The proper naturalist position counts the mind as part of the world, as McDowell wants to do. What a naturalist proper cannot coherently talk about is the Kantian subject. Instead, there are only objects. For those who would say that things are only objects in the sense that they are the object of some subject, then we may use the word ‘substance’, in the earlier Greek sense, to talk about physical things. Thus, the naturalist position is that everything is a substance; in Heidegger’s terminology, everything is essentially present-at-hand[1] and though further supposed properties or features of substances (readiness-to-hand, the existence of Dasein, the mind, intentionality, subjectivity) are reducible to that raw substance. In contemporary physics, that substance is identified with particles, though the details may be somewhat more complex than that[2]. The manifest image of the world[3], the normative space in which intentionality and morality are thought to lie, is composed of that same physical substance that makes up the brains of those who experience and project outwards.

So, for the naturalist proper, the space of reasons is not a realm outside of the natural or physical world, as it is in rampant platonism, nor is it an autonomous space within the world as it is in McDowell’s naturalized platonism. Rather, all rationality, normativity and intentionality is identical with brain states. There is no one space of reasons with which human beings have a connection; rather, each human being can be thought to have their own space of reasons. This space is not especially private, though. It can be seen physically by examination of the neurological states of the brain, and with the proper technology, those states may even be translatable into intelligible images. In another sense, it is not fully private, since glimpses into its content can be seen through behaviour.

‘Content’ needs qualification in that last remark. Intentional mental states are mental states that are about something else in the world. But they are neither a metaphysical link through some imaginary (or real) space to other substances which they are about, nor are they really representations of the substances they seem to be about. They are not the former because such space doesn’t exist in any important way. They are not the latter because, of course, the neurological features of our brain do not form a structure that mimics the outside world. Rather, they form a structure that allows us to have a mental state (which is identical with that brain state) such that we think we have a representation of the substance we are thinking about. So, when I close my eyes and picture the CN Tower, I do not obtain or summon some representation of that object. That object may be gone, moved, or different than I remember. Instead, my brain generates a certain arrangement such that it looks like the CN Tower to itself.[4] All of the qualia, ‘what it’s like to be’[5] and private world phenomena that philosophers expect to find in a separate mental world are  merely what the brain’s activity looks like from the point of view of that very brain.

Against the rampant platonist, the naturalist’s response is brief. Whatever attitudes one has towards the empirical observations with which one is presented, one does not survive without indulging in them. With a proper account of naturalism, any reason to favour a platonic account dissolves. Naturalism proper offers an explanation of intentionality, removes the “spookiness” (McDowell 92) of a separate space of reasons that McDowell complains of. We don’t need to add anything ontologically, and we have a hope to answer the how questions about mental states and intentionality through study of the brain. Spontaneity doesn’t need any explanation here, either, because it is not sui generis, if it’s counted as existing at all. We’re better off with the naturalist account.

Against McDowell’s naturalized platonism, the proper naturalist has to say that McDowell is wrong about naturalism. He argues against his ‘bald naturalist’, saying that “knowing one’s way around the space of reasons, the idea of responsiveness to rational relationships, cannot be reconstructed out of materials that are naturalistic” (McDowell 77). But the naturalist proper doesn’t want to reconstruct a space of reasons, really. The naturalist proper holds that all reasoning, all intentionality, all communication—the entire manifest image—takes place between physical substances across physical substances. The naturalist isn’t committed to reconstructing any intentional state beyond this because she doesn’t hold it to exist. What counts as intentionality for a naturalist proper is evidenced through behaviour, and it consists of a brain processing incoming information. The space of reasons, the finer points of language, art, morality, knowledge and so forth can be talked about as abstractions. They are useful in the processing that the brain must do; they result in digestible inputs. But the naturalist proper is ever-mindful that these are not things in themselves, but that they are always identical with and reducible to the states of the brain. The same holds of spontaneity. The naturalist counts human judgments to be determined (in a deterministic or indeterministic sense[6]) by the physical processes that cause them. Thus, spontaneity can be said either to not really exist, or at least to be denied status as sui generis, as is the case with the other ideas McDowell wants to preserve. Where McDowell wants to say that human beings are free to choose their beliefs, to take their experiences and spontaneously form judgments about them, the proper naturalist denies this. For the naturalist proper, sometimes brain states will have the disposition to respond to the stimulus of a red bench and form the belief that there is a red bench. Sometimes, because of other beliefs, brain states will not have such a disposition and will not form such a belief. Whether or not this happens is not an act of spontaneity, but a function of the states of the brain, including the stimulus received and the beliefs already held.

By positing an autonomous space of reasons, and a second nature with which humans can access it, the naturalized platonist gains little in the way of explanation and much in the way of recalcitrant philosophical questions. McDowell thinks that he gets out of the “threat of supernaturalism” (78) by saying that scientific advancements don’t clarify nature as a whole, but only the realm of law. This step does not work; it only redefines “nature” to include what the naturalist counts as supernatural. McDowell renames nature as the realm of law, says that the platonic heaven, the space of reasons, also exist, and says that there’s this new thing, now called nature, previously called existence, which encompasses all of them. The connection between the realms of laws and reasons is as sketchy as ever, and it is only through proper naturalism of intentionality and spontaneity that the confusion is finally dissolved.

