1002 lines
73 KiB
HTML
1002 lines
73 KiB
HTML
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<title>Rational causation</title>
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<meta name="author" content="Amr Gharbeia">
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#993366"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>R<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OdkC34" align="right" width="73" height="32" border="0">ational
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causation.</b></font></font> The remaining problems about the nature
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of causation arise in the branches of science known as psychology and
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social science. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Psychology
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has to do with the explanation of individual behavior, and that is
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problematic mainly because we know too much. As rational beings, we
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have a special way of seeing into the minds of other rational beings
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(and subjective animals generally). We ordinarily explain individual
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behavior by the reasons that the individual has for it, that is, the
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beliefs, intentions, desires and the like that are responsible for
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it, or subjectivistic understanding, as we have been calling it.
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There are two problems,</font></font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">One problem
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in this field is that rational explanations do not seem to be the
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kind of explanation that a branch of natural science ought to be
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seeking. </font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">But another
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problem is that, even if they are, they do not seem to be reducible
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to the kinds of explanation given in physics. </font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
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social science have to do with the explanation of social phenomena,
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or what has been explained here as the behavior of spiritual animals.
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We know that human societies are different from other groups of
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animals, because our capacity for subjectivistic understanding gives
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us an “inside view,” so to speak, of the phenomena. However, that
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view is not based on perception and, thus, is not from the vantage of
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natural science. Thus, there is a problem about the nature of the
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object that is being studied by the social sciences. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The problem
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about reductionism in this case is just opposite to the other cases
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considered here. Though there have been social scientists, like Comte
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and Durkheim, who thought that societies are not reducible to the
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individuals, that view is not common these days. Contemporary
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naturalists tend to assume that social phenomena must somehow be
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explained in terms of the individuals who make up human societies,
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because they do not see how there could be any relevant causes that
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arise from the nature of society as a whole.</font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The main
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philosophical problems about the nature of causation in social
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science has to do, therefore, with showing how social phenomena can
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be explained as a result of the nature of the individuals, the
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regularities in their behavior, and the situations in which they act.
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The project of explaining social phenomena in that way is called
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“methodological individualism,” and its most popular current form
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is sociobiology, which bypasses individual psychology and tries to
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explain social behavior by genes that have evolved in individuals.</font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
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ontological explanation of the nature of change provides, however, a
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solution in all of these cases. Though the laws of nature (or
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regularities) discovered in psychology and social science may not be
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reducible to the laws of physics, they are reducible to the
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ontological causes recognized by spatiomaterialism in a world like
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ours. Once again, the reason is the failure to recognize that the
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global regularities are caused ontologically by the wholeness of
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space and other substances contained by it, both basic and
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derivative, like material structures and reproductive cycles. Indeed,
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all the basic phenomena investigated by both psychology and social
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science have already been explained in tracing the course of
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evolution by reproductive causation. What follows here is just a
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reminder of their relevance. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#993366"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>P<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OdkC35" align="right" width="75" height="30" border="0">sychology.</b></font></font>
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In the first instance, psychology is based on our ordinary way of
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understanding human beings. That is to explain individual behavior
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and beliefs by the reason which are responsible for it, or what I
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have been calling “rational explanation.” For decades now, it has
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been is called “folk psychology” in epistemological philosophy of
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science, because it is generally assumed that such explanations
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depend on learning the relevant “laws of nature” as a normal part
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of the process of growing up in human society. But it has been
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explained here as subjectivistic understanding.</font></font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Subjectivistic
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understanding is part of the cognitive capacity I have been calling
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“reason,” for it is the use of rational imagination to think
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about the causes of beliefs and behavior in subjective animals like
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us. Reason has been explained here as a capacity that derives from
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the use of psychological sentences, for that is what enables the
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subject to represent and, thus, reflect on the psychological states
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that are involved causally in the process by which their animal
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behavior guidance system. That is the basis of the subject’s
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capacity to use the theoretical and practical reasoning that takes
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place in his own brain to simulate the reasoning going on in the
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brains of others, and thus, it is what enables the subject to see
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into the minds of other subjects.</font></font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Naturalistic
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understanding is another part of the capacity of reason. It is the
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use of rational imagination to think about the causes and effects of
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states of objects in space, or the kind of imagination that first
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evolved in primitive spiritual animals, which had only the use of
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natural sentences (with a subject-predicate grammar). The use of
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natural sentences gives the subject the concept of a state of affairs
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(or event) in nature, and since reason uses a faculty of imagination
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that is built on the spatio-temporal imagination of mammals and the
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structuro-temporal imagination of primates, it involves the ability
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to understand efficient causes and their effects (both those that
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depend on these basic aspects of the spatial structure of the world
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and those that are learned from experience of other regularities in
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the natural world). </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">H<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OdkC36" align="right" width="73" height="20" border="0">ermeneutics.
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</font>By “hermeneutics,” I mean the belief that the best that
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science can do in the way of explaining individual beliefs and
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behavior is to give rational explanations. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">This
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view is now most commonly defended in the philosophy of social
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science. There seems to be no hope explaining social phenomena unless
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the beliefs and behavior of individual can be explained. Even the
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gathering of statistics about individuals, as in economics and
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sociology, depends on being able to start with the ordinary
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explanations of their beliefs and behavior. Thus, those who are eager
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to have the social sciences recognized as a form of genuine knowledge
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about the world seem forced to accept a hermeneutical understanding
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of individual behavior.</font></font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Hermeneutics
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is also the foundation of most social psychology and clinical
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psychology for the same reason. But in psychology, there are attempts
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to give a deeper explanation of individual behavior, which would make
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it clear that psychology is a branch of natural science and, thus, no
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less entitled to claim that its conclusions are science. They will be
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considered next.</font></font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
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main problem with simply accepting rational explanations as
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scientific explanations is that the empirical method does not lead to
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general agreement about what is true, at least not in a way that is
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comparable to using the empirical method with efficient-cause
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explanations. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">This
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problem with the empirical method was discussed when the empirical
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method was introduced (in <font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Method</font>).
