Epistemic Boundedness and the Universality of Thought

Epistemic Boundedness and the Universality of ThoughtAuthor(s): Matthew RellihanSource: Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the AnalyticTradition, Vol. 125, No. 2 (Aug., 2005), pp. 219-250Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4321628 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 17:10

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Philosophical Studies: AnInternational Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 193.105.245.179 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 17:10:12 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=springer

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4321628?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Philosophical Studies (2005) 125: 219-250 ? Springer 2005 DOI 10.1007/s 1 1098-004-7804-3

MATTHEW RELLIHAN

EPISTEMIC BOUNDEDNESS AND THE UNIVERSALITY OF THOUGHT

ABSTRACT. Fodor argues that our minds must have epistemic limitations because there must be endogenous constraints on the class of concepts we can acquire. However, his argument for the existence of these endogenous constraints is falsified by the phenomenon of the deferential acquisition of concepts. If we allow for the acquisition of concepts through deferring to experts and scientific instruments, then our conceptual capacity will be without endogenous constraints, and there will be no reason to think that our minds are epistemically bounded.

1. INTRODUCTION

Aristotle once argued that the mind must be "before it thinks, not actually any real thing" and that it therefore "can have no nature of its own" (1941, p. 590). He reasoned that the presence of any endogenous psychological structure would limit the class of thinkable thoughts in much the same way that tinting a piece of glass limits the range of colors that can be seen through it., Since Aristotle felt he had independent justification for the universality of human thought, he concluded that the mind must be without limitations and therefore without structure. In the interests of giving credit where credit is due, let us refer to the claim that the presence of any psychological structure brings with it a limitation on the class of thoughts that can be entertained as "Aristotle's Principle", or "AP" for short.

Jerry Fodor has said that everything occurs twice in intel- lectual history, the first time as philosophy, the second time as cognitive science (1981a, p. 298).2 So I suppose we should not be too surprised to find him defending AP some two millennia after it was first articulated.



220 MATTHEW RELLIHAN

It then seems to me hard to see how the unboundedness view can be made empirically plausible. The point is that any psychology must attribute some endogenous structure to the mind (really unstructured objects - bricks, say - don't have beliefs and desires and they don't learn things). And it is hard to see how, in the course of making such attributions of endogenous structure, the theory could fail to imply some constraints on the class of beliefs that the mind can entertain (Fodor, 1983, p. 125).

Of course, Fodor, being a physicalist, cannot seriously entertain the idea that the mind is without endogenous structure. So whereas Aristotle's consideration of AP lead him to reject endogenous structure, Fodor's leads him to reject unboundedness. As far as Fodor is concerned, the idea that our minds could be epistemically unbounded - free of epistemically relevant psychological limitations - is virtually incoherent (1983, p. 121).

I am afraid I do not agree. Specifically, I am skeptical of the claim that the presence of psychological structure brings with it constraints on the class of thoughts that can be entertained. In a word, I think that AP is unsound. In fact, I will be arguing that any creature whose psychological organization is sophisticated enough to allow it, as Fodor says, to make the "char- acter of the correspondence between [its] thoughts and the world a matter of policy" will have no endogenous conceptual constraints whatsoever (1995, p. 35 italics omitted). I will be defending this view by helping myself to Fodor's information- theoretic account of concept possession, as to well as his account of deferential concepts. In the end, I hope to show that Fodor's argument for epistemic boundedness is inconsistent with the position he takes on each of these issues. If possessing a concept is a matter of being "nomologically locked"3 to the property the concept expresses, then there cannot be concepts we are unable to posses because there cannot be properties we are unable to lock onto.

Or so I will argue. For now it is best to fill in some of the details by considering the argument, implicit in much of Fo- dor's work, for the existence of endogenous constraints on our conceptual capacity, but before doing this, it is best to see how this claim fits into the larger argument for epistemic boundedness.



EPISTEMIC BOUNDEDNESS 221

2. FODOR'S ARGUMENT FOR EPISTEMIC BOUNDEDNESS

Here, in a nutshell, is Fodor's argument.4

(P1) Non-demonstrative inference is mediated by a process of projecting and confirming hypotheses.

(P2) Hypotheses have concepts as their constituents. (P3) Our conceptual capacity is endogenously constrained. (Cl) Therefore, the class of hypotheses we can entertain is

endogenously constrained. (C2) Therefore, the class of non-demonstrative inferences

we can perform is endogenously constrained. (C3) Therefore, our knowledge of the world is endoge-

nously constrained.

I think it is pretty clear that it is the third premise that is doing most of the work in this argument, so in what follows I will focus mainly on it. Let me begin, though, by saying a few words about the first and second premises and why Fodor thinks they are justified.

Non-demonstrative inference is the psychological process of belief fixation whereby a subject moves from some finite data set to a belief about the data's most likely explanation. It is thus evidenced in everything from scientific theory construction to common sense reasoning - as when we infer from the shattered window, the baseball on the floor and the bat in the yard to the conclusion that the neighbor's kid broke the window. Fodor conceives of this inferential process as being mediated by the projection and confirmation of hypotheses and thus as requir- ing (a) a source of hypotheses, (b) access to some class of data, and (c) some way of determining a "best fit" relation between the hypotheses and the data (Fodor, 1983, p. 121).5 More formally, if a subject S is engaging in non-demonstrative inference, she must have access to a set of hypotheses H1-H, and a set of data D that the hypotheses are intended to explain. She tests her hypotheses against experience by deducing the observational consequences 01-0n of each hypothesis H1-Hn, and by determining the degree of fit between each Oi and D. Thus, if the Big Bang hypothesis implies the existence of cosmic




microwave background radiation, while the Steady State model does not, and if, in fact, there is such radiation, then (assuming they are in agreement on everything else) the Big Bang hypothesis is closer to the data than is its rival and is therefore deemed a better explanation. The hypothesis whose observational consequences are closer to the data than any of its rivals is the hypothesis that a subject comes to believe - ceteris pari- bus, of course.6

So the non-demonstrative inference to the belief that p requires, inter alia, access to the hypothesis that p, and this means that a mind capable of the full range of non- demonstrative inferences would require access to the full range of explanatory hypotheses. That is, for us to have epistemically unbounded minds, it would have to be true that "whatever sort of subject domain the world turns out to be, somewhere in the space of hypotheses that we are capable of entertaining there is the hypothesis that specifies its structure" (Fodor, 1983, p. 122). An epistemically bounded mind is simply one that fails to satisfy this condition. Suffice it to say that if we are psychologically limited in the range of hypotheses we can entertain, it is quite likely that we will be limited in our knowledge of the world as well. Since scientific inference is a species of non- demonstrative inference, and since the non-demonstrative inference to the theory T requires, at a minimum, that one be capable of entertaining the hypotheses constituting T, any psychological limitation on the range of hypotheses one can entertain brings with it a limitation on the range of theories one can comprehend. The only question that remains is whether the theories we cannot understand are both interesting and true (Fodor, 1983, p. 125).

