Representing and Knowing David Banach

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION INTRODUCTION . . 1 PART I - MODELS OF REPRESENTATION CHAPTER I - MODELS OF REPRESENTATION AND OBJECTIVITY. 13 1.1 - The Physical-Visual Model of Representation. . . . 13 1.2 - Models of Objectivity . . . 16 1.3 - The Elements of an Alternative Model of Representation . . . 24 CHAPTER II - HISTORICAL MANIFESTATIONS 36 CHAPTER III - THE CASE AGAINST THE REPRESENTATIONAL MODEL OF EPISTEMOLOGY . 53 PART II - AN ALTERNATIVE MODEL CHAPTER IV - REFERENCE . . . . . 59 4.1 - Representing without Similarity .. . . . . 61 4.2 - Reference apart from Correctness. The Intuitive Case . . . . . . . . 64 4.3 - Representing and Referring . . . . . . 71 4.4 - Putnam contra a Putnamian Theory of Reference . . 80 CHAPTER V - CONCEPTS . . . . . . . 88 5.1 - Why do Concepts Present such a Problem? . . . . 88 5.2 - What are Concepts? . . . . . . . 91 5.3 - How Concepts Work . . . . .. . . 95 5.4 - Why Concepts aren't Representations . . . . . 101 CHAPTER VI - AGENCY, OBJECTIVITY, AND TRUTH . .. . 107 6.1 - Agency . . . . . . . . . 107 6.2 - Objectivity . . . . . . . . 114 6.3 - Truth . . . . . . . . . 119

PART III - THE ALTERNATIVE DEFENDED CHAPTER VII - HEGEL'S INSIGHT AND FOUR PROBLEMS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE . . . . . 123 7.1 - The Opening Arguments of the Phenomenology . . . 125 7.2 - Hegel's Insight . . . . . . . . 133 7.3 - Indexicals . . . . . . . . 138 7.4 - De re and de dicto Knowledge . . . . . 141 7.5 - Literal Meaning and Figurative Language . . . . 146 7.6 - Putnam's Model Theoretic Argument . . . . . 148 CHAPTER VIII - PUTNAM . . . . . . . 161 8.1 - Metaphysical Realism . . . . . . . 162 8.2 - Putnam's Arguments . . . . . . . 167 8.3 - Internal Realism . . . . . . . 175 CHAPTER IX - REPRESENTATION AND REALISM . . . 191 9.1 - Putnam and the Perspectivist Fallacy. . . . . 192 9.2 - Representation, Truth, and Generality . . . . . 198 9.3 - Properties and Objects . . . . . . . 202 9.4 - Inadequacies of Internalism . . . . . . 213 9.5 - The Objectivity of the Self and the Motivation of Realism . . . . . . . . 225 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . 232

to Donald Watts

for introducing me to philosophy and showing me, by example,

what it is

INTRODUCTION

Pygmalion had seen these women spending their lives in shame, and, disgusted with the faults which in such full measure nature had given the female mind, he lived unmarried and long was without a partner of his couch. Meanwhile, with wondrous art he successfully carves a figure out of snowy ivory, giving it a beauty more perfect than that of any woman ever born. And with his own work he falls in love. The face is that of a real maiden, whom you would think living and desirous of being moved, if modesty did not prevent. So does his art conceal his art. Pygmalion looks in admiration and is inflamed with love for this semblance of a form (Ovid, Metamorphoses X, 243-255)

The story of Pygmalion and the history of epistemology have much in common. Both

illustrate the power that our representations can have over us. Both are attempts to make

our representations come alive.

All of us, like Pygmalion, have the tendency to attribute properties to representations

by themselves that they have only in virtue of our interpretation of them. Physical objects

that can serve as representations are a prime example of this. An ivory statue of a woman

has physical similarities to real human forms, and we take it as representing a real

woman. But the ivory itself has none of the other properties of humans even though it

conjures up these properties in its role as representation. Yet, the representation, the

physical object, takes us in and attracts us by the allure of its simplicity, clarity, passivity,

and, most of all, by its externality.

The representation has a simplicity and clarity not found in the object or our

interpretation of it. The object is represented by only a few of its properties, giving

simplicity to the representation, and these are thrust into prominence by their selection,

providing clarity. This clarity and simplicity is enhanced by the fact that the physical

representation is static and unchanging. Compare this to the everchanging complex of

properties that makes up a real woman. The representation in comparison is passive and

unchanging, providing opportunities for contemplation and control that the object does

not. Likewise, our interpretation of the representation has a complexity and a motility not

found in the representation itself. Our interpretation introduces a tangled morass of

opinions, associations, beliefs, and memories into the representation, all of which are of

dubious quality, are internal to us, and reflect ourselves as much as the object

represented. The physical representation, on the other hand, is external to us. The

simplicity and clarity of the representation have no allure if they are imposed by us, and

the power we have over representations in virtue of their passivity loses its flavor if it is

not power over something external to us.

The drive to attribute properties to representations themselves that they only have in

virtue of our interpretation is due to an attempt to have our cake and eat it too.

Pygmalion's statue has an attractiveness in virtue of the properties discussed above,

properties that it has as a simple physical object. Yet, these properties retain their

attractiveness only if they also represent the other properties of the woman. The statue

must represent a woman, not just the shape of a woman. It is only these other properties

(e.g., warmth, suppleness, and personality) that give the representation vivacity, but these

all seem to be added by us in our interpretation. The attempt to make our representations

come alive is the attempt to combine the vivacity of our representations as interpreted

with the attractiveness they have as objects. It promises to make the clarity, passivity, and

externality of the object come alive not through our intervention, as derivative from our

life, but on its own, through its own power, with its own life.

This attempt, however, is doomed to failure, and its promise is empty. The

representation cannot of its own power call up any properties that it does not possess.

Without these other properties the representation cannot come alive. In fact (and this is

the real point of this discussion) it cannot even be a representation without these other

properties; it is simply an object. The ivory statue has certain physical properties that are

similar to those of a woman. Apart from the interpretation of an observer with certain

abilities and concepts, however, these similarities will not allow the statue to represent a

woman. A dog passing the statue in the museum may note the similarity and pause to

sniff the statue, but finding it cold and unresponsive will pass on. The properties of the

statue do not themselves lead on to other properties of the object not instantiated in the

statue. The dog does not take the statue as a representation of a woman. This requires

something that the statue itself cannot supply: it requires the activity of an agent with

abilities and concepts that allows them to connect the properties present in the statue to

the other properties of women.

The point here is not that there cannot be similarities between the statue and the

woman, nor that there cannot be enough of them. The point is that similarity is not

representation. The argument here is simple. In order to represent an object, the

representation must call up properties of the object other than those the representation

possesses. But the representation cannot by itself in virtue of its similarities call up the

other properties of the object. This requires an interpreter with knowledge of the other

properties of the object and with dispositions to associate these other properties with the

properties present in the representation. The statue by itself cannot, in virtue of its

similarity to an object, represent the other properties of the object. Thus it cannot

represent the whole object. Nor can it represent part of the object, namely the part that it

is similar to. For it does not represent those properties it simply instantiates them. For

example, a round yellow piece of plastic cannot itself represent the sun with all its other

properties, because it requires an interpreter with certain abilities and dispositions to call

up the other properties of the sun. Nor can it represent just the yellowness and roundness

of the sun, because it simply instantiates these properties. It no more represents

yellowness or roundness than the millions of other things that are yellow or round. Even

if the similarity between the representation and the object is made complete, similarity

itself does not establish representation. The object that is completely similar to the sun,

the sun itself, does not represent itself. It is itself.

Similarity, then, is not representation, because: (1) the similar properties themselves

do not, by themselves, call up the other properties of the object; and (2) they do not

represent the properties to which they are similar; they simply instantiate them. This

argument shows that similarity is not sufficient for representation. Similarity is not

necessary either. Often by decision or convention we allow something to represent an

object to which it is not similar, as when we decide to let an arbitrary letter of the

alphabet to stand for a person. Similarity, then is neither necessary nor sufficient for

representation. Of course, similarity often does play a role in representation. As Hume

saw, similarity is one of the principles according to which humans tend to associate

things. It is still the humans, however, that do the associating that allows the objects with

the similarities to serve as a representation. Similarity to the object it is meant to

represent cannot make the representation come alive.

The moral of this homily on the myth of Pygmalion is twofold: First,

representations do not come to life by themselves. No gods will breathe life into our

representations as they did to Pygmalion's. We must bring them to life ourselves. And a

dead representation is no representation at all. That is, objects only have representative

qualities insofar as they are interpreted, and objects do not interpret themselves. Objects

do not represent, people do. We call objects representations only in virtue of our activity

of interpreting them. Second, representations do not serve as substitutes for objects in

virtue of their ability to represent them apart from any interpretation. Representation

requires the activity of an agent; when this activity ceases the object ceases to be a

representation. Therefore, representations cannot serve as vessels that are infused with

representative power and which can then function on their own to take the place of

interaction with the object. This is to confuse representation with communication.

Communication does involve representation, but we do not communicate by bringing

representations to life and then passing them on to others.

There is a common sense of the word "representation" that is tied to this view of

communication. This is representation as the encoding of information. This involves

taking information and placing it in a new medium in which it takes another form and

from which it can be retrieved. Examples of this are the storage of a visual image on a

photographic negative, the storage of information on computer disks, and the encoding of

genetic information on DNA strands. All of these are popular models for representation.

It seems in all of these as if the information is stored or represented in virtue of the

physical properties of the representative medium. Here if anywhere it seems as if the

representations do their work by themselves. Even these representations, however, do not

have a life of their own: First, it is only as a part of a causal system allowing the

reproduction of the original form of the information that these objects can be thought of

as encoding information. The information itself is not present and intact in the new

medium, as anyone who has had a computer disk without the appropriate software to read

it can attest. The very same physical object with all the same properties would not be an

encoding of information if the causal system, in this case computers, did not exist.

Second, even as situated in the causal system the object does not represent or encode

information unless it can be interpreted. A causal system that reproduces information

does not represent. It may be useful to an interpreter who can interpret the reproduced

information and use it to represent, but it does not do the job itself. A chair factory does

not represent chairs; it makes them. Thus, a system for encoding information does not

itself represent, although it may be useful for a creature that can represent.

Representations, therefore, cannot take the place of objects and interaction with them.

Pygmalion created his statue through interaction with real women. His production of the

statue was an act of representing a real woman in ivory. The status of the piece of ivory

as a representation depends upon this act. The ability of the ivory to represent a woman to

other people does not rest within the ivory itself, as the dog in the museum shows, but in

the abilities and knowledge of the people who interpret it. They must themselves perform

an act of interpretation to allow the ivory to represent a woman, and this requires

previous interaction with women as well. The ivory is not a substitute for real women, it

is a way of representing real women, and as such it presupposes independent access to

real women and knowledge of their other properties on the part of the person who is to

interpret it.

No object can represent in virtue of its own properties apart from the activity of an

interpreter. Therefore, a representation cannot serve as a substitute for an object, a

container into which information is poured to be stored for future use or passed on to

someone else.

This dissertation is an attempt to apply these two morals to explain the role that

representations play in knowledge. I will call the basic thesis that we know by

representing the Representational Model of Epistemology. This model of knowledge has

been so closely tied to the attempt to make representations come alive that some have

argued that when we see that the attempt to make representations come alive must be a

failure, then we will see that the Representational Model of Epistemology is itself a

failure. It is the purpose of this work to show that this is not so. Even after we see that

representations cannot come alive by themselves, we can still hold that we know by

representing. The representations may not be able to do it themselves, but we can know

through their mediation.

This entire dissertation is an attempt to defend this thesis by, first, sketching the

outline of a theory of representation that takes the two morals above seriously and takes

the act of representing as the basic unit of analysis instead of separating the

representation from its situation in the context of this act. Next, I show how this view of

representation affects a representative model of knowledge. I argue that the

Representational Model of Epistemology escapes the traditional objections raised against

it when it incorporates this view of representing and that this version of the

Representational Model of Epistemology is preferable to non-representational models of

knowledge.

Before we begin these formidable tasks, however, we need to look more closely at the

model of representation attacked in this introduction and at what type of view of

knowledge it leads to. In particular we will need to see what type of model of objectivity

it leads to. We will also need to see what a view of representation that takes the morals of

this introduction seriously would look like. Chapter One attempts to do these things. In

Chapter Two, I look at some of the main manifestations of these models of representation

and objectivity in the history of philosophy. In Chapter Three, I examine the basic

objections to the traditional version of the Representational Model of Epistemology, in

particular the objections raised by Richard Rorty.

These three chapters comprise the first part of the dissertation. The second part spells

out in more detail the alternative view of representation being put forth in this

dissertation. Chapter Four is an account of reference, or how we can represent external

objects if the intrinsic properties of the representations cannot do the job alone. Chapter

Five deals with concepts or predication. It examines the sets of dispositions and abilities

we have to represent things in certain ways. This chapter and the chapter on reference are

the most crucial in the work. It is the special properties of our concepts, especially, that

make the attempt to make representations come alive seem plausible. Chapter Six

attempts to spell out the view of knowledge and objectivity that this theory of

representation leads to. It does this by centering upon the model of agency or the

application of concepts that this view of representation leads to. These three chapters

comprise the second part of the dissertation. The third part attempts to defend the views

set forth in Part Two by using them to reply to a set of related objections to the

Representational Model of Epistemology. Chapter Seven considers Hegel's argument

against Sense Certainty, the problem of indexicals, de re and de dicto belief, John Searle's

argument against literal meaning, and Putnam's model theoretic argument. I argue that all

these problems are related and can be solved by the view of representation presented in

Part Two. Chapter Eight looks in detail at a series of arguments by Hilary Putnam, and

Chapter Nine attempts to reply to these arguments. Putnam's arguments, it seems to me,

are by far the most clear and thorough of the objections to the Representational Model of

Epistemology. Consequently, much of the argument for my view of representation

depends on its ability to answer Putnam's arguments.

But before we move on to these topics, let us get clear about the models of

representation and objectivity involved.

CHAPTER I

MODELS OF REPRESENTATION AND OBJECTIVITY

In this chapter, I look at the model of representation attacked in the Introduction and at

the model of objectivity that this view leads to, along with some alternative views of

objectivity. Finally, I sketch the basic elements of a theory of representation that does not

attempt to make the representation come alive through its own power.

1.1: The Physical-Visual Model of Representation

The model caricatured in the Introduction is what I call the physical-visual model of

representation. I call it this because it takes representation by a physical object, such as a

statue, as the paradigmatic case. It then uses this case to interpret visual and mental

representation in general. Visual representation is then used as the model for all

knowledge or cognitive representation.

Imagine looking at an object and a physical representation of that object. Take, for

example, our statue and the woman it was modelled after. In this case both the object and

the representation are contained in the same perception. We perceive their similarities,

and we can perceive the correspondences between the statue and the women. This allows

us to see, for example, how the elbow of ivory maps onto the elbow of flesh. Thus we can

take the ivory as representing the flesh; we project the properties of the woman onto the

statue guided by the perceived similarities. We see the woman in terms of the statue,

giving special emphasis to properties of the woman that correspond to the statue. The

statue represents the woman only in virtue of the complete interpretation of the situation

by the observer and the access that he has to both the statue and the woman. This is a

paradigmatic case of physical representation, but it is one that is bound to be

incompletely analyzed. Given the alluring nature of the object, it is natural to leave out

the part that the observer plays in this situation and attribute the representative qualities

of the statue to its similarity to the woman. After all, it is the similarities that guide the

projection of the properties of the woman onto the statue. The fact that this projection is

an act of the observer, dependent upon his ability to interact perceptually with both the

statue and the woman, is easily overlooked. It is this simplified analysis of physical

representation that is taken as the paradigm and applied to visual perception which is then

used as the model for all forms of knowledge.

The visual perception, then, is seen as a representation or picture. The characteristics

of the situation that made the status of the physical object as representation possible are

excluded by the nature of perception. In the case of the statue we had independent access

to the real woman. Perception is the only way in which we contact the world. When a

perceptual experience is seen according to the paradigm of physical representation, it is

seen as an internal object rather than a process of interaction with the external object. It is

not possible to perceive both the object and the representation as it was in the case of

physical representation. We only have direct access to the representation. There is no way

to use the similarities of the visual percept to the object to guide the projection of the

properties of the object onto the representation. To do this we would need to experience

both our internal representation and the external object and use a comparison of the two

to guide the projection of properties. But we do not experience both of these; our internal

image is our experience of the external object. It cannot be compared to the external

object through some mind's eye that experiences both the image and the external object.

There is no way to ascertain the correspondence between internal representation and

external object. Thus, there is no way to gain access to the properties of the external

object other than those instantiated in the internal image. Since there is no way for the

observer to gain independent access to the external object, the representation must be

connected to the other properties of the object by itself, through its own intrinsic

characteristics. Thus, the physical-visual model of representation is committed to the

attempt to make our representations come alive.

Seeing the visual percept as a representation that must represent the object in virtue

only of its similarities and not through its connection to the object, nor through the

interpretation of an observer with access to both, makes it impossible for the visual

percept to represent at all. All of the characteristics of the original situation of physical

representation that allow it to represent are abstracted out before it is used as a model for

visual perception and cognitive representation in general. Thus, one is left with the

problem of attempting to make representations come alive, to make them represent in

virtue of their own properties. The history of modern philosophy is the story of the

realization that this is impossible.

1.2: Models of Objectivity

Objectivity is the characteristic we aim for in knowledge. In general it is the property

of not being determined by a particular subject or point of view, i.e, not being subjective.

The most natural model of objectivity, and the one tied to the Representational Model of

Epistemology, is what I call the external model of objectivity. This view simply holds

that objectivity is a property of representations which they have in virtue of reflecting

properties of the object they are meant to represent and not properties of the representing

subject or the representing medium.

One can see immediately that the Representative Model of Epistemology will have

problems assimilating this natural view of objectivity. This model of knowledge holds

that we always know through the mediation of representations. Therefore, it seems as if

the intervening medium of the representation will always make it subjective. The

representation cannot help incorporating the properties of its medium and the point of

view from which it is formed. If knowledge is always through the mediation of

representations, then it seems that it will be impossible to have objective knowledge.

I will call views of objectivity that take this difficulty seriously perspectivist models of

objectivity. I call them this because taking this difficulty seriously seems to involve

accepting a form of argument I call the perspectivist fallacy. The perspectivist fallacy is

the argument that if a representation has properties that are due to the medium of

representation or the point of view of the representing subject, then it cannot be objective

or reflect the object and not the subject.[1] It argues that representation necessarily

introduces subjective distortion because of the influence of the medium of the

representation and the perspective of the perceiver. It is easy to see how this type of

reasoning would be attractive to someone who held the physical-visual model of

representation. If mental representations are seen on the model of physical objects, they

become barriers standing in the way of our knowledge of external objects rather than

ways of getting at these objects. If we perceive only representations, then any properties

of the representation that do not exactly correspond to the external object make it

impossible for us to know the object at all. As we saw, when the representation must do

its job itself, it cannot call up any of the properties of its object other than those it

possesses. Therefore, if because of perspective or medium the representation does not

completely correspond[2] to the object it cannot represent it at all. (See the argument on

pages 4-5.) The elements introduced by the perspective and medium pollute the entire

representation. If all we perceive is our own representations, then any distortion at all

ruins the entire representation since we can never check the representation against the

object to see which features correspond and which do not. On the physical-visual model,

anything less than complete correspondence makes the representation subjective and

unable to represent the object. What is needed is a representation that shows no effects of

the perspective from which it is formed and whose content is unaffected by its medium.

The perspectivist model of objectivity aims at the God's eye view, a perspective or

medium of representation that contributes nothing to the content of the representation,

one that guarantees that it will be objective.

There are two ways of trying to achieve this special type of representation: The first of

these I call the dialectical method. This is the method favored by Plato and Aristotle, at

least on the standard reading of them. This view attempts to reach an objective

representation gradually through the examination, comparison, and synthesis of many

perspectives. If we look at many perspectives and try to synthesize representations with

various different types of medium, the result will be a representation whose dependence

on any one perspective is minimal and the dependence of the representation on the object

increases. At the limit of this process is the perfect representation or the God's eye view.

This method is comparable to the building of a certain type of platform. In order to

reduce the load carried by any particular beam upon which the platform rests, the number

of beams is increased. Imagine also that each beam that is added is somewhat thinner

than the previous beams, and as each beam is added all the existing beams are replaced

with beams of the same size. As more beams are added the strength of each beam is

decreased. This lessens the load on each beam and decreases the degree to which the

platform depends on each beam. The hope is that by adding more and more beams the

weight supported by each beam will approach zero, and you will have a platform not

being held up by anything. This analogy makes the dialectical method intuitively clear,

and it also shows the fundamental incoherence involved in the attempt to get a

representation that does not reflect any perspective or medium, a God's eye view. It is the

attempt to get a non-perspectival perspective, a representation that isn't a representation.

The second way to attempt to achieve the God's eye view is to try to get it right away

and then build the rest of your body of knowledge upon these special representations.

This is what I call the foundational method. This is the method favored in Modern

philosophy before Kant and in early analytic philosophy. Here the attempt is to find a set

of representations that reflect the object exactly and which cannot be distorted by

perspective. This can be attempted either through arriving at the special representations

through a special method which ensures the objectivity of representations or by taking

representations which have a special causal relationship to their objects which, again,

ensures their versimilitude. An objective system of representation is then built through

logical deduction and/or induction from these foundational representations. Of course, the

problem with this method is explaining how we arrive at the foundational representations.

I will discuss some of the historical manifestations of these two methods further in

Chapter Two.

The result of seeing the failure of these two methods by someone who accepts the

perspectivist fallacy is usually the abandonment of the external model of objectivity. As

in Kant, objectivity is redefined in terms of the internal properties of the system of

representations. Here objectivity no longer involves accurately representing an external

object. Knowledge becomes a relation between elements internal to our system of

representations. Objectivity becomes a stability or intersubjectivity of this system. Given

the perspectivist fallacy, any representation reflects some perspective and some medium

so it cannot reach outside of itself to something beyond representations. The only way

that the representation can be objective, or not merely caused by the peculiarities of our

constitution, is if the representation constructs its object in accordance with certain

constraints that are not just due to the peculiarities of my particular representation, but are

common to all rational creatures as such (or to all members of a cultural or scientific

community).

Objectivity, on this view, still consists in not being caused by peculiarities of a

particular perspective or representative medium. The objectivity of our representations,

however, is not a causal result of their being caused by the object and not the subject. It is

a result of our representations constructing their objects in accordance with constraints

that are shared by some set of knowers, and hence not merely subjective.

The internal model of objectivity gives a strange twist to the perspectivist tendency to

redefine the object of knowledge. Plato redefined the object of knowledge as an abstract

entity, Aristotle as a universal, formal aspect of objects. The internal model, by

recognizing that representations are active in cognition, redefines the object of knowldege

as a construct produced by the cognitive process itself. There is no longer any problem in

comparing our representations to their objects, since the objects become internal to the

system of representations. But objectivity can no longer be determination by a mind

independent reality; the mind determines reality. Objectivity, then, must be the

determination of objects according to conceptual constraints that are not simply

individual, private, and subjective, but which are common to a community and define a

common reality for them. Our representations are objective, then, if they merely reflect

other perspectives and other representations rather than external objects. It is this view

that I call the internal model of objectivity. I will be attempting to show that this

implication of the failure of the attempt to make representations come alive that does not

follow. The vital step in the move from the failure of the physical-visual model of

representation to the internal model of objectivity is, of course, the perspectivist fallacy.

Of course, calling the perspectivist line of argument a fallacy does not make it one. I

use this term simply to remind us that this argument scheme, which is so pervasive in

discussions of foundational epistemology, is suspect. The best proof of this will be to

provide an alternative to the physical-visual model of representation and to show that on

this alternative the influences of perspective or medium of representation do not make it

impossible to objectively represent the object. Part two of this work, especially Chapters

Four and Six on reference and agency, attempt to do this and add some sticks and stones

to the name calling.

We can, however, get some idea of what might be wrong with the perspectivist fallacy

by considering a simple analogy. Consider how an artist represents things using a paint

and canvas. Her medium and the perspective from which she views the object place

certain constraints on her representations. Yet her medium is neutral with respect to the

representation of certain properties of the object. While the type of canvas and paint

determine the texture of the representation and that it will be two dimensional, they

impose no important constraints on the two dimensional geometric shape placed upon the

canvas. In particular, it is just as easy to paint a circle on the canvas as it is to paint a

square. The medium is neutral with respect to these properties. Therefore, the geometrical

shape of the representation, whether it is square or round, reflects the object and not the

medium of representation. It is objective. Even though the representation is in a certain

medium and from a certain perspective, all of its properties need not be determined by

that perspective or medium. Some of them may be objective and really reflect the object.

This simple example shows at least that it is possible that the perspectivist fallacy is a

fallacy. It shows that it is possible for a representation to reflect the object even though it

is in a medium and from a perspective that introduce distortions into the representation. It

needs to be shown further how one can distinguish the objective properties of the

representation from those that are distorted by perspective. While a full explanation of

this will have to wait till Chapter Six, the next section outlines the elements of view of

representation that makes such an explanation possible.

1.3: The Elements of an Alternative Model of Representation

If the argument of the Introduction is sound, then the attempt to make representations

come alive is without hope. An object, idea, or piece of language cannot represent in

virtue of its own properties or their similarities to other objects. Representation always

involves the activity of an interpreter.

If representing is always an act, then we need to analyze the act and find out what

elements are involved and how they function. Such an analysis can form the outline of a

theory of representation that takes seriously the realization that representing is something

done by an agent, not something done by the representation itself.

The act of representing is the basic unit of the analysis. The other elements may be

analyzed out of this act, but they only have their representative qualities in virtue of their

situation in an act of representing. The mistake of the physical-visual model was to

abstract the representation from the act of representing while still thinking that it

maintained the properties that it had only as part of that act. What we are calling the

representation is the finished product of the act of representing. As we saw it can be a

physical object, an image, a perceptual experience, or a piece of language. Once we see

that representing does not depend on similarity, we can realize that other things such as

actions, that are not normally regarded as representations, can play the same role in the

representing act. It is not these things by themselves that are representations, but only

these things as interpreted, as the end product of the representing act.

As we saw in the earlier example of physical representation access or interaction with

both the object and the representation is required. We saw that representation involved

the projection of properties of the object onto the representation. In the example of the

statue, this projection was made on the basis of similarities. The flesh figure is mapped

onto the ivory figure according to the correspondences that obtain between them. It

should be noted that the similarity is neither responsible for, nor necessary for, the

projection of properties. It is the agent that performs this projection. In this example, he

does it in virtue of either some knowledge about the other properties of women and a

tendency to associate them with the properties present in the statue or through the joint

presence of the woman and the statue in his perceptual experience. Often no similarity at

all is involved in the projection; it is sometimes just a matter of the decision of the agent

or convention, as when we let x's represent defensive players and o's offensive players.

This projection of properties is the essential element of representation. Representing

always involves at least two separate modes of interaction or presentation of an object

one of which is projected onto the other.[3] The mode which is to be represented by being

projected onto the other mode will be called the source. The mode of interaction or

presentation through which the source is to be represented will be called the destination.

In our example using the statue, a great many modes of interaction with women (e.g. the

visual, the tactile, the emotional, and the sexual to name just a few) are projected onto the

single destination mode of presentation, which in this case happens to be the ivory shape.

The projection of properties here is not any real transfer of properties. It is simply the

application of modes of perception of women which involve the ascription of various

types of properties to the ivory figure. The ivory figure is perceived as a woman.

The projection of the properties is not determined by the ivory figure, although the

destination does impose constraints upon the projection.[4] It is determined by the set of

abilities, associations, and beliefs of the agent. These cognitive structures of the agent do

the representing. It is these representing structures that are most often referred to in our

normal use of the word "concept". We will have to wait until Chapter Six for a

satisfactory account of concepts, but we can give an introductory exposition here.

Concepts are the actual cognitive structures that do the representing. They are

complexes of dispositions to represent in certain ways. For example, a concept of a

particular woman consists of a number of structures for representing her in various ways:

ascribing certain properties to her, acting towards her in certain ways, and feeling toward

her in certain ways.

Concepts are not representations, that is, they are not acts of representing. They are the

mental potentials for such acts. To call them complexes of dispositions is simply a way of

saying they are sets of embodied potentials for entering into certain acts of representing,

and to identify them with certain neural and bodily structures is simply to point out that

our ability to represent is somehow embodied.

We are not directly aware of our concepts, we know them only through what they do.

This is true of all the things we characterize as dispositions. Although we must

characterize concepts in terms of how they cause us to represent, they are not themselves

representations. They are neither modes of interaction nor modes of presentation of

objects. We never have access to our concepts directly. We know them only by what they

do and how they cause us to represent. They are the active structures that lie behind acts

of representing. Since they are never present to us themselves, they cannot re-present

anything to us. Rather, they determine how we will use other things to represent objects.

The consideration of a simple analogy will help show why this is so. Imagine that you

have bought the dime store plastic model kit for Pygmalion's statue. It comes complete

with plastic cement and a twelve page set of instructions. These instructions provide the

directions for representing a woman in terms of the plastic pieces the kit provides. They

are not themselves a representation of a woman. Let us change the example slightly in

order to make it more similar to our concepts. Imagine that the kit comes with a black

box automaton that puts the model together for us. We never actually get to see the

instructions. The automaton is the active agent that performs the representation of the

woman. It is not a representation itself. This is exactly how concepts work. They are the

active structures, physically and neurologically embodied, that do the representing. In a

sense they must contain instructions or procedures for representing just as the automaton

does. We have no more access to these instructions in the case of concepts, however, than

we do in the case of the black box automaton. There may be information encoded in

concepts, in some sense, but we never have access to it. The concepts and the instructions

in the automaton are never present to us; they cannot represent anything for us. They do

the representing; they are not representations themselves.

Of course we are able to trace out the structure of our concepts quite well by

exercising them and seeing how they cause us to act, just as we could characterize the

dispositions in the black box by seeing what they do. This is what we do in conceptual

analysis. (This is why language is so useful in conceptual analysis, for, as we shall see, it

is more appropriate to say it mirrors the structure of our concepts than that it represents

the world.) The point here is simply that we are never directly aware of our concepts, or

our embodied potentials to represent, in the way we are of their expressions such as

images, perceptions, and thoughts. Hence our concepts cannot re-present things for us in

the way these things do. We are aware of our concepts only as represented through their

activities.

We were able to analyze out four basic elements necessary to representation: (1) the

source; (2) the destination. These are modes of interacting with or presenting an object.

Representing involves projection of the source onto the destination. (3) The concept or

representing structure; and (4) The finished product of the act, the representation. This is

the destination interpreted by concept in terms of the source. All of these require situation

in an act of representing in order to function. None of them can represent in isolation.

