Devitt Realism and Semantics PDF

Realism and SemanticsAuthor(s): Michael DevittSource: Nos, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Nov., 1983), pp. 669-681Published by: WileyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2215089 .Accessed: 14/02/2014 20:38

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Realism and Semantics Part II of a critical study of Midwest Studies in Philosophy V: Studies in Epistemology (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1980), 568 pp., $35.00 (cloth), $15.00 (paper).

MICHAEL DEVITT

UNIERSIY OF SYDNEY

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

In Part I of this critical study of [17], John Bacon discusses the papers on epistemology. I shall discuss the papers on realism (in 1), on understanding and truth conditions (in 2), on reference (in 3), and on intentionality (in 4).

1. REALISM

The volume contains three papers on realism: Nicholas Rescher'* "Conceptual Schemes," Simon Blackburn's "Truth, Realism, and the Regulation of Theory," and Joseph Margolis' "Cognitive Issues in the Realist-Idealist Dis- pute." Rescher represents one regrettable trend in contemporary discussions of realism, Blackburn another. Margolis struggles with both trends.

Margolis starts well with a clear statement of realism and the epistemic problems it poses. He rightly describes "current versions of realism" as "Kantian-like" (373). His discussion of Kuhn (374-376) is illuminating. We might put the position it reveals as follows: insofar as there is a world independent of our theories, it is a mere Kantian thing-in-itself, beyond reach of knowledge or reference. Such a world is one that Nelson Goodman would say is "not iorth fighting for" ([18]: 20). There is a strong trend toward just this sort of realism amongst contemporary epistemologists.

Rescher exemplifies this trend. He begins his paper by arguing effectively that Donald Davidson [5] is wrong to reject the very idea of a conceptual scheme. He goes on to consider how conceptual schemes can differ. They "embody different theories. . . about different things. To move from one conceptual scheme to another is in some way to change the subject." The difference "does not lie in disagreement and conflict" (331). It is "a matter of difference in orientation rather than one of disagreement in doctrine" (333). After much of this, and approving references to Feyerabend (332), Goodman (336) and Rorty (337) Rescher claims that it is "inappropriate to say that there is an identifiable something . .. that is prior to and independent of any and all scheme-based conceptualization" (337).

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What is realism? One of the unfortunate legacies of positivism is the current confusion over this question: a mystification of metaphysics. Two of the most influential contemporary philosophers, Michael Dummett [15] and Hilary Putnam [24] have added to the apparent difficulties.' Blackburn's paper does so too. This mystification is the second trend I regretted.

Margolis tackles this trend in a lengthy treatment of Putnam's views (379-388). So far as I can see he sinks without trace in those difficult waters, losing the issue in a maze of talk about truth, reference, convergence, Boyd, the principle of charity, indeterminacy, etc. Clarity is not aided by his conflation of early ([23]), middle ([24]: Part One), and late ([24]: Part Four) Putnam.

The Kantian trend is certainly a worry for the realist. Nevertheless the realist's most pressing problem is the strengthening Oxford-based trend toward mystification. Blackburn's paper is typical of the trend (not least in its difficulty). I shall therefore devote the rest of this section to that paper.

Blackburn takes "our metaphysics" to be "a general theory of what it is that marks a statement as true." He doubts "whether familiar ways of characterizing debates in the theory of knowledge will help." He pursues these doubts "through the figure of the quasi-realist, a person who, starting from a recogniz- ably anti-realist position, finds himself progressively able to mimic the intellectual practices supposedly definitive of realism." We need "a practice the quasi- realist cannot imitate" to give meaning to the debate;" otherwise realism is mere "images" and perhaps attitudes to our discourse. . . not so much subjects for decision as for nostalgia" (353).

Blackburn discusses four "intellectual practices" or "thoughts" which he thinks might distinguish the realist from the quasi-realist. The first, suggested by the work of Putnam, "is the thought that a theory to which one is committed could... be false," which perhaps a quasi-realist must reject (356). The second, suggested by the work of Dummett (360), "is the thought that reality must be determinate," which perhaps "a quasi-realist must deny himself' (356). The third, suggested by the works of Ramsey and Dummett (364), "is that an anti-realist can, or must, . . . [deny] a distinction between a regulative and a constitutive status for principles, in Kant's sense," whereas the realist will want to make that distinction (356). "The fourth and currently most discussed view is that realism is the best way of explaining our scientific success," an explanation that "seems to carry with it an ontological commitment. . . problematic to the quasi-realist" (356). Blackburn finds all of these thoughts inadequate for the task and so leaves us with the idea that the dispute about realism is pseudo, a matter of "old pictures and metaphors" (370).