As I have said, it is the third premise of Fodor's argument that is doing all the work, but that premise concerns conceptual constraints, and epistemic boundedness is a thesis about a limitation on the range of hypotheses we can entertain. What we require, then, is some way of linking the existence of endogenous conceptual constraints with restrictions on the range of hypotheses we can entertain, and this is where the second premise comes in.




Whatever sort of propositional attitude hypothesizing is, it is clear that it is a propositional attitude since it involves the subject standing in a certain intentional relation to a content. Thus, whatever applies to propositional attitudes generally will apply to hypothesizing as well. According to Fodor's well- known account, propositional attitudes are relations between persons (or other minded creatures), and syntactically structured internal representations (1975, 1981b, 1987). In other words, propositional attitudes are relations between persons and sentences in the language of thought. The reason Fodor goes to all the trouble of defending the language of thought hypothesis is that it allows him to explain the complexity of propositional objects in terms of the constituent structure of their underlying mental states (1987, pp. 135-136). Thus, the thought THE CAT IS ON THE MAT has the concept CAT7 as a constituent in just the same way that the sentence "the cat is on the mat" has the word "cat" as a constituent. For our purposes, this means that any limitation on the class of concepts a subject can access will entail a limitation on the range of hypotheses she can entertain. If Smith is unable to represent the property of being a cat, then, given Fodor's view of the attitudes, Smith will be unable to entertain any hypothesis that has the concept CAT as a constituent. If there are such things as cats, this could be a severe epistemic limitation.

If Fodor is right about non-demonstrative inference and the nature of the propositional attitudes, the existence of endogenous constraints on our conceptual capacity will indeed imply that we are epistemically bounded. I realize, of course, that the antecedent of this conditional is rather contentious. At present, not much is understood about the nature of non-demonstrative inference, and Fodor's account of the attitudes is notoriously controversial. I am, however, willing to grant Fodor his first two premises - mainly because, as I have said, it is the third that is doing all the work. Even if the first two premises are false, the truth of the third would probably be sufficient to license some form of an epistemic boundedness thesis. Let us move on, then, to a consideration of the third premise, after which I will register my objections, ultimately to suggest an




alternative to Fodor's view that our minds are conceptually constrained.

3. CONCEPT LEARNING OR CONCEPT CONSTRUCTION?

Fodor treats mental representations as "mental particulars endowed with causal powers and susceptible of semantic eval- uation", which are, furthermore, "the primitive bearers of intentional content" (1997, p. 7). If we accept this view, as well as Fodor's view that psychological states have constituent structure, then all of our concepts will have to fall into one of two classes - the primitive or the complex. Primitive concepts are atomic in that they lack constituent structure (RED is a favorite example) while complex concepts are molecular con- structions from other concepts. BLACK HAT, for example, has BLACK and HAT as constituents. The constituents of a complex concept can themselves be either primitive or complex, but the process of analysis has to end somewhere. When it ends, it ends because the concepts under review have no constituent structure, because they are primitive.

Given that complex concepts are ultimately resolvable into their primitive constituents, we can define a subject's potential conceptual endowment (PCE) at time t as the closure of its primitive concepts at t under whatever rules of complex concept formation it has access to at t.8 Thus, if one has the concept BLACK and the concept HAT (as well as the ability to form conjunctive concepts), then one has the concept BLACK HAT as part of one's PCE - even if one has never actually entertained the concept. A subject's PCE is meant to capture the space of concepts the organism has access to absent further experience. If one possesses BLACK and HAT, one need not experience black hats in order to acquire the concept BLACK HAT. One need only, as the empiricists would say, use one's faculty of imagination to freely combine the concepts one already has (Fodor, 1981a, p. 267, footnote 3).

With this notion in mind, it is possible to formulate Fodor's thesis that our conceptual capacity is endogenously constrained.




EC: A subject cannot increase his or her PCE through learning.9

Fodor argues for this thesis mainly by pointing out that every account of "concept learning" that has ever been given - from those of the classical empiricists right up to and including those of contemporary cognitive science - has implied that in order to learn a concept one must antecedently possess the very concept being learned as part of one's PCE. This, of course, means that if a concept is not already part of a subject's PCE, it never will be.

All of the proposals under consideration describe concept learning as a process in which the acquisition of a concept is mediated by the projection and confirmation of hypotheses concerning the nature of the concept being learned (Fodor, 1981a, p. 267). There is good reason for this since it would appear that concept learning is a species of non-demonstrative inference, and, as we have already seen, there is reason to think that non-demonstrative inferences are mediated by hypotheses. When a subject is attempting to learn some concept from its instances she is in the position of having to extrapolate a gen- eralization that will cover all possible cases from exposure to some finite subset of them (Fodor, 1975, p. 37). That is, a subject must discover some way of determining for any x whether or not x is F from the fact that a is F, b is F, c is not F, and so forth. Since the data provides inductive evidence for the identity of the concept, it is only natural to suppose that a subject learns a concept from its instances by employing the mechanisms of inductive logic.

The hypotheses that mediate the acquisition of a concept in concept learning are thought to concern the definition of the concept being learned, or, as Fodor says, "the property ... in virtue of which things fall under the concept" (1997, p. 123). Furthermore, definitions are believed to provide structural descriptions of the concepts they define. Thus, the word "bachelor" can be defined by means of the phrase "unmarried man" because the mental representation expressed by both terms is the same, namely, UNMARRIED MAN (Fodor, 1997, p. 42). This view has much to recommend it since, among other




things, it allows for an explanation of the informal validity of inferences involving linguistic representations in terms of the formal validity of inferences involving mental representations (Pitt, 1999, p. 141). If "bachelor" is mentally represented as UNMARRIED MAN, then the inference "if x is a bachelor, x is a man" has (at the level of mental representations) the same form as the inference "if x is an unmarried man, then x is a man." Kant must have been thinking along these lines when he said that analytic judgments are those in which the predicate is already contained within the subject (1965, p. 48).1o The idea is that when one thinks "bachelor" one thinks UNMARRIED MAN at the level of mental representations, and one cannot think UNMARRIED MAN without thinking MAN.

The standard view of concept acquisition which I have been sketching has a rather large problem. If hypotheses must concern the definition of the concept being learned, and if the definition of a concept is its structural description, then it would appear that in order to learn a concept, one must be able to construct the concept from those one already has (Fodor 198 la, p. 269). This is just to say that in order to learn a concept one must already possess it as part of one's PCE. By way of illustration, consider Kant's account of how one acquires the concept TREE from the experience of trees.

I see a fir, a willow, and a linden. In firstly comparing these objects, I notice that they are different from one another in respect of trunk, branches, leaves and the like; further, however, I reflect only on what they have in common, the trunk, the branches, the leaves themselves, and abstract from their size, shape, and so forth; thus I gain the concept of a tree (1974, p. 100).