This objection has probably been made before, but for the sake of my notes I’m spelling it out as I read it.

In the paper, Sellars runs through a set of three propositions that he believes that sense-datum theorists must hold, but that Sellars believes is inconsistent.

A. X senses red sense content s entails x non-inferentially knows that s is red.

B. The ability to sense sense contents is unacquired.

C. The ability to know facts of the form x is Φ is acquired.

Sellars then states that “A and B together entail not-C; B and C entail not-A; A and C entail not-B” (132).

However, I think he makes a crucial misstep in his formulation here. Namely, in C Sellars refers to a fact, that knowledge “of the form x is Φ is acquired”, but I do not believe that what is stated in A truly takes this form.

On my reading of A, when we say that x non-inferentially knows that s is red, we are not saying that x knows the fact “s is red“. It may entirely be the case that x is unable to form the sentence “s is red”. Suppose that x has been living in Mary’s Room and is experiencing red for the first time — x would not be able to know that what x sees is red. Hence, x does not have knowledge of the form x is Φ  in the sense that x can categorize his or her sense perception. But x still has some knowledge from this experience, and for the sense-datum theorist this is a recollection of that given sense data.

The difference here is a logical distinction between a de re and a de dicto formation. These two Latin phrases basically mean “of the thing” and “of what is said”. Symbolically, we can represent “x knows that” as K_x. We can also symbolize “α is red” as R(α).

Now, in the case of A, we have the claim that X senses red sense content s entails K_xR(s). This is a de re claim — what x knows is that, of s, that object is of a certain colour, which we call red. The claim is that x knows that s has some property. We can argue a bit over whether this must be knowledge by acquaintance in the sense that Sellars talks about in this paper, but the idea here is that this is not knowledge of a fact, but rather the knowledge you would acquire whether or not you knew of the category “red” to begin with.

However, in C, we have the claim that knowing facts of the form K_x[Φ(α)]. This form translates in our example to K_x[R(s)]. This is the de dicto claim — what x knows here isn’t that s is red, but the sentence “s is red”.

So, the sense-datum theorist can simply agree that knowledge of de dicto facts in this form are acquired, but deny that A includes such a fact, since what is known can be expressed as a de re claim. Hence, the triad of propositions that Sellars attributes to the sense-data theorist is not inconsistent.

Cited:
Sellars, Wilfrid. “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”. Science, Perception and Reality. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963. pp. 127-164.

A good old fun topic: luck in epistemology.

If you’re familiar with the study of knowledge, you may know that, traditionally, knowledge is defined as justified true belief.

However, not all philosophers agree with this assertion. Edumnd Gettier famously created what’s known as the “Gettier problem”, by presenting some examples (the Gettier counterexamples, as they are known) of instances of justified true belief that do not correspond with our intuitive notion of knowledge.  Since that time, more examples have surfaced that closely resemble what we would normally call knowledge, but challenge the traditional definition.  I’ll use one example that was not given by Gettier, which I think sums up the idea of luck in epistemology very well.

Carl Ginet of Cornell University provides this example of lucky knowledge.  He imagines that a person, Henry, is driving down a country road and sees a barn.  In his mind, he forms the belief that he sees a barn.  His belief is justified, because the object he sees appears to be a barn — it matches his understanding of what a barn is, how a barn looks, etc.  His belief is also true, because what he sees is, in fact, a barn.

However, things are more interesting than that.  For, in the area that Henry finds himself, the locals have an odd hobby.  They like to construct facades of buildings, which, from the road, appear identical to actual buildings.  In fact, the majority of the things that look like barns from the road are not actually barns, but wooden facades that only look like barns.

Now, here’s the problem.  Henry has a justified true belief that he sees a barn, which, in the traditional account, means that he knows that he sees a barn. But it’s only by sheer luck that Henry is actually correct in his belief.  If Henry had happened to be looking at any of the other barn-like objects in the area, he would have been wrong.  This begs the question: Does Henry really know that he is looking at a barn?

If you answer “yes” to that question, then consider the following.  Suppose that someone next to him is familiar with the area, and tells Henry that, “actually, the people in this area construct facades of buildings, and most of the things that look like barns around here are, in fact, not barns.”  If Henry is told this, but nobody confirms that he is actually looking at a real barn, does he still know that he is looking at a barn?  It would seem that his true belief is no longer justified — given what he now knows about the area, he doesn’t have a good enough reason for believing what he previously knew to be true.

Did Henry go from knowing something to not knowing it? If so, than to what degree is knowledge dependent on our state of mind?  If not, did he ever know it, and can we ever know something luckily, or are there other qualifications to knowledge other than it being justified and true?

Duncan Pritchard, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, performs what is probably the first thorough examination of this concept in his book, Epistemic Luck.

I’ll leave it at that, for now, to bring up the idea of epistemic luck.  It’s something that I’ll be keeping in the back of my mind this year as the epistemology topics come up.  I’ll be beginning my second year tomorrow, which, fortunately, has a greater focus on philosophy than my first year.  I’ll probably come back to this idea in a later post, as epistemology is one of my favourite areas of philosophy.

PHOTO CREDIT: iowa_spirit_walker / CC BY 2.0