Maverick Philosopher

But suppose there is a definite pomegranate in my visual field, and I want that very pomegranate. It still doesn't follow that the pomegranate I want exists, for a pomegranate that exists in my visual field might not exist in reality.

The fact that there are no matter transmitters does not prevent me from wanting one. I can want what does not exist, indeed, what cannot exist. Mountain bikes, however, do exist. But from the facts that I exist, and that mountain bikes exist, and that I want a mountain bike, it does not follow that there exists a mountain bike that I want. I might want a bike with features that no existing bike has.

Now compare the relational predicates 'x eats y' and 'x wants y.' The surface grammar suggests that each expresses a dyadic (two-termed) relation, the relation of eating, and the relation of wanting, respectively. But the grammar is misleading. The first expression supports Existential Generalization on 'y' while the second does not. That is, from 'x eats y' one can validly infer '(Ey)(x eats y)'; but from 'x wants y' one cannot validly infer '(Ey)(x wants y).'

Isn't this a good reason to deny that wanting is a relation? A relation exists or 'obtains' only if all its relata exist. Consider the relation of being spatially inside of. It relates my cat and a cardboard box. Could a box have a nonexistent cat inside it? And could a cat be inside a nonexistent box? Since that is well-nigh unintelligible, it is quite reasonable to hold that a relation's relata must all exist if the relation is to obtain. Since one can want the nonexistent (a time machine, the fountain of youth, etc.), but not be related to the nonexistent, wanting is not a relation.

But wanting is a case of intentionality. It follows that in at least some cases the 'relation' of intentionality is not a genuine relation.

If wanting is not a relation, what is it? A monadic property of a person? If the surface grammar of 'Poindexter wants a pomegranate' is misleading, should we say that the logical form is better rendered by 'Poindexter wants-pomegranately'? This would suggest a theory according to which intentional objects are adverbial modifications of acts of intending.

Spur both understands me and misunderstands me. For me, mental acts are intrinsically of or about their objects. But this is not to say that mental acts are representations; it would be much better to say that they are presentations. Following Husserl, I say that in outer sense perception the thing itself, a mountain say, is presented directly albeit under limited aspects; there is no mental representation that mediates between the perceptual act and the thing perceived. (The aspectuality of intentionality is crucial, although I haven't harped on it recently. See here.)

But Spur is right to say that the intentionality of mental acts is 'primitive' in the sense that it cannot be further explained. (Surely not everything can be explained in terms of something else.) Thus I consider it to be absurd to take Dennett's ascriptivist line according to which the intentionality of a 'system' is a matter of ascription from the 'intentional stance' and therefore not intrinsic or original. (Ask yourself: what about the person who occupies the intentional stance? Are not his ascribings of intentionality themselves instances of intentionality? And if they are, who ascribes them? Do we move in a circle, or opt for an infinite regress, or what?)

Our debate, however, is not primarily about mental representations, but about things that no one could deny are both material and representational, things like drawings, photographs, and paintings — but forget about Jackson Pollack and Mark Rothko, think the Dutch Masters. Following Ed Feser, I was arguing that material representations are referentially indeterminate, and that, because of this, any mental representations there are cannot be material, e.g. states of the brain. For our thoughts are referentially determinate.

At this point Spur adduced his theory that the representationality of things like photographs is constituted by resemblance (or some more abstract form of isomorphism). But this has unacceptable consequences. Suppose P is a photo of person X. If resemblance constitutes representation, it is as true to say that X represents P as to say that P represents X. But this is false. And there were several other unacceptable consequences.

I deny, then, that resemblance or isomorphism is sufficient for representation. But Spur misunderstands me when he takes me to be saying that anything X can represent anything Y if a mind interprets X as representing Y. I never said that, and surely it is not true. It is of the essence of a portrait, for example, that it resemble the person of whom it is the portrait. So in many cases resemblance is necessary for representation. Portraiture is a form of representation for which resemblance is necessary. But it is not sufficient. A photo of Edith Stein does not represent her just in virtue of resembling her, although it must resemble her if it is to photographically represent her. Even a caricature must resemble to some extent the person caricatured. But that is not to say that one could take the Stein photo as representing the Eiffel Tower — unless one abstracted entirely from its being a photograph.

Suppose I take a photo of Stein, turn it over, and lay it face down on the table. I do the same with a photo of Husserl. Between the two pieces of white paper I place a salt shaker. I then say, "If this piece of paper is Flagstaff, and this other one is Tucson, then the salt shaker is Phoenix." What I have done is make a very crude map that shows the relation of the three cities. But even here there is no intrinsic representationality. There is an isomorphism between the crude map and what it maps. But the map represents the relation of the cities only for a mind who interprets it AS a map as opposed to three objects on a table top.

This difference in our views leads to disagreements about when representation does and does not occur. For example, I hold that in the case where someone interprets the Stein photo as representing the Eiffel Tower, it does not succeed in representing that structure, whereas you hold that it does. And in the case where there is a photograph of a thing and the thing exists but no mind has interpreted that photograph as a representation of that thing, I say that the photograph succeeds in representing the thing, whereas you say that it doesn't. But do these disagreements entail that we have different concepts of representation? It would seem so.