There are two major types of representations. The first of these is exemplified best by

the coordination of sensory modalities and is most important for knowledge. In this type,

both the source and the destination mode are modes of interaction actively engaged in

interaction with the object.

What I have been calling a mode of interaction can be seen as a neurologically

embodied structure defined by its connections to sensory and motor neurons that define

ways in which we can cognitively interact with the world. I shall use the term 'mode of

interaction' fairly loosely in this work to cover four different, but closely related, types of

things: (1) neural structures defined in terms of their connections to efferent and afferent

neurons as described above. This is the primary meaning. (2) The felt character of the

activation of these structures. These are properties such as redness. (3) An entire path of

activation for one of these structures, for example one of the sensory modalities such as

sight or touch. (4) An actual interaction or type of interaction leading to the activation of

one of these structures. Hopefully, using a single term for these related things will save

the confusion of introcucing four new technical terms. (Although I concentrate here on

modes of interaction that are neurologically processed, this should not be taken to

indicate that there is not a tremendous amount of processing, essential to our well-being

and efficient perception, that is done within the sense organs and elsewhere outside of our

nervous system.)

As we shall see in Chapter Six, these structures can be activated by actual interaction

with the world or they can be activated by our concepts. In this first type of representing

the modes of interaction are activated by engagement in interaction with the world. So, in

this case the same object is usually interacted with in both the source and destination

modes. This is not always the case, however, as was shown in the example of interpreting

or creating the statue with the woman model present and mapping the perceived

properties of the woman onto the ivory. In most cases, however, the object interacted

with is the same in both the source modes and the destination modes. The prime example

of this type is sensory-motor coordination or coordination of any two of our sensory

modalities. In reaching out to grasp something that we see we are projecting our motor

abilities onto our sensory interaction with the world. The object as seen is represented to

us through our act of touching the same object. This type of representation is integrative.

It connects our interactions with the world and allows them to isolate out domains of

interest that can be referred to. This type of representing is what is called direct referring

in Chapter Four. It forms the basis of our ability to refer, and, hence, of our ability to

objectively know. This type of representing, however, rarely occurs in isolation, and even

if it did we would hardly be conscious of it. Most often this type of representing plays its

role within the context of more complex acts of representing that involve the application

of concepts as one of the modes of interaction involved in the act of representing.

The second type of representation is a kind of conceptualization of the destination in

terms of the source. It involves the application of a concept, which includes dispositions

to represent a domain in certain ways, to the destination which is a mode of interaction

actively engaged with some domain. What is common to all instances of this type of

representation is that they involve the application of modes of representing in the source

to the destination. That is, they take concepts or representing structures as their source

modes. This allows them to take properties that are presented by interaction with an

object as re-presenting other properties that are not present by applying the dispositions

to connect these properties that are included in the concept.

When we interpret a statue as a woman, we usually do not do this in virtue of an

interaction with a real woman at the same time we are looking at the statue. We have

interacted with many women in the past and have formed a concept of them. This concept

is a set of abilities to connect various properties or modes of interaction with women. It

includes abilities to connect the properties of women that the statue does not possess with

those that it does. For example, most of us have a concept of women that includes a

disposition to connect the color, shape, and visually perceived texture of human hair with

its softness and felt texture. We apply our concept of the woman, with all its representing

structures, to the statue. We attempt to represent the statue in terms of the instructions for

representing given in the concept. This would allow us to see the statue not just as a piece

of stone with the shape of a woman's hair, but as re-presenting a woman's hair and its

softness and felt properties. These other properties are often represented with a vividness

that leads to responses such as Pygmalion's, where the representation is mistaken for

interaction with the real thing.

This second type of representation is exemplified by perception. In perceiving, the

circular shape we see is the same circular shape we feel, we project our tactile mode of

interaction with the world onto our visual mode. All perception involves this type of

representation, for, as Hegel saw in his arguments against Sense Certainty in The

Phenomenology of Mind, a sensation of only one sensory modality, such as a bare patch

of red, is not a perception at all. Perception involves connecting the various sensory

properties into an object and seeing the object as the causal nexus of those properties.

Look around you. You do not see patches of color. You see objects, and you see these

objects in virtue of the projection of the tactile, kinesthetic, and other properties of the

objects onto your visual interaction with the world. It is our application of our perceptual

concepts that allows us to do this.

This type of representation is especially important for communication. Since

representations cannot serve as vessels in which we can encode information about the

world and transfer it apart from our interpretive processes, representations cannot serve in

communication by maintaining their representative powers during a transfer between

people. We cannot impart our act of representation onto the object itself and pass it along

to someone else. We can, however, exploit the concepts that we share with other people

by imparting to objects characteristics that we know will activate those specific concepts

or representing structures that caused us to have the representation that we did. Thus, we

communicate by getting people to represent the same way we did, not by passing our

representations along to them.

This basic sketch of the elements and types of representation gives an idea of how we

represent things without requiring that the representations do it themselves in virtue of

their intrinsic similarity to external objects. This view will be developed further in Part

Two, and it will be used to explain how the failure of the perspectivist model of

objectivity does not lead to an internal model of objectivity in Part Three. The remainder

of Part One considers more fully the historical manifestations of the view under attack

here and the standard objections to it.

[1] The most extreme and familiar instance of this fallacy is Berkely's argument that we cannot form a conception of material objects because whenever we attempt to do so we have a concept and not a material object independent of all conceptualization. See Berkeley 1962, Part I, sections 22-23 (pp. 75-76). [2] Of course, we saw in the Introduction that even a complete correspondence or similarity does not interpret itself. A representation that was completely similar to the external object would not represent it; it would simply be the object itself. It is no easier to interpret the completely similar representation than it is to interpret the object itself. [3] It is important to note here that these modes of interaction or presentation of the object need not be experiences, or conscious representations of the object. Even though we only consciously experience and know through representing, representing is not the only way we interact with or are presented with the world. In fact, representation requires that there be non-representational ways of interacting with the world. These interactions, however, cannot be conscious, nor can they provide knowledge. These things require representation. A rock interacts with the external world; it does not connect these ways of interacting in an act of representing, hence it cannot know or experience. [4] The destination is the medium of the representation. Therefore, it will impose important constraints upon the type of objectivity that can be arrived at through this type of representation. It is beyond the scope

of this dissertation to give an account of how the medium of representation determines the constraints on objectivity; I need only show that the medium does not make objectivity impossible. The characteristics of the destination are also what are keyed in upon by the the sets of dispositions which allow the projection of the properties of the source onto the destination. A consideration of the the properties of the destination along with the sets of projecting dispositions we can expect others to have, therefore, is important in deciding how we will choose to represent something for the purposes of communication.

CHAPTER II

HISTORICAL MANIFESTATIONS

The purpose of this chapter is to give a brief sketch of some of the manifestations that

the models of representation and objectivity presented in the previous chapter have had in

the history of epistemology. My aim will not be to show that any of the philosophers I

consider held any of the views caricatured above. Great philosophers do not hold

stripped-down over simplified views such as those presented in the first chapter. Rather, I

will attempt to show how certain tendencies in the development of epistemology can be

seen as manifestations of something like the models presented above.

The physical-visual model of representation seems to have originated with the Greeks

with their tendency towards visual metaphors for knowledge. In both Plato and Aristotle

one can detect strong tendencies that could be characterized as exemplifying this model.

Chief among these tendencies is the principle that like can only be known by like.

Representations were seen as representing in virtue of a similarity to their object, and

only objects that could have a similarity to our representations could be objects of

knowledge. Aristotle says, "As we have said, what has the power of sensation is

potentially like what the perceived object is actually... ." (De Anima II, 5, 418a4; J.A.

Smith trans.)[1]

Plato and Aristotle assume that we are capable of knowledge of the world and proceed

to describe what the object of knowledge must be like in order for this to be possible. The

physical-visual model of representation and the principle that only like can know like

play an important role in determining both of their ontologies.

The general representations or concepts through which we know the world cannot be

similar to particular objects as given through the senses. A different world is known with

the mind than is known with the senses. In Plato, of course, the world known by the mind

literally is a different world than the world known by the senses; it is the realm of forms.

A realm of general, abstract objects is necessary as the object of our general concepts and

words according to the like represents like principle.[2]

In Aristotle there are not literally two worlds, but each object is analyzed into matter

and form. In Aristotle, there are different types of objects for each type of representation,

for if representation is a matter of similarity then the type of representation will determine

the type of object it can represent. Thus Aristotle has a different type of object for each

sensory mode, the special sensibles; objects that can be perceived by more than one

sensory mode, the common sensibles; and the form of the object itself, which can only be

perceived by the mind not through any of the particular senses.[3] Aristotle says, "... what

actual sensation apprehends is individuals, while what knowledge apprehends is

universals,and these are in a sense within the soul." (De Anima II, 5, 417b23; J.A. Smith

trans.) This ontology allows the physical-visual model of representation to work quite

well. It is possible, on this view, for us to actually have the object of knowledge in our

mind. Here the similarity of representation to object is carried to the extreme. In

knowledge the representation is identical to its object. We are actually able to get the

form of the object into our soul and use it to represent the object. (De Anima, III, 5,

430a20)

Thus, the attempt to make representations come alive and the necessity that the

representation be similar to its object which follows form this attempt shape the nature of

the ontologies given by Plato and Aristotle. This is the source of subject-predicate or

substance-attribute metaphysics; if the representation is to be similar to the world, then

the structure of the world must mirror the structure of our representations.

As we saw, both Plato and Aristotle hold what seems to be perspectivist models of

objectivity. In fact, it seems that the perspectivist model originates with Plato (although it

has roots in his predecessors Parmenides and the Pythagoreans). The problems with the

physical-visual model of representation that lead to a perspectivist model begin with

Plato's distinction between knowledge and opinion and his insight that knowledge is true

justified belief.[4] Particular representations such as sensations are tied to particular

perspectives. Knowledge from particular perspectives is vulnerable to the vagaries of the

fleeting and everchanging phenomenal world. It can turn out to be limited only to that

perspective and found to be false when applied to other realms. It can be found to be

mere appearance or opinion. Since representations are seen as entities that stand between

us and the world there is no way to tell if a representation from a particular perspective is

objective, if it reflects the object and not the peculiarities of the perspective or the

medium of representation, or if it is a mere appearance due only to that particular

perspective or medium.

Objective representation requires justification. That is, it requires stepping out of the

current perspective comparing it with other perspectives and forming a more general

representation that encompasses all of these perspectives.[5] Both Plato and Aristotle have

what I called a dialectical model of objectivity. For both, objective knowledge is

knowledge of universals, and one gains access to the universals through the comparison

and combination of different perspectives. One begins with particular representations and

through a dialectical process arrives at more and more general and, hence, more objective

representations.

In Plato this process is pictured in the divided line. (Republic, Book Six) At first we

have images and appearances, representations from a single perspective. Through the

comparison and combination of sensible perspectives we can arrive at sensory experience

of stable objects. In mathematics we can arrive ate representations that are not tied to any

particular sensory perspective, but which encompass all possible sensory perspectives.

With this move the object of our representations is no longer a sensible object, but a

form. Finally through the dialectical examination of the definitions involved one can

make one's representations independent of assumptions that tie it to some set of

perspectives. Here one moves into the realm of the higher forms and achieves

unconditioned or completely objective knowledge. This process terminates, of course,

with the form of the Good, which encompasses all possible perspectives. Here one has a

representation that is not sullied by any distorting influences of medium or perspective.

In Aristotle the process is similar, but Aristotle does not have two separate realms of

sensible and pure objects. The universals which we have knowledge of are present in the

sensible objects we perceive. Therefore, Aristotle must find a way of making the

dialectical process operate within sense perception. His theory of induction or epagoge

provides this way.

Induction, for Aristotle, is the source of all the first principles or axioms from which

scientific knowledge proceeds. In induction, particular sensory representations of an

object from particular perspectives are retained in the mind and somehow compared and

fused into a single representation which is identical to the form of the object. Aristotle

describes the process well:

But though sense-perception is innate in all animals, in some the sense-impression comes to persist.... and when such persistence is frequently repeated a further distinction at once arises between those which out of the persistence of such sense-impressions develop a power of systematizing them.... So out of sense-perception comes to be what we call memory, and out of frequently repeated memories of the same thing develops experience; for a number of memories constitute a single experience. From experience again - i.e. from the universal now stabilized in its entirety within the soul, the one beside the many which is a single identity within them all - originate the skill of the craftsman and the knowledge of the man of science... . (Posterior Analytics, II, 19, 99b36-100a9; Mure trans.)

Aristotle is not clear about how this happens, but he does provide a vivid image:

It is like a rout in battle stopped first by one man making a stand and then another, until the original formation has been restored. The soul is so constituted as to be capable of this process. (Posterior Analytics, II, 19, 100a11-14; Mure trans.)

Aristotle manages to fit Plato's entire dialectical process, including its termination in a

form that is a one that includes the many particular perspectives, into sense experience.

The idea is still the same, however. Only representations that encompass many

perspectives can be objective. This is due to the physical-visual model of representation

which makes justification within perspectives impossible.

Descartes began to see the problems involved with the model of knowledge as

representation seen on the visual model inherited from the Greeks and Aristotle in

particular. He saw that there was nothing about the representations themselves that

guaranteed any correspondence with external objects. The representations as modes of

mental substance were separate from and independent of the material objects they were to

represent. There could be no reception of the form of the object into the mind as in

Aristotle. The soul was a different type of substance than the objects it had to represent. It

turns out that, for Descartes, the soul isn't so constituted as to make Aristotle's inductive

process possible.

But on seeing that no independent access to the object was available, Descartes was

interested in attempting to find other ways of ascertaining that there was indeed a

similarity between the representation and the external object. His was the foundational

approach to the perspectivist problem. He thought, for example, that using certain

methods of arriving at our representations would guarantee that they corresponded to

objects.

Early modern philosophy is the attempt to find representations that are self-justifying

to serve as foundations for a general system of knowledge. Descartes tried to arrive at

these through the use of a particular method. Locke attempted to show how some of our

representations could be taken as justified in virtue of their causal origin in reality. The

foundationalist move that began modern philosophy is a natural consequence of the

scientific revolution. A new method of paying attention to particular empirical

experiences and facts and then building upon them to arrive at general laws was

providing general representations of the world by deductively and mathematically

building upon empirical foundations. It would be natural to assume that these

foundational representations have their correspondence with the world guaranteed by

some method or by their causal origin, even though it was impossible to justify these

foundational representations in terms of other representations. The rest of modern

philosophy up to Kant is concerned with showing how the substance dualism of

Descartes and the medievals makes it impossible for there to be a similarity between

mental representations and physical objects. The identification of similarity with

representation is never questioned. The main concern is with finding better and better

ways of making representations come alive and represent in virtue of their own

properties.

With Berkeley and Hume the problems involved in the physical-visual model of

representation and the perspectivist model of objectivity began to become clear. This

begins with Berkeley's devastating arguments that nothing can be like an idea but an idea.

The possibility of the similarity between mental representations and physical objects that

is required by the physical-visual model of representation began to be questioned,

although the model itself went unquestioned. In fact, the model was (and is) so firmly in

place that Berkeley (like Putnam, as we shall see in Chapter Eight) uses his argument to

show that the objects that we represent are themselves ideas or internal to our system of

representation. Berkeley argues:

But, say you, though the ideas themselves do not exist without the mind, yet there may be things like them , whereof they are copies or resemblances, which things exist without the mind in an unthinking substance. I answer an idea can be like nothing but an idea; a colour or figure can be like nothing but another colour or figure. ... Again, I ask whether those supposed originals or external things, of which our ideas are the pictures or representations, be themselves perceivable or no? If they are, then they are ideas and we have gained our point; but if you say they are not, I appeal to anyone whether it be sense to assert a colour is like something which is invisible; hard or soft, like something which is intangible; and so of the rest. (Berkeley 1962, I, 8, p. 68)

This argument assumes that the only things that we can experience are representations,

which is a consequence of the physical-visual model of representation, and uses this

thesis to show that the physical-visual model of representation cannot work. This should

have shown that the model is incoherent, but Berkeley took the problem as springing

from the assumption of material objects, rather than seeing that representations cannot be

static entities such as ideas.

Berkeley is led astray by his perspectivism. Since, on the perspectivist model, a

representation from a particular perspective cannot reach outside that perspective, it is

impossible for our ideas to refer to material or extra-representational objects. It is this

version of the perspectivist fallacy that leads to Berkeley's infamous argument that

material objects do not exist because we can't form a concept of them that isn't a concept.

Berkeley argues:[6]

If you can conceive it possible for one extended movable substance, or, in general, for any one idea, or anything like an idea, to exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving it, I shall readily give up the cause. ................................................. But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for one to imagine trees, for instance, i a park, or books existing in a closet, and nobody by to perceive them. ... but what is all this, I beseech you, more than framing in your mind certain ideas which you call books and trees, and at the same time omitting to frame the idea of any one that may perceive them. ... but it does not show that you can conceive it possible the objects of your thought may exist without the mind. To make out this, it is necessary that you conceive them existing unconceived or unthought of, which is a manifest repugnancy. When we do the utmost to conceive the existence of external bodies we are all the while only contemplating our own ideas. (Berkeley 1962, I, 22-23, pp. 75-76)

But, of course, representations are not representations of themselves. They represent

objects, so my conception of an unconceived object is not a conception of an

unconceived concept. One could only hold this strong version of the perspectivist fallacy

if one thought that representations were static entities or objects that cannot on their own

power reach outside of themselves. A representation of both the object and the

representation is necessary in order for us to connect them. Thus what is connected to the

sign is a representation and not the object itself.[7]

The rejection of the external model of objectivity follows quickly from such

arguments. Berkeley himself would have been an internalist if it were not for the role that

God plays in his theory as the organizer and projector of all our ideas. Kant made this

move with his Copernican revolution in the definition of objectivity. Objectivity becomes

a matter of being structured in accordance with certain a priori concepts or categories,

instead of a matter of being determined by an external objects. Objects themselves

become internal to the system of representations; they become the result of the activity of

our concepts.[8]

Apart from following Berkeley's and Hume's arguments to their logical conclusion,

Kant also made a revolutionary change in the traditional model of representation. He saw

that we are active in our representation of the world. This required three levels of

representations: concepts, the active representations that do the structuring of our

experience; intuitions, the manifold of representations that are structured; and objects or

phenomena, the finished product of the structuring process and the objects of our

knowledge. Kant saw that the primary cognitive act was synthesis or judgment, in which

a concept was applied to the manifold of intuitions synthesizing it into an experience.

Kant retains a Representational Model of Epistemology. Knowledge is still a matter of

representing, but the representations are now of other representations instead of external

objects. Kant says:

As no representation ... refers immediately to an object, no concept is ever referred to an object immediately, but to some other representation of it... . A judgment is therefore a mediate knowledge of an object, or a representation of a representation of it. (A68, B93; Kant 1966, p. 54)

Truth is still correspondence for Kant (A58, B82; Kant 1966, p. 48), and

representation is still a matter of similarity between the representation and its object.

(A137-138, B176-177; Kant 1966, p. 121) Objectivity, however, must become a matter

of the internal properties of the representational system, since representations only refer

to other representations. It is characteristic of internalist views to retain the physical-

visual model of representation while rejecting externalism because of arguments

concerning the possibility of representation. It seems as if externalism is rejected in order

to save the physical-visual model of representation. If it can be made to work, this model

does allow us to know the world exactly the way it is since true representations are

similar to their objects on this model. (It is no accident that Kant's views are defended by

transcendental arguments that begin by assuming the possibility of knowledge and

experience.)

With Kant, ideas and particular images were no longer plausible candidates for the

representation that could come alive. The importance of language as the medium of

representation stems from an extension of Kant's attempt to avoid the problems brought

on by Descartes' substance dualism. There could be no pictorial similarity between

mental ideas and physical objects. Kant had argued that knowledge cannot consist simply

of ideas, but must involve the application of concepts to experience in a judgment. But in

Kant the representation lost its externality. The truth of a judgment reflects our success in

bringing order to experience, not a correspondence to external reality.

In analytic philosophy after Kant, language became the candidate for the

representation that could come alive. In language we have an object that has the form of a

judgment, yet is external to us. A linguistic representation is not just an image; its

correspondence is not pictorial similarity in any straightforward sense. Language as an

object has special properties that add to its allure. It has a formal structure and rules for

the connection of different pieces of language in virtue of this formal structure. The

correspondence between language and the world is a matter of structural isomorphism

with the logical structure of the world, not any pictorial similarity. Language is also not

limited in comprehensiveness of representation as a single idea is. The rules for the

construction of language allow the creation of more and more comprehensive

representations. So, language provides a medium of representation whose ability to

correspond to reality is not hindered by mentality and whose comprehensiveness is not

restricted by the concreteness of an image. Language becomes a plausible candidate for

the representation that is to be made to come alive if any can. The history of the

philosophy of language beginning with Frege and Wittgenstein up to the present is the

story of attempts to explain how this particularly alluring form of representation can

represent in virtue of its own properties.

All the attempts in the philosophy of language to make language into a representation

that represents in virtue of its own properties have sacrificed the ability to explain how

language functions in communication. In the ideal language project carried out by

Wittgenstein and the Logical Empiricists, language represented in virtue of a structural

isomorphism with the world. This relation obtained between private protocol statements

and the world as experienced in the subjective sensations of a particular person. As

Wittgenstein's private language argument showed, this made communication impossible.

By an argument analogous to that of Hegel discussed above, the private language

argument also showed that language cannot represent by itself through the mediation of

private sensations, since private sensations cannot represent without themselves being

interpreted.

The alternative of Frege met with equally bad results. He held that language referred

to objects through the mediation of their sense. It was the sense that also allowed

communication. Senses were thought to be public, mind-independent abstract entities.

They were governed by formal laws of composition so that the senses of whole sentences

were determined by the senses of the parts. It was language's formal structure that

allowed it to map onto the formal structure inherent in the realm of senses and in the

world of objects. This project made it difficult to explain communication in two ways:

First, in order to be understood, these public senses had to be grasped in a private

psychological act. Language may have been connected to public entities, but there was no

way of explaining how our grasp of these entities was the same. Meaning and

understanding had been separated. Frege gave a public theory of meaning, but a private

theory of understanding. Second, due to the public nature of senses and the constraints

imposed upon them by their logical structure, they could not explain the massive role that

indexicals, demonstratives, and tensed statements play in communication. Attempts to

solve these problems have become a sort of cottage industry in the philosophy of

language, but these aspects of language cannot be explained by a theory that attempts to

make language represent by itself. These types of words do not refer unless they are

situated in the context of an act of linguistic representation.

What these failures should have shown is that language does not represent the world

directly. It connects up to concepts or representing structures which we then apply

ourselves in our particular context. We will consider how this position would solve some

of the puzzles in the philosophy of language in Chapter Seven.

[1] In Aristotle's theory of sensation, each sensory faculty is composed of sets of contraries so as to be capable of being affected by the full range of sensible objects. When a particular type of object affects the senses it extinguishes its contrary and the sensory faculty becomes actually like its object. In its dormant state it is only potentially like its object, that is, it has the capacity to be affected by it and to become like it. See De Anima, II, 5 and 11. This doctrine should not be taken as a departure from the principle that like can only know like. Aristotle argued against the doctrine that like can only be affected by like. See De Generatione et Corruptione, 323b 18 ff. Thus, to be affected by its object the sensory faculty had to include its contrary, but to know a sensible object its contraries within the sensible faculty had to be extinguished in the sensation. [2] One must be careful in discussing Plato to distinguish his early doctrines and doctrines that are found in his dialogues but which were not actually held by him from those views held by the historical Plato at the most mature point of his philosophic development. Many of the views I will identify as Plato's, especially those related to his early theory of forms and the distinction between knowledge and true opinion found in his dialogues, were criticized by him in his later dialogues, often using arguments similar to those employed here. (In Chapter One, I employed a version of the argument in the Parmenides, using a sail as an image, that a form can only be similar in part to the objects that fall under it to argue that representation is not similarity, and I use a version of the third man argument, again from the Parmenides, in Chapter Five.) This of course, does not alter the fact that the historical origin of the influence of these ideas rests in the Platonic corpus. Whenever I attribute an idea to Plato here it will simply indicate that its historical influence originates with Plato's dialogues, not that the man Plato actually held that view at some late stage of his philosophical development. [3] See De Anima, II, 6. [4] Of course, Plato ends the Theaetetus with an argument against the position that knowledge consists of representation of the object along with an account or logos of its differences from other objects. (In fact, his

argument is similar to the one I use in Chapter Four against the thesis that correctness of representation determines reference.) Again, this does not alter the fact that the origin of the historical influence of the idea that knowlege is true justified belief, or that opinion can be dialectically developed into knowledge by the comparison and synthesis of many perspectives, rests in the written work of Plato, whether this view was originally Socrates's, the early Plato's, or neither of theirs. [5] I argue in Chapter Nine that this is due to a confusion of generalizability with objectivity or truth. What representations from particular perspectives lack is the ability to be successfully generalized, not objectivity or truth. The inability to see how one could become aware that a representation from a particular perspective was objective is not due to its particularity, but to the model of representation used. In Chapter Six, I explain how on an alternative model of representation there can be self-justifying representations, or representations that can be seen to be objective from within a particular perspective. [6] In these quotes, and in quotes throughout the dissertation, I will substitute bold face for the italics in the original. [7] We shall see in chapters Eight and Nine that this is exactly the structure of Putnam's argument for internalism. [8] Of course, any objective representation at all requires a given external noumenal world for Kant, but this distinguishes Kant only from Idealism. Objectivity, though it requires givenness, still consists of accordance with internal constraints.

CHAPTER III THE CASE AGAINST THE REPRESENTATIONAL MODEL OF EPISTEMOLOGY

I will attempt to respond to two different critiques of the role of representations in

knowledge in this dissertation. The first of these, given by Richard Rorty, is taken on in

this chapter. It argues that the failure of the traditional model of knowledge implies the

failure of the Representational Model of Epistemology as well. The second of these, by

Hilary Putnam, is considered in detail in Chapters Seven, Eight, and Nine. It retains the

traditional model of representation, but attempts to make it work by making the objects it

represents internal to the representational system. It seems to me that Rorty's is the more

powerful critique, since if there is no alternative to the physical-visual model of

representation then the Representational Model of Epistemology must indeed be rejected.

The physical-visual model of representation, as we shall see in Chapter Nine, does not

work even if objects themselves are made representations within our scheme. While

Rorty's may be the more powerful critique, it is much easier to respond to. Rorty's

argument is simply that the traditional model of representation doesn't work. If an

alternative model of representation that does work can be found then the Representational

Model of Epistemology can be salvaged. I attempt to provide such a model in Part Two.

Before we look at that alternative model, let us examine Rorty's critique of the

Representational Model of Epistemology.

Rorty argues that the failure of the traditional model of representation has some

important consequences. He argues that it implies not just that we need a new theory of

truth, or a new theory of knowledge, but that truth and knowledge are not things that we

need theories about. Rorty characterizes his "pragmatic" view in this way:

This theory says that truth is not the sort of thing one should expect to have a philosophically interesting theory about. For pragmatists, "truth" is just the name of the property which all true statements share. ... Pragmatists doubt that there is much to be said about this common feature.

.............................................. When they suggest that we not ask questions about the nature of Truth or Goodness, they do not invoke a theory about the nature of reality or knowledge or man which says that "there is no such thing" as Truth or Goodness. Nor do they have a "relativistic" or "subjectivist" theory of Truth or Goodness. They would simply like to change the subject. (Rorty 1983, pp. xiii-xiv)

Rorty sees that the traditional model runs into trouble when it attempts to distinguish

between knowledge and opinion, when it attempts to explain justification. Rorty takes

this as showing that this distinction should be done away with. (Rorty 1983, p. xvi)

Rorty's argument is quite simple. His argument is a straight-forward version of the

perspectivist fallacy. He assumes, correctly, that on the traditional model representations

cannot determine their own relation to the world. He then goes on to argue that the

attempts in the history of modern philosophy to provide foundations for our knowledge

by providing a theory of representation or a theory of knowledge that ascertains the

connection between our representations and the world all must fail, because any such

theory is itself a representation. We cannot escape the representational systems and the

perspectives from which we always contact the world, so there is no way for us to

ascertain the correspondence of our representations to the world beyond our system of

represent`tions.

Rorty says this of the attempt to inquire into the adequacy of language:

The latter suggestion presupposes that there is some way of breaking out of language in order to compare it with something else. But there is no way to think about either the world or our purposes except by using our language. One can use language to criticize and enlarge itself, as one can exercise one's body to develop and strengthen and enlarge it, but one cannot see language-as-a-whole in relation to something else to which it applies, or for which it is a means to an end. ... Philosophy, the attempt to say "how language relates to the world" by saying what makes certain sentences true, or certain actions or attitudes good or rational, is, on this view, impossible. It is the impossible attempt to step outside our skins - the traditions, linguistic and other, within which we do our thinking and self-criticism - and compare ourselves with something absolute. (Rorty 1983, p. xix)

Rorty objects to the attempt to use an empirical theory of the relation between

representations and the world as a foundation that will guarantee the correspondence of

our representations to the world. He says:

... the issue is not adequacy of explanation of fact, but whether a practice of justification can be given a "grounding" in fact. The question is not whether human knowledge in fact has "foundations," but whether it makes sense to suggest that it does - whether the idea of epistemic or moral authority having a "ground" in nature is a coherent one. (Rorty 1979, p. 178)

Rorty answers this question in the negative: "... nothing counts as justification unless by

reference to what we already accept, and ... there is no way to get outside our beliefs and

our language so as to find some test other than coherence." (Rorty 1979, p. 178)

Rorty argues that the attempt by Locke and others to provide a foundation for our

knowledge through giving a theory of representation was a confusion of justification and

explanation. (Rorty 1979, pp. 140-141) An explanation of the causal origin of our

representations is itself a representation. It can no more determine the relation between

another set of representations and their object than it can determine its relation to its own

noumenal object. We only experience representations, so justification by providing an

account of how our representations connect up with a world beyond our representations

does not make sense. Justification is a practice within our representational systems.

To attempt to provide a foundation for our knowledge by providing another theory,

which explains the relation of our knowledge to the world, is to confuse explanation with

justification, a practice that goes on within our conceptual systems. It is to fail to see that,

because of the failure of the physical-visual model of representation, knowledge can no

longer be viewed as a relation between representations and the world; knowledge is a

relationship between persons and propositions, not representations and an external world.

(Rorty 1979, pp. 141-142)

This argument of Rorty's is a weak1 version of the perspectivist fallacy. It argues only

that it is impossible to have objective knowledge of objects outside of a perspective or

representational system from within that system or perspective. Becoming self-conscious

about the perspective we are in by providing a theory of representation will not allow us

to avoid the distorting influences of our perspective and gain knowledge of objects

outside the system, because this theory is itself a representation within the system. It

provides no more access to external objects than does the original system for which it

was to provide foundations. The Representational Model of Epistemology fails because it

is impossible to provide a theory of representation which is not itself a representation.