Blackburn is not concerned with any particular realism dispute. His aim is to cast doubt on them all (modal, moral, mental, mathematical, etc.). One of the disputes that his argument is clearly meant to cover is the most basic one: the traditional dispute between realism about the external physical world and idealism/instrumentalism. Call that realism "PR." I shall attempt to bring out the failings of Blackburn's discussion by considering its bearing on PR. I shall not attempt to show that his discussion fails similarly with other realisms. However I do mean to suggest that it does so fail, though not perhaps always so comprehensively.

My approach to characterizing PR is old-fashioned. I think we can state the doctrine simply, if a bit vaguely, along the following lines:

Common sense, and scientific, physical entities objectively exist independently of the mental.


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(Margolis gives a similar account: 373.) It is commitment to this, not to any of Blackburn's four "thoughts," that is the main "intellectual practice" distinguishing the realist about the physical world from the anti-realist.

The first thing to note about this characterization of PR is that it makes no mention of truth. In my view no doctrine of truth is in any way constitutive of PR. I have argued this elsewhere ([10], 75-78) and will say no more here. The second thing to note is that PR does not seem in the least bit metaphorical: it seems as literal a statement as you could want.

Why suppose otherwise? Disagreements over what exists are straightforward enough: the theist thinks God does, the atheist thinks he does not, the agnostic sits on the fence; the scientific realist thinks the unobservables of science exist, the operationist/instrumentalist thinks they do not, van Fraassen [26] sits on the fence. Disagreements over objectivity and independence are not so straightforward, but with careful attention to the traditional debate we should be able to explain the disagreement so that, for example, Locke is easily placed in the realist camp, Berkeley easily placed firmly in the anti-realist camp, and Kant not so easily placed not so firmly there. We should require a powerful argument to persuade us that, despite appearances, disagreement over PR is

"12 really just disagreement over "images," "pictures," or "metaphors.

Suppose it could be shown that acceptance or rejection of PR made no difference elsewhere in one's world view. Then a "quasi-realist" who rejected PR could go along with everything else in the realist's theory: "could" not simply in the sense of consistent with logic, but also in the sense of compatible with plausible explanation. That would indeed be very persuasive evidence that, despite appearances, PR was mere froth on the surface, a pious sentiment playing no intellectual role. But showing this would be very hard. For what exists seems to make an explanatory difference: ifx exists I can usex, when the chips are down, to explain; if it does not I cannot. And if x exists objectively and independently of the mental then the best explanation of x, of the knowing mind and its language, and of the relation between x, mind, and language, will be different from what it would have been had x not so existed. How could PR make no difference?

Investigating the explanatory consequences of PR is of course important quite apart from any concern whether the dispute over it can be taken literally. For, how are we to choose between PR and its rivals? We choose the one that plays a role in the best explanation of the world. What we are investigating, however, is not what constitutes PR but what is the evidence for and against it. It is constituted by the doctrine set out above (or something like it).

Blackburn's interest in investigating whether realism makes a difference is different. Initially he can find nothing but "images" distinguishing realism from anti-realism (355). As a result his four "thoughts" are suggestions as to what constitutes realism, what defines the debate (367). What is the initial difficulty?

He finds two problems in telling "when we are in the presence of commitment to a realm of fact" (354).

The first is that from the standpoint of the anti-realist the assertion "there really is a fact of the matter (often: an objective, independent, or genuine, fact of the matter) whether. . ." is itself suspicious. For if his puzzle arises from the thought that no kind of thing could possibly play the role of (moral, conditional, etc.) states of affairs, then he ought to translate his doubt into difficulty about what the realist means to be asserting when he claims there are such things. (354)


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Perhaps it is appropriate for the anti-realist, like anybody else, to have a few such doubts about speaker-meaning (I wonder myself about "states of affairs"), but these can be removed easily enough: check on what is covered by 'objective,' 'independent,' etc. Beyond that it strikes me as simply disingenuous for the anti-realist to pursue the line Blackburn recommends. "The realist means what he says, damn it!"

The second problem is that it is not so clear that the anti-realist must take issue over any sentence of the kind: "there really is a fact. . ." This is because it may belong to a discipline to think such a thing, and it is no parkof the anti-realist's brief to tamper with the internal conduct of a discipline. . . the threat remains that the anti-realist blandly takes over all the things the realist wanted to say, but retaining all the while his conviction that he alone gives an unobjectionable, or ontologically pure, interpretation of them. (354)

So the disagreement comes down to one about interpretation; more precisely, it seems, to one over the statement of truth conditions (so that, according to Blackburn, if Ramsey's redundancy theory of truth is correct there is no genuine issue! 354).

(i) The realism issue is not one over interpretations. If the anti-realist interprets the statements of a discipline that is apparently committed to objec- tionable x's so that it is really committed to unobjectionabley's, then he should, when the ontological chips are down, paraphrase away the apparent commitment to x's in the first place. He should not take over everything the realist wants to say on pain of making a mockery of ontological questions. Differences at the level of metalanguage can, and should, be made differences at the level of object language. The quasi-realist cannot have his commitments and deny them too.

