March, 2022 - Colin McGinn

Intentionality and Space

March 18, 2022/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Colin McGinn

Intentionality and Space

Here is a famous passage from Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874): “Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction toward an object (which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although they do not all do so in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judgment something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on.” (92-93) There is not a little obscurity here and many readers have fastened onto the last sentence as something clear to hang onto. But if we are to understand Brentano’s thesis we need to scrutinize the explanatory phrases with which he introduces the idea of intentionality. First “intentional (mental) inexistence”: this is not to be taken to mean “intentional (mental) non-existence”—it isn’t the idea that intentional objects don’t exist. It is the idea that they exist (reside) in the mental phenomenon: they are contained in it, are a constituent of it. Brentano alternates between “inexistence” and “in-existence” without explaining why (and neither do the translators comment on it), but the latter expression better captures what is intended, namely existence-in—what is also called immanent existence (immanent in the mental phenomenon). Next we read that this trait could also be called “reference to a content”, which introduces two new notions: reference and content. The first word suggests language and speakers, which cannot be what is literally intended, since it is not supposed that all intentionality springs from language: the mind isn’t linguistically referring when it contains an object (not according to Brentano anyway). The second word suggests some sort of conceptual representation, analogous perhaps to Frege’s notion of sense; but that can’t be right because the intentional object is more like a reference than a sense—an object not a concept. And Brentano later dropped this formulation, no doubt for the reason just stated: of course the content of a mental phenomenon is immanent in it; what is being claimed, more controversially, is that the object is immanent too. Immediately following we have the phrase “direction toward an object”, as if this were a mere paraphrase of the previous expression, which it clearly is not. The phrase “direction toward” is presumably a metaphor (but see below), and has been latched onto in subsequent writing; and the notion of object is clearly meant to connote the target (another metaphor) of a mental state—what it is about. Hence an object in this sense is not a “thing”, by which is presumably meant a denizen of the mind-independent world (a plant, an animal, a rock). Here “object” is used as it is in “object of thought”, i.e. entity thought about. We are then faced with the daunting phrase “immanent objectivity”, which could use a little unpacking (to put it mildly). The thought is that a mental phenomenon immanently (intrinsically) contains object-directedness—it is object-oriented, object-specifying. There is something object-like lurking inside the mental state. Immanence here contrasts with transcendence, i.e. existence beyond the mental state: the intentional object is not extrinsic to the mental state but right there inside it. As to “objectivity”, this is not intended to suggest real existence outside the mind, but rather the object-positing activity of the mind (Brentano doesn’t use the word “posit” in this connection, unlike his descendant Sartre). The object of a mental act is what is presented to the subject in consciousness (“presentation” is taken by Brentano to be a universal feature of the mind). Interestingly, in a footnote to the later “Attempts to Classify Mental Phenomena” (p.189) Brentano tells us that he had considered using “objectivity” to characterize the feature he wishes to identify instead of “intentionality”, because the latter misleadingly suggests the ordinary notion of intention; but then he reflected that “objectivity” would be equally misleading, suggesting to modern readers the idea of “what really exists as opposed to ‘mere subjective appearances’”. He notes that we have no ordinary-language word for the universal and salient feature of mental object-directedness, itself a peculiar fact, and that no technical term is free of difficulties. One might suggest that a neologism like “objecticity” or “objectality” might serve the purpose, but these too court misunderstanding; we may as well settle for “intentionality” despite its misleading connotations. Anyway the phrase “immanent objectivity” should be taken to mean the same as “immanent intentionality” in Brentano’s mouth: the object intended (sic) is in the mental state not outside it (not transcendent). As he says: “Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself”.

Readers have tended to focus on the object-positing aspect of Brentano’s notion of intentionality, and indeed it is striking and plausible, neglecting the thornier concept of intentional in-existence, i.e. object-immanence. This has enabled later theorists to avoid what looks like a tension in the notion, indeed a contradiction. For how can we reconcile the following two theses: (a) the mind is always directed toward an object distinct from itself, and (b) the objects of mental activity are always within the mind? How can the intentional object be both outside and inside the mind at the same time? How can it be both transcendent (not identical to the mental act that posits it) and yet also immanent (strictly within the mind)? Perhaps this difficulty explains Brentano’s early equation of object and content: the content is clearly immanent, which satisfies one aspect of the intentionality doctrine, but then we lose the idea of separateness from the mental act itself. Compare qualia: they are clearly immanent (on most ways of construing them), but they are not distinct from the mental state that harbors them. On the other hand, the external physical objects of perception are clearly distinct from perceptual experiences, but they are scarcely immanent in such experiences. The intentional object is called upon to be a bit of both—part immanent and part transcendent: hence Brentano’s equivocation. And yet the underlying notion seems entirely correct: if I am hallucinating pink rats, say, these perceptual objects serve to individuate my experience, and yet they are not the same as my experience (it isn’t pink and ratty). The question is how to characterize this fact accurately. I don’t think Brentano ever succeeds in doing this despite the basic correctness of his theory. He has hold of a datum but he doesn’t have a clear and coherent characterization of it. You might try saying that the object is part of the experience (not identical to it), but this too is obviously wrong—no part of my hallucinatory experience is a pink rat either. The identity of my experience is fixed by its objects but it is not identical to its objects—hence immanence combined with transcendence. There are ways to go here but they require a closer examination of the nature of intentional objects—are they perhaps combinations of universals?—but the task is not an easy one. In any case, Brentano’s introduction of the concept of intentionality stands in need of further work, sound as it may be in fundamentals. What I have wanted to bring out is the tension inherent in his formulation of the notion, which is revealed when we press hard on key phrases, particularly “immanent objectivity”.