(The similarity to Berkeley's argument here is not accidental.)

But, as we saw, the perspectivist fallacy has no force apart from the physical-visual

model of representation, the very model of representation that Rorty attacks. Only if one

thinks that objects are static entities will one think that it is impossible for a

representation to determine its own relation to reality from within a particular

perspective. Rorty's argument depends on the very model of representation that he

attacks. If representation is seen as an act in which we contact the world, particular

perspectives and representations become a bridge to the external world, not a barrier that

keeps us from it. In Part II we see how an alternative model of representation of this type

avoids the perspectivist fallacy.

1 There is also a strong version of the perspectivist fallacy, which is stressed by Putnam in his arguments. It holds that it is even impossible to refer to anything outside of our perspectives our representational systems. Rorty also holds a version of this. He says that demand for a theory of reference is "... for some transcendental standpoint outside our present set of representations from which we can inspect the relations between those representations and their object." (Rorty 1979, p. 293) This, of course, is impossible according to Rorty since we have no access to objects except through representations.

CHAPTER IV

REFERENCE

Part II spells out some of the details of a model of representation that avoids the

criticisms of the previous chapter. It will attempt to explain what representation can be if

it is not similarity and how such a model of representation can be used in theory of

knowledge. This chapter will address the particular problem of how a representation or a

concept can be about an object without resembling it, that is, how there can be reference

independent of similarity. It is the thesis of this chapter that referring is an act that we

perform and that we are able to perform this act independent not only of any similarity

between our representation and the object, but also independent of the correctness of the

representation in general, independent of its correspondence. It is this ability that allows

us to represent objectively and to transcend our present state of knowledge in a way that

is not totally determined by that present state. It is this ability that makes the perspectivist

fallacy a fallacy. For even if nothing can be like an idea but an idea, this does not mean

that ideas are about nothing but ideas. This chapter, therefore, must bear much of the

burden of the defense of the thesis of this dissertation, for our ability to represent and our

ability to know by representing rest upon our ability to refer.

4.1: Representing without Similarity

In order to argue that we are able to refer independent of the correctness of our

representations we first need to remind ourselves of what representing without similarity

is, and we need to see what correctness of representation could be if it is not iconic

resemblance. In this chapter I will be giving only a preliminary sketch of what

correctness consists in. An account of what knowledge is, or how it is that we come to be

aware that our representations are correct, will have to wait until Chapter Six.

In Chapter One, I held that representing was a matter of re-presenting one mode of

interaction with the world in terms of another. It is essentially a connection of one mode

of interaction with another by a projection of one onto the other. These modes of

interaction can range from unconscious physical interactions of our bodies and sense

organs with the world, in the simplest of cases, to complex abstract concepts such as

circularity.

Representing is not a matter of having static atomic impressions through interacting

with the world. It is a process or act of connecting interactions with the world. A

paradigmatic example of representing is visual perception, where we project all of the

sensory properties of the object from past experience onto our visual interaction with the

object and see objects with all their various properties instead of merely seeing patches of

color. The mere visual impression of an object onto our eyes and nervous system is not a

representation. In fact, I argued in Chapter One, following Hegel, that such an impression

on one sensory modality does not even constitute an experience. If we interacted with the

world only through isolated impressions of one type, we would not be conscious of it. A

rock, for example, interacts with the world in essentially only one way and is changed by

that interaction. Concious perception, however, is not simply a matter of having changes

impressed upon us by interaction with the world. Representing, and in particular

conscious experience, involves the connection of modes of interaction.

Representation is not a matter of the similarity of impressions with their object. We

should not, therefore, be discouraged by arguments that our impressions cannot be similar

to external objects. Even if the impression of objects on our senses produced tiny replicas

of the objects in our brains, we would not be conscious of them.1 To become conscious of

them we would have to connect their appearance with the interaction through which they

arose. A camera is not conscious of the images projected within it. Representation is

essentially a matter of making connections between impressions or interactions with the

world.

It does not matter that our individual impressions cannot be similar to the external

world because of the particular perspective they embody. Correctness of representation or

correspondence is not a similarity of the phenomenological character of an impression to

the object. Correctness of representation is a matter of the correctness of the connections

made in the act of representing. It is not the particular properties that are connected in an

act of representing that correspond or fail to correspond; it is the connections. Particular

properties only enter our consciousness embedded in an act of representing, connected

with other properties. We are only able to isolate and give our attention to particular

properties such as redness through a complex process of abstraction.2 The objective

representational content of an act of representing, therefore, rests in the connections made

within it and not in the similarity of the character of particular elements within the

representation to its object.

For example, the correctness of my judgment that the type on this page is black does

not consist in any similarity between my experience of its blackness, i.e. its

phenomenological character, and the actual line of type. Rather, what is correct is the

connection I made in my judgment between the blackness and the other properties of the

page of type (spatial position, shape and combination of the letters, length, etc.) that

allow me to pick the type out. This connection is correct if it connects two modes of

interaction (and the properties these modes of interaction make manifest) that either

interact with the same thing or interact with different things which are actually connected.

In both cases the act of representing connects properties that are manifestations of things

that are really connected. In the first case the two modes of interaction and the properties

associated with them are different manifestations of the same thing. For example the

blackness and the texture of the type are most likely manifestations of the same chemical

structure which has different ways of showing itself depending on the type of causal

interaction involved, light or touch. In the second case the modes of interaction are

involved with different things which actually happen to be connected. This is the case in

my connection of the color of the type with its spatial position on the page.

In general the correctness or objectivity of an act of representing consists in its having

made connections between modes of interaction with the world that are caused by the

things interacted with. That is, it involves connecting modes of interaction that have a

common causal nexus in the part of the world interacted with in the act of representing.

We will need to look more fully at this type of correspondence and how we can become

aware of it in acts of knowing in Chapter Six, but this general account will allow us to see

how our ability to refer is independent of the correctness of our act of representing.

4.2: Reference apart from Correctness. The Intuitive Case.

Even on the most cursory examination the position that reference depends upon

similarity or correctness seems beset with insuperable problems. It seems to make it

impossible to have false or incorrect representations. If reference is similarity or

correctness, then a representation that is not similar to an object is not false of that object;

it cannot refer to that object. It simply is a representation of something else.

Consider this example: A person under the influence of LSD is holding a cup, staring

at it intently, and pointing at it. They declare: "This dog is a beagle." They have made an

absurdly false statement. The absurd falsity of this statement is inexplicable apart from

the fact that the person has retained their ability to isolate out a domain of interest and

refer to an object, yet they do not have the slightest idea what it is they have succeeded in

referring to. The statement is not absurd at all apart from this successful reference. If it

were not clear that the person was talking about the cup, we might assume they were

talking about some real beagle which was not present.

Cases such as these strongly suggest that reference depends on a set of abilities that

are independent of the correctness of our representations. Hilary Putnam and Saul Kripke

have suggested a theory of reference that begins to account for this separation of

reference from representational correctness. Putnam's is by far the more sophisticated

theory. I will concentrate exclusively on his views.

Frege was the first to make the distinction between representation and reference. He

saw that sentences might have different representational or information content and yet

refer to the same thing. Yet he still held that meaning or sense determined reference.3 He

still held that correctness of representational content is how reference was established. It

was this claim that Putnam was concerned with refuting.

Putnam first argued, analogously to the argument above, that this claim made error

impossible. (Putnam 1970) Holding reference to be determined by representational

content makes statements of that representational content analytic truths. If, for example,

the reference of 'lemon' is determined by the list of properties that we represent lemons as

having (let these be properties L1, L2, L3), then any statement of the form 'Lemons are

Ln' is analytically true. If an object does not have property Ln then, necessarily, it is not a

lemon. It does not seem, then, that we can be mistaken in our ascription of these

properties to lemons. Any representation that does not include these properties does not

refer to lemons at all.

Our ability to refer independently of correct representation, therefore, is the basis of

our ability to be in error, and most importantly, of our ability to correct our errors through

further interaction with the object of the representation. We now need to see what Putnam

took as the basis for this ability to refer independently of representational content.

Putnam (1975) advanced a type of theory that has come to be known as a causal

theory of reference. The basic idea of a causal theory of reference is that reference is

determined by a causal relationship of the appropriate type between a use of a word and

the object or natural kind to which it refers. A causal chain leads back from the present

use of a word to an original ostensive definition or baptismal event in which the name

was originally applied to the immediately present object. This causal chain most often

goes through the many uses of the term that have interceded between my uses and the

original use. Reference, then, is a matter of being in the appropriate causal relationship to

the object, not of having a correct representation of it.

Although Putnam's theory does involve some type of causal interaction with the object

as an important component in reference, it would be a mistake to attribute the crude type

of causal theory described above to him. It seem to me that there are three main

characteristics of his theory that preclude this reading.4

First, Putnam holds that it is not necessary for there to be a causal chain between a

particular use of a term and the object to which it refers. Reference can be established

through the mediation of an introducing event in which a description of the object or

natural kind is given. (Putnam 1973, p. 200) This is possible because, for Putnam,

language is not an individual matter. There is a division of linguistic labor. We are able to

refer to objects that we have never interacted with in virtue of belonging to a linguistic

community that contains certain experts who have interacted with the objects and have

knowledge about them that is not readily available.5 (Putnam 1975, p. 227) Thus, while a

causal interaction at some time, by someone is necessary for reference, all acts of

referring need not be tied by a causal chain to the object referred to.

Second, it is more appropriate to say that the nature of the object determines the

reference for Putnam than it is to say that a causal chain does. If I am introduced to the

term 'water' in association with a particular instance of water that I have interacted with, I

am then able to refer to innumerable bodies of water that I have never interacted with in

virtue of their having the same nature as the water with which I have interacted. Thus,

Putnam holds that 'water' refers to a particular substance, X, if and only if X "... bears a

certain sameness relation (say, x is the same liquid as y, or x is the sameL as y) to most

of the stuff I and other speakers in my linguistic community have on other occasions

called 'water'." (Putnam 1975, p. 225).

Putnam's theory diverges on this point even more from the crude version of the causal

theory of reference sketched above. For Putnam argues that the sameness relationship

that determines the set of objects referred to by a representation is interest relative.

(Putnam 1975, pp. 238-239) That is, whether an object is the same as the set of objects

you usually refer to with a term, and, hence a part of the reference of that term, depends

upon what is important in that particular context. For example, whether D2O (heavy

water) will be considered water will depend on whether one is interested in drinking it or

using it in a chemical experiment. Therefore the set of objects isolated as a domain of

interest in an act of referring is not determined by any unique causal relationship between

the act and the set of objects, although some type of interaction with members of the set

is necessary. The domain isolated out and referred to depends upon our interests and the

context of our act of referring.

Third, in Putnam's theory the representational content sometimes does play a role in

referring. When we are introduced to a term in an introducing event, the description that

is used to introduce us to the term must be correct enough to lead us (the linguistic

community) to an interaction with the appropriate object or type of object. (Putnam 1973,

p. 201) For example, if the term 'unicorn' was introduced to a community in a fleeting

encounter with a rhinoceros, your description of the animal (as a horned horse) would be

so faulty that it would not allow you to isolate the animal out for interaction in the future.

So, even though you were causally related to the rhinoceros in what seems to be the

appropriate way, you did not succeed in referring to it because of problems with your

representation of it.6 (I will argue in the next section that this is not an exception to our

thesis that reference is independent of correctness of representation.)

While it is clear from the preceding discussion that Putnam's theory is not a crude

version of the causal theory of reference, it is not quite clear what type of causal theory of

reference one is left with after making Putnam's concessions. Nor is it clear exactly how

it is that we refer if it is not in virtue of some special causal relationship between our

representations and their objects. In the next section I will attempt to answer these

remaining questions within the framework of the model of representation that we have

discussed so far.

4.3: Representing and Referring

It seems to me that the term 'reference', as it is generally used (by normal people, not

philosophers), is a general term encompassing three more particular types of reference:

direct reference, Intentionality7, and semantic reference. The relationship of these three

types of reference is simple: All Intentionality is derivative from direct reference, and all

semantic reference is derivative from Intentionality. All reference, therefore, is derivative

from direct reference. These terms are explained below.

Direct reference is accomplished in acts of representing that connect two or more

modes of interaction both of which are actively engaged in interaction with the external

world. This is not true of all acts of representing; it is only true of representations of the

first type distinguished at the end of Chapter One.8 At any rate, acts of representing that

are so actively engaged make a connection between two modes of interaction as giving

rise to properties that spring from a common causal nexus in the world. In doing so they

isolate out a domain of interest or an object as the causal nexus of the two sets of

properties connected.

The act of representing does this irrespective of the correctness of the connection

made within. The person on LSD who says of the coffee mug "This dog is a beagle."

isolates an object as the common causal nexus or ground of the two properties just as

effectively as I do when I say "This cup is a coffee mug." We know where to go to prove

them wrong just as precisely as we know where to go to prove me right. Even though

they completely misconstrue the information that arises from their interaction with the

cup, they do succeed in isolating the cup as the causal nexus of the properties they

connect. Acts of representing in which both modes of interaction are actively engaged in

interaction with the world in this way are also acts of direct referring. They pick out an

object or part of the world as the common nexus in virtue of which the two modes of

interaction are connected.

Such an act of representing directly refers even if the properties or modes of

interaction connected in the act really do not spring from the object as their common

causal nexus, as was the case with the person on LSD. The two modes of interaction need

not even interact with a single unified object. The simple act of connecting the two modes

of interaction isolates out what the two modes interact with as a domain of interest

whether in fact it forms a common causal nexus for the modes or not, i.e., whether the

connection made is correct or not.9

The reference established in an act of direct referring does not outlast the act itself.

This was the case in the brief glimpse of the unicorn/rhinoceros. It would also probably

be the case with our friend on LSD. Once he is distracted from the cup he will probably

have no memory of his earlier claim and will be bewildered if you ask him "Could I have

a drink from that beagle?" The type of reference that we are most interested in, therefore,

is not the type established in acts of direct referring, since this type of reference does not

outlast the act. We are interested in Intentionality. Intentionality, like all forms of

reference, is derivative from direct referring, however. The reference established in acts

of direct referring is passed on only in those cases where the act leads to the formation of

concepts with Intentionality. We now need to see how this can occur.

Intentionality is a property of concepts. It is also a property, derivatively, of acts of

representing that do not directly refer if those acts of representing are the expression or

application of Intentional concepts. (Recall that on this view concepts are merely the

active structures that do the representing, so it is natural that the activity of Intentional

concepts should also be Intentional.)

Concepts are complexes of dispositions to make connections between modes of

interaction in acts of representing. Some concepts (most of them) have Intentionality;

they have this property in virtue of including dispositions that lead to the performance of

acts of direct referring upon specific domains or types of domains of interest. Concepts

are about things in virtue of leading to direct interactions with those things. In these

interactions the things are isolated out as domains of interest in an act of direct referring.

Most of the modes of interaction that are involved in representing the world are

channeled through our sense organs, the outer surface of our body, and the proprioceptive

receptors that allow us to perceive the position of our body. We possess a number of

basic abilities to orient our sense organs, our body, and the relative position of parts of

our body with respect to objects and to manipulate objects with respect to their

orientation to our sense organs and body. The appropriate exercise and combination of

these abilities lead to acts of direct referring.

For example, I have the ability to direct and focus my eyes on the cup in front of me,

and I also have the ability to reach out and touch it with my hand. I can also combine

these activities in an act of direct referring. My concept of the cup is Intentional and has

as its object this cup because it includes these dispositions to channel these two modes of

interaction into the same domain of interest. (My concept of the cup, of course, also has a

great many other such dispositions that could lead to direct reference to the cup apart

from the particular ones exercised in this example.) Thus, concepts have Intentionality in

virtue of including dispositions to orient the body and sense organs in such a way as to

bring about the connection of modes of interaction in an act of direct referring.

Concepts make connections between modes of interaction; they are the active

structures whose expressions are acts of representing. The role of reference, or

Intentionality in concepts, is, as the etymology of the word 'reference' would suggest, to

lead the application of the concept back to the domain of interest from which the

connection made by the concept arose. The Intentionality or reference of a concept to a

domain of interest, then, is a matter of that concept being formed in interaction with that

domain in an act of direct reference in a way that allows and leads the concept to be

reapplied to the same domain.

Semantic reference is a property that signs have. Signs are physical objects or

activities, such as statues, maps, and language. As we saw, such objects cannot represent

by themselves; they require the interpretation of an agent with certain concepts. Signs

have meaning and reference in virtue of being conventionally or naturally associated with

certain Intentional concepts which in turn are dispositions that lead to particular acts of

representing. Signs, therefore, are not themselves representations. They, along with their

associations to concepts, are ways of getting us to reproduce particular acts of

representing. They are immensely useful for the communication and storage of

information, but they are not themselves representations, and they do not themselves have

reference. Semantic reference is wholly derivative from connection with Intentional

concepts, whose reference in turn is derivative from the acts of direct referring from

which they spring and to which they lead back. (As we shall see in Chapter Seven, seeing

language as not being itself a representation but as a conventional device for reproducing

acts of representing by accessing particular concepts solves many of the puzzles that have

troubled recent philosophy of language.)

We now need to see how reference described in these terms is independent of

correctness of representation. In one sense this in non-problematic. Direct reference, as

we saw, is clearly independent of the correctness of the connection made in the act of

isolating the domain of interest. Insofar as all reference is derivative from direct

reference, then, it is independent of correctness.

While Intentionality ultimately depends on direct reference, the abilities that lead the

concept to acts of direct reference and account for their Intentionality do not themselves

depend on direct reference. Therefore, we also need to see if these abilities are in any way

independent of correctness.

For one class of Intentional concepts this also seems unproblematic. Many concepts

are led back to interaction with particular domains of interest simply by the inclusion of

basic abilities to reorient the body and sense organs the way they were originally. The

person on LSD may be able to refer to the cup again even though they think it is a dog by

simply reaching out to the same area of space in which they had found it before.

Often, however, concepts are led back to interaction with the same domain with the

help of cues that are contained in the content of the act of representing that the concept

expresses. For example, I can refer to a building or location, even if I have never

interacted with it, if my concept of it includes the ability to represent its address or exact

spatial coordinates. In this sense, as Putnam pointed out, sometimes the description plays

an important role in fixing reference. Sometimes, the description plays an essential role in

leading the concept back to interaction with the object.

This, however, does not imply that Intentionality is dependent on correctness of

representation. First, even though the content plays an essential role in in fixing

reference, this role does not require correctness of that content. It only requires that it

lead back to the original domain; this does not require correctness. For example if your

description of a location is 'one block north of the biggest oak tree you've ever seen next

to the McDonald's restaurant', it may lead you to the location even though the large oak

tree you saw is clearly not the largest you have ever seen and the restaurant one block

north of it is a Burger King. If someone tells you to find Charlie's wife, that description

may lead you to the intended person even though it turns out that Charlie is not married,

although he does have a lover. Thus the representational content need not be correct as

long as it leads you to the right place. Second, even if the part of the representational

content that leads back to the object is correct, this does not rule out the remainder of the

content being blatantly false. Therefore, at least in the sense that it leads back to a domain

with reference to which it can be verified or falsified, Intentionality is also independent of

correctness.

We now need to see what kind of causal theory of reference we are left with on this

view. What makes it accurate to call this view a causal theory of reference at all is that it

holds that reference requires some interaction with the object, some act of direct

referring. This interaction is clearly, however, not a single type of static causal

relationship. First of all, referring is an act we perform, an interaction, not a static

relationship between a representation and an object. As an act, referring is a process; it

takes time. An essential part of isolating out a domain of interest is connecting different

modes of interaction at different times and attributing them to a domain as their common

causal nexus. Such an act cannot occur in isolation, it is always part of a dialectical

process of representing the world according to concepts, altering the concepts in the

interaction, and reapplying the concepts in a subsequent act of representing. We can

analyze out particular acts of representing or experiences, but they, like the components

of an act of representing, have the properties they do only in the context of a wider

process. Referring is an act that requires time. It is something organisms do, not a

property they have in virtue of their causal relations at any one moment.

Second, there is no one type or natural kind of causal interaction that is reference.

There are as many types of interactions that can establish reference as there are acts of

direct referring. Just as their is no natural kind of interaction in which putting a basketball

through the hoop consists, there is no one type of interaction that is referring. Yet we

seem to have no problem in achieving either of these results (nor in failing to achieve

them). Neither activity is a static relation that can be characterized generally; both are

acts.

4.4: Putnam contra a Putnamian Theory of Reference

Putnam, in his later work, provides a critique of the type of causal theory of reference

he once held. Although I will discuss Putnam's arguments as a critique of Metaphysical

Realism in great detail in Chapter Eight, it is necessary here to at least sketch out the

general outline of his main argument and my responses.

Putnam's main line of argument is that causation is essentially a theoretical notion, a

way in which we represent certain aspects of the world. He develops this into two main

objections to causal theories of reference: (1) If a causal theory of reference is just

another theory, just another representation, it cannot determine reference independently

of the correctness of representation. Its ability to determine reference depends upon its

ability to correctly represent the appropriate causal relationship. He says, "The problem is

that adding to our hypothetical formalized language of science a body of theory entitled

'Causal theory of reference' is just adding more theory." (Putnam 1977, p.18) This does

not make reference independent of correctness, for the theory of reference must be

correct to refer determinately itself:

Notice that a 'causal' theory of reference is not (would not be) of any help here: for how 'causes' can uniquely refer is as much of a puzzle as how 'cat' can, on the metaphysical realist picture. (Putnam 1976, p.126)

(2) Putnam also argues that causation is essentially an explanatory notion and that it

does not make sense to ascribe causal relations to things apart from our conceptualization

of them. Putnam says:

... the notion the materialist really uses when he employs 'causal chain', etc., in his philosophical explications is the intuitive notion of an explanation. But this notion is certainly not physically definable. (Putnam 1981a, p. 213)

Even if we could ascribe such obviously explanatory notions to things in themselves,

there would be too many causal relations, or too many explanatory chains, to

determinately fix reference. What counts as an explanation depends on the

context.(Putnam 1981, p. 46; 1981a, pp. 211-214)

I will answer each of these arguments in turn. Before I begin to respond to the first

argument, I should point out in passing its similarity to our favorite example of the

perspectivist fallacy, Berkeley's argument that we cannot conceive of material objects

because we can form no conception of them which is not a concept. So Putnam seems to

argue that a theory of reference as independent of representation and theorization is

impossible because we can't give a theory of reference that isn't a theory.

Putnam's first argument does have force against those who think that by adding a

representation of the reference relationship to our system of representations we can make

it come alive and represent apart from our interpretation. But this, of course is not the

view espoused here. People without a causal theory of reference refer just as well as those

of us that have heard of it. Reference is not a matter of having a representation of the

relationship between ourselves and a domain. It is a matter of making a relationship in an

act of representing.

One need not already have a representation of the relationship to make it, nor need

they already have a representation of the domain to isolate it out in an act of referring.10

You need not have a determinate representation of how the ball will go through the hoop

to make a basket. You need not have a determinate representation of exactly the

molecules of water that will be included to scoop a cup of water out of the lake, yet the

result is determinate. Nor need you know exactly how many crumbs will be included to

cut out a piece of cake.

To do these things requires concepts, and concepts are by their nature indeterminate.

But the expressions of these concepts are indeed determinate. Concepts are not

representations and, hence, action does not require determinate representation of the

outcome. Determinate outcomes arise in the act of applying concepts to the world in acts

of referring and representing. Representations are not mental entities that stand as a veil

between us and the world and thus require a unique reference relation to allow us to gain

access to the world. Representing and referring are acts by which we directly interact

with the world. They need no pre-existing relation to carry them across the veil of ideas.

There is no veil of ideas, and they make their own relations to the world as they go. Thus,

the fact that the theory of reference provided here is itself a theory does not prevent it

from explaining how reference is possible.

We now need to answer Putnam's second argument. This argument seems to rest on an

ambiguity in our notion of causation. It seems that Putnam is right that our normal notion

of causation is an explanatory one. When we ask for the cause of something we want an

explanation of why it is the way it is. There is, however, one type of explanation that is so

common that it has come to be called by the name of the more general notion, causation.

This is explanation by physical interaction. The billiard ball moved because another ball

hit it. In this sense, causation is not just an explanatory model or account. It is an actual

interaction whose force can be felt and which can be referred to apart from any

explanatory role it might play.11

If someone were to sneak up behind me and give me a whack on the side of the head, I

would feel the force of this interaction without being able to explain it at all or using it to

explain some other change. The interaction does not explain the felt force; what is felt is

the interaction. Any explanatory account of the interaction, of course, would not exhaust

or adequately represent the felt interaction itself.

This sense of causal interaction is not a causal explanatory chain, and Putnam is right

to point out that this type of causation cannot be given a physical account (nor a mental

one for that matter). Any account would pick out certain features of the interaction as felt

or experienced as particularly relevant or salient for some explanatory purpose. (The

interaction as felt has a force not exhausted by any explanation, which, I suppose is in

some oblique way the source of the adage that what a person who is unable to grasp the

force of some explanation needs is "a whack on the side of the head".)

It may be more appropriate to call the theory advanced here an interactional theory of

reference to distinguish it from cause in the sense of explanatory chain. The role that the

interaction plays in the theory of reference advanced here is not an explanatory or

representational one. The interaction is not itself an explanation or representation of the

reference. It is the act of referring and representing itself.

Of course, there are too many relationships or interactions going on in an act of

referring to allow us to pick out just one as being "reference". Luckily, we do not have to

pick out the interaction from the list of possible ones; we simply have to enter into it.

There are too many relationships between a ball and a basket to pick one out as

scoring a basket, yet this does not hinder us in putting the ball through the hoop (though

many other things might). There are too many relationships between ourselves and a cup

of water to specify one as scooping out that cup of water, yet we scoop the water out just

the same. We do not have to pick out which act of referring we are going to do; we just

have to do it. After all, it is not the interaction that we have to refer to. The interaction

allows us to refer to the object.

Thus, the causal or interactional theory of reference advanced here holds that referring

is an act of isolating out a domain of interest by connecting two modes of interaction with

the world and attributing them to the domain as their common causal nexus. This theory

of reference is the answer to the strong version of the perspectivist fallacy. Recall that the

strong version held that it is impossible from within a perspective or from a system of

representation to refer to anything outside of that perspective or system of representation.

This rested on the view that reference depended on correct picturing. Particular pictures

are so distorted by perspective and representative medium that they cannot picture

anything outside of that perspective. Nothing is like an idea but an idea.

Once we see that referring is an act that can be accomplished independent of

correctness of representing, we can see that no matter how distorted our perspective it

still can isolate out a domain of interest, just as spatial perspective defines a point in

space. This ability is the basis of a non-perspectivist external model of objectivity. Only

if we are able to direct our activity to a domain apart from the correctness of our

particular perspective will interaction with that domain be able to constrain our

representation of it from that same perspective.

We have also seen the beginnings of the answer to the weak version of the

perspectivist fallacy in this chapter. If correctness of representation is a matter of the

correctness of the connections made in an act of representing, rather than the similarity of

the properties that arise from the particular modes of interaction, then we can begin to see

how there can be objective representation without similarity. If the modes of interaction

(and the properties they manifest) connected in the act of representing really do have that

domain as their common causal nexus, then there is an aspect of the representation that is

caused by the object and not by the subject. This can be so even though the particular

quality of the properties that arise from our modes of interaction is completely dependent

on our peculiar physical and conceptual makeup. The objective content of acts of

representing lies not in the properties involved in the representation. These are only the

manifestations of particular modes of interaction. Objective content lies in the

connections between these properties and feeling of those connections in an act of

representing.

We will see how it is that we can become aware that the connections made in an act of

representing are caused by the object and not the subject in Chapter Six. But first we need

to find out more about concepts. We need to know more about what they are, how they

work, why they are not representations, and why they have caused so much trouble in the

history of philosophy.

1 I owe this line of argument to a similar line of argument used by Thomas Nagel in another context. See Nagel 1965, p. 99 and Nagel 1974, p. 174 note. 2 The particular type of representation that allows us to abstract particular properties is discussed in detail in the next chapter. 3 Both Frege and Putnam are concerned with linguistic representational content, or meaning. Their arguments can be generalized to all types of representation, however. 4 See my M.A. Thesis, "Putnam's Causal Theory of Reference," (Banach 1985) for a full account of Putnam's views on reference. 5 I have argued in my M.A. Thesis (Banach 1985) that this division of linguistic labor can be extended to operate over time, so that we are able to refer to objects that we cannot presently interact with in virtue of our future abilities to do so. This seems to be true of our ability to refer to the dark side of the moon before we were able to interact with it. 6 It seems to me that an extension of the division of linguistic labor over time can explain how we are able to form meaningful propositions about unicorns in cases such as these. Even though we are unable to interact with unicorns at present, we are able to make propositions concerning them whose reference depends upon our ability to interact with them in the future. If we find one that meets our description, then we can verify our falsify our propositions with respect to it. If we never find one, then it turns out that our attempt to refer was a failure. We cannot always be sure which of these cases will obtain. Reference is essentially a matter of determining where one goes to verify or falsify a representation. It is not always possible to verify or falsify a representation with what we can interact with at present. 7 I will follow John Searle (Searle 1983) in capitalizing Intentionality to distinguish it from intentions in the

sense of intending to do x. 8 Representations that connect two concepts are often not actively engaged in interaction with the world. Modes of interaction with the world need not always be actively engaged in interaction with the world to operate. This is the basis of memory, imagination, and conceptual thought (of which more in the next chapter). 9 It may seem attractive here to say that such an act of direct referring creates objects by connecting modes of interaction, but this would be misleading. It does create a domain of interest, but in cases where the domain of interest is not the common causal nexus of the properties arising from the modes of interaction it is an empty claim to say we have created an object. For example, take the merological sum created by my attempt to see two identical billiard balls as a single object by taking them as a whole to be the common causal ground of both their motion and the force exerted on them. One would be quickly disabused of the notion that the sum was an object with respect to these properties by exerting a force on one ball and failing to see the other move. The sum was obviously not the common causal nexus we took it to be. The objects referred to in acts of representing are always objects relative to the connection made in that act, as the common ground of those properties. If the connection made is correct, it is more appropriate to say the object was discovered. If the connection is wrong, the attempt to see that domain of interest as an object has failed. This view of objecthood will be discussed more fully in the last chapter. 10 I argue in Chapter Six that action, in general, does not require a determinate representation of the outcome of the action. 11 It may be thought that this account assumes the ability to refer rather than explaining how referring is possible, and is, therefore, a circular argument. Putnam sometimes makes this charge. (Putnam 1981, p.47) But what is involved here is not circularity, but a type of self-reference that is unavoidable when we try to talk about or represent the possibility of representing. To see this as circular is to confuse the type of argument given here, an ostensive one, with a demostration within a representational system. Thus it is analagous to responding to the dumb person who has just had an operation repairing their vocal cords and says "I can talk! I can talk!" by saying "But this is circular, for you've simply stated what you set out to show." Thus the fact that we have to talk (and refer) to point out and explain the abilities we have to talk and refer does not amount to a circularity in our argument. It simply shows that we have to talk to talk, and we have to represent to represent, even if what we are talking about is talk or what we are representing is representation. To see this as circular is, of course, simply Berkeley's old version of the perspectivist fallacy. (See the last Chapter for an account of how the perspectivist fallacy is just a misunderstanding of the nature of representational self-reference arising from the attempt to make representations come alive.)