Spur's theory is that isomorphism constitutes (and is therefore necessary and sufficient for) representation. My theory is that isomorphism (a species of which is resemblance in sense-perceivable respects) is not sufficient for representation although it is necessary in some instances. So I am NOT saying that anything can be interpreted to represent anything. Spur misunderstands me in the passage just quoted.

[. . .] So far I have mainly been on the defensive, but I have serious misgivings about your account of representation, or least what I understand to be your account of representation. For one, I don't see how you account for the fact that sometimes there are two representations of some thing, one of which represents that thing better than the other. For example, there might be a quality map of Baltimore and a cheap one, the quality one representing that city better than the cheap one. On your view, both maps represent Baltimore and do so because there are minds that interpret those maps as representing Baltimore. But what is the explanation for the fact that the one represents Baltimore better than the other? Perhaps this merits another post.

This does not cause me any trouble, since as I said earlier, I am not denying that isomorphism is necessary for some representations. My point was rather that it is not sufficient. So I have no problem saying that the high quality map does a better job of representing Baltimore because the isomorphism is 'tighter' than that of the cheap map. But again, my point is that no map in virtue of its intrinsic properties represents anything: its representationality derives from the intrinsic intentionality of a map-using mind.

What I maintain, by contrast, is that the representationality of every material representation, including paintings and photographs, is derivative. This means that their power to represent is not a power they have in and of themselves, but a power that derives from some being possessing intrinsic or original representationality. A photograph is genuinely of (objective genitive) something distinct from itself; talk of a photo's representing something is not metaphorical or 'as if.' But this genuine representationality is not intrinsic or original. What this means is that it cannot be understood in terms of the monadic properties of the photograph (color, size, shape, thickness, material composition of the paper, etc.) OR in terms of the relational properties it possesses in virtue of its relations to other material objects. What is needed for a photograph to represent is a relation to a mind which interprets the photograph AS a representation, and by so interpreting it, confers upon it directedness to an object.

But does it not make sense to say that a picture of the Eiffel Tower is of the Tower even when the picture is hidden away in a drawer? Of course it does: a photo in a drawer is potentially, but not actually, a representation. But this potentiality requires the actual existence of interpreting minds if it is to be converted into actual representation. If all minds were eliminated, no photograph would actually represent anything. I am not denying that there are isomorphisms between material representations and what they represent; my point is that representation cannot be exhausted by isomorphism.

Spur's theory implies that it is possible that there be a world in which there are pictures, and things pictured, but no minds at any time. Pictures and things pictured would be isomorphs of each other, and that isomorphism would constitute representation. But it would not be an isomorphism that anyone notes or establishes. Elements of the picture would instantiate a relation-structure instantiated by elements of the object depicted.

In such a world there would be photographs that never represented anything TO anyone, and that came into existence by some random physical process, but not by the efforts of purposive agents who embodied their purposes in them. This consequence, I submit, refutes Spur's theory. For it is incoherent to speak of a photograph that is neither the embodiment of a purpose, nor a representation to someone actually or potentially.

By its very concept, a representation is a representation OF something TO someone. To elide the 'TO' part -- the dative of representation to give it a fancy name -- is to radically alter the concept and change the subject. I have no problem with someone using 'representation' to mean isomorphism if that person admits that he has changed the subject and is not addressing the phenomenon of representation as originally understood.

1. You say that intentionality is only exhibited by linguistic things. I find your view arbitrary and idiosyncratic. The modern discussion of intentionality was inaugurated by Brentano in 1874 in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. Brentano introduced intentionality as the mark of the mental, as that which distinguishes mental from physical phenomena. Here are some notes that go into some of the details. From Brentano on, through Husserl, Chisholm and Searle, intentionality has been primarily attributed to mental acts such as wishing, willing, desiring, remembering, imagining, perceiving, etc.

2. One of the debates, of course, is whether the intentionality of language can be understood in terms of the intentionality of thought, or whether one should approach it the other way around. A sort of locus classicus of this debate is the Chisholm-Sellars correspondence from 1956, published in 1958 in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. II, pp. 507-539. But whichever is primary, it is presupposed that intentionality pertains to both. My own view is that the intentionality of mind is primary.

3. In a broad sense of 'representation,' mental states, linguistic items and such things as photographs, maps, and models can all be reasonably considered representational. Whether it is odd to use the word 'about' in a given context shouldn't impress you too much unless you are an ordinary language philosopher -- which I am pretty sure you are not given your comments on my Wittgenstein posts. Where 'about' sounds odd, one can sometimes substitute 'of.' There is nothing linguistically odd about the question, 'What is this model of?'

The same goes for photographs, paintings, drawings, movies, etc. We don't say, 'What is this photo about?' but we do say, 'What/who is this photo of?' I have many rather clear and poignant mental images of past inamorata: surely those images are of those women.