With these clarifications in place I now want to focus on a different (but related) question: the role of space in constituting the structure of intentionality. In the most basic case the distinctness of the intentional object (hereafter the Object) consists in separation in space, i.e. perceived separation. We see the object as spatially removed from us, and hence distinct. The Object is phenomenally distant (even if it doesn’t in point of fact exist). Perceptual presentation is presentation in space. Even bodily sensations are spatially presented: the pain located in the foot, the tickle under the arms. So the Object is not presented naked, as it were, but as embedded in a spatial matrix. Even thoughts are positioned in relation to the body, roughly in the vicinity of the head. Space is the form of our sensibility, as Kant would put it. It is notable that Brentano’s most explanatory phrase, and the one that is most often repeated, uses a spatial concept—that of direction. We do indeed experience Objects as existing in a certain direction, and we direct our attention to certain portions of space. It is the same with the notion of pointing, also natural in this connection (but not used by Brentano): one points in space. The separateness of the Object is typically (paradigmatically) a spatial separation: we experience things as spatially distinct from us. We might even suppose that phenomenal space is a precondition of intentionality; it is certainly ubiquitous.[1] Then the following thought comes to mind: the mental and the physical are not quite so different from each other as we might have supposed. For if the essence of the physical is extension, then the essence of the mental is phenomenal extension. Material objects stand in spatial relations and are extended in space; mental phenomena are intentionally directed to Objects in (phenomenal) space. Space thus enters in two ways into the constitution of reality: as the condition of material existence and as the condition of mental existence–the former by way of actual physical space, the latter by way of perceived phenomenal space. Things in actual space are not intentional in virtue of properties of extension; things not extended in actual space nevertheless incorporate space into their intentionality. The material world is extended but not directed toward extension, while the mental world is directed toward extension but not extended. So the mental and the physical are not quite so sharply distinguished as Brentano’s criterion would suggest, once we take account of the role of space in constituting intentionality. An idealist about space might suppose that actual physical space derives from phenomenal space; a realist about space might suppose that phenomenal space results from actual physical space by some sort of abstraction or by dint of outright externalism about mental representation. But even if we recognize two irreducible sorts of space, it turns out that space is the common factor between extended matter and non-extended intentional mind. There may indeed be two fundamental sorts of reality, extensional and intentional, but they are united under the umbrella of space: one existing in space, the other having space existing in it. Space (as Object) is immanent in the mind, as well as being distinct from mind, and it is also immanent in matter (but not as Object). There is a dualism of spaces here that goes along with the dualism of the extensional and intentional. Brentano talks as if the structure of intentionality exists independently of spatial representation, so that mind and matter are conceptually and ontologically remote from each other; but once we recognize that space is integral to both we see that the two are not so widely separated.[2] To put it differently, the mind is as reliant on extension as matter is in order to have being, despite the different ways in which extension enters the picture (de re and de dicto, as it were). And it is extension that grounds the “objectivity” of intentionality, because the mind is “directed” to things in phenomenal space: the intended Object is located in space relative to the subject. I see pink rats as over there, at a certain distance from me, and this is what my apprehension of this Object as distinct (transcendent) is grounded upon. The immanence consists in the fact that this remote Object also individuates my mental state—the remote fixes the proximate. Without perceived space it would be hard to see what the distinctness of the Object could consist in, so Brentano is tacitly relying on it to ground intuitions about the intentional structure of the mental. But then he is invoking a type of fact that applies also to the physical world, only non-intentionally. It is true that there might be peripheral cases in which matter is not extended and mind is not embroiled in the spatial, but surely the central cases both involve extension in their respective fashions. Descartes taught us that the essence of matter is extension; Kant taught us that the essence of sensibility involves “intuitions” of space; Brentano taught us that the essence of mind is intentionality: put these all together and we get the result that matter is constituted by real extension and mind is constituted by phenomenal extension. Mind is directedness toward a spatially extended world, and matter is that world (granted that it exists). Physics is the study of the actually extended world; psychology is the study of mental phenomena about the (phenomenal) extended world. Mental phenomena are essentially intentional; the intentional is spatially saturated; so psychology is about mental reference to a spatial world. It is about aboutness, and aboutness is spatially constituted. The laws of psychology therefore concern spatially imbued intentional states (e.g. the laws of psychophysics). We can abstract away from phenomenal extension in psychology, as we can abstract away from actual extension in physics, but the subject matter is inextricably bound up with extension in both cases. In particular, the mind is inherently intentional in Brentano’s sense (suitably cleaned up) and up to its neck in spatial representation. So there is a kind of metaphysical unity at work here despite the deep ontological differences between the mental and the physical.

[1] It might be thought that mathematical intentionality is a counterexample to the claim of spatial universality, since we don’t apprehend numbers as existing in space. Mathematics is a special case in many ways, and its ontology is highly debatable, but I would note the following point: we do apprehend numbers as public objects in the sense that the same number can be grasped by many minds (unlike particular states of mind). This is an analogue of spatial separation because it locates numbers in a “space” beyond the mental sphere—hence the talk of “logical space” and “Plato’s heaven”. We can’t help thinking of mathematics in quasi-spatial terms, so even here spatial concepts condition our thinking. But in the case of concrete reality, both mental and physical, space holds sway: here intentionality is candidly spatial in nature. Brentano would have done well to acknowledge this fact explicitly, especially since it would enable him to make his points more clearly and decisively.

