Philosophical Investigations 19:l January 1996 ISSN0190-0536

REVIEW ESSAY:

Janus Beliefs and the Principle of Sufficient Reason

Susan Haack. Evidence and Enquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology, Oxford, Blackwell, 1993. pp. x + 259. Price A45. Jerry A. Fodor. The Elm and the Expert: Mentalese and its Semantics, MIT Press, 1994. pp. xii + 128. Price A15.95.

Anthony Palmer, University of Southampton

Compared with animals, human beings are not especially fast or strong; their forte is, rather, their greater cognitive capacity, their ability to represent the world to themselves and hence to predict and manipulate it (Haack p. 20).

This idea of a cognitive capacity, an ability to represent the world, has presented philosophers with two sorts of problems. If we put the emphasis on the word 'world' and think of representing as unprob- lematic then our problems are traditional epistemological ones. We need to know how we can be assured that our ways of representing the world do actually represent it. This was the question Descartes forced on philosophy with his Evil Demon hypothesis and which he himself tried to solve with his doctrine of clear and distinct ideas. Thinking was not a problem for Descartes, right thinking was. On the other hand, after Descartes, thinlung soon became a problem. What is it to represent the world to ourselves, let alone in a correct way? Susan Haack's problems are of the first lund, Jerry Fodor's are of the second.

In modern times, however, both are in danger of becoming out- moded. One form of the danger comes from philosophers impressed by the possibilities of neuroscience. If beliefs, thoughts, desires, etc. go the way of the spirits of the woods and the trees, and psychology becomes relegated to folklore, both epistemology and computational psychology will be confined to the philosophical dustbin.

Both Haack and Fodor, rightly in my view, refuse to be impressed by philosophical exploitations of neuroscience. 0 Blackwell Pubhshea Ltd 1995. 108 Cnwley Road, Oxford OX14 IJF. UK and 238 Man Street, Cambridge. MA 02142. USA

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I am aware that there are those - mostly in Southern California, of course - who say that empirical theories that appeal to inten- tional constructs will (or should) be replaced, eventually, by explanations couched in the nonintentional vocabulary of neuro- science. There is, however, not the slightest reason to suppose that they are right to say this, and I don’t. That people (and, surely, other higher organisms) act out of their beliefs and desires, and that in the course of deciding how to act they often do a lot of thinking and planning, strikes me as maybe empirical in princi- ple but surely not negotiable in practice (Fodor pp. 3-4).

That it does not seem to be negotiable even in the practice of its main exponents seems clear enough, as Haack cannot resist pointing

Churchland . . . indulges in the fantasy that in the hture ‘libraries become filled not with books, but with long recordings of exem- plary neural activity . . . not . . . sentences or arguments’. But he offers us books, books consisting of sentences and (at least occa- sionally) arguments (Haack p. 180).

out.

And even Stitch, she reminds us, sometimes tells us what he thinks. One of the reasons, of course, why some philosophers, even those

not in Southern California, have allowed themselves to be over impressed with work in neuroscience is just because both traditional epistemology and computational psychology seemed to have reached a dead end. In the case of epistemology the problem has always been one of somehow connecting belief to truth by means of a theory ofjustification on the assumption that if you have a belief which is both justified and true then you have all that is necessary for knowledge. A little article by Edmund Gettier, published in Analysis in 1963, which, despite the industry which has grown up around it, has yet to be satisfactonly dealt with, succeeded in bring- ing the whole enterprise into question. Haack conjectures that ‘part of the explanation of the present disillusionment with epistemology [and therefore no doubt part of the motivation for leaving it all to neuroscience] is just plain boredom with the Gettier problem’ (p. 7). Her attitude to it is that if you can connect belief to truth by means of a satisfactory theory of justification why should anyone care what you call what you have got when you have made the connection? The genuine philosophical problem at the heart of the epistemologi- cal enterprise is just how to make it, and that difficulty is formidable enough. The two major canddates in the field, foundationalism and coherentism, have turned out to be broken reeds. Indeed one of the 0 Blackwell Pubhihen Lrd. 1996

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strengths of Haack’s book is the chapters in which this view is argued for. She, however, resolutely refuses either to abandon the enterprise and leave everything to the neuroscientists or to seek edification rather than explanation in what she calls ‘the vulgar prag- matism’ of Richard Rorty’s hermeneutic circle. There is, she claims, ‘an intermediate theory which can overcome the difficulties faced by the familiar rivals’ (p. 11). She calls this intermediate theory (not without qualms) ‘foundherentism’. Her qualms are understandable. Despite Anthony Quinton’s claim, cited on the dustjacket, that he was pleased to discover that he had, without realising it, been one dl along, it is hard to believe that the term will catch on.