One gains the concept TREE when is able to formulate the hypothesis "x is a tree if and only if x has a trunk, branches and leaves" - or, as Kant says, when one is able to "reflect" on these properties as being common to all trees. Of course, in order to formulate this hypothesis in the first place, one must have access to the complex concept A THING WITH A TRUNK, BRANCHES, AND LEAVES. But since this concept is intended as a definition of "tree", and since definitions express the constituent structure of the concepts they define, one clearly




has not augmented one's PCE by learning TREE in this way. If TREE is actually a complex concept, having TRUNK, BRANCHES, and LEAVES as constituents, and if one has to have these concepts in order to acquire the concept TREE in the first place, it is not clear that anything is even being learned. The process looks less like concept learning than concept construction (Antony, 2001, p. 206)

The situation is even worse when we consider primitive concepts. Since primitive concepts are those that lack constituent structure, and since definitions are supposed to provide structural descriptions of the concepts they define, it would appear that primitive concepts are not definable. Of course, if they are not definable, then, according to the classical account, they are not learnable either (Fodor, 1997, p. 124). This reinforces the observations made above. A subject's PCE is constituted by the closure of his primitive concepts under whatever combinatorial rules he has access to. If primitive concepts cannot be acquired, this means that a subject's PCE cannot be increased, and if this is true, then it will be impossible for us to venture beyond our innately determined conceptual endowment."' It is but a small step from this observation to Fodor's "mad-dog" nativism since if primitive concepts cannot be learned, and if the rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction entails, inter alia, that most of our lexical concepts are without analyses and therefore primitive, it follows that most of our lexical concepts would have to be innate.12 That is, not only concepts like RED, but also concepts like COMPUTER, PROTON, and FUSION would have to be possessed innately. Needless to say, this is a rather surprising consequence.

Many people have taken issue with Fodor's "mad-dog" nativism and have attempted to circumvent it by recon- structing the empiricist's account of concept acquisition. However, it is important to see that EC is actually a weaker thesis than radical nativism. The former could be true even if it should turn out that the analytic/synthetic thesis is sal- vageable, even if it should turn out that many of our concepts are, in fact, definable.




Imagine a relatively rudimentary mind M whose primitive conceptual endowment at t consists of only RED, BLUE, SQUARE, and CIRCLE, and whose only means of constructing complex concepts from these primitives at t is by conjoining them. Assuming that the rule for conjoining primitives into complex concepts is recursive, the PCE of this organism would be infinite, though exceedingly redundant. It would include, not only the primitives themselves, but also RED SQUARE, BLUE CIRCLE, RED-BLUE, SQUARE CIRCLE and much else besides. What it would not include, however, is any concept that is not constructable from its relatively meager conceptual base. Clearly, there are many such concepts - PROTON, MACROCOSM, and COMPUTER are but a few examples. Moreover, if EC is true - if it is, indeed, impossible for a subject to augment its PCE through "concept learning" - these concepts will never be part of M's PCE. That would be a rather significant epistemic limitation.

What's true of rudimentary minds is true of more sophisticated ones as well. In general, a mind incapable of enlarging its PCE would have its conceptual space limited to whatever concepts can be constructed from its innate conceptual endowment, and, as Fodor says, "we have no guarantee that the concepts required to build true science are situated in that space" (1981a, p. 314). In fact, I think Fodor could go even further to claim that it is virtually guaranteed that the concepts required to build true science are not situated in that space. Consider the concepts of any sufficiently advanced science - concepts like ELECTRON, GENE, and PROTEIN. A subject could only have innate possession of these concepts in one of two ways. If concepts of this sort are complex, a subject could have innate access to them by having innate access to their constituents. If, however, these concepts are primitive, this will not be possible, and it will have to be the concepts themselves that are possessed innately. This second possibility, though defended at one time by Fodor himself, is almost universally recognized as being absurd. In general, the only way we have of explaining the existence of complex, seemingly designed biological structures is by way of appeal to natural selection, but,




as Sterelny (1989, p. 122) points out, there is no way that the concepts of advanced science and technology could have been selected for many millennia before they could have conferred any selective advantage upon their possessors. Having access to the concept COMPUTER would not do you any good if your primary concern is surviving in the African savannah. But with the appeal to natural selection taken away, the only explanation that remains is luck, and luck is notoriously unlikely.

What is far more likely is the suggestion of Block (1986) and Sterelny (1989). If the concepts of advanced science and technology are innately encoded in our minds, then it is probably not accurate to say that we got lucky. It is probably more accurate to say that the course of our scientific and techno- logical development was directed along lines pre-established by our psychological biases - that we discovered genes and in- vented computers because we happened to possess concepts like GENE and COMPUTER as part of our innate conceptual endowment. Of course, this means that we would just as surely have been steered away from whatever course required concepts we do not possess innately. So, for every case in which we get lucky by having a QUARK just when we need something to represent quarks, there is, no doubt, another case in which we get unlucky by lacking an X just where we need something to represent xs. This, of course, is just another way of saying that we are conceptually constrained and therefore epistemically bounded.

Having innate access to concepts like GENE and ELEC TRON is rather absurd, but it is less absurd to suppose that it is not the concepts themselves but their constituents that are innate. Thus, we could imagine that ELECTRON, for example, has some rather complex constituent structure along the lines of NEGATIVELY CHARGED SUBATOMIC PARTICLE, and that we possess ELECTRON innately in virtue of possessing its constituents innately. There are, however, a couple of problems with this suggestion. First, definitions are scarce, and since we are supposing that a concept's definition doubles as its structural description, this means that probably very few concepts have a constituent structure. Indeed, the definition of




ELECTRON that we have just proposed is almost certainly incomplete, and any new definition is likely to be done in by further counterexamples. If the history of defining terms in philosophy is any indication, we would probably never discover the necessary and sufficient conditions for being an electron, just as we have never discovered the necessary and sufficient conditions for being good, for being a person, or for knowing that p. In general, it does not appear that very many words have definitions (and, therefore, that very many concepts have a constituent structure), since very few attempts at defining anything - whether in philosophy, linguistics, or anywhere else - have been successful.'3 But this makes it more likely that the concepts of advanced science are primitives, and this takes us right back to the problem of explaining their biological genesis.

The absence of viable definitions is almost beside the point. As Antony points out, finding the constituents of concepts like ELECTRON is only half of the battle; we need also to ensure that the primitive constituents of such concepts are "more plausibly innate than the concepts constructed in terms of them" (2001, p. 208). However, concepts like NEGATIVELY CHARGED and ATOM do not seem to fit the bill. Concepts like HAVING A MASS OF 9.109534 x 10-2' GRAMS, or HAVING A CHARGE OF 1.602 x 10-'9 COULOMBS do not even seem to be moving us in the right direction. They are, if anything, less likely to be innate than the concept they are supposed to be defining. In general, unless we can analyze all of the concepts of advanced science and technology into primitive concepts the possession of which could have conferred some selective advantage onto our prehistoric ancestors, we are stuck in the same boat as before. That is, we will have to accept that the presence of concepts like ELECTRON, GENE and the like in our innate conceptual endowment is just a fortuitous acci- dent, and what with fortuitous accidents being at the mercy of fortune, it is more likely than not that we will be missing many of the concepts we need.

So the stakes are high. Unless we can determine some way in which we can augment our PCEs as a result of experience, we will have to accept that our conceptual capacity is biologically




constrained and therefore incomplete. In what follows, I will show that even if we accept the standard view and agree that definitions express the structural description of the concepts they define, it will still be possible to show that one can augment one's PCE as a result of experience. Ultimately, I will show that this can be done without limit.