[2] Brentano talks as if intentionality were a one-at-a-time thing, but in perceptual cases (and arguably in others) there is a kind of intentional clustering: the mental act takes in many Objects simultaneously, as with vision. Many Objects are laid out in space and intentionality arranges them thus-and-so. Also, it seems wrong to view it as an all-or-nothing thing: we can be more directed to one Object than another, as with the center and periphery of the visual field. Intentionality is not a simple one-one on-off relation (or quasi-relation) but operates more holistically and in a graded manner. What is right in his idea is that the mind is intrinsically directed at the world, though in manifold ways. This is a rather startling discovery because otherwise the mind is quite various (Wittgenstein would have done well to take note of it in his insistence on psychological variety).

Acquaintance Knowledge

March 11, 2022/6 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Colin McGinn

Acquaintance Knowledge

There are some things that can only be known by acquaintance, i.e. by “direct experience”. If you want to know what red is, it’s no use having it described to you; you have to experience it for yourself. Such knowledge is not propositional: it is knowledge concerning a thing (what kind of thing is a point of contention). Typically, we know what certain qualities are in this way—and this is not a matter of knowing that such-and-such.[1] The question I am concerned with now is the transmissibility of such knowledge—the possibility of conveying it to someone hitherto ignorant of it. For there is a marked contrast between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description in this regard: the latter can be conveyed to someone not already in possession of it, while the former cannot. If I have acquaintance knowledge of red, I cannot communicate this knowledge to you by the usual methods: by means of language or by acting in certain ways. But if I have a piece of propositional knowledge (knowledge of a fact) I can transmit it to you. Even if the knowledge concerns an inner state of mine, as private as you wish, I can let you know what the fact is that I know: I can cause you to know the same fact–for example, the fact that I am in pain. This knowledge is transmissible, but I can’t transmit my knowledge of what pain is—I can’t cause you to have it by verbal or behavioral means. I can’t cure your ignorance by communicating my knowledge to you: I can’t teach you what pain is; this you have to know for yourself. Pain teaches you what pain is; other people can’t. But in the case of propositional knowledge it is always teachable: it can be transferred from person to person. We may thus venture the following generalization: all propositional knowledge is transmissible, but no acquaintance knowledge is transmissible. We could even strengthen this generalization as follows: all propositional knowledge must be transmissible, but no acquaintance knowledge could be transmissible. You can be educated about any fact, but you can never be educated about whatever it is that acquaintance knowledge is knowledge of. No one can instruct you about what red is; only experience can—by vouchsafing you a sensation of red.

This distinction should be distinguished from other distinctions in the rough neighborhood. It is clearly quite distinct from the a priori-a posteriori distinction: acquaintance knowledge is typically (though not always) a posteriori, and some propositional knowledge is a priori. Nor does it coincide with the innate-acquired distinction: acquaintance knowledge could be either, as could propositional knowledge. Nor is it the same as the distinction between basic and derivative knowledge. Nor is it the same as the distinction between subjective and objective knowledge. It would also be wrong to say that it coincides with the public-private distinction: acquaintance knowledge can be shared by many people (nearly all of humanity), and not all propositional knowledge need be publicly possessed. It’s also not the same as the certain-uncertain distinction. The distinction I am making is specifically about transmissibility: what can be conveyed, taught, passed on to others. Propositional knowledge can always in principle be transmitted from one person to another, so that it doesn’t need to be known first-hand; but acquaintance knowledge can only be acquired from one’s own resources—it can’t be outsourced. No lessons, no matter how persistent or expensive, will ever inculcate knowledge of what red is; it must be acquired by the individual acting alone. Of course, you could sign up for a treatment that caused experiences of red in you if you naturally lack them: this would be someone else causing you to have knowledge of what red is. But it isn’t the same as someone verbally explaining to you what red is, as they might explain to you what the equator or iambic pentameter is. The general point is that knowledge comes in two types, the transmissible and the non-transmissible. We could say that the former type can always be possessed by testimony while the latter type can never be. This is by no means a trivial observation and raises the difficult question of why it should be so.

What about knowing-how—is it transmissible or not? Evidently it is: a skill can be conveyed from one person to another by verbal instruction or by example. Of course the student must have capacities sufficient to learn from the instruction, but that is also true of transmitting propositional knowledge. And some will be better at acquiring the knowledge than others—also true of propositional knowledge. Still, the knowledge can be inculcated from afar (aided by individual practice). So acquaintance knowledge stands out from the other main kinds of knowledge in respect of its non-transmissibility: it is the odd one out. Except notice this fact: propositional knowledge presupposes acquaintance knowledge. Recall Russell’s famous pronouncement: “Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted”. We need not accept the “wholly” here, but the point is not lost: transmissible knowledge is built up from non-transmissible knowledge. But not vice versa: so, as Russell says, acquaintance knowledge is more basic than propositional knowledge. There is no propositional knowledge of facts without acquaintance knowledge of things. We therefore could not transmit knowledge unless we had knowledge we can’t transmit. Even the most transmissible of knowledge rests upon knowledge that resists transmission (save by causing suitable experiences in the recipient). Thus non-transmissible knowledge is as valuable and essential as the transmissible kind—the kind we prize in science. Even physics presupposes knowledge that cannot be conveyed from one person to another (mathematics too if we have acquaintance with mathematical entities). If there were no such knowledge, transmissible scientific knowledge would be impossible. When Frege talked about science passing knowledge on down through the generations via Thoughts he was forgetting that this is only possible because some knowledge can’t be so passed on: it must be discovered afresh by every generation. You can only learn from your teachers because there are things you can’t learn from them—by those mysterious self-generated acts of acquaintance. If teachers had to instill knowledge by acquaintance in you, you would never learn anything—and they would be out of a job. Education can only instill knowledge because it is not the only thing that instills knowledge. Educators might benefit from reflecting on this.

