26 Unphilosophical Introduction

26 Unphilosophical Introduction
Beliefs are productive in that there are infinitely many distinct ones that
a person can entertain (given, of course, the usual abstraction from
‘performance limitations’). Beliefs are systematic in that the ability to
entertain any one of them implies the ability to entertain many others that
are related to it in content. It appears, for example, to be conceptually
possible that there should be a mind that is able to grasp the proposition
that Mary loves John but not able to grasp the proposition that John loves
Mary. But, in point of empirical fact, it appears that there are no such
minds. This sort of symmetry of cognitive capacities is a ubiquitous
feature of mental life.2 It implies a corresponding symmetry of
representational capacities since RTM says, ‘no cognition without
representation’. That is, RTM says that you can’t grasp a proposition
without entertaining a thought.
So, the question presents itself: what must mental representation be like
if it is to explain the productivity and systematicity of beliefs? This
question is loaded, to be sure: that the systematicity of the attitudes
requires the systematicity of mental representation doesn’t itself require
that the systematicity of mental representation is what explains the
systematicity of the attitudes. Perhaps both are the effects of a common
cause. Maybe, for example, ‘the world’ somehow teaches the mind to be
systematic, and the systematicity of mental representation is the byproduct
of its doing so.
The stumbling-block for this sort of suggestion is that the mind is much
more systematic than the world: that John loves Mary doesn’t make it true,
or even very likely, that Mary reciprocates. Sad for John, of course, but
where would The Western Canon be if things were otherwise? In fact, the
only thing in the world that is as systematic as thought is language.
Accordingly, some philosophers (Dan Dennett 1993 in particular) have
suggested that it’s learning language that makes a mind systematic.
But we aren’t told how an initially unsystematic mind could learn a
systematic language, given that the latter is ipso facto able to express
propositions that the former is unable to entertain. How, for example, does
a mind that can think that John loves Mary but not that Mary loves John
learn a language that is able to say both? Nor is it clear what could make
language itself systematic if not the systematicity of the thoughts that it is
used to express; so the idea that the mind learns systematicity from
language just sweeps the problem from under the hall rug to under the
rug in the parlour. On balance, I think we had better take it for granted,
2 It bears emphasis that systematicity concerns symmetries of cognitive capacities, not
of actual mental states. It is, for example, patently not the case that whoever thinks that
Mary loves John also thinks that John loves Mary. Compare van Gelder and Nicklasson
1994.
and as part of what is not negotiable, that systematicity and productivity
are grounded in the ‘architecture’ of mental representation and not in the
vagaries of experience. If a serious alternative proposal should surface, I
guess I’m prepared to reconsider what’s negotiable. But the prospect hasn’t
been losing me sleep.
So, to repeat the question, what is it about mental representation that
explains the systematicity and productivity of belief ? Classical versions
of RTM offer a by now familiar answer: there are infinitely many beliefs
because there are infinitely many thoughts to express their objects. There
are infinitely many thoughts because, though each mental representation
is constructed by the application of a finite number of operations to a
finite basis of primitive concepts, there is no upper bound to how many
times such operations may apply in the course of a construction.
Correspondingly, thought is systematic because the same primitive
concepts and operations that suffice to assemble thoughts like JOHN
LOVES MARY also suffice to assemble thoughts like MARY LOVES
JOHN; the representational capacity that is exploited to frame one
thought implies the representational capacity to frame the other. Since a
mental representation is individuated by its form and content (see
Chapter 1), both of these are assumed to be determined by specifying the
inventory of primitive concepts that the representation contains, together
with the operations by which it is assembled from them. (In the case of the
primitive concepts themselves, this assumption is trivially true.) As a
shorthand for all this, I’ll say that what explains the productivity and
systematicity of the propositional attitudes is the compositionality of
concepts and thoughts.
The requirement that the theory of mental representation should
exhibit thoughts and concepts as compositional turns out, in fact, to be
quite a powerful analytic engine. If the content of a mental representation
is inherited from the contents of its conceptual constituents then, presumably,
the content of a constituent concept is just whatever it can
contribute to the content of its hosts. We’ll see, especially in Chapter 5,
that this condition is not at all easy for a theory of concepts to meet.
4. Quite a lot of concepts must turn out to be learned.
I want to put this very roughly since I’m going to return to it at length
in Chapter 6. Suffice it for now that all versions of RTM hold that if a
concept belongs to the primitive basis from which complex mental
representations are constructed, it must ipso facto be unlearned. (To be
sure, some versions of RTM are rather less up front in holding this than
others.) Prima facie, then, where a theory of concepts draws the distinction
between what’s primitive and what’s not is also where it draws the
What Concepts Have To Be 27
28 Unphilosophical Introduction
distinction between what’s innate and what’s not. Clearly, everybody is
going to put this line somewhere. For example, nobody is likely to think
that the concept BROWN COW is primitive since, on the face of it,
BROWN COW has BROWN and COW as constituents. Correspondingly,
nobody is likely to think that the concept BROWN COW is innate since,
on the face of it, it could be learned by being assembled from the
previously mastered concepts BROWN and COW.
A lot of people have Very Strong Feelings about what concepts are
allowed to be innate,3 hence about how big a primitive conceptual basis an
acceptable version of RTM can recognize. Almost everybody is prepared
to allow RED in, and many of the liberal-minded will also let in CAUSE
or AGENT. (See, for example, Miller and Johnson-Laird 1978). But there
is, at present, a strong consensus against, as it might be, DOORKNOB or
CARBURETTOR. I have no desire to join in this game of pick and
choose since, as far as I can tell, it hasn’t any rules. Suffice it that it would
be nice if a theory of concepts were to provide a principled account of
what’s in the primitive conceptual basis, and it would be nice if the
principles it appealed to were to draw the distinction at some
independently plausible place. (Whatever, if anything, that means.)
Chapter 6 will constitute an extended reconsideration of this whole issue,
including the question just how the relation between a concept’s being
primitive and its being innate plays out. I hope there to placate such
scruples about DOORKNOB and CARBURETTOR as some of you may
feel, and to do so within the framework of an atomistic RTM.
5. Concepts are public; they’re the sorts of things that lots of people
can, and do, share.
Since, according to RTM, concepts are symbols, they are presumed to
satisfy a type/token relation; to say that two people share a concept (i.e.
that they have literally the same concept) is thus to say that they have
tokens of literally the same concept type. The present requirement is that
the conditions for typing concept tokens must not be so stringent as to
assign practically every concept token to a different type from practically
any other.
3 I put it this way advisedly. I was once told, in the course of a public discussion with
an otherwise perfectly rational and civilized cognitive scientist, that he “could not permit”
the concept HORSE to be innate in humans (though I guess it’s OK for it to be innate in
horses). I forgot to ask him whether he was likewise unprepared to permit neutrinos to lack
mass.
Just why feelings run so strongly on these matters is unclear to me.Whereas the ethology
of all other species is widely agreed to be thoroughly empirical and largely morally neutral,
a priorizing and moralizing about the ethology of our species appears to be the order of the
day. Very odd.