INDETERMINACY AND THE FIRST PERSON PERSPECTIVE

Karsten R. Stueber Department of Philosophy College of the Holy Cross

Worcester, MA 01610 kstueber@holycross.edu

Published in Verdad: logica, rerpresentacion y mundo,ed. by C. Martinez Vidal, (Universidade de Santiago De Compostela, 1996): 333-341. Please quote according to the published version. If you need a hard copy of the article please feel free to contact me at kstueber@holycross.edu.

ABSTRACT

KARSTEN R. STUEBER INDETERMINACY AND THE FIRST PERSON PERSPECTIVE In this paper, I will discuss Searle's main argument for the first person perspective in regard to meaning and intentionality. He claims that Quine's and Davidson's arguments for the indeterminacy of meaning and inscrutability of reference should be understood as a reductio ad absurdum of the third person methodology. I will defend the third person perspective by reevaluating the claims for the inscrutability thesis. It will be shown that Searle's argument for the first person perspective is not conclusive and that the inscrutability of reference does not follow from the analysis of radical interpretation.

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In recent years several philosophers have claimed that it is impossible to adequately characterize

mental states within the predominant third person perspective because of their irreducible subjective

nature. John Searle has argued specifically that both Quine's and Davidson's arguments for the

indeterminacy of meaning and reference have to be understood as a reductio ad absurdum of the

third person methodology.i In this paper, I will analyze this debate between the first person and third

person methodology in regard to intentional states and I will defend the third person perspective by

reevaluating the claims for the inscrutability thesis. As we will see, neither is Searle's argument for

the first person perspective conclusive nor does the inscrutability of reference follow from the

analysis of radical interpretation.

I. Davidson's Arguments for the Inscrutability of Reference and for Indeterminacy of meaning

Both Quine and Davidson argue for the inscrutability of reference and the indeterminacy of

meaning, i.e. they claim that there is no fact of the matter to what we refer. Quine's argument in

Word and Object depends, however, on a narrow empiricist and behaviorist conception of what

constitutes objective evidence for the radical translator. His thesis of indeterminacy can be rejected

by pointing out that he evaluates the practice of meaning attribution according to a standard which is

external to our practice of translation, because he subscribes to the dogma of the distinction between

scheme and content.

Davidson's argument for the inscrutability of reference, on the other hand, does not depend

on such questionable assumptions and has to be taken more seriously. He claims that even an

undogmatic explication of our notion of meaning through the philosophically appropriate thought

experiment of radical interpretation supports the inscrutability thesis.ii Schematically his argument

for the inscrutability thesis has the following structure:

1.) Semantic properties supervene in some way on or are constituted in regard to non-semantic properties which are publicly accessible from the perspective of the radical interpreter and which form the evidence for radical interpretation.

2.) This evidence does not uniquely determine an interpretative theory of truth. Different

schemes of reference are compatible with the evidence of the radical interpreter. ------------------------------------------------------------- 3.) Because of 1.) and 2.) meaning and reference are indeterminate and as Davidson further

maintains that "since every speaker must, in some dim sense at least know this, he cannot

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even intend to use his words with a unique reference, for he knows that there is no way for his words

to convey this reference to another."iii

Intuitively this conclusion seems to be absurd. Does not the success of communication depend on

our ability to recognize the intention of the speaker a la Grice? How can we even rationally engage

in a meaningfully discourse if we cannot convey anything determinate? If nothing determinate can

be intended, communication seems impossible. For Searle, the above conclusion is therefore

obviously false. He suggests that the inscrutability thesis is pragmatically inconsistent because in

order to sensibly maintain the indeterminacy thesis, we have to assume that our terms have a

determinate reference and that we can distinguish between the references of different terms.iv Since

the argument is deductively valid, Searle concludes that semantic properties are not supervening on

publicly accessible properties and that one should reject the first premise of the argument. Instead of

adopting the third person perspective, as Davidson does in his analysis of radical interpretation, he

suggests that we should adopt a first person methodology for the purpose of investigating the

phenomena of meaning and intentionality.

