Abstract
The main goal of the paper is to present an objection to the mental files framework. Alongside being representational resources that the mind exploits when having attitudes concerning particulars, many philosophers have explored the idea that singular concepts can serve another function: that of storing alleged information about their referents. In other words, singular concepts are characterized as mental files. Given that the latter implies an overwhelming and unnecessary complication of what’s in our minds, I argue that we should only keep the representational function of concepts. The work files are supposed to do, I claim, can be exported to other aspects of the cognitive system.
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Notes
I follow the convention of using capital letters to denote concepts and thoughts.
Typically, for one can have a singular concept for a fleeting thing and a singular thought about it. Perhaps, this entity would be conceivably accessed by different cognizers, from different perspectives, etc.
I thank Ramiro Caso for bringing up this point to me.
Recanati is here answering a different objection, namely, that files cannot be storages of information and constituents of thoughts at the same time.
Even the language of thought hypothesis can be held taking concepts and thoughts to be the mental representational devices (see Davis 2003, Ch. 20, for a full discussion of the language of thought hypothesis and its relation to the representational and computational theories of mind).
As noted by an anonymous referee, this could give an advantage to the files theory over the austere picture, namely, that individual concepts appear many more times in the latter than in the former; for, while the thoughts that are involved in our attitudes would contain individual concepts whenever required, the mental files theory avoids this repetition by linking the different concepts in the relevant manner. However, this claim depends on the plausibility of dispensing with attitudes as attitude-plus-thought compounds, which will be discussed below.
Perhaps this is a way of spelling out Recanati’s comment that “for a file to ‘contain’ information just is for it to have a certain informational content” (2012 p. 40, fn. 12). An analogous possibility, suggested by an anonymous referee, is that the description in terms of containment can be compatible with concepts co-activation taking place. I believe the reasons that cast doubt over the proposed strategy (see below) also apply to this latter possibility.
Ninan has raised a worry concerning the different types of attitudes and the scope of the files metaphor (Ninan 2015). For reasons of space, I will leave that topic out of this debate, though I believe it calls for very interesting discussion.
Of course, paraphrasing the content of these beliefs in order to make them adaptable to the simple subject-predication structure could bring a solution for the mental files theorist. However, this is no easy task either, for one would hope that some sort of systematic guide for carrying out paraphrases was offered.
Given this state of the matter, the referee’s objection from footnote 9 would not run, for the files picture is not solid enough to dispense with beliefs in the standard sense. This means that the files theorist would still be committed to the many appearances of individual concepts that are needed to account for the thoughts involved in relational beliefs.
Other reasons for preferring the austere picture over the mental files picture could be related to issues concerning the cognitive demand that is imposed in a system that stores such a high number of occurrences of concepts. I will not get into this point here, but interesting debate might develop around it.
Another big role of files is that of serving as modes of presentation (Recanati 2012, p. 34). Now, if modes of presentation are what accounts for some distinction between thoughts which express identical contents, plain concepts can do just as well: one can have a thought about Cicero using a CICERO-concept or using a TULLY-concept. But if modes of presentation are also supposed to involve some descriptive component, I would not take that road to begin with. The reasons for this exceed the limits of this paper. I thank Justina Díaz Legaspe for bringing up this point to me.
In this spirit, for example, Davis talks about conceptions of things as centered beliefs systems, that is, systems of beliefs with a common subject (Davis 2003, p. 501). As long as conceptions are nothing but bundles of beliefs (or, should we say, attitudes in general), this is pretty much the image I have in mind when picturing the effect of the tracking process. Davis considers representing conceptions as prototype structures, which resemble mental files in some respects, but as I understand it, these are improper though useful characterizations of centered belief systems (pp. 513–517).
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Acknowledgments
I hereby thank Tomás Castagnino, Nicolás Lo Guercio, Eleonora Orlando and two anonymous referees for insightful comments on previous versions of this paper. I also thank the audience at the II Workshop on Issues in Contemporary Semantics and Ontology, Mental Files and Singular Reference, Buenos Aires, October 2013. Funding for research was provided by the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas of Argentina in the form of a Graduate Fellowship.
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Losada, A. Mental Files, What for?. Rev.Phil.Psych. 7, 405–419 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-015-0284-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-015-0284-x