Frank Jackson’s ‘Epiphenomenal Qualia’ (1982)

i) Introduction

ii) The Modal Argument Against Physicalism

iii) What is it like...?

iv) The Bogey of Epiphenomenalism

Firstly, Frank Jackson introduces us to Fred. Fred can see two colours in a given area; whereas we can see only one. The problem is that he's unsuccessful when it comes to teaching the rest of us the difference between red-1 and red-2. We can't make that distinction. Fred, therefore, concludes that “the rest of the world is red-1/red-2 colour-blind”. The point is that Fred has a different phenomenal experience to the rest of us. He has the “ability” to distinguish two shades of red which we can't distinguish.

Jackson concludes that it won't help us to understand the difference between red-1 and red-2 even if we were to know everything there is to know, physically, about both red-1 and red-2. There must therefore be a phenomenal gap between the physical and either red-1 or red-2 (perhaps both). Either one or both must run free (as it were) of any physical underpinning.

Despite all that, researchers do find a physical explanation as to why Fred can distinguish between red-1 and red-2. In this hypothetical situation we

“find out that Fred’s cones respond differentially to certain light waves in the red section of the spectrum that make no difference to ours (or perhaps he has an extra cone) and that this leads in Fred to a wider range of those brain states responsible for visual discriminatory behaviour”.

Yes, you guessed it, this imaginary state of physical affairs doesn't have the slightest impact on Jackson’s argument. It's indeed the case that red-2 has its own physical underpinning. It's also the case that we have full physical knowledge as to why Fred can distinguish between red-1 and red-2; though we still can't distinguish red-1 from red-2. We still can't read-off the extra colour from the new physical information we've acquired of Fred’s brain, eyes, etc. And nor can we infer or deduce what red-2 is like from these physical facts. There's still a gap between our knowledge of the physical and our knowledge (or lack of knowledge) of the phenomenal (i.e., if we can call phenomenal knowledge, knowledge at all).

The Modal Argument Against Physicalism

Jackson then brings on board a modal argument; as well as giving attention to the possibility of zombies. In fact the zombie possibility starts off with a logical argument - or at least with a statement about the limits of logical entailment.

Mary may well have all the physical information about red (or about red’s physical underpinnings). Similarly, we may have all the physical information about what seems to be another person. Jackson argues that

“no amount of physical information about another logically entails that he or she is conscious or feels anything at all”.

This is an incredible conclusion. It's not only about the possibility of zombies: it also applies to all our fellow human beings. Perhaps it's a new take on the “problem of other minds” in that Jackson argues that a complete physical picture won't tell us whether or not another being is conscious or feels anything at all. As with other-minds arguments, we inductively infer that other people have minds and feel pain because of their behaviour and what they say (although verbal expressions are a form of behaviour). Though, again, we can't say that behaviour alone logically entails consciousness or pain. However, we have good reasons to believe that other people do suffer pain, etc. (though that’s another story). In the case of zombies, we can say that a zombie is physically and behaviourally identical to us, yet he won't be conscious and he won't feel pain. More technically, he may have the same “functional states” too. Jackson concludes by asking us a very telling and simple question:

“But then what is it that we have and they lack?”

Of course he answers his own question thus:

“Not anything physical…”

Jackson's self-questioning concludes with the statement that “[c]onsequently there is more to us than the purely physical”. Thus: “Thus Physicalism is false.”

As it stands, this seems to assume that the phenomenal - by definition - must be nonphysical. Many philosophers reject this. Indeed, according to certain physicalists (such as David Lewis), they do think that the phenomenal is something over and above the physical – or, at the least, above the physical as we currently describe it. (The point, however, is that we can't have new knowledge of an experience of red, etc.) Jackson tells us that certain philosophers

“sincerely deny that there cannot be physical replicas of us in other possible worlds which nevertheless lack consciousness”.