(ii) Blackburn's nothing-but-images conclusion is too strong and too swift. The conclusion is supported by a brief discussion of realism about conditionals, and by unsupported claims that some ways of drawing the realism/anti-realism distinction there and elsewhere are mere images. But, (a) even if he is right about conditionals, that is far too thin a base to generalize about all realisms; (b) not all his unsupported claims are obviously correct; (c) he has not mentioned other plausible ways of distinguishing realism from anti- realism. There is nothing here that casts the least doubt, for example, on the genuine non-metaphorical nature of the dispute over PR.

Because of these largely spurious initial problems, Blackburn seeks practices that define disputes about realism. We might expect that an investigation of the four "thoughts" guided by this would lead to a different assessment of its findings from one seeking the explanatory differences between realism and anti- realism. We would also expect that Blackburn's mistaken association of disputes about realism with problems of interpretation and truth would lead him to look in the wrong places for differences between realism and anti-realism. Both expectations are confirmed.

The Dummett-inspired second "thought" about determinacy is, in my view [10], largely irrelevant to realism. I am skeptical too of Blackburn's discussion of the third "thought" about the distinction between regulative and constitutive principles (362-367), but the discussion is too difficult for a confi- dent opinion.

The first Putnam-inspired "thought" is much more promising: a realist (of the PR sort) thinks that a theory he is committed to might be false. Blackburn argues (356-360), quite correctly, that this cannot constitute realism as the



anti-realist can and should accept it too. However, if we are seeking an explanatory difference between PR and its denial, this is a good place to find one. The best realist explanation of this epistemic fact will be different from the best anti-realist one. It will be different in that it will be in terms of physical entities existing objectively and independently of the mental, whereas the anti-realist one will not. The anti-realist explanation may, for example, appeal to physical entities constituted by ideas or sense data (Berkeley and the phenomenalists) or otherwise dependent on the knower (Kant, Kuhn, Rescher).

The fourth "thought" is also -promising: realism is the best way of explaining success. A problem with such a thought is the vagueness of talk of "success." Sometimes what is to be explained is personal success in achieving goals ([24]: 100-103), and sometimes it is theoretical success in predicitng observable phenomena ([24]: 18-22). However what interests Blackburn is scientific progress: "the way in which our knowledge expands and progresses" (356). I think the realist can hope to give a good explanation of each of these sorts of success, insofar as they need explantion ([1 1]: 298-299). As before, these explanations will differ from any an anti-realist could give in that a commitment to PR will be part of them. Yet Blackburn thinks that the quasi-realist can accept a realist explanation of scientific progress.

Blackburn's discussion of this fourth "thought" is very puzzling. The first puzzle is his realist explanation of scientific progress:

(RR) It is because opinion is caused, perhaps indirectly, by the fact that p, that it converges upon p. (367)

As it stands, this is not an explanation of sceintific progress at all; it is an explanation of the human practice of choosing theories that as a matter of fact converge; it is an explanation of behavior.

Accept the explanation's implicit assumption that progress consists in convergence. What, then, we primarily want explained is not this behavior but, first, the nature of convergence, and second, what makes convergence pro- gressive. RR has nothing to say on these matters. Consider what a realist might want to say on them. On the first, he is likely to start from the ontological base of PR and seek to establish some doctrine explained in terms of correspondence truth. On the second, he may explain why the convergence of Ti, T2, . . . accompanies their increasing observational success: say, T2 gives a more truth- ful account than Ti of the entities underlying the observable world and so is more observationally successful; on the other hand the best strategy for increasing success is by finding out more about these underlying entities. This explanation suggests a further, but subsidiary one: that of the aforementioned human behavior. The explanation is that humans have caught on to this strategy. In filling out this explanation the realist will have to assign a causal role to the world of PR. That is what RR is getting at. But it is rather distant from an explanation of progress.

The second puzzle is that RR is even more distant from realism. It is bizarre to think that any doctrine about the genesis of human opinions could be definitive of realism. Indeed, is there any metaphysical position that could not accept RR, given a suitable account of "the fact that P"?

The third puzzle is Blackburn's own reason for thinking that "it may be possible to say [RR] without being a realist." "The problem arises ... when the opinion or theory that we are testing itself makes causal and explanatory claims"; for example, the claim in physics that "the decay of a radioactive


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atom... causes" "a given experimental result." "To deny that is simply to abandon the physics" (368), which the anti-realist will not want to do.

(i) What has the claim about causes in physics got to do with RR, a claim about the causes of convergent opinion, causes in epistemology? On the face of it, nothing at all.

(ii) It is not true that the anti-realist about physics cansimply go along with the claims of physics. He may go along with them initially, but he is a revisionist about physics and, when the chips are down, he has to paraphrase away apparent commitment to, say, atoms because he does not think there are any atoms. That is, for example, what the operationists attempted.

