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Cognitivism and Explanantory Relativity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
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In much of his writing in the philosophy of mind, John Searle has been highly critical of what N. Block refers to as ‘The Computer Model of the Mind’ — the approach that treats the mind as a symbol-manipulating device akin in spirit, if not detail, to the modem computer. Searle refers to this philosophical approach as ‘cognitivism.’ The extent of his skepticism and animus toward the computer model of the mind is plainly apparent in the following quotation from Searle: ‘I used to believe that as a causal account, the cognitivist's theory was at least false, but I am now having difficulty formulating a version of it that is coherent even to the point where it could be an empirical thesis at all’ (The Rediscovery of the Mind [Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1992], 215). In what follows, I shall attempt to show that this charge of incoherence is unfounded.
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References
1 ‘The Computer Model of the Mind,’ An Invitation to Cognitive Science, 3rd ed. Osherson, D. and Smith, E. eds. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1990)Google Scholar.
2 I am here ignoring the question of tacit beliefs. On the computer model of the mind, these would be beliefs that are not explicitly represented; that is, that are not instantiated by syntactically structured representations. The postulation of tacit beliefs is seen as a way of reconciling the purported fact that our ‘ordinary’ concept of belief licenses an indefinitely large stock of beliefs to rational agents with the presumed storage limitations of our finite brains. Just how an agent's tacit beliefs are related to her explicitly represented beliefs, and even whether our ordinary concept of belief indeed underwrites ascriptions of indefinitely large belief stores, are questions that I will bypass in the discussion that follows in the text- however see Block's ‘The Computer Model of the Mind,’ sec. 3.3.1, for a discussion of these issues. The omission of these questions from the discussion in the text is not serious, since the main focus is cognitivism's account of mental causation, and only beliefs that have syntactic realizations are thought to be causally efficacious.
3 See, for example, the exchange between Stich and Fodor: Stich, S. From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1983)Google Scholar; and ‘Narrow Content Meets Fat Syntax,’ Meaning in Mind: Fodor and His Critics, Loewer, B. and Rey, G. eds. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1991)Google Scholar; Fodor, J. Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A Theory of Content and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1990); ‘Reply to Stich,’ Meaning in Mind: Fodor and His Critics, Loewer, B. and Rey, G. eds. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1991)Google Scholar. See also Cummins, R. Meaning and Mental Representation (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1989)Google Scholar.
4 Over the years the philosopher most closely associated with the cognitivist approach to psychological explanation is Fodor, Jerry. A significant portion of his published work is concerned with defending one or another thesis associated with cognitivism. Perhaps his most important works on this score are The Language of Thought (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell 1975)Google Scholar; RePresentations: Essays On the Foundations of Cognitive Science (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1981 ); Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind; ‘Reply to Stich’; and ‘Fodor, Jerry,’ A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, Guttenplan, S. ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1994)Google Scholar. Other noteworthy philosophical defenses of cognitivism are Field, H. ‘Mental Representation,’ Erkenntnis 13 (1978) 9–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; S. Stich, From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science; Lycan, W. ‘Toward a Homuncular Theory of Believing,’ Cognition and Brain Theory 4 (1981) 139–59Google Scholar; Pylyshyn, Z. Computation and Cognition (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1984)Google Scholar; Jackendoff, R. Consciousness and the Computational Mind (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1987)Google Scholar; and R. Cummins, Meaning and Mental Representation. (The list is by no means exhaustive.)
