The Inefficacy of Skepticism

 

 

There is something peculiar about skepticism, psychologically speaking. It seems both cogent and ineffectual. Our epistemic practices are roundly criticized, convincingly so, and yet we decline to modify them; we soldier on regardless. We don’t refute the skeptic, but we don’t heed him either. Why are we so complacent, stubborn, and irrational? We are like flat-earth true believers who know all the refutations of their position but cling to it anyway. Of course, there are those who seek, by a variety of stratagems, to blunt the force of skepticism, thus bolstering their initial naïve epistemology; but this always reeks of cognitive dissonance, and is generally unpersuasive. And there are many others who reject such soothing stances and yet still decline to alter their epistemological assumptions—what is it with them? Skepticism thus retains both its power and its impotence: hard to rebut, but also hard to go along with.

We can imagine that not being so. Suppose some possible beings develop the kind of commonsense epistemology possessed by normal humans—the usual concepts of belief, knowledge, justification, reason, evidence, etc., along with the usual distribution of these concepts. They believe, and take themselves to know, various truths about their environment, other minds, the past, the future, etc. But also suppose that at the very outset skepticism starts to rear its head—it comes with the territory. Skeptical possibilities become widely entertained, and not just in university departments. Children start to bring them up, spontaneously and nervously, around the age of ten after a few blissful years of epistemological complacency. People quickly realize there is something seriously amiss with their assumptions. It is rather like starting life with superstitious beliefs and then soon discovering science. We would expect some major revisions of opinion, on pain of irrationality. Maybe some diehards will try to cling to their earlier views, but most will capitulate to reason, accepting that they are really notcertain that there is a table there, or that they are not brains in a vat, or that other people have minds. They might well also agree that such beliefs are not even adequately justified and are not genuine instances of knowledge. They accordingly cease to talk and think this way—as people outgrow superstition, religious dogma, and prejudiced politics. Skepticism is given its due; earlier opinion is discarded. One can be brought up to believe the tenets of a particular religion, but it is within one’s power to abandon those tenets under cogent criticism—and so it might be for one’s “epistemological religion”. And it is not as if you will go to hell if you discard your callow epistemological dogmas.

Or consider this possibility: a group of beings holds to commonsense epistemology for thousands of years with nary a skeptical thought among them. No one has so much as thought of skepticism, so there isn’t any pressure for revision. Children never wonder about what colors other people see, or ask if it’s all a dream, or how we know that the future will resemble the past. Then a particular individual, call her Helena, through some quirk of genius, comes up with skeptical arguments, which (we are supposing) are thoroughly convincing. Helena publishes these arguments in a scientific journal and they reach the public via global press coverage (think Einstein on relativity). Headline: Scientist Discovers We Don’t Know Anything. It is conceivable that our beings will accept the findings in question, as people have accepted other earth-shattering discoveries (species evolved by natural selection, the earth moves, we are not the center of the universe, slavery is wrong). They thus revise their epistemic belief system to fit the new ideas, declining to throw around words like “certain”, “know”, and “justified” with the abandon of yore. It becomes part of received opinion that these words don’t apply as widely as was believed heretofore, maybe applying only to one’s knowledge of one’s own mental state. So late-onset skepticism could have the same efficacy as early-onset skepticism; the mere fact of arriving late on the scene doesn’t imply that skepticism must be resisted. It is just that epistemic error has been around for a very long time. So why don’t we fit either of these models?

It is an empirical question when skepticism first arose for humans. We can safely assume that it wasn’t coeval with the onset of epistemic concepts and their associated beliefs: humans didn’t discover skepticism at the precise moment they began to deploy epistemic concepts, or a short time thereafter. We know that skepticism was much discussed in ancient Greece, but that must post-date by thousands of years the existence of commonsense epistemology. So we would expect some inertia about abandoning this aspect of ordinary belief. But such inertia didn’t stop other ancient canards from going extinct. Would humans have found it easier to let skepticism have its way if it had cropped up later in history, as in my second scenario? It might be argued that skepticism has grown stale for us and thus has lost its initial sharp edge; if it had been discovered at the time of the scientific revolution, it might have had more potency. But this seems implausible: it would still have encountered stiff resistance if discovered in 1680 or 1952. Why? It is conceptually possible for there to be beings who accept its urgings, so why are we so intransigent? It would be different if the skeptical arguments were simply fallacies and follies, easily defeated and defanged, but (we are assuming) that is not so. So what is going on here? Why are we so internally divided on the subject, schizoid almost? Why do we accept the force of skepticism and yet do nothing about it, even when we are quite self-conscious about our position? Why the psychological split?