In order to be able to evaluate the validity of Searle's consideration it is, however, important to

first fully understand the reasons for accepting or rejecting the premises on which Davidson bases

his inscrutability argument. As Quine has already pointed out in his discussion of the

analytic/synthetic distinction, to justify a philosophical distinction or position based solely on

ordinary linguistic intuitions is not sufficient, unless these intuitions can be accounted for only by

that particular philosophical position. In Kantian terms one might say that intuitions without

philosophical reflections are blind.v

Here then is a brief outline of the arguments that one can reconstruct from Davidson's work in

support for the first two premises. Giving up the third dogma of empiricism means that we can

understand the relationship between world and language only in terms of truth. Hence, we can

conceive of the empirical significance of a sentence only in terms of truth conditions but not any

more in terms of sensory stimulation. Something can be understood as a conceptual scheme or a

language only insofar as it allows for the distinction between truth and falsity, i.e. only insofar as its

linguistic expressions have certain truth conditions. But if we accept that our intuition about the

general concept of truth is best expressed through Tarski's convention T - `P' is true iff p - then we

can understand something as being a language only insofar as it can in principle be interpreted.

Convention T requires that its right side is an interpretation of the object language sentence by a

sentence of the meta-language. Our conception of languagehood and of linguistic meaning can

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therefore be only analyzed in regard to our practice of interpretation and the criteria which are

constitutive for this interpretative practice. The analysis of radical interpretation is the attempt to

bring into open all of the criteria and principles on which we implicitly rely to justify particular

interpretations and decide whether a particular behavior constitutes linguistic behavior. For that

reason an analysis of the interpretation of a familiar language is philosophically insufficient because

in these interpretive processes it is already decided that a particular behavior manifests linguistic

behavior or that a certain expression has a certain linguistic meaning.

If these considerations are plausible, then one has to accept that the criteria which are revealed

through the analysis of radical interpretation are not only constitutive for meaning attribution to

another speaker of a foreign language but that they constitute the framework in which we can

sensibly talk about any meaning at all. If meaning and reference turn out to be indeterminate and

inscrutable within the framework of radical translation, then linguistic meaning and reference as

such are indeterminate even in our own case, or at least so Davidson argues.

Davidson's argument for the inscrutability of reference depends on the assumption that the

reference of a particular expression is determined in the context of constructing a particular theory of

truth for the language of a speaker. The reference assignments to specific words can be only

indirectly argued for by justifying the interpretation of full sentences, since for Davidson a

systematic relation between a speaker and its environment which forms the evidence for the radical

interpreter, exists only on the level of the sentence. Only if we assume that the speaker holds

something true and that it is true by the interpreter's standard can radical interpretation get off the

ground. According to Davidson different, assignments of schemes of reference are compatible with

the totality of evidence even while interpreting according to the principle of charity and even after

the logical form and the total ontology of a language is fixed.

Davidson's argument is based on the conviction that it is always possible to construct an

alternative and equally justifiable scheme of reference by constructing a function which maps each

object one to one on another, a so-called permutation of the universe. To stay with Davidson's

fictional example, just assume that each object has a shadow. It is then possible to construct function

f (the shadow of) which maps each object onto its shadow.vi Davidson now maintains that within the

framework of radical interpretation we are equally justified to interpret ̀ Wilt' as referring to Wilt or

the shadow of Wilt and tall as referring either to tall things or shadows of tall things. We can

therefore not decide between interpreting the utterance ̀ Wilt is tall' as Wilt is tall and the shadow of

Wilt is the shadow of a tall thing. Thus, reference remains fundamentally inscrutable.