4. Are you thinking of a representation as a mere proxy or stand-in? I once read a paper at the A.P.A. criticizing Plantinga. The latter wrote comments on my paper, but since he couldn't attend the session, he sent his assistant Menzel in his place to read the comments. Menzel was Planinga's representative (stand-in, proxy) at the session; but that is not to say that Menzel represented Plantinga in the sense in which a photograph of Plantinga represents him, is of him, and will continue to be of him even after he is dead and gone.

I don't deny that a picture might function as a proxy object or stand-in. But I do deny that standing-for can be reduced to standing-in. Suppose I am organizing a dinner party for ten guests, and for each guest I have a photograph. To work out the seating arrangement I lay their photographs on the table in positions that model the positions I want them to sit in. In this case, the photos go proxy for the persons they depict, and there is a certain common relation-structure or second-order isomorphism that the pictures on the one hand, and the guests on the other, instantiate. But the ofness or aboutness of the pictures cannot be reduced to their proxiness, or their instantiation of this relation-structure.

Premise (1) is self-evident. And of course we can generalize to nonpersons. My Christmas lasagne was a thing of beauty, so I took a picture of it. But the proof of its excellence was in the eating which was total. Surely it would be absurd to say that the picture now represents something else, or nothing at all. It represented then, and represents now, a particular batch of lasagne of uncommon delectability. We could put it this way: the pictorial representation has a content, and the content is what it is regardless of the existence/nonexistence of the object depicted.

Premise (2) is not self-evident, but is nonetheless extremely plausible. It presupposes that resemblance is a relation, and, more controversially, that relations are existence-symmetric in the following sense: if R is an n-adic relation, and R is instantiated, then each of R's n relata either exists or does not exist. I prefer to affirm the stronger principle that relations are existence-entailing, but the foregoing argument requires only the existence-symmetry of relations.

Premise (2) also presupposes that what ceases to exist does not exist at all after it ceases to exist. What ceases to exist does not merely lose the temporal property of presentness and acquire the temporal property of pastness; what ceases to exist becomes nothing, or lapses into nonbeing. The ultimate lapsus: the fall into nonentity. Premise (2) thus presupposes the dotrine of presentism according only temporally present items exist.

So if you accept both the existence-symmetry of relations and presentism, then it looks as if you must accept my argument above.

But what about causation? Is it a relation? If it is, then it cannot relate a nonexistent to an existent (by the existence-symmetry principle) and so cannot relate a past item to a present item (given the truth of presentism). But we want to say that the present is what it is beCAUSE of what happened in the past: Poindexter limps today because he sprained his ankle yesterday. The fact of causation suggests an argument against presentism:

4. If x is the cause of y, then both x and y exist.
5. Some temporally present items are caused by items that are not temporally present.
Therefore
6. Some items exist that are not present.

Suppose the barking of the dog startles the cat. Both events must exist if they are to stand in the causal relation, by the existence-symmetry principle. But the barking is temporally prior to the being startled. So the barking exists even though it is not present — which contradicts presentism.

John Bigelow ("Presentism and Properties," Philosophical Perspectives, 1996) deals with this objection by taking a page from the Stoics. He maintains that the relata of the causal relation are not events one temporally prior to the other, but presently true propositions. Thus, it is now true that the dog barked (past tense) and now true that the cat is alarmed (present tense). If this suggestion can be made to work, then we can reject premise (5) of the above argument. For then both cause and effect exist at present.

Your confidence is based on your taking the rock piles as other than merely natural formations. You take them as providing information about the trail's direction, which is to say that you to take them as trail markers, as meaning something, as about something distinct from themselves, as exhibiting intentionality, to use a philosopher's term of art.

Of course, the rock piles might have come into existence via purely natural causes: a rainstorm might have dislodged some rocks with gravity plus other purely material factors accounting for their placement. Highly unlikely, but nomologically possible. But please note that if you believe that the cairns originated in that way, then you could not take them as embodying information about the direction of the trail. It would be irrational in excelsis to hold both that (i) these rock piles came about randomly; that (ii) these rock piles inform us of the trail's direction.

So if you take the rock piles as trail markers, then you take them as other than merely natural formations caused to exist by natural causes. You take the stacking and the placement as expressive of the purposes of a trail-blazer or trail-maintainer, an intelligent being who had it in mind to convey information to himself and others concerning the direction of the trail.

This shows that any intentionality embodied in the cairns is derivative rather than intrinsic. The rock piles in and of themselves do not inform us of the trail's direction. They provide us this information only if we take them as embodying the purposes of an intelligent being.

Of course, my taking of rock piles as embodying the purposes of an intelligent being does not entail that they do in fact embody the purposes of an intelligent being. But in most cases my ascription of a purpose corresponds to a purpose: I ascribe a purpose and the rock piles do in fact embody a purpose. Thus there are two streams of intrinsic intentionality converging on the same object, one emanating from me, the other from the trail-maintainer. The ascribing and the embodying are usually 'in sync.'