4. DEFERENTIAL CONCEPTS: HOW TO GET SOMETHING FOR NOTHING

It is clear that what is causing all of the problems for the tra- ditional account of concept acquisition is its reliance on definitions.14 It is this reliance, together with the standard view that definitions express the structural description of the concepts they define, that licenses EC. What is needed, then, is an account of concept acquisition that does not require the mediation of hypotheses concerning the definition of the concept being acquired. That is just what I hope to provide in this section.

Concept learning is the process that takes a subject from a state in which she does not possess some concept to a state in which she does. This means that before giving an account of concept learning, we require an account of concept possession - the end state of the process. I will follow Fodor in adopting his information-theoretic account of concept possession in terms of which possessing a concept is a matter of being in a certain nomic relation with the property the concept expresses (1998, 121). 15 Information-based semantic theories share a commit- ment to the idea that the basic relation between a symbol and the property it expresses is that of carrying information, and that carrying information is a matter of causal covariance between "symbols ... and things symbolized" (Fodor, 1990b, p. 176). Imagine a madman whose malady is that he is forced to shout out the name of any object he happens to see (he yells "dog" when he sees a dog, "tree" when he sees a tree, and so on). Now imagine that instead of being caused to token expressions in English when encountering objects, he is caused to token expressions in "mentalese." Instead of screaming




"dog" when he sees a dog, he tokens some mental representation DOG, perhaps even unconsciously. Since his mental symbol carries the information that a dog is near in just the same way that smoke carries the information that a fire is near, it possesses at least the rudiments of representation. This is the founding insight of informational semantics.

The phenomena of mislabeling and association in thought indicate that the informational relation cannot be all there is to meaning. Sometimes - on a dark night, say - our DOG-thoughts are caused not by dogs, but by unusually large cats. Sometimes our DOG-thoughts are caused not by dogs or cats, but (because of some associative connection between the two) by thoughts of cats. Even though DOG is caused by dog, cat and CAT-thought, even though it carries the information "dog or cat or thought of cat", it still must represent the property of being a dog, rather than the property of being a cat, or a CAT-thought. This is where subtleties arise in the informational account. Fodor's own suggestion is to introduce the notion of asymmetric dependence. To be precise, in order for some mental symbol M to represent the property P it must be a law that P causes M, and if there is any other law or laws relating a property R to M (where R?P), then the law linking R to M must be asymmetrically dependent upon the law linking P to M (Fodor, 1990a, 1997). So, my DOG symbol represents the property of being a dog because unusually large cats wouldn't make me token DOG but for the fact that dogs make me token DOG, and the converse does not hold. Likewise, the thought CAT sometimes makes me think DOG only because there is an independent connection between the property of being a dog and my DOG-thoughts. Because these asymmetric dependencies hold, there is still a sense in which each DOG-thought is causally dependent upon the property of being a dog, and we are thus able to preserve the idea that symbols represent the items they are causally dependent upon.'6

Since possessing a concept is a matter of being in a certain nomic relation to the property the concept expresses, and since it is totally implausible that the laws in question are basic, some mechanism will be needed to sustain the relation between a




mental symbol and its denotation (Margolis, 1998, p. 352). Moreover, since the relationship between a concept and the experiences that occasion it is, as a rule, non-arbitrary (we tend to acquire the concept F-NESS from the experience of xs that are F), the sustaining mechanism will generally have to be, as Fodor would say, "rational-causal" rather than "brute-causal" (Fodor, 1997, p. 127). That is, concept acquisition will have to be psychologically-mediated, but which psychological states will do the trick?

The information-theoretic account demands that a concept be nomologically locked to the objects that fall within its extension. If a subject has a mental state that covaries with robins and orioles, but not with penguins and ostriches, the subject does not have a mental state that covaries with the property of being a bird, and thus does not possess the concept BIRD. This means that, pace Cowie (I 999, p. 132), entertaining hypotheses concerning a concept's prototype probably will not be sufficient for acquisition since such hypotheses probably will not be sufficient for the establishment of the appropriate nomological relation. Hypotheses concerning the inferential role of a concept do not seem to be in much better shape. Two concepts can have similar (or even identical) inferential roles while nevertheless representing different properties. Worse still, even if there were a way to individuate concepts through their inferential roles, it would probably require links to so many other concepts that we would run the risk of claiming that a subject needs to possess every concept before possessing any. This does not help us in our battle against epistemic boundedness, and it certainly does not constitute much of an alternative to Fodor's "mad-dog" nativism.

We know that hypotheses concerning the definition of the concept being acquired are suitable sustaining mechanisms because the definition of a concept determines its extension (at least relative to a context). This means that a subject can lock to the property a concept expresses merely by virtue of knowing the concept's definition. If my mental symbol BACHELOR is nomically related to the property of being both a man and unmarried, it is, ipso facto, nomically related to the property of




being a bachelor (Cowie, 1999, p. 132). Of course, definitions are of no use to us because we are looking for a case in which acquiring a concept will allow us to increase our PCE, and we already know that the classical view does not allow for this. What we need, then, is some class of sustaining mechanisms that, like definitions, will determine the extension of the concept being learned, but that, unlike definitions, will not require the prior possession of the concept's constituents. In this vein, it is useful to consider Fodor's account of deferential concepts.

Fodor presents the case of the lay botanist who wishes to acquire the concept ELM (1995, pp. 34-38). On the informational account, what he has to do is get his ELM thoughts to covary with the property of being an elm. He could venture into the woods and proceed inductively, but he need not bother. Since there already are properties in the world that covary with the property of being an elm, all he needs to do is adopt a policy of thinking ELM whenever one of these properties signals the presence of an elm. One such signal is the ELM thought of a botanist, but since these are not perceptible, he will have to settle for a botanist's "elm" utterance. So we have the following causal sequence. The property of being an elm causes the expert to token ELM, the expert's tokening of ELM causes him to say "elm", and the expert's "elm" utterance causes our lay botanist to think ELM. Thus, adopting a policy of thinking ELM whenever a botanist says "elm" will bring one into a nomic relation with the property of being an elm. By deferring to an expert, one can borrow the reference of an expert's thought.'7

Reference borrowing seems suspiciously easy, but several features of the informational account make its inclusion unavoidable. If, as Fodor says, "relations of nomic covariance between symbols and their denotations" are all that matter in determining the content of a mental symbol, it would not make any difference how the causal relation between a symbol and its denotation is mediated (I 990a, 56 parentheses omitted). If it is a law that the property of being a star causes a subject to enter the state STAR, and if all other causes of STAR are asymmetrically dependent upon this relation, then the subject's STAR state represents the property of being a star - full stop.




Whenever, wherever and however this relation obtains, representation is established. Thus, it does not matter whether the subject's relation to the property of being a star is mediated by the theory that stars are holes in the heavenly firmament, or by the theory that stars are giant balls of gas. It does not even matter whether the theory sustaining the covariation is someone else's. In informational semantics, mediation does not matter.