CHAPTER V

CONCEPTS

Concepts are the active structures that do the representing. All knowledge rests in the

possession of concepts. While all knowing is done through representing, the ability to

enter into knowing relationships with the world, all knowledge in posse, as potentiality,

rests in concepts. This chapter considers concepts, what they are, how they work, and

why they are not representations.

5.1: Why do Concepts Present such a Problem?

Some of the peculiarities of the operation of concepts account for much of the

plausibility of the attempt to make representations come alive and to take representations

as mental pictures. In particular, concepts account for memory, imagination, and abstract

thought free of dependence on actual perception. The recognition that we have these

abilities results in some very important conclusions for the theory of knowledge.

The fact that we have memory of actual experiences that seems to be identical in

content, if not in feel, to actual experiences of the world seems to imply that the

phenomenological content of our experiences is not dependent on our actual interaction

with the object. This, of course, led to the view that perception impresses ideas or

pictures into our mind that we can call up and look at with our mind's eye when we have

a memory. (Hume appears to be the clearest example of this.) This also implies that what

we are looking at with our mind's eye when we are actually perceiving is not the object

itself, but a vivid impression of it in our mind, a mental picture or idea. Combine this

view with a mind-body split and it becomes very difficult to see how our perception can

accurately represent or picture reality; it becomes very difficult to see how anything can

be like an idea but an idea. Memory shows us that the phenomenological character of our

perceptions, the properties we perceive, are not attributes of the object as it is by itself,

but are impressions upon our mind which retain indelibly the contributions made by this

medium. The fact that we can have the same perceptions with or without interaction with

the object shows that the phenomenological content of our perceptions is subjective, due

to our constitution and not the object.

The abilities of imagination[1] cause even more problems for the attempt to see

representations as pictures. For in imagination we see that the phenomenal properties we

get in perception can be called forth and combined at will. It becomes clear that the mind

is not simply a wax tablet for the impressions of sense. Mind is active, and in imagination

it seems as if our concepts are active. With this it becomes much more difficult to regard

concepts or ideas as pictures. General or abstract ideas must be abilities to make and

manipulate many pictures.[2] Having such abilities allows us to think of things that are not

present and to think of abstract properties such as redness or triangularity. Imagination

frees our representative powers from their ties to sense perception. It is even less clear,

however, how abstract ideas can mirror particular reality. They no longer even seem to be

pictures; as Berkeley and Hume showed, there can be no abstract images.

Once it is seen that in our imaginings the images produced are the results of the

activity of our concepts, it is no great leap to the realization that the images in perception

are also a result of the activity of concepts. This, of course, was the leap that Kant made.

With this move we see that the images we get in perception are not even impressions

upon our mind; they are our own constructions. They are representations of reality

constructed according to other representations, concepts.[3] The veil of ideas is doubled[4]

in thickness. When concepts are seen as active and as representations, it becomes

necessary to regard them as representations of a world that we construct. This, of course,

is Kant's Copernican Revolution. It is the source of the internal model of objectivity.

I will attempt, in the following sections, to give an account of concepts that allows us

to account for memory, imagination, and abstract thought without regarding concepts or

ideas as pictures in the mind and without leading to an internal model of objectivity. This

will require taking concepts as active abilities, as Kant did, but not as representations, as

Kant did.

5.2: What are Concepts?

Concepts, as we have seen before, are more or less discrete networks of dispositions to

represent domains of interest in certain ways. They are dispositions to connect modes of

interaction in acts of representing. Many such dispositions pertaining to a single domain

of interest can be grouped together into one concept by connection with the set of basic

abilities that direct our activity to that domain of interest and tend toward direct

interaction with it.

The discreteness of these clusters is only relative, since there is no reason why a single

disposition to connect two modes of interaction cannot be connected with more than one

set of basic referring abilities. Thus my disposition to represent a person perceived by my

senses as having blonde hair may be part of my concept of my mother, my father, and the

numerous other people who I know to have blonde hair. It would have been highly

wasteful for the mind to have duplicated this disposition anew in each concept in which it

appears. Thus, it makes sense to assume that it is a single disposition with connections to

many different sets of basic referring abilities, and, hence, a member of numerous

overlapping clusters of dispositions that make up various concepts.[5] Thus we would

expect the boundaries between concepts to be fuzzy; we would expect concepts to affect

each other, and we would expect the particular operation of particular dispositions to vary

with the conceptual context they are operating in.

Once we are freed from the illusion that representations must connect properties that

are pictures or images of certain aspects of reality, we can see that concepts can connect

varying types of interactions including perceived properties, actions, feelings, emotional

responses, and other concepts. Thus my concept of my mother is a complex set of

dispositions to perceive her, act toward her, emotionally respond to her, and think about

her in various different ways. It seems to me that this view of concepts is closer to our

normal pre-reflective view of concepts than are the philosophical views of concepts as

list of properties or abstract pictures.

Concepts on this view must be physically and neurologically embodied structures.

There is nowhere else for them to be. It is simplest to see the dispositions of which they

are composed as neurological connections between neural structures that are usually

activated by bodily and sensory interaction with the world.[6] These neural structures are

what I have been calling modes of interaction. I call them this because they are defined

by their connections to sensory and bodily receptors and motor neurons, hence they

provide for and control all our cognitive interaction with the world.

Concepts also have another characteristic without which it is (at present) impossible to

explain their operation. The operation of concepts gives rise to consciousness. It is

impossible, on this view, to give an account of how concepts work without considering

how they affect and are affected by the contents of consciousness.[7] Although it is rare in

contemporary discussions of knowledge to consider the role of consciousness in

knowledge, it is not surprising, at least to me, that knowledge and representing require

consciousness. I for one would be a much less efficient knower if I were not conscious

(or at least if I were less conscious than I usually am).

Therefore, saying that concepts involve dispositions cannot simply be a shorthand way

of saying that they are structures that do things. (Although, since we do not normally

have access to the actual neural structures involved, we must describe concepts in terms

of what they do.) The dispositions must be viewed as what I call teleological tendencies.

They are teleological not only in the sense that they have an object or are directed at

some goal, in this case the connection of the two modes of interaction. These tendencies

actively pursue their object, and, most importantly, they have a particular subjective

character that guides and drives the tendency towards its completion or expression. That

is, there is a way that the disposition feels when active and the consciousness of this feel

is instrumental in guiding the activity of the organism to the expression of that tendency.

Consider a simple example: I have an itch. This can be seen as a disposition to connect

my visual and tactile location of the itch with my specific motor abilities known as

'scratching'. The fact that I have such a disposition does not explain why I in fact scratch

the itch or how if I am unsure of the exact location of the itch how this disposition guides

my activity to find the right spot to scratch. It is the subjective character of the disposition

or teleological tendency that drives the disposition towards its expression and which

guides it along the way. Scratches that miss the spot don't feel as good as those that hit

the spot (literally and figuratively). Thus, in the process of its interaction with the world

the teleological tendency drives itself towards its own expression. As we shall see in the

next chapter, agency and the possibility of knowledge, or the awareness that we are

engaged in an act of objective representing, require that our concepts have these

characteristics. Before we move on to that, we need to see more about how concepts

operate in memory,imagination, and abstraction and why they are not representations.

5.3: How Concepts Work

The sketches in this section will be radically incomplete. I will not pretend to know

how memory, imagination, or abstraction actually work. I will however begin to sketch

how an account of them might be given according to the model of concepts outlined in

this chapter.

First we need to get a bit clearer about what a mode of interaction is, how it is

activated, and how they are combined with or projected onto one another. As noted

earlier, what I am calling modes of interaction are neural structures defined in terms of

their connections to efferent and afferent peripheral neurons. Their activation involves the

manifestation of properties, feelings, memories, associations, etc., in the case of afferent

modes of interaction and various types of bodily actions and movements in the case of

efferent modes of interaction.

Representing involves the connection of these structures or the projection of one onto

the other. The point of calling it a projection rather than simply a connection is to

emphasize the fact that the activation of one of the modes of interaction is primary in

time and leads to the activation of the other in virtue of their connection by a concept. In

the technical terminology of Chapter One, the primary mode of interaction is the

destination, the secondary is the source. For example, my eyes activate a visual mode of

interaction. This is connected to tactile modes of interaction by concepts, so these tactile

structures are activated apart from actual input from tactile peripheral neurons. This

causes the projection of the tactile modes of interaction onto the visual mode of

interaction. The experienced result is my visual perception of the tactile properties in my

experience of the object or scene. The tactile properties are re-presented in terms of the

visual ones. For example, when I see visual images on the television, I project the other

types of properties I associate with these images onto my visual sensation and see people

doing things instead of flickering images of light, which is what an animal without our

conceots, such as a dog, might see.

It should be noted that what we identify as properties are not the individual

contributions of each mode of interaction to the finished experience. What we call the

property redness is the result of a complex process of abstraction from already finished

experiences. Since we only become conscious or have experiences after modes of

interaction are connected, we have no access to what they actually contribute to the

experience apart from this abstraction.

Memory and imagination show us that our perception involves the activation and

connection of modes of interaction. They also show us that these structures can be

activated independent of actual interaction with the world. On the model presented here,

one way of viewing concepts are as autonomous activators of groups of modes of

interaction. Concepts tend toward the activation of the modes of interaction independent

of activation of these structures from interaction with the world. (Of course, we must

assume that concepts have a mutually inhibitory effect on each other to prevent too many

of them from activating too many structures at once.)

Memory can be explained, although superficially, without much trouble on this model:

We have an experience. It involved an act of representing or connecting the activation of

modes of interaction. This was caused in an act of direct referring, where both modes of

interaction are directly in contact with the world and were activated by that interaction.

This resulted in a concept connecting these two modes of interaction and tending toward

their joint activation independent of stimulation from the external world. Since this

concept is a member of a cluster of concepts relating to that domain in virtue of

connection with certain basic referring abilities, various different types of activations

within that diffuse cluster can bring about the activation of this concept and result in the

representing of the memory. It should be noted that nothing in this model requires the

storage of the original experience; what is stored is simply the ability to engage in that act

of representing again.

Imagination can be explained (in only its roughest outlines) in a similar manner.

Concepts tend towards their expression in acts of representing, and these often result in

images, among other things. What imagination shows us is that the activation of these

concepts is under our control to some degree.[8] An important aspect of this ability is the

way in which we are able to take connections or concepts in one cluster, relating to one

domain of interest, and apply them to another domain by connecting that concept with the

referring abilities that refer the new cluster to the new domain.[9] It should be noted that

this metaphorical projection of concepts is itself an act of representing which takes as its

source the concept to be projected and its destination the new cluster of concepts and, in

particular, the set of referring abilities that unites the cluster as relevant to a specific

domain.

Abstraction is also a type of representing that takes a concept as one of its modes of

interaction. It seems to be the exact converse of normal perception, where a direct

sensory mode of interaction is the destination and a concept by which the sensory

interaction is connected with other properties and knowledge is taken as the source which

is projected onto the sensory interaction. The other properties and knowledge are

represented in terms of the sensory experience. In abstraction a sensory experience is

represented in terms of a single property. Take for example our seeing an object as red.

Here a concept that attempts to connect a mode of interaction whose activation we

experience as redness with another mode of interaction is the destination. We attempt to

project interactions onto this concept. That is, we try to see things we are interacting with

as red.

This is a very important ability. It allows me to find the red ball on the desk, among

other important things. I interact visually with objects on my desk, all the while activating

the red mode of interaction. When I experience non-red things this activates other modes

of interaction, and the mutually inhibitory effect of the modes of interaction inhibits the

activation of the red mode of interaction. When I light upon a red object the activation

from the interaction reinforces the activation from my concept. Luckily, I am aware of all

this activation and inhibition; I feel it as a satisfaction[10] or frustration of my teleological

tendencies. Therefore, I know that I have found the red object I was looking for.[11]

This ability to actively attempt to see the world in terms of a concept and then have

the connections aimed at by the concept either reinforced or inhibited by interaction with

the world forms the basis of our ability to gain objective knowledge of the world. Before

moving on to a more detailed discussion of this in Chapter Six, we need to see why

concepts are not representations.

5.4: Why Concepts aren't Representations

There are three main types of considerations that make it impossible for concepts to be

considered representations. Of course, the most simple argument is that if the model of

representing presented here is correct, then representing is essentially an act. Therefore,

concepts cannot be representations because they are the active structures that do the

representing, not the acts themselves. But rather than derive the conclusion that concepts

are not representations from this model of representing, I would like to see it as an

independently accessible conclusion that supports this model. Let us, then, review the

three main considerations that rule out concepts as representations.

First there is a problem about the ontological status of concepts. If they are particular

images, they cannot be representations, because there can be no similarity between

images and objects as they are in themselves. The other alternative seems to be that they

are abstract entities. Besides the metaphysical extravagance involved in this thesis, it does

not make it any easier to see how concepts represent. Abstract objects do not interpret

themselves any more than particular ones. When concepts are finally seen as active

abilities, they are no longer accessible to our view. Putting them behind the scenes as

dispositions or abilities makes it impossible for them to ever re-present anything to us

since they are never present to us. It seems a fairly safe principle that what we are never

conscious of cannot be a representation, and we are never conscious of concepts. Even if

when, through neurology, we can begin to get an idea of what they are, it becomes no

easier to see them as representations. It is slightly ludicrous when one is asked for a

representation of a horse to present the asker with a set of slides of the neural structures

that carry out our visual and mnemonic representing of horses. Even if they were to find a

tiny image of a horse on one of the slides, there is no reason to take this as a

representation of the horse apart from an act of interpretation than there is to take a

footprint as a representation of a foot apart from some act of interpretation.

Once again, it should be noted that none of this means that we cannot analyze our

concepts, make new connections between them, or play around with them in our heads. It

means simply that any access we have to concepts is through what they do, how they

cause us to represent. Since we are also aware of the operation of concepts, although not

of their content, through the felt character of the teleological tendencies that make them

up, we can also effectively guide their operation. Yet, even though we are aware of how

they are guiding us towards their satisfaction and of how close they have come to this

satisfaction, we are only aware of a particular expression of the general potential or

concept itself.

Second, it seems that concepts as opposed to images are irreconcilably general and

indeterminate in their application to particular things. This presents a number of problems

in taking them as representations. On one hand, if they are taken to represent in virtue of

similarity, then it seems that they can only represent general objects. My concept of

redness is not similar to the red ball, but only to its redness. It represents an abstract

object in the realm of forms, not a particular object. If, on the other hand, they are seen to

represent in virtue of having been active in the construction of the objects they represent,

it becomes difficult to explain how these concepts can be both pictures with similarity to

their objects[12] and active agents that construct images. As we saw, if the application of

concepts depends on their correctness or similarity, then it will be impossible for

concepts to apply to anything to which they are not completely similar. The application

of concepts requires an Intentionality based on the inclusion of referring abilities. Since

these must be independent of representational content, a concept that can apply itself

cannot be a representation.

Kant's solution of providing an intermediary faculty of Imagination to schematize the

concepts will not do. Apart from the dubiousness of the ad hoc assumption that there can

be entities that are half way between abstract concepts and particular sensuous images,

the project seems to land one in a representational counterpart of Zeno's paradox. For

how is the application of the concept to the schema determinately accomplished? It

should require another intermediary; after all the schema is only half similar to the

concept. Why shouldn't it require another schema half way between the concept and the

original schema? But the real problem lies in the move from schema to particular, for

there will always be determinate particular aspects of the image that are not in the

schema. Plato's gradation of the forms from the Good down to the most particular form

did not help him with the problem of participation. So the attempt to provide mediation

between general concepts and particular images will not solve the problem of application

for Kant.[13] How it is the schemata perform their function remains an "art hidden in the

depth of the human soul, the true secrets of which we shall hardly ever be able to guess

and reveal." (Kant 1966, A141, B180-81, p. 123)

The obvious alternative to Kant's view is to see concepts as sets of abilities that include

abilities to refer to a particular. Such concepts can apply themselves because they are not

representations that can only apply in virtue of their similarity to particular objects. They

are formed in interaction with certain domains and include within themselves dispositions

to refer back to those domains. Thus, they can apply in particular circumstances by

producing acts of representing without having another representation outside of them that

determines their application.

The third problem is a fairly obvious one. If concepts are seen as both representations

and active in the construction of what they represent, it is clear that the external model of

objectivity must go. If the representation constructs the object, there is no hope of its

content being caused by the object. Objectivity becomes dependent on concepts rather

than the other way around. I am assuming for this argument that no one would accept an

internal model of objectivity unless forced to by lack of alternatives. One can avoid an

internal model by taking concepts as the active structures responsible for representations,

rather than representations themselves. The next chapter explains how this is possible.

[1] By imagination I mean simply the ability to creatively construct and manipulate images. The Kantian notion of imagination is related to the attempt to solve problems peculiar to Kant's system. The normal uses of the word make it an ability we have in virtue of our concepts, not a mediator between concepts and sensation. [2] Hume actually arrived at a theory of abstract ideas similar to this. Abstract ideas were seen as using concrete particular ideas, but having their content or meaning consist in a habit or custom of thought that could produce other particular images at will. See the Treatise, Book I, Part I, Section 7; especially pp. 20-21. (Hume 1928) [3] See Kant's 1st Critique, A68, B93. (Kant 1966, p. 54). [4] It is actually tripled; we must count the sensible manifold as a level of representation as well. [5] It should be noted that this claim, like most of the description of the working of concepts in this chapter and throughout this work, is an empirically testable hypothesis about how neurologically embodied connections between modes of interaction operate as coordinated wholes. [6] Although I became aware of this work too late for it to be incorporated into the content of this chapter, there has been recent work on neurological and mathematical models of cognitive activity that seems to correspond closely to the models presented here. Paul and Patricia Churchland have presented some recent work in neurology that takes neural sheets and the connections between them as the basic units of cognition. These neural sheets can be identified with what I have called modes of interaction and the connections can be identified with the dispositions that make up concepts. (See Paul Churchland 1986, 1987 and Patricia Churchland 1986, Chapter Ten). A group of researchers in cognitive science called the Parallel Distributed Processing Group (PDP) have provided mathematical models in which states of neural activation represented mathematically as vectors are transformed or connected to other states through weighted connections mathematically represented as matrices or tensor functions. The vectors correspond to the modes of interaction, the matrices to the dispositions or concepts. These models also agree with the view presented here in seeing the content of cognitive activities as resting in the connections made between the states of neural activation. (See Rumelhart 1986 and Patricia Churchland 1986, Chapter Ten). [7] It may be possible in the future to give a physical account of what we now describe as the contents of consciousness and its operations. This would require giving an account of the necessary connection between the mental properties and the physical properties that allows one to see how they spring from a common causal nexus. At present I am convinced by Thomas Nagel's and Donald Davidson's arguments that it is not possible to give such an account in purely physical terms, at least as the physical is now understood. (See Nagel 1974, 1986 Chapter Three, and Davidson 1970.) [8] This can mean simply that the dominant teleological tendency in our makeup at a particular time determines the activation of certain of our concepts, which then go on to determine the next stage in the process. How agency is possible without assuming a homunculus or transcendent governing agency will be discussed in Chapter Six. [9] For convincing accounts of the prevalence and importance of this type of representing see Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Johnson 1987, and Lakoff 1987. Two things should be noted about this type of metaphorical elaboration of concepts: (1) I do not think it involves making new concepts, but simply the extension of existing ones into new domains by connecting them with new clusters and the referring abilities that define them. The concepts then act differently or metaphorically when exercised in their new context upon their new domain. (2) Metaphorical projection of concepts implies and requires reference that is based on basic referring abilities that are independent of the content of the concepts involved. Without the establishment of domains independent of conceptual content, metaphorical projection would be a wholly conceptual matter, just another way of connecting concepts. What makes it metaphorical is the connection of old concepts to new aspects of reality, not connection to new concepts.

[10] I use the word satisfaction to distinguish it from particular feelings. Satisfaction is not, as the utilitarians thought, a particular feeling that we can call pleasure. Pleasure or satisfaction is a way of feeling the particular phenomenological character of our interactions as an expression or culmination of a teleological tendency. [11] This explains the necessity of consciousness for knowledge. For it is not just the fact that the desired connections are reinforced when I scratch the right spot. I must be conscious of this, that is, I must connect it with the tendencies to continue the reinforced activity. If I were not conscious of it, the right connections might be being reinforced like mad, while I go on happily trying to put my elbow in my ear. The directedness of the activity towards a goal and the guidance of that activity towards the goal by the subjective character of the process are necessary for knowledge to be achieved; this is what adding consciousness to the analysis adds. [12] See Kant 1966 (A137, B176, p. 121) for his statement of the principle that a concept must be homogeneous or similar (gleichhartig) to any object it represents. [13] Kant sometimes speaks of schemata as procedures for the construction of images instead of representations half-way between images and concepts. It is no more clear, however, how there can be a procedure for determinately applying concepts to particular images. It is also unclear how this characterization of schemata is coherent with Kant's general strategy in the Schematism. See the passage referred to in the above footnote for a fairly unambiguous indication that schemata are to serve their function by being homogeneous or similar to both concepts and images.

CHAPTER VI

AGENCY, OBJECTIVITY, AND TRUTH

The main thesis of this dissertation is that representing is an act, something we do. The

combination of topics in this chapter should not, therefore, be surprising. In order to take

the thesis that representation is an action seriously, we will have to see what is involved

with agency or the application of concepts. In order to see how an act of representing can

be objective, we will have to see how a concept can be applied to a domain in a way that

allows the representation that results from the application to be caused by the domain and

not the concept. We will find that it will not do simply to apply traditional notions of

agency to the new model of representing, for the assumptions of the physical-visual

model of representation and the perspectivist model of objectivity are built into the

traditional view of agency. Therefore we must begin by seeing what agency, or the

application of concepts, can be on this view.

6.1: Agency

Traditional views of agency have been concerned with explaining how humans can act

in a way that is not determined by the chance and indifferent happenings of the physical

world. They have mainly taken the view that we are able to act freely in virtue of our

rationality. Our rationality is seen as something transcending the physical world and,

therefore, able to act freely and to direct our lives in a way that will have a value

independent of the particular, transitory, and indifferent goings on in the material world.1

Reason, by virtue of its commerce with abstract ideas, forms, and principles, defines an

aspect of our nature that transcends the material world providing us with both freedom

from its chains and shelter from its travails.

Agency according to this traditional view is a type of causality that our reason has

with respect to our material existence. Kant says:

Will is a kind of causality belonging to living beings so far as they are rational. Freedom would then be the property this causality has of being able to work independently of determination by alien causes... .(Kant 1964, 446, p. 114)

This is only the negative definition of the freedom our rationality has from constraint by

material things. One of these material things, for Kant, is our own physical constitution,

so that included in the things that constrain us are our passions, emotions, sensations, and

feelings. The positive conception of freedom is action in accordance with law or principle

that the agent as a rational creature makes for itself.2 Thus, agency, involves the

formation of a representation of the action to be brought about. This representation then

exerts a causality upon our physical being to guide its action in a way that frees it from

physical determination.

Since this view of agency presupposes the ability to form determinate representations,

it can hardly be used to explain acts of representing. Let us look at the shortcomings of

this view of agency, then, to see if they lead us to a more promising view.

The first problem stares one in the face immediately. If reason is transcendent, the

causality it is able to exert on the material world seems a mystery. Once one separates off

reason from the causal effects of the material world, getting back to affect the material

world becomes difficult. This problem becomes extremely pressing if the split between

the material realm and the transcendent realm cuts one in half, and one is dependent for

their welfare on their ability to use reason to guide their action in a way that isn't prey to

every passing pathological whim or fancy. Kant's solution is to invent another type of

causality, self-causality. This wouldn't make sense unless the self were split in two;

causation is a concept used to relate two different things or temporal states of things. The

noumenal self is seen as causing the empirical self, and not the other way around. In

which case it doesn't seem to be self causality at all, but the causality of our true self upon

its image in the empirical world. So, besides being an ad hoc solution to the problem, the

notion seems to have internal inconsistencies, not to mention the inconsistencies with

other aspects of Kant's doctrine.

It seems, then, that whatever agency is, it cannot be the causation of a transcendent

reason. Neither can it be the causality of a representation either transcendent or

immanent. For as we saw, such a static picture or representation cannot be wholly

determinate, and will never determine a particular action in all its details. An agent that

simply acted out predetermined representations would seem stupid and stiff to us. They

would be unable to respond to unanticipated details and changes in the situation. They

would not exhibit intelligence, the ability to creatively respond to the constraints of the

situation.

This has important implications for the theory of knowledge. In making agency free

from possible determination by particular situations, it is also made impervious to

adjustment to constraints and learning from interaction. If reason is to be transcendent it

cannot be altered by its actions on the material world. The Greek response to this, at least

on the traditonal reading of Plato and Aristotle, is to make reason a faculty that deals with

timeless objects and to argue that man's true nature is to be realized by making himself

timeless as well by contemplation of the timeless entities. To learn from experience

reason cannot be transcendent. Thus the effect of the scientific revolution on philosophy

is Hume's critique of the role of a transcendent reason in morals and science.

Kant saw that understanding, or the faculty of concepts, was active in experience.

Once one sees this there are two ways that one can turn. Kant's move is to keep reason

transcendent, to keep it out of the fray, like the eromenos, the beloved, moving others but

never moved.3 This allows the concepts that structure experience to remain

representations, but it sets the phenomenal objects constructed by the concepts up as a

barrier between concepts and the world. Phenomenal objects become another level of

representation for Kant. He replaces the veil of ideas with a veil of phenomenal objects.

This is only natural; if reason is to be kept transcendent some barrier must be formed

between the direct interaction of concepts with the world. If there are no longer passive

ideas to fit the bill, the passive effects of the activity of our concepts, phenomenal

objects, will have to do.

The other alternative is to bring concepts down out of their transcendent realm and

make them interact directly with the world. This is the view urged here (and the one

urged over two hundred years ago by Thomas Reid). Once representing becomes a way

of interacting directly with the world, and concepts become dispositions to enter into such

interactions, our activity becomes a way of contacting the world rather than a way of

building a barrier between ourselves and the world.

Agency, then becomes a matter of the activity of concepts, as discussed in the

previous chapter. It requires that concepts be dispositions that have a subjective character

that actively drives the concept towards its expression. That is, concepts as dispositions to

connect modes of interaction through joint activation, must be able to and tend to activate

the modes of interaction they connect independent of contact from the external world. It

also requires that we be able to control the activity of these concepts.

This control need not require a homunculus that oversees and controls the activity of

our concepts. It can simply mean that the total network of my concepts (which after all is

me) with its system of inhibitory and reinforcing connections determines which of my

concepts will be active and which will not. On this view, each of us is a set of physically

embodied potentials. Many of the potentials that make us what we are arise from the

combination and organization of physical structures, rather than from the potentials

inherent in the particular structures by themselves. Conscious organisms are organized so

that their activity is primarily an expression of their own complex potentials rather than

those of the environment and the simple potentials of their physical components. (They

do this mainly by taking and exploiting energy from the environment.) Their freedom

consists in this, and their agency consists in their activity being the expression of their

own complex potentials rather than the environment or the particular potentials of their

components. Concepts act in and of themselves through the expression of the potentials

embodied in them. We, as a system of concepts, act, through the expression of the

potentials that this system has as a whole.

The fact that we are a person simply consists in the fact that process by which one

state of this total network passes on to the next has a coherence in virtue of the

connections within the network and that my experience of this process has a unity in

virtue of its continuity. Both of these conditions can be interrupted from without. The

price of making reason vulnerable to outside influences is making the self open to

dissolution by circumstances beyond our control. This should not be surprising; we are

not immortal after all.

Agency, then, is the active tendency of our concepts to express themselves guided by

the subjective character of their activity. This ability of our concepts to act autonomously,

i.e. apart from activation from the external world, as expressions of their own potential,

can be disturbed by interaction with the external world. In this lies the possiblity of our

having objective representations.

6.2: Objectivity

It is the ability of the application of our concepts in acts of representing to be satisfied

or frustrated that makes it possible for us to arrive at objective representations. In our

application of our concepts to the world, the connections they tend to make can be

reinforced or inhibited. This allows us to engage in a dialectical process of interaction

with the world that allows us to arrive at representations that make connections that are

caused not by our concepts, but by the world.

We are able to come to have objective representations even though the

phenomenological character of our representations is determined by the perspective from

which it arises. It can do this because the representational content of our acts of

representing lies in the connections made in them, not in their phenomenological

character. In an act of representing we connect modes of interaction and attribute them to

a domain of interest as their common causal nexus. If that domain is in fact the common

causal nexus of the activity of the modes of interaction, then the representation is true.

We can come to be aware that our acts of representing are true, we can know by

representing, through the peculiar characteristics of our concepts and their expression in

agency. Our concepts are clusters of teleologicl tendencies to connect modes of

interaction in acts of representing. This means that they are not only capable of doing this

upon prompting of the outside world; they tend to do it on their own. Their subjective

character drives and guides them to acts of representing, just as an itch leads to a scratch.

This means that they can connect modes of interaction by jointly activating them apart

from their activation through interaction with the world.

The application of a concept to the world involves taking two or more modes of

interaction and applying them to a domain of interest which they isolate. These modes of

interaction will be being activated by the operation of the concept which tends toward

their connection. It will be attempting to represent the domain as the common causal

nexus of the activation of the two modes of interaction. It does this by interacting with

the domain through the modes of interaction while activating them. The joint activation

of the modes of interaction by the concept can be either reinforced or inhibited by the

interaction with the domain.

For example, consider an attempt to find a red book on a desk. Imagine that we have

two modes of interaction: one whose activation we experience as the visual shape of a

book, the other's activation is experienced as the color red. Imagine also that we have a

concept that includes two sets of dispositions: one set tends to activate both of the modes

of interaction above, the other directs our sense organs so as to apply the pathways that

are able to activate these two modes of interaction from the outside to the various objects

on the desk. The concept works to attempt to have a representation of a red book by

jointly activating the two modes involved. In the interaction with objects on the desk the

joint activation of the two modes can be reinforced or inhibited through the pathways

from the senses. If we light upon an object which activates both the book mode and the

red mode, we feel this reinforcement as the satisfaction of the teleological tendencies

whose expressions guide our activity.

