Hilary Putnam’s ‘Why Reason Can’t Be Naturalised’

i) Quine's Sheer Epistemological Eliminationism

ii) Sensory Stimulations, Beliefs, and the Normative

iii) Truth, Reference and Causal Processes

iv) Alvin Goldman's Reliabilism

Quine's Sheer Epistemological Eliminationism

Hilary Putnam’s position on W.V.O. Quine’s epistemological naturalism was very strong. He called Quine's position "sheer epistemological eliminationism". Putnam stated that Quine was arguing that

"we should just abandon the notions of justification, good reason, warranted assertion, etc., and reconstrue the notion of 'evidence' (so that the 'evidence' becomes the sensory stimulations that cause us to have the scientific beliefs we have)".

That's because Putnam believed that “justification, good reason, warranted assertion”, etc. are normative notions and (as we're often told) “Quine wanted to abandon the normative”. Whether or not Quine really did want to abandon all these notions, the very possibility of abandoning them seems extreme (at least in epistemology or even science). What would we have left? Well, for Putnam’s Quine, we would have “evidence” – or evidence which is reconstrued to be "the sensory stimulations that cause us to have the scientific beliefs we have".

Sensory Stimulations, Beliefs and the Normative

We only have evidence in the form of beliefs, not in the form of sensory stimulations - at least according to Donald Davidson. And if we're dealing with the beliefs of other subjects, then we're also dealing with the normative – primarily with attributions and assumptions of rationality on behalf of these subjects.

So whereas Putnam was saying that Quine wanted to abandon the normative in his project of naturalised epistemology, Davidson and Jaegwon Kim claimed that Quine couldn't have done this even if he had wanted to. Of course if sensory stimulations were so free of the normative (or even if they do actually exist as Quine saw them), then talk of sensory stimulations providing “input” - and the assertions they cause being seen as “output” - would be a purely descriptive - not a normative - epistemology (which is what Putnam claimed Quine really wanted).

Truth, Reference and Causal Processes

Putnam went further than this. His basic argument was that if Quine abandoned the normative, then it followed that he must also have abandoned - or given up on - “truth”. Rather than saying (as many philosophers do) that notions of justification, rational acceptability, warranted assertibility, right assertibility, etc. are alternatives to truth, Putnam argued that they all assume or/and rely on the notion of truth from the very start.

For example, the justification (or warranted assertibility) of p is relative to the truth of p. That is my first take on Putnam’s position. However, Putnam himself explained the Quinian implicit rejection of truth in this way. He argued that

"the notions the naturalistic metaphysician uses to explain truth and reference, for example the notion of causality (explanation) and the notion of the appropriate type of causal chain depend on notions which presuppose the notion of reasonableness".

Causality and reference don’t – at first - seem like normative notions or indeed normative things. However, to put it simply, there is an indefinite number of causal processes out there in the world. More particularly, there are also an indefinite number of causal processes which could (or which may) account for our theories of truth and reference. And that’s where the normative angle comes in. The causal theorist of truth (or reference) has to decide (or choose) what the “appropriate type of causal chain” is. The world - or its causal processes - won't choose these things for him. Thus he requires the normative notion of reasonableness. That is, what type of causal process would it be reasonable to select in our accounts of truth and reference? What are the important and relevant causal processes to this act of reference or this account of truth?

Here too the predicates “important” and “relevant” are normative in nature. To put this in Davidson’s way: causation “is not itself explanatory”. Causation is neither evidence for - nor an explanation of - anything. In Davidson’s terms again, beliefs fulfil these roles. And as already stated, beliefs can't help but have a normative component.

Alvin Goldman's Reliabilism

These arguments against Quine’s naturalism can be applied to a more specific approach – or alternative – to the normative notion of justification.

Take Alvin Goldman’s reliabilism. As Putnam puts Goldman’s position:

"… instead of saying that a belief is justified if it is arrived at by a reliable method, none might say that the notion of justification should be replaced by the notion of a verdict’s being the product of a reliable method."

Here again we can say that normative factors will be involved in our assessments of what actually is an example of a reliable process (or a reliable method). Indeed the very choice of reliability as an epistemic virtue will itself have required normative choices and constraints. More specifically, the “replacement” of justification with reliability must involve (or must have involved) normative decisions and judgments as to the value of reliability - or reliable processes - in the epistemological project...