I have a theory. Consider perceptual illusions such as the Muller-Lyer illusion: these are products of our epistemic faculties—they purport to represent aspects of the world, inviting belief, and offering justification (i.e., how things seem). Yet they are false: those lines are not really unequal in length. The perceiver need not know this and so may form the belief that the lines are not equal. This counts as a piece of commonsense perceptual epistemology. We can imagine people being under this illusion for centuries, never realizing that it is an illusion. Or consider the moon illusion: people might really believe that the moon shrinks as it rises over the horizon into the night sky. Now some scientist points out that these are indeed illusions—things seem that way but they are not really that way. Some people may persist in their earlier beliefs in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary, but most will come to accept that they were wrong—they have been under an illusion. But there is no corresponding change in their perceptual responses: it still looksto everyone as if the lines are unequal and that the moon shrinks. The perceptual system is not penetrable by outside information; it is “encapsulated”.[1]It is modular, stimulus-dependent, and bottom-up. No amount of reasoning, no matter how cogent, can prevent this system from mechanically delivering its standard output. It is, we might say, impervious to reason—a kind of reflex that we have to live with even when we know it is leading us astray. You might have very good reasons for suppressing your patellar reflex, but find it impossible to do, given the way your nervous system is wired; well, the visual system is like that, sublimely indifferent to higher rationality. From this we may infer causal isolation: central beliefs cannot cause the visual module to vary in its mode of response. Such beliefs are quite inefficacious when it comes to controlling vision. So we evidently contain two sorts of informational system that are insensitive to each other (the visual system can’t usurp the central cognitive system either). We thus arrive at a dual-system epistemic psychology. The two systems function autonomously, have a different ontogenesis, and may even employ distinct sorts of mental representation; no doubt they also have different neural substrates. They co-exist and can interact but they don’t mingle—one has no veto power over the other. Sometimes they hardly seem to communicate with each other. We might say that the visual system inclines one to believe what its output (a visual impression) suggests, but this inclination doesn’t prevent one from fully accepting that the facts are otherwise. The result is an oddly ambivalent state of mind, which accounts for the fascination of such illusions: on the one hand, you are inclined to believe what your senses tell you, but on the other you firmly reject their intimations. If someone were to tell you that all this illusion stuff is just a hoax thought up by manipulative scientists—the lines really are unequal and the moon really does shrink—you would be tempted to respond, “I knew it all along!” It is hard to accept that your visual system, otherwise so reliable, should so cruelly deceive you—as if you have a little evil demon living inside your head. As it is, however, you conclude that the scientists are right and your visual sense is wrong—while all the while your senses stick to their own version of things. Theywill not be moved.

My theory, then, is this: our commonsense epistemic system is also an autonomous module separate from the system that trades in skeptical arguments. The commonsense system (“folk epistemology”) pre-dates the reflective skepticism-involving system and is largely independent of it. We started by describing ourselves using epistemic terms at some point in human evolution well before written language and sophisticated culture developed, probably as a result of an innate faculty, and only later did human thought begin to reflect upon itself and issue criticisms. Just so, human vision evolved before science and objective measurement, only later becoming subject to rational criticism, but unable to respond to such criticism by altering its mode of operation. Thus skepticism failed to penetrate the cognitive system that pre-existed it. Put simply, people reflexively apply epistemic concepts to themselves and others, but these applications are independent of higher-order reflection of the kind employed in skeptical arguments.[2]They are encapsulated, automatic, and hard-wired. It is as if we are under the illusionthat we know: that’s how we seemto each other. I seem to know many things about the external world, other minds, etc., but skepticism teaches me that this is an illusion, exposed by consideration of our true epistemic situation.[3]The hamster may be under a similar illusion and be equally impervious to skepticism (if the hamster could understand skepticism)—precisely because it is programmed to accept its natural perspective on things. We go around the world representing it (wrongly, I am assuming) as containing knowledge, justification, certainty, and evidence, by courtesy of our innate epistemic endowment; but skepticism can make no inroads into this system, despite its superior wisdom, because the system is encapsulated and largely oblivious.[4]Thus we have a dual epistemic architecture: a primitive quasi-reflexive uncritical system, and a more sophisticated reflective critical system. The former is reluctant to take orders from the latter, as an adolescent doesn’t listen to his elders and betters. These faculties have different developmental schedules and neural implementations, and they might even differ in their coding properties and mode of operation. It would be possible to have the former without the latter, as presumably children are for some time in this condition. This would explain our divided epistemic self, our ambivalence, our schizoid tendencies, and our confusion. The commonsense faculty is a lot more ancient and primitive, a holdover from simpler times (and look how much illusion and error has been alleged by contemporary science!); the skeptical line of thought is something superadded, a product of late human culture, by no means integral to what preceded it.[5]No wonder it has so little impact on its set-in-its-ways predecessor! But we mixed-up humans contain both systems and so have to live with their quarrels: we are aware of what we are inclined naturally to think andof what our reflective reason says about those inclinations. We want to attribute knowledge, but we are cognizant that this attribution is questionable. We are caught between these two judgments—as we are caught between the conflicting claims of perception and cognition. This is why skepticism is psychologically peculiar: in it we are witness to our own psychological plurality—the fact that we are an assembly not a unity. We suffer from internal conflicts, no doubt with an evolutionary basis. Our faculties don’t always fit harmoniously together. This is a familiar thought for our emotional nature, but the same is true of our cognitive nature, as the case of perceptual illusion so vividly illustrates. I have suggested that our attitude to skepticism has similar roots. One faculty tells us that we know; another says not so fast. The former persists in its ways despite the superior wisdom of the latter.

