Neo-Empiricism and Intentionality

Steven Gamboa

Dr. Steven GamboaAssistant Professor of PhilosophyDepartment of Philosophy and Religious StudiesCalifornia State University, Bakersfield9001 Stockdale Hwy., Bakersfield, CA, 93311-1022

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Abstract

A revival of empiricist theories in cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and philosophy has been led by figures such as Antonio Damasio (1994), Lawrence Barsalou (1999), George Lakoff (1987), and Jesse Prinz (2002, 2004). Their work has served to connect familiar empiricist approaches to thought and reason with contemporary cognitive psychology and neuroscience. The work of Jesse Prinz is of special philosophical significance since it aims to bring together the work of neo-empirically minded theorists in the cognitive and neuro-sciences with main themes found in contemporary philosophical theories of intentionality and reference. In this paper, I examine Jesse Prinz’s efforts to synthesize a neo-empiricist theory of concepts with contemporary semantic theories of reference and intentionality. In part one, I analyze Prinz’s approach in some depth. In part two, I raise a question concerning the origins of intentionality. Specifically, I am interested in examining the minimum cognitive prerequisites for intentionality within Prinz’s theory of perception-based representation. In part three, I raise a problem case for Prinz’s account of the requirements for intentionality, and propose an adjustment in Prinz’s account to meet the challenge of the objection.

Keywords: neo-empiricism, concepts, intentionality, objectivity, Jesse Prinz, Tyler Burge

The last two decades have witnessed a revival of empiricist theories in cognitive

psychology, neuropsychology, and philosophy. Key figures in the resurgence of

empiricism include Antonio Damasio (1994), Lawrence Barsalou (1999), George Lakoff

(1987), and Jesse Prinz (2002, 2004). Their work has served to connect familiar

empiricist approaches to thought and reason with the most up-to-date work in cognitive

psychology and neuroscience. What unites these theorists (and what connects neo-

empiricism to its 17th and 18th century classical antecedents) is a commitment to the thesis

that all of our conceptual representations are perceptually based. In other words, neo-

empiricists claim that the same cognitive resources used in perception are utilized for

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thinking as well. As a corollary, they deny that there are any conceptual representations

encoded in some distinct, non-perceptual system of representation.

Many philosophers will welcome the revival of empiricist theories of concepts,

especially those who viewed with suspicion the strongly rationalist orientation of much

cognitive psychology and philosophy in the years since Chomsky launched the cognitive

revolution. For philosophers sympathetic to neo-empiricism, the work of Jesse Prinz is

of special significance since it aims to achieve a synthesis, bringing together the work of

neo-empirically minded theorists in the cognitive and neuro-sciences with main themes

found in contemporary philosophical theories of intentionality and reference.

In this paper I examine Jesse Prinz’s efforts to marry a neo-empiricist theory of

concepts with contemporary semantic theories of reference and intentionality. In part

one, I analyze Prinz’s approach in some depth, and take note of its many virtues. In part

two, I raise a question concerning the origins of intentionality. Specifically, I am

interested in examining the minimum cognitive prerequisites for intentionality within

Prinz’s theory of perception-based representation. This question is of considerable

independent interest, but also provides a valuable means for exploring the options

available to a neo-empiricist account of the cognitive prerequisites for intentionality.1 In

part three, I raise a problem case for Prinz’s account of the requirements for

intentionality. I propose an adjustment in Prinz’s account to meet the challenge of the

objection, and consider whether the modification causes unwanted disturbances

elsewhere in Prinz’s account. I conclude that the modified account of the minimum

requirements for intentionality do not conflict with other major components in Prinz’s

philosophical project.

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Part 1: Prinz’s synthesizing project

Furnishing the Mind is dedicated to developing and refining what Prinz calls

the “proxytype theory” of concepts. In describing proxytype theory, I will focus first on

what proxytypes per se are, and then discuss their semantic properties. Prinz defines

proxytypes as “perceptually derived representations that can be recruited by working

memory to represent a category.” (2002, p. 149) The definition requires unpacking. First,

that proxytypes are perceptually derived makes clear Prinz’s debts to the empiricist

tradition of imagism and the principle of “nihil in intellectu nisi prius in sensu”.