Perhaps we can say here that such beings couldn't exist according to the physical laws of our world. Aren’t philosophers usually talking to us about the possibility of zombies in our world? Or, at the least, about zombies at a possible world which still nevertheless shares our laws of nature? However, isn’t it logically possible that zombies could exist not only at other possible worlds; but also in our own? Isn't this scenario metaphysically possible?

What is it like to be...?

Thomas Nagel offered us something very special to this general debate when he published his paper, ‘What is it like to be a Bat?’. Very generally, S can't tell us what it is like “from a bat’s point of view”. The bat’s point of view is “not our point of view”. In addition, the bat’s point of view

“is not something captureable in physical terms which are essentially terms understandable equally from many points of view”.

David Hume (according to Jackson) offered an argument that goes against the general position (at this time). Hume argued that

“from knowledge of some shades of blue we can work out what it would be like to see other shades of blue”.

So did Hume believe that we could deduce (or infer) what a new shade of blue is like simply by studying the physical basis of the given shades of blue? Or did Hume mean that we could work out a new shade of blue from the shades of blue we've already seen (i.e., not from the physical substructure of our known shades of blue)? These two claims are quite different.

For example, we could work out the physical substructure of another shade of blue by examining it. Though we still couldn't imagine another shade of blue. As for inferring another shade of blue simply from our previous experiences of known shades of blue: this is equally contestable and probably untrue. Indeed both hypotheses seem untrue, at least prima facie.

The Bogey of Epiphenomenalism

Jackson now introduces epiphenomenalism into the debate.

What is epiphenomenalism?

Well, for a start, epiphenomenalists don't deny qualia. However, they do

“countenance the idea that qualia are causally impotent with respect to the physical world”.

Again, believers in epiphenomenalism don't necessarily deny that there are qualia. Instead they believe (or some of them do) that it's “possible to hold that certain properties of certain mental states” can indeed be seen as qualia. However, “their possession or absence makes no difference to the physical world”. They are "causally impotent".

Perhaps, however, an epiphenomenalist can accept that the

“instantiation of qualia makes a difference to other mental states though not to anything physical”.

One can immediately ask here whether or not it's coherent to deny qualia causal efficacy at the same time as allowing that they may well make a difference to other mental states (regardless of their effect on anything purely physical).

There are good reasons for holding that qualia are indeed causally inefficacious.

For example, “a quale like the hurtfulness of pain must be causally efficacious in the physical world”. A pain is a phenomenal process that can cause us, for example, to remove our hand from a fire. This is a causal relation (or link) between phenomenal pain and the physical movement of a hand. Surely this causal link is real. However, there's a Humean argument against believing this which makes use of a general position which is taken from Hume’s well-known stance on causality. Jackson writes:

"No matter how often B follows A, and no matter how initially obvious the causality of the connection seems, the hypothesis that A causes B can be overturned by an overarching theory which shows the two as distinct effects of a common underlying causal process.”

We can rewrite the passage above by making it germane to our current debate. Thus:

No matter how often the removing of one’s hands follows one's experience of intense heat, and no matter how initially obvious the causality of that connection seems, the hypothesis that the intense heat causes the removal of one's hand can be overturned by an overarching theory which shows the two as distinct effects of a common underlying causal process.

In that case, what would that common underlying causal process actually be? Why augment entities at all by positing yet another causal process to account for the feeling of heat and the removal of the hand? The epiphenomenalist argument would of course be that instead of the feeling of intense heat being itself a cause of the moving of the hand, there will be a causal process which subserves the feeling of intense heat. It would be that underlying cause that prompts the sudden movement of the hand. The feeling of pain (or the quale) simply “rides on the top” of this so far undiscovered underlying causal process.

So why the quale or the feeling at all? What point does it serve? Why not simply do without it? Why not give a fully physical and behaviourist account of what happens? And if there is such an account, then what point is pain from an evolutionary point of view? Jackson alights on this last point. He asks:

“We may assume that qualia evolved over time… and so we should expect qualia to be conducive to survival. The objection is that they could hardly help us to survive if they do nothing to the physical world.”

The assumption here is that everything about the human body and mind has its evolutionary value in the precise sense that it helps us survive in some shape or form. This is wrong... according to Darwinians.