 

Col

[1]I am here following Jerry Fodor inModularity of Mind(1983).

[2]Here we may be reminded of Hume’s famous response to the skeptic: we can believe skepticism in our study but we lapse back into common sense when we leave it. Thus we have “natural beliefs” and “philosophical beliefs”—each the province of different cognitive faculties. (Contemporary cognitive science is in many ways a reversion to seventeenth and eighteenth century thought.)

[3]To repeat, I am assuming the cogency of skepticism here, not arguing for it; my question is what explains our reluctance, or inability, to take it seriously in our ordinary practices.

[4]The same might be said of the problem of free will: first we believe in it as a result of an ancient cognitive-cum-affective system, then we come to question it because of scientific ideas such as determinism and genetics. Even when convinced we have a tendency to cleave to old ways—thus we can find ourselves both disbelieving in free will and yet unable to shed our commitment to it.

[5]Psychologists have postulated a “theory of mind” module that grows spontaneously in the young child, much as the language faculty does; it is quite unhindered by skeptical thoughts concerning other minds. Those thoughts come later and from a different source (“critical reason”): they make little dent in the earlier module. Thus we automatically view others as having minds, even though we may be intellectually convinced that we have no grounds for this supposition. Similarly, we have a “theory of world” module that pre-dates and resists later skeptical reflections, however unreasonably. If we put the point in terms of organ psychology, it is as if the primitive mental organ keeps pumping out what it is designed to pump out even when the organ of rational thought counsels otherwise. After all, evolution has only a passing interest in objective truth; what matters to the genes is what works (which may, or may not, coincide with the truth). Whether anyone reallyknows anything, or has justified certainty, is not a matter of great concern to evolution.

 

 

Physiology of Mind

 

Physiology lacks a philosophy to call its own. There is no philosophy of physiology to speak of. Perhaps this is because physiology is a sub-discipline of biology and we already have a philosophy of biology. But this neglects the possibility that physiology works with concepts and theoretical constructions specific to itself, and these require philosophical treatment in their own right. Here is how the OEDdefines “physiology”: “the branch of biology concerned with the normal functions of living organisms and their parts”. As always, this definition is worth dwelling on. Physiology is the science of the functioning of living organisms and their component parts, such as the heart, the kidneys, and the brain. The word “function” here has two separate connotations: it refers to theoperationsof organisms and their parts, and it refers to the purposeof those operations. How do organisms work and why do they work that way? Thus the function (purpose) of the heart is to circulate blood, and the way this purpose is achieved is by acting as a pump with a certain structure and mode of action. Physiology must first identify the end an organ serves and then explain how that end is achieved by the organ in question. And what is an organ? The OEDhas this: “a part of an organism which is typically self-contained and has a specific vital function”. An organ is relatively autonomous in its operation and its function is specific and vital (though not necessarily a matter of life and death). So physiology is concerned with organs that have their own identity and which have a dedicated specific purpose not shared by other organs. The central concepts of physiology are therefore life, purpose, functioning,andorgan.Notice that no restriction is made to the body as opposed to the mind (this will be relevant later), nor are genetics and evolution invoked.