Since routes of causal access to a property are semantically irrelevant, informational semantics is non-cognitivist about concept possession (Fodor, 1997, p. 124).18 Unlike the classical view in terms of which possessing a concept means knowing the concept's definition, the information-theoretic account makes no epistemic demands upon the subject whatsoever. There is nothing - no definition, no prototypical structure, no func- tional role - that a subject has to know in order to possess a concept. A subject may become nomologically locked to a property in virtue of entertaining a true theory, a false theory, or no theory at all. This is significant because definitions have traditionally been the favorite epistemic criteria for concept possession. If we give up on epistemic criteria, we will have one less reason for keeping definitions around.

What is perhaps most significant is that the causal and information-bearing relations are transitive.'9 Consider Dre- tske's nice illustration of this point.

The acoustic waves emanating from a radio speaker carry information about what is happening in the broadcast booth because they carry accurate information about what is happening in the audio circuit of the receiver; these events, in turn, carry information about the modulation of the elec- tromagnetic signal arriving at the antenna; and the latter carries information about the manner in which the microphone diaphragm (in the broadcasting studio) is vibrating. The mircophone's behavior, in turn, carries information about what the announcer is saying (1981, 58).

The "acoustic waves emanating from a radio speaker" carry information "about what the announcer is saying" in the studio because the intervening apparatus realizes a suitable sustaining mechanism for modulating variations in the former with variations in the latter. Likewise, the lay botanist's ELM-thoughts




carry the information that an elm is near because his policy of having his thoughts covary with those of an expert realizes a suitable sustaining mechanism for modulating his thoughts with instantiations of the property. If the expert's "elm" utterance carries the information that an elm is near, then anything that is causally dependent upon an expert's "elm" utterance will as well.

Of course, ELM-thoughts that are actually caused by an expert's "elm" utterance will constitute a vanishing minority of the total. In fact, for most of us none of our ELM-thoughts will be caused in this way. This, however, is irrelevant. On Fodor's account, all that matters is that all of the laws linking ELM- thoughts with non-elm causes are asymmetrically dependent upon the law linking such thoughts with the property of being an elm. As long as all of one's actual ELM-thoughts are asymmetrically dependent upon the fact that one would think ELM if one were ever to hear a botanist say "here's an elm", one's thought will have the proper content. Representational relations, like nomic relations generally, depend upon which counterfactuals hold true in a given case (Fodor, 1995, p. 37). It's a law that salt is water-soluble whether or not any sample of salt is ever actually dissolved in water. Likewise, someone who adopts the policy of thinking ELM whenever an expert does represents the property of being an elm whether or not any of his ELM-thoughts are actually caused by the "elm" utterances of a botanist.

Here is the payoff. If, as Fodor suggests, deferential intentions are suitable sustaining mechanisms for laws relating a mental state to the property it represents, adopting a policy to abide by a certain deferential intention will be sufficient for concept acquisition. However, deferential intentions, unlike hypotheses concerning the definition of a concept, do not require the prior possession of the constituents of the concept being learned, and thus falsify EC. Consider the deferential intention involved in ELM acquisition.

DI: I will think ELM whenever a botanist says "elm".

It is true that some rather sophisticated cognitive capacities are required in order to formulate and abide by such an intention,




but it is equally clear that the capacity to entertain the constituents of the concept being acquired is not among them. The fact that the mental symbol ELM occurs in the formulation of such an intention is, admittedly, a little misleading. It makes it seem as though one does, in fact, need to have prior access to the very concept being learned in order to form such an intention, but this is merely an artifact of our presentation. Any mental symbol - ELM, BEECH, or even DOG - that is brought into the appropriate nomic relation with the property of being an elm through the sustaining mechanism provided by a deferential intention will, ipso facto, represent elms. It is the deferential intention that gives the symbol meaning, so its presence in the intention is not as a concept, but merely as an arbitrarily chosen mental symbol. As long as one has access to a pre-existing stock of such symbols, and as long as one has the capacity to adopt policies with regard to one's own thoughts, deferential acquisition will provide us with a case that falsifies EC. If, however, you are uncomfortable with the idea that we have a stock on uninterpreted mental symbols lying around just waiting to be used in the formulation of deferential intentions, read DI as the intention to think CAUSE OF "ELM" UTTERANCE whenever a botanist says "elm". This serves the same purpose as deferential intentions involving ELM, but unlike the latter it makes it perfectly clear that prior possession of the constituents of ELM is not required.

Deferential intentions need not be adopted only with regard to living, breathing experts. If we can treat "experts as instruments", then surely we can treat instruments as instruments (Fodor, 1995, p. 36 italics omitted). Many scientific instruments function by creating an environment in which a law will be instantiated linking a property we cannot detect to a property we can.20 It is too difficult (or too unpleasant) to directly per- ceive the acidity of a solution, so we defer to litmus paper and replace the task of determining whether or not the solution is acidic with the task of determining whether or not the litmus paper turns red (Fodor, 1995, p. 35). Since the redness of the litmus paper is a signal that the solution in which it is sub- merged is acidic, tokening ACID whenever the paper turns red




will cause us to token ACID whenever a solution is acidic. Again, as long as the asymmetrical dependencies hold, this will mean that our ACID thoughts will represent the property of being an acid, and, again, possession of the constituents of ACID is not required.

Like the case of deferring to experts, the case of deferring to scientific instruments is not at all unusual. In general, a scientific instrument is designed to instantiate a law linking a property we cannot detect to a property we can. It is because there are such laws as those relating the height of mercury in a thermometer to the ambient temperature, the image on the lens of a telescope to the visible features of a distant object, the audible signal of a Geiger counter to the presence of radiation, and the path of liquid droplets in a cloud chamber to the presence of some or other ionizing particle that we are able to acquire concepts expressing unobservable properties at all. In each case, representation of an unobservable is made possible by the fact that the scientific instrument allows us to replace the task of locking to an unobservable property with the task of locking to some observable signal of that property.

In general, deferential acquisition is the process of formulating an intention to token a specific mental symbol whenever some observable signal is instantiated. If there is some property S (the tokening of a botanist's "elm" utterance, the redness of litmus paper, the height of mercury in a thermometer, etc.) that functions as a signal of some other property P (elmhood, acidity, temperature, etc.), then in order to represent the property P one need only adopt a policy to have one's thoughts covary with S. Since a signal of P is, by definition, any property that causally covaries with P, it will certainly be coextensive with P. This means that the task of determining the extension of P can be replaced with the indirect task of determining the extension of S, P's signal. Deferential acquisition will thus require the prior possession of all concepts required to determine the extension of S, as well as the ability to represent and adopt policies with regard to one's own thoughts. Acquiring ACID deferentially, for example, will require prior possession of concepts like RED, and LITMUS PAPER. What it would not




require, however, is the prior possession of the constituents of the concepts being acquired. After all, definitions were thought to be necessary only because concept acquisition requires some way of determining the extension of the concept being acquired, and in deferential acquisition that job is done by the nomic connection existing between a property and its signal. So, by co-opting or borrowing the reference of some signal of P one can acquire a concept representing P without formulating hypotheses that contain the constituents of the concept being acquired. This, of course, means that the deferential acquisition of a concept will result in the augmentation of a subject's PCE, and if this is true, EC is not.