Epistemology changes once this point is fully absorbed. There is not simply a homogeneous body of transmissible knowledge—knowledge of propositions. There are two categories of knowledge that work quite differently, one of them capable of passing from mind to mind, the other resistant to such passage. One kind of knowledge can be imported from outside while the other has to be homemade. The kind that can be transmitted consists of facts—objects having properties—but the kind that has to be homegrown concerns the nature of properties or types (universals, as Russell would say).[2] We can also be acquainted with tokens (particulars) but our knowledge concerns the general type. Tastes provide a good example: you may know the taste of oysters but not be able to convey this knowledge to anyone else (except by offering them an oyster). This is quite different from knowing propositionally that there are six oysters on the table. Both types of knowledge coexist and commingle, as when I know that a certain restaurant specializes in oysters with a particular taste. The proposition can only be understood if knowledge of the taste of oysters is brought to bear on it. Epistemology thus needs two departments corresponding to the two types of knowledge. I think there has been a kind of prejudice against knowledge by acquaintance, possibly stemming from its essential incommunicability: real knowledge should not be so confined, it is thought. But actually it is the bedrock of all knowledge, just as Russell says: we rely on a natural convergence of acquaintance in our epistemic dealings, and if we didn’t have it communication would be impossible. There is a shared acquaintance with universals that everyone brings to the table, but this is not something that can be taught—as we know from the case of the blind. To put it differently, shared experience is the basis of all knowledge and all knowledge transmission (the grain of truth in empiricism). This is not shared “form of life”, as Wittgenstein would have it, but shared direct knowledge of universals (properties, types). In knowledge by acquaintance we are brought very close to the things known, and this is imported into all our knowledge, even concerning remote matters. This closeness is what cannot be duplicated by verbal instruction or observation of the other: experience of red tells me what red is in a way that nothing else can, and it is the basis of my grasp of propositions about the world of fact (“This apple is red”). What I have wanted to point out is that such knowledge, though vital, cannot be transmitted from person to person: if you don’t have it, tough luck. No amount of education can remedy your ignorance: if you don’t know what oysters taste like, you are going to have to eat one to find out, or remain forever ignorant on the subject.[3]

[1] My text is Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy (1912), especially chapter 5. Russell never discusses the question I raise here.

[2] We can analyze propositional knowledge as true justified belief, but we can’t analyze acquaintance knowledge that way: it isn’t a type of belief at all (belief that what?), and the notion of justification has little purchase. It is really quite surprising that we use the word “know” for both cases, though entirely natural.

[3] The concept of knowledge by acquaintance is usually left at a rather intuitive level without much effort to investigate its distinctive properties. Examples suffice to introduce the concept. No doubt this is because it is hard to say anything useful about it (compared to propositional knowledge). This is why I have attempted to get at its general features, acknowledging that it is quite obscure (in what cognitive form is it represented?). It is a lot harder to penetrate than propositional knowledge—we have no convincing analysis of it. Russell says that it is “essentially simpler” than what he calls “knowledge of truths”: that may be so, but it doesn’t follow that it is easier to understand.

Footnote to “Is Knowledge True Justified Belief?”

March 8, 2022/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Colin McGinn

[1] My ulterior purpose here is to defend traditional philosophical theorizing from misguided objections stemming from the impossibility of completing a classic conceptual analysis. Gettier didn’t show that the whole project of a priori analysis (we can still use that word) is pointless; rather, he showed (arguably) that a certain conception of analysis can’t be vindicated for the case of knowledge. This should not be interpreted as entailing pessimism about traditional a priori philosophy; it should be interpreted as showing that such philosophy is not committed to a certain very strong conception of what it must look like. We could say that “weak analysis” does not require “strong analysis”, though in another sense the weak kind can be perfectly strong. It seems to me that TJB is an excellent analysis of knowledge, requiring no further supplementation (or subtraction). I leave open the question of whether it is possible to give a strong analysis of the intuitive concept of knowledge (in fact I think it is by invoking the idea of non-accidental true belief: see my Truth By Analysis, chapter 3).

Is Knowledge True Justified Belief?

March 8, 2022/2 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Colin McGinn

Is Knowledge True Justified Belief?