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The empirical method is the attempt to discover what is true by
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inferring to the best explanation of what is observable in the
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natural world, and as we noted, it is a method that can, in
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principle, be used in conjunction with various kinds of explanation:
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efficient-cause explanations, rational-cause explanations and
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ontological-cause explanations. The way that it leads to agreement in
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the case of efficient-cause explanations has made natural science a
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spectacular success in the attempt to discover the true. Its use in
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conjunction with ontological-cause explanations is the foundation of
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ontological philosophy, where it may also lead to general agreement,
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this time about the basic substance constituting the natural world.
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But in the case of rational-cause explanations, it fails to lead to
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agreement about what is true. Different rational subjects trying to
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explain the same behavior (or the same beliefs) of some individual
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often wind up with different conclusions, and no matter how much they
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consider one another’s rational explanations, there does not seem
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to be any way for them to reach agreement. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The problem
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about reaching agreement on rational-cause explanations is sometimes
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called the hermeneutical circle, because the attempt to resolve
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disputes about what an individual intends or believes in a particular
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case depends inferring to the best rational cause explanation. Since
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one standard of the best explanation is explaining the widest range
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of phenomena, the widest range in this case is the range of the
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individual’s behavior. But for other instances of the individual’s
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behavior to be relevant in judging which explanation is best, they
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must also be explained rationally, and thus, the same problem arises
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about explaining them. The rational explanation of one instance of
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behavior depends on the rational explanation of the other, and that
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instance on yet another, so that in the end, all the behavior has to
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be interpreted. The rational explanation of the part thus depends on
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the rational explanation of the whole, and as it happens, even when
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all relevant behavior is included, there are still differences among
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the subjective scientists. </font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The reason
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for these disputes can be explained, as we did earlier, by the nature
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of rational explanation. It comes down to disagreements among the
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subjective scientists themselves in basic their beliefs about the
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world, especially their most basic and general beliefs, such as moral
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and religious beliefs. An inference to the best rational explanation
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is an inference to the fewest and simplest psychological states that
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will explain the widest range of behavior, but it depends on a
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judgment about which alternative explanation is the most coherent,
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that is, rational selection. And since rational explanation involves
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using one’s own process of practical and theoretical reasoning to
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simulate the reasoning of others, the judgment about which
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alternative set of psychological states is simplest and fewest
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depends on using one’s own desires and beliefs (including beliefs
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about what is good) as the background in which they are compared.
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Since that background varies from one subjective scientist to the
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next, subjective scientists tend to disagree about which is the best
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rational explanation. </font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Inferences
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to the best efficient-cause explanations are not subject to this kind
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of dispute, because naturalistic understanding involves only beliefs
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about the natural world which are ultimately based on perception. No
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judgments about what is good and bad, or what is meaningful, or how
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one feels is relevant in natural science. But they are the stuff of
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the subjective sciences.</font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Insofar
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as such disagreements about the best rational-cause explanation are
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not resolvable, it is apparent that the conclusions of subjective
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science are not objective. The ontological explanation of the nature
|
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of reason shows that there is a good deal of validity in rational
|
||
explanations, because the animal behavior guidance systems of
|
||
rational subjects do work in basically the same way. Thus, to some
|
||
extent, they can be used to discover the true, though the range in
|
||
which they are trustworthy may be limited to more immediate
|
||
intentions is rather well defined social situations. However,
|
||
rational explanations will lead to much greater agreement about the
|
||
reasons behind individual behavior when ontological philosophy
|
||
evolves in philosophical spiritual animals, because there will be a
|
||
great deal more agreement about background beliefs and values.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">However,
|
||
a genuine science of individual needs more than rational explanation,
|
||
because psychology must be integrated as a branch of natural science.
|
||
Thus, naturalists are on the right track in attempting to reduce
|
||
rational cause explanations to the kind that is used in natural
|
||
science. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">N<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OdkC37" align="right" width="73" height="20" border="0">aturalism.</font>
|
||
There have been various attempts to reduce rational-cause
|
||
explanations to efficient-cause explanations, and as a way of showing
|
||
the relevance of the ontological explanation of the nature of change
|
||
to issues about causation, let me mention the main varieties here. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><b>Behaviorism.</b>
|
||
The original attempt to turn psychology into science is behaviorism,
|
||
that is, the attempt to discover a law of nature describing the
|
||
regularities about individual behavior so that it would be possible,
|
||
in principle, to explain particular actions by efficient causes.
|
||
These first attempts tried to reduce behavior to what is now called
|
||
“respondent conditioning,” exemplified by Pavlov’s dog, in
|
||
which behavior that is already triggered by some stimulus is
|
||
conditioned so that it comes to be triggered by another stimulus. It
|
||
was followed by the theory of operant conditioning, developed mainly
|
||
by B. F. Skinner. Operant conditioning is based on the law of effect.