There are rock piles that have no meaning and rock piles that have meaning. But no rock pile has intrinsic meaning. And the same goes for any material item or configuration of material items no matter how complex. No such system has intrinsic meaning; any meaning it has is derived. The meaning is derived either from an intelligent being who ascribes meaning to the material system, or from an intelligent being whose purposes are embodied in the material system, or both.

Thus I am rejecting the view that meaning could inhere in material systems apart from relations to minds that are intrinsically intentional, minds who are original Sinn-ers, if you will. I am rejecting the view that any sort of isomorphism, no matter how abstract, could make the rock piles mean or represent the trail's direction. No doubt there is an isomorphism: the trail goes where the cairns go. No one cairn resembles the trail to any appreciable extent; but the cairns taken collectively do resemble the trail.

Unfortunately, the trail also resembles the cairns. But the trail does not represent the cairns. Representation is most of the time asymmetrical; but resemblance is always symmetrical. I conclude that resemblance cannot constitute representation. Note also that the cairns might resemble things other than the trail. Thus the cairns taken collectively might resemble the path of a subterranean gopher tunnel directly below the trail and following it exactly. But obviously, the cairns do not mark this gopher tunnel.

Note also that isomorphism is not sensitive to the difference between rocks whose stacking is artificial, i.e., an artifact of a purposive agent, and rocks whose stacking came about via random purely natural processes. But it is only if the stacking is artificial that the stacks would mean anything. And if the stacking is artificial/artifactual, then there is a purposive agent possessing intrinsic intentionality.

With a 'proctoscope,' for example, I can 'scope out' my colon and its contents. (Kevin Kim take note: this is right up your 'alley.') With a 'cerebroscope' I can 'take a gander' at the inside of my skull and its contents. My point is that the perceptions I get using these instruments are outer perceptions even though what I am looking at (whether gray matter or brown matter) is spatially inside of my body. Thus the external world includes not only everything spatially outside of my body, but also everything spatially inside of my body. The problem of the external world, by the way, is not the problem of whether or not there is something outside my body or brain, but the problem of understanding how we know that what appears to consciousness as independent of consciousness really is independent of consciousness.

I will now drop the qualifier 'outer' to save bandwidth. I will speak of perception, meaning by it outer perception. But bear in mind that by 'perception,' I mean perceptual consciousness of objects (whether in the visual, olfactory, tactile, or whatever mode). This is what we ordinarily mean by the term, and this is where we must start. It is obvious that perceptual consciousness exhibits intentionality. But I should add that intentionality cannot be understood apart from consciousness. This is a point argued for by Colin McGinn and assumed by me here. It is a separate topic requiring a separate post.

Now here is the question: Is my perception (perceptual consciousness!) of yonder mountain mediated by any kind of internal image or representation? Commenter Spur maintains a picture theory according to which the intentionality of perception is to be understood as constituted by an internal image's resemblance to the thing perceived. So if I am perceiving a red rubber ball, there is on Spur's theory an image inside my brain that resembles the ball, with the resemblance being that which makes the representation a representation of the ball. In a slogan: Ofness is constituted by likeness!

But does it even make sense to posit such images and representations? 'Represent' is a three-place predicate: if x represents, then x represents y to z. A map, for example, represents a chunk of terrain, or an arrangement of city streets and landmarks, to a map-user. The same goes for 'image' the verb: to image is to image something to someone. The point extends to 'mediate': if x mediates, then x mediates y to z. There is an accusative of mediation and a dative of mediation -- to press some grammatical terminology into service.

Spur's images are epistemic mediators. So, given the logic of 'mediates,' the ball-image mediates the ball to someone who, by perceiving the image becomes perceptually conscious of the ball. Spur himself tells us that we perceive these inner images. And here is where the whole story become unintelligible. We want to understand perception of a ball or a mountain or the inside of a bodily orifice. We are told that to understand perception we must posit an image in the brain/mind that mediates between the subject of perceiving and the object of perception. But if this image is itself perceived, then we are back where we started and none the wiser. For perception is precisely what we want to understand! It is useless to explain perception of a ball in terms of perception of an internal image. For then we either move in a circle or embark upon a vicious infinite regress. If I perceive an internal image, is that perceiving itself via a second internal image? If no, then why do I need an image when I perceive the ball? If yes, then an infinite regress arises.

To avoid this mess, already diagnosed by Edmund Husserl back in 1901, Spur must say that by 'perceive,' he does not mean be perceptually conscious of. He must deny that the image is an object of consciousness. But then it is no different than anything else in the organism that is part of the causal basis of perception. Blood flow to the brain is essential to the occurrence of perception, and the blood flow better be properly oxygenated; but surely blood and oxygen molecules do not function as epistemic mediators.

An image that is not an object of consciousness is not an image in the ordinary sense of the term. In what sense, then, are there any images in the head? And how does one distinguish these images in the head from all the other stuff in the head?