Venturing beyond the dictionary definition, we can make a number of other observations about physiology (the science and the reality). First, there is a division of labor among organs: some do one job and some do another (nineteenth century physiologists compared the body to a factory). Second, function and structure are intimately connected: whatever the function of an organ is, it must have a structure that suits it to perform that function; and physiology as a science must characterize this relation. We may think of it as a fittingrelation: it resembles the way artifacts fit their function—they must be physically capable of performing it. Thus physiology (functioning, activity) must dovetail with anatomy (structure, architecture). Third, although organs are sharply differentiated, they must be integrated—because they have to work harmoniously together. Rogue organs do nobody any good. They need some sort of central command or supervision (here is where the brain comes in handy). Fourth, and connected, organs belong to organ systems, forming complex organs—consider all the organs that go into digestive systems. These must be integrated together, but they also need to be integrated with other organ systems. Accordingly, there is a hierarchical structure to physiology: systems, subsystems, individual organs, components of such organs, etc. Fifth, there is a normative aspect to physiology: that is, we have the notions of health and disease, normality and pathology. This is because of the teleological element: organs are healthy or defective according as they achieve their purpose, which is to preserve life (which we assume is a good thing). Sixth, just as the organism exists in an external environment which it must negotiate, so the several organs of the body exist in an internal environment; and in both cases adjustment and accommodation are required. Here is where homeostasis comes in—the need to keep the internal environment stable and contained within certain limits (temperature being the most obvious parameter). The organism exists in a physical environment and one that contains other organisms; the organs exist in a chemical environment and one that contains other organs. There is a nesting of environments. The organism has a certain Umwelt, but so does the individual organ. This point gives rise to the seventh observation: organs, like organisms, are input-output devices. Something goes in and something comes out. Often the organs function as a conversion device—as with the lungs and stomach. All organs need nutrients to be absorbed in order for actions and processes to be powered. The components of the body are not isolated and cut off. Thus the organs need to contain interactive mechanisms—devices that make things happen, often of elaborate design. The system is intricate and interlocked, though differentiated and distinct. Eighth, the organs have a genetic basis, a distinctive embryogenesis, and an evolutionary history; they are certainly not “acquired” by means of interaction with the environment. The tabula rasais a very bad model for physiology. The heart is as hard-wired and pre-determined as any nativist could wish. Ninth, despite the manifest variety of organs, there are certain physiological universals, particularly pertaining to cellular structure: all organs are made of cells, though the cells typically differ histologically. Thus macro-physiology is highly heterogeneous, while micro-physiology is quite homogeneous (the cell with its nucleus, membrane, and mitochondria). As it were, the atoms are alike, but the objects they compose exhibit considerable variety, according to their specific jobs. Tenth, we can, for any organism, make a list of its characteristic organ systems, which serve to fix its phenotype; these may overlap with other species or may be unique to the species in question. By my reckoning, human physiology contains the following organ systems: digestive, respiratory, sexual, circulatory, immune, motor, postural, sensory, protective, and mental (with many subdivisions: see below). So the magic number is 10—other species may well have less, though in general this number seems to apply to all but the simplest organisms. Thus evolution needed to produce 10 organ types that work together to keep an organism alive. Subtract any of them and you tend to get a dead organism. Physics and chemistry have their types of particle; physiology has its types of organ. The raison d’etreof each is its contribution to maintaining life.

Before I turn to applying this conception to the mind, it will help to talk in some detail about specific organs, so that we have a concrete point of comparison. The heart is composed of two types of cell, known as cardiomyocytes and pacemaker cells, which have different functions. The former enable muscular contraction and are cylindrical in shape. They have high mitochondrial density that enables them to produce large amounts of ATP, which makes the heart resistant to fatigue. Heartbeats are caused by the shortening and lengthening of fibers. The gross anatomy of the heart divides it into the atria and the ventricles, chambers that receive blood and pump it out, respectively. The tissue of the heart is a type of muscle tissue. By pumping blood the heart serves its purpose of circulating blood throughout the body to maintain organs and perform other functions. The functioning of the heart is closely linked to the respiratory system. The kidneys, for their part, have a different shape (more like a large bean) and are made up of different cell types called nephrons. They process liquids and expel urine. The liver is a large organ that contains hepatocytes and endothelial cells, boasts two lobes, is adjoined to the gallbladder, and performs a variety of functions related to digestion, also secreting bile. Diagrams of these organs can be made and they have a distinctive macro anatomy and microanatomy. Structure is suited to function; function is specific; there is input and output; there are links to other organs. This is the stuff of physiology as defined above. It goes beyond more general biological concepts, such as genotype and phenotype, natural selection, species, evolution, reproduction, and so on. Physiology is primarily concerned with the concept of an organ, understood in the way outlined—structure, role, purpose, operation. As remarked, this concept is not conceptually tied to the body or to the concept of the physical: it could have turned out that organisms house non-corporeal organs (as was supposed for the elan vital), so long as these entities fulfill the general abstract definition of an organ. If cavities in the body perform a role analogous to meaty tissue, then they too would count as organs, since they aid life. Or a Cartesian biologist might postulate an immaterial organ responsible for circulating the blood, on the (mistaken) assumption that such an impressive and important feat could not be performed by mere matter and needs the help of the ethereal. Most significantly for our purposes, nothing in the definition of physiology requires that the mindnot count as an organ possessed by an organism. Hence we have the idea of a physiology of mind—a science of mental organs.[1]That is, psychology is a branch of physiology. Not just a branch of biology, but a branch of the branch of biology called physiology. Nor is this conception in any way precluded by the etymology of the word “physiology”, since this word derives from a Greek word meaning simply “nature”. Nothing specifically physicalis entailed (whatever exactly “physical” is supposed to mean).[2]