5 Searle's, distinction (in ‘Intrinsic Intentionality: Reply to Criticisms of “Minds, Brains, and Programs,”’ Behavioural and Brain Sciences 3 [1980] 450–6)CrossRefGoogle Scholar between intrinsic vs. observer-relative intentionality is clearly a special case of the broader distinction between intrinsic vs. observer-relative properties. Ascriptions of intrinsic intentionality, like ascriptions of intrinsic physical properties such as mass, are intended to pick out genuine features of the world. Ascriptions of observer-relative intentionality, on the other hand, are not literal ascriptions of intentionality. Rather, such ascriptions of intentionality to objects are an indirect and succinct way of referring to the intrinsic intentional states of the observers who design and/ or use those objects to fulfill various needs, purposes, goals, etc. Thus, e.g., Searle claims that when we ascribe intentionality to a device such as a thermostat, we are not to be taken as making literal ascriptions of intentional states to the device. Instead, these nonliteral ascriptions provide a convenient way of understanding the device, making predictions about what it will do, and so on. What makes this possible is the fact that we know what function the device was designed to perform, why people install them in rooms, etc.
Now while the distinction between observer-relative vs. intrinsic intentional properties is obviously intended to be a special case of the broader distinction between intrinsic vs. observer-relative properties, it is not clear that Searle's way of drawing the latter distinction can serve as the basis for the distinction in the case of intentionality. Intrinsic properties, Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind) tells us, are ‘in no way dependent upon the decisions and practices of beings with intentional mental states.’ This is cashed out as the claim that if ‘all observers and users cease to exist’ the world still contains intrinsic properties. Clearly, however, if all users and observers ceased to exist, the world would no longer contain any intentional properties, intrinsic or observer-relative.
I suspect that this merely raises a technical difficulty with Searle's formulations, and does not compromise the fundamental distinctions that he is trying to draw. However, I am unclear as to how he might solve the difficulty. Admittedly, the distinctions are intuitively appealing, and for present purposes I shall assume that distinctions can be drawn along the lines that Searle suggests. My argument in the text will be that the more general distinction between intrinsic vs. observer-relative properties can't do the work that Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind) requires of it.
6 When he first presents the argument, Searle contends that the factors that account for the multiple-realizability of syntax ultimately reveal syntax to be universally realizable. The result that syntax is universally realizable would mean that ‘for any object there is some description of that object such that under that description the object is a digital computer,’ and ‘for any program and for any sufficiently complex object, there is some description of the object under which it is implementing the program’ (The Rediscovery of the Mind, 208). Searle concludes that such results would reveal the central cognitivist thesis that the brain is a computer to be of no explanatory value (see 207-8). But then he immediately backs off, conceding that there are ways of tightening up the definitions of ‘syntactic property’ and ‘computation’ so as to avoid these disastrous consequences (see also Endicott, R. ‘Searle, Syntax, and Observer Reality,’ Canadian journal of Philosophy 26 [1996] 101–22)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. What Searle thinks is the real problem with the multiple-realizability of syntax, as I indicate in the text, is that it is a symptom of the observer-relativity of syntactic properties. Thanks to an anonymous referee for indicating the need for clarification here.
7 The following simple example from Block, N. ‘Can the Mind Change the World?’ Meaning and Method: Essays in Honor of Hilary Putnam, Boolos, G. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990)Google Scholar; reprinted in Philosophy of Psychology: Debates on Psychological Explanation, Macdonald, C. and Macdonald, G. eds. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1995)Google Scholar, page references are to the latter, illustrates the sense in which syntactic characterizations capture patterns of relations between lower-order states, and thereby abstract away from the details of implementation.
Consider an input-output system whose input and output registers are bistable, and take on values of either 7 volts or 4 volts. Suppose that if both input registers are at 4 volts, then the output is 4 volts, and every other input yields the 7-volt output. Then (1) the system is an and gate, (2) the 4-volt value counts as a ‘1’ for this and gate, and the 7-volt value counts as a ‘0’(33).
As Block points out, a bistable system in which the patterns of relations between the different voltage levels were reversed, so that the system yielded an output of 7-volts when and only when both registers were at 7-volts, and otherwise yielded an output of 4-volts for any other combination of inputs, would still count as an and gate, though in such a system the 7-volt register would play the role of ‘1’ and the 4-volt would play the role of ‘0.’
