Private Facts?

 

I’m not sure that everyone does "assume that all the facts in the world are equally accessible to standard, objective, third-person tests (Searle, 497)". This is a peculiarly scientific account of fact or facts. That's not to say, however, that this account is not all-pervasive and even common; though it is still largely scientific in origin and nature. We do see some things that aren't susceptible to "objective, third-person tests" as factual.

For example, if you formulate a mental image of Tony Blair in your mind, surely that imaginative act and the mental image itself have a factual status. If not to me, then to you. Surely it is a fact if one formulates a mental image of Tony Blair no matter how private and first-person it is. Something happened. And the mental image of Tony Blair is something. If these things aren't factual, then what are they?

We can accept the stipulatory account of the word or concept [fact] and say that facts must be objective and susceptible to third-person tests. However, we can just as easily reject that stipulation and provide our own. Or we can adopt Wittgenstein’s Tractatus view of facts in which all facts must be worldly or part of the world. With this too we can either reject or accept it. So it depends on what we mean by ‘fact’ in the end.

For example, one definition is "the worldly correlate of a true proposition" or "that which makes a true proposition true". Can a mental image be a "worldly correlate"? Is a pain a part of the world? These things surely must be parts of the world – unless the mental is a ‘third realm’, as in Karl Popper. It's easier to accept that a mental image or pain can be that which makes a true proposition true.

However, even this version of fact is problematic for mental items. Then, if something is truly first person or private, how can it be factual? Surely what is factual needs some kind of communal or third-person agreement. Is that same kind of thing true of knowledge and even of truth?

Take non-mental private though first-person facts. Jim can say that he's a millionaire. He can say it is a fact; though he refuses to prove it in any way or show us what he has bought with his money. He may well be a millionaire. Why should anyone else think that he is? And if no one else has a reason for thinking him a millionaire, how can it really be a fact? However, perhaps he really is a millionaire and he's just playing with us, as it were. Would it even be factual in this case? He either has or doesn't have a million pounds. If he has a million pounds. Then it is a fact that he has a million pounds. It's a fact that only one person knows about and it's not even a mental ‘fact’. It does seem to be private, at least in a looser sense. Unless, again, it is a definitional point that facts must acquire, as it were, objective or third-person status. In that case, it is not (yet) a fact that Jim is a millionaire, which seems odd. It's odd even if he has not spent a penny of it and simply keeps it all under his bed. Whether or not he spends it, it is still a million pounds. And if it is still a million pounds, he is a millionaire. Thus it is a fact that Jim is a millionaire?

De Re & De Dicto Modality

[I wasn't able to use the symbol for the necessity operator in this piece.]

The x in ∃x occurs free in the scope of necessarily in ∃Fx therefore the statement is de re. On the other hand, no variable or constant is free in the scope of necessarily in the formula necessarily ∃x Fx, therefore it is a de dicto statement. [The logical symbolism in the above doesn't make sense. This needs to be revised.] So the de re statement reads:

There is at least one x, such as that x is necessarily F.

The de dicto statement reads:

Necessarily there is at least one x, such that that x is F.

The de re statement ascribes a necessary property to an object. Whereas the de dicto statement ascribes necessity to the formula itself. That is, necessarily at least one object is F. The de dicto statement is saying that there is necessarily at least one x such as that x is F. Whereas the de re statement says that there is at least one object (though not necessarily one object), such that the object is necessarily F. In the former case, the necessity operator works on the object, whereas in the latter case the operator works on a property of the object.

In terms of possible worlds, the de re statement says that all x’s have the property F at all possible worlds. And if a = x, then a has the property F at all possible worlds.

The de dicto statement, on the other hand, says that there is at least one x such that this x is F. However, x's aren’t necessarily F at all possible worlds. So x, or an x, on the de dicto reading, need not be F in all possible worlds.

Quine on De Re Modality

‘9 = the number of planets’ in Quine’s scheme because he was an extensionalist. That is, he didn’t believe in possible worlds. However, he didn't accept that that the number of planets necessarily is more than 7 because the number of planets does not necessarily equal 9. But if we don’t except that the definite description equals 9 because of possible world scenarios, then we have no “clear meaning” what the description ‘the number of planets’ refers to. It could be 10 in possible world w1 and 1000000 at another possible world. In fact if possible worlds are infinite in number, ‘the number of planets’ could equal any number. If this is the case, then the definite description ‘the number of planets’ quite evidently “lacks a clear meaning”. So the number of planets can either have no de re meaning or it has a different meaning at every possible world.

Quine must accept, and I think he did accept, Necessarily (9 > 7). Though, according to Marcus, the description ‘the number of planets’ can't be a proper name precisely because it designates different numbers at different possible worlds. However, the name ‘Tony Blair’ does indeed designate the same object at all possible worlds. Though what, precisely, does that mean? It doesn’t mean that Tony Blair is called ‘Tony Blair’ at all possible worlds. It does mean that our name ‘Tony Blair’ designates the object Tony Blair at all possible worlds, whether or not Tony Blair is actually called ‘Tony Blair’ at all these possible worlds.

Kripke’s necessary a posteriori means:

If a and b are identical, then necessarily a = b at all possible worlds.

No mention of actual names is mentioned here. The a and b designate objects, not names. So the person Tony Blair could be named ‘Frank Parsons’ at one possible world, just as Cicero was also named ‘Tully’ at our world. Therefore Tony Blair couldn't be two different entities at different worlds; though he could have two or more different names at other possible worlds.

De Re & De Dicto Modality

The first de dicto statement means that part of the concept [British monarch] includes or contains the concept [head of the British government]. Of course it could be the other way around. That is, the concept [head of the British government] contains or includes the concept [British monarch]. We could say that one is more of a definite description than the other. However, [British monarch] is still descriptive in that different individuals could fulfil that role at different possible worlds.

The de re reading applies an essential or necessary property to a res – to a person. It could be read this way: Ma necessarily ∃Ba. Here the necessity operator is applied to the person who is a British monarch. It says that if this is the case, then he or she must be head of the British government.

In the de dicto reading, the necessity operator is placed differently. Here we have: necessarily (Ma necessarily Ba) ¸  (Ba necessarily Ma) ˆ (Ma ≡ Ba). Here the necessity operator has as its scope the whole statement, including all the constituent concepts or predicates. It reads:

Necessarily, if a is M, then a is B and necessarily if a is B then a is M. Therefore a is M if and only if a is B.

It could be said that the biconditional in and of itself entails necessity.

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.