The concept will tend to interact with the domain in ways that reinforce the joint

activation of the modes of interaction. It will act to do this guided by the subjective

character of the experience. If it is able to settle on a way of interacting with the domain

that reinforces the activation produced by the concept, then it has arrived at an act of

representing that satisfies the teleological tendencies that make up the concept. We are

aware when we have arrived at such an act of representing in virtue of its subjective

character. In previous discussions of this view, it has been described to me as a

phenomenological glow theory.4 This seems an accurate way of describing the

satisfaction as the overall character the experience has as the fulfillment of the

teleological tendency, rather than some particular quality added onto the experience. But

there is no need to describe this glow in detail. We all know what it feels like; it feels

good.5

In such an act we have represented the domain as having connections which it in fact

does. The connections made in such an act are objective because they are determined by

the domain interacted with and not by our concept. Only if the domain activates the same

connected set of modes of interaction as the concept will the connections made by the

concept be reinforced and satisfaction be felt. Such acts of representing are self-justifying

in the sense that it is not necessary to go outside of them to become aware of their

objectivity. They bear on themselves the mark of their objectivity, their

phenomenological glow. They can be described in terms that apply to Kant's reflective

judgement. They cause pleasure because we find the world in accordance with our

concepts even though our concepts did not cause it to be so. In other words it is the very

objectivity of the connections that makes them satisfy. The amount of joint activation

provided by the concept alone can be viewed as the neutral level. The concept aims at

going above that level and is frustrated by any diminution. Only a reinforcing activation

caused by an interaction with a domain that is a common causal nexus for the activation

of the two modes of interaction can provide satisfaction by raising the level of joint

activation above the neutral level.

What makes our concepts capable of arriving at knowledge is the fact that they are

both active and open to alteration in the application. If they were completely passive, we

might have objective representings but we could never be aware when we were having

them. We would simply take whatever connections were forced on us. If we were

completely active, we could never make objective connections because they would

always be due to our activity. What makes objective knowledge possible is the fact that

our agency is embodied and involves active tendencies that go to the world attempting to

represent it in a certain way but which may be frustrated, satisfied, or altered in the

process of interaction.

It is important to note that objectivity is arrived at here not through moving out of the

perspective to take up new ones from which the original perspective can be judged. This

is what the perspectivist model of objectivity would expect. Single perspectives and

individual acts of representing, however, can be objective. The connections that are made

in a particular act of representing can be caused by the domain with which it is interacting

and not the perspective. The particular properties that modes of interaction give rise to in

an act of representing are determined by perspective and the type of sensory apparatus we

have, but the connections between the effects of a domain on these modes of interaction

can be caused by the domain and not our activity. Perspectives are not windowless rooms

from which there is no escape. They are themselves windows onto the world. They give a

limited and incomplete view of the world, but a view nonetheless.6

6.3: Truth

The view of truth implied in the previous section is a correspondence theory of truth.

The act of representing that produces satisfaction co-responds with reality. That is, the

domain of interest responds to interaction the same way as does the act of representing

initiated by the concept; both activate the set of modes of interaction connected in the

representation. The connection made in the act of representing really does have the

domain as its common causal nexus.

Depending on the elements stressed in an analysis of an act of representing, each of

the three traditional theories of truth can seem plausible. If we concentrate on the concept

involved and whether it produces satisfaction or not, it seems as if something like a

pragmatic theory is correct. Goodness of concepts is a matter of whether they work or

not. Do they produce satisfaction? If so, then there is little more that can be said to

recommend the concept.

If we concentrate on the particular properties or concepts that are connected in an act

of representing, it seems that a coherence theory fits best. We want the connections we

make in representing to form a coherent network.

If we concentrate on the act of representing as a whole and its relation to the domain

with which it interacts, correspondence seems to be the best theory. The objectivity and

truth of an act of representing does not consist in the satisfaction it gives rise to (although

this is how we come to be aware of its truth). Nor does it consist in a coherence between

elements within the act of representing. The objectivity lies in the relationship of the act

to the domain with which it interacts. It is the causal force of this interaction that makes

the connection made in the act a result of the object and not the medium of

representation. Such an interaction results in the co-respondence of the object and the

representation; both make the same connection between modes of interaction.

What this shows is that there are various types of goodness for various types of

cognitive objects. It seems to me that the word truth most appropriately applies to

representations; it is commonly admitted that the ordinary notion of truth is of a

correspondence. The pragmatic and coherence theories may be correct in their domain,

but they are not correct theories of truth. Truth is a property of representations. Neither

concepts nor the modes of interaction that make up the elements of a representation are

themselves representations.

This chapter, then, provides an answer to the weak version of the perspectivist fallacy.

It gives an account of how an objective representation can be formed from a single

perspective. Cognitive activity from within a perspective can arrive at representations that

are not determined by that perspective because it involves the application of concepts that

actively attempt to make connections between modes of interaction that isolate out a

domain of interest and direct activity towards it that results in interaction in which the

concepts can be satisfied or frustrated. Perspectival interactions with the world are

interactions nonetheless, and their results will contain aspects that are due to the object

interacted with and not the perspective. This is fortunate, since they are also the only type

of interaction it is possible to have with the world.

1 See Nussbaum 1986 for an excellent discussion of how this motivation helped to shape the view of reason arising out of classical Greek philosophy. 2 It is somewhat ironic that freedom takes the form of binding oneself to a principle. It is true that the principle is of our own making, but it comes to us in virtue of a rational nature we share with all rational creatures. So the moral law, though we make it anew, comes to us a little stale. Like used underwear, the moral law is yours now but bears the imprint of its previous owner, in this case all rational creatures. Some may opt for the chains of pathological determination; at least they are my chains. 3 Thus Aristotle's metaphor for the unmoved mover, pure contemplation, to whom all things move as the lover moves toward his beloved. It moves but is not moved. See Metaphysics 1027a 24-26. 4 S. Marc Cohen applied this name to it. Although he did not mean it as a kindly characterization of my view, I have taken to the term as an accurate description of my view. 5 Incidentally,this view explains why knowledge is valued for its own sake apart from its uses. The more we know, the more often the conceptual tendencies we attempt to impose on the world will be satisfied, to our pleasure. 6 See Chapter Nine for an account of how such single perspectives are necessarily incomplete and unable to yield general knowledge. Although these single perspectives are not generalizable and, hence, not as useful, they are still objective. To deny their objectivity is to deny the only basis that general concepts can have.

CHAPTER VII

HEGEL'S INSIGHT AND FOUR PROBLEMS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

In this chapter I consider four closely related problems in the philosophy of

language along with an argument of Hegel's. This argument of Hegel's pinpoints the

cause of the problems from the philosophy of language and points the way to their

solution. Hegel's argument and all of the problems deal with the inability of

representations to connect themselves to the world determinately when they are taken as

static entities that must represent through their intrinsic similarity to their objects.

What Hegel's arguments show so nicely is how the problems that arise concerning

the determinate reference of representations stem from an incoherence within the

physical-visual model of representation itself. Hegel also shows how this model, when

faced with these difficulties, leads of itself to an alternative in which representation is

viewed as an interaction with an object in which we see various properties as springing

from the object as their common causal locus. The recognition that the physical-visual

model of representation, of itself, leads to this type of model of representation is what I

call Hegel's insight. It should not be too surprising if one considers that this model takes

physical representation as a paradigm for representation but then goes on to give an

incomplete analysis of that paradigm. There will be a tension within the model between

the paradigm and the analysis that will lead to problems and finally to a revision of the

model to make the analysis consistent with what actually goes on in the paradigm cases

of representation.

This is what goes on in the dialectic of Hegel's arguments. The problems in the

philosophy of language can be viewed as part of a similar dialectic leading to a view

similar to the one presented here. They lead one to a view in which language, by itself, is

not seen as representing the world. Language, through connections solidified by nature

and convention, simply activates certain concepts which then get us to represent the

world ourselves in certain ways. Thus, it is not surprising that language is indeterminate

in its representation; language itself does not represent the world at all. It activates

concepts which can be applied in various determinate acts of representing, depending on

the context of the application.

The next section contains an exegesis of the opening arguments of the

Phenomenology in Hegel's own terminology. Those who find Hegel to be for the most

part unintelligible (and I must admit that I fall into this class) can safely skip to the next

section where I give a summary of the argument in modern terms borrowed from Charles

Taylor. For those willing to brave the Hegelianisms, however, it is worthwhile to go

through in detail the dialectic in which the physical-visual model of representation

develops itself into a view very much like the one presented here.1

7.1: The Opening Arguments of the Phenomenology

Hegel, in the two chapters I will consider in this section, and throughout the

Phenomenology, employs a unique methods of critiquing the various positions he

considers. Instead of using outside standards and principles contrary to the position

considered, the criticism comes from within the point of view being criticized. The view

itself upon reflection finds itself to be unsatisfactory or contradictory. As Hegel makes

clear in the introduction, (Hegel 1967, p. 140) Consciousness operates according to a

model or criterion of knowing. It can test this model within itself by checking to see if

what it is actually doing in knowing fits the model under which it is working. In this way,

Hegel will show that assumptions that are internal to the physical-visual model of

representation will themselves imply its failure.

In the first chapter of the Phenomenology, "Sense Certainty", Hegel examines a

stage of consciousness in which the model of knowledge in operation is one in which

knowledge is immediate apprehension of the object through sensation. In this type of

knowledge the object is apprehended in its totality, unaltered, and free from any

conceptualization. ( Hegel 1967, p. 149) While this type of knowledge seems at first to be

the richest, most concrete form of knowledge, it is in fact the poorest and most abstract

type says Hegel. This type of certainty says of its object only that it is; it contains only

the being of the object but nothing about it. (Hegel 1967, p. 149)

There are two elements to this certainty. There is the object of which we are

certain and the I, or the representation we have of the object through which we know it.

The essential element in this duality is the object. It is in virtue of the object that our

representation is knowledge. (Hegel 1967, p. 150) The object is the same whether or not

it is known; it is independent of the I or the representation of it. This is a central tenet of

the Representational Model of Epistemology when it uses the PVMR as its model of

representation._

These elements in sense certainty are not simply observations by Hegel; they are

found in sense certainty itself. They are part of the model of knowing which sense

certainty has within itself. What Hegel does next is to see if in fact this is the model that

is actually followed in sense certainty. Sense certainty is made to criticize itself from

within by considering whether its knowledge actually fits the model that it uses. (Hegel

1967, pp. 150-151)

The object in sense certainty is known merely as pure being; it is pure This. Since

the knowledge is unmediated and unconceptualized, it can be indicated only by the

demonstrative. What self-critical sense certainty must ask itself is what this pure

demonstrative, or pure This, is. (Hegel 1967, p. 151) The This is equivalent to the here

and now, so this question takes the form, "What is the Here and what is the Now?" Any

statement answering this question, for example "The Here and Now is Carbondale at

night.", will lose its truth in other places and times. Truth or knowledge however must be

able to be said or written down. Knowledge, properly so called, must be able to be

expressed linguistically without any loss, according to the model. (Hegel 1967, p. 151)

The knowledge of sense certainty, even the knowledge of the pure This, cannot be

immediate; the immediate cannot be said. Even the This is a universal. Sense certainty

cannot say what it means to be the object of knowledge; what it means is the particular,

what it says is the universal. (Hegel 1967, pp. 151-152) In examining itself, sense

certainty found itself to differ from the model it had of itself. Its representation could not

determinately refer to a particular object in the way the model required. The essential

element, the object, was found to be universal, not immediate. Sense certainty changes its

model to accord with its findings.

Sense certainty now takes the I or the representation as the essential element.

Sense certainty is not done away with; the force of its truth, however, moves from the

object to the immediacy of my experience. (Hegel 1967, pp. 153-154) The I, however, is

found to be a universal just as the Here and the Now were. When the immediate fact of

the I is put into linguistic form, a form knowledge must be able to take, it loses

immediacy just as the This did. (Hegel 1967, p. 154) Here Hegel shows that even

indexical representations, when seen on the physical visual model, cannot determine their

own reference.

Sense certainty in examining itself, finds that the model it had of knowledge was

faulty. It finds that the essential element is neither the object nor the representation.

Unmediated knowledge of particulars is found to be impossible. Sense certainty in trying

to know in this way finds itself in self-contradiction. It finds, instead of the unmediated

particular, a universal in which particular properties and descriptions, the intended Here's

and Now's, are unified. (Hegel 1967, pp. 157,160) With this, sense certainty moves to the

next stage, perception.

The argument in the second chapter, "Perception", has two main stages. In the

first it is argued that the object of perception as a unified thing with distinct properties is

self-contradictory and that the object cannot be seen as merely a particular thing with

properties nor as merely properties in a universal medium. In the second stage, it is

argued that the object of perception is essentially reflected into self. But before we can

examine these arguments, we need to examine the model of knowledge which perceptual

consciousness is operating on.

In perception, again, we have a representation, here called the perceiving, and an

object. The object, again, is seen as essential and indifferent to whether it is known or

not. The representation can be as well as not be and the object would remain the same.

(Hegel 1967, p. 163) We now have to look more closely at this object to see how this

model of knowledge works.

The object is seen as a thing with many properties on this model. The object has

three moments: (Hegel 1967, pp. 163-166) (1) It is a collection of properties in a

universal medium. Each of these properties are distinct and determinate. They have this

determinateness in virtue of their negation of the other properties. Each is what it is in

virtue of its not being the others. These properties interpenetrate, but yet they are

independent and do not affect each other. Hegel calls this moment the Also. (2) The thing

is also a unified particular with properties which exclude their opposites from this unity,

as, for example, the whiteness of a piece of salt excludes its blackness. This moment

Hegel calls the One. (3) The thing is also the properties themselves, the relation between

these two other moments.

Perceptual consciousness, on this model, has merely to take this object, to do

nothing but apprehend what comes its way, in order to have knowledge. It is pure passive

receptivity. (Hegel 1967, p. 166) Any action on the part of consciousness would alter the

truth. Perceptual consciousness may at times fail to apprehend the object correctly

because of this. In these cases any contradiction is attributed to the perception. (This, of

course, is a central thesis of perspectivist models of objectivity.) The object is always

selfsame. The criterion of truth on this model is selfsameness, and truth is attained by

apprehending the object as selfsame. (Hegel 1967, p. 167) After setting forth this model,

Hegel then follows his normal procedure of checking to see if the actual experience of

perceptual consciousness follows this model.

Perceptual consciousness finds, upon reflection, that its conception of the object is

self-contradictory. The properties of the object are seen as both universal and

determinate. Perceptual consciousness is aware of the object as purely one. It is also

aware of the properties in it as universal. (Hegel 1967, p. 167) As universal, the property

belongs to the object as community or Also. But the property is also determinate,

excluding its opposites. As determinate the property belongs to the object as One. The

particular qualities require attachment to a One in order to be properties. And the

property is only determinate in relation to other properties in the universal medium or

Also. The particular thing requires properties to characterize it, and the properties require

particular things in order to be properties. (Hegel 1967, p. 168) Perceptual consciousness

finds itself tossed back and forth; first it considers the object as a One then it is driven to

consider it as an Also. Perceptual Consciousness has found that its conception of the

object is self-contradictory in that the two moments of the object, the Also and the One,

necessarily require each other and, yet, consciousness cannot form both of them into a

static conception of the object; one straightaway gives way to the other. This is the first

stage of the argument.

Consciousness, however, does not attribute this contradiction to the object, but

attributes it to itself. Since it is aware of its own effects, it attempts to strip the distortion

introduced by its own workings to get to the object as it is in itself. (Hegel 1967, pp. 168-

169) Perceptual consciousness begins by regarding the object as a One, as a particular. It

then attributes the manifold of properties to its own workings. The thing is a particular

substance or substratum which only has manifold properties in affecting our diverse

sensibilities. (Hegel 1967, pp. 169-170)

These manifold properties, however, are determinate, and as we saw in the first

stage of the argument, these properties require a One. The thing as One without

properties does not exclude others from itself. As we saw, The particular One requires

properties. The thing, therefore takes on the characteristics of the universal medium. It

has a manifold of independent, interpenetrating properties, and these properties are

inherent in the thing itself; they are not due to consciousness. (Hegel 1967, p. 170) The

thing becomes an Also, a bundle of atomistic properties. Any unity or particularity we

perceive is now due to the workings of consciousness. (Hegel 1967, p. 171)

Consciousness is able to look back upon these last steps and realize that the thing

itself, and not just its way of perceiving it, manifests itself in this twofold movement. The

thing is a One for itself and an Also for another. The thing is seen to be a movement

between these two moments, a movement between being for itself and being for another.

(Hegel 1967, p. 172)

The thing is seen to have an essential reality for another as well as for itself. The thing

is no longer indifferent as to whether it is known or not, and the representation can no

longer be or not be with thing remaining the same. Perceptual consciousness has given

way to the Understanding. The thing has become a movement between being for itself,

the One, and being for another, the Also. It has become what Hegel calls unconditioned

absolute universality. (Hegel 1967, p. 175)

So then, we have seen that Hegel, in the first two chapters of the Phenomenology,

gives an account of consciousness's self-critique of a model of how representations

function in knowledge. On this model knowledge is seen as a relation between a

representation and an object. Representations are seen as sense impressions or

perceptions that have no intrinsic connection to their objects. The representation is

independent of the character and the existence of the object. Three main argument

structures were used in this critique: In the first, Consciousness comes to see that

unmediated knowledge is impossible. The simple impression of a representation onto the

mind in sensation does not itself make the sensation intrinsically represent a determinate

object. In the second, it comes to see that the conception of the object as a thing with

many properties is self-contradictory. The objects is seen as represented by the collection

of properties as perceived and as the substrate that stands behind these properties. In the

third, it comes to see that the object must be seen as the causal locus that stands behind

the various properties that we represent the object as having for us.

In the next section, these arguments are put in a contemporary context, and it is made

clear how they constitute a critique of the physical-visual model of representation and

how they suggest an alternative model.

7.2: Hegel's Insight

In this section I will look at the interpretation given of the preceding arguments by

Charles Taylor. Taylor puts the arguments in a modern context, and, by taking them out

of their Hegelian language, makes them a more straightforward critique of the physical-

visual model of representation.

Taylor introduces two main notions in order to facilitate the understanding of these

arguments. The first of these is called the Metacritical move (Taylor 1983), by which

these arguments criticize the physical-visual model of representation (PVMR). In this

move one sympathetically takes up the PVMR and tries to make it work. That is, they try

to represent according to this model. By taking the model seriously, one sees that it can't

work as the model for all representation. This is what goes on in the arguments in the

previous section; consciousness tried to represent according to the model and found that

it could not.

Secondly, Taylor looks at these arguments as transcendental arguments. (Taylor 1972,

p. 159) A transcendental argument starts with some undeniable fact of our experience and

goes on to argue that experience must have certain features in order for this fact to be as it

certainly is. The three arguments from the preceding section are seen as a series of

transcendental arguments, each building upon the conclusion of the other.

Taylor interprets Hegel's critique of PVMR using these notions as follows: Hegel had

made the Metacritical move in having natural consciousness take up the model of

representation that he wished to critique. (Taylor 1972, p. 159) Consciousness will try to

represent according to the model, and if it cannot, it will alter the model in ways

suggested by the difficulties encountered. The first model encountered is that of sense

certainty, where the representation is formed by the pure unmediated receptivity of the

object in experience. To represent according to this model we must attempt to form

representations from experience which is devoid of any conceptualization. The starting

point of the first transcendental argument is that all knowledge must be linguistically

expressible, i.e. representable. (Taylor 1972, p. 162) Since knowledge must have this

characteristic in order to be knowledge, there can be no unmediated knowledge of

particulars. Expression of such knowledge automatically brings it under a description or

universal.

The representation of the object formed by unmediated passive sensation can have no

content; it can only point to its object. To have content the representation would have to

include a description of the object and bring it under concepts, in which case the

representation would no longer be unmediated. But even such a bare demonstrative

representation is universal and can determine no definite reference, for the domain that is

pointed to must be defined in some way and this can only be done by bringing it under

concepts. The attempt to get representations from pure passive reception, and thereby

have particular definite reference, finds itself to be impossible. What the model is left

with is simply a particular which can be only pointed at and many universal descriptions

of it.

This is the model with which the next stage begins. Here the representation is formed

in the passive apprehension of the object which is here a thing with properties. The dual

starting points for the second transcendental argument are that the identification of

properties requires that they be seen as belonging to particular things, and that the

distinction between particular things requires that they have properties. Therefore, things

and properties cannot be separated in consciousness. (Taylor 1972, p. 183) Both the thing

and its properties must be an object of perception. It is necessary to our experience of

either the properties or the thing that the other be present in experience. The attempt to

represent the object through a passive reception of its properties fails, because our

representation of the properties requires that we attribute them to an object beyond the

properties we represent.

The thing and its properties as an object of experience is the model on which the next

argument operates. It argues that if the thing and its properties are to be part of the same

experience, then the thing must be grasped as the causal locus of the properties. (Taylor

1972, p. 174) In Hegelian terms, if the One and the Also are both necessarily presented to

consciousness as the nature of the object, as they are after stage one of the argument, then

the object must be seen as an oscillation, or force, or causal locus which accounts for the

appearance of both the particular and the universal medium in consciousness. In more

simple language, we couldn't have experiences of objects with diverse properties, such as

softness and redness, unless we perceived such objects as a causal locus in this way.

Representation requires the connection of properties that arise from interaction with an

object as all springing from the object as the common causal locus of these properties.

This makes my representation of the object dependent on my interacting with it. If a thing

is to be perceived as both a particular thing and a collection of properties, which it must

be according to the second argument, then it is essential to my representation or

perception of it that I interact with it. It is essential that it be for me as well as for itself.

(Taylor 1972, pp. 174-182)

The critique of the PVMR essentially amounts to this: representation was found to be

impossible on the models examined in the first two chapters of the Phenomenology.

Representation was found to require interaction with the object. The object had to be for

me as well as for itself in order for me to know it. That is, representation requires causal

interaction with the object in which we represent it in terms of its causal effects on us.

Hegel's argument exploits a property that representations have when taken to be static

entities that are separated from any essential interaction with their object. Such

representations are indeterminate in their reference. They cannot in virtue of their

intrinsic similarity to the object determine their own relation to it. Therefore, they can

represent indiscriminately a number of different objects. But these representations must

have a determinate correspondence to a single object or type of objects. A single

representation cannot correspond to two different objects. Hegel exploits this incoherence

within the physical-visual model of representation. This same characteristic of

representations when seen in this way also causes problems in the philosophy of

language, where linguistic symbols are seen as the representations that must have a

determinate correspondence to the world. In the remaining sections, I consider these

problems and how, according to Hegel's insight, they lead to a view of representation

similar to the one presented in Part Two.

7.3: Indexicals

There are a number of linguistic expressions that represent different things depending

on the situation in which the expression is used. Examples of this type of expression are

indexicals like 'I', `here', and 'now'. These expressions will represent different things

when employed in different situations.

This is a strange and unexpected phenomenon according to the physical-visual model

of representation, in which objects represent on their own, in virtue of a similarity to the

object. Yet, in the case of indexicals, the same representation, without changing,

represents different objects in different contexts. It cannot be similar to all of the different

objects which the indexical can represent in different situations.

Nor can the indexical be viewed as a single word with many meanings, for there is no

non-indexical representation which can be taken as the meaning of the indexical in any of

its particular applications. John Perry has devised an example that shows this: (Perry

1979) Perry is walking through a supermarket; he notices a trail of sugar running down

the aisle. He surmises that someone has a leaky bag of sugar and is making a mess. Perry

follows the trail of sugar to try to find the person who is making a mess. After numerous

circuits around the store he realizes that it is he who is making the mess. He fixes the bag

of sugar.

The problem is to find a representation that does not involve an indexical which Perry

came to grasp when he fixed the sugar. Perry argues that it is impossible to find such a

representation. Any candidate for such a representation such as "John Perry is making a

mess" or "The person going in circles around aisle number eight is making a mess" would

not explain Perry's action unless he also grasped representations that he would express as

"I am J. Perry" or "I am the one going around in circles" If, for example, I were to come

to grasp the first two representations without grasping the last two, I would not act to fix

my bag of sugar; it's Perry that has the problem, not me. So it seems that indexicals

cannot be taken as equivalent to some set of non-indexical representations.2

In indexicals it seems that we have a hopelessly indeterminate representation. This

element of indeterminacy is not limited to explicit indexicals. Almost all linguistic

representation has an indexical element. Language refers to different things when

employed under different conditions. An example of this is the dependence of most

factual statements on the time of their utterance for their truth value. A sentence that is

true now, may not be five minutes from now. There is no set of timeless entities to which

representations correspond. Objects change with time, and the stage of the objects'

development that a linguistic representation refers to is not determined by any intrinsic

property of the representation. The same representation will refer to different objects at

different times. 'The president of the U.S.' refers now to a different object than it did in

1973. It seems that indexicality is ubiquitous in language.

While this is a problem for a view in which objects are supposed to represent in virtue

of their own properties, it is exactly what one would expect on the view presented here.

On this view, physical objects and events that act as signs do not represent the world.

When we use them in communication or for the storage of information, we do so not in

virtue of their ability to represent the world on their own. They have no such ability. We

do so in virtue of the connections that these symbols have, through nature or convention,

to our concepts. It is by activating our concepts and causing us to represent the world

according to those concepts that symbols function in communication and information

storage. They do not represent the world themselves, they get us to represent it in a way

similar to the way the person who made the symbols represented it.

On this view, we would expect the symbols to be indexical. They activate concepts

which are not themselves representations, but dispositions to represent in certain ways.

Determinate representation only occurs when the concepts are applied in a particular

situation. The same concepts applied in different situations result in different acts of

representing. Language is indexical, because it doesn't represent the world; it gets us to

do it, and how we do it depends on the situation were are in.

7.4: De re and de dicto Knowledge

A central problem in the philosophy of language is referential opacity or the

intensionality of relations such as belief and knowledge. The problem is that in

statements of belief or knowledge such as, "John believes that Mary is keen." one cannot

substitute expressions that have the same reference for expressions in the proposition that

is believed and still be sure that the expression will have the same truth value. For

example, say Mary is identical to the person who took the last beer from the refrigerator.

One cannot substitute 'the person who took the last beer' for 'Mary' in the above

expression, for John may also believe that the person who took the last beer is a jerk.

This, of course, is possible because John may not know that Mary is the person who took

the last beer.

This problem is what led Frege to distinguish between sense and reference, to hold in

essence that there are two types of representation. Russell made this more explicit with

his distinction between knowledge by aquaintance and knowledge by description. In

knowledge by aquaintance, which is essentially equivalent to de re knowledge or

knowledge of the object, the representation is connected up to the object through direct

contact with the object, not through the correspondence of the representation to the

object. In cases of de re knowledge it is not possible that you would be unable to identify

the object which you are representing, as would be the case if you only knew the object

through a description, such as 'the person who took the last beer'.

This last expression would be knowledge by description, de dicto knowledge or

knowledge of a representation of the object. In such cases we are often unable to

recognize or refer to the object that we are representing.

The fact that there seem to be these two types of knowledge raises two problems

neither of which should arise on the physical-visual model of representation. First, it is

unclear how there could be anything like de re knowledge according to this model.

Reference is supposed to be established through correctness of representation, so it is

unclear how contact with an object will establish a connection between the representation

and the object that isn't dependent on the correspondence between the representation and

the object. According to the PVMR, representation is a matter of the correspondence or

similarity of the representation to its object.

Second, it is unclear how there could be any merely de dicto knowledge according to

the PVMR. The connection between representations and objects is determined by a

correspondence between them. If a representation is true and has such a correspondence,

it is unclear how it can fail to determine reference to that object. It has the only

connection to an object that one can have according to the PVMR.

The problem that de re and de dicto knowledge present for the PVMR is of a different

nature than that presented by indexicals. The problem is caused by the same characteristic

of the PVMR, an indeterminacy of representation that makes de dicto knowledge

incapable of determining reference. But the problem is of a different nature.

In the case of indexicals, the problem was caused by the PVMR. The problem lay in

the model of representation not in our actual ability to use indexicals to represent

determinately. The opposite is the case here. The distinction between de re and de dicto

knowledge points out a real deficiency in knowledge by representation. The problem for

the PVMR is that according to it, there should be no problem. If a representation

corresponds to its object, then it should refer determinately to it.

Let me give some examples that show how this distinction points out a real deficiency

in the way we have knowledge and then explain how this problem could be expected

according to the model of representation in Part Two.

My office is on the third floor. In climbing the stairs to my office, I sometimes

mistakenly get off on the second floor and wander around for a short time until I realize

my mistake. Once as I was walking up the stairs to my office I was relating just these

facts to a friend, and as I was explaining how I sometimes did such stupid things I got off

on the second floor and looked around bewildered as I explained how I sometimes made

this very mistake. It seems a serious deficiency in our knowledge that we can be in the

process of enunciating a representation of a situation we wish to avoid and at that same

moment fail to be aware that that representation refers to the very situation into which we

are entering.

If only for the entertainment value, let us consider another example. I had been writing

down a list of references when I was interrupted. I put aside the list, and when the

interruption was over, I started taking some notes on another project. A little while later, I

tried to find the list of references again. After a systematic search of the desk and its

surroundings I was just beginning to entertain hypotheses concerning the vanishing of

objects into other dimensions, when I discovered that the list of references was right in

front of me on the back side of the notes which I had been taking. I had used the same

sheet of paper for both. Again it seems a serious deficiency in our knowledge that I

should have a true representation of the list of references and even an ability to refer to

the object apart from the correctness of my representation (I had looked first in the same

spatial region in which I had left the list, but upon seeing that the only thing there was my

notes on the other project, I continued my search elsewhere) and yet be unable to

recognize the object when all my efforts and abilities are directed towards doing so.3

Such deficiencies in the way in which we know by representing are tragic in some

instances (Oedipus fails to recognize both his father and his mother though he had true

representations of both and it was of greatest importance to him to do so.) and comic in

other instances (mistaken identities abound in Shakespeare's comedies), but this

deficiency in knowledge by representation is taken as definitive of the human condition

in both cases.

While such a condition is inexplicable on the PVMR, it is to be expected on the view

presented here. Reference is established independently of correctness of representation

and is accomplished by a different set of dispositions than those that are responsible for

the content of the representation. It is to be expected that these two sets of dispositions

should sometimes fail to be connected so that the knowledge contained in the connections

that one set of dispositions tends to make will not be applied to the domains to which the

other set of dispositions tends to make us refer. The very fact that allows us to learn from

experience and gain knowledge, the independence of reference from correctness of

representation, sometimes makes it impossible to apply our knowledge when we most

need to.

7.5: Literal Meaning and Figurative Language

John Searle gives an argument (Searle 1979, Chapter Five), very similar to the one

considered in the section on indexicals, that language does not have a determinate literal

meaning unless situated in a context in which a network of beliefs and background

conditions allow it to determine definite conditions of satisfaction. Searle says:

I want to challenge... the view that for every sentence the literal meaning

of the sentence can be construed as the meaning it has independently of any context whatever. I shall argue that in general the notion of the literal meaning of a sentence only has application relative to a set of contextual or background assumptions .... (Searle 1979, p. 117)

His argument exploits the fact that, as we saw in section 7.3, all language is indexical in

that it requires situation in a context in order to determinately represent a state of affairs.

