Mind Workshop: Smith

Joel Smith, How is Intersubjectivity Possible?, took issue with Strawson’s well-known idea that behaviour constitutes logically adequate criteria for mental state attribution rather than being just a sign of mentality. In his view, this is not simply due to Strawson’s generality constraint on the ascription of mental states to certain entities, but results from Strawson’s conviction that the “sign” view cannot tell consistently how subjects develop the ability to deploy mental concepts. What undermines this argument, however, is that “sign” views are not committed to first person developmental accounts. Joel’s alternative is based on the phenomenological notion that what is perceived in visual experience is not just the (presented) front aspect of an object, but includes (co-presented) invisible aspects of the entire object as well. Similarly, he suggests, mentality is co-presented in seeing others. There are reservations against the idea of a visual experience of mentality--it is intuitive to treat mentality as an invisible function--and against the idea of a mere co-presence of mentality--co-presentation implies that we can get a better view of it. If certain mental states can be picked out by their functions, however, co-presenting them means anticipating the structure of the functional roles that the appropriate mental properties have. By merging co-presentation and functional accounts, Joel concludes, we can get a better view of mental co-presence without making mental functioning present, and thus we get logically adequate criteria for mental state attribution.