|
||
When kinds of behavior that are generated spontaneously or randomly
|
||
are reinforced, they are more likely to generated again, especially
|
||
under similar stimulus conditions. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><b>Functionalism.</b>
|
||
Behaviorism has been replaced in psychology by cognitive psychology.
|
||
It departs from its predecessor by recognizing that behavior is
|
||
mediated by internal states, and thus, it takes the project of
|
||
psychology to be to discover the internal states that are
|
||
responsible. But cognitive psychology does not attempt to discover
|
||
the physical properties of internal states. Instead, it attempt to
|
||
discover them in terms of their causal connections to input states
|
||
and output states of the organism. That leads to what is called
|
||
“functionalism.”</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><b>Neurophysiology.
|
||
</b>The other thriving trend in psychology is the attempt to reduce
|
||
rational explanations to neurophysiology, that is, to the states of
|
||
the brain. (Though brain states may still be defined functionally,
|
||
the functions are physiological functions, and thus, involve
|
||
descriptions that are more closely tied to physics.) </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
significance of ontological philosophy for each of these projects is
|
||
implicit in what has been said in tracing the course of evolution as
|
||
a global regularity caused by reproductive cycles and the wholeness
|
||
of space.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><b>Neurophysiology.</b>
|
||
The problems of neurophysiology have been addressed by this
|
||
ontological explanation of the course of evolution by tracing the
|
||
stages of animal evolution from somatosensory through manipulative
|
||
animals to rational subjects (stages 4-9). The nervous system was
|
||
explained as an animal behavior guidance system, but the biggest
|
||
departure from received neurophysiology comes from the recognition of
|
||
levels of neurological organization and what each contributes to the
|
||
animal system of representation. That functional explanation shows
|
||
how structures in the nervous system serve as a faculty of
|
||
imagination, that is, a mechanism in which covert behavior calls up
|
||
sequences of images from memory in the sensory input system to
|
||
represent the effects of motion on the relations of objects in space,
|
||
of manipulation on the geometrical structures of objects in space,
|
||
the causal relations among states of objects in space, and the causal
|
||
relations among psychological states. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This is a
|
||
different kind of neurophysiological explanation of behavior than is
|
||
expected by the current defenders of neurophysiology, such as Paul
|
||
and Patricia Churchland, for they are eliminative materialists, who
|
||
expect rational explanations (or “folk psychology,” as they call
|
||
it) to be replaced by neurophysiology. By contrast, this explanation
|
||
of how the brain works explains the validity of rational explanation
|
||
by showing not only how they are valid explanations, but also by
|
||
explaining how it is possible for rational subject to give such
|
||
explanations of beliefs and behavior. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">As a
|
||
functional explanation of those structures in the brain, however, it
|
||
leaves a great deal yet to be explained. Indeed, all the detailed
|
||
mechanisms that are required to serve these functions remain to be
|
||
explained. But those nervous mechanisms are quickly yielding to the
|
||
astonishing progress of empirical neurophysiology. Since they are
|
||
coming at it from opposite directions, what ontological philosophy
|
||
implies and what empirical neurophysiology is disclosing should
|
||
converge on a single, complete explanation of how the brain works
|
||
before long. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><b>Behaviorism.</b>
|
||
What made it possible to explain the stages of neurological
|
||
organization by reproductive causation was the recognition that the
|
||
faculty of imagination does not require the mechanism of
|
||
embryological development (that is, the multicellular biological
|
||
behavior guidance system) to provide the detailed structure of the
|
||
brain. It needs to provide only the basic systems of the faculty of
|
||
imagination, because its structure makes possible a contained form of
|
||
reproductive causation in which the behavioral schemata behind covert
|
||
behavior can evolved by reinforcement selection. That is, given that
|
||
there are random variations on behavioral schemata, the learning of
|
||
new ways of behaving and thinking can be explained by a memory
|
||
circuit that strengthens the synapses of neurons involved in
|
||
generating behavior of that kind when they are successful by
|
||
genetically determined criteria (such as success in getting around in
|
||
space or success in social relations mediated by linguistic
|
||
behavior). Thus, the brain has a built-in structure that internalizes
|
||
structures of the world, from the spatial structure of the natural
|
||
world to language and the capacity for reflection. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This is an
|
||
explanation of the validity of operant conditioning, at least, in
|
||
mammals and beyond. The law of effect is true, on this functional
|
||
explanation of the faculty of imagination, because the regularity it
|
||
describes is the evolution of behavioral schemata by reinforcement
|
||
selection within the mammalian brain. (The memory circuit works in a
|
||
similar, but far more limited way in non-mammalian vertebrates, and
|
||
thus, the learning in pigeons was limited enough to stand out in the
|
||
kinds of experiments that Skinner conducted.) </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">But this
|
||
neurophysiological explanation of operant conditioning reveals that
|
||
it is not as open ended and unstructured as Skinner believed, because
|
||
it is the evolution of behavior schemata that operate as various
|
||
faculties of imagination (spatio-temporal, structuro-temporal,
|
||
naturalistic and subjectivist imagination). That is, behind the overt
|
||
operant behavior, including verbal behavior) is a covert operant that
|
||
calls up sequences of images of a certain kind, and thus, from the
|
||
point of view of the subject, the behavior is generated in world from
|
||
an understanding of the world that sees the actual against the
|
||
background of the possible. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><b>Functionalism.
