Reading Group: Davidson's 'Can there be a Science of Rationality?'

Davidson’s paper starts with some remarks about Quine’s position with regard to the prospects of a natural scientific account of the propositional attitudes, and more generally of thought and meaning. This detour introduces two possible ways to view the project of giving a scientific account of these phenomena: (1) that there is a natural scientific account to be had because the phenomena in question are behavioural dispositions and as such are physiological entities for which it is natural to expect there to be such an account; (2), that the problematic intentional concepts in question are not reducible to a natural scientific account but should be maintained for their usefulness (p155).

Davidson then goes on to ask whether his own account of thought, meaning and the propositional attitudes (the ‘Unified Theory’), can be called scientific. In this regard he makes some interesting, albeit inconclusive, suggestions. I am not going to discuss these suggestions. Rather, I want to focus on a more general issue regarding the ‘Unified Theory’, one that connects to (1) and (2) above.

Davidson says that the ‘normative, holistic, and externalist elements in psychological concepts cannot be eliminated without radically changing the subject (p157).’ So presumably he thinks (2) above is the way to go. He thinks ontological reduction is possible (hence anomalous monism), but that ‘nomological and definitional’ reduction are off the cards (p168). He does not explain in this paper exactly why such reduction is not possible or in what sense. The story he has given elsewhere usually appeals to the so-called principle of charity. But whatever the detail, what is the content of the claim? Is it that the entities being studied (propositional attitudes, thoughts) *are* not nomologically and definitonally reducible? Or is it that they may well be but that we are incapable of *understanding them* without the prop of a folk-psychology (that the concepts in question are *only* useful)? Moreover, what is not so reducible? Is it that the state of being in a propositional attitude might be reducible to natural scientific terms, but that the practice of interpreting such attitudes is not? If this is the case (as Davidson seems to suggest at p167), then it seems to me deciding whether this matters depends on what view one has on the subject of whether thought and language are constitutively intersubjective. Those (like Fodor and Chomsky) who think they are not, are already committed to some sort of reduction being on the cards, so treat interpretation as a folk-psychological prop. What does Davidson think? If he thinks radical interpretation is just part of a folk-psychology, then his ‘Unified Theory’ is certainly not scientific, as such theories do not describe how we take things to be, but how things actually are with the world (unless of course, it is a theory that formalises how we mistakenly think about how we think, which it is not). So presumably he does not think this. But his invocation of the constitutive role of intersubjectivity in thought and language is based on the fact we can’t *make sense* of these phenomena without concepts like radical interpretation. But this is compatible with it being the case that the constitutive role in question is illusory – radical interpretation may actually be something we only posit as a folk-psychological heuristic. So when he says Fodor et al are changing the subject when they posit that the ‘nature of thought and meaning…' can 'be answered by discovering neural mechanisms’, it doesn’t seem to me he is able to say this. Not unless he can show that intersubjectivity really is constitutive of thought and language. But that is a question his ‘Unified Theory’ is neutral on.

Reading Group: Akeel Bilgrami, 'Intentionality & Norms'

Bilgrami's paper is rich, and I want neither to summarise it nor comment on everything he has to say. I'm going to focus on sections I-IV, putting aside the very interesting comments on the nature of commitments (section V) and the discussion of Davidson (section VI). This is partly justified, I seems to me, by the fact that most of the anti-naturalistic argumentation happens in these early sections.

The main claim is that intentional states, being normative states, cannot be reduced to dispositions. This, Bilgrami suggests, is a serious obstacle to the naturalisation of the mind. There are two main arguments which, as Bilgrami puts it, effect a 'pincer' movement on the naturalistic reduction of intentional states to dispositions. The first is a variation on Moore's Open Question Argument (OQA). The OQA works by pointing out that, according to the naturalistic proposal, the question "I have the disposition to f, but ought I to f?" should be a closed question. That is, the answer should trivially be yes. The problem is that it looks like an open question. So the naturalistic proposal must be false. Consider the belief that it is raining outside. Suppose that a part of the proposed dispositional account is that I am disposed to believe that it is wet outside. We can fill in the above schema, "I am disposed to believe that it is wet outside, but ought I believe that it is wet outside?".

