The dominant model of mental explanations is based on the notion of causality. It aims to explain human agency by reference to antecedent mental states and events, which stand in a causal relationship to human action. This explanatory strategy follows from one of the basic tenets of the cognitive view, the idea that mental representations constitute the inner termini of the causal chains that instigate action, thus implying some sort mechanical interaction between mental representations. In the guise of methodological solipsism223, for example, an agents mental events and states are thought of as the causes of actions. Furthermore, it is thought that the cognitive role of a given mental event or state determines its role in the explanation of action. Of course, the account of human agency proposed by the methodological solipsist, is incompatible with an analysis of mental content in which content ascriptions involve the world, and in which a subject’s responses to objects is developed through the acquisition and application of rules for the use of concepts224.
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Note: Methodological Solipsism has its origins in Hilary Putnam’s ‘The Meaning of ‘Meaning’’. According to this view, the mental state of an individual does not presuppose the existence of another subject. It only presupposes the existence of the individual who is in a mental state of some sort. Thus, methodological solipsism ties mental ascriptions and their contents to (mental) states (i.e. tokenings of metal representations, in the context of the cognitive view) in the thinker.
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Note: The following discussion will only investigate the position of the methodological solipsist with regard to mental explanation and agency. While an important contribution to these issues has been made by Donald Davidson, a discussion of his ideas is beyond the scope of the present investigation.
As PF Strawson has pointed out mechanical transactions are fundamental to our notion of causality. Consequently, it is not surprising that whenever the notion of causality is invoked, the notion of mechanical interaction is not far behind. It is in this way that some advocates of causal theories of mental explanation have, by way of metaphor, been lead to metaphysics:
‘…we should regard mechanical transactions as fundamental in our notion of causality in general….It is not then to be wondered at that such transactions supply a basic model when the theoretical search for causes is on; that we look for causal mechanisms; that, even when it is most clearly metaphorical, the language of mechanism pervades the language of causes in general, as in the phrases “causal connection”, “causal links” and “causal chain”.225
This remark indicates that causal explanations only get a grip in cases where mechanical links between states and events provide a coherent story, e.g. in the context of an account where mechanical processes connect states and events. Yet, if one searches for corresponding mechanical links in the context of mental states and events a metaphysical mismatch ensues. In the preceding discussions of thinking and mental content it has been repeatedly highlighted that thoughts and their content depend on the way a subject uses concepts to structure his activity. But this aspect is not captured by an account in which (spatio-temporal) states and events interact with each other in a causal manner. This line of argument has already been adopted by Kant, who also refuted the idea that content laden mental states, i.e. PAs, are causal states and that they obey physical laws. Wolff, for example, has pointed out that according to Kant, the paradigmatic case of rational action is a case in which a. I form a concept of some event, object or state of affairs, which I choose to bring into being, and b. I do something, which I believe will actualise that which my concept represents. Thus, subjects act in order to realize a certain goal or end. A subject that acts thus, acts according to its thoughts. Importantly, however, it acts in accord with his thoughts qua representations with cognitive significance, and not in accord with thoughts qua mental events, which have a temporal location and thus, phenomenal causes and effects226. Furthermore, in the Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that:
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Strawson (1985), p.124
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‘…in judging free actions wit regard to their causality we can only get as far as the intelligible cause, but not beyond it. (CrPR, B585)’227
This view is compatible with the results of the recent investigation into thought and thinking, which suggested that thoughts are not bits of reality, and that having a thought is not possessing some thing which stands in a material relationship to other extra-mental things, but is rather to be understood as an interlocking network of rule- governed abilities (if one feels the need to give a “general account” of thinking). On the other hand, Kant disputes that explanations of action necessitate references to rational determinations or reasons of the acting subject. Rather, in the light of Kant’s reasoning an explanation of action needs to put the reasoning subject at the centre, by focusing on his judgements, i.e. his use of concepts, as the source of action.
