Sellars And Wittgenstein On Psychological Ascriptions

 

Here are two quotes from Wilfred Sellars and Ludwig Wittgenstein:

“The essential point is that in characterizing an episode or a state as that of

knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we

are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to

justify what one says.” - Wilfred Sellars 

“But it is clear that A believes that p, A thinks p, A says p, are of the form “‘p' says p”: And here we have no co-ordination of a fact and an object, but a co-ordination of facts by means of a co-ordination of their objects.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein 

In the quotes above, Sellars and Wittgenstein both suggest that, in our use of certain psychological ascriptions, we are doing something other than providing empirical descriptions of mental states such as “belief” or “knowledge”. According to Wittgenstein, we are “co-ordinating” the elements of one fact (perhaps a fact involving certain signs) with the elements of another fact (perhaps some environmental fact). According to Sellars, we are “placing” an episode or state within the “logical space of reasons”. 

If Sellars and Wittgenstein are correct, then when we say that someone thinks or knows something, we are not placing that subject and their thought within nature. In other words, we are not making a claim about how things are with them and their thought in the way that we might make a claim about, for example, the color of a basketball. Rather, we are assigning a certain normative status to the elements of reality that constitute their assertion or belief in something like the way an umpire might assign a baseball swing a normative status by calling “strike”. 

What makes a view of this sort philosophically interesting is the way it can help to explain the claim that judgement is, in some important sense, self-conscious. 

It has sometimes been said that judgement is self-conscious in the following sense: Thinking “P” is identical to thinking “I think that P”. If judgement is self-conscious, there is no such thing as believing something without, thereby, believing that one believes it. This sort of idea precludes the possibility of a thinker who is, somehow, unaware of what it is that they think. 

But the idea that judgement is self-conscious can be confusing. It certainly seems like the fact that a car is red is different from the fact that I think a car is red. But if this is so, how can my judgement about a car be the same as my judgment about one of my beliefs? This would seem to involve a single belief that is somehow about two distinct facts and that is difficult to understand. In order to address this confusion, we need to unpack how Sellars and Wittgenstein provide a way of seeing how a judgment can be self-conscious without being a judgment about two different facts. 

As noted above, Wittgenstein and Sellars hold that at least some of our psychological ascriptions do not involve empirical descriptions of mental states. Rather, they involve assigning a normative status to certain episodes or objects. If we accept this sort of view, then thinking “P” and “I think that P” does not need to imply that we are thinking about two separate facts. Instead, thinking “P” involves representing the fact that P while thinking “I think that P” involves assigning a normative status to something in the world, by virtue of which, it represents the fact that P. When we recognize that thinking “I think that P” does not require representing a distinct content, we can avoid the confusion associated with self-conscious judgement that was presented above: We can say that the act of representing P is one and the same as the act of assigning a certain normative status to that representation. 

These considerations do not establish that judgment is actually self-conscious. However, they do suggest that one popular source of resistance to that idea can be adequately addressed. 

Comments On “Knowledge And The Internal”

 

In his essay, “Knowledge And The Internal”, John Mcdowell provides a series of theses and optional views that one might affirm about the nature of perceptual knowledge:

Thesis 1 (The Internalist Thesis): We can only reason on the basis of appearances and our rational principles.

Option 1 (The Skeptical View): Reasoning on the basis of appearances and our rational principles cannot result in knowledge of the external world.

Option 2 (The Rationalist View ): Reasoning on the basis of appearances and our rational principles can result in knowledge of the external world all on its own. 

Option 3 (The Hybrid View): Reasoning on the basis of appearances and our rational principles cannot result in knowledge of the external world all on its own, but can result in knowledge of the external world if it produces beliefs that correspond with reality. 

Thesis 2 (The Idealist Thesis): We can reason on the basis of what is the case and rational principles:

Option 1 (The Idealist View): Reasoning on the basis of what is the case and rational principles can result in knowledge of the external world.

According to Mcdowell’s idealist view, appropriate reasons for forming perceptual judgements are located in the external world, rather than in our heads, and perceptual judgements formed on the basis of these reasons can be instances of genuine knowledge. This conclusion does not immediately force us to draw any further conclusions about the nature of perception. In particular, it does not force us to conclude that perceptual states are essentially characterized in terms of representational contents. For all that this paper establishes, there may be a way to understand how perception provides us with reasons of the right sort without involving representational content in any important sense.

In order to move from Mcdowell’s idealist view to a view about perceptual content, we need to identify what sorts of conditions must be satisfied in order for a perceptual judgment to be formed for appropriate reasons. We can begin by providing some remarks about rational belief in general. 

When we form a belief on the basis of certain reasons, this often involves a transition from beliefs that represent those reasons to a belief that represents some conclusion. For example, before John concluded that Socrates is mortal, he first held the beliefs that all men are mortal and that Socrates is a man. These latter beliefs represented his reasons for drawing the conclusion that Socrates is mortal. In this case and many others, it appears that a precondition for believing something on the basis of reasons is the existence of conceptual states that represent the reasons that we are responding to. 