Here is a preliminary diagnosis. The materialist philosopher wants to understand perception. But instead of attending phenomenologically to perception, which shows itself to be a direct (unmediated) awareness of objects, he assimilates perception to a phenomenologically quite distinct form of consciousness, consciousness of objects via images. He thinks, quite absurdly, that perceptual consciousness is a type of image-consciousness. But since these mediating images do not appear, he inserts them into the brain where they cannot appear. In doing so, he violently distorts the concept of image he started with. For a brain-image does not appear to anyone, nor could it possess any intrinsic intentionality. So our materialist is stuck with the problem of explaining how this posited brain-image is of or about its object. But this is the very problem with which we began: What makes my thought of him a thought of him? (As Wittgenstein once formulated it.) Nothing is explained by translating this problem into material terms: the problem is only made worse.

Interim conclusion: Materialist theories of intentionality explain nothing.

1. I hike up to Fremont Saddle to have a look see. There before me in all its magnificence is Weaver’s Needle. My perceiving of the Needle and the surrounding landscape is of or about the landscape. Perceiving is not just a state I am in; it exhibits directedness to an object. This directedness is known in the trade as intentionality. Call it for present purposes mental aboutness. Pulling out a guidebook from my pack, I read a description of Weaver’s Needle. The declarative sentences comprising the description also exhibit aboutness. Call this semantic aboutness. Reaching into my pack a second time, I take out a topographical map of the region. It too exhibits aboutness. The map is of the terrain. A map is a kind of model. So we could call this model aboutness. These are three prima facie quite different types of aboutness.

2. My view is that mental aboutness is sui generis and irreducible. But I am open to refutation. One question is whether we can understand mental aboutness in terms of model aboutness. Can we explain the intentionality of mind as a special case of the intentionality of things like maps? What makes my visual perception of the Needle? What directs it to precisely this object? There is a crude image-theory that we should dispose of right away. It would be absurd to say that inside my brain there is a little picture of Weaver’s Needle and that this picture’s resembling the Needle is what confers intentionality on my visual perception. Surely, if you crack open my skull you won’t find any little pictures or drawings or statues in there.

But we can think of models more abstractly. My topographical map, after all, does not have a picture on it of the Needle. Its location is indicated by the words ‘Weaver’s Needle’ and a series of roughly concentric converging contour lines whose increasing closeness indicates the abruptness of the elevation change. The modelling involves what could be called a second-order isomorphism as opposed to the kind of first-order isomorphism one finds in models that literally resemble what they model. I can model a square object by drawing a square on a piece of paper. In this case, model and modelled literally resemble each other in respect of the property of being square. A portrait painter does something similar. If he is severely realistic, he gives a red-nosed drunk a red nose. The property of being (a definite shade of) red is common to both the nose on the painting and the nose on the drunk. But the contour lines and their relations to each other do not resemble anything in the landscape in the same way. Here we have to be careful, however. The lines do resemble streams and trails and striations in the rock. But if we consider their relations to each other, then there is no first-order resemblance to anything in the landscape.

So perhaps we can escape the absurdity of a crude image-theory of perceptual representation by saying that in my brain there is a configuration of matter that stands in a relation of second-order isomorphism to that magnificent spire of stone called ‘Weaver’s Needle,’ and that this second- order isomorphism is what confers intentionality upon my perceptual state. The idea is that there is a complex brain state whose constituents stand in a relation to each other that is isomorphic to the relation that the parts of the Needle stand in to each other.

3. Spur can tell me whether this is a fair rendition of the theory he proposes. Here is one question I have about it. It is obvious that not every state of the brain is a mental state: there is a lot going on in the brain, and not all of it is mind-manifesting. So a viable theory must be able to furnish a criterion for distinguishing those brain states that are mental from those that are not. On a mental models theory, as I understand it, what makes a brain state mental is its standing in a relation of second-order isomorphism to some object in the external world. But doesn't every portion of the brain stand in the relation in question to something or other somewhere? Doesn't every configuration of matter in the brain model something.

What I'm saying is this. A criterion of adequacy for any theory is that it explain why some brain states are mental and some are not. (In particular, why some are intentional and some are not.) But given the incredible complexity of the brain, each of its parts will instantiate relation-structures that are also instantiated by things external to the brain. It follows that each part of the brain will exhibit aboutness so that there will be no way to distinguish the states of the brain that are mental from those that are not. The criterion of adequacy will not have been satisfied.

A related problem. Suppose a portion of my brain and a portion of Spur's brain instantiate the same relation-structure: the two brain-portions are second-order isomorphic and so model each other. One would have to conclude from the theory that the two brain portions are mentally about each other -- which is absurd. There must be more to mental aboutness than isomorphism. If you say, "Yes, being caused in the right way," then I have a different set of arguments for you.

The other way of contesting the Brentano thesis is by adducing phenomena that are intentional but not mental, where mentality implies consciousness or at least the possibility of consciousness. It might be that there is nothing specifically mental about intentionality at all. Perhaps intentionality is to be found in nature and in artifacts below the level of mind. If so, it may be possible to understand intentionality at the level of mind by working up to it 'from below.' It may be possible to build a 'gradualist bridge' from mindless intentionality to minded intentionality. One might then come to understand how intentionality in us has 'evolved.'

