Naturalism Reading Group: McDowell's 'Naturalism and the Philosophy of Mind'
The dialectical structure of McDowell's paper is the following (missing out a few side points against Rorty and some linking of the argument to the history of philosophy).
(1) Lay out the distinction between the logical space of reasons within which knowing and thinking operate and the logical space of law within which the natural sciences explain the phenomena that constitute 'nature'. Accept this distinction as a genuine intellectual achievement, but refuse to identify 'nature' with the realm of law.
(2) Give motivation for this 'liberal naturalism': '[T]hinking and knowing are aspects of our lives' (p94) as rational animals, and so need to be included within the domain of nature.
(3) Point out that liberal naturalism accepts the 'sui generis' nature of activities that occupy the logical space of reasons, against 'restrictive naturalism' which does not, wanting instead to characterise such activities in terms of the realm of law.
(4) Explain the aim of isolating the realm of law, according to liberal naturalism: to understand its 'mode of intelligibility' so that it can be distinguished logically from the space of reasons. But also, to see how easy it is to conflate the realm of law and the realm of nature and thus to understand the root cause of our modern anxiety over the place of mind in nature.
(5) Diagnose the roots of this anxiety in the Cartesian philosophy of mind that attempts to include the special normative features of thinking within the realm of law: that is, such philosophy misunderstands the sui generis nature of the logical space of reasons, thinking of it as a demarcated region of the realm of law with special characteristics. Conversely, liberal naturalism properly understands the sui generis character of thought, and crafts a conception of nature that goes beyond the realm of law and is thus able to accommodate it.
(6) Show that modern 'restrictive' naturalistic philosophy of mind and language, such as that of Ruth Millikan, simply repeats the basic mistakes of the Cartesianism it purports to reject. Moreover, because of this it cannot explain the phenomenon of thought as it patterns our lives, so is to be rejected (such patterning is equated with Frege's conception of intentionality). Note, this last point is not that restrictive naturalism endangers some aspect of our folk psychology to which we are particularly wedded. Rather, it apparently endangers the very idea of thought.
I will do my best here to assess McDowell's case for (6). I will then say something about why 'restrictive' naturalists might not find his case against Millikan completely convincing, and why this hangs on what one's fundamental philosophical motivations happen to be.
McDowell takes up Millikan's rejection of what she calls Frege's 'meaning rationalism'. This is the idea that 'sameness and differences in elements of thought-content are transparently available to a rational subject.' (p100) Millikan finds fault with (amongst other things) Frege's assumption that intentionality is 'semantic rationality', which is (amongst other things) the thesis that grasping a sense is being intentionally directed towards an object (towards a Bedeutung). Thus grasping a sense is semantically rational in that 'it is a matter of what, for instance, can and cannot be true together.' (p101) Millikan takes this assumption to be 'substantive and indefensible' (ibid.). That she thinks it substantive is because - according to McDowell - she conceives of rationality as inhering in an 'intact mind' that is in good mechanical order. And this means that Frege (on this conception of the mind) is committed to the internal machinery of the mind being in such mechanical order that it could track the requirements of semantic rationality. But, Millikan points out, certain forms of semantic rationality presuppose directedness at determinate objects. 'And there are modes of directedness at determinate objects - for instance, those expressible by perceptually-based demonstratives - that we cannot get into our picture without appealing to environmental circumstances - circumstances external to the intra-organismic machinery that Millikan thinks would have to be meant by the 'intact mind'.' (ibid.) So Frege's conception of intentionality fails for Millikan because it conceives of rationality in semantic terms that are too strong to be accounted for by any properly (mechanically) functioning 'intact mind'.