Haack’s foundherentism is best brought out by an analogy which she admits informs much of her thinlung about epistemology. The analogy is that of a crossword puzzle, which, she argues, ‘better rep- resents the true structure of relations of evidential support than the model of a mathematical proof so firmly entrenched in the founda- tionalist trahtion’ (p. 2).

The crossword puzzle model permits pervasive mutual support, rather than like the model of a mathematical proof, encouraging an essentially one directional conception. The clues are the ana- logues of the subject’s experiential evidence; already filled in entries, the analogues of his reasons. The clues don’t depend upon the entries, but the entries are, in variable degree interdependent (p. 82).

The main hfficulty with the foundationalist view is that it ulti- mately has to privilege certain beliefs over others in order for the justification of belief to be secured. Yet no one has yet discovered a way of guaranteeing such privilege. The main difficulty with the coherentist approach is that while no beliefs are privileged coher- ence among beliefs does not seem, by itself, to play a justificatory role; we have no reason to believe (pace Davidson et al) that it is truth indicative. Haack’s foundherentist approach retains what would be privileged in the foundationalist approach (roughly speak- ing beliefs which are said to rest upon experience), but at the point in the foundationalist approach at which they are asked to display their privileged credentials they rely instead on the way in which they cohere with other beliefs. ‘The clues do not depend upon the entries, but the entries are in variable degree interdependent.’ She is enabled to do this because of the distinction she draws between ‘the state and content senses of belief, between someone’s believing

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something and what they believe’ (p. 74). Beliefs are, as it were, Janus faced. In so far as they are states of the believer they face the world in that they have causes, but in so far as they have contents they face each other in that they can be consistent or inconsistent, cohere, or not cohere, with each other. A proper theory of the justification must pay proper attention to the dual aspect of belief. It must be partly causal and partly logical, i.e. it must be foundheren- tist, the best analogy for which is that of a crossword puzzle.

The analogy, of course, cannot be pursued to the point of check- ing that you have the correct solution by some analogue of looking it up in the next day’s paper. Nevertheless, the ideal with regard to our system of beliefs as having to be seen as approximating to the solution of a crossword puzzle, with entries not only grounded in the clues of experience but also exhbiting the maximum amount of interdependence, provides us with a conception of justification which is the best to which we can aspire. And even if this has never been, nor perhaps ever will be, achieved, the fact that it is the best to which we can aspire must make it good enough. If the best to which we can aspire were not good enough enquiry would be futile and that is not an option that can be contemplated, at least not by everybody all of the time.

I would not say that ‘all men by nature desire to know’ in the sense that Aristotle intended; but a disposition to investigate, to inquire, to try to figure things out, is part of our makeup, though not for many people an ovemding part. And if we enquire at all we can only proceed in the hope that our best is good enough. (Haack, p. 215)

There are echoes both of the Janus nature of belief and of the idea that our best just has to be good enough in Fodor’s four Jean Nicod lectures published under the title of The Elm and the Expert. ‘My philosophical project over the last 20 years or so’ he tells us,

has been to understand the relation between a venerable old idea borrowed from ‘folk psychology’ and a trendy new idea bor- rowed mainly from Alan Turing. The old idea is that mental states are characteristically intentional . . . The new idea is that mental processes are characteristically computational. My problem lies in the apparent difficulty of getting these ideas to fit together. (PP. 1-21

There really is a difficulty here. The business of computation can have nothmg to do with content. Computation is essentially syntac- Q Blackwell Publishen Ltd. 1996

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tical. If mental states are intentional that only means that content is of their essence. I believe that so and so is the cuse, I desire that so and so be the case, etc. Computation and content seem doomed for ever to be kept apart. No amount of syntactical characterisation will ever guarantee reference and yet in any ordmary sense of content refer- ence needs to be brought in. None the less, it is essential for Fodor’s project that syntax and content come together.