The reason that a second argument is needed is, for reasons familiar from discussions of Moore, this argument only works if the reduction was supposed to maintain sameness of sense. If the naturalistic view was that the belief and the disposition have different senses but the same referent, then the OQA is ineffective against it. So the second, Fregean, argument asks of the senses of the intentional states (the one's to be reduced), 'what are these senses expressing?' (131). The naturalist is then faced with a dilemma: if they express naturalistically acceptable properties, then the OQA comes back into play, if they express naturalistically unacceptable properties then the reduction has failed.

Although I think that this is a really powerful strategy, I have two criticisms of Bilgrami's treatment. The first is that he appears to assume that senses are descriptive. That is, he assumes that 'senses express properties', such that there is a question to be asked concerning whether the properties so expressed are natural or normative. But, as is very familiar, there is a significant position that is being ignored here (represented by Evans and McDowell), according to which senses are ways of thinking of objects that cannot be identified with independently identifiable definite descriptions. As, I seem to recall, McDowell puts it, what the sense of an expression is can be shown but not said. Admittedly, that view may have more appeal as an account of the sense of proper names than of terms referring to intentional states. But, so it seems to me, the very existence of such a position means that, without arguing against it, Bilgrami's non-naturalistic argument is inconclusive.

My second criticism is of a move that Bilgrami makes in response to one potential reply to the pincer strategy. This response, if I understood it correctly, was to allow that the senses in question expressed non-natural properties, but that these properties are also non-actual. That is, insofar as the relevant senses attribute non-natural properties to the world, they never attribute really existing properties. Now Bilgrami asks, what could justify this claim? His answer is, nothing other than a question begging scientistic prejudice, according to which only natural properties exist. What I take issue with is the suggestion that this answer would be question begging. Here is Bilgrami:

"The naturalist was supposed to give an argument for the reduction of value to natural properties and facts...Against that argument a Frege-Moore counterargument had been presented. If it turns out that in one's response to this counterargument one is assuming a criterion for property existence that takes for granted the truth of naturalism, the naturalist has begged the question" (136)

But surely this gets the dialectic entirely backwards. In the present context there is no argument for naturalism to which Bilgrami is offering a counterargument. Rather, he is giving an argument against naturalism, to which the naturalist is envisaged to be responding. Since this is the case, the naturalist is entitled to draw on elements of his own view in order to defend himself against Bilgrami's argument. The burden is no Bilgrami to show that the senses must express properties that really exist, rather than on the naturalist to show that they do not. If that's right, then this type of response is left open for the naturalist to make.

Reading Group: David Macarthur, 'Naturalism and Skepticism'

Kant called it a veritable scandal for philosophy that claims about the existence of the external world have to be taken on faith. Macarthur echoes this sentiment. He is alarmed by the fact that most philosophers today seem indifferent to this scandal although there is still no satisfactory proof for the existence of the external world. In his view, the culprit is (scientific) naturalism. Naturalism dismisses the epistemological preoccupation with refuting the skeptic as an exaggeration of the underlying problem. It takes external world skepticism (knowledge of the external world is not rationally justified) to be defective in certain respects so that its refutation is no precondition for satisfactory accounts of knowledge. Macarthur concedes that quietism with regard to the skeptical problem is an option. However, he thinks that naturalism lacks the resources for sustaining this option. If that is true, then naturalism simply begs the question against the skeptic and thus exacerbates external world skepticism.

Hume was unambiguous about the skeptical consequences of his naturalism. According to him, all mental processes are causal processes. If all mental processes are causal processes, then subjective experiences are intramental effects of some cause. Intramental effects can be produced by an infinitely large number of causes and for that reason do not allow us to tell what their actual effective causes were. So it may be the case that, contrary to our presumptions, none of these causes issues from the external world. This causal theory of experience results in a systematic mismatch between mind and world which leads to external world skepticism.