Take the well-known case of a coat being both warm and heavy, which Jackson cites. A warm coat was clearly once conducive to survival for all kinds of animal (including human beings). The problem is that warm coats are also heavy coats. The coat’s heaviness was not conducive to survival (for obvious reasons). However, this example of both pro and con is adequately explained by evolutionists and indeed by Jackson. He writes:

“Having a heavy coat is an unavoidable concomitant of having a warm coat… and the advantages for survival of having a warm coat outweighed the disadvantages of having a heavy one.”

What has this to do with the qualia debate? The epiphenomenalist argues that qualia

“are a by-product of certain brain processes that are highly conducive to survival”.

As is often the case in many debates in the philosophy of mind, the problem of other minds also raises its head. In terms of qualia, we can ask the following question:

“[H]ow can a person’s behaviour provide any reason for believing he has qualia like mine, or indeed any qualia at all, unless this behaviour can be regarded as the outcome of the qualia?”

Clearly another person’s physical behaviour doesn't point directly - or even indirectly - to the existence of qualia (like or unlike our own). So what's the point of qualia? Even if that question was answered a moment ago, can’t we still see this lack of behavioural evidence for qualia - as well as their very existence - as pointing us to the conclusion that behaviour must indeed be the outcome of qualia? Clearly an epiphenomenalist can't accept this conclusion.

Jackson then reiterates the basic epiphenomenalist position on qualia. He writes:

“Now the epiphenomenalist allows that qualia are effects of what goes on in the brain. Qualia cause nothing physical but are caused by something physical.”

We know this position by now. However, the epiphenomenalist can still give a physical or behaviourist account of qualia. He does so in the following way:

“Hence the epiphenomenalist can argue from the behaviour of others to the qualia of others by arguing from the behaviour of others back to its causes in the brains of others and out again to their qualia.”

The epiphenomenalist has already accepted qualia and he gives a physical account of them. Thus if the epiphenomenalist accepts that he indeed has qualia, he must make sense of this in terms of the behaviour of other people. If other people behave like him, and he admits to his own qualia, then he can happily accept that because others behave like him, then they (probably?) also have their own qualia. And because he's already argued that qualia are caused by the brain, then the brains of other people must cause their qualia too. Thus qualia are given a physical or behaviourist explanation, even if qualia are still seen as being inefficacious physically.

Many, if not all, epiphenomenalists argue that the supposed causal impotence of qualia is a godsend for die-hard (neo) dualists. They merely “sooth” their “intuitions”. The fact remains, however, that they are an "excrescence":

“They do nothing, they explain nothing…”

At least they do nothing and explain nothing if one accepts the general epiphenomenalist position; which many philosophers of mind don't!

We talked earlier about the relevance of evolutionary theory on the qualia debate.

So what about an evolutionary account of our knowledge - or lack thereof - in regards to the reality of qualia? Perhaps our lack of knowledge of qualia can also be explained in evolutionary terms. Jackson states that

“it is very likely that there is a part of the whole scheme of things, maybe a big part, which no amount of evolution will ever bring us near to knowledge about or understanding of”.

The simple reason for this is that “such knowledge and understanding is irrelevant to survival”. This may account for this epistemological dearth on our part. Similarly, it's been argued (by, for example, Donald Davidson) that certain false beliefs are quite helpful for survival in certain contexts! In addition, Jackson’s position is a little like Colin McGinn’s in that he talks in terms of “cognitive closure”. That is, we are (or we may be) cognitively incapable of acquiring a complete knowledge of consciousness (or of qualia).

Perhaps McGinn’s own position can also be given an evolutionary explanation.

References

Jackson, Frank. (1982) 'Epiphenomenal Qualia'.

-- (1986) 'What Mary Didn't Know'.

McGinn, Colin. (1989) 'Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?'.