Yes, despite the counterexamples. It is fair to say that before Gettier’s paper the TJB analysis of knowledge was the accepted theory. The theory was not regarded as a work in progress, as somehow incomplete, or vulnerable to counterexample. If not self-evidently correct, it was taken to be clearly and incontrovertibly correct. It is true there were some doubts about the necessity of the three conditions for knowledge, but not the sufficiency: nothing meeting those conditions could fail to be knowledge. That is why Gettier’s counterexamples came as a surprise, a shock, and a blow. If TJB doesn’t define knowledge, then what does! Some tried to retain the old analysis by claiming that the examples all involve defective justifications (and there was something odd about those alleged justifications), but most accepted that the counterexamples refuted the analysis. How could we have been so wrong—so confident and yet so misguided? Thus the hunt was on for a better theory, one immune to counterexample. But surely there is something funny going on here: is it possible that the pre-Gettier confidence was actually well placed and yet his counterexamples do show the conditions not to be logically sufficient? In what follows I will defend this position, which may seem not to exist in logical space. The key will be to distinguish between being a good theory and being a theory that provides necessary and sufficient conditions in every possible world: the latter is not required for the former. Or, to put it differently, a theory of what knowledge is isn’t the same as a logically watertight analysis of the concept of knowledge, i.e. the provision of a (complex) concept identical to the concept of knowledge. We can have a good theory (a true theory) of knowledge without it being immune to conceivable counterexamples concerning possible cases; and TJB is such a theory.

The TJB theory tells us that knowledge is not the same as belief, which can be both false and irrational or unjustified. It distinguishes knowledge from mere opinion, because knowledge requires truth and a rational basis. It identifies the main components of knowledge, as they distinguish knowledge from belief (this can be useful when fighting sophists, say). It connects knowledge to the normative concepts of truth and justification, revealing what attempts at knowledge aspire to. These are important insights, adequate for most practical purposes, and they are recognizable by any normal person. By these criteria the TJB theory is a good theory. The existence of Gettier-type counterexamples does not defeat these insights (which go back to Plato). So what do they tell us? They tell us that in conceivable cases the conditions are not logically sufficient—there could be cases in which they are satisfied but the believer doesn’t know. Not that such cases are common, or even actually occur, or that they show that knowledge is not different from belief after all, but just that they exist in logical space: we can imagine such cases and our intuition tells us that they don’t qualify as knowledge. The question is why this matters: so what if the theory doesn’t cover every imaginable case? Was it ever intended to? Can’t it be a good theory and not cover all of logical space? What if we said it was only meant to cover actual or typical or central cases of knowledge? If we had said that knowledge is just belief, we would face the objection that this fails to cover even the most common and central cases; but Gettier cases are admittedly uncommon and not central, involving bizarre kinds of justification. A good theory needs to get the basic elements of knowledge right (truth and justification), but does it need to cover all conceivable cases, no matter how contrived or irrelevant to daily life? Can’t it be more like an empirical scientific theory, which doesn’t purport to cover all of logical space?

Before pursuing this line of thought let’s remind ourselves of some analogous cases in which an illuminating philosophical theory runs into unexpected trouble with the logically conceivable. Take the causal theory of perception: in order for a sensory experience to count as a perception there must be a causal connection between the experience and the object; it isn’t enough to see a clock that a clock be there and you have an experience as of a clock. This theory rightly distinguishes perception from veridical hallucination and it points to the indispensible role of causation in constituting perceptual facts. (The same can be said about memory: the memory impression must be caused by an earlier event in order to count as remembering it.) But no sooner was this theory propounded than counterexamples to it were constructed (note the word): we had the problem of deviant causal chains. Does this show that the causal theory of perception is a bad theory? Not at all: it merely shows that the conditions it identifies don’t logically guarantee perception in every possible world—they are not logically sufficient. But in all actual cases there are no such deviant causal chains and the theory works just fine; more important, it identifies the main elements of the perception relation, illuminatingly so. We shouldn’t throw out the theory simply because counterexamples to it can be produced: it gives us important information about what perception consists in. Or consider Bernard Suits’s definition of a game: an activity in which inefficient means are adopted to achieve an end (I oversimplify). Suppose counterexamples could be contrived showing that logically possible cases could satisfy these conditions and not be games (not that I think this can be done). Does that imply that Suits failed to identify the central element in what distinguishes a game from what he calls a “technical activity”? Obviously not; and all actual games may well obey his theory (and no non-games). Thus we should distinguish theoretical adequacy from the provision of logically necessary and sufficient conditions. We detach the adequacy of a theory from any claim of complete modal coverage. We separate the project of providing a good theory of games (the things themselves) from the project of providing a (complex) concept identical to the concept of a game. These are quite different enterprises—one about the nature of things as they actually exist, the other about the content of a concept that we can extend to merely possible cases. Both enterprises may be worth pursuing, but they should not be confused—hence the failure to do the latter does not undermine the success of the former. A good theory of X need not be a good theory of the concept of X that covers every conceivable application.[1]

Let me illustrate the distinction by reference to a well-known paradigm—scientific natural kinds. Suppose a chemist announces that water consists of H2O. That is a very good theory: it connects water to molecular theory and it distinguishes water from other substances, among other things. Then a philosopher comes along and objects as follows: couldn’t there be some other chemical combination that also qualifies intuitively as water, as it might be H3O, so that the H2O theory doesn’t provide a logically necessary condition? Moreover, couldn’t hydrogen and oxygen molecules be distributed in a ratio of two to one but be so spread out as not to form what we would intuitively call water, so that the condition isn’t sufficient? The point is not so much that these are genuine counterexamples to a claim of logical necessity and sufficiency—though they do appear to be—but that they are irrelevant to the chemist’s claim. For the chemist was not asserting that, as a conceptual truth, water is H2O in all possible worlds; his claim was more limited than that (no matter what a philosopher may expect). His claim was more like this: the theory identifies the main elements of water, distinguishing it from other substances, and connecting it with molecular theory. It’s about actual water and what it’s made of not about how things are in possible worlds. He might go as far as to say that his claim is a nomological necessity—a lawlike truth about the actual world—but he has no interest in venturing claims about how things might be out there in logical space. His attitude towards the counterexamples cited will be one of sublime indifference, given that they do nothing to undermine his claim to winning a Nobel Prize in due course. Or consider heat and the theory that heat is molecular motion. Someone might object that there are conceivable cases in which we have heat without molecular motion and molecular motion without heat: some possible things that we would intuitively count as heat are correlated with some other physical phenomenon, and in some conceivable circumstances there could be molecular motion but no heat. Again, it doesn’t matter whether the counterexamples are persuasive; the point is that they don’t matter so far as the physical theory is concerned. That theory is not intended as a theory of how the concept of heat applies in imaginary possible worlds; it’s about heat as it actually exists and acts here and now.