What explains this apparent precondition? One plausible proposal is that, in order to form appropriate beliefs in response to the evidence provided by certain facts, we must have conceptual representations of those facts available for our rational faculties to operate upon. Properly functioning rational faculties are what govern truth-preserving transitions between our cognitive states. They do this by operating upon those states in light of the distinctive conceptual contents that those states possess. Without conceptual representations of our reasons for belief, there would not be any way for the evidence provided by those reasons to make a relevant impact on our belief-forming mechanisms. 

If we accept that conceptual representations of our reasons for belief are a genuine precondition for making judgements on the basis of those reasons, we can then apply this insight to issues involving perception. 

Because of this precondition, perception can only put me in a position to believe on the basis of good reasons if it involves an appropriate conceptual state. The most natural conclusion to draw from this is that perception itself is a conceptual state that represents the reasons it supplies for our beliefs. When I perceive that the car is red, my reason for believing that the car is red is the fact that the car is red. This fact is included in what my perceptual state represents by virtue of its conceptual content. This is why, in accordance with Mcdowell’s idealist view, perception can supply reasons for belief that are nothing other than the worldly facts we are perceiving. 

One might object to the sort of view sketched above by denying that our reasons for belief are ever worldly facts. One might hold, with Donald Davidson, that “nothing can count as a reason for holding a belief except another belief”. If reasons for belief cannot be anything besides other beliefs, perception cannot open us up to reasons that lie beyond our own minds even in principle. 

I think that Davidson’s claim is mistaken. Although other beliefs are required in order for us to *have* reasons for belief, they are not *the same* as those reasons. In an ideal case of reasoning, our beliefs are what enable us to be rationally responsive to worldly facts. It is those facts that serve as our genuine reasons, not the beliefs that represent them. This reflects our common self-understanding of why we believe things. John believes that Socrates is mortal because all men are mortal and Socrates is a man. He does *not* believe that Socrates is mortal because he *believes* that all men are mortal and Socrates is a man. John’s actual reasons are worldly facts that establish the truth of his belief. This is why he presents them to justify his conclusion about Socrates. 

Another possible objection is presented by reasoning based on false beliefs. In cases of perceptual illusion, we seem capable of making justified inferences on the basis of false beliefs about what is in our environment. If we appeal to worldly facts that do not actually exist as our reasons for perceptual judgement, how can there be any justifiable inferences at all in such situations? What distinguishes a rational response to undetectable illusion from an irrational response? 

I think the appropriate thing to say here is that, in these cases, people are mistaken about their reasons for belief. Although someone suffering an illusion might claim that their perceptual beliefs are based on how things are in their environment, this isn’t actually true. Those beliefs are actually explained by an inaccurate perceptual state that represents their environment as being a certain way. Similarly, if Paul falsely believes that John is a scoundrel because all lawyers are scoundrels and John is a lawyer, then, since John is not a lawyer, it is Paul’s *belief* that John is lawyer, rather than the fact, that partially explains his conclusion. When we form judgements based on false beliefs, we are mistaken about what actually explains our judgments. Although we think that our judgements are explained by worldly facts, they are actually explained by our false beliefs. In these sorts of cases, we sometimes say that a person is justified, despite lacking knowledge, because they formed appropriate beliefs on the basis of the evidence as it appeared to them. Justification applies to beliefs that would have been knowledge if the subject had not been undetectably deceived. 

In conclusion, this version of Mcdowell’s idealist view claims that perceptual states represent the external world and supply us with reasons for belief by virtue of their conceptual content. In good cases, perception puts us in touch with what is actually the case and allows us to be rationally influenced by reality. In bad cases, it causally explains our perceptual judgments without producing knowledge. 

Physicalism And Conceivability: Reply To David Pallmann

In a recent facebook post, David Pallman provided the following argument against mind-body physicalism:

“ A modal argument against mind/body physicalism.

1. According to physicalism, I am a physical object/entity.

2. Physical objects/entities cannot possibly exist in the absence of physical things.

3. But I can possibly exist in the absence of physical things.

4. Therefore, I am not a physical object/entity.

5. Therefore, physicalism is false.”

As a reply, I think the physicalist’s best option is to reject premise three by undermining the inference from conceivability to possibility that supports it. In defense of this move, they should, first, provide counterexamples to the claim that positive conceivability entails metaphysical possibility. Second, they should use these examples to motivate an account of conceivability and modal error. Finally, they should argue that, on the basis of this account, anti-physicalist conceivability cases are susceptible to modal error and, thus, unreliable as a guide to metaphysical possibility. Here’s a rough sketch of how that sort of argument might go:

There are possible cases where certain metaphysically impossible situations seem conceivable even after ideal rational reflection. For example, the existence and non-existence of a metaphysically necessary being both seem positively conceivable. However, since one of these cases is metaphysically impossible, at least one metaphysically impossible scenario is positively conceivable. Additionally, it seems positively conceivable that water is composed of H20. However, it is epistemically possible that, in the future, we might discover that we were mistaken and water is actually composed of XYZ. In this situation, what seemed to be positively conceivable (apparently possible, given our knowledge, after ideal rational reflection), would turn out to be metaphysically impossible. This is another possible case where positive conceivability would not be a reliable guide to metaphysical possibility. 