Frank Jackson on What Mary Didn’t Know

i) Introduction

ii) Knowledge?

iii) Knowledge By Description & Knowledge by Acquaintance

iv) Mary's New Abilities

v) Knowing How & Knowing That

vi) Conclusion

************************

Mary “doesn't know what it's like to see red”. This argument has nothing to do with imagination (or Mary’s inability to imagine red). As Frank Jackson puts it: “Powers of imagination are not to the point”. This is about Mary’s knowledge (or lack thereof), not her imagination. More precisely, “she would not know” what it's like to experience red. More to the point,

“if physicalism is true, she would know; and no great powers of imagination would be called for”.

Knowledge?

The first response to this is to ask what Jackson meant by the word “knowledge” (or by the words “knowledge of red”). This seems like an odd use of the word “know”. How would Mary (or anyone else for that matter) know what red is like? What is the epistemology of knowing red? Even if Mary could sense red: could she also know red (or what red is)? Could she (or anyone else) be wrong about what is or isn't red (i.e., without inter-communal responses)?

Is Jackson’s conclusion correct? That is:

i) If physicalism is true

ii) then Mary would know what red is.

Firstly, Jackson argues that given Mary’s “fantastic grasp of neurophysiology and everything else physical” she couldn't thereby work out the last phenomenal part of red “by making some more purely logical inferences”. Mary can't, then, infer the phenomenal from the purely physical - no matter how complete and exact her physical knowledge is.

Knowledge By Description & Knowledge By Acquaintance

Jackson then makes a distinction which has often been made in various areas of philosophy: the distinction between “knowledge by description” and “knowledge by acquaintance”. Presumably Mary had knowledge by description before she was let out of her black-and-white room. After she was let out, then she had knowledge by acquaintance. In other words, her previous complete descriptions of red weren't enough. On freeing, she also became acquainted with red (not only with red’s physical “supervenience base”, as Jaegwon Kim puts it).

Does this also mean that phenomenal red literally can't be described? This is a position which has been long accepted by many philosophers. That's why colours (or “colour words”) are taught (so the argument goes) purely by ostension – by the teacher pointing to something red and then saying to the student, “This is red.” However, if red is (in effect) purely phenomenal, and taught by ostension, then how can Mary (or anyone else) have knowledge of red?

Mary Acquired New Abilities, Not New Knowledge

I've questioned Jackson’s use of the notion of knowledge. So too does David Lewis and Laurence Nemirow. They do so by distinguishing knowing (or learning) that something is red from acquiring “a certain representational or imaginative ability”. How can the sudden new experience of red (outside the black-and-white room) be a knowledge of red? How does Mary learn something new? She experiences something new; though she doesn't learn something new or acquire new knowledge.

However, something new does happen to Mary. As stated, she acquires a certain representational or imaginative ability. Presumably that ability is to recognise red on further occasions (or to distinguish red from other colours). Though how would she know that it's red unless someone else tells her that's the case? This would be especially relevant if Mary's new experience of red was sudden and had no direct connection to her previous examinations of red’s physical micro-structure. Outside the room she would see something new; though how would she know that it's red? Indeed how would she have known that it was a colour of any description?

Knowing How & Knowing That

Earlier I commented on Jackson’s use of the knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance distinction. Now he brings in the “knowing how” and the “knowing that” distinction (as used by David Lewis).

Mary now knows how to recognise red. She has that “ability”. Does she know that it's red? Not if, as argued, she has no new knowledge of red at all. And even with such knowledge, she would still require third-person help (as it were) to tell her that the red wall outside is indeed red.

We can join up the two oppositions here:

knowledge by acquaintance - knowledge how

knowledge by description - knowledge that

However, according to this discussion, neither knowledge by acquaintance nor knowing how are, in fact, examples of knowledge (strictly speaking). Only knowledge by description and knowing that are true examples of knowledge. Alternatively, perhaps we can't have one without the other. That is:

i) We can't have knowledge how without knowledge that. Or,ii) We can't have knowledge that without knowledge how.