|
||
</b>The neurophysiological structures in the nervous system have been
|
||
explained by the functions of various systems at a series of level of
|
||
neurological organization. That is a functional explanation in the
|
||
strong sense that is entailed by reproductive causation and the
|
||
recognition that evolution is progressive, increasingly sophisticated
|
||
ways of serving as an animal system of representation are what causes
|
||
each higher level of neurological organization. And these functional
|
||
explanations of the levels of neurological organization include
|
||
functional explanations of various nervous structures in the brain,
|
||
such as the <i>behavior generator</i>, the <i>local image</i>, the
|
||
<i>object image</i>, and the like. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">These
|
||
functionally described states are not quite what cognitive psychology
|
||
is looking for. In the first place, they are tied certain
|
||
neurophysiological structures in the brain, and thus, internal states
|
||
are no explained exclusively in terms of their causal connections to
|
||
(sensory) input and (behavioral) output. Secondly, the functions that
|
||
are ascribed to internal states are not merely that of representing
|
||
aspects of the world, but as representing objects, representing them
|
||
as being located in space, as having geometrical structures, as being
|
||
efficient causes, and even as having reasons. And the functions of
|
||
such states depend on them being parts of a faculty of imagination. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This
|
||
departure from received functionalism in psychology solves the
|
||
problems that have been encountered, and by considering them more
|
||
closely, those who are interested can see how. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Intentionality.
|
||
</font>The philosophical problems about the nature of mind arise from
|
||
certain aspects that seem to be incapable of explanation by the basic
|
||
laws of physics. One of those problems is consciousness, or the
|
||
subjective aspect of experience, such as the phenomena appearance of
|
||
the natural world in perception. The foundations for the ontological
|
||
explanation of consciousness were discovered in Properties, and the
|
||
way in which it explains the unity of mind, or the fact that many
|
||
qualia appear to the subject at the same time, was explained as part
|
||
of the discussion of the mammalian brain (Stage 6). The other main
|
||
problem, which will be discussed here, has to do with intentionality.<sup>
|
||
<a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote1anc" href="#sdendnote1sym"><sup>i</sup></a></sup></font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
problem about <i>intentionality</i> is how there can be psychological
|
||
states that are <i>about</i> the world. We know there are
|
||
psychological states about the world, because they are what we use to
|
||
give rational explanations of behavior (and beliefs) of rational
|
||
subjects (and other subjective animals). Though the mind obviously
|
||
depends in some way on the nature of the brain, it does not seem that
|
||
that the <i>aboutness</i> of psychological states can be explained by
|
||
the basic laws of physics. Functionalists believe, however, that they
|
||
can be explained as functional states. No one denies that it is
|
||
plausible to suppose that the intentionality of psychological states
|
||
involves a system of representation built into the brain. But how can
|
||
states of the brain be representations? How can they be about the
|
||
world?</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Intentionality
|
||
cannot be explained as something we <i>read into</i> the phenomena,
|
||
as if it were just a useful way of describing or summing up what
|
||
happens in nature.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote2anc" href="#sdendnote2sym"><sup>ii</sup></a></sup>
|
||
That would be to deny the reality of the phenomenon, at least as part
|
||
of the natural world. And it is hard to see how even that is possible
|
||
without contradicting oneself, because no one who holds that we are
|
||
reading things into nature (or describing them in certain ways) can
|
||
deny there are intentional states in the world. Those very
|
||
interpretations are <i>about </i>objects in the natural world. The
|
||
only way to avoid self-contradiction, therefore, is to hold that
|
||
one’s own mental states are not part of the natural world, and that
|
||
is, ontologically speaking, a form of mind-body dualism. It implies
|
||
that there are two basically different kinds of substances in the
|
||
world: natural entities without real intentional states, and beings
|
||
like us, who must have them, since we do refer to other objects and
|
||
ascribe intentional states to them. This is a disastrous kind of
|
||
dualism, for there is no way to explain how substances whose natures
|
||
differ as mind and body are related to one another as a single world.
|
||
And even if there were, it would be to give up naturalism and, thus,
|
||
ontological philosophy.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote3anc" href="#sdendnote3sym"><sup>iii</sup></a></sup></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Though
|
||
it is generally agreed among naturalists that intentionality is to be
|
||
explained functionally, there is little agreement about what such a
|
||
functional explanation would involve. There are two main schools of
|
||
thought about the nature of "functionalist theories" of
|
||
psychological states, and both would explain intentionality in terms
|
||
of representations in the brain. One theory holds that the most
|
||
science can do is give functional <i>descriptions</i> of the brain.