Here then is a full-blown version of my worry: Computational mechanisms implement intentional laws only if computational properties can somehow guarantee intentional ones. But there seems there could be no way in which they could do so on the assumption that the metaphysics of content is informational. And I do not want to give up either the assumption that there are intentional laws, or the assumption that semantic properties are informational, or the assumption that intentional laws are compu- tationally implemented. So now what? (p. 16)

What is new in this set of lectures is that Fodor drops the idea, which has tempted him up to now, of solving the problem by &s- tinguishing between ‘broad’ and ‘narrow’ content, where narrow content is, roughly, broad content minus reference, and broad con- tent is, roughly, a function of narrow content onto reference. This dstinction was tempting just because it allowed computational pro- cedures to operate on content, albeit only narrow content. Now this distinction is dropped just because Fodor wants to give up the requirement that there should be any guarantee that the intentional and the computational should come together. H e finds this new idea ‘sort of amusing’.

It would be a really lovely irony and, in light of the views I’ve previously professed, a great joke on me, if it turned out to be not the narrow but the broad hnd of content that makes psychology both irreducibly intentional and irreducibly computational. @. 54)

The search for a guarantee that the intentional and the computa- tional should come together seemed

to imply a sort of pre-established harmony between the inten- tional and the computational. And for better or for worse, pre-established harmonies aren’t, these days, in philosophical good repute. (pp. 16-17)

It will be sutlicient, he now thinks, for the purposes of his particular combination of folkpsychology, with its stress on the intentional, and the computational theory of mental processes, with its stress on

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the syntactical, if good reasons can be provided for thinhng that by and large andfor the most part both can be expected to coincide.

He provides us with the following analogy suggested by one of his students, Andrew Milne.

Consider the two properties being a dollar bill and being dollar-look- ing . . . Dollar lookingness reliably coinstantiates with dollarhood . . . This is unmysterious because, though the properties are not identical, there is a mechanism that functions to keep them in phase. The mechanism in case you are wondering is the interven- tion of the cops. (pp. 18-19)

He then asks the following question.

Why shouldn’t much the same be true of the correlation between broad content intentional properties and the computational processes by which they are implemented? (p. 20)

It should now be clear why I think that while for the most part their views are poles apart there is, nevertheless, a similarity between Haack’s attempted ratification of her foundherentist theory of justification and Fodor’s new ideas in The Elm and the Expert. Haack thinks that if the foundherentist story is the best that can be given with regard to the justification of belief, then it must be truth indicative. Fodor thinks that if the best theory of intentionality we can have is externalist and the best theory of the mind we can have is computational then these together must be good enough. Things must be so arranged that, by and large and for the most part, the two are kept in sync. And since nobody nowadays believes that there is a pre-established harmoniser who keeps the harmony per- fect, nevertheless there must be some less than perfect conductor capable of producing something less than discord. The best we can have must be good enough.

Computational-syntactic processes can implement broad inten- tional ones because . . . the world arranges things so that the syntactic structure mode of presentation reliably carries information about its causal history. Just as the cops so arrange things that dollar look- ingness carries information about dollarhood. (p. 54)

Both Haack and Fodor self-consciously respond to Descartes’ chal- lenge and both, although from very different hrections, end up with conclusions, which seem, to me at least, not only remarkably s i d a r to each other but which also bear a strihng resemblance to a familiar response to the Cartesian challenge. Both seek to bring

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causal and logical accounts of belief into sync, so that the world can turn out to be the way in which we think it is, if we use our minds correctly. The double aspect nature of belief turns out, in the end, not to be a problem but a boon. When Janus guards the gates of philosophical heaven the best explanations we have just have to be good enough. Although not pre-established, there is, nevertheless, a sufficient reason for the harmony between thought and the world.

I suspect, however, that many of us, who, like both Haack and Fodor, are not only hstinctly unimpressed by the philosophical pre- tensions of neuroscience, but are also profoundly depressed by the thinly disguised cynicism of Rorty’s ‘conversations’, will be reluc- tant to take refuge in a latter-day Leibnizian optimism. Even if all is not for the best in the best of all possible worlds the task of malung sense of what we say and do remains a challenge.

Department o f Philosophy, University o f Southampton, Highjeld, Southampton SO1 7 1BJ

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