The basic idea is far from novel (Chomsky has been speaking of “mental organs” for decades and comparing them to bodily organs). What I want to do is apply the conception developed above in an explicit theoretical way, so that the mind emerges as fully and properly physiological–not metaphorically but literally. The mind really is an aspect of the physiological constitution of the organism, animal or human. It is literally a collection of physiological organs. Recall the dictionary definition of “physiology”: “the branch of biology concerned with the normal function of living organisms and their parts”. Surely it is obvious that the mind of an organism is part of its normal function: the mind has a function and this function is normal. Or rather, the mind is made up of faculties (“organs”) that have a function and which function in the life of the organism. The sense experiences of bats, say, have a function and they function in the life of a bat—they have a purpose, a nature, and a mode of operation. We refer to the senses as sense organsfor a reason—they literally are organs. But they are not purely bodily organs—they are psychophysical organs; they have both a mental and physical aspect. Their having the former aspect in no way disqualifies them for the title “organ”. Not that it matters whether the word “organ” fits as a matter of common usage; from a theoretical point of view, vision (say) is as much a vital biological property of an organism as the stomach. There is no principled or interesting dividing line here. Animals have organs in their bodies and they have organs in their minds (or partly so). Again, the dictionary definition of “organ” confirms this topic-neutrality: an organ is just part of an organism that is “self-contained and has a specific vital function”. It would be pointless to quibble over the word “part” here on the grounds that mental faculties are not really partsof an organism; we could easily rephrase the definition by using “aspect” or “property” or “trait”. The interesting question is to what extent mental organs share the characteristics I attributed to organs in general, for that is what determines whether the concept of the physiological is apt. So: is the mind organ-like?

Consider the language faculty. There is much controversy on this subject but I propose to cut through all that and adopt a specific perspective, roughly that developed by Chomsky. I will accordingly say that language is an internal system (with an external expression) that consists of rules of computation and a lexicon of word-like elements. A grammar specifies the structure of this system and takes a generative form. The grammar is innate and modular. Sentence structure can be represented by tree diagrams. The grammar outputs infinitely many possible strings on a finite basis. The internal system connects to sensory systems (typically hearing) and to motor systems (typically speech mechanisms), as well as to cognitive processes such as logical reasoning. Given this general conception, it seems evident that the language faculty counts as an organ and hence as an element of human physiology. It has a complex internal structure, relatively specific, with connections to other mental organs, an innate basis, and even its own mode of depiction (those tree diagrams). If we ask what its function is in the life of the organism, the answer is not far to seek: it serves either as an aid to thought or as a means of communication (depending on your view of the purpose of human language). In either case (or in both) language performs a vital biological function in the life of the human organism; you are at a comparative disadvantage without it. It contributes to reproductive fitness. It propagates the genes. It is also an input-output system: sensory inputs, including speech, and motor outputs, also vocal (sometimes gestural). You report what you see and hear and you talk about what you think and feel. So it is connected to other organs or modules or faculties, and hence operates in its own specific internal environment (consider internal speech). It is differentiated yet integrated, self-contained yet embedded. Thus it counts as part of human physiology—our nature as living things, our phenotypic identity. Essentially, it has a certain functional architecture that fits into the life of a particular species—a compositional structure and characteristic mode of operation. As plants engage in photosynthesis as part of their mode of living, so humans engage in linguistic synthesis as part of their mode of living: they put sentences together by following certain procedures and this product aids them in life. And this faculty can exhibit signs of ill health and disease if it fails in its purpose, as other organs can: thus aphasia and the various types of language pathology. The language faculty is not supposedto issue in nonsense or grammatical error, yet it sometimes does—it is then not working according to its function. There is right and wrong, good and bad, well-formed and ill-formed. Physiology is inherently vulnerable to breakdown and malfunction, and language is no different. This is a logical consequence of having a biological purpose.