What should we say about conceivability in light of these cases? First, we should give some account of what conceiving of some possibility involves. In my view, the best thing to say is something like this: When we conceive of a possibility, we are describing a total situation in which our worldly evidence is such that we are disposed to judge that certain concepts apply. For instance, when I conceive of a world where water is composed of H20, I describe a world where things with certain functional roles (H20 molecules) realize watery stuff. I am disposed to judge that such a world is one where water is composed of H20, so I take such a world to be possible. However, if I later discovered that water is, in fact, composed of XYZ, then describing such a world (the H20 world) would no longer dispose me to judge that it is one where water is composed of H20. This is because, based on my a posteriori discovery, I would no longer take the relevant worldly evidence (watery stuff) to be actual water. 

The above account suffices as an explanation of why an inference to metaphysical possibility based on conceivability might be defeated by subsequent a posteriori discoveries. However, there are other cases, such as the conceivability of God’s existence and non-existence, that don’t seem capable of being explained in this way. Even if we make the a posteriori discovery that God exists, it seems like we will still be able to describe a total situation in which our worldly evidence disposes us to judge that it is a situation where God does not exist. What these cases show us is that we can describe total situations that, despite being coherent, are nevertheless metaphysically impossible. I think this suggests that positive conceivability is, even in the ideal case, not an indefeasible guide to metaphysical possibility. One lesson we should draw from this is that our judgements about metaphysical possibility cannot be based on conceivability alone. Rather, they must also be informed by the metaphysical implications of a posteriori discoveries as well. 

In light of these considerations, I think what the physicalist should say about anti-physicalist conceivability arguments is that they involve descriptions of coherent total situations containing worldly evidence that dispose us to judge that they are worlds where certain mental phenomena are present in the absence of associated physical phenomena or vice versa. They are ideal cases in the sense that they are not susceptible to defeat by future empirical discoveries because, unlike the case of water and H20, the worldly evidence that disposes us to judge that mentality is present/absent is the existence of mentality itself. When we judge that pain is present, for example, we judge this on the basis of the existence of pain. This is unlike water, where we judge that water is present on the basis of the existence of watery stuff. That is why, even if someone believes that pain is identical to C-fibers firing, they will still find it positively conceivable that pain can exist in the absence of C-fibers. They still find it conceivable because they can describe a total situation where C-fibers are absent but painful sensations are present and, since painful sensations are sufficient for the presence of pain, they will be disposed to judge that this is a world where pain is present but c-fibers are absent. Furthermore, there is no incoherence in our description of a world where pain is present in the absence of C-fibers firing because there are no a priori connections between our concepts of pain (or painful sensations) and C-fibers. As far as a priori reflection is concerned, such a situation is entirely coherent. Nevertheless, based on our a posteriori evidence, the physicalist should say that these concepts both refer to the very same physical phenomenon. Consequently, they should say that the conceivability of anti-physicalist scenarios is not a reliable guide to metaphysical possibility. 

The physicalist can explain the positive conceivability of anti-physicalist scenarios by pointing out that our metal concepts are distinctively “first-personal” in the following sense: We apply them directly on the basis of the phenomena that they refer to. By contrast, our physical concepts are “third-personal” in the sense that we apply them indirectly on the basis of observational evidence. Because these concepts do not have any a priori connections to one another, we cannot infer, a priori, that they co-refer. The possibility of possessing these sorts of co-referring concepts that lack a priori connections can be explained in physicalist terms by appealing to the difference in worldly evidence that disposes us to apply those concepts: We recognize things with certain causal-structural roles as c-fibers and certain phenomenal states of our direct acquaintance as pain. This allows the physicalist to dismiss the positive conceivability of anti-physicalist scenarios an unreliable guide to metaphysical possibility on the grounds that they involve metaphysically impossible descriptions that aren’t recognizable as metaphysically impossible, even after ideal rational reflection. In this sense, they are like the cases where we conceive of the existence and non-existence of God. Anti-physicalist conceivability cases, however, are explained by appealing to the difference in our first-personal and third-personal concepts. 

In summary, the physicalist can provide examples where positive conceivability does not entail metaphysical possibility. These are situations where we describe coherent total situations involving worldly evidence that disposes us to judge that certain facts obtain, even though those situations are metaphysically impossible. The physicalist can then establish that anti-physicalist scenarios depend on descriptions involving worldly evidence that are not a priori incoherent because they appeal to first-personal and third personal concepts that have no a priori connections to one another. Because our a posteriori evidence suggests that mental concepts and physical concepts do, in fact, co-refer, we should conclude that the anti-physicalist scenarios are positively conceivable but metaphysically impossible.  

Addendum: Another lesson that we can draw from these remarks is that conceivability is not the essential tool of metaphysical inquiry that some take it to be. Our modal judgements about metaphysical possibility are determined by more holistic considerations involving a priori reflection, a posteriori discoveries, and abductive theorizing