Davidson: Knowing Ones Own Mind 2

Posted on August 1, 2008
Filed Under Davidson, Peirce, Philosophy |

0A06EE12-AD09-4F22-A012-9D1195B0B385.jpgThis is a followup to my prior post on Davidson’s paper “Knowing Ones Own Mind” in Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Sorry for the delay. The part that is left in the paper deals with the question of “where” thoughts are. It’s an interesting question and one I’ve switched my own views on. At one time I pretty much followed Putnam’s style of externalism. This divides mental states into two categories: narrow and broad. Narrow states are those that are purely in the head. Broad ones aren’t. Examples of broad states are those tied to meaning. That is states like belief. Putnam has some famous arguments for externalism that we discussed last time in relation to Davidson’s own arguments. The question though is whether we should say meanings are in or out of ‘the head.’ Putnam says yes. Davidson, despite being an externalist, says they aren’t.

Putnam and other’s basic argument is that since two people in the same physical state can mean two different things depending upon context then we must say meaning is more than the head.

Davidson has an excellent counter argument using the example of a sunburn. A sunburn is only a sunburn if caused by the sun. Yet there may be a physically identical burn caused by a heat lamp. We can’t call this a sunburn. Thus what individuates the two states is external to the physical state itself.

What Davidson suggests is that we err when we thing of the objects of thought as “things.” The old empiricist notion of “sense data” isn’t held by many (or if it is, then it is something like neural states). Yet it is hard to see how this could be “before us” in order to infer from. Davidson argues that this old way of thinking about mental objects is in error.

I’d add as an aside that I think this metaphor of thinking goes back to the old Greek idea of phantasms or impressions on our mind from the outside that we accept or reject. I think that in far more subtle forms it remains with us. The rejection of the “myth of the given” was supposed to have ended this way of thinking. The idea of something completely present to the mind we react to.

Here one obviously sees a lot of parallels between Davidson’s analytic philosophy and many major Continental figures. I’d say that one also finds a lot of similarity with the pragmatists - especially Peirce.

The quest for object is a quest for an object the mind encounters that both uniquely differentiates one thought from an other but which also enables a person to totally know their thoughts. (The old quest of foundationalism - especially in its Cartesian forms) While Davidson doesn’t really give an argument he asserts that there are no objects like this. If they aren’t known in full then the person can be mistaken and thus not know their thoughts. If they are fully known then it seems by Davidson’s, Putnam’s and others arguments that they can’t properly differentiate our thoughts properly due to role of context.

Now obviously the internalists and foundationalists won’t be convinced here. But Davidson’s target is much more other externalists.

I think that if one adopts Peirce’s semiotics though that all this second half makes a lot more sense. A thought is a kind of sign-process. It is “caused” by some object which is indicated only by hints. The sign is an irreducible relationship between object, sign, and interpretant (idea). A belief is just one example of such a sign. It has effects (the interpretant that constitutes both our actions due to belief and the ideas we ‘think’ when we have the belief); it has a source that individuates it and determines it. The sign is the thought itself.

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3 Responses to “Davidson: Knowing Ones Own Mind 2”

“The rejection of the “myth of the given” was supposed to have ended this way of thinking.”

How so? Sellars says that experiences “as it were, contain claims”, claims which the apperceptive subject can endorse, reject, or withhold judgement on. It seems that the idea of “impressions on the mind” “that we accept or reject” is not to be identified with the mythical Given, for Sellars is keen to defend a concept of experience which answers to this description, and it is Sellars to whom we owe the very notion of a mythical Given.

I’m also not sure that your “Greek” notion is really Greek, rather than Cartesian (and thus modern). Ancient & modern skepticisms are rather more different than similar. Burnyeat & Frede’s “The Original Skeptics” is good on this topic, as on many others.

“While Davidson doesn’t really give an argument he asserts that there are no objects like this.”

I’m not sure why you think he doesn’t have an argument here. We can identify the contents of thoughts without reference to any objects other than “external” ones, and so other objects simply drop out as needless posits — they don’t do any work for us. And since the seeming need for them was what originally motivated their positing, removing this apparent need also removes the justification for thinking there are objects “present to the mind”.

I also think it’s wrong to say that Davidson’s externalism presents a problem for a subject’s ability to “totally know their thoughts”. There is no fact of the matter about the content of any one thought, taken in isolation, due to the indeterminacy of translation, but this means there’s not something we can fail to know here. (And neither is there a fact of the matter about what a body of thoughts each singularly refers to; there is no way to “disambiguate” away indeterminacy by appealing to context etc. For it is not a case of ambiguity; the indeterminate translations get things right, in the only sense in which it makes sense to speak of “getting things right” here.)