For example, why reliable methods (or processes) rather than the methods (or processes) of clairvoyance? Is it because clairvoyance isn't a reliable process (or method)? Wouldn’t that be a circular justification (whether virtuous or vicious)? Even after reliabilism has been chosen as a tool of epistemology, normative decisions and judgements will still be required and used by the reliabilist.

Jaegwon Kim’s ‘What is Naturalised Epistemology?’ (1988)

The primary criticism of Quine’s naturalisation of epistemology project is that he was attempting to abandon the normative component of epistemology entirely. Many epistemologists would say that this approach is a wrong move in itself. Jaegwon Kim argues that it's not even possible without giving up on epistemology itself.

Kim actually sees Quine’s ‘evidence’ - or anyone else’s for that matter - as justification or justificatory in nature. Something works as evidence because it effectively justifies a theory or whatnot. Not only that: there will be normative factors which determine want counts to us as evidence (as well as why things don't count as evidence). There may also be normative factors or judgments which have led us to find what we now take to be evidence. 

For example, not accepting anything a mad scientist takes to be evidence for X to actually be evidence for X.

Quine himself often talks about evidence in his naturalisation project, yet Kim argues that

"evidence itself is a normative concept, distinct from and irreducible to the naturalistic concepts employed in science, e.g., the concepts of stimulation, causation, law, etc". (289)

Ordinarily one wouldn't really think of such a scientific predicate as ‘evidence’ as being a ‘normative concept’. So what does Kim mean by this? Firstly, he used the word ‘evidence’ is this context:

"Traditional epistemology asks what makes certain states, certain experiences and beliefs, evidence for other beliefs." (289)

This isn't very helpful because Kim tells us how the concept [evidence] was used in traditional epistemology; though he doesn’t tell us what traditional epistemologists, or what he, means by 'evidence' and why it is indeed a normative notion. He seems to be talking not about the relation of beliefs, ‘certain experiences’ and their relations to the world; but the relation of beliefs and experiences and their relations to ‘other beliefs’. Thus it is, perhaps, an internalist account. It's also logical in that Kim is referring to the evidential or logical ‘links’ between beliefs and beliefs - not between beliefs and the world. That is, the world itself can't be taken as evidence. Beliefs themselves must be taken as evidence. And beliefs have a normative dimension.

This is also Donald Davidson’s position in that he argues that the world - or an aspect of the world - doesn't provide evidence for a belief: only another belief can do that job. This seems to be both a holist argument and an argument against Quine’s position on what he calls ‘sensory stimulations’ (amongst other things).

In any case, according to Kim, ‘empirical psychology’ doesn't offer us anything about these logical or evidential relations between beliefs and beliefs; but only between our ‘meagre input’ (i.e. Quine’s sensory stimulations) and our ‘torrential output’ (i.e. our assertions or beliefs). Another way of putting all this is to say that the naturalised-epistemology approach (or the empirical-psychology approach) is purely descriptive in nature in that it tells us what goes in (the head) and then correlates it with what comes out (of the mouth). Though if it only does that, then it tells us nothing about ‘what confers positive epistemic value’ (289). That is, why is this evidence for that belief and is it good evidence? Not: X goes in and Y comes out.

I mentioned Davidson a moment ago and his stress on beliefs rather than on sensory stimulations and suchlike. Kim himself offers a

"Davidsonian argument for the claim that Quine is not even entitled to speak of naturalised epistemology as investigating the ancestry of beliefs". (289)

Presumably this is because Quine would talk in terms of sensory stimulations being the ancestors (as it were) of beliefs. Though, as I've just said, Davidson argues that only other beliefs can be the ancestors of yet further beliefs. Not only that: if we see beliefs - rather than (mere) sensory stimulations - as being primary in the epistemological project, then

"the identification of beliefs is possible only on the assumption that one’s subjects are rational, where rationality here is normative and includes epistemic rationality". (289)

That is, one must employ Davidson’s ‘principle of charity’ when analysing the beliefs of one’s subjects. And if we do that, we must assume that our subjects are - at least to a degree - rational. Rationality (or being rational), according to Davidson, is a normative notion because we must choose what constitutes rationality in that there's no purely scientific answer as to what rationality is. And the very assumption of a subject’s rationality is itself a normative move because he may well be mad. If the subject were mad, he wouldn't be the subject of an epistemological enquiry and perhaps wouldn't even be a person in the first place.

So various normative factors are creeping into the epistemological project all along the line. Even talk of ‘sensory input’, ‘sensory stimulations’ and ‘causal mechanisms’ between assertions and what the assertions are about can't erase the normative from the picture, at least according to Davidson and Kim.