Searle uses a number of simple examples to show this. One example will suffice here

to get the point across, since the principle involved is identical to that in the argument

concerning indexicals. Searle argues that the prototypical example of literal meaning 'The

cat is on the mat' does not have determinate conditions of satisfaction unless situated in a

context of background beliefs and abilities. Searle points out that statements such as this

presuppose a gravitational field or an up-down orientation in order to determine

conditions of satisfaction. He also points out that there will always be borderline cases,

such as if the cat is half on and half off the mat, in which it will be unclear if the

conditions of satisfaction are met.

While it is impossible to see how language could be figurative according to the

physical-visual model of representation, it is hard to see how it could be any other way

according to the model in Part Two. Since language does not itself represent the world

but only activates concepts which tend towards representing the world in certain ways,

what a piece of language represents and whether it is true or not will depend upon the

particular context in which it is applied. Only acts of representing are determinate on this

view. Thus, language will be figurative, i.e. it will give rise to different acts of

representing and, hence, have different meanings, in different situations. This is because

our concepts produce different acts of representing when applied in different contexts.

Application of language to new domains will produce new meanings.

Also, because language can be connected to more than one set of concepts, it can

direct an interpreter to represent the world in a number of different ways. In the hands of

an artist who can exploit the various connections that our symbols have to our concepts,

language can become a powerful tool in getting us to look at the world in novel and

unexpected ways. The power of language is due to its indefinite connection to concepts,

not to an ability to represent apart from our interpretation in particular contexts.

7.6: Putnam's Model Theoretic Argument

Putnam's model theoretic argument can be seen as an extension of Searle's argument

to linguistic and representational systems. It argues that even an entire linguistic system

taken as a whole cannot determinately refer by itself. It shows once more that the attempt

to make representations come alive will be a failure, even if the the representation is as

complex and comprehensive as an entire linguistic symbol system.

Putnam's argument is just another instance of Hegel's insight that representation

involves interaction with an object in which different ways of presenting the object are

connected and attributed to the object as their causal locus. It should be no surprise, then,

that a formal system, a collection of meaningless symbols and rules for combining and

manipulating them, should be unable to uniquely determine its own reference. What

seems surprising, however, is that model theory, the most powerful tool at the disposal of

the attempt to make linguistic representations come alive, should bring about the demise

of the attempt. But, again, even this should not surprise one after seeing the structure of

Hegel's argument. Hegel's metacritical move was to attempt to represent according to the

physical visual model; it will be found that it is impossible to do so according to the

presuppositions contained in the model itself. In the same way, the attempt to make

linguistic representations come alive in virtue of their formal structure is seen to be

impossible because of properties of that very formal structure. We now need to look at

Putnam's argument and see why this is so.

Putnam appropriates the Lowenheim-Skolem Theorem from model theory and extends

it to representational systems that include empirical representations. Model theory

provides interpretations for formal systems. That is, it provides assignments of

individuals, sets, functions, and relations to the various symbols in a formal system. If

such an interpretation makes all the well formed formulas in a system of symbols true,

then that interpretation is called a model. Thus truth functional semantics, or the attempt

to spell out the meaning of linguistic items by assigning them an extension that preserves

the truth of the sentences containing each item is sometimes called model theoretic

semantics. It attempts to spell out the meaning of a linguistic system by spelling out a

model for it, that is, by defining an interpretation of it that makes all its statements turn

out true.

Putnam's argument is aimed most forcefully, then, at model theoretic semantics,

although it has much wider application. It shows that fixing the truth value of a statement

in all possible worlds does not fix the reference of the linguistic items that make up the

statement. But such an argument would have much wider implications than just the

downfall of model theoretic semantics. It would show, in a forceful way, that reference is

not determined by truth. That is, it would show that reference is not determined by

correctness of representation, by the intrinsic similarity of the representation to its object.

It shows that representation is not just similarity, because similarity cannot even

determine reference. Even truth cannot bridge the gap between representations and the

world and determine a unique relationship between the representation and its intended

object. Such an argument would show that representations cannot come alive through

their own properties.

The intuitive idea behind Putnam's argument is quite simple. Even if we know that a

statement is true we do not know what it is true of. The standard example here is Quine's

gavagai example.4 An anthropologist encountering a culture with an unknown language

sees a rabbit go by, upon which a native utters "gavagai". The natives repeat this when

ever they see a rabbit, and they assent whenever the anthropologist says "gavagai" in the

presence of a rabbit. The anthropologist is pretty sure that "gavagai" is true of the

situations in which rabbits are present. Yet they are not exactly sure what it is true of.

Should it be translated by "There is a rabbit.", "There is an undetached rabbit part.",

"There is a rabbit event.", or "There is the rabbit god."? The point here is that an

uninterpreted piece of language cannot determine reference; that is, language seen as a set

of meaningless symbols cannot determine its own reference even if it is in some truth or

similarity relationship to the world.

The Lowenheim-Skolem Theorem is the expression of this fact for formal systems. It

holds that any formal system that has a model, i.e. any satisfiable system, has a countable

(finite or equinumerous with the set of natural numbers5) model. This was a quite

surprising result, since it showed that even systems in which you could prove Cantor's

Theorem, which stated the existence of transfinite numbers, had countable models. It

showed that there would always be unintended models of any formal system. The formal

constraints imposed by the system do not uniquely determine its interpretation. Different

interpretations will make the same system true; that is, it will have numerous models. In

fact, there is a stronger version of the Lowenheim-Skolem Theorem which requires the

Axiom of Choice for its proof that states that every system that has an infinite model has

another model which is a subset of the first, so it is easy to see how the number of

unintended models could multiply quite quickly.

Putnam shows that this not only true for the formal systems in number and set theory,

but even for a system which incorporated all of our empirical knowledge. This shows that

our linguistic representation of the world, even if true, does not determine a definite

reference or correspondence relationship to the world. Various different models or

ontologies could satisfy the theoretical and operational constraints imposed by our system

of knowledge. The theoretical constraints are those imposed by the formal structure of the

system. Any model must make all the theorems, or logical truths, of the system true. The

operational constraints are the constraints imposed by the inclusion of our empirical

knowledge of the world in the system . This is expressed in the system by a set of

sentences stating the quantity of all physical magnitudes (mass, heat, electrical charge,

gravitational force, etc.) at all space-time points to some arbitrary accuracy. (Putnam

1977, p. 3) Thus, Putnam shows that even a representational system that includes all

possible operational constraints, all possible empirical knowledge about the world, would

not establish reference to a world beyond our representations. He does this by applying

the Lowenheim-Skolem Theorem to a formalization of an ideal empirical theory. Even

such a theory would admit of different alternative interpretations that satisfied all the

theoretical and operational constraints.

Putnam shows this by devising a method for constructing unintended interpretations

that satisfy all the constraints from the intended model. He does this in Reason, Truth and

History (Putnam 1981), giving a technical exposition of the general procedure in an

appendix (pp. 217-218) and an example of the method in Chapter Two (pp. 33-35).6

Rather than go through Putnam's example, which requires a bit of work to understand, I

will give a simpler example that illustrates the same feature of representational systems

that allows Putnam's argument to work. I will then explain why Putnam's example had to

be more complex and how it differs from the one given.

Consider a very simple formal system. Let it contain only two constants, a and b, two

predicate symbols, P1 and P2, and one relation symbol, R. It has no quantifiers, no

variables, and no sentential connectives. The operational constraints in the system are

exhausted by the only three sentences in the system. We can imagine that the world

which it describes existed only for one instant, and the only empirical knowledge possible

would be of two objects, their predicates, and their relation at that instant. Let the

operational constraints and the sentences of the system , then, be exhausted by: P1a, P2b,

and aRb.

One model for this system would be one that assigned the symbols meanings in a

world that consisted of only a circle and a square and in which, at the only instant at

which the world existed, the circle was on top of the square. This model would be

formally defined in this way:

Circle on Square World: a- the circular object; call it x. b- the square object; call it y P1- circularity, formally defined as {x}. P2- squareness, formally defined as {y}. R- on top of, defined as the set of ordered pairs {<x,y>}

This interpretation makes our simple system true. It satisfies all theoretical and

operational constraints imposed by the system; hence it is a model of that system.

But there is another model of the system as well. (in fact, there are indefinitely many.)

Consider a world which consists of two dogs, a german shepard and a beagle. At the one

instant at which the world is existing, the german shepard is eating the beagle. A model

which mapped our system into this world would be defined in this way:

Dog Eat Dog World: a- a german shepard; call it x. b- a beagle; call it y. P1- german shepardness, defined as {x}. P2- beagleness, defined as {y}. R- is eating, defined as {<x,y>}.

Each of these models maps the system onto a set of objects, properties, and relationships

that satisfy the system; they make the three sentences of the system true. What this shows

is that when a set of objects or symbols is taken as a representational system the

relationship between the symbols and the objects they are meant to represent is wholly

arbitrary. A representational system can be used to represent one set of objects just as

easily as another as long as both sets have the same formal structure as the set of objects

that is taken to be the symbol system. They need only have an isomorphism to the symbol

system that allows them to be mapped onto the system in a one to one correspondence.7

Any interpretation that mapped the above system onto a world with two objects each with

one property and with one relation between them would be a model of the system no

matter what the objects, properties, or relation were.

Even when sentences expressing operational constraints are included in the system it

still cannot uniquely determine a model, because the sentences that express the

operational constraints are themselves meaningless strings of symbols that can be

interpreted by any isomorphic set of objects, properties, and relations.

Putnam gives a general argument exploiting the property of symbols systems shown

above and expressed in the Lowenheim-Skolem Theorem to show that any symbol

system, no matter how much information it contains, will admit different interpretations.

(Putnam 1981, pp. 217-218) The example that he gives (Putnam 1981, pp. 33-34) to

exemplify the general procedure used in this proof works exactly the same way as the

example above does. His example is considerably more complex because of an extra

constraint that he adds to his argument.

In the example above the two interpretations map the system onto different worlds,

different sets of objects. Putnam, however, is interested in showing that the Lowenheim-

Skolem results hold even if we limit the interpretations to a single domain. This would

show that even if there is a single world with a determinate set of objects, no

representational system could determinately refer to any subset of the world. So Putnam's

example is of two different interpretations of a sentence that map the symbols onto the

same domain of objects. Putnam succeeds in getting interpretations that differ, yet which

make the same set of operational constraints true by giving disjunctive definitions of the

symbols that allow them to be mapped onto one subset of objects in one situation and

onto another subset of objects in other situations.

In this way a symbol can satisfy the same operational constraint (by being mapped

onto the same objects) as an intended interpretation in situations where the operational

constraint is operative, while at the same time being a different interpretation (in virtue of

mapping the symbol onto other objects in other situations).8 Even with this added

complexity, Putnam`s example is still just an example of the fact that a symbol system

does not determine its own interpretation; it supplies only the most meager of formal

constraints upon its interpretation, and these constraints allow multiple incompatible

interpretations.

The results of the Lowenheim-Skolem Theorem, then, were inevitable once we began

to get precise about how exactly the formal structure of symbolic systems constrains their

interpretation. Formal systems are sets of meaningless symbols and can be interpreted as

applying to any domain onto which they can be isomorphically mapped. Putnam's use of

these results shows that the attempt to make language the representation which can come

alive and to see all cognitive representation as linguistic will be a failure in the same way

that the attempt to make ideas represent in virtue of their phenomenological character or

causal origin was a failure.9 Putnam's argument is a specific instance, applying to

linguistic systems, of Hegel's argument that representations cannot be seen as self-

existing objects that determine their relation to their object themselves. They must be

seen as one moment or aspect of a process of interaction with an object. Hegel showed

that the physical-visual model of representation, the attempt to see representations as

objects existing independently of what they represent and yet as determinately referring

by themselves, is incoherent. Putnam shows the same thing for the special case of

linguistic representation.

Hegel, however, follows the argument in one direction (at least for a little while), and

Putnam follows it in another direction. Hegel sees the argument as leading towards a

model of representation as a moment in a dialectic interaction with the world, one in

which representations can still be seen as representing something outside themselves. He

still has a Representational Model of Epistemology.

Putnam takes another route out of the problem. He holds that the argument shows that

models are assignments within our representational systems, and that, therefore, the

domains or worlds into which they map our symbol systems are also constructions within

the system. He says:

Models are not lost noumenal waifs looking for someone to name them; they are constructions within our theory itself, and they have names from

birth. (Putnam 1977, p.25)

and

For an internalist like myself, the situation is quite different. In an internalist view also, signs do not intrinsically correspond to objects, independently of how the signs are employed and by whom. But a sign that is actually employed in a particular way by a particular community of users can correspond to particular objects within the conceptual scheme of those users. 'Objects' do not exist independently of conceptual schemes. We cut up the world into objects when we introduce one or another scheme of description. Since the object and the signs are alike internal to the scheme of description, it is possible to say what matches what. (Putnam 1981, p.52)

and

If, as I maintain, 'objects' themselves are as much made as discovered, as much products of our conceptual invention as of the 'objective' factor in experience, the factor independent of our will, then of course objects intrinsically belong under certain labels; because those labels are the tools we used to construct a version of the world with such objects in the first place. (Putnam 1981, p. 54)

Thus, Putnam solves the problem posed by the model theoretic argument by abandoning

the external model of objectivity and the Representational Model of Epistemology.

Representations intrinsically refer to objects because they were used in the construction

of those objects, the objects being themselves internal to the representational system.

Thus objectivity cannot be a matter of our representations being caused by the object, and

knowledge cannot be a relation between representations and extra-representational

objects.

It seems to me that Putnam's conclusion is a result of failing to see the full power of

Hegel's argument. It does not simply show that the physical-visual model of

representation will not work if it is made to apply to extra-representational objects, it

shows that it does not work, period. Putnam retains the physical-visual model of

representation at the price of the external model of objectivity. On Putnam's view

representations intrinsically correspond to objects because they were used in the

construction of those objects. (We shall see in Chapter Nine that the same arguments he

raises against the external physical-visual model of representation can be brought against

his internal version.) In order to retain representations that intrinsically refer, Putnam

accepts the counter-intuitive conclusions involved in internalism. It is strange that

Putnam's conclusions are a result of the retention of the very model of representation that

he argues against.

Before we can argue that this is in fact what Putnam does and that there was an

alternative model of representation open to him, we need to see more clearly what

conclusion Putnam draws from his version of Hegel's argument and the arguments he

gives for drawing that conclusion.

1 It was a consideration of that dialectic that first started me in the direction of the view presented here and led me to see the various problems in the philosophy of language considered in this chapter as leading in the same direction. 2 My argument does not depend on there being no solution to this problem. There may be some clever way to solve this problem within the confines of the physical-visual model of representation, but this does not affect my case against it. For the very fact that it is a problem that requires an intricate solution on this model shows something is wrong with the model. On the view in Part Two, indexicals are not even a problem. Physical objects could be expected to act as indexicals when employed in representing given the nature of their role in representation. 3 The structure of this problem is identical to Frege's problem with the morning star and the evening star. It is possible to know a thing under two descriptions, or from two perspectives, and not be aware that the two descriptions or perspectives are of the same thing. 4 See Quine 1959, 1960. 5 The set of natural numbers is the set of positive integers from one to infinity. 6 Putnam gives many versions of his model theoretic argument, but only in Reason, Truth and History is the general nature of his use of the Lowenheim-Skolem Theorem and a particular example of his procedure given. See also Putnam 1977; Putnam 1983, pp. ix-xi; and Putnam 1976, pp. 125-126, pp. 130-131, and pp. 133-135. 7 The isomorphism needed does not even require that the number of objects in the domain of the model be the same as the number of symbols in the system. For example, an interpretation that mapped the system described above onto a world consisting of one object, a red ball, would be a model of the system if it mapped R onto the identity relation. 8 Putnam (1981, pp. 33-35) gives an example of this procedure. 9 See Putnam 1977, pp. 16-17 for his application of the model theoretic argument to the thesis that all thought is done in a mental language.

CHAPTER VIII

PUTNAM

In this chapter I will look at Hilary Putnam's solution to the problems posed by the

arguments of Chapter Seven and the arguments he gives for this solution. He calls his

solution internal realism, for it attempts to avoid relativism while making objectivity a

matter of internal constraints. To understand Putnam's view and his arguments for it, we

first need to see what his view is an alternative to and what led him to see an alternative

was necessary.

8.1: Metaphysical Realism

Putnam calls the view he is attacking Metaphysical Realism. He defines this view

most clearly in Reason, Truth and History:

One of these perspectives is the perspective of metaphysical realism. On this perspective, the world consists of some fixed totality of mind-independent objects. There is exactly one true and complete description of 'the way the world is'. Truth involves some sort of correspondence relation between words or thought-signs and external things and sets of things. (Putnam 1981, p. 49)

Putnam also holds that this view has an important implication, which he sometimes

identifies with Metaphysical Realism:

The most important consequence of metaphysical realism is that truth is supposed to be radically non-epistemic - we might be 'brains in a vat' and so the theory that is 'ideal' from the point of view of operational utility, inner beauty and elegance, 'plausibility', simplicity, 'conservatism', etc., might be false. 'Verified' (in any operational sense) does not imply 'true', on the metaphysical realist picture, even in the ideal limit. (Putnam 1976, p. 125)

Putnam even identifies this claim with metaphysical realism at times:

I concluded that metaphysical realism - the view that truth outruns even idealized justification - is incoherent. (Putnam 1983, p. 85)

and ... for the sharp distinction between what really is the case and what one judges to be the case is precisely what constitutes metaphysical realism. (Putnam 1981, p. 71)

One should note a number of troubling things about Putnam's definition of the view he

will attack. First, it is so vague as to include many possible views which it is difficult to

see how his arguments against the view address. Let me examine his main definition.

His definition seems to include three separate positions: The first sentence of the

definition states a view I will call ontological realism. It states that the world consists of

some fixed totality of mind-independent objects. This, of course, is a metaphysical

statement about the nature of what exists. It says what exists is independent of our minds

and that it has sufficient structure independent of us to differentiate itself into objects.

This to be distinguished from possible alternative views such as (1) Idealism, the view

that there is no mind independent reality, and (2) the view that what exists is mind

independent but has insufficient structure to differentiate itself into objects. I call this last

view the Oatmeal theory of reality. This is the view that reality is a bowl of mush; you

have to spoon it out yourself. This latter theory is the view Putnam espouses. It should be

noted that it is quite difficult to see how one could support any of these views except by

empirical evidence. In particular, it is unclear how any argument concerning the nature

and possibility of representation could support any such view.

The second sentence states a view I will call epistemological realism. It states that

there is one true and complete description of the world. This is essentially

the view that knowledge is a determinate relation between a description or representation

and the extra-representational world and that we either have such knowledge or it is

possible for us to have it. Epistemological realism is a form of the Representational

Model of Epistemology. It holds that we know by representing and that it possible to

have a true and complete representation of the world.

This view implies ontological realism, but it is not implied by it. Therefore, there will

be at least two alternatives to it. One alternative will reject ontological realism, and along

with it the external model of objectivity and the Representational Model of

Epistemology. This is Putnam's internal realism. The other alternative will retain

ontological realism and the Representational Model of Epistemology. It will hold that

there is a world of mind-independent objects and that we can know it by representing. It

will also hold, however, that it is impossible for us to have a true and complete

representation of reality. It will hold that the very nature of representation precludes

completeness.1 This is the view espoused in this dissertation. In what follows, I will

attempt to show that Putnam's arguments against Metaphysical Realism do not apply to

this alternative.

The third sentence in the definition states a view I will call semantic realism. This is

the view that there is a determinate reference relation between representations and the

world. This view is most clearly expressed in "Realism and Reason": "Minimally,

however, there has to be a determinate relation of reference between terms in L and

pieces (or sets of pieces) of THE WORLD, on the metaphysical realist model... ."

(Putnam 1976, p. 125) It seems, however, that widely differing views could accept this

claim. The physical-visual model of representation, with its claim that representations are

entities that have a determinate correspondence or similarity relation to objects is an

instance of semantic realism. (And this is almost certainly the view that Putnam intended

by his definition.) The view of reference given in Chapter Four also seems to be a version

of semantic realism. Representing is seen as an act in which a domain of interest is

isolated out and referred to. There is no preexisting relation between the representation

and the world that constitutes reference, the act of representing itself makes the relation.

Yet, there is a determinate reference relation between representations and parts of the

world; the act of direct referring makes a determinate relationship. As we saw in Chapter

Four, Putnam's arguments do not apply to this view of reference.

It may be helpful to define the position argued for in this dissertation in comparison to

Metaphysical Realism. The view espoused here is very similar to Metaphysical Realism.

It differs from it in only two respects: (1) It does not hold epistemological realism, but

holds a closely related version of the Representational Model of Epistemology, since it

holds that there cannot be a true complete representation. (2) It holds a version of

semantic realism (see Chapter Four) that Putnam did not appear to be aware of. The very

fact that there is an alternative to Metaphysical Realism that is not internal realism

weakens Putnam's position considerably, since most of the argument he gives for his

position takes the form of objections to Metaphysical Realism.

Another problem with Putnam's definition is that it is difficult to see how it implies

the consequence that truth is radically non-epistemic, a consequence he sometimes

identifies with Metaphysical Realism. It seems that this implication requires an additional

assumption: that justification of a representation involves stepping outside of that

representation to another which represents the similarity of the representation to its

object. On this view justification always involves further representation, and, hence, must

always be justified itself. Truth, or the actual relationship between the representation and

the object, will always outrun the chain of justifying representations; the last justifying

representation in the chain might always be false.

If, however, we have a view of representation in which there are self-justifying

representations in the way explained in Chapter Six, then the very relation or act in which

a representation becomes justified, the very relationship in which we become aware that

it is true, is the very same relationship in which its truth consists. Truth becomes an

epistemic notion. It would be surprising if it were not. After all, truth is a property of

judgments, one that we become aware of in knowledge through justification. The world,

of course, will always outrun our knowledge - our knowledge will always be incomplete -

but partial truth will not outrun knowledge or justification as seen on this view, and

partial truth is all we have. So, again, we should keep in mind that Putnam's definition of

Metaphysical Realism allows alternatives that are not directly addressed by his

arguments.

Let us now see what his arguments against metaphysical realism are.

8.2: Putnam's Arguments

We have already seen Putnam's main argument against Metaphysical Realism, the

model theoretic argument, in Chapter Seven. It is essentially an argument against

semantic realism. It attempts to show that representations cannot determinately refer to

extra-representational objects. Recall that it showed this by showing how there could be

alternative interpretations or mappings of any representational system onto the world.

This constitutes a critique of Metaphysical Realism, because it would allow more than

one true mapping of a language onto the world.

This argument rests on a view of representations as objects whose relation to their

object is arbitrary. They are seen as ideas, words, sentences, or linguistic systems. Given

that we have no direct access to the world there is no way for us to single out a unique

correspondence between us and the world. The problem is not that there can be no

similarity, but that there are too many. Putnam says:2

The trouble with this suggestion is not that correspondences between words or concepts and other entities don't exist, but that too many correspondences exist. To pick out just one correspondence between words or mental signs and mind-independent things we would already have to have referential access to the mind-independent things. ... you cannot single out a correspondence between our concepts and the supposed noumenal objects without access to the noumenal objects. (Putnam 1981, pp. 72-73)

The premise that we are cut off from the noumenal world by a veil of representations

is essential to Putnam's argument. He says this after giving an account of his use of the

Lowenheim-Skolem Theorem: "This simply states in mathematical language the intuitive

fact that to single out a correspondence between two domains one needs some

independent access to both domains." (Putnam 1981, p. 74) Elsewhere he sets out the

problem in a similar way:

Early philosophical psychologists - for example, Hume - pointed out that we do not literally have the object in our minds. The mind never compares an image or word with an object, but only with other images, words, beliefs, judgments, etc. The idea of a comparison of words or mental representations with objects is a senseless one. So how can a determinate correspondence between words or mental representations and external objects ever be singled out? (Putnam 1983 p. viii)

This premise is essential to both his model theoretic argument and the internalist

conclusions he draws from it.

Putnam sees that physical objects or signs cannot represent themselves; they are used

by us to represent things. He says this in diagnosing the problem that leads to the model

theoretic argument:

This is the fatal step. To adopt a theory of meaning according to which a language whose whole use is specified still lacks something - namely its 'interpretation' - is to accept a problem that can only have crazy solutions. To speak as if this were my problem, 'I know how to use my language, but, now, how shall I single out an interpretation?' is to speak nonsense. Either use already fixes the 'interpretation' or nothing can. ................................................. But the world doesn't pick models or interpret language. We interpret our language or nothing does. (Putnam 1977, p. 24)

Thus, Putnam sees that representations, and language in particular, do not interpret

themselves. We interpret it, and our use of language is the interpretation. So, Putnam saw

that it does not make sense to talk of a language or system of representations that has a

program of use, yet lacks an interpretation. Even though Putnam saw that representations

do not interpret themselves and that we do, he still remained strangely wedded to the

model of representation that made the attempt to make representations come alive

necessary. He still holds that objects or mental signs are themselves representations rather

than things we use to represent. This assumption is what lies behind his premise that we

must have independent access to both the representation and its object in order to

determine reference. If representation were seen as an activity of interacting with the

world that uses objects, signs, and mental images to re-present the world, there would be

no need for independent access to the world. Representing is itself an access to the world,

not a veil that keeps us from it.

We shall see shortly how Putnam uses this premise and his assumption that

representations are objects which gain their reference through our use to arrive at his

internalist conclusions. First, however, let us review some of the arguments that Putnam

gives against causal theories of reference that seem closely allied to the view expressed

here. We have considered two of these arguments in Chapter Four already, but we now

need to look at these in more detail and see how they fit into his general argument for

internalism.

We saw already that Putnam's first argument against the thesis that a causal theory of

reference can explain how representations have a determinate reference was that this

theory of reference was just more symbols which themselves had to have a determinate

reference. This quote gives a good indication of what Putnam's argument is aimed at:3

The problem is that adding to our hypothetical formalized language a body of theory entitled 'Causal theory of reference' is just adding more theory. ... If 'refers' can be defined in terms of some causal predicate or predicates in the metalanguage of our theory, then, since each model of the object language extends in an obvious way to a corresponding model of the metalanguage, it will turn out that, in each model M, referenceM is definable in terms of causesM; but , unless the word `causes' (or whatever the causal predicate or predicates may be) is already glued to one definite relation with metaphysical glue, this does not fix a determinate extension for 'refers' at all. (Putnam 1977, p. 18)

This argument, then, is aimed at the attempt make a system of representations have a

determinate reference by adding a body of empirical sentences about the the reference

relation itself. Of course, Putnam is correct to point out that such an attempt will not

work. The set of sentences that spells out the reference relation does not itself refer

determinately. The argument, however, simply amounts to making the trivial remark that

we cannot have a theory of reference that is not a theory. The fact that talk about

reference must itself refer does not make all such talk circular, unless one holds that

reference must be established by representing the sign and the object and mapping the

one onto the other. Putnam seems to hold such a view, as evidenced by his insistence

that reference is impossible without independent access to the object. A causal theory of

reference, however, is trying to avoid such a view.

As we saw in Chapter Four, however, in the interactional theory of reference

presented here (and in most causal theories of reference) it is not a representation or

theory of the interaction or causal connection that is supposed to determine reference; it is

the interaction itself. We need have no representation of it at all.

Putnam himself was aware that this is not what the causal theorists intended:4

At this point in the dialogue, there is an argument that I invariably get from causal realists. This runs somewhat like this: 'You are caricaturing our position. A realist does not claim that reference is fixed by the conceptual connection (i.e., the connection in our theory) between the terms "reference", "causation", "sense impression", etc.; the realist claims that reference is fixed by the causation itself. (Putnam 1983, p. xi)

Putnam argues that this reply assumes the ability to refer or single out a unique

correspondence relation between our use of the word 'cause' and the real causal

relationship:

Here the philosopher is ignoring his own epistemological position. He is philosophizing as if naive realism were true of him (or, equivalently, as if he and he alone were in an absolute relation to the world). What he calls 'causation' really is causation, and of course there is a fixed, somehow singled out, correspondence between the world and one definite relation in his case. Or so he assumes. But how this can be so was just the question at issue. (Putnam 1983, p. xi)

This objection would be well taken if the causal theorist were trying to provide a

demonstration to prove that we do in fact refer. But no one doubts that we in fact refer;

what is wanted is an explanation of how this is possible. (The premise that we do in fact

determinately refer to objects plays an important role in Putnam's arguments for

internalism.) A causal theory of reference of the type provided here points to an aspect of

our interaction with objects in our acts of representing and uses it in an explanation of our

ability to refer. The fact that this ability is exercised in this very explanation does not

make it circular any more than a talk about the anatomical structures that make speech

possible is circular. Neither provides a demonstration that the activity is possible; the

only proof of this would be to engage in the activity. They explain how the activity is

possible. So, while Putnam's argument does show that a theory that attempts to explain

how reference is possible by including a theory of reference in our symbol system will

run into the same model theoretic problems, it will not apply to a theory that attempts to

explain how various aspects of our interaction with the world allow us to refer.

Putnam has another argument against the causal theorist, however. Even if we allow

causal relations between representations and their objects, there will be to many different

relations to uniquely determine reference. This is simply an application of the model

theoretic argument to the causal relation itself. A representation will have many different

causal relations to many different things; how will the representation know which is the

intended reference relation. Putnam says:

Given that there are many 'correspondences' between words and things, even many that satisfy our constraints, what singles out one particular correspondence R? (Putnam 1981, p. 46) ................................................ For, assuming a world of mind-independent, discourse-independent entities (this is the presumption of the view we are discussing), there are, as we have seen, many different 'correspondences' which represent possible or candidate reference relations... . (Putnam 1981, p. 47)

As we saw in Chapter Four, this objection does not apply to the interactional theory of

reference offered here. A representation does not have to represent or refer to its own

reference relation to refer; it simply has to enter into that relation. Interacting with the

world in a way such that you isolate out a domain of interest does not require that you be

able to determinately represent the domain of the reference relation beforehand. The

force of Putnam's argument depends on the same assumptions as his general model

theoretic argument. First there is the sound premise that reference is something we fix,

that signs do not represent by themselves but only when situated in a program of use. But

this is combined with the assumption that representations are still objects or signs, static

entities that can only be related to their objects through our activity. If our only access to

the world is through such entities that are caused in some mysterious way by interaction

with the world, then our representations will form a veil between us and the world.