Much the same can be said about other commonsense mental categories: perception obviously, but also memory and reasoning. I won’t discuss these in detail; it is fairly easy to see how the story will go. There will be a specification of the organ’s function and a description of its enabling structure–the former obvious, the latter less so. Then we will need to locate it in a wider system, characterizing its inputs and outputs, and its internal environment. There will be specific architectural details, as well as some shared properties (constituent structure looks like a universal). We might be able to draw a map of the mind relating its various components—a full mental anatomy.[3]No doubt there will exist a physical and chemical basis to the mental organs at a deeper level of analysis (which will not replace the higher levels), and a cellular substrate. The important point is that we are not now engaged on a completely different enterprise from that of traditional physiology; we are merely extending that enterprise. The same theoretical framework is employed, but now applied to the physiology of mind.[4]A stubborn residual dualism will be resisted in favor of a more unified vision of the organism. The mind will be granted a lot more internal structure than on certain traditional conceptions, which insist on a radical discontinuity between the study of the body and the study of the mind (the body jammed with structure, the mind merely a blank nothingness). The body turned out to have a lot more internal structure than early physiological inquirers suspected; the mind will likely reveal a lot more structure than similarly benighted theorists assume (and has already done so). Framing the questions in physiological terms provides an apparatus for inquiry that encourages the same kind of open-minded exploration. Approaching an alien species, we would expect to discover its internal bodily organization—its organs and their processes—but we should adopt the same attitude towards its mental organization. The most basic principle of physiology, whether of the body or the mind, is that nature has made organisms to consist of differentiated but integrated organs serving specific functions. There is no such thing as blank and homogeneous physiology.[5]

 

[1]Kant speaks of the “physiology of understanding” in relation to Locke’s project in the Essay: this was a good insight on his part. See the preface to Critique of Pure Reason.

[2]The physiological conception I am advocating is not to be confused with the perspective of so-called neuroscience. There is nothing reductionist about my proposal and its preferred descriptive vocabulary is not the same as that of the brain sciences. That vocabulary is geared to the type of cell composing the brain (neurons) as well as the gross anatomy of the brain. By contrast, the vocabulary of physiology abstracts from this detail and talks of organs, function, structure, life, and organic systems. This talk is topic-neutral and in no way presupposes a “physicalist” view of the mind (whatever that might be).

[3]It is an interesting question whether consciousness counts as an organ in its own right or whether it is a quality possessed by various mental organs. I suspect the latter to be true, but in either case it would be a physiological phenomenon, perhaps analogous to the smoothness of bodily organs, which is shared by many such organs.

[4]Let me put in a word for the “second brain”, that neural structure in the gut that regulates digestion. Assuming that there are mental correlates to its operations, we could postulate a “second mind” that harbors its own set of mental organs (see my “The Second Mind”, in Philosophical Provocations, 2017). I suspect many people will be more ready to grant physiological status to this lowly mind than to the more familiar mind that engages in logical reasoning and artistic creativity. But really the “head mind” is no less organic than the “gut mind”.

[5]Even a physiology of an immaterial Cartesian substance, if such there could be, would deal in organs and their activities, since the mind is made of a number of interacting faculties that need an operational structure. The immaterial mind would not be a formless nothing any more than the body is. Perception, thinking, language, memory, emotion, and volition will all require specific configurations of the immaterial stuff in which the mind is held to reside. And there will be the same questions about purpose, mode of operation, etc.

 

 

 

 

The Limits of Predication

 

 

A realist will hold that there may be properties of objects we don’t know about, even can’t know about. Kant holds that the noumenal world consists of just such instantiated properties.[1]Human knowledge is limited and doesn’t necessarily extend to every property of objects. But it is not typically maintained that reality may contain facts that fail to consist in the instantiation of properties of anykind. Indeed, this looks contradictory given that we equate facts with instantiations of properties—and what else could they be? How could reality contain anything that wasn’t the instantiation of a property by an object? From an epistemological point of view, how could there be a conceptual scheme that wasn’t predicative? Surely any representation of a fact will consist of the identification of some object and the ascription to it of a predicate. Even unknown properties are logically ascribable by means of a suitable predicate—perhaps wielded only by God. How can thought be anything other than predicative? So there doesn’t seem room for a position that finds the object-property distinction or the subject-predicate distinction parochial:allof reality must conform to these linked distinctions. Granted we don’t know all properties, but whatever we don’t know is at least a property of somesort; and similarly for objects. Put differently, when Plato discovered the distinction between particulars and universals (or logicians discovered the subject-predicate distinction) he discovered a necessary non-negotiable truth about all possible reality. Every possible world must consist of particulars instantiating properties, however peculiar those particulars are and however alien their properties. The world may be very different from how we think of it in terms of its objects and properties, but that it contains objects and properties is not disputable; here skepticism reaches its limit. It couldn’t turn out that the real world fails to consist of objects and properties (particulars and universals). Similarly, there could not be a conceptual scheme in which nothing is predicated of any object: Eskimos may have ten words for snow and the Hopi have a different concept of time, but in both cases they employ predicative concepts directed towards individual things. Every conceivable conceptual scheme consists of concepts, i.e. mental entities that express general features of objects. So there are no limits to predication, as there are no limits to the object-property distinction. These are as solid and universal as any logical law. The structure of reality is given by the object-property structure and the structure of thought is given by the subject-predicate structure—nothing else is possible or conceivable. There can’t be sectors of reality that fail to conform to these structures. Reality necessarily consists of predicable properties.