Mary needs knowledge that red is red before she can learn how to distinguish red from other colours. Alternatively, she must know something in order to know that it's a colour or that she has had a new experience outside her room. To know that red is red, she must know what red looks like. How does this work for the other distinction? Thus:

i) We can't have knowledge by acquaintance without knowledge by description. Or,

ii) We can't have knowledge by description without knowledge by acquaintance.

This works in a similar way to the above - and for similar reasons. How do we know we're acquainted with something (an x) without the help of some form of description? How do we know we're now acquainted with red without some kind of ostensive definition (or some other kind of help)? We may know that we're acquainted with something new; though not that it's red or even that it's a colour of any kind. Alternatively, red can't be described to us in order to give us knowledge that without our also being acquainted in some way with phenomenal red. Without being acquainted with something, we wouldn’t know what it is that's being described.

Yet what if both distinctions are false disjunctures between ostensibly two alternatives? Perhaps this is like Ned Block’s distinction between “phenomenal consciousness” and “access consciousness”. The difference here is that Block admits that in this case you may not be able to have the one without the other. Nevertheless, this shouldn't stop us making the distinction because it's still, after all, an acceptable distinction.

Conclusion

The important conclusion to all this is that

“a physicalist can admit that Mary acquires something very significant of a knowledge kind – which can hardly be denied – without admitting that this shows that her earlier factual knowledge is defective”.

Physicalists aren't, then, denying that extra little something. They only deny the increase in Mary’s knowledge. Thus it's strange that Jackson (at least at this point in his career) still insisted in using the word “knowledge” - suitably reduced to his “of a knowledge kind”. What did he mean by that? A kind of knowledge is still an example of knowledge, isn’t it?

Thus perhaps all this depends on what Jackson and physicalists mean by the word “knowledge”!

References

Block, Ned, 'On a Confusion About a Function of Consciousness' (1995)

Jackson, Frank, 'What Mary Didn't Know' (1986)

Lewis, David, 'What Experience Teaches' (1990).

A Wittgensteinian Fragment on Solipsism and the Self

According to Wittgenstein, the solipsist is contradicting himself when he says, "Only what I see exists." That's because the I/self itself isn't seen in experience. Therefore, like the rest of the things he doesn't see, he has no right to talk about the I/self at all.

As Quine also said, if we have no “criterion of identity” for an object, then we should deny that object any (official) existence. Thus the I/self has no criterion of identity and therefore it should be thrown overboard.

The solipsist doesn't exist by his own standards because the I isn't seen, only the things that the I sees are seen. Thus the subject is indeed “a vanishing point” (Tractatus). There's nothing to see, hear, or smell; but that which the I itself sees, hears and smells. Thus perhaps we should write the I/self in quotation marks because it can be taken as a word without a referent or designation.

What is a person? 

Is it something over and above (to use David Pears' words) “the subject which is living this mental life” or “the subject which is having these visual impressions”? Surely some thing needs to have a mental life or have visual impressions. Or do we just intuitively presume that there needs to be a subject of a mental life or a subject of visual impressions?

Instead of the word 'person', we now meet the word 'subject'; which doesn't seem identical. A subject is a subject of something whereas a person needn't be the subject of something. (At least this is the case on certain readings of the concept [person].)

What is a subject? 

Subjects in subject-predicate expressions are the subjects of predication. Can we predicate anything of the subject? We can predicate experiences or cognitive operations of the subject. For example, when I say "The rose is red", I'm predicating an attribute (or property) of the rose. However, experiences or cognitive operations aren't the same kind of predicate as “red”. These are things the subject does or carries out. The rose, on the other hand, doesn't do red, carry out red or experience red. (This is like saying “John works on the farm” rather than “John is tall”.) Do we have predicates of the latter kind which can be predicated of the subject? We can say what the subject does or what the subject experiences; though can we attribute properties to the subject? It's these kinds of criteria of identity that are missing from the subject. No; the subject has no intrinsic identity-conditions. However, if the subject has vanished, then how can it be the subject of experiences or of cognitive operations? Something must surely experience things and carry out cognitive operations.