Naturalism shares Hume’s premiss but seeks to avoid the conclusion. All attempts to do this, Macarthur argues, are dogmatic in one way or other. (Before he turns to representative naturalistic responses to external world skepticism, he rejects inference to the best explanation as a suitable anti-skeptical instrument. Even if references to the external world explain best what makes our experiences coherent, these reference are pointless if our subjective experiences are not coherent, as seems to be the case on the causal theory of experience. This is simply to reinforce the point that if inference to the best explanation is one of the most powerful tools of naturalism, it cannot hope to refute the skeptic but must settle for the quietist option.)

Macarthur discusses three representative examples for naturalistic responses to external world skepticism. These are

(1) Quine’s position that skepticism cannot doubt all of knowledge at the same time. As far as skepticism merits an answer, there is common ground with science – those bits of empirical knowledge which are not currently in doubt. External world skepticism doubts all of knowledge and thus is unanswerable.

(2) The reliabilist view that replaces rational justification with a causal account of belief formation. If beliefs are produced by reliable processes, we can have true beliefs about the external world without having a subjective experience of its justification. So the skeptic’s view that there is no external world because we do not have rationally justified knowledge of it is badly motivated.

(3) Finally, Strawson’s interpretation of Hume according to which the belief in the external world is natural, not rational. Although what the skeptic says against the external world is intelligible, the lack of rational justifications for beliefs in the external world does not affect the natural commitment to this notion.

Macarthur finds all these responses unsatisfactory. Here are (what I take to be) his main reasons for this assessment:

(ad 1) It is wrong to assume that external world skepticism doubts all of knowledge. It just doubts knowledge about the external world. So external world skepticism is answerable by naturalist standards.

(ad 2) Reliabilism may have a point on possible knowledge. But actual knowledge involves some subjective experience of justification. So the skeptical point retains its force. Furthermore, reliabilism cannot properly account for the reliability of belief-forming processes. Reliability is either posited dogmatically as the property of some process, or accounting for it leads to infinite regress because reliability is accounted for in terms of other reliable processes.

(ad 3) Natural belief cannot be revised or confirmed empirically. This contradicts naturalistic principles. Then, the notion of natural belief obscures the connection between belief and reason. Contrary to assumptions or hypotheses, Macarthur claims, beliefs are always open to rational criticism. External world criticism, like any other skepticism, insists that beliefs be given up if they become untenable. Strawson’s Humean “natural belief” is untenable by these standards.

Macarthur concludes that these representative naturalistic responses fail to stop the Humean move from naturalism (his causal theory of experience) to skepticism. Naturalism has not shown that the skeptic need not be refuted and therefore begs the question against the skeptic. So quietism on naturalist terms is not a viable solution.

Just two quick observations:

(I) Part of Macarthur’s point against (2) is that accounts for reliability are infinitely regressive. But this may not be as damaging for reliabilism as he seems to think. The accuracy of inductive reasoning may be enhanced by further induction (Popper, not Hume). Similarly, subsequent reliable processes may have corrective effects on the original process. So reliability may not be the dogmatic notion as which Macarthur portrays it.

(II) Macarthur suggests that external world skepticism withstands all these responses. However, to withstand them, it has to be modified in each case. The skepticism that survives (1) is not the same as the skepticism that survives (2). As (1) and (2) can be held jointly, naturalism might try to corner external world skepticism by combining these responses. I hope I can make this a little clearer:

To manoeuvre external world skepticism past (1), the skeptic must accept that there is some rationally justified knowledge, just not that about the external world. If positioned against (2), this appears to amount to the concession that there is some actual reliabilist knowledge – as there is rationally justified knowledge about something, though not the external world, the reliability of the process by which this knowledge is reached is confirmed as well. It does not seem impossible, then, to expand this reliable process tentatively, to close the causal gap between mind and world and to include beliefs about the external world. These cannot be not true because the process is unreliable, and this seems to hold regardless of the availability of rational justifications for them.