Old hands will no doubt be clamoring to explain about the necessity of identity: if the scientist is making a claim of identity, then he is committed to rejecting the counterexamples, so that they do count against his theory if they are genuinely possible cases. But why should we foist any such interpretation on his words (or thoughts)? This identity business is philosophy talk not chemistry talk. He said that water consists of H2O and heat is a manifestation of molecular motion; and these don’t force any modal claims on him—he might readily allow that water and heat could be different in other possible worlds.[2] Similarly, the epistemologist need not claim that knowledge is identical to true justified belief, which would land him in trouble with the Gettier counterexamples, given the necessity of identity; his claim could rather be that these are the main elements of knowledge, or that nearly all knowledge fits this analysis, or that it is a matter of natural law that knowledge is TJB, or that the central cases of knowledge conform to the theory, etc. He might cheerfully allow that the theory does not cover all conceivable cases, even acknowledging that the concept of knowledge is not identical with the concept of true justified belief. After all, philosophers only recently started fretting about necessary and sufficient conditions for concepts to apply: before that they were content to offer theories of things. In fact, this practice started around the middle of the twentieth century, possibly as a result of the logicist program in philosophy of mathematics—the attempt to rigorously define mathematical notions in terms of logic. Here the idea of a priori necessary and sufficient conditions had some purchase (see Russell’s theory of descriptions as an offshoot), and it was natural to hope for something similar in other areas of philosophy. But this was not the project of philosophy in earlier times, or independently of certain trends in analytical philosophy (Frege could be said to be the originator); instead people were trying to produce adequate theories, as judged by the usual criteria. The demands on conceptual analysis in terms of logically necessary and sufficient conditions are very stringent, but the philosopher need not be wedded to that methodology; and this means that there is room for a type of theory that doesn’t have such lofty goals. We can thus accept that TJB provides a good theory of knowledge without insisting that it captures all conceivable cases, either through lack of necessity or lack of sufficiency. This is what knowledge basically, centrally, paradigmatically, is—even if there are odd cases that don’t quite conform to it. It can be argued that not all knowledge requires belief (uncertain knowledge, animal knowledge), that not all knowledge requires justification (direct knowledge of one’s own mental states), and that not all knowledge even requires truth (can’t someone know that the golden mountain is golden, though this proposition is neither true nor false?): but these are not central cases, so they don’t undermine the general goodness of the TJB theory. Similarly, Gettier-type cases involve strange kinds of defective justification (e.g. Russell’s example of the accidentally accurate stopped clock); they are by no means common or central. This explains why no one thought that the TJB theory was vulnerable till Gettier came along—it wasn’t vulnerable, given its aims. What Gettier in effect did was force us to distinguish between two projects: giving a sound theory of knowledge (the thing) and providing necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of the concept of knowledge in all conceivable cases. We can engage in both projects but we shouldn’t let one be hostage to the fortunes of the other. We certainly shouldn’t give up on providing a theory of knowledge just because we can’t find necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of the concept. The TJB theory is a fine theory by any standards, a solid philosophical achievement, despite the counterexamples.[3] Indeed, we might applaud it for being precise enough to allow the construction of counterexamples to it (a simple true belief theory will not lead to the kind of ingenious cases invented by Gettier and others). The same is true for the causal theory of perception and memory and Suits’s theory of games (also Grice’s original analysis of speaker meaning). These are all great theories, exhibiting the power of a priori philosophical analysis, despite the possibility of clever counterexamples. One might be tempted to conclude that there will always be counterexamples in philosophy, but that doesn’t prevent us from coming up with excellent theories. There are counterexamples to the claim that tigers are striped and have four legs, but that doesn’t mean that this “theory” is defective in any way when properly understood.

[1] Compare the case of sentences: we could define a sentence as a meaningful combination of words expressing a complete thought. Is this definition sufficient? Isn’t Shakespeare’s “But me no buts” a meaningful combination of words expressing a complete thought, but it’s not a sentence (it isn’t grammatical)? It’s like “On me no ons” or “It me no its”. So a meaningful combination of words expressing a complete thought need not be a sentence. Fair enough, one might say, but that hardly undermines the general correctness of the definition in question. It only fails to apply in the oddest of cases.

[2] A different kind of example: it might be a good theory of life to say that life is the operation of selfish genes, i.e. DNA molecules, while allowing that on other planets, or in other possible worlds, reproduction works differently with no DNA involved. It’s a good theory because of its explanatory power and unification of macro biology and microbiology, but it need not aspire to metaphysical necessity. In philosophy too a good theory might have many such “counterexamples”, just as a bad theory may have none (e.g. “knowledge is a very special kind of belief”).