|
||
The other holds that natural science can give functional <i>explanations
|
||
</i>of the brain, although it is based on an analysis of functional
|
||
explanations (the etiological theory) that precludes their reduction
|
||
to the ontology of naturalism. A brief account of these theories will
|
||
provide a sense of the obstacles that intentionality poses for a
|
||
naturalistic metaphysics. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><b>Intentional
|
||
states as functional states. </b>The still dominant view of
|
||
psychological states is called "functionalism,” a philosophy
|
||
of psychology inspired by the analogy between minds and computers a
|
||
quarter century ago.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote4anc" href="#sdendnote4sym"><sup>iv</sup></a></sup>
|
||
The idea is that psychological states can be understood as internal
|
||
states in a complex system whose kinds can be distinguished in terms
|
||
of the causal roles those states play in mediating between input and
|
||
output, much as internal states of computers explain its output in
|
||
response to certain kinds of input because of how internal states are
|
||
related by the program. Thus, the goal of psychology is supposed to
|
||
be giving a functional description of the mind/brain, much as one
|
||
would a computer, that is, by describing a system of interconnected
|
||
internal states that tells how all possible inputs would affect
|
||
output. Two points about functionalism of this kind should be
|
||
noticed, </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">First,
|
||
it denies the possibility of reducing functional systems to the kinds
|
||
of physical processes that realize them. According to the
|
||
deductive-nomological model of explanation, the reduction of one
|
||
theory to another depends on establishing a necessary connection
|
||
between the terms used by one theory and the terms used by the other,
|
||
and functionalists deny that there is any such type-type identity
|
||
between functional states and their physical realizations in the
|
||
brain.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote5anc" href="#sdendnote5sym"><sup>v</sup></a></sup>
|
||
That is, the functional properties of a system are thought to
|
||
"supervene" on its physical properties. One of the deepest
|
||
convictions functionalists have is that, just as physically different
|
||
kind of computers can perform the same computations, so physically
|
||
different kinds of brains or brain states can realize the same
|
||
psychological states. Functionalists are quick to point out that they
|
||
are not denying materialism (or physicalism). They need not believe
|
||
in the existence of anything but entities of the kind mentioned by
|
||
the basic laws of physics. They admit that functionally defined
|
||
states <i>are </i>identical to the physically defined states that
|
||
realize them in each specific case. The agree that if a physical
|
||
system of some kind realizes a functional system, then another
|
||
physical system of the same (relevant) kind must also realize it. But
|
||
they believe that there is only a token-token identity between
|
||
functional and physical properties. They deny there is any necessary
|
||
connections between the types of these tokens, because they believe
|
||
that indefinitely many different kinds of physical systems can
|
||
realize a functional system. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Second,
|
||
the very form of functionalist psychology precludes any explanation
|
||
of intentional states in terms of representations of the world.
|
||
Psychological states are ordinarily classified not only by the
|
||
propositional attitudes involved (that is, depending on whether they
|
||
function as beliefs, desires, intentions or the like), but also
|
||
according to content (or what they are about, beliefs <i>about water</i>,
|
||
say, being different from beliefs <i>about alcohol</i>). Though the
|
||
former kinds are plausibly explained by their casual role in
|
||
mediating between input and output, the latter cannot be, for any
|
||
correspondence to objects/states in the world would lie outside the
|
||
functional system. The only way of distinguishing psychological
|
||
states according to their content within the functional system is by
|
||
differences in the representations themselves, that is, by the
|
||
so-called formal aspects of the states (which are analogous to
|
||
syntax, as opposed to semantics, in linguistic analysis). They have,
|
||
in the jargon of this field, "narrow content,” but not "wide
|
||
content.” They cannot have a content that depends on a relationship
|
||
to objects/states in the rest of the world, because the only
|
||
relationship of the system's internal states to the rest of the world
|
||
is by way of its input and output, and functional theories abstract
|
||
from how input and output connect to the rest of the world. Thus,
|
||
since functionalist theory cannot connect the mind with real
|
||
objects/states in the world, it cannot explain the intentionality of
|
||
psychological states — that is, explain <i>how </i>and <i>why </i>they
|
||
are <i>about </i>the world. It cannot, for example, say which beliefs
|
||
are true. It cannot even explain what makes true beliefs true.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
leading proponent of functionalism, Jerry Fodor, argues that these
|
||
two points are connected. He argues that psychology cannot explain
|
||
psychological states by how physical states correspond to
|
||
objects/states in the rest of the world, because functionally
|
||
described states supervene on physically described states and the
|
||
physical states on which they supervene are <i>in </i>the brain. This
|
||
doctrine he calls "individualism.”<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote6anc" href="#sdendnote6sym"><sup>vi</sup></a></sup>
|
||
</font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Fodor
|
||
does not, of course, deny that the internal states of functional
|
||
systems do sometimes refer to objects/states in the world. But he
|
||
proposes to account for the "wide-content" of our ordinary
|
||
psychological explanations by supplementing his functionalist theory
|
||
of mind with a "causal theory of reference.” The referents
|
||
would be picked out as certain more or less remote causes of input to
|
||
the functional system that are regularly related to the internal
|
||
states. That is supposed to account for the intentionality of
|
||
psychological states, but even Fodor recognizes that such a causal
|
||
theory of reference has trouble accounting for some kinds of
|
||
references.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote7anc" href="#sdendnote7sym"><sup>vii</sup></a></sup>
|
||
And there are more basic philosophical objections to such a theory,
|
||
which Fodor does not acknowledge.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote8anc" href="#sdendnote8sym"><sup>viii</sup></a></sup>
|
||
However, neither class of problems is relevant here. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">For
|
||
our purposes, the problem is that, if the intentional content of
|
||
psychological states can be explained only by <i>tacking </i>a causal
|
||
theory of reference <i>onto </i>a functionalist theory, then far from
|
||
explaining intentional states in terms of the ontology of naturalism,
|
||
functionalist psychology actually makes intentionality more puzzling.