Blackburn sometimes writes as if we can say anything we like without ontic commitment. We cannot, and if we could, we would not need eighteen pages to persuade us that there was no difference between commitment to realist and anti-realist ontologies.

Realism (of the PR sort) can be stated clearly and unmetaphorically. Furthermore, it can be argued for by showing, first, that it provides a plausible world view including a naturalized epistemology of the sort suggested by Quine, and a naturalized semantics of the sort suggested by Field [16]; second, that the arguments against it fail; and third, that its alternatives are completely implausible. It is not just the best explanation in town but the only one. That's another story, of course, but it is one on which Blackburn casts no serious doubt. The failings of his paper are typical of the current tendency to mystify the issue of realism.3

2. UNDERSTANDING AND TRUTH CONDITIONS

Herbert Heidelberger's paper, "Understanding and Truth Conditions," raises a very good question. A received wisdom of contemporary semantics is that understanding a sentence, or knowing its meaning, consists in knowing its truth conditions. This is construed as knowing that it is true in such and such circumstances or knowing a "T-sentence." Heidelberger rightly remarks that this view of understanding seems to be regarded as uncontroversial, "'harmless' and perhaps unworthy of serious discussion." Yet it is not "obviously true" (402). He sets out to examine the identification, though, "to avoid extraneous problems" (402) he replaces knowledge of truth conditions with awareness of truth conditions. He argues that awareness of the truth conditions of a sentence does not imply understanding of the sentence, but that the understanding "nearly enough" (402) implies the awareness.

Heidelberger's argument that awareness does not imply understanding is sound. Awareness amounts to belief in a T-sentence (402-403). Heidelberger points out that beliefs about each side of this biconditional can give us good ground for believing it even though we do not understand the sentence mentioned on its left-hand side (404-405).

This alone shows the identification to be mistaken, of course. However, if the inference from understanding to awareness were good, an important part of the identification would remain. (That inference plays a key role, for example, in arguments that meaning cannot be explained in terms of realist truth conditions.) Heidelberger thinks understanding does "nearly enough" imply awareness in that it implies the awareness given three assumptions: (a) the sentence must be "unambiguous"; (b) the person must be "aware of what, in general, it is for a sentence to be true"; (c) he must believe "the simple logical consequences of his beliefs" (403).



The qualification "nearly enough" is far too generous to the received wisdom: these are three mighty strong assumptions. The ambiguity that is ruled out by (a) must cover all indexicality if Heidelberger's argument (408- 409) is to go through. For all Heidelberger has shown, therefore, the implication does not hold at all for a great part of language. (b) requires that the person have the concept of truth-in-L, which is not, again so far as we have been shown, something that comes with understanding L. (c) speaks for itself. If Heidel- berger is right in thinking we need these three assumptions to derive awareness of truth conditions from understanding, then the implication from understanding alone is simply invalid. No part of the identification remains.

In my view the identification has nothing to be said for it, despite its popularity. Why should a skill in using L consist in any propositional knowledge about L, let alone knowledge of truth conditions? Such semantic propositional knowledge as we may have is, I suggest, the hard-won result of amateur and professional theorizing about language not the privilege of every speaker ([ 8]: 95-110).

Suppose it is the case that Hanson believes that 'the moon is round' is true-in-English iff the moon is round. This requires that Hanson have some way to represent to himself the sentence 'The moon is round' and the situation of the moon being round. Clearly if Hanson understands the sentence in English, then that will give him a means of representing the situation. However that alone will leave him far from his belief. He also needs a way of representing to himself truth-in-English. Such a representation comes from semantic theorizing about English. It comes from understanding the language of a theory which may, but need not, be the semantic parts of English. It does not come merely from understanding non-semantic parts like 'The moon is round.' Heidelberger's assumption (b) is vital.

Heidelberger's argument for his "near-enough" implication from understanding to awareness is not a success. It starts with a lengthy discussion of three definitions (405-408): first of "understanding" by quantifying over propositions; second of "expresses"; third of "doxastically essential." Despite this paraphernalia, the argument proper (409) is infelicitious and overcomplicated. (Why, e.g., does he use a schematic letter in (12) instead of the sentence 'the moon is round,' and why does he use the letter 'p' in particular, given that (12) already contains 'p' as a variable?) More seriously, the argument is invalid. Neither of the two key inferences (from (12) to (12') and from (13) to (13')) is good: each ignores the well-known failure of substitutivity in belief contexts.