Notice that deferential acquisition even provides an account of how one might acquire a primitive concept. Consider the case of a man with red-green colorblindness (or, if you prefer, total colorblindness) who depends on his wife to tell him such things as when to stop at traffic lights, when his tie clashes with his pants, and so on. Let us just suppose that he has no L- or M-cones at all so there would not even be a possibility of him having uncon- scious RED or GREEN thoughts. Clearly, on the information- theoretic account he cannot possess RED or GREEN since he cannot possibly have an internal state covarying with either the property of being red or the property of being green. When we supplement the informational account with Fodor's account of deferential acquisition, however, we see that it is quite simple for this man to acquire RED, which is, by hypothesis, a primitive concept. All he has to do is adopt a policy of bringing his thought into line with his wife's "red" utterances. Since this signal is likely to be nomologically locked to the property of being red, his own thought will be as well. It is true that learning RED in this way will result in having the concept without its associated qualia, but this, of course, makes no difference on the informational account. Routes of causal access, remember, are semantically irrelevant. Of course, since a subject's PCE is defined as the closure of his primitive concepts under the rules of complex concept formation he has available, learning a primitive concept from experience directly results in the augmentation of a subject's PCE. Again, this spells trouble for EC.




If access to the constituents of a concept is not required in order to acquire a concept deferentially, then EC is invalid, and this means that it is possible to augment one's PCE after all. This, in turn, means that our conceptual capacity is not constrained by our innate conceptual endowment, and to the extent that Fodor's argument for epistemic boundedness depends on upon this claim, it too is invalidated. But we were after larger game. We were intending to demonstrate not only that a subject's PCE can be augmented as a result of experience, but that it can augmented without limit. Consider, then, what our account of deferential acquisition has shown. If there is any property F that we are unable to represent directly (and, therefore, any concept C (expressing F) that we are unable to possess directly), we can acquire the ability to represent F (and the concept C) as long as (a) there is a law linking the instantiation of F to the instantiation of some other property G, (b) we can detect G, and (c) we can adopt a policy to bring our thoughts into correspondence with G. Thus, assuming that we are the sorts of creatures for which (c) holds, the only way in which there could be a concept that is beyond our grasp is if there were some property for which (a) and (b) did not hold. That is, there would have to be some property that has no humanly detectable signal - not even when mediated by the best possible scientific instruments, not even in the distant future. If there were such a property, we would be unable to represent it because we would be unable to lock onto it with our unaided perceptual factulties, and because there would be no instrument linking the undetectable property to some detectable signal. Thus, we would be unable to acquire it either classically or deferentially. Notice, however, that this limitation has nothing to do with our endogenous psychological constitution, but rather with the absence of the appropriate instrument instanti- ating the appropriate law. That is, what is defective is not us but the world. It is the world that is missing the appropriate law, the appropriate instrument. This is obvious, because if there were such a law, if there were such an instrument, we would be able to acquire the concept and our limitation would disappear. This, I submit, is the mark of an exogenous rather




than an endogenous limitation, and Fodor's argument was only that our conceptual capacity is endogenously constrained.

Note what we have shown. Any mind that (a) is capable of adopting policies with regard to its own thoughts, (b) has some pre-existing stock of mental symbols on hand to adopt policies with regard to, and (c) has the capacity to fashion instruments that will bring a detectable signal into nomic relation with an undetectable property, will be without endogenous psychological constraints. I suppose it is an empirical issue whether or not our minds fit this description. Indeed, Fodor once argued that we are not able to adopt policies with regard to our thoughts, only with regard to our words (Fodor, 1991, p. 285-286).21 Perhaps this is true. Perhaps it is also true that we do not have access to some preexisting stock of mental symbols that we are capable of calling upon in deferential acquisition. These are all empirical issues, but the claim behind Fodor's argument for epistemic boundedness, you will remember, was not empirical. Fodor defended AP on conceptual grounds. He argued that the existence of psychological structure is inconsistent with the universality of thought, and therefore that the idea of an epistemically unbounded mind is "virtually incoherent" (1983, 121). But we have just shown that any mind that satisfies conditions (a)-(c) will be without endogenous constraints and therefore (probably) epistemically unbounded. Moreover, (a), (b), and (c) express structural features that a mind must have in order to be without endogenous constraints on its conceptual capacity. That is, it is not despite, but because of its psychological organization that such a mind is unbounded. In other words, AP is false.

Objections

Here are a few objections to my argument, in order of increasing severity.

Objection 1. One might object that my argument does not actually constitute a rebuttal of Fodor's because though we have shown that it is possible to have a mental state with any content whatsoever, this does not constitute a demonstration of




the claim that it is possible to possess any concept whatsoever. Concepts, as Fodor points out (1990a, p. 114), are individuated by their modes of presentation - that is, syntactically. Thus, on the information-theoretic account, H20 and WATER have the same content, but this does not entail that they are the same concept. The former is obviously complex (its constituents include HYDROGEN and OXYGEN), but the latter might not be. So, acquiring the ability to represent H20 by deferring to a chemist's "H20" utterance will allow one to acquire a concept with the same content, but not necessarily the same concept. What is more, since concepts are individuated by their constituent structure, one cannot have the concept H20 unless one possesses its constituents - HYDROGEN and OXYGEN. But if concepts are individuated by their constituent structure, then one must have the constituents of a concept in order to possess the concept, and if this is true, then it looks like we cannot augment our PCE after all.

Reply. It is true that concepts have to be individuated by their constituent structure since we need a way of explaining why synonymous concepts (like H20 and WATER) have different computational roles, and since computational role su- pervenes on syntax. However, this only shows that what matters in arguments concerning epistemic unboundedness is representational capacity rather than conceptual capacity strictly construed. Let us admit that acquiring the ability to represent H20 by deferring to the chemist does not actually result in one having the concept H20, but rather some other concept with the same content - WATER, say. From an epistemic point of view, this does not seem to make any difference. As long as each property can be represented, and as long as the relations between properties can be represented as well, the net effect will be the same. It does not matter to the chemist whether it is true by definition that water contains hydrogen, or merely as a result of physical necessity. Either way it is true, and necessarily so.

Objection 2. We want it to be the case the when we establish a nomic connection between our thoughts and a signal of some property it is the property that we are representing rather than




the signal. However, when we adopt a policy to think QUARK whenever Murray Gell-Mann says "quark" (or whenever our quark detector flashes red, or whatever) our thought covaries with the verbal utterance as well as with the property. How, then, can we be sure that our QUARK thoughts represent the property of being a quark rather than the property of being a quark utterance (or a flashing red signal, or whatever)?