|
||
Even if all the references we take psychological states to be making
|
||
did turn out to have causal relations to the world, it would show, at
|
||
most, that there is an objective regularity about our ascriptions of
|
||
references to psychological states. But it would not explain why
|
||
psychological states are about the world. need to tack a causal
|
||
theory of reference onto a functionalist theory of mind would still
|
||
suggest that the intentionality of psychological states is something
|
||
accidental. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">What
|
||
Fodor’s functionalism is leaving out can be seen with the help of
|
||
our ontological explanation of the function of the animal behavior
|
||
guidance system. Because animals acquire their free energy by
|
||
ingesting other objects in space, they need, in addition to their
|
||
biological behavior guidance system, a system to guide behavior that
|
||
acts on other objects in space. Thus, animal behavior is different
|
||
from biological behavior, because it must direct behavior at other
|
||
objects in space, rather than just at the world as a whole (or merely
|
||
oriented in a gravitational or electromagnetic field). Thus, what
|
||
makes animal behavior guidance systems more powerful is the evolution
|
||
of a subsystem, the animal system of representation, which uses an
|
||
interaction between sensory input and behavioral output to represent
|
||
the objects toward which its behavior is directed. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Behavior
|
||
is generated by the structure of the organism as an irreversible
|
||
structural global regularity, but as animal behavior, it can make
|
||
events occur regularly in its territory that are otherwise quite
|
||
improbable only by acting other objects in the region. That is, what
|
||
coincides with the geometrical structures of region’s
|
||
thermo­dynamics flow of matter toward evenly distributed heat to
|
||
do work is not an unchanging material structure, like a region-wide
|
||
machine, but rather animal behavior, that is, behavior in which,
|
||
typically, the animal moves around in the region and acts on other
|
||
objects (as in chasing prey and ingesting them). But that requires
|
||
animal behavior to be guided in relation to objects in space, and
|
||
thus, a system evolves in the animal behavior guidance system to
|
||
represent the object, or what we have called the animal system of
|
||
representation. The animal stages of evolution are all increases in
|
||
animal power that comes from the animal system of representation
|
||
representing the nature of the world in which its behavior must act
|
||
more completely. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
animal system of representation evolves first in telesensory animals.
|
||
(The somatosensory animal has only an implicit representation of the
|
||
object, because it uses the location of the sensory input in the body
|
||
to locate the object for purposes of directing behavior at it, for
|
||
example, as the hydra’s tentacles sting prey that touch it and
|
||
contract to draw the prey into its gastrovascular cavity.)
|
||
Embryological development constructs a nervous system in telesensory
|
||
animals that uses the regular changes in sensory input as a function
|
||
of behavioral output to represent the object in such a way that it
|
||
can guide locomotion in relation to the object. The function of this
|
||
brain structure depends on how the animal interact with other objects
|
||
in space, and that is the basis of the relationship of representation
|
||
between the states of the animal system of representation and the
|
||
objects in space. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Functionalism
|
||
abstracts from this functional explanation. To insist that such
|
||
internal states be defined strictly in terms of the internal causal
|
||
relations by which they mediate between sensory input and behavioral
|
||
output is to cut off from consideration all the structural effects
|
||
outside the body that are involved in doing the non-reproductive work
|
||
of controlling relevant conditions. The culprit here is the computer
|
||
analogy, and there are two ways in which it cuts psychological states
|
||
off from any deeper explanation. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">First,
|
||
on the computer model, the only context that is relevant in a
|
||
functional system is the input to the system and its output, and
|
||
thus, functionalism abstracts from the part of the structural effects
|
||
outside the organism. That cuts the animal behavior guidance system
|
||
off from any coincidence with the thermo­dynamic flow outside the
|
||
organism, including any relevant conditions the behavior it is
|
||
generating might be controlling.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote9anc" href="#sdendnote9sym"><sup>ix</sup></a></sup>
|
||
</font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Second,
|
||
on the computer model, the internal states of a functional system are
|
||
defined only in terms of the causal relations among them that are
|
||
responsible for mediating between input and output, and thus,
|
||
functionalism also abstracts from the structural global regularities
|
||
that occur within the animal behavior guidance system. When
|
||
functionalists abstract from the "physical realization" of
|
||
the functional system, they are abstracting from the material
|
||
structures that channel the flow of free energy in the animal
|
||
behavior guidance system. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This
|
||
abstraction is necessary, functionalists would insist, because there
|
||
are different kinds of structural causes that could generate the same
|
||
kind of structured thermodynamic order. That may be true of
|
||
computers, but it is not true of biological mechanisms, because in
|
||
products of reproductive causation, there is a necessary connection
|
||
between functions and traits. The kind of structural effects that
|
||
serve any function are determined by that function, because they are
|
||
the most powerful way of controlling that relevant condition that is
|
||
possible for organisms of their kind when they evolved. That
|
||
necessary connection makes a type-type reduction to naturalist
|
||
ontology possible. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Both
|
||
kinds of abstraction are appropriate for computers, because their
|
||
input and output is strictly linguistic (or digital), and many
|
||
different machines can be built that manipulate the syntax of
|
||
linguistic or mathematical representations. But animal behavior
|
||
guidance systems are structural causes that have evolved by
|
||
reproductive causation to guide behavior in a world of objects in
|
||
space, not just syntax manipulators designed by human ingenuity to
|
||
work in a linguistic environment. Given our definition of
|
||
"functions,” therefore, neither kind of abstraction —
|
||
neither from the objects in space outside the brain nor from the
|
||
physical nature of the brain itself — is appropriate. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><b>Functional
|
||
explanations of intentional states.</b> This brings us to the other
|
||
received theory of the intentional content of psychological states,
|
||
