James Ross's argument from intentional determinacy

James Ross, in his essay “Immaterial Aspects of Thought, presents an argument against a physicalist account of propositional content which I will call the Argument from Determinate Content. He writes:

Some thinking (judgment) is determinate in the way no physical process can be. Consequently, such thinking cannot be a (wholly) physical process. If all thinking, all judgment, is determinate in that way, no physical process can be the (the whole of) any judgment at all. Furthermore, “functions” amng physical states cannot be determinate enough to be such judgments, either. Hence some judgments can be niether wholly physical processes nor wholly functions among physical processes.⁵²

Yet, he maintains, we cannot deny that we perform determinate mental operations. He writes:

I propose now, with some simple cases, to reinforce the perhaps already obvoius point that pure function has to be wholly realized in the single case, and cannot consist in the array of “inputs and outputs” for a certain kind of thinking. Does anyone count that we can actually square numberes? “4 times 4 is sixteen”; a definite form (N x N = N²) is “squaring” for all relevant cases, whether or not we are able to process the digits, or ralk long enough to give the answer. To be squaring, I have to be doing some thing that works for all the cases, something for which any relevant case can be substituted without change in what I am doing, but only in which thing is done.⁵³

I should add that if we don’t literally add, subtract, divide, multiply, square numbers and take their square roots, not to mention perform all the complicated mathematical operations involved in, say, Einstein’s theory of relativity, then physicalism, which not only says that reality is physical but that physics, at least approximately, gets it right, is up the creek without a paddle.

Ross’s argument can be formalized as follows.

1. Some mental states have determinate content. In particular, the states involved in adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, in squaring numbers and taking their square roots, are determinate with respect to their intentional content.

2. Physical states are indeterminate with respect to intentional content. Any physical state is logically compatible with the existence of a mulitplicity of propostionally defined intentional states, or even with the absence of propositionally defined intentional states entirely.

3. Therefore, the mental states involed in mathematical operations are not and cannot be identical to physical states.

Bees and Perspectives

BDK: Afterthought: it would be great for antinaturalists to answer Bennett's question. In general, your answer to this question starkly reveals your philosophical stripes. This is all about propositional thought and the like, truth, reference and all that.

As for what you'd have to add to make bees conscious, or whether bees are already conscious, I have no strong opinion. I think Dretske believes they are conscious. I am agnostic. Do qualia precede propositional contents in evolution? I tend to think so, but am not sure: even leeches might feel little flashes of pains and excitements.

VR: I think what is needed is the perspective of an agent who sees certain things as the case, and who is introspectively aware of what it means when it says something.

Example: I enter a conversation and misuse a word consistently. The community of language speakers makes a word mean one thing, but I meant something else, and in spite of the sniggers that I got from everyone, I think to myself "But I was using it to mean that." I can recognize two words that sound the same but mean different things, and I can identify two words that mean that same but sound different.

Add to this the perception of necessary relationships that obtain amongst proposition. We have to be people who exist at particular places and times who know that some things exist regardless of place or time. And I see difficulty with that so long as what gives us pieces of information are temporally locatable physical brains and causal connection from those brains to particular states of affairs in the world.

Now, could we solve these problems naturalistically if we could just solve the hard problem of consciousness naturalistically? My answer is that raw feels by themselves aren't going to solve it; we're going to need a connection between consciousness and the mental states involved in rationality.

My new way of putting the argument from reason together

I reformulated the argument from reason as follows:

A version of the argument from reason.

1. If naturalism is true, then propositional attitudes are eliminable, reducible, or epiphenomenal.
2. Propositional attitudes are not eliminable.
3. Propositional attitudes are not reducible.
4. Propositional attitudes are not epiphenomenal.
5. Therefore, naturalism is false.

Philosophopickle wrote: Very interesting. I wonder, though, if one is able to reply that propositions supervene naturally on a certain state or set of relations (specifically in the brain). Hopefully we see more on this.

VR: Yes, but would those states be causally effective, or would they, as I suspect, be epiphenomenal. This argument plan attempts to combine the argument from propositional attitudes with the argument from mental causation. It seems to me that if you are arguing with a reductionist, the argument from intentional/propositional states is effective, since I think there are good anti-reductionist arguments. However, if you are dealing with a non-reductivist, the mental causation argument is the way to make your case. So I'm combining them.