Nevertheless, Heidelberger has raised a good question. It is time those who subscribe to the identification made some attempt to argue for it.4

3. REFERENCE5

Diana Ackerman's agreeably forthright paper, "Natural Kinds, Concepts, and Propositional Attitudes," offers a causal theory of reference of sorts starting from criticisms of the theories of Putnam ([22], [23]) and Kripke ([19], [20]). However, she has a different focus from theirs. Where they are concerned to describe, even if only in a rudimentary way, the nature of the causal relation between word and object, she is concerned to fit accounts of this sort into a certain philosophical framework. Indeed she is content to use the schematic letter 'R' to stand for the relation in question, as she was also in her earlier similar treatment of names ([1], [2]). Her framework for semantics is Fregean. She is an enthusiast for "conceptual analysis" [3].


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Ackerman makes a great deal of errors she attributes to Putnam. First he is alleged to assume "that if one's concepts of elms and beeches do not differ in descriptive content they do not differ at all" (472). She thinks the concepts differ "non-descriptively" in a sort of irreducible way that can be explicated only by means of the different analyses ['elm' and 'beech'] have" (473).

What precisely is Putnam's error? In a passage Ackerman cites, Putnam says that his concepts of the two trees are the same ([22]: 704). He is not claiming, of course, that his concepts are numerically one and the same: they are not quantitatively identical. And he is obviously aware that they differ in the trivial respect that one leads to utterances of 'elm' and the other, 'beech.' He is claiming that, in nontrivial respects, they are qualitatively identical. If Putnam has erred it must be in claiming that his psychological states fail in this way to distinguish elms and beeches.

Ackerman seems to think that Putnam has erred also in overlooking the differing "non-descriptive connotations" and "meanings" of 'elm' and 'beech' (472-474). Given her definitions of these technical terms, I think it unlikely that Putnam has erred in these ways. He would agree with Ackerman that the terms differ in "connotation" because, presumably, he would think they do not make the "same semantic contribution" to determining what "proposition" is expressed (471). Putnam certainly does not think this difference can be captured by associated descriptions, and so it will be "non-descriptive," in Ackerman's sense, if the difference is not simply a matter of differing extensions (472,476). Would Putnam think that two coextensive terms with the same associated descriptions had the same "connotation"? The above definition is no help in answering, because Ackerman does not explain the identity conditions of "propositions" and the ordinary notion is vague at just this point. The key to understanding her "connotation" in difficult cases is her "propositional attitude principle":

if two terms are not interchangeable salve veritate when used in propositional attitude contexts, then the terms differ in connotation. (472)

In the light of this we can see that Putnam would think the differences in "connotation" were not simply ones of extension; for he would think 'beech' and 'Buche' differ in "connotation" ([23]: 270). So Putnam would think that 'elm' and 'beech' differ in "non-descriptive connotations." Since, for Acker- man, the "meaning" of a term "determines its connotation in a given context" (471) it seems that this difference would carry over to "meanings."

Ackerman offers an analysis to explain the difference in conceptual content, connotation and meaning of 'elm' and 'beech.' "Analysis" itself is explained by a paradigm-the well-known analysis of 'knowledge' that starts from justified true belief-and by a theory: (i) an analysis is a necessary truth; (ii) it is knowable a priori; (iii) it is arrived at and tested in an armchair by generalizing from the speaker's "replies to questions about simple described hypothetical situations" (473; [3]). Her analysis of natural term K is given by 'entity that is of the same kind as those (or almost all of those) that stand in causal relation R to my use of K' (473).6

How could a difference in analyses explain the cognitive differences between 'elm' and 'beech'? How could it explain the fact that the terms are not interchangeable in attitude contexts and hence differ in "connotations"? The only answer seems to be that speakers know the analyses. But that is completely implausible: at most a few philosophers know anything about the causal theory of natural kind terms. Ackerman does not gives this answer: she holds only to



the weaker, and more plausible, claim that analyses are knowable by speakers (474; [1]: 60). Ackerman gives no answer, leaving her analyses apparently irrelevant to the observed cognitive differences.

Return now to Putnam's first alleged error. What Ackerman needs to show is that Putnam was wrong in thinking his psychological states did not distinguish qualitatively between elms and beeches. If Ackerman's analyses were known by Putnam (qua speaker) she would have succeeded. But they are not. So Ackerman has not identified a psychological difference that Putnam over- looked.8

Ackerman's analyses are intended to explain the fact that 'elm' and 'beech' are not interchangeable in attitude contexts. It is worth noting that Putnam has immediately available the first step in an explanation that is simpler than Ackerman's, and is psychologically plausible: speakers do not believe that 'elm' and 'beech' are coextensive.9

Ackerman's theory has other difficulties which she sets out with admirable frankness. First, we must surrender certain intuitions about "rigidity": e.g., the one that Fido is necessarily a dog; in some "possible world" he is something else (479-480). Second, we must accept "that if there were no word 'gold' there would be no gold" (481). Since, I presume, words depend for their existence on people, if there had been no people there would have been no gold! Third, her view has "the consequence that there are generally no exact translations... for names and natural kind terms between natural languages" (482; I do not think this consequence is so bad). Fourth, the view results in a certain sort of "pri- vacy": "many of the propositions S expresses are private in the sense that it is logically impossible for them to be expressed or entertained by anyone else" (483).