Skepticism (and its metaphysical counterpart, antirealism) gain no traction from the indeterminacy of translation. (See essay 5 in ISO, “Indeterminism and Antirealism”.) I think that this also undermines the connections you see between Davidson on the one hand and Peirce and many Continentals on the other — word-world relations are subject to the indeterminacy of translation and the inscrutability of reference, so it doesn’t make sense, on Davidson’s account, to try to handle them one at a time — such as treating of a sign or an object. One has to treat of many signs and many objects simultaneously, and there is no one “right” way of e.g. setting up a satisfaction relation for the T-theory of a language, of connecting signs and objects, signifiers and signifieds. Which is not an epistemic or pragmatic inability on our part, but something inherent in the matter itself: not that we cannot know What A Word Refers To (What A Sign Hints At, What Is Signified By A Signifier), but that there isn’t anything like that to be known. Language just does not work that way. (Which does not entail anything radical about our everyday knowledge; it is only philosophy’s castles in the air that are laid siege to.)

Daniel, first thanks for your comments. I always am grateful when people contest my readings - it seems the best way to improve my understanding. These are preliminary thoughts. I’ll probably have more tomorrow when I actually have a copy of the essay handy to refer to.

The myth of the given I seem to remember Davidson mentioning. I need to look that up, but as I mentioned don’t have the book handy right now. (If I was wise I’d probably hold off replying for an other day - but these will do as preliminary) The issue of Greek thought though I’m much more confident on. This was actually a big deal back when I was studying Stoic philosophy. I know that this notion directly entered the Enlightenment by Locke who explicitly mentions it. I’m reasonably confident Descartes got it from the Stoics as well. While I’m not an expert in the least on Aristotle I’m quite sure the idea is in his thought fairly extensively as well.

What is common to all the main Greek philosophers is phantasia being what appears - especially to the eyes. For the Stoics it is the image or impression presented by an object to the mind. In Aristotle, as I recall, it is more a capacity of the mind. (Although I believe this is disputed by some mainly on the basis that there’s never a complete act that images something) However I was more thinking of the Stoic and Epicurean views. I do agree that, from what I recall of it, Aristotle’s view might be more similar to Davidson’s. That is as a rough capacity to present things to other cognitive processes.

Back to Sellars I’ll have to reread the passage I was thinking of. I have a copy of Sellars at home and will see what I think rereading it. My own comments were more thinking of presence in Derridean/Heideggarian terms and the relation of the object to the sign in Peircean terms. The way I was reading Davidson was that he was arguing not for a kind of presence but rather a relation to absent things. But what was important was not the things (as it was for Putnam) but the relationship. What then gets replicated and repeated is a relationship. This ties into my continuing interest in the issue of reproduction and icons in Derrida and Peirce.

To the question of the argument. Certainly he suggests we can identify thought content without reference to internal objects. However that wasn’t what I was referring to. Rather he made a stronger claim. That is that no object before the mind could function the way either internalists or externalists like Putnam wanted it to. He said nothing would work but gave no reason. Merely presenting an alternative view isn’t really an argument for the absence of possibility in the opposing view. At least I’d have a hard time seeing that as much of an argument.

So to say something is not needed is a different issue from saying something is impossible. Certainly the weaker claim is more interesting though.

As to totally knowing ones thoughts. If there’s nothing present then I don’t see how foundationalism is possible. Davidson presents our generally being correct but I think he’s fairly explicit that there’s a strong fallibilism. I don’t recall him arguing for such a fallibilism. You’ve got me curious. The way he speaks appears, to me, to take for granted that his externalism makes foundationalism impossible. It seems to me we have to distinguish between fallibilism (which entails I think no totality of knowledge of our thoughts) from skepticism. They are, as I see it, quite different issues.

The issue of “language doesn’t work that way” is probably the best argument. But that, to me, is simply the ultimate argument against foundationalism.

Just to add, I wasn’t equating the myth of the given with the Greek view. Although clearly they are related. I see the Greek view as a subset of the myth of the given.

Now some have actually suggested that Davidson in these articles on first person authority himself falls prey to the myth of the given by seeing language as a sign that is interpreted. i.e. we have first person authority because we know our own beliefs the way we know others and this entails we know our own beliefs in a certain way.

I think this line of attack against Davidson is misplaced, but I’ll discuss that hopefully soon.

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