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However, it is important to understand that in maintaining the inscrutability of reference,

Davidson is not claiming that we cannot distinguish between Wilt and the shadow of Wilt within a

particular language. Such a claim would obviously validate the complaint that Davidson's thesis of

the inscrutability of reference leads to a pragmatic contradiction because in order to state the thesis

one would need to make a distinction which the thesis itself denies. Davidson does not claim that the

distinctions within a language are obsolete but that it is indeterminate what language -which is

identified through a particular reference scheme- we are speaking. The inscrutability thesis should

therefore not be understood as implying that we are not able to distinguish between Wilt and the

shadow of Wilt within a language, but rather as implying that our intuitions about these distinctions

are not sufficient to determine one unique reference scheme within which these distinctions can be

accounted for. Davidson himself regards the indeterminacy of meaning as a rather harmless

consequence of his analysis of meaning and compares it to the possibility of measuring temperature

according to different scales of measurement such as Fahrenheit or Celsius.vii

Nevertheless, this response to the indeterminacy thesis remains unsatisfactory. In the case of

measuring temperature we at least know which measuring scale we are using even though another

one might be just as adequate.viii In my opinion, Searle is right to be dissatisfied with the

inscrutability thesis but for a slightly different reason than the one he articulates. To accept such a

thesis for one's own language seems to require that one disengages oneself from the very same

linguistic practice with which we need to formulate the inscrutability thesis. This engagement in a

linguistic practice however cannot be understood as being merely a practical necessity from which

we can free ourselves on a more theoretical or philosophical level.

A comparison to the discussion of external world scepticism might be helpful to illustrate this

problem. Global scepticism is obviously unacceptable from the perspective of our ordinary cognitive

practices, but the sceptic maintains that it is unassailable from a theoretical level which transcends

the restricted and arbitrary constraints of our ordinary practices. Furthermore, the sceptic claims that

on a theoretical level the skeptical worries are based on certain platitudes about objectivity and truth

which we are committed to in our ordinary practices themselves.ix But this distinction between a

merely practical and a theoretical level of reflection cannot be made in the case of the inscrutability

thesis. To maintain that it is not possible to decide what language one is speaking, because

assignments of different referent schemes are compatible with the totality of the evidence, requires at

the very least a perspective from which these languages are recognized as different languages and as

possessing different referent schemes. In this case the distinction seems to be made from the

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perspective of the language we speak. To claim that the reference of our own language is inscrutable

would require one to entertain a linguistic cosmic exile or the no language point of view. But that

seems to be impossible and unintelligible.

II. Indeterminacy and the First Person Perspective

Even though I am dissatisfied with the inscrutability thesis I am more than reluctant to follow

Searle in his rejection of the first premise and his adoption of a first person methodology. First of all,

to think about meaning and intentionality as being constituted within the first person realm makes it

impossible to explain how meaning could in principle be intersubjectively accessible. As

Wittgenstein argued already, if meaning is constituted within the first person perspective then one

cannot conceive in principle how somebody else can have thoughts with the same contents as

oneself.x Secondly, even if one cannot accept the inscrutability thesis and rejects the first premise of

Davidson's argument, this does not automatically lead to the acceptance of the first person

perspective. To object to the first premise means to reject the specific analysis of intentionality

within the framework of radical interpretation but not to oppose the third person perspective per se.xi

One could argue that semantic properties like reference are determinately supervening on natural

properties besides those that are accessible from the point of view of radical interpretation. In this

context one could, for example, think of the various attempts to reduce semantic content to the

notion of information or consider the proposal to account for reference in terms of causal relations.

Most of the current naturalization attempts, however, do not escape the problem of indeterminacy,

since it is not clear how one can be justified to single out one particular causal relation as the

reference relation. Just to insist that causation itself fixes reference determinately, even though we

might not be able to construct a causal theory of reference, is to put oneself outside the realm of

scientific naturalism. It is not clear what differentiates such a "naturalistic" position from the claim

that reference is a relation sui generis.xii

I propose, hence, that one should reject the second premise of the argument. I will argue that the

indeterminacy thesis is not even intelligible from the perspective of radical interpretation, since we

justify an interpretation of a particular speaker's utterances not only in the context of making sense

of her linguistic but also her non-linguistic behavior. The interpretation of the non-linguistic

behavior of a particular person is thus further evidence for the interpretation of her linguistic

utterances. The radical interpreter does not only observe the linguistic behavior of a particular