But surely, McDowell argues, this is bad, for if sense and reference don't hang together in propositional attitudes as Frege takes them to, we lose partial grip on the rationality of thinking - we lose the ability to explain why a thinker is not irrational if she holds two conflicting propositional attitudes (say, belief and disbelief) toward the same object. Moreover, why not contrapose and reject Millikan's concepton of the 'intact mind' as properly functioning internal machinery, precisely because it can't account for semantic rationality? McDowell states 'to have an intact mind just is to be semantically rational.' (p102) The point being, only semantic rationality can account for the kind of normativity that structures the space of reasons. Millikan's mistake is to construe Frege's notion of sense as characterising 'the internal mechanics of having one's mind on objects.' (ibid.) But this is to treat the notion as characterising a special portion of the realm of law, and this is what her repetition of the Carteisan mistake consists in. Moreover, Millikan's allergic reaction to the idea of semantic rationality is that it would commit her to the 'spooky' idea that 'meanings move the mind directly' (p103). But this is only because she conceives of the mind as falling in the logical space of law. If it is seen as falling within the logical space of reasons, then the idea of meanings moving the mind becomes unproblematic: it becomes the idea that grasping senses describes 'patterns in our lives'. (ibid.) The basic mistake is trying to conceive of such 'grasping' in terms of mechanical understanding rather than the semantic rationality operative in the space of reasons.
With regard to Millikan's 'externalist' argument against Fregean intentionality, McDowell accepts that the environment plays a role in determining thought contents, but denies that we need displace thoughts from the rational animals that have them, as Millikan does, when she conceives of rationality as 'a norm effected in an integrated head-world system under biologically ideal conditions.' (ibid.) The problem with this form of externalism is that the thing that thinks is no longer identified with the rational animal that does the thinking.
Ultimately then, McDowell complains that Millikan fails to see his liberal-naturalist alternative because of her implicit Cartesianism (her conceiving of the mind as a special part of the domain of law). This is disastrous, because we end up losing our grip on thinking as something we do, which presumably was what the restrictive naturalist originally wanted to explain.
Now, I certainly think that if Millikan presents Frege's conception of thought in the psychologistic terms of properly functioning 'internal machinery', then she is wrong to do this (I have to say, I doubt that someone as smart as she is would do this). And it certainly seems a counterintuitive result to relocate thought outside the rational animal that thinks. But I have two worries about McDowell's argument here. First, does Millikan really conceive of the mind in terms of the realm of law? For she thinks of it in terms of 'proper biological function under ideal conditions', and that seems like a teleological and thus normative notion to me. Granted, this notion does not exhibit the same normativity that's operative in the 'space of reasons', but neither does it exhibit the non-normativity of the realm of law. Second, and more important, McDowell's motivation for refusing the assimilation of nature to the realm of law is to avoid the anxieties we experience in trying to account for thought without supernaturalism. Fair enough. But what if one is motivated by the idea that naturalism is driven by the aim of a unified scientific account of the world? Accepting the sui generis phenomenon of thought into the realm of nature is going to look ad hoc to someone so motivated, representing a failure of naturalism rather than a success. To that person the anxiety McDowell can't countenance is just an acceptable by-product of working towards such an account of the world, hopefully to be overcome in some future version. Don't we just reach a stand-off of competing philosophical motivations here? Perhaps McDowell can win the stand-off by demonstrating that restrictve naturalism leaves us with the 'grotesque' (as he puts it) result that thoughts are not wholly possessed by thinkers, or that restrictive naturalism can't account for the normativity of thought? But presumably, Millikan's conception of 'proper biological function under ideal conditions' is precisely supposed to handle the normativity of thought. Given her commitment to a unified scientific account of nature, perhaps partially extricating thoughts from thinkers heads is a price worth paying to achieve this goal? How do we mediate here? Can we appeal to the common sense of McDowell's neo-Aristotelianism? One thing is sure, simply slinging mud won't help, as McDowell does at the end of the paper by calling restrictive naturalists 'scientistic'.
In Mind and World, McDowell takes the line that he is just providing an alternative account of naturalism and intentionality, one where we don't have to stay on the seesaw of Myth of the Given/Coherentism (he uses the language of showing up a blindspot, an unseen possibility). So there he admits that the 'therapy' he offers is available to those who want it, but he doesn't claim that it is mandatory for all. Here, he seems to take a tone where rather than simply providing us with an alternative possibility, he's actually closing off the possibility of restrictive naturalism. But the arguments don't seem to warrant this stronger line to me.
