Abstract
Tyler Burge is famous for defending primitivist naturalism about mental representations, according to which mental representations are primitive natural states. Primitivist naturalism contrasts with semantic reductionism, according to which mental representations are reducible to more fundamental natural states. Burge developed the most compelling and influential attack on semantic reductionism from a primitivist naturalist point of view. My goal in this paper is to defend semantic reductionism from Burge’s attack. I assess and refute his objection to the motivations for semantic reductionism and his objection to the semantic reductionist theory that he takes to be the most promising one, namely, teleosemantics. I argue that in spite of the ingenuity of Burge’s objections, they fail to show that there is no motivation for taking representational states as reducible to more fundamental natural states or that the core thesis of teleosemantics is flawed.
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Notes
Burge’s third attack is that teleosemantics and other standard reductionist theories have a conception of representation that is too liberal—they consider several states that clearly are not representational as representational states (2010, pp. 303–304). However, it is beyond the scope of this paper to assess this third attack. For a sympathetic assessment of Burge’s third attack on teleosemantics, see Rescorla (2013); for a critical one, see Artiga (2016). I think that this third attack ultimately fails because teleosemantics in particular is fully compatible with the minimal conditions for intentionality, that is, the minimal conditions that a given sensory state should satisfy in order to constitute a genuine representation (Souza Filho, 2022). Schulte (2015) develops a somewhat similar response to Burge’s third attack.
Burge develops this general thesis in his paper “Mind–body causation and explanatory practice” (1993).
“Is reduction of the sort expected by the Deflationary Tradition [i.e., semantic reductionism] possible? Reductions are a legitimate type of explanatory unification. Occasionally reductions succeed. In principle, representation might be somehow reducible to other notions. I believe, however, that trying to reduce representation and veridicality to something more ‘naturalistically acceptable’ is probably pointless and hopeless. […] the notions of veridicality and representations—and notions like perceptual state, belief, propositional inference—are scientific primitives.”(Burge, 2010, p. 298).
Note that this further argument doesn’t imply that Burge’s semantic primitivism is incoherent or incompatible with his own description of the philosopher of mental representation’s job. Rather, what I am arguing here is that in light of this job there is a motivation for reductionism, since this job is fully compatible with the reductionist enterprise, not only with the primitivist one.
Here I take for granted a variation of the ontological parsimony principle according to which we should not multiply fundamental entities in our ontology without necessity. Nonetheless, it is beyond the scope of this paper to defend it. For a presentation and vindication of this principle, see Schaffer (2015).
Notice that this is a debate on the motivations for reductionist naturalism, not on the reasons that purport to demonstrate that representational states are reducible to more primitive natural states. That is, the validity of these motivations implies only that we should engage into the reductionist enterprise. Whether it will succeed in reducing representational states is a further matter that will be decided in the course of this very enterprise.
See Sterelny and Griffiths (1999) for the reductionist debate on classical genetics and Rosenberg (2006) for the debate on evolutionary biology. What if there are indeed biological notions that, after a thorough investigation, will turn out to be irreducible? This is a real possibility. In this case we should treat them as valid and irreducible notions. So, reduction is not necessary for validating scientific notions. Nevertheless, my point (contra Burge) is that this is definitely not the case regarding mental representations.
This brief description of the historical debate on the nature of heat is based on Stephen G. Brush’s account of the history of kinetic theory of gases (1976).
Here I assume that the frog’s representational state is a nonconceptual representation, i.e., it has a nonconceptual content. Since beliefs (and other propositional attitudes) have conceptual content, it follows that the frog does not have a belief that there is food around. There is a whole debate on whether there are indeed nonconceptual contents, but it is not the goal of this paper to assess it. For an overview, see Bermúdez and Cohen (2020).
But why isn’t the content of the frog’s representation fly or small-dark-moving-thing? Why isn’t the function of the consumer system to catch and digest flies or small-dark-moving things, given that in the historical environment, the frog usually obtained food when it caught flies or small-dark-moving things? This is a case of functional indeterminacy that threatens not only the viability of consumer-based teleosemantics, but also other teleosemantic theories. However, it is beyond the scope of this paper to assess functional indeterminacy problems. For an overview, see Neander and Schulte (2022).
Evidently, this is a very rough simplification of consumer-based teleosemantics. For instance, the presence of food is not the only external condition required for the proper functioning of the frog’s motor-digestive system. Other conditions are also required, such as the presence of oxygen. In light of it, Millikan claims that the content of the representation is food, not oxygen, because the producer system was selected to produce representations that correspond to food, not oxygen. For a full development of consumer-based teleosemantics, see Millikan (1984, 2004), Papineau (2017).
Notice that the performance of the biological function by a system contributes to fitness from a global point of view; a particular performance may not contribute, but the performance of the function contributes to fitness when globally (not locally) considered. That is the reason that the relevant system was favoured by natural selection throughout its evolutionary history.
Or even a third biological function constituted by a third effect as long as it is adaptive. There is no pre-established limit of the number of parallel functions that a given biological system may have.
What is the criterion to determine for any given trait when it has not just one, but two or more parallel biological functions? Why are they different functions? This is a general problem in philosophy of biological function that is not my goal to assess here. However, for the present purpose it is sufficient to show that in Burge’s example there are two different functions because (i) there are situations in which one function is fulfilled but not the other; and (ii) there are two different selection processes favouring different effects—to detect the distal condition and to increase strength and agility. Together (i) and (ii) are sufficient to show that in Burge’s example the producer system has two different biological functions.
Garson (2019, pp. 187–212) has developed a new kind of teleosemantics based on his generalised selected effects theory of biological function. It contrasts with traditional teleosemantic theories that are solely based on the standard aetiological theory of biological function. Garson suggests that his new version of teleosemantics avoids the mismatch objection (2019, p. 211). However, since he does not develop his response to this objection, I will not assess it here. Finally, I wasn't aware of Graham's paper before submitting this paper. I thank an anonymous reviewer for bringing Graham's paper to my attention.
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Acknowledgements
My gratitude to David Papineau, Matthew Parrott, Matthew Soteriou, Carolyn Price, Barry Smith, Patrick Butlin, Manolo Martinez, Osvaldo Pessoa and Roberto Horácio Pereira for their support and comments on earlier versions of this paper. I presented this paper at the London-Warwick Mind Forum (King’s College London), Teleosemantic Perspectives on Perception—A Research Workshop (University of Bielefeld) and University of Campinas. I thank the participants of these conferences for their valuable comments and suggestions. This paper is the result of my research during my PhD at King’s College London, my postdoc at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and, finally, at the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco. I thank the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) and the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) for funding this research. Finally, I thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.
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de Souza Filho, S.F. A Teleosemantic Response to Burge’s Attack on Semantic Reductionism. Erkenn (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-023-00782-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-023-00782-4