That seems like a compelling position, and it puts a limit on how dramatically reality may diverge from the way we normally think of it. The structureof our thought is adequate to every conceivable state of affairs even if the contentof our thought is restricted. Reality can only be constituted in one way, and we possess that way. Things are not so dire as skeptics sometimes make them seem. But on reflection this comforting conclusion begins to look overly optimistic, indeed unacceptably anthropocentric. For how could the contingent facts of human psychology, characteristic of a particular species at a particular point of evolutionary history, manage to encompass every possible configuration that objective reality may assume? Do we think that the minds of other animals possess such universal logical penetration? If we agree that human language evolved quite recently in evolutionary time, and that it forms the foundation of our cognitive abilities, how could it be that it is adequate for every layer or type of reality, reaching across all possible worlds? Isn’t the subject-predicate structure just a feature of our biologically given language faculty, hardly indicative of the way everything must eternally and necessarily be? Why should it apply to the world of subatomic particles even? It didn’t evolve with this part of reality in view. Isn’t it enormous hubris to identify the structure of our thought with the structure of all possible reality? Thus it may be said that reality might well consist of facts, states of affairs, things, or stuff that flout our cognitive structure—that don’t fit the predicative form. This form may apply to the world of the senses, but why should it apply to every part of reality, no matter how noumenal? Why should our concept of a property have such universal sweep? Maybe it is just a hopelessly anthropocentric way to conceive of reality, bequeathed by Plato and imposed on Western thought uncritically. Of course, we can’t say what this reality might be like, since we are limited to the cognitive resources we have, but that is no bar to accepting that our resources may be partial or even skewed. Perhaps all we can do is speak of “the thing in itself” or “the ultimate stuff of the world” or “being as such”, admitting that there is no requirement for the designation of these phrases to fall neatly under the structure embedded in the distinction between objects and what can be predicated of them. This structure may be artificial or superficial or simply not applicable to everything.

This type of radical position is familiar from the philosophical tradition and is not without romantic associations (it is up to us to make reality in our own image!). The world consists of undifferentiated stuff and we impose structure on it by exploiting out predicative cognitive apparatus. Reality is not objectively divided into particulars and properties; we project that structure onto it according to our own interests. The real world is like amorphous dough or a formless cloud or a blank slate or the empty sky; all individuating structure derives from us. The trouble with these metaphors is that they concede the point at issue while claiming to deny it: for dough, clouds, blank slates, and the sky all have constitutive properties that make them what they are. They are not somehow pre-predicative or property-less—those mythical “bare particulars”. We know of nothing in reality like that. There is no infinitely plastic substratum we can point to. But the underlying metaphysical claim is not refuted by the inadequacy of these examples–the claim, namely, that it seems a bit of a stretch (to put it mildly) to suppose that all reality must conform to contingent human modes of thought, even deep-seated ones. Is there a better way to articulate the position? Might there be signs of its correctness already existing within our conceptual scheme? An obvious first thought takes its rise from feature-placing sentences like “It’s cold”. It may be suggested that such sentences fail to predicate a property of any particular, so are counterexamples to the subject-predicate hegemony. That may be true as a matter of grammar, but the point doesn’t cut deep: there is still the property of being cold, and clearly the state of affairs in question involves assorted cold objects. However, the idea that some statements could locate a quality rather than ascribe it to a distinguished object is not without value in the present connection, because it loosens the grip of the paradigm supplied by statements about perceived material objects. Couldn’t there be a world of spatially distributed features?