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speaker but also her non-linguistic interaction with the world. She for example does not only observe

the speaker saying "Ich öffne die Tür" but she also sees him opening the door. Now it might be

possible to construct truth-conditions for the German sentence according to which "ich öffne die

Tür" is interpreted as I open* the shadow of the door. However, from the perspective of our

linguistic practice it does not seem to be possible to describe her action as an opening* of the shadow

of the door, since we cannot totally abstract from our way of describing the world. If this is indeed

the case then we are forced to interpret the interpretee in the standard mode in light of the principle

of charity, otherwise her linguistic and non-linguistic action cannot be regarded as being consistent

with each other or even caused by one agent.

Now, one might object that in arguing in the above manner I dogmatically prefer our way of

describing the world. One could claim that those persons using a supposedly permuted scheme of

reference might make a similar argument from their perspective. Ramberg in his explication of the

Davidsonian thesis of inscrutability asks us, for example, to imagine the case of two Gods who

speak permuted languages and who are both equally and objectively justified in their interpretation

of the speaker.xiii In appealing to such a God's eye point of view one is leaving the context of the

thought experiment of radical interpretation and appealing to a cosmic exile position, a position

Davidson normally regards as unintelligible because it appeals to a notion of truth outside the realm

of interpretation.xiv To argue conclusively for the inscrutability thesis one would have to show that

even from the perspective of the radical interpreter one cannot distinguish between different schemes

of reference. To insist on a God's eye perspective and to maintain that there might be two permuted

languages as in the above example is to beg the question since it assumes the truth of the

inscrutability thesis without arguing for it. The thesis of the inscrutability of reference is therefore

not consistent with the claim that our conception of semantic properties can be fully analyzed

through the thought experiment of radical interpretation, or to say it differently, the acceptance of

premise 1 is not consistent with assertion of premise 2.

Conclusion

As I have shown, Searle's arguments for the first person perspective as the philosophically

appropriate basis for the analysis of meaning and intentionality have proven neither to be conclusive

nor are his objection against the perspective of radical interpretation in the end well founded.

Contrary to what Davidson maintains, the inscrutability thesis cannot be sensibly asserted from the

perspective of radical interpretation.

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The above argument, though, does not refute what I would like to call the general indeterminacy

of meaning, which one should strictly distinguish from the inscrutability thesis. The thesis of the

indeterminacy of meaning is a consequence of giving up the analytic/synthetic distinction and the

holism involved in the construction of an interpretive theory of truth. The only criteria for the correct

interpretation of a specific sentence is in the end the overall fit between the interpretation of a

specific sentence and the interpretation of all the other sentences. In this context the interpreter has

certain room to construct different interpretations which are equally well justified because she is able

to pragmatically trade off belief and concept attribution. To give an example, even under the

guidance of the principle of charity it is not fully determined if we should interpret the ancient Greek

term "arete" as expressing the same concept as our term "virtue," and attribute different beliefs to

the Greeks or if we should rather say that the Greeks possessed a concept for which we do not really

have one linguistic expression, since we in contrast to them would not attribute virtue to horses. In

whichever manner we decide to interpret this particular term, both interpretive options would

account for the differences in linguistic behavior and are equally supported by the evidence.

This kind of indeterminacy of meaning is, however, compatible with the assumption of a special

first person authority in regard to our own mental states. We do not at all expect that everybody is

able to explicate all concepts in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. We rather assume that

our concepts are characterized by a certain amount of vagueness and openness and that it is not

always clear whether a particular concept applies in a certain situation. This is a general

characteristic of our conceptual scheme and no appeal to the first person perspective will change it,

because even from that perspective we are at a loss to come up with necessary and sufficient

conditions. There is, therefore, no need to be particularly worried about Searle's assault on the third

person perspective insofar as intentional states are concerned.

