Millgram. an Apprentice Argument- On Collins ''the Nature of Mental Things

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International Phenomenological Society

An Apprentice ArgumentThe Nature of Mental Things by Arthur W. CollinsReview by: Elijah MillgramPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 54, No. 4 (Dec., 1994), pp. 913-916Published by: International Phenomenological Society

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Philosophy nd Phenomenological esearch

Vol. LIV,No. 4,

December 994

An ApprenticeArgument*

ELIJAHMILLGRAM

Princeton University

In

The

Nature

of

Mental

Things,

ArthurCollins argues

that beliefs

cannot

be

identified with innerstates. If they could, one could be in a position to say,

I

have

the inner

state,

and

so

believe thatp;

but whether

p

is

true

remains

an

open question ;

but

one

cannot

be licensed to make assertions of

the

form

I

believe

that

p, but p's

truth is an

open

question.

David Finkelstein has

pointed out that

this

argumentbegs

the

question against

inner

state theories,

since a

satisfactory

nner state

theory

would

identify

the belief

that

p

with

an

inner state the havingof which would precludethe problematicassertion.In-

vestigating (say)

the

state

of

one's

brain and

determining

that

one

has

the

brain

state

B,

which

one's

preferred

heory

identifies

with the belief that the

cat is on

the

mat,

is not to have

inquired

nto

the

whereabouts

of the

cat;

but

if

the theory

is at

all

adequate,

when

one

is

in

B,

one will

agree

that

the cat

is

on the mat.'

If the

objection

is

well-taken,

the

argument

doesn't

work,

but

I

am

in-

clined to

think

that

it nonetheless

expresses

an

insight

that

is importantand

correct.

If

this is right,

it should be

possible

to

recast Collins' insight

in an

argument

that

sidesteps

Finkelstein's

objection.

I

will outline

such

an

argu-

ment here.

(Since

Collins'

argument

has come to be

called his masterargu-

ment,

I

suppose

this

argument

hould

be called an

apprentice rgument. )

Two preliminarypoints. First,

we

need a characterization

f the theories

that the

apprenticeargument

will

be directed

against. ( Inner

tates will not

do: if

the

argument

works

at

all,

it will work

against

some

theories

that iden-

tify beliefs with facts thatare not inner ;and to call somethinga state s

to

say nothing

at

all.)

As

a

first

approximation,

his will do: the

target theory

must be

ambitious-that

is,

it

must

purport

o

say

what it is to

believe that

*

A

version

of

this

material was

presented

to

the

Cognitive

Studies

Colloquium

at

Princeton

University.

I'm

grateful

to the audience

for

comments;

I have also benefited

from

comments

from

and discussion with

Alyssa Bernstein, Hilary Bok,

Robin

Briggs,

Sarah

Buss,

Arthur

Collins,

Alice

Crary,

Oren

Etzioni, David Finkelstein,

Gilbert

Har-

man,

Jenann

Ismael,

Brian

Loar,

Robert

Nozick, Hilary Putnam, Tim Scanlon,

and

CandaceVogler.

1

Collins, 1987, chap.

2.

I

discuss

the

argument,

and

Finkelstein's

objection, in Mill-

gram,

1991.

COLLINS

YMPOSIUM

913



p for a sufficiently

wide

range of p-and it must

be

subject-irrelevant-that

it, it must say what it is to believe thatp in terms that, often enough, are not

tantamount

o the assertion

of

p.

A

theory

that

identified beliefs that

pi

with

brain

states

Bi

would

be

ambitious;

and

such

a

theory

would

be

subject-irrel-

evant, since facts

about

your

brain states are not about the

objects

of

your

be-

liefs (except

when

your

beliefs

are

about

your

own brain

states). By contrast,

a theory that distinguished beliefs from desires, but which lacked the re-

sources

to

distinguish

beliefs

on the

basis

of

their

contents,

would

fail

to sat-

isfy the first condition; and a Davidsonian theory

of

belief might

well

fail to

satisfy the second condition,

if its

invocation

of the

principle

of

charity

meant using the facts

pi

to ascribecorresponding

eliefs

that

pi.

The second preliminary o the apprenticeargument nvolves eliciting two

observations rom Moore's

Paradox.

Moore's

Paradox s the familiar act that

sentences

of the

form

p,

but

I don't

believe

that

p

sound

self-contradictory.

(Moore thoughtthis

was

paradoxicalbecause

the state of affairs described

by

the sentence is not

contradictory,

s

its

third-person

estatement

makes

clear.

There is nothing wrong with p, but he doesn't believe that

p. )

Moore's

Paradox

s

broader han its standard

ormulation.

For

example,

I believe that

p,

but

p's

truth

is an

open question -the

assertion whose

illegitimacy

is

central to Collins' argument-is

also a

Moore's Paradox sentence. For our

purposes,

the

following

constraint s

sufficiently

broad: asserted

strength

of

belief must matchstrengthof assertion of the belief's object. If I insist thatI

strongly

believe

that

p,

I should be

willing

to insist that

p

is

true;

if

I

say

that

I

half-heartedly

believe that

p,

I

should be

willing

to

say something

along

the lines

of It is

likely

that

p.