Self-Reflexivity and Self-Identity

The notion of reflexivity (i.e., to self-referentiality) or, the more closely related notion, self-reflexivity.

We can start off by saying that a reflexive relation is something that certain things can have to themselves. Or, alternatively, literally everything has the reflexive relation of self-identity .(If this is a genuine relation, or, indeed, a genuine property.) Stones are seen, by some, to be self-identical; though they are seen by no one as being self-reflexive. The self-identity reflexive relation (though not the self-reflexive relation) is something everything has to itself.

The self-identity reflexive relation or property, for example, is sometimes called a “strongly reflexive” relation. A “weakly reflective” relation is, on the other hand, sometimes stated as “everything has it to itself that has it to anything”.

We can have beliefs about our beliefs, thoughts about our thoughts, and so on.

A thought about a thought is not self-referential or self-reflexive. It's not the thought itself that refers to or thinks about itself (or even the content of the thought that does so): it's the person who has the thought who thinks about his own thought. The thinker himself is self-reflexive, not the thought itself. The thought is not self-referentially related to itself either. It’s just that the thought itself is thought about. Again, it's the owner of the thought (so to speak) who is self-reflexive (about his thought). The thought (or thoughts) about the thought can therefore be called second-order thoughts. Again, the base thought (as it were) is neither self-referential nor self-reflexive. A thought could, of course, be self-referential; or at least its content could be. However, I don’t think that the thought (or a thought itself) can ever be self-reflexive. The possible self-referentiality of a thought’s content would not also be an example of self-reflexivity.

There is an example of self-reflexivity which is more closely related to examples of self-referentiality.

Once example is what takes place when the self/person analyses the (same) self/person. That is, when the subject and object of self-analysis can be said to be one and the same thing – i.e., the self that analyses is the (same) self that is analysed. Thus, in the light of what we've said about self-referential statements, we can now ask:

Can the self/person both have thoughts (about himself) and also be the object/subject of these thoughts?

This wouldn’t be like the putative property self-identity which was referred to in the last paragraph. (In which it was said that all objects are said, by some, to have the property of being identical to themselves.) There is no such strict identity when it comes to the self/person and the self’s thoughts about itself. On a traditional reading, thoughts about the self come and go; whereas the self’s substance stays put. Thus, on this reading at least, thoughts about the self are not identical to the self itself. And even if we don’t believe in selves as bare particulars, the thoughts about the self would still not be identical to the self the thoughts are about. This would even be the case if part of the self (at a particular point in time) included those thoughts about the self (that has such thoughts). In this instance, particular thoughts about the self can’t be identical to the self taken as a totality at any given time. There may, however, be a partial identity (at least if we accept the bundle theory of the self); though not complete identity (which is the case if we accept the property - or relation – self-identity).

To give a taster of self-reflexivity or possible self-referentiality, here are a few points that put obstacles in the way of such states.

We can ask:

How can a human subject take himself to be the subject of study; as Descartes famously claimed he did when sitting next to his fire?

Perhaps we can never actually get to the essence (or totality or complete truth) of ourselves because it's precisely the same self that's trying to get to the essence, etc. of itself. It is, therefore, attempting to be both subject and object. (In a Cartesian manner, if we can’t discover our own “true essence of mind”, how can we even begin to discover the true nature of external reality?) According to many philosophers, it's a Cartesian myth that we can objectively “perceive” our own minds or states of consciousness. It's not a fact, then, that the mind (or the items within it) are “transparent” to the self-analysing mind itself. Perhaps we can never get to every item or working within our own minds. Perhaps we can't, specifically, recognise that it has been “conditioned” to, say, believe certain things or see particular things in certain ways. To put it bluntly, if it's the self that is analysing the (same) self (or the self that's analysing itself), then the “unseen” conditionings, workings, non-transparent items, etc., of the self (as object) would also be the conditionings, workings, non-transparent items, etc. of the self that's doing the (self) analysis. It could therefore only be a self which is split into two (quite literally) which could be both subject and object at one and the same time. Though then we can simply say that after such a split we will no longer be talking about two selves, encamped within the same mind-brain: not one self that's split in two. And if that were the case, then there would be no authentic self-reflexivity and certainly no self-referentiality.