Reply. Fortunately, Fodor has already responded to a similar objection directed against his semantics, and I think much of what he says in his response can be applied to our own case. Consider the following objection to the informational theory of content. According to this theory the thought COW represents cows because it is a law that cows cause COW tokens. How- ever, it is also a law that retinal projections of cows cause COW tokens, so why does not COW represent retinal projections of cows instead of real live cows? Fodor's reply is that given since "cows are mapped one-many onto their proximal projections, the mechanisms of perception... must map the proximal projections many-one onto tokenings of COW" (1990a, 109). A head on view, a bird's eye view, a view from below, from a distance, from any number of different angles and in any number of different lighting conditions all eventuate in the tokening of COW. When we include all of those tokenings that are mediated by theory, such as when a "mere ripple in cow- infested waters" causes us to token COW, it is clear that the only way of specifying all of the different proximal projections cows can have upon our retinas will be by means of an open disjunction (Fodor, 1990a, p. 109). In other words, there is nothing that all of the retinal projections of cows have in common other than the fact that they are caused by cows. Assuming, with Fodor, that open disjunctions are not the sort of things that can figure into nomic relations, the only law controlling COW tokenings will be the one that relates these tokenings to actual cows. Thus, only actual cows will determine the content of COW.

Fodor's solution to the problem of retinal projections forces us to add the following stipulation. We can acquire a concept deferentially only if our deferential intention is locked to a




number of different signals of the property the concept expresses. Thus, if we were to think QUARK when and only when we detected a Gell-Mann-"quark"-utterenace, the content of our thought would be, at the very least, indeterminate. It might represent the property of being a quark or it might represent the property of being a "quark" utterance. If, however, our QUARK thoughts were controlled not merely by "quark" utterances, but also by a number of different signals, then, as in the COW case, the only thing that would be common to all of the signals controlling our QUARK thoughts would be that they are all caused by quarks. After all, quark detectors can come in any number of different varieties (quarks could have been called "schmarks"), and that means that our connection to the property could be mediated by any number of distinct and heterogenous signals. If this were true, then the only law in the offing would be the one connecting the property of being a quark to the property of being a QUARK thought, and everything would be as it should be. That this is true in actual cases of deferential acquisition should be pretty clear. If your radio telescope beeps when and only when your optical telescope signals the image of a galaxy, there is pretty good evidence that the image and the beep have the same cause. So it is the robustness of deferential intentions that allow our thoughts to go beyond a signal in order to represent its underlying cause.

Objection 3.22 Let us assume that Fodor's theory gives us an account of representation. It does not follow that his account is therefore a theory of concepts and concept possession. After all, representation is cheap - thermometers and thermostats represent the temperature, but we would not say, on that basis, that they therefore have the concept TEMPERATURE, or 20 ?C, or whatever. Concepts are not simply representational states, they are representational states that occur as constituents of propositional attitudes. Propositional attitudes, in turn, are computational relations to syntactically structured internal representations. So unless a representational state enters into the appropriate computational relations with other representations - those defined by a satisfactory decision theory,




and a satisfactory theory of inference - they do not count as concepts (Fodor, 1990a, p. 130). A computationally isolated representational state is no more a concept than is the height of mercury in a thermometer. As Fodor says, it might turn out that "the intentional is a big superset of the psychological" and if this is the case, the mere demonstration that we are capable of representing any property falls short of what is needed in order to establish epistemic unboundedness (1990a, 130). Epistemic unboundedness is a thesis about the beliefs we can and cannot have, so unless the representational states acquired by means of deferring to experts and scientific instruments can be shown to figure into the computational states definitive of belief, they will be irrelevant to arguments concerning unboundedness.

Reply. Though I suppose it is technically an empirical issue, I see no reason why a mental state that is brought into covariance with some property through deferential acquisition could not also occur as a constituent of propositional attitudes like belief. After all, the way one acquires a deferential concept is by adopting an intention to think some thought whenever a given signal is detected, and intentions are surely propositional attitudes. Perhaps it is best to consider a case that is as close to real life as possible, so let us return to the example of the color- blind man who defers to his wife's color judgments. It is clear, at least, that his color concepts can play the appropriate computational role in his mental economy. If his wife tells him that the traffic light is red, he will likely stop his car, but in order for this to happen his deferentially acquired RED concept has got to enter into the appropriate computational relations with the rest of his beliefs and desires. It is only because he believes that running reds is against the law, and desires not to break the law that he decides to bring his car to a stop in front of the light. Indeed, we have been speaking of concept acquisition, but the content of the man's deferentially acquired RED thought is really closer to that of a belief. If he thinks RED whenever his wife says "red" and if his wife says "red" whenever the redness is locally instantiated, then his RED thought actually carries the information that redness is locally instantiated. So it would




appear that what is acquired in "concept acquisition" really has the content of a belief - it has the force of an assertion - and this makes it easier to suppose that it would enter into the computational relations characteristic of belief.

Objection 4. If we accept that concepts can be acquired deferentially in the ways that have been described, there are some rather absurd consequences. One may, for example, acquire the concept ELM without knowing anything about what elms are. As long as one adopts the policy of having one's ELM thoughts depend upon the ELM thoughts of an expert, one need not know anything specific about the properties of elms. One need not know that elms are a type of tree, a type of living thing, or even a type of physical thing. But what would such a concept be? What would one's concept represent the elm as being if it does not represent it as being a tree, a living thing, or even a physical object?

Reply.23 I am afraid this consequence really does follow from my argument, but this is only because it follows from any information-based semantic theory. As was said earlier, information based semantic theories are non-cognitivist - they make no epistemic demands upon a subject whatsoever. This means, inter alia, that there is nothing a subject has to believe, no inferences he has to accept, in order to possess the concept ELM - or any other concept, for that matter (Fodor, 1995, p. 37). As we have said, all that is required is that the appropriate nomic relation obtain between a concept and the property it expresses. As long as this relation obtains, the subject possesses the concept. If an informational semanticist is asked what ex- actly one's deferentially acquired concept of, say, an elm is,24 he can only give the Wittgensteinian reply. Of that which we cannot speak, we must remain silent.

NOTES

' The image of the colored glass is from the discussion of Aquinas in Geach (1961). See also Fodor (1983, 125 footnote 42).




2 Of course, Fodor is echoing Marx's emendation of Hegel. Marx said that everything in history occurs twice, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

3 This phrase, due to Loewer and Rey (1991), is shorthand for the complex causal relationship existing between a mental state and the property it represents. I will be filling in some of the details later. 4 I have cobbled this argument together from various places. See Fodor

(1975, Chapter 2; 198 la, pp. 314-315; 1983, pp. 120-126). For what appears to be a more extreme argument for boundedness, see (Fodor 1997, Chapter 6) in which Fodor argues that many of what we take to be mind-independent properties like being a doorknob are in fact mind-dependent. 5 See also (Fodor, 1975, p. 37) and (Fodor, 1981a, pp. 268-269) for

roughly equivalent treatments of non-demonstrative and inductive inference.

6 This account of non-demonstrative inference is basically an abridged version of Rey's (1997, pp. 214-216). See also Thagard (1988).

7 I will follow Fodor by using expressions in caps to refer to concepts and sentences in the language of thought. I will use italics to refer to properties and expressions in inverted commas to refer to expressions in natural language. Thus CAT refers to the concept, cat to the property, and "cat" to the word. Sometimes, for ease of presentation, I will use expressions in natural language to indicate expressions in "mentalese" when the context makes clear what is intended.