A different kind of argument might be extracted from quantum physics. Here it may be said that the ontology of discrete locatable particulars instantiating determinate properties is put under pressure. This line of argument is only as persuasive as the underlying physics that it presupposes, and we all know how controversial that is. Still, again, the case provides some inkling of what an alternative view of reality might be like, in so far as we can really understand what is being maintained. And even if we can’t understand it, there is the possibility that reality might not fit the neat structure we habitually bring to bear on it: everything might be a lot messier down there, blurrier, weirder. Do particles really haveproperties in the way macroscopic objects do? Similarly, it might be said that field theory in physics violates the particular-property distinction: fields take intensity values at certain points but there is no objectthat instantiates a certain property. Fields are not locatable particulars, but are spread out indefinitely through space. Again, there are going to be questions about the ontology of fields, but at least this case provides a possible way to think about an alternative conception of the structure of reality.  Then again, we have the view, espoused by Russell, that the subject-predicate form is a relic of the old substance metaphysics, which should be replaced by an event-based ontology. In this ontology we don’t speak of objects (substances) instantiating properties but rather of the exemplification of event types in space-time.[2]This might be thought an alternative to the old Platonic model of a continuing object being hooked up to a shareable universal. Again, there is a question about how far this position departs from the basic object-property distinction and subject-predicate grammar, but it at least purports to offer an alternative conceptual structure. And what about the mind—does it really fit the predicative form? That form surely has its home in the material world of perceived particulars, but it has always seemed strained when applied to the contents of mind. We feel like we are forcing consciousness into a mold not designed for it: hence the metaphors of ghost or stream or steam or halo or genie. We want to say that the mind isn’t an object, thus indicating that facts about it are not divided up as material objects and their properties are. There is even some strain in the notion of a mental property (see Wittgenstein on “mental state”). Finally, it might be wondered whether vagueness puts a dent in the usual conception, because it undermines the picture of discrete bounded properties, and what it is to possess them. What kind of property is baldness? Frege didn’t think it was a property at all.[3]

But putting these possibly suggestive points aside, there is the deeper argument that there is just no good reason to suppose that reality must mirror the structure of human thinking. Even if we are stuck inside the subject-predicate cognitive structure, why should reality oblige us by conforming to it? Our concepts might not represent reality correctly, so why should our conceptual structurenecessarily represent it correctly? Our concepts occur not just in acts of predication but also exhibit other features: they compose to form complex concepts; they are subject to logical operations like conjunction, disjunction, and negation; they are subject to adverbial modification; they have intension and extension; and so on. Must the world answer to all these aspects? Must there be counterparts to them in reality? Our concepts serve our purposes, but those purposes don’t seem to include capturing the structure of reality in all its forms. So there seems room for a type of skepticism that questions whether predication can be read into reality, as it exists independently of us. It is hard to see what could quell such skepticism. And yet we have only the thinnest idea of what reality might be like if it doesn’t fit the object-property mold. I admit to having a split mind on the subject: the logician in me cleaves to the logical form supplied by the subject-predicate proposition, but the metaphysical realist in me acknowledges that reality is not compelled to mirror the human mind. Maybe reality is silently laughing at our subject-predicate obsession, our object-property hang-up, our particular-universal prejudice; but then doesn’t it have the property of laughing? Or is it that the word “property” is hopelessly undefined, a philosopher’s invention, stretched to breaking point beyond its tethering paradigms? And so we want to let out a philosophical scream–as Wittgenstein might put it. Back to the rough ground! In other words, we are caught in a classic philosophical dilemma: on the one hand, the world could not contain anything other than objects with properties; on the other hand, that looks like a prejudice born of familiarity and a lack of imagination.

How do we even possess these very abstract concepts of object and property, particular and universal, reality, fact, existence, being? They seem to reach far beyond anything we actually know about; and yet not quite so far as we seem able to contemplate when we think about absolutely everything. Our most general and capacious concept of reality seems hospitable even to worlds devoid of objects and properties–unless, of course, that is a metaphysical illusion.[4]

 

[1]At any rate, that’s a natural interpretation of his position: both the phenomenal world and the noumenal world consist of instantiated properties, the latter unknown by us. It would be possible, however, to hold that the noumenal world has another kind of reality, left unspecified.

[2]Time itself might be regarded as a counterexample to object-property ontology: are periods of time really objects that instantiate properties? If it rains over successive intervals, is this a case of temporal particulars (moments, eons) instantiating meteorological universals? Time seems like the wrong kind of thing to consist of discrete particulars. The subject-predicate form (“Today it’s raining”) here lacks ontological backing.

[3]Frege also didn’t think that existence is a property of objects, so an existential fact isn’t an object-property fact. Rather, it is a fact about concepts—a second-order fact. Thus not all facts consist in objects having properties—some consist in properties having properties. Are there possible worlds in which all facts consist in properties having properties instead of objects having properties?

[4]This is one of those vexing philosophical questions about which one seems able to slip in the blink of an eye from one position to another according to mood (and no doubt temperamental factors are involved). The romantic revels in the idea of a free and indeterminate world full of possibility, while the classicist prefers tried and true logical categories.