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Endnotes

i. See his "Indeterminacy, Empiricism and the First Person", Journal of Philosophy 84 (1987), pp. 123-146 and The Rediscovery of Mind, Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press, 1992, esp. chap.7.

ii. For this evaluation of Quine see my Donald Davidsons Theorie sprachlichen Verstehens, Frankfurt a.M., Beltz Athenäum, 1993, Kap.1. For a recent critique of Quine from the perspective of our actual translation practices see also D. Bar-On, "Indeterminacy of Translation - Theory and Practice," in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 53 (1993):, I defend radical interpretation as the philosophically appropriate context for the analysis of meaning against objections from Fodor and LePore in "Holism and Radical Interpretation," in Analyomen 2, ed. by.G.Meggle and P. Steinacker, Berlin/New York, DeGruyter (Forthcoming).

iii. See Davidson "The Inscrutability of Reference, in "Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1984, p.235. For our purposes it is not necessary to define the notion of supervenience in an exact fashion. For the argument, it is only of importance that semantic properties cannot be regarded as properties which are utterly independent of other non-semantical properties. As it is known, Davidson himself is a proponent of a rather weak conception of supervenience according to which it is impossible that two events are identical in all their physical properties but differ in their mental or semantical properties. For different conceptions of supervenience see the relevant article in J. Kim, Supervenience and the Mind, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1993.

iv. See Searle, "Indeterminacy, Empiricism and the First Person," p. 140, ftnte. 13.

v. See Quine's response to objection from Grice and Strawson in Word and Object, p.67.

vi. See Davidson, "The Inscrutability of Reference", p.229/30. For another more complex example see Putnam, Reason, Truth and History, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1881, chap.2.

vii. See for example Davidson, "Reality without Reference," in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, p.224/25 and "Towards a Unified Theory of Meaning and Action," in Grazer Philosophische Studien 11 (1980), p.6.

viii. In my discussion of the inscrutability of reference in Donald Davidsons Theorie sprachlichen Verstehens, pp.159ff I did not stress this fact sufficiently enough.

ix. This line of argument is most forcefully represented by B. Stroud, The Philosophical Significance of Scepticism, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1984. I argue against the claim that these platitudes have unavoidable skeptical consequences in "Practice, Indeterminacy and Private Language: Wittgenstein's Dissolution of Scepticism", Philosophical Investigations, pp.11-36.

x.Searle seems to be committed to a projective account of understanding based on analogical reasoning, i.e. I project my intentional thoughts onto you if I observe that you behave similarly and your behavior is caused by similar internal non-semantical states. See Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind, p.22. Within the context of such an account, it is however not clear how it is possible to establish that type-identical intentional states supervene causally on type-identical neurophysiological states as Searle seems to maintain (See ibid., p.124), because the notion of type-identity in regard to intentional states seems to be unintelligible within the first

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person perspective.

xi. See for example Fodor's and LePore's critique of radical interpretation in Holism, Oxford, Blackwell, 1992, p.81.

xii. For opposing views in this debate see J. Van Cleve, "Semantic Supervenience and Referential Indeterminacy,", in Journal of Philosophy 1992, pp.344-361 and E.LePore/B.Loewer, "A Putnam's Progress," in Midwest Studies in Philosophy XII (1988), pp. 459-473. In The Elm and the Expert, Cambridge, MIT Press 1994, Fodor addresses the referential indeterminacy which plagued his earlier account of content. He admits that a purely atomistic account of content is not possible but that he can avoid semantic holism and the threat of indeterminacy by appealing to the logical syntax of a language, such as the linguistic construction of predicate conjunction. This argument does not, however, even remotely address the argument for the inscrutability of reference which is based on the idea of a permutation of the universe.

xiii. See B. Ramberg, Donald Davidson's Philosophy of Language, Oxford, Blackwell, 1989, p.94/95.

xiv. Davidson's appeal to the idea of an omniscient God in his argument against skepticism is in my opinion another example of a transgression of his own paradigm of radical interpretation. See Davidson, "A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge," in Truth and Interpretation, ed. by E. LePore, Oxford, Blackwell, p.317.