the one that would <i>explain </i>representations by their function,
|
||
rather than just describe them by their causal roles as internal
|
||
states in a functionalist system. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Ruth
|
||
Millikan (1989, p 282) rightly challenges Fodor's assumption that the
|
||
status of an inner state "<i>as</i> a representation is
|
||
determined by the functional organization of the part of the system
|
||
that uses it,” pointing out that there is no such a thing "as
|
||
behaving as a representation without behaving like a representation
|
||
of anything in particular.” The relationship to objects/states in
|
||
the world is essential, she insists, to any explanation of
|
||
intentional states in terms of representations. She is also correct
|
||
to insist that such a system can be <i>explained </i>functionally,
|
||
and not merely <i>described </i>functionally. But her theory fails to
|
||
reduce psychological states to naturalist ontology, because she
|
||
accepts a theory of functional explanations, the "etiological
|
||
theory,” that takes accidentalism for granted. And as a result, she
|
||
overlooks an essential ingredient in any adequate explanation of the
|
||
nature of psychological states.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Let
|
||
us call Millikan's kind of explanation the "teleological theory"
|
||
of representations. It holds that what makes an inner state a
|
||
representation is that its function is to represent.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote10anc" href="#sdendnote10sym"><sup>x</sup></a></sup>
|
||
According to the etiological analysis, representations are states of
|
||
an organism that correspond to certain objects/states of the world
|
||
and that were selected to be parts of the organism <i>because they
|
||
correspond </i>to those objects/states in the world. That makes the
|
||
correspondence part of the explanation of the intentional state
|
||
something more than what happens to be true of it or what we read
|
||
into it, because the state's correspondence to the world is
|
||
responsible for the organism having been able to do something that
|
||
was (and perhaps still is) required for its success in reproduction. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">There
|
||
are, for example, bacteria that use tiny magnets (magnetosomes) to
|
||
guide their locomotion. What they represent is not, however, the
|
||
direction of magnetic north, which causes their orientation, but
|
||
rather the direction of oxygen-free water, because magnetosomes were
|
||
selected for their correspondence to oxygen-poor water. That
|
||
correspondence causes their reproductive success by enabling them to
|
||
avoid the toxic, oxygen-rich water near the surface, and thus, the
|
||
magnetosomes have the function of representing oxygen free water.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote11anc" href="#sdendnote11sym"><sup>xi</sup></a></sup></font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
teleological theory of psychological states is closer than Fodor's
|
||
functionalism to the explanation entailed by this ontological
|
||
explanation of the course of evolution, because instead of tacking a
|
||
causal theory of reference onto a functional system, it gives a
|
||
functional explanation of the correspondence between inner
|
||
representations and objects/states in the world. But the teleological
|
||
theory of representations nevertheless agrees, in effect, with the
|
||
other abstraction involved in functionalism, for it still assumes
|
||
that there is no necessary connection between intentional states and
|
||
the physical states that realize them. The accidentalist assumptions
|
||
of the contemporary Darwinist explanation of about the course of
|
||
evolution lead to the etiological analysis of functional
|
||
explanations, and since that precludes explaining course of evolution
|
||
by the functions that are possible, it does not seem possible to
|
||
explaining psychological states ontologically. Both assumptions of
|
||
accidentalism are relevant. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">First,
|
||
though inner states of an animal may have the function of
|
||
representing something, what they represent is contingent. Since
|
||
natural selection is imposed by changes in the environment, what
|
||
inner states correspond to depends on environmental changes or
|
||
conditions that could be different. There may be a historical
|
||
explanation of the natural selection of intentional states, but since
|
||
what is represented is contingent, no ontological reduction of
|
||
psychological states is possible. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Furthermore,
|
||
even if the selection pressure responsible for psychological states
|
||
were given and the nature of the correspondence were determined,
|
||
psychological states would still not be reducible to the ontology of
|
||
naturalism, because the etiological theory has nothing to say about
|
||
the mechanisms that would serve that function. The kinds of inner
|
||
states and how they are made to have the required correspondence
|
||
would depend on which random variations happened to be available at
|
||
the time the selection pressure was imposed. Thus, the teleological
|
||
theory of representations does not offer an account of intentionality
|
||
that reduces psychological states to the ontology of naturalism. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
examples used to illustrate states with representational functions,
|
||
such as the magnetosomes in bacteria mentioned above, seem to confirm
|
||
accidentalism. Though they might guide some bacteria to oxygen free
|
||
water, they might guide other animals in seasonal migrations. But
|
||
such examples are misleading, because they implicitly assume that the
|
||
representational functions of inner states are tied directly to the
|
||
control of rather specific conditions. And this may be true in
|
||
somatosensory animals and simpler animals, since they do not have
|
||
animal systems of representation. And since the accidentalists
|
||
assumptions of contemporary Darwinism keep teleological theorists
|
||
from trying to trace the course of evolution, they do not notice that
|
||
the evolution of greater power in higher animals comes from serving a
|
||
more universal function in behavior guidance, namely, the
|
||
representation of objects for the purpose of adapting behavior to the
|
||
spatial aspects of the world. That is, they overlook the
|
||
inevitability of the evolution of the animal system of representation
|
||
in multicellular animals.<sup> <a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote12anc" href="#sdendnote12sym"><sup>xii</sup></a></sup>
|
||
</font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
animal system of representation has a necessary neurological
|
||
structure in telesensory animals because of how behavioral output
|
||
must be combined with sensory input to locate objects in space for
|
||
purposes of guiding behavior. There are, of course, different ways of
|
||
serving this function, as we have seen, with the greatest differences
|
||
arising from the fundamental difference between proterostome and
|
||
deuterostome embryological development. But the inevitability of the
|
||
