Davidson: The Myth of the Subjective 2

Posted on August 27, 2008
Filed Under Davidson, Philosophy |

0A06EE12-AD09-4F22-A012-9D1195B0B385.jpgMy initial thoughts on the paper were here. I want to delve into the arguments here. I think I finally really get Davidson after this paper and the next one (”What Is Present to the Mind?”). I was rereading this one again and suddenly, click, a lot came together. Basically it all hinges on the notion of a state. Now if you are like me you think of state as a collection of objects in a system plus their relevant properties. This is how I’m biased from physics to do. However what Davidson wants to argue is that the mental isn’t about some object or property but about relations. So for Davidson when we talk about physical states we’re talking as we do in physics. When we’re talking about the mental (or related phenomena) we’re talking about the physical plus relations. But relations obviously can’t be reduced to a physical state.

On the one hand this is pretty profound. Plus it is directly related to something I’ve been studying off and on for years: the type-token relation and what is replicated when we have repetition. On the other I almost wonder if we should call this a state at all. In other words I think one way of putting this thesis is that there is not mental state at all. Rather there are mental relations. (Or perhaps the mental is relatedness)

One should note that Davidson extends this to all propositional attitudes as well as meanings in general. They all depend upon relations and thus entail something beyond the physical. I’m here meaning physical in the sense of physicalism as the reduction of phenomena to physics - relations proper just don’t exist in physics as I understand it.

One might well ask what relations are for Davidson. I don’t want to read too much into him at this point. However he does appear to be moving away from the nominalism that has plagued much of philosophy since the end of the medieval period. (And traditional interpretations of physics are explicitly nominalistic)

Davidson in this paper also make an anti-Cartesian move that is interesting. If objects are necessary for meanings then one can’t be a Cartesian skeptic sense to be skeptical requires the objects one is being skeptical about. Of course this way of criticizing Descartes is hardly unique to Davidson.

The more interesting move is the more general anti-foundationalist one. (i.e. attacking empiricists) Since it is objects that cause meanings and not senses we can dispense with appeals to senses entirely. They just aren’t necessary. This is really a corollary to the anti-Cartesian move of course. But deception by the senses just isn’t that relevant in general. (This for the reason that our beliefs are generally correct)

In effect Davidson is saying we can talk about relations (which for him appear to be primarily causal relations) without talking about what goes on between the object and the belief. Now I mentioned last week that while this is true, it doesn’t mean we ought not have questions about what goes on in that causal chain. (For instance how we manage to have generally correct beliefs) It’s just that these aren’t necessary for many philosophical questions whereas historically many philosophers have tried to solve those questions (especially in epistemology) by looking at deeper causal chains.

But I’m coming more and more to think Davidson is right. It seems empirically correct that our beliefs are generally correct. I also think that there are logical reasons to think they have to be generally correct for the kind of human relations we encounter in the world.

There interesting question Davidson asks next is what is left of our notion of “the subjective.” The very quest for inner states become irrelevant. After all if we are talking about relations and primarily relations to objects outside of us then the whole issue of inner states becomes irrelevant. That’s not to say we can’t talk about inner physical states.

However is this true? It’s hard to say that the phenomenal experience of pain (as opposed to the belief or recognition of being in pain) can be seen as a relation. (In Peircean terms this is the difference between 1stness or a thing in itself and 3rdness or a thing in a relation with something else) Can we salvage the subjective by phenomena or qualia? I’d think so, but Davidson doesn’t address that here.

By the subjective Davidson is talking about thoughts. That is mental states with intentionality of various states. These are relations and thus just subjective because (a) they are asymmetrical (I know my thoughts in a way you don’t - which isn’t to say you can’t know them) and (b) they are “mine” in a way that they are not yours.

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