Abstract
In this paper, I argue that mental files are both concepts and bodies of information, against the existing views proposed by Fodor and Recanati. Fodor argues that mental files are not concepts but memories of information because concepts are mental symbols. However, Fodor’s argument against the identification of mental files with concepts fails. Recanati disagrees with Fodor and argues that mental files are concepts. But Recanati’s view does not differ essentially from Fodor’s because Recanati holds that mental files are simple mental symbols that cannot be composite entities such as bodies of information. I show that Recanati fails to capture the significance of the notion of mental files as repositories of information. More importantly, we should accept that mental files are bodies of information that literally contain pieces of information. By holding that concepts are bodies of information, we can provide a simpler account with a wider explanatory scope that explains how concepts carry cognitive significance and why one concept is deployed in thought instead of another co-referring concept.
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Notes
Jeshion (2010) proposes a strong view that one thinks singularly about an object if and only if one thinks through a mental file about that object. Additionally, Jeshion argues for a ‘cognitivist’ understanding of the conditions for a subject to form or deploy a mental file in thinking about a particular object. According to cognitivism, the formation or use of a mental file is triggered (that is, without agential or voluntary control) when the mental file has significance to a cognitive system. For criticisms of cognitivism, see Sawyer (2012), Genone (2014), and Goodman (2016). Although Recanati holds that mental files are vehicles of singular thoughts, he acknowledges that there are purely descriptive files that function as constituents of descriptive thoughts (Recanati 2012, 2013a). Therefore, while he argues that singular thoughts depend on mental files as their vehicles, he also suggests that mental files can constitute other types of thoughts. Goodman (2016) holds the same position. Henceforth, for convenience, I focus mainly on the case of singular thoughts.
Recanati (2012, p. 40, n. 12, p. 50) holds that the pieces of information stored in a mental file are the subject’s beliefs about the object to which the mental file refers and the predicates that the subject is disposed to ascribe to the referent. Lawlor (2001) and Schroeter (2007, 2008) take information to be a bunch of propositional attitudes and dispositions that are relevant to one’s information-gathering and object-tracking activities. Fodor (2008) claims that mental files contain beliefs and sentences composed of mental symbols. Lawlor (2001), who accepts LOTH, also holds that the attitudes stored in a mental file are written in Mentalese terms. However, it is worth noting that some philosophers, like Dretske (1981), accept the mathematical notion of information provided by the communication theory proposed by Shannon (1948) and Shannon and Weaver (1949), according to which information is what reduces uncertainty, defined as a quantity of possible states. This sort of information is not sufficiently fine-grained because it fails to capture the informative nature of an intensional or modal content. For instance, ‘Hesperus is Phosphorus’ carries the same Dretskean information as that carried by ‘Hesperus is Hesperus’ because both sentences are necessarily true, so they do not differ with respect to the reduction of possibilities. Dretske (1981, p. 218) attempts to deal with this issue in terms of the difference in the structures of concepts.
It is worth noting that a piece of information is not the content ascribed to a representational state. If a mental file is merely a set of contents, not a complex of representational states, then we face skepticism regarding concepts, according to which a bunch of contents (rather than one concept as a mental state) plays an explanatory role in solving various philosophical problems (e.g., Stalnaker 2008). I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for their comment that I should address this point clearly.
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for the comment that I should make this point clearer.
Fodor (2008, pp. 94–95): ‘[M]ental representations [i.e., mental symbols] can serve both as names for things in the world and as names for files in the memory.... [T]he same Mentalese expression (M(John)) [i.e., a mental symbol referring to John] serves both as John’s Mentalese name and as the name of the file that contains your information about John’ (emphases are the author’s, and the descriptions within the square brackets are mine).
This point is also related to the regress objection typically raised against LOTH. Against this objection, Fodor holds that the syntactic properties of Mentalese do not involve the process of interpreting or understanding them, in contrast to the fact that a sentence, as a syntactic structure of a public language, requires an interpretation (Fodor 1987, p. 67).
I am grateful to David Hills for encouraging me to consider this version of the Fordorian argument. I also thank an anonymous reviewer for their comment that I should rethink the gist of this argument and revise my response to it.
Of course, explaining how a thinker’s cognitive system can unconsciously detect the pieces of information relevant to a given context is a difficult task. But it is not only a problem for my account. Like the Frame Problem, it is a general problem for every position that accepts the intuition that we do not reflectively pick out the relevant features of the object of thought. Providing an account that solves such a problem is not my concern here.
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for their comment that this objection needs to be dealt with.
Indeed, Recanati acknowledges that his notion of mental files is a variant of Fodor’s notion of concepts (Recanati 2012, pp. 244–247. See especially p. 245): ‘So what is the difference between the view I have expounded and the view, argued for by Fodor ... that modes of presentation are syntactic? ... The difference is primarily terminological’).