8 No functionalist would seriously offer T as a candidate for a functional definition of ‘pain.’ The example is offered only as a heuristic device. Its shortcomings as a characterization of the functional role of pain are irrelevant for Schiffer's argument.
9 It would perhaps be more accurate to say that tokenings of N in S are the effects of kickings and the causes of wincings. I will ignore this qualification in what follows.
10 Not surprisingly, this strategy for arguing against systematic causal overdetermination in the philosophy of mind, as well as the colorful moniker, are due to Schiffer.
11 This example was suggested by an anonymous referee.
12 Ironically, Searle is someone who denies that macrophysical dispositional properties like hardness or liquidity are reducible to microphysical properties. According to Searle, the former are ‘realized in and caused by’ the latter (see The Rediscovery of the Mind, chap. 5). However, this will not do the objection in the text any good, since Searle also denies that macrophysical properties have causal powers distinct from those of the microphysical properties that serve as their supervenience base. Searle explicitly disavows any implication that macrophysical properties are therefore shown to be epiphenomenal. However, this doesn't seem to be coherent: if the two sets of properties are distinct, and if causal efficacy inheres exclusively at the level of microphysical properties, then how can it fail to follow that macrophysical properties have no distinctive causal powers?
13 It was pointed out by an anonymous referee that it is possible to resist the assimilation of dispositional properties with microstructural properties, thereby blocking my suggestion that there is an important disanalogy between functional properties and dispositional properties. He or she suggests the property of being soporific — ‘which is realizable by different chemicals in different brands of sleeping pills’ — as an example of a dispositional property which is both multiply realizable and causal-explanatory.
I am perfectly happy to go along with the claim that the property of being soporific is multiply realizable by virtue of the fact that there are different chemical agents that can achieve the same effects (and that the property of being soporific is functionally defined in terms of those characteristic effects). But then I would claim that the property of being soporific adds nothing to our understanding of the causal efficacy of various kinds of sleeping pills. Imagine that we are given an exhaustive account of the manner in which some type of sleeping pill produces its effects, an account couched entirely in terms of the chemical properties of the pill and their effects on the human nervous system. What more would we add to such an account if we appended the claim that the pill has the property of being soporific? Surely such an emendation would add nothing to our understanding of the causal efficacy of the pill; that is, to our understanding of how it works. This is one of the messages of the argument by Schiffer cited in the text aside from worries about causal overdeterrnination, functional properties can't tell us anything about causal mechanisms (hence are not causal explanatory). This is not to say that explanations that cite functional properties are incapable of being informative or useful. It is just that whatever explanatory utility functional properties possess, it is not a causal-explanatory utility.
14 Garfinkel's book is filled with examples of cases in the natural and social sciences which illustrate the phenomenon of explanatory relativity. Recent work on the ecological effects of deep-sea trawling provide yet another example of explanatory relativity. Mayer, L.M. Schick, D.F. Findlay, A. and Rice, D.L. ‘Effects of Commercial Dragging on Sedimentary Organic Matter,’ Marine Environment Research 31 (1991) 249–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argue that the geometry of sea-floor sediment is a principal factor in determining whether bacteria release nitrogen in a form that serves as a natural fertilizer or in an inactive form that is unserviceable for most of the animal life in that ecosystem.
15 It is important to see that my account is not simply a version of functionalism. Functionalism about syntax treats syntactic properties as functional properties, hence as properties at level m of properties at level m-l having such and such functional roles. Thus importantly, a functionalist account of syntactic properties defines them in terms of the causal profiles of properties at ‘lower levels.’ And for that very reason, as we saw in the text, functionalism is precluded from treating syntactic properties as causally efficacious, at least with respect to the properties in terms of which they are defined. My account is immune to this criticism, however, since it locates the causal efficacy of syntactic properties in structural or systemic features of the brain, features which are identifiable independently of their causal roles.
16 Thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting the need for this qualification.
17 I wish to thank the anonymous referees for their very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Because of their insight and diligence, this is a much better paper than it otherwise would have been.