Combine this with the first premise, and it will, indeed, be impossible to refer. As Putnam

says in the quote above:

The mind never compares an image or word with an object, but only with other images, words, beliefs, judgments, etc. The idea of comparison of words or mental representations with objects is a senseless one. So how can a determinate correspondence between words or mental representations and external objects ever be singled out. (Putnam 1983, p. viii)

If representations are taken as activities of interaction with the world, then the veil of

ideas falls away and becomes a bridge of ideas. Representing is a way we interact with

the world, not the static result of some interaction we cannot be aware of. Thus, reference

does not have to be established by an interpreter from outside of the representation by

assigning it an object of which the interpreter is also conscious. Reference can be

established within the representation, in the very activity of interaction with the world

that is the representation.

Putnam saw that objects or symbols did not interpret themselves. Yet, he did not see

that this made it impossible for such objects, themselves, to be representations. Objects

even when interpreted from without by an interpreter by being assigned or matched with

a meaning are not representations. We represent, not objects. Representing is an activity

of conscious organisms. We sometimes use objects or symbols in this process, but they

are only representations when situated in the context of such an activity. Representing is

not something we do by assigning symbols an interpretation. It is the act of interpreting

one thing in terms of another; it is the connection of different modes of interaction. Thus

reference goes on within the activity of representing, as a part of it; it is not something we

assign to the representation from outside by assigning it an interpretation.

Thus, it seems that Putnam's arguments rest upon the retention of aspects of the very

model of representation that he is attacking by his realization that words do not interpret

themselves. Let us now see how these assumptions function in his arguments for

internalism, or what he calls internal realism.

8.3: Internal Realism

Internal realism is in essence a form of the internal model of objectivity. It reinterprets

the object of knowledge as internal to the representational system and, thus, makes

objectivity a matter of the internal properties of the system. Putnam's version of this

model involves two theses: one concerning the ontological status of objects and one

concerning the nature of truth.

As we saw in the last chapter, Putnam holds that objects are constructs within theories.

He says in describing his view:

I shall refer to it as the internalist perspective, because it is characteristic of this view to hold that what objects does the world consist of? is a question that it only makes sense to ask within a theory or description. (Putnam 1981, p. 49)

and elsewhere:

'Objects' do not exist independently of conceptual schemes. We cut up the world into objects when we introduce one or another scheme of description. (Putnam 1981, p. 52)

and

If, as I maintain, 'objects' themselves are as much made as discovered, as much products of our conceptual invention as of the 'objective' factor in experience... . (Putnam 1981, p. 54)

This, of course, implies an Oatmeal theory of reality. If it only makes sense to talk of

objects within a theory and if we make objects through the application of our conceptual

schemes, then there must be insufficient structure in the world to differentiate itself into

objects. This is the thrust of Putnam's article "Why there isn't a ready-made world". The

second quote above is almost an exact statement of the Oatmeal theory: The world is a

bowl of mush; you have to spoon it out yourself. So then, Putnam's internal realism

involves the thesis that objects are constructs in our representational systems and that the

noumenal world beyond our representations has no intrinsic structure.

The second thesis of internal realism is that truth is idealized rational acceptability.

Truth can no longer be a correspondence to an extra-representational world; it is an

internal property of our representational systems. Yet, it is not just what happens to be

accepted in the theory at any particular time. Internal realism is not a relativist theory in

which there are no external constraints on knowledge. Putnam says:

Internalism does not deny that there are experiential inputs to knowledge; knowledge is not a story without constraints except internal coherence; but it does deny that there are any inputs which are not themselves to some extent shaped by our concepts... or any inputs which admit of only one description, independent of all conceptual choices. (Putnam 1981, p. 54)

and

Just as the objective nature of the environment contributes to fixing the reference of terms, so it also contributes to fixing the objective truth conditions for sentences, although not in the metaphysical realist way. (Putnam 1983, p. 86)5

Thus, Putnam holds that truth cannot be acceptability within a system at any one time,

but acceptability under ideal conditions. He says:

'Truth',in an internalist view, is some sort of (idealized) rational acceptability - some sort of ideal coherence of our beliefs with each other and with our experiences as those experiences are themselves represented in our belief systems... . (Putnam 1981, pp. 49-50)

and

I treat truth as an idealization of justification. ... A statement is true, in my view if it would be justified under epistemically ideal conditions... .

(Putnam 1983, p. 84)

Putnam holds, however, that ideal epistemological conditions can never be achieved.

(Putnam 1983, p. 84; Putnam 1976, p. 125; Putnam 1981, p. 55) It is a regulative ideal or

limiting concept that allows us to bring into question things that are justified at present

and even our present standards of justification.

Putnam waffles (to the point of inconsistency) as to whether theories will converge

under ideal conditions, whether there is only one true theory. He says:

Many 'internalist' philosophers, though not all, hold further that there is more than one 'true' theory or description of the world. (Putnam 1981, p. 49)

and

... then incompatible theories can be true. To an internalist this is not objectionable: why should there not sometimes be equally coherent but incompatible conceptual schemes which fit our experiential beliefs equally well. ... But the motive of the metaphysical realist is to save the notion of the God's Eye Point of View, i.e. the One True Theory. (Putnam 1981, p. 73)

Yet, he also says:6

...the two key ideas of the idealization theory of truth are ... (2) Truth is expected to be stable or 'convergent'; if both a statement and its negation could be 'justified', even if conditions were as ideal as one could hope to make them, there is no sense in thinking of the statement as having a truth value. (Putnam 1981, p. 56)

Thus, it is an essential part of internal realism that truth be more than just internal

justification. Let us look at Putnam's arguments for this thesis before we look at those for

the ontological thesis, since the arguments for the theory of truth are relatively simple.

Putnam's first argument is simply that truth is supposed to be something that doesn't

change. (Putnam 1981, p. 55; Putnam 1983, p. 84) What is justified within a particular

system can change as the system changes, therefore, according to Putnam, truth must be

some idealization of justification. Putnam also has a more subtle argument for his theory

of truth. If truth is a matter simply of the conditions under which a statement can be

asserted, then it seems that we can make no sense out of what assertions are other than

physical acts or utterances. Putnam says:

If assertion is to be taken in a suitable 'thick' sense, however, then we have to recognize that asserting is guided by notions of correctness and incorrectness. (Putnam 1983, p. xiv)

This notion of correctness requires a conception of truth that goes beyond assertability.

For to assert something is not just to utter a sentence; it is to utter the sentence as

representing something that is true or correct. Without a realist theory of truth, assertion

becomes just utterance, a movement of the larynx. Thus Putnam says:

If a philosopher says ... that knowing the assertability conditions is knowing all there is to know about truth, then, insofar as I understand him at all, he is denying that there is a property of truth (or a property of rightness, or correctness), not just in the realist sense, but in any sense. But this is to deny that our thoughts and assertions are thoughts and assertions. (Putnam 1983, p. xv)

I have spent this time reviewing Putnam's argument for a realist theory of truth, not

because I mean to take issue with it, but to show how deeply realist intuitions and

arguments still have a hold on him. The question to be considered in the next chapter is

whether these intuitions can be assimilated to an internalist metaphysics and

epistemology.

We now need to look at the arguments and motivations that led to Putnam's

ontological position, his view that objects are constructions within theories and the

Oatmeal theory of Reality that this implies. We saw in Chapter Seven that Putnam's

ontological theses are a way of solving the problem posed by the model theoretic

argument. Putnam diagnoses the problem in this way:

The predicament is only a predicament because we did two things: first, we gave an account of understanding the language in terms of programs and procedures for using the language (what else?); and then, secondly, we asked what the possible 'models' for the language were, thinking of the models as existing 'out there' independent of any description. At this point, something weird had already happened, had we stopped to notice. On any view, the understanding of the language must determine the

reference of the terms, or, rather, must determine the reference given the context of use. If the use, even in a fixed context, doesn't determine reference, then use isn't understanding. The language, on the perspective we talked ourselves into, has a full program of use; but it still lacks an interpretation. ................................................. We need, therefore, a standpoint which links use and reference in just the way he metaphysical realist standpoint refuses to do. The standpoint of 'non-realist semantics' is precisely that standpoint. (Putnam 1977, p. 24)

Putnam, then, is committed to a theory in which understanding is determined by use.

To understand a language is to be able to use it. And to understand a language we must

be able to determinately apply it; that is, we must be able to refer. So understanding must

determine reference. The reference of a set of symbols must be determined by a program

of use in which the symbol is assigned an extension by us. This is the first premise of

Putnam's argument for the ontological thesis of internal realism. This is simply a result of

the recognition that objects or symbols don't interpret themselves, that meaning cannot be

a result of intrinsic similarities between representations and their objects.7 Signs gain

their reference by our interpretation; we assign them a referent.

Assigning a sign a referent is only possible if we have access to both the sign and the

object to which it is to refer. We must have immediate access to each of these; that is, the

access cannot be through another sign. This is the second premise of Putnam's argument.

We have already seen, in Chapter Seven, ample evidence that Putnam held this view, but

here is a representative quote: "This simply states in mathematical language the intuitive

fact that to single out a correspondence between two domains one needs independent

access to both domains." (Putnam 1981, p. 74)

The central premise of his argument, at least for our purposes, is that we never have

access to the world; we only have access to representations. As we saw earlier, this seems

to be a result of retaining a view of representation as something that signs or objects do,

albeit only with our interpretation. But even if an object does not represent on its own, if

the object is taken as a representation it will form a veil or barrier between us and reality.

If representations are seen as objects or signs, even ones that only get their meaning

through our interpretation, they will stand as intermediary objects between us and the

world. We will never see the world, only these intermediary objects. (It should be clear

by now why this is importantly wrong. On the view put forward here representing is an

activity of interacting with the world; it does not form a barrier between us and the world.

Objects and signs only have representative powers when we are using them to represent,

when they are situated in an act of representing) We have already seen (in section two

above) how important this premise is to Putnam's model theoretic argument. As an

indication of this consider this quote in which Putnam explains how he bases his

semantics on constructive, intuitionist mathematics and how this avoids the model

theoretic problems:

'Objects' in constructive mathematics are given through descriptions. Those descriptions do not have to be mysteriously attached to those objects by some non-natural process (or by metaphysical glue). Rather the possibility of proving that a certain construction (the 'sense', so to speak, of the description of the model) has certain constructive properties is what is asserted and all that is asserted by saying the model 'exists'. In short, reference is given through sense, and sense is given through verification procedures and not through truth conditions. The 'gap' between our theory and the 'objects' simply disappears - or, rather, it never appears in the first place. (Putnam 1977, p. 21)

It is this gap between the representations and the objects that allows the model

theoretic argument to have force, and it is this very same gap which Putnam's ontological

thesis is a way of getting around. The gap, of course disappears in Putnam's theory

because objects become constructions within the theory, to which we have immediate

access. This what allows us to assign our signs a determinate reference.

Given these three premises we can now make a rough reconstruction of Putnam's

argument for his ontological thesis. It has the form of a transcendental argument. It

begins with the fact that we do refer determinately to objects and arrives at his

ontological thesis as the only way in which this fact could be possible:

1. We do determinately refer to objects. 2. Reference must be fixed by us through our use; this involves the assignment of a referent to our signs through their interpretation. 3. We can only assign a referent to a sign if we have immediate access to both the sign and the referent. 4. We have no immediate access to noumena, things as they are in themselves apart from our representation of them. We have immediate access only to representations. Therefore, 5. The objects to which we determinately refer must be internal to our system of representations.

Of course, it is the fourth premise above that I will take issue with. The theory of

representation provided here does away with the veil of ideas making premise four false

and allowing for an alternative way of explaining reference. (See Chapter Four.) In a

transcendental argument such as this the presentation of an alternative explanation of the

fact with which the argument starts is a serious objection, since the conclusion only

follows if it is the only explanation of that fact.8

In Putnam's theory there is no problem of reference. The objects are constructs within

the fully interpreted theory:

For an internalist like myself, the situation is quite different. In an internalist view also, signs do not intrinsically correspond to objects,independently of how those signs are employed and by whom. But a sign that is actually employed in a particular way by a particular community of users can correspond to particular objects within the conceptual scheme of those users. 'Objects' do not exist independently of conceptual schemes. We cut up the world into objects when we introduce one or another scheme of description. Since the objects and the signs are alike internal to the scheme of description, it is possible to say what matches what. (Putnam 1981, p. 53)

Since we cut up the world by describing it, the world apart from our description cannot

already have structure apart from our activity. If it only makes sense to talk of objects

within a scheme of description, then there are no objects in the world as it is apart from

our conceptual activity. The world as it is in itself is a bowl of mush; we spoon it out into

objects ourselves. What we call the 'world' and what we call 'objects', then, must be

constructs in our theories and not the mush of the noumenal world. Putnam, therefore,

seems committed to an Oatmeal theory of Reality. The world that we refer to is of our

own making. Putnam uses as a metaphor a play in which we are both an actor and author:

Kant's image was of knowledge as a 'representation' - a kind of play. The author is me. But the author also appears as a character in the play (like a Pirandello play). ................................................ I would modify Kant's image in two ways. The authors (in the plural - my image of knowledge is social) don't just write one story: they write many versions. And the authors in the stories are the real authors. This would be 'crazy' if these stories were fictions. A fictitious character can't also be a real author. But these are true stories. (Putnam 1976, p. 138)

If the world we refer to with all its structure is a construct of ours within our theories,

then the noumenal world cannot have any structure by itself. Thus, Putnam attacks the

notion that there is a 'ready-made world' (Putnam 1981a), that there are self-identifying

objects (Putnam 1981, pp. 53-54), and that there are essential properties (Putnam 1981a).

Before going on, in the last chapter, to a critique of internalism and a defense of the

view of representation presented in Part Two, I need to first consider a passage that may

seem at first to argue against the interpretation of Putnam's ontological thesis given

above. Putnam considers the possibility that someone might respond to his arguments by

saying that we refer in virtue of some correspondence relation to noumenal objects, but

that there is no one privledged or intended reference relation, so that in different models

or theories a term may have a different reference. On this view reference turns out not to

be determinate.9 This is a view Putnam calls ontological relativity. This, of course,

rejects the very fact from which Putnam's argument begins. Putnam could be expected to

be unable to understand a position where the properties by which we describe an object

don't automatically apply to the object. Where under different theories you have the same

object or part of the world characterized differently, instead of having a different object

in virtue of the new theory. This is just how Putnam responds:

This doctrine, however, cannot be accepted. I cannot accept it for my own language, because to do so would turn the notion of an object into a totally metaphysical notion. I know what tables are and what cats are and what black holes are. But what am I to make of the notion of an X which is a table or a cat or a black hole (or the number three or ...)? An object that has no properties at all in itself and any property you like 'in a model' is an inconceivable Ding an sich. (Putnam 1983, p. xiii)

This should be read as arguing that the thing we call the 'world' is not the noumenal

world, but the world as constructed within our theory. It should not be taken as an

admission that things in themselves have structure after all. Here are some quotes that

indicate this as the correct reading:

The fact is, so many properties of THE WORLD ... turn out to be 'theory relative' that THE WORLD ends up as a Kantian 'noumenal' world, a mere 'thing in itself'. If one cannot say how THE WORLD is theory-independently, then talk of all these theories as descriptions of 'the world' is empty. (Putnam 1976, p. 133)

These theories, then are not descriptions of THE WORLD, the noumenal world; they are

descriptions of the constructed world within our theory. Putnam also says:

If the picture of the language user that we have thus far discussed ... leads to the metaphysical fantasy of a 'ready-made world', with self-identifying objects, 'built-in' structure, essences, or whatever, and the modified picture of the mind or brain simply accepting a whole lot of different correspondences, without trying to 'fix' any particular one as the intended correspondence between word and object, leads to the metaphysical fantasy of a 'noumenal' world, with no determinate relation to our experiential world, then the trouble with this entire discussion must lie at a deeper level. (Putnam 1983, p. xiii)

Here Putnam explicitly rejects the interpretation that his rejection of ontological relativity

leads him to accept a world with built-in structure. The world that we refer to is neither a

noumenal world with built in structure, nor a noumenal world with no structure, it is the

world as constructed within our representational systems.

It is interesting to note the motivation of Putnam's rejection of ontological relativity,

for it reveals much about the motivation of his internalism in general. Consider the

argument in the quote above from "Realism and Reason" (Putnam 1976). It seems that

the position that Putnam wants to retain at all costs is whatever it is that we refer to, the

properties that we refer to it by are really true of it. "If one cannot say how THE WORLD

is theory-independently, then talk of all these theories as descriptions of 'the world' is

empty. (Putnam 1976, p. 133) Strange as it may seem, one of the main assumptions

behind Putnam's internalism is something like a subject-predicate or substance-attribute

metaphysics. Whatever objects are, the properties we apply to them, as we describe or

represent them, really do apply to them. Objects really do have properties, the very

properties we ascribe to them in our representations. The properties that we represent an

object as having really are in the object. The structure of reality really does mirror the

structure of our language or representations.

Thus, as Putnam says, he does hold a version of essentialism (Putnam 1981a, p. 220)

and a version of self-identifying objects (Putnam 1981, pp. 53-54). (He is quick to point

out that this is not in a sense of any use to the externalist, but this is only because Putnam

had become convinced the versions of essentialism open to the externalist could not work

because of the nature of reference and the veil of ideas. He would have liked to have

accepted them, as he did before he was convinced that they didn't work.) Of course,

Putnam's substance-attribute metaphysics, the fact that objects mirror the structure of our

representations, is simply a result of the fact that objects are constructs within our

representational systems constructed in accordance with our theories. But we should not,

therefore, infer that this metaphysics is simply an implication of Putnam's internalism.

Rather, it is a pre-assumption of Putnam's that leads to his Internalism. His rejection of

ontological relativity shows that. He had an alternative to internalism, ontological

relativity10, yet he could not stand a theory on which we could refer to the world but not

say how it was. Putnam was trying to be as good an essentialist as he could; it turned out

that internal realism was the best he could do.

We should also discuss how Putnam's essentialism is caused by the retention of the

physical-visual model of representation and, in particular, the perspectivist fallacy, but

this leads us into a critique of Putnam's assumptions from the point of view of the theory

of representation presented here. Therefore, let us continue this discussion in Chapter

Nine.

1 Such an alternative would require a theory of representation, such as the one sketched here, that allows for there to be objective, true representation from particular perspectives. This allows there to be some knowledge without requiring complete knowledge, a God's eye view, or a representation that isn't a representation, which is inconsistent with a Representational Model of Epistemology. 2 Also see Putnam 1981a, p. 207 for a similar quote. 3 Also see Putnam 1983, p. xi and Putnam 1981, pp. 45-46. 4 Also see Putnam 1981, p. 46 for a similar admission with respect to Hartry Field's causal theory. 5 It should be noted that Putnam never gives a positive account of what the internal realist way of allowing the objective nature of the environment or experiential input constrain knowledge; nor does he give an account of how this is possible on his theory. I, of course, will not attack Putnam on this point of his theory. I will question whether it is consistent with his internalism and its Oatmeal theory of reality. 6 An almost identical quote is at Putnam 1983, p. 85. It is not surprising that Putnam should be inconsistent on this point, since, as I shall argue in the last chapter, internal realism is incoherent at just the point where it tries to combine a realist theory of truth with an internal theory of justification. The only reason one would have to believe that truth would be convergent would be that internalism is false and that all theories are constrained to converge by reference to common external objects. 7 See Putnam 1981, Chapter Three for an excellent account of how this approach was seen to be mistaken. Along with this recognition came the realization that a truth functional account of language understanding was inadequate. Assigning a sign the set of objects of which it is true does no explain how we come to understand the sign as referring to those objects. See "Reference and Understanding" in Putnam 1978, pp. 97-119 for an account of this. 8 In fact, my alternative need not be shown to be true to refute the argument. It only need be shown that if it were true then reference would be possible. 9 That is, the reference of signs or objects taken as representations is not determinate. The use of a sign in a particular act of representing, however, is always determinate. 10 This is the alternative, I will defend in the section on properties and objects in Chapter Nine. It should be noted that Putnam was quite unfair in his presentation of ontological relativity. It may be Quine's position that an object may be anything at all depending on the model applied to it (I am unsure even of this.), but this is certainly not essential to the position. If one admits that the world does have intrinsic structure, then the same part of the world may be split up into different objects according to the model used, but the number of models that can be applied to that part of the world will be limited, and the world will constrain those models. This is the position I will defend in Chapter Nine.

CHAPTER IX

REPRESENTATION AND REALISM

In this final chapter I will attempt to spell out the epistemological implications of the

theory of representation presented in this dissertation and see what type of realism it

tends to support. If I were inclined to name the type of realism defended here (one most

often names a position in order to attack it), I would use the name Richard Rorty applies

to the views of Thomas Nagel, Intuitive Realism.1 (Rorty 1982) I would take three central

theses as characterizing intuitive realism. First, the world that we talk about has a nature

independent of our characterization of it. Second, since we know the world only by

representing it, our knowledge, by its very nature, is incomplete. Third, although

knowledge from particular perspectives is necessarily incomplete, it can be objective and

true, so far as it goes. It seems to me that the term Intuitive Realism is appropriate,

because its main thesis is that objective knowledge is possible from particular

perspectives. It is a rehabilitation of intuition as an essential form of knowledge. By

intuition I mean any knowledge or representation from a single perspective. (I believe

this is generally what we mean by intuition in both the Kantian and everyday senses.) Not

all knowledge is reflective, involving the comparison of different perspectives, and the

possibility of any knowledge at all rests upon knowledge from particular perspectives.

I will begin my consideration of the implications of an alternative theory of

representation by looking at how the theory can be used in a critique of the assumptions

that lead to Putnam's realism.

9.1: Putnam and the Perspectivist Fallacy

We saw in Chapter Eight some of the main assumptions that led to Putnam's internal

realism were. Let me review them quickly: It was assumed that representations were

objects or signs that gained their reference through our interpretation of them. It was

assumed that we only experience representations, that we have no direct access to the

world. We also saw that Putnam assumed something like a subject-predicate or

substance-attribute metaphysics; that is, he assumed that the properties or characteristics

in our representation of objects really do belong to the object, as these properties are

represented. He was committed to some version of self-identifying objects, and when

faced with the choice of abandoning self-identifying objects and accepting ontological

relativity or abandoning externalism, he abandoned externalism. He says: "... this story

may retain THE WORLD but at the price of giving up any intelligible notion of how

THE WORLD is." (Putnam 1976, p. 132) We saw that this was due to his position on

reference. It seems an obvious fact that we do determinately refer, and we could not be

referring if we contact objects only mediately, through our representations. Therefore, the

things to which we refer must be within our representational systems.

This argument depends for its force upon the strong version of the perspectivist

fallacy; it depends upon the thesis that if a representation is from a particular perspective,

then it cannot refer to anything outside of that perspective. Putnam states the thesis in this

way: "If one cannot say how THE WORLD is theory independently, then all talk of these

theories as descriptions of 'the world' is empty." (Putnam 1976, p. 133)

We saw earlier that the perspectivist fallacy is a result of the attempt to make

representations come alive. It arises from a misunderstanding of what representations are

and how they function. In particular, it is a misunderstanding of representational self-

reference. It is essentially a result of taking representations to be objects or signs. Once

one sees that such objects cannot guarantee their own correspondence to the world, that

they cannot represent by their intrinsic similarity to their objects, then objective

knowledge will be seen to a require a step outside of the present representation to other

representations from different perspectives. Putnam diagnoses the problem well and

traces it back to Occam:

The problem, in a way, is traceable back to Occam. Occam introduced the idea that concepts are (mental) particulars. If concepts are particulars ('signs'), then any concept we may have of the relation between a sign and its object is another sign. But it is unintelligible, from my point of view, how the sort of relation the metaphysical realist envisages as holding between a sign and its object can be singled out either by holding up the sign itself ... or by holding up yet another sign... . (Putnam 1976, pp. 126-127)

The point at which the physical-visual model of representation begins to unravel is

representational self-reference, where one begins to be concerned with the relation

between the representation itself and the object, and where one begins to be concerned

with justification. As Rorty saw so well, the traditional model of representation begins to

run into problems with the Platonic distinction between opinion and knowledge, with the

insight that knowledge is not just true belief, but true justified belief.2 With this the

problem of representational self-reference becomes central. Knowledge requires not just

a representation of the object, but a representation of the relation between the

representation itself and the object. It was quickly seen that self-justifying representations

were impossible on the traditional model.3 Objects do not determine their own relation to

the world, and when they are taken to be representations they form a barrier between the

knower and the world. Therefore, there can be no knowledge from particular perspectives

or representations on the traditional view; justification always requires another

representation from other perspectives. Since a sign cannot determine its own relation to

its object, it cannot represent its own relation to its object; it cannot justify itself.

Justification always requires another representation, which itself requires justification.

Putnam's version of the perspectivist fallacy is his argument that reference requires

independent access to both the sign and its referent. A sign cannot determine its own

referent, so reference requires a representation of both the sign and its object in which the

sign can be assigned to the object or interpreted.

We saw, however, that if representing is seen as an activity of interaction with the

world then it becomes possible to understand how there can be self-justifying

representations. Representations as described in Part Two not only represent an object, by

connecting modes of interaction and attributing them to the object as their common

causal origin, but they also represent the relation between the act of representing itself

and the world, by being an act of connection that can be caused by the interaction with

the world. We saw that representation involved the application of concepts, or active

tendencies to connect modes of interaction with the world, and that interaction with a

domain of interest in an act of representing could reinforce or inhibit the connections

made by the concept in a way that was felt as satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the

tendency. The connection of the modes of interaction represents the domain as their

common causal locus, and the felt satisfaction represents the act of connection itself as

being caused by interaction with the domain and not by the subject. Thus, on this view,

all representations are inherently self-referential.

This is possible because representations are not seen as objects or static entities that

somehow are put in some relation to objects; they are not seen as symbols. Rather,

representations are seen as acts involving an interaction between the subject and the

object. Thus, they can interpret themselves (or, to put it more precisely, they are acts of

interpretation), since they are an act of isolating a domain by connecting modes of

interaction with that domain. They refer to themselves, because they are the expression of

teleological tendencies that aim at their completion. And they can justify themselves,

because they involve causal interaction with the domain to which they refer in which the

tendency they express can be satisfied or frustrated. On this view objective knowledge is

possible from within a single representation, because the representation is seen as an

activity and not an object.

The perspectivist fallacy, then, is mainly a misunderstanding of how representations

work due to taking physical objects or symbols as a model for representation. Since such

representations cannot come alive and determine their own interpretation, they cannot

justify themselves. Therefore, knowledge will always require stepping outside of one's

perspective and forming a more general representation. But representations are not

objects and they interpret themselves. Since they include the interaction of subject and

object, they can contain their own justification. The perspectivist fallacy, then, is due to a

failure to see how representations can be (and essentially are) self-referential.

This is essentially the problem with Putnam's argument that determinate reference

requires independent access to both sign and object. By taking representations to be

objects (even objects that are only interpreted by us), he makes the self-reference that is

essential to representation impossible. His internalism comes about as a last ditch effort

to save a model of representation and the determination of reference that his own

arguments show to be deficient, rather than as an alternative account of representation.

(Making objects internal to the representational system allows non-self-referential

representations to refer.)

Before we see how this last ditch effort itself fails, let us see some more implications

of the view of representation presented here and how it requires a revision of some of the

presuppositions that led to the dilemma faced by the traditional model.

9.2: Representation, Truth, and Generality

One of the most important implications of the view presented here is that our

knowledge is essentially incomplete. The view here is that all knowing is through

representing and that representation from particular perspectives can be objective and

forms the basis of all our knowledge. This view also holds that the content of all

representation lies in the connections made within it, not in the properties that are

connected.

This view implies that our knowledge is limited in two ways: First, we never know

objects as they are in themselves. The properties we perceive are the felt modifications

that the object produces in us; it makes no sense to attribute them to objects themselves.

We can only know objects as the causal locus of some set of properties. We can only

know that certain domains have causal powers which are manifested as the properties we

feel. (This limitation is the topic of the next section.) Second, (and most important for this

section) a representation from a particular perspective, though true and objective, is tied

to that perspective and cannot necessarily be generalized to other perspectives. All

representations are particular, they connect properties as stemming from a particular

interaction with a domain. All generality is a matter of concepts, or tendencies to

represent certain domains in certain ways. But it is only representations that are self-

justifying; only they can correspond to the world. There is no way of being sure that our

concepts will always produce satisfaction whenever they are applied to other domains.

One of the main sources of the traditional model of representation and the troubles

that go along with it is the tendency to see this limitation as a problem with

representation. One of the sources of epistemological dilemmas is the confusion of

generality with truth. Only representations are true; only they co-respond with the domain

with which they are interacting. But it turns out that truth (by itself) is not very important,

if what you want is to control and predict the world. Just because two properties were

connected in one domain, does not mean they will be so connected in other domains.

What is important for the purpose of controlling the world is the ability to apply the

connections one has made in the past to present situations in the correct way. But this is

not a matter of the correspondence of any particular representation with the domain with

which it interacts. Just because my representation of the cat as being on the mat is true

now, does not mean it will be true five minutes from now. Generalizability is not a matter

of truth of representation. The truth of a representation guarantees only that the

connection made is caused by the interaction with the present domain; it does not

distinguish between those connections which are contingent and those that are necessary.

Generalizability requires the differentiation of essential connections from contingent

ones. In order to know which foods are bad to eat or poisonous, one needs to know more

than just whether a particular instance of the type of food was bad to eat one time; one

needs to know if the bad symptoms are essentially connected to that type of food. This

not a matter of having a true representation. It is a matter of having concepts which tend

to produce true representations.

Remember that concepts involve tendencies to connect certain properties and they also

involve sets of tendencies to orient our bodies so as to directly refer to certain domains.

Let us call the first type of tendency representing tendencies and the second type referring

tendencies. Generalizability, then, rests upon the ability to form concepts in which the

representing tendencies are connected with referring tendencies that lead to interaction

with domains in which the connections made by the representing tendencies are satisfied.

If we imagine that concepts tend to reinforce those tendencies that produce

satisfaction, then concepts, in their normal operation, will tend to become generalizable.

The possibility of this will rest on our ability to have true representations, but the

generalizability of concepts is not truth.

Generalizability is something we arrive at only due to pragmatic considerations. It is a

result of our tendency to reinforce connections that produce satisfaction. Our knowledge

is inherently limited in this respect. The world only determinately constrains us in

particular acts of representing. Our concepts are constrained by the world only insofar as

they lead to these acts. Our knowledge, therefore, is limited to those perspectives and

domains that we can isolate out given our modes of interaction with the world. But this is

not due to a failure of our representations. It is not a result of a veil of ideas that stands

between us and the world. It is a result of the fact that representations are interactions

with the world. Since representations are embodied on this view, the generalizability of

their application in concepts will be constrained by the way they are embodied. Since

representations are ways of interacting with the world, our knowledge will be limited by

the ways in which we can contact the world through our bodies and sense organs.

