Three Views of Language & the Mind

[Pages:240]Three Views of Language & the Mind

Jeffrey Speaks Submitted May 16, 2003

A dissertation presented to the faculty of Princeton University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Recommended for acceptance by the Department of Philosophy November 2003

c by Jeff Speaks, 2003. All rights reserved.

Abstract. The essay which follows is about the relationship between mind and language. Most recent thought about intentionality has it that (i) mental states of individuals are largely, or in the most fundamental cases, independent of social facts about public languages, and (ii) these social facts are derived from, or constituted by, the mental states of individuals. The purpose of this essay is to challenge this individualist orthodoxy (as well as the view of the relationship between mind and action which often accompanies it), and suggest in its place a communitarian picture of intentionality which gives public languages a role to play in the constitution of thought.

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Preface

This essay is an attempt to give at least a partial answer to a traditional question about the relative priorities of mind and language: Is language prior to thought, or is thought prior to language?

I defend the claim that the truth lies closer to the first of these alternatives than is usually supposed. But, as will become clear quickly in what follows, this simple-sounding traditional question breaks down into a number of different questions about the relationship between specific linguistic and mental phenomena. Because the issues involved with some of these may often seem far removed from our initial question, it will be useful to begin with a brief overview of the structure of what follows.

As the title indicates, this essay is concerned with three different ways of answering this question; as you might expect, I argue against two, and defend the third. The two views I criticize are both ways of substantiating what I call the thesis of the priority of the mental, or, equivalently, the priority of the individual. To substantiate this thesis is to defend a claim about language, and a claim about the mental.

The thesis about language is that the meaningfulness of public language expressions is derived from more fundamental facts about the mental states of individuals who use the language. This thesis may take one of two forms:

[1a] Expressions in public languages have only a derivative kind of intentionality. In particular, the meanings of such expressions are constituted by the propositional attitudes -- the beliefs and intentions -- of speakers of the language.

[1b] Expressions in public languages have only a derivative kind of intentionality. In particular, the meanings of such expressions are constituted by the meanings of expressions in private languages -- in, that is, the idiolects or languages of thought of speakers of the language.

The thesis about the mental is that the contentfulness of the mental states of individuals is not to be explained by facts about shared, public languages; rather, mental states are constituted in the first instance by facts about the individuals who have those thoughts. Again, this thesis can take two forms:

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[2a] Facts about the beliefs and thoughts of agents are prior to and independent of facts about the public languages spoken by those agents. In particular, we can say what it is for an agent to have a certain belief in terms of certain properties of internal states of that agent, which do not involve any facts about public languages.

[2b] Facts about the beliefs and thoughts of agents are prior to and independent of facts about the public languages spoken by those agents. They are, however, derived from facts about the private languages of such agents. We can explain what it is for an agent to have a certain belief in terms of the contents of representations in that agent's idiolect or language of thought, and can explain what it is for a representation in such a language to have such a content in terms which do not invoke any facts about meaning in shared, public languages.

Each of these theses has, in one form or another, enjoyed wide support in recent analytic philosophy. The two views of language and the mind that I argue against in the first two parts of this essay are the mentalist picture of intentionality, which consists centrally of the atheses above, and the private language picture of intentionality, which consists of the b-theses above.

The structure of the essay is very simple. After Chapter 1, which explains some key methodological notions used in stating foundational claims about intentionality, I turn in Part I to critical examination of the mentalist picture of intentionality. Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted to showing the falsity of [1a], and Chapter 4 is targeted against [2a].

Many of the problems faced by mentalism can be seen as motivations for the private language picture of intentionality, with is another way of spelling out the thesis of the priority of the individual. Accordingly, in Part II I turn to discussion of this view, arguing in Chapter 5 that thesis [2b] is false, and in Chapter 6 that thesis [1b] is false.

This opens the way to a defense of a communitarian picture of intentionality, which I present in Part III of the essay. Communitarianism is partly defined by the negations of the four theses above. It holds that many of the mental states of agents are constituted by facts about the public languages they speak. In Chapter 7, I show how the failure of individualism motivates such a view, and present a positive account of one such mental state -- belief -- in Chapter 8. Giving an account of the beliefs of agents partly in terms of the meanings of expressions of their public languages raises the question of what constitutes public language meaning. As it turns out, this question is only one of a number of related questions which threaten the communitarian position with circularity. I turn to discussion of these problems, some possible responses, and some of the philosophical consequences of communitarianism in Chapter 9. Part III leaves a number of important questions unanswered; in particular, I ignore the role of intentions in communitarianism. It is intended not to provide a full foundational account of intentionality, but rather to do no more than to show the possibility of a communitarian alternative to more well-worked out individualist views of thought and language.

These issues have been much discussed in analytic philosophy in the last half-century; accordingly, many of the issues have become quite technical and complex. Sometimes it has

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been impossible to avoid delving into technicalities in the main text; but, when possible, I have consigned discussion of complicated but relatively peripheral issues to appendices. Footnotes in the main text indicate when discussion in one of the appendices is relevant.