These difficulties are of a magnitude that would make a lesser mortal despair. Ackerman comforts herself with the thought that rival theories have worse difficulties.

Ackerman's problems come in part from her commitment to conceptual analysis. She writes as if the nature of R is knowable a priori. If we can learn in that way about R then, presumably, we can also about all semantic properties and relations: all semantic theory becomes knowable a priori. Why should semantics be any more knowable a priori than economics, biology, or physics? Certainly we can do a lot of semantics from an armchair, but this is because we bring two things with us to our chair: (i) the semantic wisdom of the ages-hard won empirical theory; (ii) the memory of much of the phenomena that need explaining. A lot of physics can be done from an armchair too. And if we confine our armchair semantics to reflections on usage-on "what we would say"-the most we will discover is the implicit folk semantics. The task should be not to enshrine folk theory but to improve it ([8]: 87-90; 99-100).

There is nothing, I suggest, that we need an "analysis" like Ackerman's to explain. To progress beyond- Putnam in the explanation of the differences between 'elm' and 'beech,' we need, first, to give an account of the causal relation R; second, to show how that account yields the required differences, including those at the cognitive level, between 'elm' and 'beech.' Ackerman does not attempt these tasks.

4. INTENTIONALITY

In this section I shall consider a topic related to reference: intentionality. In particular I shall consider, in varying degrees of depth, the following five


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papers: Fred Dretske's "The Intentionality of Cognitive States," John Pollock's "Thinking about an Object," Diana Ackerman's "Thinking about an Object: Comments on Pollock," Romane Clark's "Not Every Act of Thought Has a Matching Proposition," and Herbert Heidelberger's "Beliefs and Propositions: Comments on Clark."

Dretske offers a theory of intentionality for those propositional attitudes that imply knowledge. So the theory does not apply directly to, e.g., beliefs. He sets aside until another time the problem of developing it to-cover such other attitudes, but thinks the problem is not "insuperable" (292). Given the nature of the theory this seems unduly optimistic.

His stance is materialist. So the problem for him is to explain "how purely physical systems could. . . occupy intentional states" (282). His theory is that intentionality "is a pervasive feature of all reality .... What is distinctive, and hence problematic, about our cognitive states is... that they have a higher order of intentionality" (285). Intentionality pervades reality in virtue of its role as an information carrier. At item, e.g., a thermometer, has this role to the extent that there is a nomic dependence between the events occurring at the source and at the receiver. "Cognitive states exhibit an intentional structure because they are, fundamentally, nomically dependent states" (287). The content of such a state is characterized in terms of the condition on which it is nomically dependent. It is this key part of Dretske's view that makes the above thought about belief seem optimistic. Dretske acknowledges the problem: "beliefs can be false" (292): so their content may be one thing, the condition on which they nomically depend quite another. The essence of intentionality is surely something beliefs and knowledge have in common.

Pollock argues against "a traditional view" that "when one thinks about an object, one must think about it under some description which it uniquely satisfies." He describes a "non-descriptive way of thinking about an object" (487). Ackerman, of course, agrees (501). However, she is critical of Pollock's account of that way. So am I, but differently.

Pollock's argument against the traditional view strikes me as sound, but not as overwhelming as those that can be straightforwardly derived from the classic refutations of description theories of names by Kripke [19] and Donnellan [14]. For most thoughts involving names are paradigms of thought about an object. Strangely enough Pollock does not mention Kripke and has only a passing reference to Donnellan (496).

Pollock identifies his non-descriptive way of thinking about an object, all examples of which seem to involve names, both logically and phenomenologi- cally (488-489). He calls that way, the representation involved in it, and the belief employing the representation, 'de re' (490). He seems to allow that there are also descriptive ways of thinking about an object which, implicitly, he calls 'de dicto' (490).

Pollock raises the question: "Given a de re representation, what determines its representatum?" (Like most others he does not seem bothered by the corresponding question about descriptive representations. Apparently the link between a description and the objects it applies to is thought to need no explanation.) In answering his question Pollock distinguishes

two ways in which we come to employ de re representations: (1) we may begin with the de dicto belief that there is a unique object exemplifying some concept a... and we subsequently come to think of that object in ade re way; (2) we may simply perceive the object and immediately come to think of it in a de re way. (490)



Set aside (2) for a moment. The move referred to in (1) requires, I take it, that we come to have beliefs we would express using a name for x, the object uniquely exemplifying the concept a. Pollock does not find this sufficient for the belief to be aboutx: an object which is intuitively not the "particular" one the person is thinking about might "purely by chance" exemplify the concept (490-491). So any representatum of a "de re" representation must be something that the representation is, in this special way, "about."