What I would like to see are some really clear examples of intentionality in inanimate nature or in mindless artifacts. Daniel Dennett thinks there is intentionality in locks and keys. The following passage is from Kinds of Mind, p. 35:

Intentionality in the philosophical sense is just aboutness. [. . .] A lock and key exhibit the crudest form of intentionality; so do the opioid receptors in brain cells — receptors that are designed to accept the endorphin molecules that nature has been providing in brains for millions of years. [. . .] This lock-and-key variety of crude aboutness is the basic design element out of which nature has fashioned the fancier sorts of subsystems that may more deservedly be called representation systems, so we will have to to analyze the aboutness of these representations in terms of the (quasi?) aboutness of locks-and-keys in any case.

If I am thinking about Jude Acers, my thought is about him: he is not about my thinking. Generalizing, we can say that intentionality is an asymmetrical relation: if X stands in the intentional relation to Y, then Y does not stand in the intentional relation to X. (Brentano rightly pointed out long ago that intentionality is not a relation, strictly speaking, but ein Relativliches, something relation-like; but this nuance does not harm my point.)

Now in Dennett's example, is the lock about the key or the key about the lock? Well, there is a sense in which each is about the other. By studying the key, I can infer something about the lock, and by studying the lock I can infer something about the key. Each provides information about the other, and to a locksmith, a great deal of information.

There are many cases like this. Animal droppings on the trail provide information about what manner of critter has been by recently. Bear scat 'means' bears have been around. One sort of footprint 'indicates' that a coyote has passed by, another sort a mountain lion. The paw of a coyote provides information about the type of print it would leave if it were to leave a print, and a footprint provides information about the design of the paw. (Here 'design' just means pattern.)

So in the coyote case as in the lock and key case we have symmetrical aboutness: lock is about key, and key about lock; paw is about footprint, print is about paw. Or consider a compass needle. It is about magnetic North in the sense that one can infer where magnetic North is from the direction in which the the needle is pointing. But equally, one can infer from the location of magnetic North where a properly functioning compass needle will point.

The symmetry of this sort of aboutness — call it aboutness₁ — gives us excellent reason to distinguish it from intentionality, or aboutness₂, which is asymmetrical. So I argue as follows:

P1. The aboutness₁ of lock and key, bear and scat, etc., is symmetrical.
P2. Intentionality is asymmetrical.
-----
C. Aboutness₁ is not a form of intentionality.

From this one can see that Dennett is quite mistaken in his claim that lock-and-key aboutness is a "form of intentionality." It is not a form of intentionality, and to think that it is is to confuse the the two senses of 'aboutness' lately distinguished. Dennett himself seems to be aware of this since at the end of the passage quoted he shifts his ground and speaks of "quasi-aboutness." This fudge is very telling. No doubt there is some likeness as between lock-and-key aboutness and intentional aboutness, but that proves nothing since everything is like everything else in some respect.

The point is that one gains no insight at all into how intentionality emerges —if it does emerge — by having it compared with locks and keys. Note also that to infer something about the lock from the key presupposes genuine intentionality on the part of the locksmith. Furthermore, locks and keys are artifacts -- which presupposes artificers and their genuine intentionality.

To sum up. To build his gradualist bridge, Dennett looks for a form of primitive intentionality below the level of mind or consciousness. He thinks he has found it in his lock and key example. But what I have just shown is that the symmetrical aboutness in the lock and key case is not, and cannot be, a form or type or species of intentionality — which is asymmetrical. The former merely resembles the genuine article. But if A resembles B, it does not follow that A is a form of B. A decoy duck resembles a duck but is not type of duck.

Husserl also points out that, no matter how carefully I examine the picture, I will discover no intrinsic feature of it that is its "representative character." (593) That is, there is no intrinsic property of the picture that confers upon it its reference to something beyond itself. So Husserl asks:

What therefore allows us to go beyond the image which alone is present in consciousness, and to refer the latter as an image to a certain extraconscious object? To point to the resemblance between image and thing will not help. (593, Findlay trans. slightly emended.)

Why won't resemblance help? If picture and thing depicted both exist, then of course there will be resemblance. But it cannot be in virtue of X's resemblance to Y that X pictures or images Y. "Only a presenting ego's power to use a similar as an image-representative of a similar . . . makes the image be an image." (594) Husserl's point is subtle. I'll explain it in my own way. A picture considered by itself is just a physical thing with physical properties. What makes it be an image? Its physical properties cannot account for its being an image. And the fact that it shares physical properties with some other thing cannot make it an image either. A painting of a mountain can be a painting of a mountain even if there is no mountain of which it is the painting. Pictures of the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas are pictures of said hotel even though it has been demolished. The intentionality of a photograph can survive the destruction of its 'subject.' A depiction of Cerberus is what it is despite the dog's nonexistence.