...

This essay has benefited from conversations with and comments from a number of people in Princeton's Department of Philosophy. I cannot single out the many conversations with fellow graduate students over the last few years which have, in a variety of ways, changed the shape of this dissertation; but I can say with certainty that it would have been much worse without their help. Special thanks are due to the members of the Dissertation Seminar of the last three years, and especially to Antony Eagle, who read and commented on large parts of the penultimate version of the essay.

It is is similarly difficult to recall all of the individual instances in which members of the faculty contributed to this dissertation; but special thanks are owed to Paul Benacerraf, Sean Kelly, Mark Greenberg, Jim Pryor, Gideon Rosen, and Scott Soames. In particular, Mark introduced me to many of the topics in the philosophy of mind and language with which this essay is concerned in his seminar on mental content in the fall of 2000. I am sure that my approach to these problems, in more ways than I am aware, bears the stamp of Mark's thinking. In the last several years he has read several drafts of various parts of the dissertation, and invariably has responded with helpful comments on both very general issues in the philosophy of mind and technical details of the relevant piece. Without his help, my understanding of the issues discussed in what follows would have been greatly impoverished.

The person to whom I owe the greatest academic debt is my advisor, Scott Soames. In many places in the dissertation, I note that certain points or formulations are due to the advice of one or another philosopher; I have not followed this practice with respect to Scott's comments, simply because such an acknowledgement would appear on virtually every page. Scott has read every page of what follows, some of them many times, and with each reading uncovered new objections to and implications of my work. In more than one case, whole sections of chapters emerged from Scott's comments. I do not think that it is an overstatement to say that Scott taught me how to do philosophy in a rigorous and systematic way; for this, and much else, I am greatly in his debt.

Of course, anyone who has written a dissertation has personal as well as academic debts to acknowledge. In my case, three stand out: my friends at Princeton, to whom I owe a very happy five years; my parents, to whom I owe ceaseless support and encouragement; and, most of all, Elyse Deeb, to whom I owe more than I can say.

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Table of Contents

1 Mentalism, Private Languages, & Communitarianism

1

1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.2 Constitutive claims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1.3 Foundational questions & the metaphysics of intentionality . . . . . . . . . . . 13

I THE MENTALIST PICTURE

16

2 Meaning and Intention

17

2.1 Two classes of propositional attitudes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.2 Grice on speaker-meaning and intentions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

2.2.1 Cases of reminding and examination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

2.2.2 Persuasive discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

2.2.3 Speaker-meaning without intended effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

2.2.4 Meaning, speaker-meaning, & Moore's paradox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

2.2.5 Assessment of Grice's account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

2.2.6 Two interpretations of Gricean accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

2.3 Convention and linguistic meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

3 Meaning and Belief

43

3.1 Ramsey on meaning and belief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

3.2 Lewis on conventions of truthfulness and trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

4 Belief and Belief States

56

4.1 From mentalism to functionalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

4.2 Solipsistic theories of content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

4.3 Four kinds of externalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

4.4 Content and indication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

4.4.1 From a simple causal theory to the causal-

pragmatic theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

4.4.2 The conjunction problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

4.4.3 Problems with counterfactuals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

4.4.4 The objects of belief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

4.4.5 Indeterminacy and the pragmatic account

of belief states . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

4.5 Content and functional role . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

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4.5.1 What is a functional role? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 4.5.2 Commonsense functionalism and psychofunctionalism . . . . . . . . . . 89

II THE PRIVATE LANGUAGE PICTURE

95

5 Belief and Mental Representations

96

5.1 Theories of belief and theories of content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

5.2 Mental representations and the constraints

on constitutive accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

5.3 Mental representations and information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

5.3.1 What is `tokening a mental representation' ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

5.3.2 Information as causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

5.3.3 Information as counterfactual dependence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

5.3.4 Information as covariation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

5.3.5 Information as asymmetric dependence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

5.3.6 Information as teleology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

5.3.7 Informational theories and belief states . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

5.4 Mental representations and conceptual role . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

5.4.1 Conceptual role semantics & conceptual role

theories of content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

5.4.2 The relationship between conceptual role

and functional role . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

5.4.3 Possession conditions & conceptual roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

6 Public and Private Languages

124

6.1 The thesis of the priority of idiolects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

6.2 Idiolects and the meanings of utterances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

6.3 The autonomy of public languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

6.4 The case for skepticism about public languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

6.5 Four explanatory uses for public languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

III THE COMMUNITARIAN PICTURE

140

7 Why Individualism Failed

141

7.1 Two presuppositions of individualism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

7.2 Public languages as vehicles of thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

7.2.1 Belief and language use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

7.2.2 The appeal to deference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

7.2.3 Why deference is a red herring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

7.3 Beliefs, inner states, & behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

7.3.1 Functionalist accounts of belief states . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

7.3.2 Why behaviorism fell out of fashion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

8 Belief As Constituted By Behavior

160

8.1 The supervenience of belief on behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

8.2 Accepting a sentence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

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