8 See Fodor (1981a, p. 277) and (1981a, p. 314) where he employs a concept similar to the notion of an organism's PCE-namely, the idea of a ''space of concepts available-in-principle.' 9 See Fodor (1975, Chapter 2); (1981a, p. 277, 314; 1983, p. 125).

10 See also Quine (1980, pp. 20-21) in which Kant's description of ana- lyticity is somewhat unfairly described as "metaphorical." " Strictly speaking, a subject may be able to increase his PCE if he is able to acquire new means of constructing complex concepts from primitives. Fodor (1980) provides arguments similar to those concerning concepts for why this is not possible. In order to learn a new rule of formation one needs to entertain hypotheses with the same expressive power as the rule one is learning. This, of course, means that one must have access to the rule prior to learning it. 1 2 See Block's (1986) account of what he call's "Fodor's Paradox." "Fodor's Paradox" is the argument that most of our lexical concepts must be innate and differs from the argument for the endogenous conceptual limitations only in that it adds the premise that there is no analytic/synthetic distinction. 13 For a few polemics against definitions, see Fodor, et al. (1980) as well as Fodor (1981 a, 1997).




14 Indeed, most people who object to Fodor's nativistic conclusions do so by rejecting the thesis that the acquisition of concepts is mediated by hypotheses concerning the definition of the concept being learned. See, for example, Block (1986), Sterelny (1989), Margolis (1998), and Cowie (1999). 15 See Fodor (1987, 1990a, 1997) for an elaboration of this view. Fodor defends the information-theoretic view only for concepts that express properties, and is comfortable with the idea that the logical terms derive their meaning from the causal role they occupy in the minds of their possessors (1990a, 111). There is also some indication that he would endorse a causal-chain theory of proper names (Cain, 2002 p.1 16). Since concepts that express properties are the most relevant to Fodor's argument for epistemic boundedness, I will be focusing on these. 16 To be sure, there are problems that remain even after the notion of aymmetric dependence is introduced. See, for example Adams and Aizawa (1994), as well as Fodor's replies to objections in Fodor (1990a, 1991). 17 The term "reference-borrowing" is due to Devitt (1981). 18 See also Fodor (1995, pp. 37-38). 19 The transitivity of the information-carrying relation, no doubt, derives from the transitivity of causal relations, and perhaps even from what Fodor refers to as the "fairly-transitive" reliably causally covaries with relation (Fodor, 1987, p. 119). If Fodor is right about the transitivity of the "is lawfully connected to" relation, then the transitivity of the information- carrying relation follows directly from the former, and there is no need to independently stipulate Dretske's so-called "Xerox principle" (Dretske, 1981, pp. 57-58). 20 See Fodor's information-theoretic treatment of concepts expressing unobservable properties in Fodor (1987). 21 Fodor argues this in reply to Loar (1991). 22 This objection is inspired by Fodor (1990a, p. 130). 23 See Fodor (1995, pp. 37-38) where this reply is made to a similar sort of objection. 24 See Fodor (1995, p. 37) where this sort of question is considered and rejected.

REFERENCES

Adams, F. and Aizawa, K. (1994): 'Fodorian Semantics', in Warfield and Stich (eds.), Mental Representation, Cambridge: Blackwell, pp. 223-242.

Antony, L.M. (2001): 'Empty Heads', Mind and Language 16(2), 193-214. Aristotle. (1941): 'De Anima', J.A. Smith (trans.), in McKeon (ed.), The

Basic Works of Aristotle, New York: Random House, pp. 535-603.




Block, N. (1986): 'Advertisement for a Semantics for Psychology', in French, Uehling and Wettstein (eds.), Studies in the Philosophy of Mind, vol. 10, Midwest Studies in Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Min- nesota Press.

Cain, M.J. (2002): Fodor: Language, Mind and Philosophy, Cambridge: Polity.

Cowie, F. (1999): What's Within?, New York: Oxford University Press. Devitt, M. (1981): Designation, New York: Columbia University Press. Dretske, F. (1981): Knowledge and the Flow of Information, Cambridge:

MIT. Fodor, J.A. (1975): The Language of Thought, New York: Cowell. Fodor, J.A. (1980): 'On the Impossibility of Acquiring "More Powerful"

Structures', in M. Piattelli-Palmarini (ed.), Language and Learning: The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Fodor, J.A. (1981a): 'The Present Status of the Innateness Controversy', in Representations, Cambridge: MIT, pp. 257-316.

Fodor, J.A. (1981b): 'Propositional Attitudes', in Representations, Cam- bridge: MIT, pp. 177-203.

Fodor, J.A. (1983): The Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psy- chology, Cambridge: MIT.

Fodor, J.A. (1987): Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Phi- losophy of Mind, Cambridge: MIT.

Fodor, J.A. (1990a): A Theory of Content and Other Essays, Cambridge: MIT.

Fodor, J.A. (1990b): 'Information and Representation', in Hanson (ed.), Information, Language and Cognition, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, pp. 175-197.

Fodor, J.A. (1991): 'Replies', in Loewer and Rey (eds.), Meaning and Mind: Fodor and his Critics, Cambridge: Blackwell, pp. 255-319.

Fodor, J.A. (1995): The Elm and the Expert: Mentalese and its Semantics, Cambridge: MIT.

Fodor, J.A. (1997): Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, New York: Oxford.

Fodor, J.A., Garrett, M.F., Walker, E.C.T., and Parkes, C.H. (1980): 'Against Definitions', Cognition 8, 263-367.

Geach, P.T. (1961): 'Aquinas', in G. Anscombe and P. Geach, Three Phi- losophers, Ithica: Cornell.

Kant, I. (1965): Critique of Pure Reason, Kemp-Smith (trans.), New York: St. Martin's.

Kant, I. (1974): Logic, R.S. Hartman and W. Schwarz (trans.), New York: Dover.




Loar, B. (1991): 'Can We Explain Intentionality?', in Loewer and Rey (eds.), Meaning and Mind. Fodor and His Critics, Cambridge: Blackwell, pp. 119- 135.

Loewer, B. and Rey, G. (1991): 'Editor's Introduction', in Loewer and Rey (eds.), Meaning and Mind. Fodor and His Critics Cambridge: Blackwell, pp. xi-xxxvii.

Margolis, E. (1998): 'How to Acquire a Concept', Mind and Language 13(3), 347-369.

Pitt, D. (1999): 'In Defense of Definitions', Philosphical Psychology 12(2), 139-1 56.

Quine, W.V.O. (1980): 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism', in From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge: Harvard, pp. 20-46.

Rey, G. (1997): Contemporary Philosophy of Mind. A Contentiously Clas- sical Approach, Cambridge: Blackwell.

Sterelny, K. (1989): 'Fodor's Nativism', Philosophical Studies 55, 119-141. Thagard, P. (1988): Computational Philosophy of Science, Cambridge: MIT.

Department of Philosophy Georgetown University 37th and 0 Streets, NW Washigton, DC 20007 USA



Epistemic Boundedness and the Universality of Thought

Documents

Transcript of Epistemic Boundedness and the Universality of Thought