But even if there exists something that a picture resembles, that does not suffice to make the picture a picture of a thing it resembles. Suppose I have two qualitatively identical ball bearings. In an Andy Warholish mood, I take a picture of one of them, the one closer to my computer. Gazing fondly at the photo, I say, "This ball bearing is the one that is closer to my computer." Since the photo resembles the other ball bearing as well, but is not of that ball bearing, it cannot be resemblance that confers upon the photo its intentionality.

What Husserl is saying in effect is that pictures, paintings, movie images, and the like possess no intrinsic intentionality: what intentionality they have is derived from conscious beings who possess intrinsic intentionality. For Husserl, and for me, the project of trying to account for intrinsic intentionality in terms of internal pictures that resemble outer objects is a complete nonstarter. For one thing, it leads to a vicious infinite regress: "Since the interpretation of anything as an image presupposes an object intentionally given to consciousness, we should plainly have a regressus in infinitum were we again to let this latter object be itself constituted through an image . . . ." (594)

There are both phenomenological and dialectical reasons for rejecting the image-theory (Bilder-theorie) of consciousness. Phenomenologically, there is no evidence that ordinary perception is mediated by internal images. In addition,

1. The image-theory interprets intentionality in terms of resemblance, but resemblance cannot explain the intentionality of pictures that (i) never had an object, or (ii) lost their object.

2. The image-theory interprets intentionality in terms of resemblance, but resemblance cannot account for a picture's being of the very object it is of as opposed to some other one that it merely resembles.

3. The image-theory is involved in a vicious infinite regress.

4. Since image-consciousness presupposes ordinary perceptual consiousness, it is impossible to explain the latter in terms of the former.

5. The image-theory tries to locate the intentionality of consciousness in the intentionality of a picture when it is clear that there is nothing intrinsic to any picture that could account for its intentionality.

As James Ross has argued (in a related argument summarized in the book), this is one of the upshots of arguments like Quine's indeterminacy of translation argument and Kripke's (or "Kripkenstein's") "quus" argument: all of the behavioral, neurological, and other material facts about us are systematically indeterminate vis-a-vis their intentional content. This is why Quine ends up holding that there is just never any fact of the matter about what we mean. But as Ross shows, this is demonstrably false: sometimes, at least, there are determinate facts about meaning, such as when we engage in formal reasoning (addition, modus ponens, etc.) which is of its nature all-or-nothing. And even to hold that we never really strictly engage in such entirely determinate formal reasoning, but only approximate it -- a pretty desperate move, which also entails that none of our arguments (including arguments for materialism!) is ever really valid -- itself involves having a thought with determinate meaning, for we must grasp what addition, modus ponens, etc. are (which means grasping something inherently determinate) in order to deny that we ever strictly carry these operations out.

In short, if materialism is true, we never have any determinate thoughts; but we do have them, at least sometimes; so materialism isn't true.

In re: one commenter's claim that a representation can have dual meanings, he's right, but the point is irrelevant. All that matters for the argument is that at least some representations definitely represent one thing (A, say), and definitely do not represent some other thing (B), even though their material properties alone do not determine which thing is represented.

In re: intentionality and causation, you might recall that in the book I also discuss an argument from Popper against the possibility of a causal theory of intentionality. He says that any such theory must presuppose particular "beginning" and "ending" points in the causal chains it appeals to so as to identify them as the thing represented and the state doing the representing, respectively. Yet any attempt to pick out a precise "beginning" or "ending" point in the chain of physical causes is interest-relative, since there are no genuine "beginnings" or "endings" of the relevant sort in nature. It follows that any attempt to explain intentionality in this way will be viciously circular. (Popper's argument predates Putnam's, but I wish I had also cited Putnam in the book.)

Keep up the good work yourself! And let me know when you will be able to get to L.A. It would be great to get together.

Best, Ed

Context-Sensitive versus Context-Independent Concepts of Causation. We often in ordinary English speak of 'the cause' of some event, a myocardial infarction say, even though there are many contributing factors: bad diet, lack of exercise, hypertension, cigarette smoking, high stress job, an episode of snow-shovelling. Which of these will be adjudged 'the cause' is context- and interest-relative. A physician who gets a kick-back from a pharmaceutical concern will point to hypertension, perhaps, so that he can prescribe a massive dose of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor, while the man's wife might say that it was the snow shovelling that did him in.

To take a more extreme example, suppose a man dies in a fire while in bed. The salient cause might be determined to be smoking in bed. No one will say that the flammability of the bedsheets and other room furnishings is the cause of the man's incineration. Nevertheless, had the room and its furnishings not been flammable, the fire would not have occurred! The flammability is not merely a logical, but also a causal, condition of the fire. It is part of the total cause, but no one will consider it salient. The word is from the Latin salire, to leap, whence our word 'sally' as when I sally forth to do battle at a chess tournament. A salient cause, then, is one that jumps out at you, grabbing you by your epistemic shorthairs as it were, as opposed to being a mere background condition.

