Abstract
Can we think of a task in a distinctively practical way? Can there be practical concepts? In recent years, epistemologists, philosophers of mind, as well as philosophers of psychology have appealed to practical concepts in characterizing the content of know-how or in explaining certain features of skilled action. However, reasons for positing practical concepts are rarely discussed in a systematic fashion. This paper advances a novel argument for the psychological reality of practical concepts that relies on evidence for a distinctively productive kind of reasoning.
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Notes
This essay remains neutral on whether, in addition to observational, semantic, and practical concepts, there are also phenomenal concepts in Chalmers’s (2004) sense.
As raised by Butterfill and Sinigaglia (2014).
For a more careful discussion of this Fregean argument for practical concepts, see Pavese (2021).
Butterfill and Sinigaglia (2014, pp. 128–129) do argue that motor representations and intentions differ in formats by arguing that there is a difference in format between cognitive imagininations and phenomenologically action kind imaginations. But their argument assumes that differences in format follow from differences in characteristic performance profile.
Indeed, arguably, far from solving it, appealing to practical concepts makes the interface problem even less tractable, if the problem is, as it seems plausible, one of translation. For what insures that, as intermediaries between conceptual and motor representations, practical concepts will not raise an interface problem of their own? The issue arises because for them to facilitate the translation between the code (or format) of intentions and the code (or format) of motor representation, practical concepts would need to be written in a hybrid code —a little conceptual, a little motoric—but there are reasons to be skeptical that any such a thing as ‘hybrid code’ actually makes sense. If, on the other hand, a hybrid code is simply a code different from both the conceptual and the motoric codes—but somehow resemblant of both—it is not at all clear that the interface problem is overcome. Indeed, a regress of translation threatens to arise.
I did say that semantic concepts often come with (even explicit) knowledge, but this is not to be understood as definitional; rather it is to be understood as a criterion for semantic concepts’ possession.
I am grateful to a referee for urging me to clarify these issues.
Cf. Butterfill and Sinigaglia (2014) on evidence for thinking that motor representations do not feature in practical or theoretical reasoning.
Though some spatial reasoning might involve non-conceptual representations (Peacocke 1992), it seems widely assumed that observational concepts would figure in spatial reasoning.
In particular, just like one might have a perceptual belief that has an observational concept as its component (cf. Weiskopf 2015), one might have a practical belief—that is, one might believe a practical proposition—a proposition that has a practical concept as a component, or make a judgment that has a practical concept as a component—a practical judgment. Indeed, I suspect that Anscombe’s (1963) practical knowledge—knowledge of what one is doing while doing it—ought to involve practical concepts of this sort.
The personal-subpersonal level distinction is drawn by different people in different ways. See Drayson (2014) for an overview.
About (i): the idea is that working memory is not a discrete subpersonal system and is instead the locus of central cognition (e.g., Baddeley 1992, 1996; D’Esposito and Postle 2015) as well as the locus for highly cognitive capacities such as reasoning, learning and comprehension, as well as propositional attitudes (Prinz 2004). If productive reasoning depends on representations in working memory, that is at least some reason to think that productive reasoning is available to central cognition and so personal-level. About (ii): if the productive reasoning is affected by some general (but not necessarily declarative) knowledge of the subject, that would be evidence that it is not encapsulated, and so, in my sense, not subpersonal. So, in the following I will assume that (i) and (ii) are together sufficient for reasoning to be personal-level in the relevant sense.
Some have talked of practical concepts to refer to conceptual representations of affordances. Here, I don’t take this feature to enter into the notion of practical concepts, as I am thinking of it.
Paresis occurs when the subject is damaged in their corticospinal system—that is, the cortical motor areas and the corticospinal tract that connects the cerebral cortex to the spinal cord. It reflects a problem in transferring motor commands from the cortex to the spinal cord (Sathian et al. 2011). The term ‘ataxia’ is instead used in a specific sense to refer to impaired spatial and temporal coordination of movements or sometimes more generally as a catch-all term for poor coordination, inaccurate and variable movements, dysmetria, and intention tremor. It results from damage to the cerebellum, its input and output pathways in the brainstem, the spinocerebellar tracts or posterior columns in the spinal cord, or large fibers in peripheral sensory nerves.
In fact, some describe apractic agents as performing movement errors with their non-paretic hands. Cf. Goldenberg (1996).
This hypothesis is formulated differently from different researchers. Some talk of motor programs, action schemas, while others talk of control policies.
Indeed, on the basis of the evidence marshaled so far, one of the first philosophers to discuss ideo-motor apraxia—(Merleau-Ponty 1962, pp. 523–525, fn 99)—observes “We will not render apraxia comprehensible \(\dots \), unless the movement to be accomplished can be anticipated but without being so through a representation.” Indeed, Merleau-Ponty (1962, p. 142) argues that apractic subjects lack a body schema, which he does not seem to conceive of representationally.
A referee objects that it is not obvious that imaginistic representations of actions should be considered practical concepts since they are not obviously necessary for intentional responses to typical environmental cues and the referee thinks that practical concepts should be involved in such responses. As we have seen, I don’t think it is obvious that practical concepts are involved for performing familiar tasks in environmentally triggered conditions (perception of affordances, semantic or observational concepts might explain those performances). Nor is it part of the functional characterization given in Sect. 3 that practical concepts are involved in environmentally triggered responses. Indeed, those responses don’t seem to involve productive reasoning.
A referee asks whether it could be that apractic patients have more general memory problems, that prevents them from learning any new concepts. However, as discussed in Sect. 4, there is no evidence that it is common to all apractic patients that they have more general memory problems (though some have Alzheimer’s, not all do cf Wheaton and Hallett (2007), p. 1). A referee further asks whether apractic subjects may be missing the ability to perform tasks on demand, because they cannot or call up the action schemas on the basis of novel activators. Note that this explanation assumes— like the popular explanation—they have already action schemas for tasks they have not encountered before, and we have seen from the Novel Tool Test that that is not true.
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for raising this objection in this form.
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I’d like to thank John Krakauer for many discussions over the years on ideo-motor apraxia and its relevance for my project. I am very grateful to Ian Robertson, Daniel Hutto, Wayne Christensen, Shaun Gallagher, Katsunori Miyahara, as well as the other participants of the Mind in Skilled Performance conference at the University of Wollongong in February 2020 for helpful feedback on the talk on which this paper is based. I am grateful to Sara Aronowitz for discussion and helpful comments on an earlier draft. The comments of two anonymous reviewers were also very helpful. Finally, I am grateful to the Center of Human Abilities for a fellowship that partly supported this research.
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Pavese, C. Practical concepts and productive reasoning. Synthese 199, 7659–7688 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03132-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03132-5