A correct explanation of action, necessitating reference to the actual reasons underlying a subjects behaviour, highlights the connection that exists between the ascriptions others make of an acting subject and the subject actions as such. This connection is not mechanical, as the subject must freely hold those reasons, whose force is normative and not physical or deterministic. Just as in thought, judgements are made according to the normatively constrained applicability of concepts rather than according to mere causal conditions, so, in action, the subject’s physical activity is formed and directed by his conception of the world. These conceptions are, of course, constructed out of concepts. Consequently, if concept use proceeds without compulsion and if it is responsive to the claim of reason, it imparts this same feature to action. If one accepts that the ability to use concepts is governed by prescriptive norms, one implicitly concedes that both theoretical and practical reason involve ‘oughts’ and not just dispositions to move thus and so. This awards a special status to mental ascriptions, in so far as they have properties which are unlike those of physical states. To a certain extent ascriptions of knowledge or of beliefs and desires, for example, involve a subject’s ‘making up his mind’, as it were. In contrast to physical states, which can be discovered by evaluating and analysing mind-in dependent evidence, mental attributes come into being when a subject ‘makes up his mind’. In the case of belief, for example, one not merely reacts, but rather has to
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Note: ‘By freedom, on the other hand, I mean the power to begin a state on one’s own. (…)reason creates for itself the idea of a spontaneity that can, on its own, start to act – without, i.e., needing to be preceded by another cause by means of which it is determined to action in turn, according to the law of causal connection.’ (CrPR B561f.)
answer to a given norm, e.g. to form a belief on the basis of (true) evidence, as one takes it to be. Consequently, whenever one forms a thought, belief, intention, or desire one could say to oneself ‘I do feel inclined this way, but is that how it should be?’. Importantly, if one experiences a degree of uncertainty as to where one stands then one will not experience thus because one is unable to obtain certain facts about certain states inside oneself. Rather, in the light of certain norms, one was not yet able to come to a decision. This aspect points at an interesting connection with moral judgements. In self-ascriptions and mental ascriptions (to others) like in moral judgements, there are implicit prescriptive norms to which the subject’s inclination must be sensitive. Because one’s recognition of such a norm is part of mental self- ascription, one finds reason or spontaneity, i.e. the ability to act thus and so for reasons rather than as a result of antecedent conditions (CrPR B561f.), at the centre of our mental life. When acting, a subject structures his activity in accordance with rational determinations.
The present analysis emphasizes the fact that talk of thought and action concerns the rational control, by a thinker, of his own activity, and thereby explains how it reveals his mental life. A mental explanation appeals to the ways an agent reasons and thus it concerns the rules which articulate his activity. The nature of reasoning displayed by human beings, and consequently the structure and content of mental explanation only emerge when one considers them as rational and social beings. Mental explanation tells us which concepts are being used to shape an action. Concepts involve rule-governed links between a subject’s behaviour and the world and thus determine the way that an action is sensitive to that world. The same concepts make linguistic interaction with a subject possible. By suggesting an explanation of action which centres on what an agent thinks about things rather than providing a description of a causal chain, the ascriptions involved and the ways they fit together appeal to a far richer conception of human beings and their relations than those that would be allowed within the constraints of the cognitive view.
5. Concluding Remarks
The present chapter investigated the reductionist account of intentionality inherent in the cognitive view, which attempts to explain linguistic content as resulting from mental content and then to give a reductionist account of the latter. In addition to scrutinizing this notion of explanatory priority and the hypothesized causal role of mental states inherent in this account, the plausibility of this explanation with respect to the normativity and structure of content was examined. It was demonstrated that the representationalist distinction between intrinsic and derived intentionality is implausible as it involves either an infinite regress or implies that one could never fully convey the full meaning of a sign. Furthermore, the discussion highlighted the normative structure of language and mind. Participating in a language game is tantamount to acquiring a (human) mind. Linguistic meaning cannot be explained as the result of the animation of otherwise dead signs by acts of understanding as has been postulated by Fodor, for instance. Fodor’s attempt to naturalize mental content through the provision of a causal explanation228 in the context of his LOT hypothesis fails. Mental content cannot be explained as a result of freestanding internal mental representations. Words are not injected with meaning through acts of understanding. Instead, their meaning is their use. Mental states are not internal freestanding states of the mind, which have to be connected via mechanisms with the world, but are intrinsically relational states. Freestanding internal representations cannot account for the normativity of content. They either presuppose what they set out to explain or fail to sustain normativity.
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