What is required for this special aboutness? Pollock claims that we need some sort of connection between thinker and object. He suggests an "epistemic contact" (491) that occurs when the thinker believes that there is a unique a for "a non-defective good reason" (492). But the intuitions he is relying on show that such contact is not sufficient for this aboutness. I have non-defective good reasons for supposing there to be a unique object that is a shorter spy than any other, a child born before any other in the twenty-first century, etc., yet I am not in the position to have thoughts about such objects in particular.

He is much more on the right lines with (2). Indeed it seems to me that all thought about a particular object is based on such perceptual situations, which I call "groundings." The benefit of groundings can be passed on-"reference borrowings"-thus enabling those who have never perceived an object to have thoughts about it. The required connection between thinkers and objects is the sort described by causal theories of reference ([8], [9], [12]).

Ackerman claims (and, she says, Pollock agrees) that he is not using 'de re' with its usual sense.

This usual sense contrasts de dicto ascriptions of necessity to propositions and de dicto beliefs in propositions with de re ascriptions to entities of necessary properties and de re beliefs of entities that they have certain properties, where the de re locutions permit existential generalization. (501)

This contrast between beliefs (not ascriptions of belief, note), whether usual or not, strikes me as useless. Surely, all singular beliefs must permit existential generalizationjust as all singular statements do. And if any belief were belief in a proposition, why would it not be trivially the case that they all were (particularly since propositions are usually explained as the objects of belief)? I doubt if there is any contrast between beliefs that is analogous to that between de dicto and de re ascriptions of necessity.

The difficulties with the term 'de re' may account for Pollock and Acker- man being, to a degree, at cross-purposes. Ackerman asks: "Why does Pollock make the standards for non-descriptive de re representations higher than those for representation by the descriptions from which they are derived?" (501). Epistemic contact is required for the latter but not the former. She points out that a person can have a representation that is non-descriptive, meeting Pol- lock's initial tests for being de re, and is intuitively about a certain object; yet the person may not have the required epistemic contact with the object. An "at- tributive" name would be a good example. However, that is not the sort of representation Pollock is discussing, for he requires a de re representationto have special aboutness: it must be about a particular object the person has in mind: it must be "referential." He seems to have nothing to say about a case like Ackerman's. Does he think such cases are to be treated as, in his sense, either de dicto (descriptive) or de re? If so, Ackerman's discussion shows he is mistaken.

Clark, in a somewhat drawn-out paper, is refreshingly skeptical of propositions. Not so Heidelberger in his response. He distinguishes a "singular" proposition from a "general" one.


680 NOUS

Adopting terminology from the recent literature, we can say that belief de dicto is belief with respect to a general proposition, and belief de re is belief with respect to a singular proposition. (525)

We note that this definition of 'de dicto' is different from Ackerman's usual one, though the definition of 'de re' is, apparently, the same. However, we wonder when we have "belief with respect to a singular proposition?" Heidelberger says that it is when "the object the belief is about" "enters into" the proposition believed. When is that? When a person believing the proposition necessarily "attributes" the property in question to the object. Yet believing that the wisest man is mortal is not, according to Heidelberger, believing a singular proposition (525). He does not explain why this belief does not attribute mortality to the wisest man. The answer would rest, presumably, on intuitions like Pollock's about special aboutness. So, Heidelberger's use of 'de re' turns out to be more like Pollock's than Ackerman's.

It will be remembered that Ackerman evinced a liking for propositions in her discussion of reference. A consequence of this was that many propositions were "private" (section 3). Pollock has a similar attachment and reaches a similar conclusion (496-498), by an argument that Ackerman criticizes (504- 507). A pressing question is: Why do we need such private entities? What do they explain?

In reading these papers on reference and intentionality it is hard to avoid thinking10 that the terms 'de dicto', 'de re,' and 'proposition,' make progress with these difficult subjects more difficult.11

REFERENCES

[1] Diana Ackerman, "Proper Names, Propositional Attitudes and Non-Descriptive Connotations," Philosophical Studies 35(1979): 55-69.

[5] , "Proper Names, Essences and Intuitive Beliefs," Theory and Decision 11(1979): 5-26.

[3] , "The Informativeness of Philosophical Analysis," in Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., and Howard K. Wettstein, eds., Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume VI: The Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (Minneapolis: Univer- sity of Minnesota Press, 1981): 313-320.

[4] Tyler Burge, "Sinning Against Frege," Philosophical Review 87(1979): 398-432. [5] Donald Davidson, "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," Proceedings and

Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 47(1973-74): 5-20. [6] Michael Devitt, "Singular Terms,"Journal of Philosophy 71(1974): 183-205. [7] ,"Brian Loar on Singular Terms," Philosophical Studies 37(1980): 271-280. [8] 'Designation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981). [9] ,"Critical Notice of Contemporary Perspectives in the Philosophy of Language

(Peter A. French, Theodor E. Uehling, Jr., and Howard K. Wettstein, eds.)," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 59(1981): 211-221.