[3] As Kripke would say, something can be a good “picture” without being a watertight “theory”; or as I prefer, something can be a good theory without being a watertight conceptual analysis. And it isn’t that such a theory aspires to being conceptually leak-proof.

Attributes of Mind

March 4, 2022/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Colin McGinn

Attributes of Mind

Three attributes of mind stand out: intentionality, subjectivity, and privacy. The mind is essentially about something; the mind is accessible only from a certain point of view; the mind is known directly only by its subject. I take it these attributes are familiar and I won’t elaborate on them (or defend them). Are they independent of each other or are they conceptually connected? Could they be instantiated separately? Is one of them basic? Are there three mind-body problems corresponding to each attribute or is there just one mind-body problem with three different formulations? These questions are by no means easy, because on the face of it the three attributes are differently defined. There is some feeling, I think, that intentionality is basic: subjectivity and privacy are consequences of it. But the conceptual links are obscure partly because intentionality is itself obscure (does anyone know what “intentional inexistence” means or what “directedness” is?). In intentionality a world is presented to a subject, and the upshot is that only someone with that type of presentation can know what it involves, and no one else can have the kind of epistemic access to it that the subject has. Obscurely, intentionality entails subjectivity and privacy (the bat has experiences of things and this determines what it’s like to be a bat and no one else can observe what the bat is experiencing). The mind is outer-directed, inwardly grasped, and not publicly known; and it is because of intentionality that subjectivity and privacy obtain—though the links are not transparent. So at least we are inclined to suppose: the attributes of subjectivity and privacy don’t seem basic relative to intentionality, and it is implausible that the three attributes are unconnected. They come as a package deal not as a mere list. Can we articulate this dependence further?

Perhaps we can find some illumination by considering matter (corporeal things). What are the essential attributes of matter? Matter is extended in space, objective, and public: it has shape and size, can be grasped from many points of view, and can be observed by different perceivers. Are these independent attributes or do they form an intelligible cluster? We know what Descartes would say: extension is the basic defining attribute of matter, with objectivity and publicity consequences of it. Again, the links are not totally transparent, but they are intuitively compelling: extension in space gives rise to objectivity (i.e. objects in space can be grasped from many perceptual points of view), and what is extended in space can be perceived by the senses. So we can simplify and say that the essential attribute of matter is extension, with objectivity and publicity as derivative (though introducing various epistemic considerations). Hence it has been common to describe matter as extended substance: it is the form that reality (“substance”) takes when it is what we call “physical”. By analogy, we can say that the essential attribute of mind is intentionality, with subjectivity and privacy as derivative. It is the form that reality (“substance”) takes when it is what we describe as “mental”. These are necessary truths of the metaphysics of matter and mind. Matter is reality extended in space and having spatial relations to other matter; mind is reality pointing beyond itself and not standing in spatial relations to other things (intentionality doesn’t even require the existence of what it “points” to). Matter exists by virtue of having extension; mind exists by virtue of having intention (if I may put it so). Matter lacks intentionality (it doesn’t intend anything); mind lacks extension (it doesn’t occupy space with a specific shape and size). These are two forms that reality may take—two “modes of being” that reality may assume. There are extensional facts and intentional facts.

We can now pose the following question: Why does reality (existing stuff) take these two forms? In the case of matter the only answer can be that this is what matter is: if you are going to have matter, you are going to need extension (God had no choice in the matter of matter). The big bang supposedly created matter and space (they are coeval), so it had no choice about how matter would exist, i.e. by means of extension. But in the case of mind extension will not suffice: extended things don’t have intentionality, not in virtue of extension anyway. So if mind is to exist reality must be capable of intentionality. How is it so capable? Here is a hypothesis: intentionality is the form that reality takes when it is not physical. As a matter of metaphysics, reality can either be extended (hence material) or it can be intentional (hence mental). Since mind lacks extension, it can only exist by being intentional (in the technical sense), because there is no other way for reality to exist. We might try to imagine many ways reality could exist—many “modes of being”—but in fact there are just two: by extension or by intention.[1] Both are basic forms that reality may assume. Before the big bang there was no extension (no matter in space), but there could have been intention (a sort of primitive “directedness”). Indeed, we can envisage a kind of quasi-mental sea of intentionality existing prior to the emergence of extended stuff. A Brentano-style panpsychist will suppose that the basic mental nature of the universe is actually constituted by intentionality (or “proto-intentionality”). The point I am making is that both extension and intention are ways that things might primitively be. Intention doesn’t derive from extension (it couldn’t) but instead is just how reality is constituted when it isn’t material. Thus the falsity of materialism is the reason mind is intentional: it leaves the mind with no choice about how to be—because if you are not material you must be intentional (likewise if you are not intentional you must be material). That, at any rate, is the hypothesis: the inescapable dualism (not pluralism!) of the cosmos—the necessity to be either extended or intended (so to speak). We might even speculate that the default condition of the universe is intentionality, with extension introduced later into the picture by way of the big bang. Matter came late to the party, invited in by the big bang’s obsession with extension in space; before that the universe was a hotbed of intentionality (or some primitive antecedent of what we know today by that name). Matter (extended substance) is the anomaly, the parvenu, the new kid on the block; mind in the form of intentionality is the normal way reality comports itself—the old money, the ancient customs, the way things are traditionally done. If there is going to be immaterial substance (and before the big bang that’s all there was, matter requiring spatial extension), there is no choice but to go with intentionality—there being no other way that reality can be. Extension and intention exhaust the options, according to the hypothesis (and really what else could reality be?).[2] Descartes supposed that the essence of mind is thought; that was too narrow and Brentano’s intentionality is its more inclusive heir: but he never contemplated any third possibility—something other than thought or extension. There is just no third option, as a matter of metaphysical necessity: to be is to be either extended on intended—spread out in space or directed beyond itself. Everything material has extension and everything mental has intention, and there is nothing but the material and the mental. What we call the mind is reality in its non-extended mode just as what we call matter is reality in its non-intended mode. Intention then gives rise to subjectivity and privacy, as extension gives rise to objectivity and publicity. That is how the universe is basically organized.