(1) Lay out the distinction between the logical space of reasons within which knowing and thinking operate and the logical space of law within which the natural sciences explain the phenomena that constitute 'nature'. Accept this distinction as a genuine intellectual achievement, but refuse to identify 'nature' with the realm of law.
(2) Give motivation for this 'liberal naturalism': '[T]hinking and knowing are aspects of our lives' (p94) as rational animals, and so need to be included within the domain of nature.
(3) Point out that liberal naturalism accepts the 'sui generis' nature of activities that occupy the logical space of reasons, against 'restrictive naturalism' which does not, wanting instead to characterise such activities in terms of the realm of law.
(4) Explain the aim of isolating the realm of law, according to liberal naturalism: to understand its 'mode of intelligibility' so that it can be distinguished logically from the space of reasons. But also, to see how easy it is to conflate the realm of law and the realm of nature and thus to understand the root cause of our modern anxiety over the place of mind in nature.
(5) Diagnose the roots of this anxiety in the Cartesian philosophy of mind that attempts to include the special normative features of thinking within the realm of law: that is, such philosophy misunderstands the sui generis nature of the logical space of reasons, thinking of it as a demarcated region of the realm of law with special characteristics. Conversely, liberal naturalism properly understands the sui generis character of thought, and crafts a conception of nature that goes beyond the realm of law and is thus able to accommodate it.
(6) Show that modern 'restrictive' naturalistic philosophy of mind and language, such as that of Ruth Millikan, simply repeats the basic mistakes of the Cartesianism it purports to reject. Moreover, because of this it cannot explain the phenomenon of thought as it patterns our lives, so is to be rejected (such patterning is equated with Frege's conception of intentionality). Note, this last point is not that restrictive naturalism endangers some aspect of our folk psychology to which we are particularly wedded. Rather, it apparently endangers the very idea of thought.
I will do my best here to assess McDowell's case for (6). I will then say something about why 'restrictive' naturalists might not find his case against Millikan completely convincing, and why this hangs on what one's fundamental philosophical motivations happen to be.
McDowell takes up Millikan's rejection of what she calls Frege's 'meaning rationalism'. This is the idea that 'sameness and differences in elements of thought-content are transparently available to a rational subject.' (p100) Millikan finds fault with (amongst other things) Frege's assumption that intentionality is 'semantic rationality', which is (amongst other things) the thesis that grasping a sense is being intentionally directed towards an object (towards a Bedeutung). Thus grasping a sense is semantically rational in that 'it is a matter of what, for instance, can and cannot be true together.' (p101) Millikan takes this assumption to be 'substantive and indefensible' (ibid.). That she thinks it substantive is because - according to McDowell - she conceives of rationality as inhering in an 'intact mind' that is in good mechanical order. And this means that Frege (on this conception of the mind) is committed to the internal machinery of the mind being in such mechanical order that it could track the requirements of semantic rationality. But, Millikan points out, certain forms of semantic rationality presuppose directedness at determinate objects. 'And there are modes of directedness at determinate objects - for instance, those expressible by perceptually-based demonstratives - that we cannot get into our picture without appealing to environmental circumstances - circumstances external to the intra-organismic machinery that Millikan thinks would have to be meant by the 'intact mind'.' (ibid.) So Frege's conception of intentionality fails for Millikan because it conceives of rationality in semantic terms that are too strong to be accounted for by any properly (mechanically) functioning 'intact mind'.
