Abstract
In the late 1970s, Jerry Fodor, Hilary Putnam and Stephen Stich argued that the intentional content of most mental states is “wide,” i.e., does not supervene on the physical makeup of the subject’s head at a time. But many (including Fodor himself) have since argued that underlying the ordinary wide contents there must also be distinct, narrow ones. In “A Narrow Representational Theory of the Mind,” Michael Devitt defends the claim that the laws of mental processes as investigated by cognitive psychology should advert only to the narrow properties of representations, though some of those properties will be meaning properties specified by conceptual role, and that the scientifically appropriate boundary for explaining the behavior of an organism is its skin. But in Coming to Our Senses he repudiates that doctrine, because he has come to accept that widely characterized behavior is a more appropriate explanandum for psychology than behavior narrowly characterized.
This paper argues that there are narrow meanings, on the model of Kaplan’s notion of “character,” but (agreeing with Devitt) we have seen no reason to believe that there are narrow contents underlying ordinary wide ones.
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Notes
- 1.
As we shall see, Devitt (1996) starts with a general concept of “semantic role,” and develops a notion of mental “meaning” from it. “Narrow meaning,” as he will prefer to call it, is rightly broader than narrow content as just defined.
- 2.
Coming: “Psychological laws should advert to properties of tokens that are only syntactic” (1996: 264).
- 3.
And he does not contest the argument up till that point. In Coming he will.
- 4.
Notice that two different notions are expressed in these last two sentences, that do not necessarily coincide: internal functional roles, of the sort that would be codified in a Lewisian (1972) Ramsey sentence, and mathematical functions from external causes to wide referential meanings. “Function” as between those two is a pun, not that Devitt is confused as between the two meanings of the word.
- 5.
Devitt does not consider Fodor’s (1980) argument from opacity. To expound and criticize that elusive argument would have taken a separate paper.
- 6.
Coming: “Psychological laws should advert to properties of tokens that are only narrow semantic” (1996: 275). Devitt adds, “This should be read as a commitment to laws that advert to properties that are not syntactic, for example, to narrow word meanings.”
- 7.
Fodor (1987) went on to repair the defect by arguing independently that for scientific purposes, states and events must be individuated by their causal powers. Devitt addresses this in a footnote (1989: 395–396 n. 29), but here again he is not convinced; he glimpses the objection that he will address at the end of the paper (see below), and that in Coming will disabuse him of the argument entirely. Wilson (1995: ch. 2) demolishes the argument from causal powers on its own terms.
Still another version of the argument is the plain appeal to Twin Earth: If I and Twin Bill are molecular duplicates and so exactly alike in our heads, then necessarily (ignoring quantum randomness) we will behave in exactly the same way. That version too will succumb to the later objection just mentioned.
- 8.
Of course no two human beings are ever functionally identical in reality, but Devitt points out (391) that all we need is functional similarity in the respects relevant to the situation in question.
- 9.
Notoriously, in episode 22 (1970) of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” the Pythons scabrously lampooned Australian philosophers, and in that sketch pretended (very humorously, I admit) that every Ozzie philosopher is named Bruce. When I first arrived at Sydney University I had looked forward to learning what motivated that particular trope, but to my disappointment the real Australian philosophers did not know either, as ‘Bruce’ was not a conspicuously common name. It must be remembered, though, that in the sketch, the new member of the department at the University of Woolloomooloo, “a chap from pommie land,” was named Michael, though with a made-up surname.
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Fourth Bruce: Michael Baldwin – this is Bruce. Michael Baldwin – this is Bruce. Michael Baldwin – this is Bruce.
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First Bruce: Is your name not Bruce, then?
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Michael: No, it’s Michael.
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Second Bruce: That’s going to cause a little confusion .
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Third Bruce: Mind if we call you ‘Bruce’ to keep it clear?
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- 10.
Which belief, I’m bound to say, would be ludicrously false.
- 11.
This can lead to confusion, as it does on, e.g., p. 288.
On pp. 157–158 he notes a few assumptions he makes regarding the relation between thought content and linguistic meaning: (1) thoughts as specified by “that”-clauses and the corresponding verbal utterances have the same meanings. (2) Thought meanings should be given “a certain explanatory priority” (italics original). (3) À la Grice, a linguistic utterance’s conventional meaning “is explained in terms of regularities in speaker meanings.” [Very strong disagreement from me on that one.] Nonetheless (4) conventional linguistic meanings play a role in the determination of particular thought meanings.
- 12.
- 13.
Block (1986), a functional-role theorist, acknowledges this as a significant problem.
- 14.
- 15.
Devitt also suggests (1996: 295–296) that if a narrow property were to predict proper intentional objects of behavior, it would be as near as matters to a Kaplanian character, and so return us to our first view of narrow meanings.
- 16.
And put to evil uses, but let us draw a veil.
- 17.
Subsequently, Jackson and Chalmers themselves (2001) backed off the idea that A-intensions correspond to public linguistic meanings or types of meaning analogous to Kaplanian characters. They did kick A-intensions upstairs and diffusely so, into individual minds at particular times.
- 18.
Pautz (2013) offers a good critical survey of the “Research Program.”
Nicholas Georgalis (2006, 2015) similarly defends a notion, “minimal content,” that is available only from the first-person perspective and is more fundamental than (indeed an absolute prerequisite for) ordinary wide content. It is determined by the subject’s conceptions and intentions, and differs from Horgan’s phenomenal intentionality (Georgalis says) by not individuating contents according to phenomenology in the “what it’s like” sense. My problem with Georgalis’ view is that according to it, only mental states of which the subject is aware can be intentional at all; states of which the subject is unaware do not have even derived intentionality. Georgalis not only accepts that consequence but insists that it is an important truth. But if, like me, you think that being aware of a mental state you’re in and being unaware of it is typically just a superficial matter of attention, you will not be persuaded that that difference creates such an ontological gulf.
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Lycan, W.G. (2020). Devitt and the Case for Narrow Meaning. In: Bianchi, A. (eds) Language and Reality from a Naturalistic Perspective. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 142. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47641-0_13
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