Of course, all this is deeply mysterious. Why did the universe decide to give birth to extended stuff late in its lifecycle? How did it pull off that trick? What does it mean to “occupy” space? And what exactly is the alleged primitive intentionality (we have enough trouble understanding the sophisticated kind we encounter in ourselves every day)? Does it allow for directedness towards the non-existent? Might it be that both sorts of reality derive from some yet more basic stuff of which they are both aspects? Is some sort of idealism indicated? How can an organism harbor both sorts of reality given that organisms are extended substances with intentional properties? By rights such a thing ought to be impossible, since extension can’t give rise to intention. Can we avoid dualism? Are our concepts hopelessly inadequate for doing advanced cosmology? Even if the hypothesis of a dual reality is correct, how could it be established? What does seem clear is that intentionality, as understood (sic) by Brentano, doesn’t fit into a world of extended bodies in space standing in spatial relations; that is precisely what the mind is not according to Brentano’s thesis. All we know is that we have two types of being here—two ways reality can configure itself. These appear irreducibly distinct—yet curiously conjoined. Presumably the brain is more than an extended thing, given that it powers the mind, but nothing visible in the brain suggests what this more amounts to. We can report, I think, that mind is more complex than matter in the sense that intentionality is a more complex phenomenon than extension: mere extension is simpler than the kind of directedness Brentano had in mind, especially in relation to non-existence. Intentionality has more internal structure, more design; extension is “dumber” than intention. Not that extension is as simple as a mathematical point; after all, it exhibits all the complexity of geometry. But it is grosser than intention, less articulated. Intention needs a subject and an Object and a “relation” of apperception (whatever that may be). If this structure characterizes much of reality (“pan-intentionalism”), then reality is more articulated than the simple extension model suggests. A human preference for simplicity therefore militates against the idea. Geometry is not adequate to capture it. Our worldview tends to be dominated by our senses, but these are geared to representing extended things in space; a completely different way of thinking is needed to conceptualize intentionality. We possess such a way in the form of introspection, but it is hard to integrate this with the perceptual viewpoint (without introspection we would probably never have thought of intentionality). Russell would say we are acquainted with the underlying intentional structure of the world in acts of introspection, but perception yields nothing of this sort, only extended objects in space. We tend to think that the objects of perception are basic and primary, but this bias clashes with the facts of introspection. Ideally we should be open to both sorts of reality (Berkeley had a lot of trouble with the very concept of matter). True, there are puzzles aplenty, but that (as they say) is the mark of a fruitful research program. The concepts of intentionality and extension are the fundamental concepts in their respective domains, and they form the twin pillars of a realistic cosmology.[3]

[1] It might be tempting to suppose that mind could exist in a non-intentional form, as a kind pure subjectivity—a pre-intentional consciousness. Thus we have William James’s famous phrase “a blooming buzzing confusion” used to characterize the mind of the infant before real thought steps in. But such an idea tacitly brings in intentionality because blooming and buzzing are states of mind in which things outside seem a certain way—as with flowers and bees. Whenever there is consciousness there is some kind of outer-directedness no matter how vague or general or inarticulate. Mind requires intentionality—as matter requires extensionality.

[2] I need to say a word about mathematics, a big subject in the present context. It might be said that mathematical existence is a third type of reality distinct from material extension and mental intention. I don’t necessarily disagree, but mathematical reality isn’t going to cut it as the essence of the mental: it is too abstract and unchanging. Empirical reality has only two ways to be; mathematics can happily exist in its separate sphere. Of course, one might try to reduce mathematics to matter or mind (nominalism or psychologism), thereby keeping things down to two basic categories; but even if we resist such reductions and stick to Platonism, mathematics doesn’t make room for a third category of non-abstract reality. Concrete reality is (according to our hypothesis) necessarily limited to the two categories of the extended and the intended (matter and thought, roughly).

[3] I would say that despite the huge influence of Brentano’s concept of intentionality (one of the great discoveries of philosophy) it has never been fully integrated into the subject. True, it shaped phenomenology (and existentialism), and is often cited in works of analytic philosophy, but it has never formed the foundation of a systematic metaphysics. Nor has it received the analytical attention that has been lavished on the notion of linguistic reference (its spoken analogue). One searches in vain for any incorporation of it into the works of Russell and Wittgenstein, as well as other luminaries. Partly this may have to do with Brentano’s less than lucid style (though it isn’t that bad), but more likely it results from the internal obscurity of the notion: for it is hard to know what exactly we are dealing with here. Linguistic reference gives the impression (probably illusory) that we know what we are talking about, but words like “directedness” and “intentional inexistence” are not calculated to promote confidence that we have hold of a real phenomenon. Nevertheless, the intuitive power of the notion has ensured its continued presence on the philosophical scene. For my part, I’d like to see it play a more prominent role in analytical philosophy of mind and in metaphysics.