Kim goes further than all this.

It's a simple fact, to Kim, that all epistemic properties are normative properties. So if naturalised epistemology gets rid of the normative, it also gets rid of epistemology. Thus naturalised epistemology mustn't be, well, epistemology at all.

Perhaps this is no surprise because Quine himself says that epistemology is a ‘branch of psychology’, which is itself ‘a book in science’. However, if epistemic properties are normative properties, and normative properties are supervenient (as Kim states), then epistemic properties must supervene on "certain non-epistemic, ultimately non-normative, properties" (289). So Kim’s position is far from being, say, Cartesian or internalist in nature and one may also say that it's also - to some degree at least - naturalistic in that epistemic properties must supervene on what is naturalistically kosher. However, this is also a question of whether or not supervenience itself (or its acceptance) is naturalistically acceptable. 

Modes of Presentation of Mental/Brain Events?

It seems hard to accept that to Donald Davidson "talk about minds" is just an "idiom" or "mode of portrayal". One is tempted to think that there must be more to it than that. That is, then, that minds are different from brains; it's not only that we use different modes of portrayal for what is essentially the same thing.

Can we even say that mind-talk is a ‘mode of presentation’ and brain-talk or physical-talk is a mode of presentation of the same thing? What thing? The mind or the brain?

We can also say that the words ‘brain’ and ‘mind’ have different ‘senses’; though the same ‘referent’. What is that shared referent - mind or brain?

Surely we can't capture the mental events as they are described as physical events according to "strict and deterministic physical laws". Even if they are physical, the difficulty would be correlating them with specific mental events such as the perception of a red ball or saying ‘There’s a red ball’. The physical aspects of the brain can easily be determined in principle. What can't be done is to capture the correlations between specific mental events and specific physical events or brain-events. That is, if the physical correlations of mental events are in any way specific rather than holist, ‘distributed’ or even externalist!

The brain-events are law-governed. The mental events are norm-governed. What's the difference, then, between norms and laws? Norms are human creations. Laws are not. Norms are accountable to features such as the agent’s general - and supposed - rationality and conformity to epistemic principles. Thus a background of detail is required to interpret mental events which includes the normative.

Of course if the mental is intentional, then it has a feature - that of aboutness - that nothing physical, qua the physical, has. Mental events must take into consideration what they're about or other semantic features. Brain-events, on the other hand, aren't about anything. They have no semantic features whatsoever. It's precisely because ‘intentional psychology’ is intentional - or has aboutness - that it's classed as ‘folk psychology’ and not real psychology or genuine science. Real or genuine science doesn't concern itself with aboutness or semantics. That's why, essentially, the eliminativists what to eliminate intentional psychology because of its semantic commitments. That's why they want to eliminate folk psychology.

Richard Rorty, for example, once endorsed this ‘dual-aspect theory’:

"… Rorty’s view that ‘neuronal states’ and ‘mental states’ are names from two vocabularies for talking about the same items." (266)

Can two things that are so unlike really be the same thing? Is it really just about "two vocabularies for talking about the same items" (266)? Or is it really two vocabularies for talking about different items? Perhaps there's another reason for the different vocabularies – that the two sets of items are actually not the same thing.

Questions About Consciousness

The simple point about consciousness (or conscious experience) is that everything that happens in the brain could happen without consciousness. That is, why is consciousness added on top of all those physical- or brain- processes because the organism itself, it can be argued, could function, to some degree at least, without consciousness. David Chalmers writes:

"If all we knew about were the facts of physics, and even the facts about dynamics and information processing in complex systems, there would be no compelling reason to postulate the existence of conscious experience. If it were not for our direct evidence in the first-person case, the hypothesis would seem unwarranted…" (David Chalmers, 1996: 4-5)

Consciousness can't be inferred or deduced from "the facts of physics, and even the facts about dynamics and information processing in complex systems". If anything, consciousness must emerge from the facts of physics, etc.

Why does it do so?

How does it do so?

The way that David Chalmers actually puts it is as if consciousness (or conscious experience) is simply not needed – it adds nothing to the organism except, well, conscious experience. Isn’t the mind or consciousness used to help us survive and get us around the world? Surely this is obviously the case. Unless there's a behaviourist or functionalist argument which states that we would act the same - that is, respond to inputs or stimuli - even without consciousness.