[10] ,"Dummett's Anti-Realism,"Journal of Philosophy 80(1983): 73-99. [11] "Realism and the Renegade Putnam: A Critical Study of Meaning and the

Moral Sciences," Nous 17(1983): 291-301. [12] , "Thoughts and Their Ascription," in Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehl-

ing, Jr., and Howard K. Wettstein, eds., Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume IX (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, in Press).

[13] , Realism and Truth (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, forthcoming). [14] Keith Donnellan, "Proper Names and Identifying Descriptions," in Donald David-

son and Gilbert Harman, eds., Semantics of Natural Language (Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1972): 356-379.



[15] Michael Dummett, Truth and Other Enigmas(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978).

[16] Hartry Field, "Tarski's Theory of Truth,"Journal of Philosophy 69(1972): 347-375. [17] Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., and Howard K. Wettstein (eds.),

Midwest Studies in Philosophy V: Studies in Epistemology (Minneapolos: University of Minnesota Pres, 1980).

[18] Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1978).

[19] Saul A. Kripke, "Naming and Necessity," in Donald Davidson and Gilbert Har- man, eds., Semantics of Natural Languages(Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1972): 253-355, 763-769.

[20] , "A Puzzle about Belief," in Avishai Margalit, ed., Meaning and Use (Dor- drecht, Holland: Reidel, 1979): 239-283.

[21] Stephen Leeds, "Theories of Reference and Truth," Erkenntnis 13 (1978): 111-129. [22] Hilary Putnam, "Meaning and Reference,"Journal of Philosophy 70(1973): 699-711. [23] , Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1975). [24] ,Meaningand theMoral Sciences (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978). [25] Kim Sterelny, "Natural Kind Terms," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (in press). [26] Bas C. van Fraassen, The Scientific Image (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).

NOTES

11 criticize Dummett in [10] and Putnam in [11]. 2Dummett [ 15] holds what I call "the metaphor thesis": metaphysics beyond mean-

ing is mere metaphor ([10]: 79-82). 3I offer detailed arguments for the position taken in this section in [13]. 4I set out and reject what often seems to be the implicit argument for the identifica-

tion in [10]; 85-88. 5Nous sent a draft of this study to Diana Ackerman. I have made several changes as a

result of her lengthy comments on this section. 6There is a problem with this analysis: any such entity is a member of a hierarchy of

natural kinds. Kim Sterelny [25] has suggested a way for a causal theory to handle this problem.

7Tyler Burge's criticism of views like Ackerman's ([4]: 427-430), at which she takes umbrage (474-475; [1]: 65, 68n), may have a similar basis to mine. So also, perhaps, Donnellan's objection ([1]: 65; [2]: 19).

81n [1] and [2], and again here on pp. 477-478, Ackerman uses her technical terminology to criticize Kripke's and Donnellan's views of proper names in much the same way as she criticizes Putnam above. I am similarly dubious of such criticisms, particularly of Kripke ([7]: part 1; [9]: 217-218; see also Kripke [20]: 243-244, 273n). I certainly think that names have what Ackerman calls "non-descriptive connotations" ([8]: 152-156; [ 12]), and have done so for some time ([6]: 204, cf. Ackerman's claim about what causal theorists thought "until very recently": [2]: 6, 11).

9I would give a fuller explanation, compatible with a causal theory of reference, by adapting the discussion of names in [12] to natural kind terms.

101 develop this thought in [12]. See also ([9]: 213-215). "I am indebted to the following for helpful comments on a draft of this study: David

Armstrong, John Bacon, William Lycan, Keith Price, J. J. C. Smart, and Kim Sterelny.


Article Contentsp. 669p. 670p. 671p. 672p. 673p. 674p. 675p. 676p. 677p. 678p. 679p. 680p. 681

Issue Table of ContentsNos, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Nov., 1983), pp. 529-730Volume Information [pp. 725-728]Front Matter [pp. 550-682]Functionalism and Propositional Attitudes [pp. 529-549]Transcendental Arguments I [pp. 551-575]Metaphor and Grammatical Deviance [pp. 577-599]Rule by Fear [pp. 601-620]Rational Behavior in Bargaining Situations [pp. 621-635]Asserting [pp. 637-650]The Photographic Fallacy in the Debate about Mental Imagery [pp. 651-661]Critical StudiesKnowledge, More or Less [pp. 663-668]Realism and Semantics [pp. 669-681]

Critical ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 683-689]Review: untitled [pp. 689-693]Review: untitled [pp. 694-701]Review: untitled [pp. 701-706]Review: untitled [pp. 707-711]Review: untitled [pp. 711-715]Review: untitled [pp. 715-719]

Recent Publications [pp. 720-723]Announcements [p. 729]Errata: Analyticity and Truth in all Possible Worlds [p. 730]Back Matter [pp. 724-724]

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