Abstract
The nature of perceptual demonstratives, the ‘that F’ component of judgments of the form ‘that F is G’ based on perceptual input, has been a topic of interest for many philosophers. Another related, though distinct, question concerns the nature of demonstrative judgments based not on current perceptual input, but instead derived from memory. I argue that the account put forward by John Campbell fails to adequately account for memory-based demonstrative thought.
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Notes
The judgments under consideration here are mental judgments, which need not necessarily be linguistically expressed.
(Levine 2010) argues that demonstratives cannot play a significant role in concept acquisition. However, Levine’s argument focuses upon what he labels ‘type-demonstratives’, i.e. demonstratives in thought that refer to the types in question (e.g. blueness) not the particulars that instantiate them. In the example above, the demonstrative employed refers to the object itself. Second, Levine makes the controversial assumption that something like Fodor’s (1975) Representational Theory of Mind is correct. Thank you to an anonymous referee for bringing this objection to my attention.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for help clarifying the ensuing discussion.
Making sure to read the definite description as having narrow scope. I also here ignore the question of whether the change in time necessitates a change in content.
See (Martin 2002) for more on the intricate nature of this debate.
See (Evans et al. 1981) though for an attempt to argue that we can grasp such thoughts.
The exact nature of memorial justification is a tricky business. Some (Owens 1999) have argued that memory only preserves justification. Others, e.g. (Burge 2003) and (Lackey 2005), have argued that while memory sometimes merely preserves justification, it may sometimes serve to provide new justification for a particular claim. Neither function requires that memorial knowledge be inferential. See also (Huemer 1999) for his attempt to combine the preservative and justification producing aspects of memory. While questions about the epistemology of memory are interesting in themselves, we are here concerned not with whether a particular belief is justified or how, but instead with whether such a belief is possible at all. Thus, I think our enquiry can proceed without getting mired in such debates.
A third potential interpretation of Transition construes the basing relation as a purely causal relation.
While this version of Transition may also be plausible, the corresponding version of Understanding faces concerns similar to those raised earlier. Viz. even if I don’t understand what was expressed yesterday by my utterance of ‘Today’, clearly such an event can be causally responsible for my current thought about the previous day. The proposal is also unavailable, at least to Campbell, due to his claim above that being ‘compelled’ to make a transition does not guarantee understanding of the transition itself. Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this proposal.
This is not to deny that (i) memory judgments are based on evidence or (ii) some memorial judgments are inferential.
An anonymous referee points out a disanalogy between (R) and (DR); the time-specification is explicitly included in the content expressed by the utterances referred to in (R), but not the thoughts of (DR). This gives rise to an ambiguity in what is expressed by ‘that (remembered) man was F;. It could have the content that remembered man was F at a particular time, or it could have the content that remembered man was F at some time or other. Is this disanalogy enough to cause problems for using (DR) to generate knowledge? I don’t think it is. If the content of the judgment is that remembered man was F at some time or other, then it is clear that knowledge of the antecedent of (DR) as stated would be sufficient for knowledge of the consequent. If the content of the judgment is instead that remembered man was F at a particular time, then one would have to know the particular time at which the past judgment was true. This both seems possible and most importantly, does not require that one understand the content of the past judgment itself.
In fact, we might be in error as to when such an episode occurred (see Schacter 2001). There might also be concerns as to whether such an event that appears has even occurred. Thus, perhaps one has ‘constructed’ the experience since it better coheres with one’s notion of self than the actual experience one underwent. The degree to which this occurs, and its philosophical significance, is an interesting question (see Conway 2005; Campbell 2006), but I choose here to focus upon the relationship between veridical episodic memories, which surely do occur, and demonstrative thought.
We shall see that there are concerns about the viability of this approach.
The number of similarities/differences between now and here judgments is admittedly a controversial matter. My contention is only that such judgments are similar enough to give us pause when considering the possibility of deep centering as a route to understanding the content of past judgments.
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Acknowledgments
Thank you to two anonymous referees for very helpful comments. Thank you to Curtis Von Gunten for discussion as well.
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Buford, C. Centering on Demonstrative Thought. Philosophia 41, 1135–1147 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9448-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9448-z