That can’t be correct because we reason about input and stimuli; whereas the lower animals, computers and machines do not. Reason is part of mind and indeed of consciousness. Mind or reason may still respond to input or stimuli; though it needn't respond with fixed output – at least not in the same way every time as is the case with the lower animals and computers or machines.

Chalmers say that "there would be no compelling reason to postulate the existence of consciousness experience" over above the physical facts. Who would be doing the postulating anyway? A conscious mind. Who would be asking these questions about the need to postulate consciousness? A conscious mind. We can hardly talk about "our direct evidence in the first-person case" for consciousness because it can hardly function as evidence if our minds or consciousness has never even been in doubt. You can't use something that is beyond doubt as evidence. At least it wouldn't be like everyday scientific evidence; just as one doesn't count anything as ‘evidence’ for the truth of 2 + 2 = 4. Talk of evidence doesn’t seem to the point in this specific context.

Jerry Fodor puts all the above in an even more rudimentary way:

"Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious. So much for the philosophy of consciousness." (Fodor, 1992)

Is this bald statement similar to how we once thought of the conundrum of how the organic (or the living) could arise from the inorganic or, as it were, the dead?

Perhaps it's also like the emergence of water’s liquidity from H2 O molecules or even light from a stream of photons. Perhaps there are a thousand cases of emergence - if the liquidity of water is emergence - in the world. The difference is that it is we who are conscious. So consciousness is something that's extra-special to us because we are conscious creatures. And consciousness, or mind, accounts for all these questions in the first place!

Perhaps Fodor’s questions (or rhetorical questions) are bogus questions.
 
Is something’s being conscious simply a causal question as to what causes consciousness? Or is Fodor asking us how matter causes consciousness? Perhaps the real question is why matter sometimes causes consciousness. Though why do H2 O molecules cause water or water’s liquidity? What do we mean by ‘why’ here? Is there even an answer to these kinds of why-question? What would an answer be like? Could there even be an answer? Can every question be answered? If we ask a question, does that mean that it can be answered or that there must be an answer? Perhaps, again, some why-questions are simply meaningless or bogus. Try to imagine what the answer would, or could, be like when we ask how matter can cause consciousness. Perhaps that's why, as Fodor puts it, no one "even what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious". That's because there may not be an answer because the very question itself is bogus or meaningless; just as question ‘Why is water H2 0?’ or ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ or ‘Why is gravity this rather than that?’ can be deemed to be meaningless.

'It's logically possible that...'

We hear a lot about logical possibility - as in "it is logically possible that…" - in contemporary analytic philosophy. For example, David Chalmers says that it's logically possible that, zombies could exist. What do these claims amount to? Do they amount to much and should we be put out by them? Bertrand Russell thinks not:

"No logical absurdity results from the hypothesis that the world consists of nothing but myself… and that everything else is mere fancy. But although this is not logically impossible, there is no reason whatever to suppose that it is true; and it is, in fact, a less simple hypothesis, viewed as a means of accounting for the facts of our own life, than the commonsense hypothesis that there really are objects independent of us, whose action on us causes our sensations." (Russell, 1912:22.)

When I wake up, it's logically possible that I'm still asleep. When I wake up, instead, it's logically possible that all my family are now dead. When I move over to the tap, it's logically possible that poison - not water - could come out of it. If it is water, it's logically possible that I could choke on the water. Then I look out of the window. It's logically possible that the town I see it a simulation of what I saw the day before. And so on.

I could think of ten logical possibilities before each breakfast.

But what is the point, even from a philosophical perspective?

Perhaps there's a big difference between the merely possible and the logically possible.

It's the logically possible that excites the sceptics and philosophers like Chalmers. Should I conclude - from all these logical possibilities - in the same way as Russell above? Should I say that "although [they are] not logically impossible, there is no reason whatever to suppose that [they are] true"?

Put simply. Something that's logically possible still may not be true. Indeed something that's logically possible probably won’t be true – won’t be the case. So why contemplate the logical possibility at all - even philosophically? Where will it get me?

Russell’s next point is that the logically possible hypothesis is (often?) "less simple" than the everyday one. He writes that "it is, in fact, a less simple hypothesis, viewed as a means of accounting for the facts of our own life". In my examples, this means that it's a less simple hypothesis to believe that I'm currently dreaming. It's a less simple hypothesis to assume that all my family is now dead. It's a less simple hypothesis to assume that poison will now come out of my tap rather than water. It's a less simple hypothesis to assume that my window-view is a mere simulation of the facts.