But surely, McDowell argues, this is bad, for if sense and reference don't hang together in propositional attitudes as Frege takes them to, we lose partial grip on the rationality of thinking - we lose the ability to explain why a thinker is not irrational if she holds two conflicting propositional attitudes (say, belief and disbelief) toward the same object. Moreover, why not contrapose and reject Millikan's concepton of the 'intact mind' as properly functioning internal machinery, precisely because it can't account for semantic rationality? McDowell states 'to have an intact mind just is to be semantically rational.' (p102) The point being, only semantic rationality can account for the kind of normativity that structures the space of reasons. Millikan's mistake is to construe Frege's notion of sense as characterising 'the internal mechanics of having one's mind on objects.' (ibid.) But this is to treat the notion as characterising a special portion of the realm of law, and this is what her repetition of the Carteisan mistake consists in. Moreover, Millikan's allergic reaction to the idea of semantic rationality is that it would commit her to the 'spooky' idea that 'meanings move the mind directly' (p103). But this is only because she conceives of the mind as falling in the logical space of law. If it is seen as falling within the logical space of reasons, then the idea of meanings moving the mind becomes unproblematic: it becomes the idea that grasping senses describes 'patterns in our lives'. (ibid.) The basic mistake is trying to conceive of such 'grasping' in terms of mechanical understanding rather than the semantic rationality operative in the space of reasons.
With regard to Millikan's 'externalist' argument against Fregean intentionality, McDowell accepts that the environment plays a role in determining thought contents, but denies that we need displace thoughts from the rational animals that have them, as Millikan does, when she conceives of rationality as 'a norm effected in an integrated head-world system under biologically ideal conditions.' (ibid.) The problem with this form of externalism is that the thing that thinks is no longer identified with the rational animal that does the thinking.
Ultimately then, McDowell complains that Millikan fails to see his liberal-naturalist alternative because of her implicit Cartesianism (her conceiving of the mind as a special part of the domain of law). This is disastrous, because we end up losing our grip on thinking as something we do, which presumably was what the restrictive naturalist originally wanted to explain.
Now, I certainly think that if Millikan presents Frege's conception of thought in the psychologistic terms of properly functioning 'internal machinery', then she is wrong to do this (I have to say, I doubt that someone as smart as she is would do this). And it certainly seems a counterintuitive result to relocate thought outside the rational animal that thinks. But I have two worries about McDowell's argument here. First, does Millikan really conceive of the mind in terms of the realm of law? For she thinks of it in terms of 'proper biological function under ideal conditions', and that seems like a teleological and thus normative notion to me. Granted, this notion does not exhibit the same normativity that's operative in the 'space of reasons', but neither does it exhibit the non-normativity of the realm of law. Second, and more important, McDowell's motivation for refusing the assimilation of nature to the realm of law is to avoid the anxieties we experience in trying to account for thought without supernaturalism. Fair enough. But what if one is motivated by the idea that naturalism is driven by the aim of a unified scientific account of the world? Accepting the sui generis phenomenon of thought into the realm of nature is going to look ad hoc to someone so motivated, representing a failure of naturalism rather than a success. To that person the anxiety McDowell can't countenance is just an acceptable by-product of working towards such an account of the world, hopefully to be overcome in some future version. Don't we just reach a stand-off of competing philosophical motivations here? Perhaps McDowell can win the stand-off by demonstrating that restrictve naturalism leaves us with the 'grotesque' (as he puts it) result that thoughts are not wholly possessed by thinkers, or that restrictive naturalism can't account for the normativity of thought? But presumably, Millikan's conception of 'proper biological function under ideal conditions' is precisely supposed to handle the normativity of thought. Given her commitment to a unified scientific account of nature, perhaps partially extricating thoughts from thinkers heads is a price worth paying to achieve this goal? How do we mediate here? Can we appeal to the common sense of McDowell's neo-Aristotelianism? One thing is sure, simply slinging mud won't help, as McDowell does at the end of the paper by calling restrictive naturalists 'scientistic'.
In Mind and World, McDowell takes the line that he is just providing an alternative account of naturalism and intentionality, one where we don't have to stay on the seesaw of Myth of the Given/Coherentism (he uses the language of showing up a blindspot, an unseen possibility). So there he admits that the 'therapy' he offers is available to those who want it, but he doesn't claim that it is mandatory for all. Here, he seems to take a tone where rather than simply providing us with an alternative possibility, he's actually closing off the possibility of restrictive naturalism. But the arguments don't seem to warrant this stronger line to me.
Labels: Naturalism, Normativity, Ratonality, Reference, Thoughts
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