Proper Names and Individuation (3)

“… the role of the general term is to identify the referents – not to identify the ‘kind of identity’ asserted.” (John Perry, 1970)

The first kind of identification referred to above is simply a matter of ostension: of pointing (which may include a Kripkean ‘naming-baptism’); whereas the other kind of identification is dependent on the “kind of identity”. Michael Dummett expresses the first kind of identification thus:

“A bare knowledge of the reference of the name a will consist…in knowing, of some object, that a refers to it, where this is a complete characterisation of this particular piece of knowledge.” [Dummett, 1991]

Dummett argues against this distinction. He says:

“…there cannot be a proper name whose whole sense consists in its having a certain object as referent, without the sense determining that object as referent in some particular way.” [Dummett, 1973]

Dummett must think that the name, say, ‘Tony Blair’ is a de facto rigid designator: a designator that denotes via the mediation of some concept or description. A de jure designation, on the other hand, is an ‘unmediated’ reference. That is, a rigid de jure designator denotes what it denotes without the mediation by some concept or description.

Can we have basic naming (or the “identification of referents”) without the latter kind of identification? What is at the ostended point? Doesn’t individuation (therefore sometimes the identification of kinds) come before the basic kind of Kripkean naming and identification? Wouldn't this be an epistemological question, rather than an ontological one? It would be a question about our knowledge of an object, rather than (the reality) of the object. It may still be the case (in conformity with Kripke) that we can only know an object to be the object it is through its ontological essence. Here again we see a philosopher making the same distinction:

“Kripke did make a feasible distinction between a description giving the content of a name and merely fixing its referent.” [Jason Stanley, 1997]

According to Marcus,

“the causal theory of names elaborated by Kripke and others. Proper names, unlike definite descriptions, can be used by speakers to refer to objects without mediation of ‘concepts’ or descriptive clusters. They can be used to capture and institutionalise an act of ostension.” [Marcus, 1978]

My argument is that without individuation we can't have ostension. We need to bring along with us the concepts that will help us individuate a given spatial region or physical mass. The concepts don't come from that spatial region or physical mass itself, otherwise we would have concepts that wouldn't necessarily belong to the object within that spatial region or physical mass. Therefore an act of ostension does require conceptual mediation. How would we know when one object ends and another object begins? How would we distinguish an object as an object at all?

The traditional problem was that if referents depended on concepts (or ‘descriptive clusters’), then each person would bring along his own concepts (or descriptive clusters). It was supposed to follow from this that a reference couldn't rely on a single concept or a single descriptive cluster. The referent would therefore be lost amongst rival - or simply different - conceptual contents of names.

Why was it thought that if the reference couldn't rely on specific concepts that it could escape all concepts? Everyone would still be having causal contact with the same referent [see Donald Davidson, 1989]; though that causal contact alone wouldn't tell us which concepts or descriptions were the correct ones (if there are correct ones). If everyone were still having the same causal contact with the same object (or the same spatial region or physical mass), then that wouldn't matter. Different or even contradictory concepts would still be related to the same object or spatial region/physical mass.

Thus, in an indirect sense admittedly, acts of ostension could still be ‘institutionalised’ [Marcus, 1978]; thought we couldn't guarantee uniformity of conceptual choices. The object wouldn't be lost; though the guaranteed uniformity of concept choices would be. And, of course, if different people brought the same conceptual baggage with them, then that in itself would/could generate a certain degree of conceptual uniformity. However, that wouldn't be guaranteed. And it could be possible to generate agreement between different or contradictory concepts if the concepts of the object or spatial region referred back to the object as it is “standardly recognised” [Paul Moser, 1993]. Of course what is standardly recognised would still be a contingent matter. Even the standard conceptual description of the object would still not be the way the object describes itself. Therefore there's no reason to suppose that what is standard today will be standard next week.