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.
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.
Labels: Intentionality, Naturalism, Normativity
posted by Joel at 11:39 am
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