The attempt to transcend these limitations leads to the problems of a perspectivist

model of objectivity. This is the confusion of generalizability with truth. The attempt to

see representation as something that goes on by itself, apart from our embodiment and

interaction with the world, makes it necessary to see truth and objectivity as things that

must be independent of particular perspectives and ways of interacting with the world.

This attempt to identify generality with truth is self-defeating. For particular perspectives

and acts of representing cannot be general. Therefore, on this view, they cannot be

objective or true. The only source of objectivity, however, is particular interactions with

the world (only in these interactions are the connections made by our concepts

constrained by the world); but since these are merely subjective on this view, we are left

without any source of objectivity but internal constraints. The incoherence of the image I

used for the perspectivist model is instructive here. In attempting to so increase the

number of posts holding up a platform that the amount of weight supported by any one

becomes zero, you are taking away the foundations of the platform rather than

strengthening it. If, in the end, only completely general representations can be true or

objective, then the particular perspectives upon which these general truths rest are

worthless as foundations.

Retaining the distinction between truth and generality (that is, the distinction between

representations and concepts) is essential. Only then is it possible to see how we can have

general knowledge (concepts that are generalizable) that rest upon objective foundations

(true particular representations). The price of this, however, is the admission that our

knowledge is necessarily limited by the modes of representing allowed by our type of

embodiment.

9.3: Properties and Objects

We have seen that Putnam is committed to a substance-attribute ontology. We now

need to see what type of ontology is required by the view presented here. This will

involve seeing what view of properties and objects these views lead to.

We have seen that on this view the content of representations lies in the connections

made within them and not in the properties which are connected. Properties are simply

the felt character of an interaction with a particular domain through a particular mode of

interaction. There are two reasons, which have become commonplace since Berkeley and

Hume, why it does not make sense to attribute properties to objects themselves and not

just to our interactions with them: First, the same properties can be felt in the absence of

interaction with the object (through imagination and memory). We saw that this was due

to our ability, through our concepts, to stimulate modes of interaction independently of

their activation from peripheral neurons. Second, properties are tied to particular modes

of interaction and the particular sensory and bodily connections that define those modes

of interaction. Different organisms from different perspectives with different sensory

apparatus will perceive different properties. For these reasons, it does not make sense to

attribute properties, or the way an object feels in a particular mode of interaction with it,

to objects. Nor, therefore, does it make sense to take the properties connected in a

representation as part of its content.

For example, the property redness is the felt character of interactions with certain

types of objects through our eyes and the neural apparatus connected with them. The

same objects manifest different properties when interacted with according to different

modes, with different sensory organs. There is no reason to consider these properties as

parts or attributes of the object.

We sometimes talk as if we are attributing properties to objects, or as if we take

properties as expressing objective characteristics of objects. For example, we say that

roses are red or that redness is a particular wavelength of light. Insofar as these

statements have objective content, however, it lies in the connections made between

redness and other properties, such as the other ones that allow you to pick out roses or

certain wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. In making these statements, we are not

attributing redness to noumenal roses nor identifying it with a property that the object has

independently of any mode of interaction. Rather we are connecting redness up with

properties manifested through other modes of interaction. (This explains why primary

properties, which are manifested by more than one sensory mode, were sometimes taken

to be objective. They are not single properties; they are ways of representing objects as

being the common causal locus of two sets of properties, usually visual and tactile.)

A substance-attribute or subject-predicate metaphysics is tied up with the physical-

visual model of representation. If representations must be similar to their objects in order

to represent, then the properties that make up representations must have their counterparts

in the objects. Furthermore, if representations generally have a subject-predicate

structure, then objects must have a similar structure in order for our representations to

mirror them.

The subject-predicate structure of some representations, however, does not reflect the

necessity of mirroring a world with a substance-attribute ontology. Rather it results from

the fact that the reference of our representations must be determined independently of the

correctness of our representations in order to allow for the growth and correctability of

our representations. Thus representing often involves connecting one set of dispositions

to enter into acts of referring (the subject) with another set of dispositions to represent a

domain in a certain way (the predicate). This does not involve attributing the properties

involved in the predicate to the domain; it is simply representing the domain as the

common cause of the set of properties. The properties themselves are simply the felt

effect of the activation of our modes of interaction by the domain. There is no reason to

think that the structure of the object mirrors the structure of our sensory apparatus. The

substance-attribute metaphysics seems to be due to a misreading of the significance of the

structure of representation.

This misreading is one that would be natural for one who held that representation

occurs through the intrinsic similarity of the representation to its object. It is also a

fortunate misreading, for it allows us to have knowledge of objects as they really are. For

it so happens, on this view, that the properties we perceive objects to have through our

senses really do inhere in the object, even though the substance in which these properties

inheres becomes a mysterious 'something I know not what'. This implication of the view

makes it powerfully attractive for those like Plato and Aristotle, or Kant and Putnam, who

take the fact that we have knowledge of the world as given or as a starting point. For this

model makes possible a knowledge of how the world really is, although it does require a

reinterpretation of what the world is in order to allow this. (In Plato and Aristotle, the

world is seen as containing universals to become more like our concepts; in Kant and

Putnam the world become a construct of our concepts in order to allow determinate

reference or objective validity for our concepts.)

Unfortunately, the only reason to hold such an ontology would be if one held that we

represent through the similarity of our representations to their objects, a view that would

not work even if it were possible. The price of giving up a substance-attribute ontology,

however, is giving up our ability to know the world as it is, to mirror the world with our

representations. The price of retaining this is to make the world a construct of our

concepts, as Putnam sees. He chooses an Oatmeal theory of the noumenal world in order

to retain objects with properties and the ability to refer to them. We now need to see what

view of objects one can have if one gives up substance-attribute metaphysics.

The view of representation given here requires that the world have structure apart

from our representation of it. The world must have sufficient structure to constrain the

connections made in acts of representing in order for this view to work. Domains must

either be or fail to be the common causal locus of properties connected in acts of

representing. To be an object on this view is not to be a substrate with various properties,

it is simply to be the common causal ground of a set of properties (on this view, these

properties are the felt character of the interaction with a domain according to certain

modes). The properties are causal effects on the subject seen as springing from a common

source, rather than attributes that inhere in the object and which produce images of

themselves on our senses.

On the substance-attribute view, objects are defined independently of the particular

properties they manifest. There is a substantial structure that defines the object upon

which attributes can be pinned. On the view advanced here, however, objects are defined

by the set of properties of which they are the common causal origin. To be an object on

this view is simply to be the common causal nexus of the activation of a set of modes of

interaction. Discontinuities in the connections between properties experienced in

interaction with domains is what defines objects. A domain which is an object causally

reinforces the connection of modes of interaction in a way in which the environment

surrounding that domain does not.

But this makes the definition of objects dependent upon the modes of interaction

operating. A domain may connect one set of modes in a way that is discontinuous with

the environment, while the way it connects another different set of modes of interaction

may be completely continuous with the environment.

For example, a completely transparent object is continuous with the environment with

respect to interaction by sight, while discontinuous with respect to touch. An opaque gas

may be just the opposite: continuous with respect to touch and discontinuous with respect

to sight. What is recognized as an object (i.e., as a domain connecting properties in a way

discontinuous with its environment) will depend on how one is interacting with the

domain. We take things like doors and desks to be objects because our bodies are so

structured so that our bodily interactions with these connect properties in a way

discontinuous with the environment. But a Martian whose body structure allowed it to

pass as effortlessly through material objects as we pass through air would not recognize

the same objects as us. (At least not by means of these tactile interactions.) Whether a

domain is recognized as an object depends on how one interacts with it.

But this is not so because objects are constructed by us in the act of representation.

Objects are discovered through representation, not constructed. The very nature of

representation, on this view, precludes an Oatmeal theory of reality. Representing is the

product of concepts which are tendencies that can be satisfied or frustrated. The

satisfaction or frustration of particular representations is unintelligible apart from the

constraint of external objects with structure. Concepts are tendencies that aim at their

own satisfaction; they will not construct objects that frustrate them. A world that

constrains our conceptual activity in this way must have structure. It may not have a

substance-attribute structure, but a world in which domains connect modes of interaction

in ways that are discontinuous has structure.

If to say that the world has structure is to say that there are discontinuities in its causal

powers that from closed regions of space-time, then to say the world has mind-

independent structure is to say that there are mind independent objects. Objects are

defined by closed discontinuities in the causal powers of the world. The objects that we

perceive objectively must be independent of our perception of them.

This, of course, does not mean that we have some non-conceptual access to objects.

The exercise of our concepts in acts of representing is our access to objects, and the

objects we perceive depends upon what concepts we use. Yet, the objects exist apart from

our perception of them; the concepts determine only which of the pre-existing objects

will be perceived.

We experience the structure of the world only through its causal effects on us. This is

what it means to say that we know only by representing. To say that the world consists of

objects is simply to say that there are discontinuities in the way the world connects the

various causal effects it has on us. It is not to say that there are determinate substrates

onto which properties are grouped. Within a single domain there are many possible

objects. Which ones are picked out depends on the modes of interaction with the domain.

The properties define the substrate; which is to say that there is no substrate (a substrate

that changes with the properties is a contradiction in terms), only the myriad of structures

that connect the various modes of interaction. The world, though structured, does not cut

itself into exclusive discrete and isolated units. The objects or closed discontinuities of

the causal powers of the world overlap in space and time. We isolate certain of these

objects or closed discontinuities by representing the world according to only some of the

possible modes of interaction with it.

An image that I find helpful in understanding this view is of the runway lights of a

large airport at night. There are a number of pairs of parallel rows of lights, each pair

defining a runway. These pairs intersect each other at various angles. If one views these

lights from ground level on a plane moving into position to take off, they appear only as a

tangled clump of lights as long as one is not looking in a direction close to parallel to any

of the runways. As one moves to a position where one's line of sight is close to parallel to

a runway, the structure of the runway emerges. A pair of parallel rows of lights pops out

from the morass of lights. That perspective on the airport allows one to see that runway,

while hiding others from view. As one moves around the airport, changing perspectives,

different structures appear and disappear from view. These structures are not created by

the perspectives or by our activity; they were always there. One simply had to approach

them in the right way to discover the structure.

In the same way, the world contains many discontinuities or structures, in which lie

the possibility of the discovery of many objects. One needs simply to interact with the

world in ways that allow the discovery of these objects. It seems that this is basically

what science does: it attempts to find new ways of approaching the world in order to get

it to show its structure.

The view presented here is essentially a version of the ontological relativity that

Putnam rejected because it retained the world while abandoning any intelligible notion of

how the world is. What objects one recognizes depends on the modes of interaction one

has with the world. This view certainly abandons any possibility of knowing how the

world is apart from its causal effects on us. It is a reluctance to admit that the world may

have a structure that our representations cannot mirror that accounts for the resistance to

ontological relativity. Yet the knowledge we have of how the world from its causal

effects tells us what discontinuities there are in the world and what properties are

connected as causal powers of the domains defined by these discontinuities. This is

certainly knowledge of how the world is. It is at least enough for efficient control and

adaptation to the world.

In this section, I have been explaining what ontological views are presupposed by the

views of this dissertation. Views about how the world is apart from our representation of

it cannot be defended by arguments concerning the nature of representation. There are

two possible defenses of such ontological views. The first type of defense is empirical.

Our empirical knowledge certainly seems to support the view that the world has a

structure. We have gone a long way towards discovering some of that structure. The

standard objection to this defense is that empirical knowledge is only knowledge of

experience, not of things as they are in themselves. But this objection has force only if

one thinks that what we experience are representations. If one thinks that we experience

the world directly through representing it, then our experience will tell us about the world

and not just our representations.

The second line of defense is to point out the incoherence of the alternatives. In

particular, an internalist view holds that the world has no structure and contains no

objects apart from our activity. Yet, almost all our theories imply the existence of objects

with structure apart from our activity. (Take, for example, any theory of the origin of the

universe or of the planet Earth. If there were no cognizers around to provide the world

with sufficient structure to produce objects it is unclear how anything could happen,

including the genesis of structures that made those cognizers possible.) This point is so

simple it almost seems to be in bad taste to bring it up. Yet simple points such as these,

when taken seriously, seem to me to show the incoherence of internalist views. The next

section explores the inadequacies of internalist views in more detail.

9.4: Inadequacies of Internalism

In this section I argue for the view of representation and its role in knowledge

presented here by pointing out the inadequacies of its major rival, internalism. The

arguments I use will be aimed at Putnam's internal realism, but most of them apply to

other forms of internalism as well. These criticisms center on the internalist claims that

objectivity is a matter of internal constraints, that objects are constructs within

representational systems, and that determinate reference of our concepts is possible

because our concepts are active in the construction of their objects and have their

application or reference fixed in this process. The criticisms fall into two main groups:

First, I will argue that internalist views fare no better than externalist views in explaining

how determinate reference is fixed, whether to objects or other words, as long as they still

view representations as objects or signs. Second, I will argue that internalism, and

especially Putnam's internal realism, is self-referentially incoherent. It has trouble

explaining both how it can be possible and how it can be true without implying its own

falsity. All of these defects of internalism arise because it retains the very model of

representation whose inadequacies led to the abandonment of external models of

objectivity. It still sees representations as objects or symbols or other static entities even

though it sees that it is impossible for such things to represent apart from our activity.

Internalism attempts to solve the problem of reference by making the things referred

to a part of the representational system, so that a veil of ideas does not make it impossible

to fix reference. "Since the objects and the signs are alike internal to the scheme of

description, it is possible to say what matches what." (Putnam 1981, p. 52) Reference

becomes fixed by us by assigning our signs referents within our representational system

through our interpretation of the signs. This solution seems plausible only as long as one

doesn't attempt to get clear about what a scheme of description is and how reference is

fixed within such a scheme.

Putnam diagnoses the problem about reference to external objects in this way:

As we have seen, the problem is this: there are these objects out there. Here is the mind/brain carrying on its thinking/computing. How do the thinker's symbols (or those of his mind/brain) get into a unique correspondence with objects and sets of objects out there. (Putnam 1981, p. 51)

If one substitutes "other symbols" for "objects" in the above quote, the problem remains.

For how a determinate reference relation is determined between signs and other signs or

objects within the system is just as much a problem as it was for external objects. For the

problem with representing external objects was not due to the fact that they were

external; it was due to the fact that no object or symbol intrinsically represents any other

object apart from situation in an act of interpretation. The veil of ideas did not cause a

problem for representation; a problem with our view of representation caused the veil of

ideas.

One can be comforted by the assurance that the other symbols or objects are internal

to the scheme of description only if one does not worry too much about what such a

scheme is. Such schemes can only be sets of symbols, i.e., sets of physical objects or

events that can be taken to stand for something else. How it is that unique reference

relations are determined between signs and objects remains a problem whether the

objects in question are external noumena or other symbols within the system.

Simply being internal to the same representational systems does not establish any

unique relationship between items; it only allows us to assign or make connections

between items in our interpretations. Our interpretation of the signs does not establish any

determinate relation between them either. For we could always make alternative

interpretations that satisfied all the internal, formal constraints of the system. To see that

this is so, take any of Putnam's model theoretic arguments and let the alternative models

consist of signs within the system rather than external objects. There are no built in

semantic relations between objects whether the objects are cows, cats, mats, linguistic

symbols, or constructed objects in a conceptual schemes. Of course we can assign a

determinate reference in an act of interpretation, but the determinacy of the reference lies

in the act of interpretation, not in the object. The object itself is indifferent as to how it is

interpreted. Within the constraints imposed by the formal structure of the symbol system,

the interpretation is wholly a matter of convention. The determinacy of reference lasts

only as long as the act of interpretation; the act does not impart any special properties to

the object that allow it to refer determinately in the future.

An example of the application of model theoretic arguments to symbol systems is the

indeterminacy of translation. Different symbol systems can be mapped onto each other in

different ways while retaining the isomorphism required by their formal structures. This

is true of subsets of a single system as well; there is indeterminacy of semantic relations

within single languages as well. The fact that within a system we can agree by convention

on an interpretation does not determine a unique reference relation between the symbols

of the system. This only shows that an act of interpretation has determinate reference, not

that the symbol system does. There can always be alternative interpretations of the

system.

Putnam thought he could solve the problem of reference by doing away with the veil

of ideas between representation and object. But the problem did not lie in the veil of

ideas, but in the view of representations as physical objects. If the representation is taken

to be a physical object then, even when we do have access to both object and

representation, no determinate reference is established. This is exactly what Putnam's use

of the Lowenheim-Skolem Theorem shows: that even in cases where there can be some

relation between sign and object, there will be too many alternative relationships. Thus

even in cases where we can determinately interpret our symbols, there will be too many

different alternative interpretations. The moral of the model theoretic argument should

have been that representations are acts rather than objects. Instead Putnam concludes that

if only objects were internal to our representational systems we could make symbols

come alive by picking out a preferred interpretation for them. But on internal grounds

alone, there is nothing but convention to make one interpretation preferable to another.

This is what the Lowenheim-Skolem Theorem shows whether the models are taken to

consist of external objects or other symbols.

Another inadequacy of internalism is that it does not avoid the problem that it set out

to avoid: the problem of the relation of representations to extra-representational reality.

The way that internalism avoids charges of total relativism and idealism is to retain the

notion of an external world that somehow constrains our knowledge. In Putnam, this

constraint takes the form of experiential "input". (Putnam 1981, p. 54) There is no

determinate relationship between any particular representation and the world. Instead the

world has input into and constrains the entire representational system as a whole. It is no

more easy, however, to see how an entire representational system has a determinate

relation to the world in which it can be constrained than it is in the case of a particular

representation. Internalism, by making the basic unit of meaning the whole conceptual

system rather than the particular representation, does not solve the problem of the relation

of representations to the external world. It simply puts the problem off. Since, on the

internalist view, there is no semantic relation between representations and the external

world it is not clear how interaction with this world can constrain the representations.

The problem of how the external world can provide constraints to our knowledge

without there being a determinate relationship between our representations and this

external world becomes even more acute when one considers how it is that we construct

objects or cut the world up by the application of our concepts. This process is left

completely obscure by Putnam. It is difficult to understand how concepts are formed

from experience since there is no determinate relation between the concepts and the

world nor any intrinsic structure to the world which can constrain their formation.4 It is

even more difficult to understand what guides the application of particular concepts to

particular situations. If there is no structure to the world apart from the activity of our

concepts then why cannot any concept be applied in any situation? And if there is no

determinate reference relationship between concepts and the world then what determines

their application in particular situations? The cornerstone of any internalist theory is the

claim that objects are constructed by the activity of concepts upon unstructured reality,

but it seems impossible to give an intelligible account of how this could occur without

ascribing some structure to reality and allowing some determinate reference relation

between this structure and our concepts.

The seeming impossibility of making clear such a central tenet of internalism suggests

that there may be an internal incoherency involved in the view. For the only way the view

could possibly work is if it is false and there is some determinate relation between the

world and our representations that allows the world to constrain our representations.

Internalism recognizes that the traditional view of representation cannot work, yet it

retains a view of the role of representation in knowledge that can only make sense if the

traditional model of representation works.

An examination of the status of the subject and the symbol system itself makes the

incoherence involved in internalism clearer. All objects are constructs within conceptual

schemes, according to internalism. Yet there are two classes of objects of which this

cannot be true: subjects and conceptual schemes. Can a conceptual scheme be a construct

within itself? The subject that does the cognizing and the conceptual scheme must be

given some transcendental status in order for the theory to work, just as the

transcendental ego and the categories had to have special status for Kant. The image that

Putnam uses for his view betrays this incoherence. He compares his version of

internalism to a play in which the author is also a character in the play. (Putnam 1976, p.

138) While this is an intriguing and powerful image, if one tries to take it seriously one

finds that it doesn't make sense. A subject cannot be both the maker and the thing made,

for the construction of objects is a structured activity, one that requires concepts, and

these concepts cannot themselves be the result of the making activity which they

structure. All construction of objects requires the application of pre-existing concepts.

Internalism cannot be true of the concepts that make internalism itself work. It only

seems to do away with ready-made objects; in fact it requires a special class of ready-

made objects to become intelligible.

This type of self-referential incoherence can also be seen in the internal realist

definition of truth. The central notion of the internal realist theory of truth is idealized

justification. The intuitions that lead to the idealization of justification as the definition of

truth are inconsistent with internalism. The only reason one would believe that under

ideal epistemic conditions conceptual systems will converge is if one believed that under

ideal conditions conceptual systems are constrained by a common external world. What

other reason could one possibly offer for such a belief?. Putnam has gone through great

pains to show that alternative theories can satisfy all the operational constraints imposed

by the world. Why should interaction with the world under ideal conditions cause

different conceptual schemes to converge, unless there is some determinate relationship

between the conceptual scheme and the world under these ideal conditions which

constrains the scheme in the interaction? It turns out that the only reason one could have

to believe that internal realism is true would be if it was false, at least under ideal

conditions. .

Alvin Plantinga has devised a graphic way of showing the incoherence of internal

realism. He has shown (Plantiga 1982) that internal realism implies that there exists an

ideal rational scientific community. Putnam explicitly denies that there could exist such a

community. (Putnam 1981, p. 55; Putnam 1983, p. 84) Plantiga provides a fairly involved

proof of this implication of internal realism. I will give a shorter account which illustrates

the method of his proof.

Internal realism can be defined in this way:

IR- a sentence X is true iff. if there were an ideal rational scientific community (IRS) it would accept X.

Let X in the definition above be the sentence "An IRS does not exist." If one assumes this

sentence to be true, they can arrive at a contradiction using IR. An IRS could not accept

this sentence, for doing so would make it true, in which case the IRS would not exist. By

a reductio ad absurdum, then, there must be an IRS.

What this shows is that in order to be made intelligible as a theory of truth, internal

realism must assume ideal epistemic conditions. It must assume, as an idealization,

conditions under which correspondence of representations with reality is possible. In this

way, internal realism is true to its perspectivist roots. Perspectivist models of objectivity

seek a God's eye view, a representation free from the distortions introduced by the

medium of representation. In identifying objectivity with the God's eye view, the

perspectivist model makes all other particular representations merely subjective,

incapable of corresponding with reality. Internal realism takes this to the extreme. It is

simply the identification of true representation with the God's eye view, or the non-

perspectival perspective, along with the proviso that the God's eye view is impossible.

This proviso ultimately makes the view unintelligible as a theory of truth. For the type

of idealization involved is not like that in science. It still makes sense to speak of friction

even if frictionless planes do not exist, but it is not clear that it makes sense to talk of

justification if ideal conditions do not exist. If, in fact, we can never arrive at conditions

under which our representations can correspond to reality, then talk of justification of our

assertions does not make sense. For, as Putnam points out (Putnam 1983, p. xiv),

justification and assertion require standards of correctness, or else they collapse into mere

noise making. Standards of correctness as idealized limits that are not really possible

cannot play this role. As we saw, justification and the internal realist theory of truth, only

make sense if there is reason to believe that justification procedures will cause

convergence. If the conditions that make convergence possible are only ideals, not

possible in reality, then justification cannot even make sense. Justification does not make

sense without standards of correctness or truth, but internal realism attempts to define

truth in terms of justification.

It is not as if internal justification and representation under ideal conditions were on a

continuum of which truth was the limit. It is not clear how any epistemic conditions can

be more or less ideal for internal justification. If justification is a matter of the internal

characteristics of a system, then the conditions under which the system is applied to

external reality should not be relevant to justification. Ideal epistemic conditions are not a

natural extension of internal justification standards; ideal conditions for justification only

make sense if justification is not entirely internal. Again, internal realism only makes

sense if it is false.

Internalism, then, is incoherent both in that it requires the existence of subjects and

conceptual schemes which have a ready-made structure and in that it defines truth and

objectivity in terms of conditions that are ruled out as impossible by its model of

representation. The first type of incoherence above is suggestive of another type of

argument against internalism. This type of argument also reveals much about the

motivations of realism, especially of realisms in which particular perspectives are seen as

providing objective knowledge. I will close with an account of how the view of

representation presented here is motivated by these type of considerations.

9.5: The Objectivity of the Self and the Motivation of Realism

One of the most convincing arguments against internalism springs from the nature of

our knowledge of self. We all know of at least one object that is not a construct within a

conceptual scheme: ourselves. Other people form conceptions of us, yet we know that our

nature is not dependent on these conceptions. We are also aware that even our own

conceptualizations of ourselves do not exhaust our nature. There are many aspects of

ourselves of which we are not cognitively aware, and we can come to learn about these in

various ways.

Of course, the way in which we conceive of ourselves is affected by other people's

conception of us and by our past conception of ourselves. The affect that this has on what

we are cannot be overestimated. What others think of us is one of the most powerful

considerations in human motivation. Yet, this does not make us constructs within other

people's conceptual schemes. None of us consider ourselves to be such internal objects,

for we all attribute a reality to ourselves that is independent of the conceptualization of

others. To use Thomas Nagel's terms, there is something that it feels like to be us at any

particular moment, and this is not a product of any conceptual scheme, for it can be

conceptualized in various ways with more or less success.

The various representations that other people make of us and that we make of

ourselves do not exhaust us. The complex network of embodied potentialities that is us,

by its very nature as a potentiality, outruns any set of its expressions. The sense that we

have of the felt character of the teleological tendencies or potentials that operate in us

makes us aware that there is more of us than meets the eye, whether it be the eye of

another person or our mind's eye. This is true of all things we characterize as dispositions.

Their nature is not exhausted by our representations of them; to paraphrase Shakespeare,

there are more things in this world, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your representations.

It is this conviction that the world outruns our representation of it that forms the heart of

realism.

I am also able to refer to this object apart from the correctness of my representation of

it. This, of course, is true of my ability to refer to me. Even if I know nothing about

myself (say I am an amnesiac), I will have little trouble in picking out which person in a

room is me, or in distinguishing myself from the furniture.

Thus our knowledge of the object with which we are most familiar, ourselves, reveals

an object that does not fit the internalist model. It reveals an object with a nature that is

determinate apart from external conceptualization and to which we are constantly

referring apart from representations.

This response to internalism seems especially powerful to me because it works upon

what seems to me to be the strongest of the motivations for realism. It is often said that

realism is motivated by a need for firm foundations for our knowledge or for stability.

These motivations cannot be applied to intuitive realism, for it insists upon radical

incompleteness of our knowledge and on the relativity of the discovery of objects to

modes of interaction with the world. On this view we cannot mirror the world with our

representations; we can only know it through its causal effects on us. The motivation for

intuitive realism springs from the importance of particular perspectives and particular

interactions with the world in all of our lives.

Anti-realisms make objectivity dependent on traits or modes of conceptualization that

are common to a community, culture, or species. The real world becomes a common

world, one shared by all rational creatures in common, or by all members of a community

or culture. The private, the peculiar, and the particular all become less than real; they

become merely subjective aspects of reality.

For example, the way that the Huron river looks to me as I float on my back on an a

mid-summer's night, with the stars reflected in the surface of the water and the dark

background of trees mounting up to the sky so full of fire flies that it looks like the

heavens have merged with the earth, can find no place in an objective conception of the

world on this view. Another person might describe the scene as a rinky-dink stream with

lots of bugs and no place to get a pastrami sandwich. If objectivity is a matter of those

aspects of our conceptual schemes that are shared by some set of cognizers, then our

idiosyncratic views of the world become merely subjective, less than real. Only if

particular perspectives can be felt as objective, if we can feel the force of the world

determining our experience through its phenomenological feel, can we regard our

particular impressions of the world as objective and real.

The world that is important to us, the one whose reality we become excited in arguing

over, is not any social construct, rational framework of experience, or model within a

theory. One rarely sees vehement argument about the transcendent reality of space and

time or about the objective validity of the categories. Yet arguments about realism are

often animated. The main issue concerning realism is not the existence of a world apart

from our experience; almost everyone believes in that. Nor does it concern the existence

of abstract, totally objective aspects of reality; these are too boring to excite much interest

in most people. The issue is about the objective reality of our particular experiences of

reality.

The world that the realist is vehement about saving is not the noumenal world that no

one experiences, nor is it the completely objective world that everyone experiences. They

are interested in maintaining the reality and objectivity of their world, their particular

experiences of the world.

The realist is rebelling against an internalist model in which the only representations

of the world that are objective are those that can be shared by many perspectives or that

are common to a whole community. Realists, egotists that they are, are only minimally

interested in these bleached out abstract versions of the world. They are interested in their

particular experiences of the world. It is my particular experiences of myself, my family,

my friends, and of particular places and events of significance to me whose objectivity

and reality I want realism to preserve. It is no surprise that realists sometimes take anti-

realist arguments personally. These arguments threaten the objective reality of the only

source of value in our lives: our particular experiences of ourselves and the world around

us. We want the value we get from particular experiences to reflect the world we live in

and not just its subjective appearance to us.5

Likewise, the realist in science (as opposed to the scientific realist) is also interested

mainly in preserving the objectivity and centrality of particular experiences of the world

rather than in the reality of some objective constructs or theories. It is the reality of facts

that the realist in science fights for, not the reality of theories.

Thus, the real motivation of realism is a striving for what was impossible on the

physical-visual model of representation; it is a striving for the objectivity of particular

representations of the world from particular perspectives. We want the reality of our

personal worlds preserved.

This was impossible when representations were seen as objects that could not

determine their own relation to the world. When representing is seen as an active

interaction with the world, particular representations can carry within them the possibility

of their justification. They can be objective, since the connections made within them can

be caused by the interaction with the world rather than by our activity. According to this

type of realism, particular representations from particular perspectives can be objective;

they can reflect the world with which they interact.

This is fortunate for us, since all of our experience is from particular perspectives. Our

self is defined by the particular perspectives it takes toward the world. This type of

realism leaves room for the objectivity of this self. We are lucky that it does, for

otherwise we would not be characters in a play of our own making, as Putnam suggests.

There is no room for particular selves in a world constructed according to the internalist

model; only what is accessible from many perspectives has objective reality on that view.

If realism were not true, we would be lost characters in search of a play which could

accommodate our particularity.

1 Although the views presented here as Intuitive Realism were influenced by Nagel, they differ from his views on several major points, most importantly on the nature of objectivity. In particular, it is not clear that Nagel would accept the third of the theses given below. 2 As noted earlier, Plato criticizes this view in his later work, but this does not alter the fact that the historical origin of the influence of these views lies in his writings. 3 This result is what Godel's theorem shows for formal systems. A set of signs cannot contain a proof of its own consistency. On the traditional model of representation, this type of self-reference is not really intelligible, for the interpretation of a sign, that which makes it a representation, requires something outside the sign itself. So, no symbol system can refer to itself without a metalanguage or another set of symbols to determine its interpretation, in which case the whole system (language + metalanguage) does not refer to itself, but only a part of itself (the language). 4 For a discussion of a similar problem with Kant on empirical concepts see Schrader 1958. 5 This should by no means be taken as a form of solipsism. This view is just as committed to the reality and objectivity of other people's perspectival views of the world as it is to my own. We do not need a common conceptual scheme to avoid idealism or solipsism, on this view; we share a common external world.

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