Recanati argues that a malfunction can occur in this information storage process. For instance, some pieces of information about an object different from the referent of a given mental file may be gathered into the file due to a malfunction. In this sense, he takes primary content to be normative (2012, p. 63).
An anonymous reviewer points out that my explanation of primary content is not so clear. But it is Recanati who provides such an account. He does not provide any detailed account of how the function he regards as primary content can be a semantic content despite his claim that it does not contribute to a truth-condition (Recanati 2012, pp. 38–39, n. 10; p. 247). Although he says several things about primary content, they are at best fragmental.
For another account, according to which the uses of ‘Cicero’ and ‘Tully’ are associated with different pieces of information, see Gray (2016). However, contrary to my view, Gray agrees with Recanati that a mental file functions as a mode of presentation independently of its informational content. I will not go into the details of his view. I am grateful to François Recanati for letting me know that Gray’s view has some similarity with mine.
Indeed, Recanati’s argument based on the CICERO/TULLY case is at odds with his claim that the mental file associated with a type proper name, say, ‘NN’ contains the metalinguistic information that the referent of the name is called ‘NN’ (Recanati 2012, p. 234, n. 10). In an earlier book, Recanati (1993, ch. 9–10, esp. pp. 184–187) argues for the metalinguistic view on proper names against Kripke’s (1980) arguments, and he proposes an account of proper names according to which the metalinguistic information plays a role in accounting for our linguistic understanding of proper names. Of course, according to his account, the information about the referent’s being called by a certain name alone is not sufficient to give a full explanation: we need more information about the language community and the name-convention relevant to the use of a token proper name. Setting aside the details, the question is how to reconcile his argument based on the CICERO/TULLY case with his account that emphasizes metalinguistic information. Recanati might argue as follows: ‘Surely, together with other relevant pieces of information, the metalinguistic information triggers the formation or the re-deployment of the mental file associated with the proper name token in use. However, this does not necessarily indicate that the mental file plays the mode-of-presentation role by virtue of those pieces of information. It is still the file itself that functions as the mode of presentation.’ I acknowledge that this is a logically or conceptually possible option. However, we shall see that there is no good reason to deny that the information contained in a mental file determines the mode of presentation role played by the file.
That I call the co-referring files by different names does not entail that they are actually distinguished from one another by having these names or that the cognitive significance these files convey differs with respect to their syntactic properties. Using distinct names of co-referring files is merely a way of talking about them.
The deployment of a specific mental file, of course, does not have to be a conscious process. Peter’s deployment of the \(\hbox {PADEREWSKI}_{1}\) file results from his response to the information about Paderewski’s being a pianist, which is contained in that file. Ordinarily, we do not reflect on information. Rather, we think about things in the world by responding to the information about them and, thereby, by deploying the mental files as thought vehicles.
An anonymous reviewer raised this objection. I am grateful to them.
Fine (2007, pp. 36–37). (The anonymous reviewer who raised the above objection also raised the worry that Fine’s argument against Fregean view can be used to criticize my view. For an argument that the counterexample on which Fine’s argument depends does not work, see Sosa 2010, pp. 350–351). Also see Sainsbury and Tye (2012, pp. 14–15, pp. 138–139), Pryor (2016, pp. 331–334). When I was substantially revising the earlier draft, Krista Lawlor pointed out to me that an objection against what I have argued about cognitive significance based on difference of information can be found in Pryor (2016). I am grateful to her.
Evans (1982, ch. 4.3, ch. 6) (especially, p. 148 and pp. 192–196). Also, see Evans’ discussion of the case of two steel balls (Evans 1982, p. 90, p. 155). Pryor expects a response based on Evans’ account of this case (although Pryor (2016, p. 333, n. 37) mistakenly mentions ‘indiscernible spheres’ instead of the steel balls), and the conclusion of this response does not differ from that of the argument I am sketching in the main text. I hope to address the details of my disagreement with Pryor’s understanding of the Evansian response on another occasion.
I will provide a detailed justification of my controversial interpretation of the Generality Constraint on another occasion.
I am grateful to Krista Lawlor for her helpful comment that this challenge should be dealt with.
This is related to the topic Recanati calls ‘de jure co-reference of information’ (Recanati 2012, pp. 94, 95).
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Acknowledgements
This paper is a shortened and substantially revised version of the first half of the draft I initially submitted. I am grateful to Mark Crimmins, David Hills, and Krista Lawlor for their very helpful comments on the first draft. Especially, I would like to express my gratitude to Krista Lawlor for her encouragement. Seong Oh and Peter Baumann provided me with helpful questions and suggestions on the revised draft. I am also grateful to them. I am much indebted to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions that helped me to improve the quality of this paper.
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Lee, P.S. Mental files, concepts, and bodies of information. Synthese 195, 3499–3518 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1381-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1381-4