Hilary Putnam cites the example of the pressure cooker that exploded (Renewing Philosophy, p. 48). No one will say that it was a lack of holes in the pressure cooker's vessel that caused the explosion. A stuck safety valve caused the explosion. Nevertheless, had the vessel been perforated, the contraption would not have exploded!

What these examples show is that there is an ordinary-language use of 'cause' which is context-sensitive and interest-relative and (if I may) point-of-view-ish. A wholly objective view of nature, a Nagelian view from nowhere, would not be able to discriminate the salient from the nonsalient in matters causal. In terms of fundamental physics, the whole state of the world at time t determines its state at subsequent times. At this level, a short-circuit and the current's being on are equally causal in respect of the effect of a fire. Our saying that the short-circuit caused the fire, not the current's being on, simply advertises the fact that for us the latter is the normal and desired state of things, the state we have an interest in maintaining, and that the former is the opposite.

The ordinary notion of cause, then, resting as it does on our interests and desires, presupposes intentional notions. I cannot be interested in or desire something unless I am conscious of it. And I cannot adjudge one state of affairs as normal and the other as abnormal unless I have interests and desires.

These considerations seem to wreak havoc with attempts to explain reference in causal terms. The materialist thinks he can do so by invoking physical causation. The idea is that the referents of a word W cause W-tokenings. The reference of a word is determined by the causal influence of the word's referents: Cats' causing of 'cat'-tokening is what confers upon these tokenings their aboutness, their reference to cats. If this is to work, it must be cats, and not pictures of cats, or the past behavior of English speakers that causes 'cat'-tokenings. But surely the past behavior of English speakers is part of the total cause of present 'cat'-tokenings. (See Putnam, pp. 48-49.) 'Cat' does not refer to this behavior, however. To exclude the behavior as non-salient requires use of the ordinary interest-relative notion of causation. But this notion, we have seen, presupposes intentionality.

The upshot is that causal accounts of representation are viciously circular: they presuppose the very notion that they are supposed to be reductively accounting for, namely, intentionality. In sum:

1. Our ordinary concept of causation is interest- and context-sensitive and so involves intentional notions.

2. It is this ordinary notion of causation that alone can help explain why, e.g., 'cat' refers to cats rather than to pictures of cats.

Therefore,

3. The causal account, presupposing as it does intentionality, is of no use to the physicalist who cannot countenance unreduced intentionality.

My main interest is negative: in showing that materialism doesn't work. Please don't respond by saying that some other theory (substance dualism, say) doesn't work either. For the issue is precisely: Does materialism work? If theory T1 is explanatorily inadequate, its deficiencies cannot be made good by pointing out that T2 is also inadequate. This is an invalid argument: "Every alternative to materialism is inadequate; therefore we should embrace materialism despite its inadequacies." Wouldn't it be more reasonable under those circumstances to embrace no theory?

One more preliminary point. If materialism is adequate, then we ought to embrace it, and dispense with God, the soul, and the denizens of the Platonic menagerie. For if materialism were adequate, there would be no reason to posit anything beyond the material. But if materialism is not adequate, then we do have reason for such posits.

The following argument is my interpretation of remarks made by Edward Feser in his Philosophy of Mind: A Short Introduction (One World, 2005), pp. 156-159)

1. Consider a representation such as a picture. You draw a picture of your mother. The picture represents her: it is of or about her, and it would remain about her even were she to cease to exist. The picture is a physical object with physical properties: the paper is of a certain size and shape and texture, the ink of a certain chemical composition, the lines have a definite thickness, etc. Now I would insist that these physical features cannot be that in virtue of which the picture represents your mother: they cannot be that in virtue of which the physical item is a representation. But even if I am wrong about this, there remains a problem for a materialist theory of representation.

2. Suppose a 'copycat' comes along and makes an EXACT copy of your picture of your mother. The copycat's intention is not to represent your mother; his intention is merely to represent your representation of your mother. Now there are two pictorial representations, call them R (the original) and R' (the copy). The question arises: Is R' a representation of your mother, or is R' a representation of R? Now suppose a second copycat comes along and produces a second copy R''. Does R'' represent R' or R or your mother? The situation is obviously iterable ad infinitum.

3. Clearly, there is a difference between saying that R' represents your mother, a human being, and saying that R' represents R, a nonhuman drawing of your mother. The reference is different in the two cases. But the reference is indeterminate if we go by the physical properties of the representations alone. Suppose I hand you two drawings of your mother, one an exact copy of the other, but you do not know which is the orignal and which is the copy. You cannot, by inspection of these drawings, tell which is which. Thus you cannot determine the reference from the physical properties.

4. The point is generalizable to other types of representations. Suppose I say 'cat' to refer to a cat and my copycat brother says 'cat' simply to copy me. If my brother mimics me perfectly, then it will be impossible from the physical properties of the two word-sounds to tell which refers to a cat and which does not.

Please do not say that we are both referring to a cat. For my copycat brother is a mere copycat: his intention is merely to reproduce the word-sound I made. To make it even clearer, replace my b