neurological structure of the system for representing the objects of
|
||
animal behavior at later stages of evolution, because they use higher
|
||
levels of neurological organization to represent additional aspects
|
||
of the spatial structure of the world. Spatio-temporal and
|
||
structuro-temporal imagination give the animal subject internal
|
||
states that correspond to the world in a way that does not depend on
|
||
the selection pressure that happen to have been imposed on the
|
||
animal. It evolves because evolution is progressive. In order for
|
||
animal to have more power to control relevant conditions, their
|
||
behavior guidance systems must have animal systems of representation
|
||
that represent objects as being located in space and as having
|
||
geometrical structures. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">These
|
||
forms of imagination in animals are the foundation, as we have seen,
|
||
for the evolution of naturalistic and subjectivistic imagination in
|
||
primates with the use of language. But those forms of imagination are
|
||
also inevitable, and they involve a correspondence between brain
|
||
states and the states in the world, including other subjects, that is
|
||
also necessary. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">This
|
||
solves a problem that functionalist explanations encounter when they
|
||
try to explain correspondence with nothing but causal connections
|
||
between input and output within the organism. The correspondence is
|
||
not just a constant conjunction between telesensory input and the
|
||
object in space that is involved in reference, as Fodor seems to mean
|
||
by calling it a casual connection, but an isomorphism between
|
||
geometrical structures in the brain and the geometrical structures of
|
||
the locations of objects in the space around the telesensory animal. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote1">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote1sym" href="#sdendnote1anc">i</a>
|
||
Franz Brentano originally proposed intentionality as the distinctive
|
||
mark of the mental. He focused on what he called "intentional
|
||
inexistence", by which he meant that a mental state could be
|
||
about something even if that something did not really exist. That
|
||
rules out explaining the content of a mental state as an actual
|
||
relationship to what it is about, but the content can be explained
|
||
by a theory that holds that particular representations are part of a
|
||
system. (Brentano did <i>not </i>require that <i>all </i>psychological
|
||
states are about things that do not exist). If there is a systematic
|
||
or normal relationship between representations of all types and
|
||
kinds of objects/states in the world, then tokens of those types can
|
||
stand for objects or states that do not exist.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote2">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote2sym" href="#sdendnote2anc">ii</a>
|
||
This is the position long defended by D. C. Dennett (1971, reprinted
|
||
in 1978). Not only does he take psychological states to be something
|
||
that we ascribe to objects from the "intentional stance",
|
||
but he also takes functions to be something we ascribe from the
|
||
"design stance" and mechanisms to be something that we
|
||
ascribe from the "physical stance". Dennett can be happy
|
||
with such a position, because he is still basically an
|
||
subjectivistic epistemologist, who is content to explain nature in
|
||
terms of our ways of knowing about it, rather than ontologically.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote3">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote3sym" href="#sdendnote3anc">iii</a>
|
||
It does not help to say that there are no intentional psychological
|
||
states, only words and sentences that refer to the natural world,
|
||
because the same problem then arises about language. See the
|
||
discussion of the problems of cotemporary analytic philosophy in
|
||
Stage 10 on philosophical spiritual animals.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote4">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote4sym" href="#sdendnote4anc">iv</a>
|
||
See Putnam's (1975) 1960's papers on psychology and Fodor (1975).</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote5">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote5sym" href="#sdendnote5anc">v</a>
|
||
Fodor (1975) was among the first to distinguish token-token
|
||
reductions from type-type reductions.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote6">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote6sym" href="#sdendnote6anc">vi</a>
|
||
See "Individualism and Supervenience" in Fodor (1988) and
|
||
Fodor (1991).
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote7">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote7sym" href="#sdendnote7anc">vii</a>
|
||
Such a causal theory of reference is defended in Fodor 1988, Chapter
|
||
4.</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote8">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote8sym" href="#sdendnote8anc">viii</a>
|
||
For example, Putnam points out in "Why There Isn't a Ready-Made
|
||
World" (1983, pp. 205-228) and (1981) that the kind of causal
|
||
relation Fodor uses to explain references to objects/states cannot
|
||
be explained by internal realism in terms of materialism. See the
|
||
discussion of contemporary analytic philosophy in Stage 10.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote9">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote9sym" href="#sdendnote9anc">ix</a>
|
||
Fodor dismisses the possibility "that brain states should be
|
||
relationally individuated" as "plain silly."</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote10">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote10sym" href="#sdendnote10anc">x</a>
|
||
Millikan (1989, p. 283) holds that what is required to "fly a
|
||
naturalist theory of content" is an "appeal to teleology"
|
||
in which "what makes a thing into an inner representation is,
|
||
near enough, that its function is to represent". Millikan uses
|
||
an etiological analysis of functional explanations, and I have
|
||
simplified her analysis somewhat, because we are interested only in
|
||
representations that were naturally selected in the course of
|
||
evolution. We will take up language in the next part. Van Gulick
|
||
(1980) is an earlier attempt to formulate a teleological theory of
|
||
representation.</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote11">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote11sym" href="#sdendnote11anc">xi</a>
|
||
Millikan (1989, pp. 290-91) uses this example from Dretske (1990) to
|
||
illustrate her theory.</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote12">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote12sym" href="#sdendnote12anc">xii</a>
|
||
In arguing against the causal theory of reference, Matthen (1988)
|
||
uses, in effect, the input function of a behavior guidance system to
|
||
illustrate functional explanations of the correspondence to external
|
||
conditions, but he focuses on representations of color rather than
|
||
the representations of objects in space on which such perception
|
||
depends.</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</body>
|
||
</html> |