However, perhaps it doesn't really matter if my everyday hypothesis - if it is a hypothesis - is simpler than the logical possibility. Simplicity may not equal truth. A logical possibility may not automatically equal a falsehood. Perhaps the simplicity or complexity of each hypothesis simply doesn't matter to that hypothesis’s truth or falsehood. Perhaps simplicity is only psychologically appealing – and that’s it.

This is interesting because simplicity - or the simplicity of theories or hypotheses - is given a lot of credence in science – or so many philosophers of science have told us.

Russell, however, thinks that the simplest explanation is the "best". Thus:

"We can then ask: what is the best explanation of these experiences? Russell answers that the simplest explanation is the best; and the simplest explanation is the commonsense explanation. So we know that there is an external world because we seem to experience an external world; and the best explanation of our seeming to experience it, is that we really do experience it. Russell’s argument is an instance of the form of argument known as abduction, or inference to the best explanation." (Chappell, 79)

Again, why is the simplest explanation seen as the best? Is there a necessary - or logical - relation between simplicity and truth? Certainly many philosophers and scientists have thought so. Why? Because simplicity is more aesthetically appealing? In that case, what is the logical - or necessary - relation between aesthetic appeal and truth?

The example of "the best explanation of our seeming to experience the external world, it that we really do experience it" (79) doesn't really seem like an explanation at all. It certainly doesn't seem like a philosophical explanation; let alone a justification of one’s belief that the external world really exists! The fact that I seem to be rich doesn’t make me rich. I seem to experience goblins when drunk; though that doesn’t mean that they exist. Indeed if I seem to experience goblins when sober, why should I assume that goblins really exist and not, instead, explain my experience in some other way? So, again, why is the simplest explanation the best explanation?

In addition, when we make an abductive inference, is it necessarily the case that it must be the simplest inference or explanation? That is: does 

abduction = inference to the best explanation? 

They're indeed often connected; though are they synonymous? Chappell gives his own example of why the simplest explanation may not be the true explanation:

"Suppose sixteen very similar murders occur in one city in one month. On the facts we have, the best (and simplest) explanation of the murders might well be that the murders were all committed by the same criminal. It obviously doesn’t follow that this explanation is true: there will be many facts that we are not explaining by this hypothesis, because we don’t know them." (80)

For example, eight of the murders might have been carried out by a "copycat killer" – or even fifteen of them. Perhaps two killers are working in conjunction. Perhaps because all the killings were done with a handgun, that may have something to do with the fact that a thousand handguns were found and sold in the city to a thousand people. Thus that’s why all the killings were handgun killings, not because they were all committed by the same person. 

Perhaps the fact that all the deaths were similar may turn out to be a false in the end. Someone who died of poisoning might in fact have gone on a mushroom hunt the day before.

What do we mean by "similar" as in "similar murders"? For example, aren’t many murders similar to each other anyway? For example, in New York I would guess that 90% of killings are done with handguns of some description. So all these murders will be similar. It doesn’t follow that they were all done by the same person. If there were no guns, perhaps most murders would be strangulations. Again, not every case of strangulation would then point to the same suspect.

Despite all these possible explanations, it's still the case that an inference to the best explanation may be, well, the best explanation:

"Inference to the best explanation is obviously a useful intellectual strategy, perhaps an indispensable one." (80)

Indeed the simplest explanation of every murder in every city in the last ten years would be that the same man committed all of them – all 100,000 of them! Actually, perhaps that wouldn’t be a simple explanation because we would need to explain how he found the time and the skill to kill 100,000 people! We could settle on the simple hypothesis that all these murders were carried out by the same gang. Surely that would be a simple hypothesis.

The problem with using inference to the best explanation as "a useful intellectual strategy" (80) - in these examples at least - is that innocent people may be convicted of murder simply because their committing the murders is the simplest explanation on offer. That doesn’t - or wouldn’t - mean that they actually did commit the murders! However, the simplest explanation may be useful in the sense that if this weren't an "intellectual strategy",  the detective - or indeed anyone in any walk of like - may be overburdened with data. Some of that data would of course be irrelevant or bogus. 

The problem, of course, is deciding which facts or data are irrelevant or bogus. Perhaps some complex pieces of data - or some complex facts - aren't irrelevant or bogus. Perhaps they're really explanatory or even true. Still, a detective - or anyone else - can't have all the facts. And even all the facts he knows can't be thoroughly accounted for. We need to select what we think is relevant. Perhaps the way to do this is to select the simple facts - or explanations - of the matter at hand.