Call

this

constraint

coassertability:

failure

to

satisfy

the

coassertabilityconstraint nvolves producing

an

instance

of

Moore's

Paradox.

Call the sentences

pairedby

the

coassertability

onstraint Moore's

pairs.

The

move from

one

member

of a

Moore's pair to the other conserves inferen-

tial

warrant.

If

I

say

that I

believe

it's

raining outside,

I should be

willing

to

go

ahead and

say,

with

the

correspondingdegree

of

force,

that it is

raining

outside;

and when

I do

that, my

warrant or the second

assertion s

the

same

as

my

warrant or the

first.

I do not

acquireany

new

reasons, or lose any old

ones,

when

I

make such a

transition.

t is an

observation hat warrant onser-

vation holds across

Moore's pairs;

but warrant

onservationcan also be sup-

ported by

an

argument

rom

coassertability.

The

argument s an inference to

the best explanation:whatcould betteraccountfor the matching forces of I

believe

that

p

and

p,

f not

that they

are

supportedby the same reasons?2

2

The

closest competing explanation

has the

statements

of

belief supported by a faculty

of

introspection.

But there are

good

reasons to think that

we have no such faculty, if

the

deliverances

of the

faculty

are

supposed

to

differ from

conclusions from the

evi-

dence for the truth

of the

propositional objects

of one's

beliefs. For an argument to

this

effect,

see

Shoemaker,

1988.

914 ELIJAHMILLGRAM








With these

preliminarypoints made,

we

can

proceed

to the

apprentice

ar-

gument. Suppose

that

an

ambitious

and

subject-irrelevant heory

of belief

T

is true,

and

suppose,

for

purposes

of

illustration,

that

T

identifies

particular

beliefs

with

specified

brain

states.

We can

imagine that

T

is

embodied

in

a

belief

oracle: an

appliance

hat sits on

my

kitchentable and answers

questions

about

my

beliefs. One

morning,

I am

sitting

in

my kitchen, groggy

and

hung

over, and my niece comes up to me and asks me whether there is life on

Mars.3 I have an opinion about this, but it would be too much of an effort

just

now to collect

my

wits and

figure

out what it is.

Fortunately,

I

have

prepared myself

for occasions like this.

I

turn to the belief oracle and ask

whether I believe there

is life

on Mars. It scans

my

brain and

tells

me that I

do.

I

now turn back

to

my

niece

and

tell her

that there

is, indeed,

life

on

Mars. (This is licensed by the coassertability onstraint.)My niece

goes

back

to

her

game

of

space invaders,

and I am struck

by

the

thought

that warrant s

conserved when I

move from

one member

of

a Moore's

pair

to the other:

I

have

asserted hat

there

is life on Mars on the basis of facts

about my brain-

facts that

(I agree)

are irrelevant to the

question

of whether there is life on

Mars. (One would

not

appeal to the brain states of a Weekly World News

reader o determine

whether

here s

life on

Mars,

and

nothing

n

the

story

has

ruled out

my being

a

Weekly

WorldNews

reader.)

It cannot be

legitimate

to make assertionson the

basis

of

facts that are

ac-

knowledgedto be irrelevant.Havingan ambitiousandsubject-irrelevanthe-

ory

of

belief, together

with

Moore's

Paradox,

seems to make

just

such asser-

tions

legitimate;

so

something

has

to

go.

Moore's Paradox s

too

basic a

fact

about belief to abandon.It follows

that

we

must

give up

the

notion that

an

ambitiousand

subject-irrelevantheory

of belief

could be right.

I am

quite puzzled by

the

apprenticeargument. t seems too

outlandish o

work, but I have not yet come across a successful objection to it.

The argu-

ment

seems to be pulling

a

very large rabbitout of an empty hat;

and there

are as

yet unformulated,

but nonetheless

very real, conservation aws in phi-

losophy: rabbits (even small ones, and certainly not large ones)

cannot be

pulled

from

empty

hats. The

conditions

imposed

on

target theories are satis-

factory

as first

approximations,

but

evidently have

a

lot

of

room for

tighten-

ing up. Consequently,

I

don't

think it's

entirely clear just what the rabbit

looks like. But it seems to

include dualism, behaviorism,

materialism

and

functionalism-until

very recently,

the full

menu

of

positions

in

philosophy

of mind. The problemhere is: either to figure out why the apprenticeargu-

ment does not

work,

or

to

say just

what is

being pulled out of the

hat, and

what Moore's

Paradox

puts

into the hat

in

the

first place. Doing

this

would

tell us

a

good

deal about

beliefs, and

other

mental states to which

beliefs

can

be

inferentially

elated.

3

The

setting and example

are due

to ArthurCollins and David Finkelstein.

COLLINS

YMPOSIUM

915








References

Collins,

A.

W.,

1987.

The Nature

of

Mental Things. University

of Notre

Dame Press,

Notre Dame,

Indiana.

Millgram, E., 1991.

Review of

Arthur

Collins,

The

Nature of

Mental

Things. Mind,

100(1),

147-49.

Shoemaker, S.,

1988. On Knowing One's Own Mind. Philosophical

Per-

spectives, 2 (Epistemology), 183-209.

916 ELIJAH

MILLGRAM






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Millgram. an Apprentice Argument- On Collins ''the Nature of Mental Things