Imagism has long been out of philosophical favor, but that may in large part be due to its

association with an antiquated view of perception as something akin to the conscious

introspection of pictures in the head. More contemporary accounts of perception from

cognitive science offer a much wider range of highly structured representations for

empiricists to work with. For Prinz, perceptual representations are the products of

dedicated sensory input systems, but these can include dynamic, multimedia

representations that converge information from auditory, visual, tactile, and other sensory

modalities.

Secondly, Prinz’s definition establishes that proxytypes are recruited from long-

term memory networks. In our cognitive activities, we make use of an enormous amount

of diverse information. A crucial theoretical role for concepts is to encode and organize

this information. Prinz argues that all information organized conceptually can be

captured by links between perceptual representations.2 Prinz posits a number of links

(hierarchy, transformation, binding, situational, predicative) that serve to bind together

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perceptually derived representations in a long-term memory network. The links are

established, in true empiricist fashion, on the basis of patterns of co-instantiation and co-

occurrence revealed in experience. For example, if one experienced a barking dog, a

visual representation of the dog will get grouped together via the binding link with the

auditory representation of the barking sound, such that henceforth these co-instantiated

features are linked in long-term memory.

The third component in Prinz’s definition of proxytypes concerns the limits

imposed by working memory. Our long-term memory networks contain myriad

perceptual representations linked in complex, overlapping, and connectionist ways. But

when one is engaged in thinking about some category, say dogs, it would be impossible

for the entire network of dog-related information to get activated since that would

seriously overload our working memory. One might be tempted at this point to introduce

amodal, non-perceptual symbols (indicators rather than detectors) to play the role of

concepts, but Prinz argues that such a move is unnecessary. There’s a simpler solution:

simply use a stored perceptual representation as a proxy for the entire category. On this

view, thinking is a process of re-enacting and manipulating perceptual states, and

proxytypes are used to stand in for (and thus represent) the objects involved in the

simulated scene.

Proxytype Theory is not exhausted by the claim that concepts are constituted by

proxytypes. Key to Prinz’s broader synthesizing project is his adoption of a ‘two factor’

account of conceptual content: proxytypes carry two distinct kinds of content, cognitive

and intentional. Prinz’s distinction between cognitive and intentional content

corresponds to the perhaps more familiar distinction drawn by many philosophers

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between the ‘narrow’ and ‘broad’ content of mental states. Cognitive (narrow) content

refers to the sort of meaning that supervenes on the individual’s psychological states,

such that duplicates necessarily share all the same cognitive (narrow) content. Intentional

(broad) content refers to the sort of meaning that is not determined by what is in the head

because it includes those objects and kinds in the world that the concept picks out or

refers to. Cognitive psychologists have been more interested in the narrow meaning or

cognitive significance of concepts, whereas philosophers have been more concerned with

the intentional or broad relation between concepts and objects in the world. If successful,

Prinz’s two-factor account would bring together an impressive body of results on the

cognitive content of concepts in psychology with contemporary philosophical theories of

intentionality and reference.

The advantages of a two-factor theory of cognitive content are considerable.

First, it handles familiar Frege Hesperus/Phosphorus (1893) cases in a satisfying way:

while the concepts of <Hesperus> and <Phosphorus> have the same intentional content

(they both refer to the same heavenly body, viz., the planet Venus), the two concepts

have different cognitive contents and are thus distinguishable on that basis. Likewise,

Putnam’s ‘twin Earth’ case (1975) is more grist for the mill. In Putnam’s thought

experiment, the stuff that flows in rivers and fills oceans and lakes on twin Earth, while to

all appearances just like our familiar Earthly water, has a different molecular structure

from water on Earth (XYZ rather than H2O). In such a scenario, the Earthly and Twin-

Earthly <water> concepts have different intentional contents (since they refer to different

kinds), but they have the same cognitive content (which helps account for the intuition

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that there is at least some sense in which duplicates must share the same beliefs and other

mental states).

Assuming that concepts bear two kinds of content, how do they relate?

According to the familiar Fregean line, sense determines reference. Using Prinz’s

terminology, we would say that a concept’s cognitive content determines its intentional

content. But Prinz doesn’t follow the Fregean model. Instead of cognitive content

determining intentional content or vice versa, Prinz offers independent accounts of the

factors that determine the semantics for each dimension. There are a number of

advantages to keeping these two accounts independent, but the most important for Prinz

is that by doing so we can avoid placing any epistemic conditions on successful

reference. Prinz captures the point this way:

Ordinary people believe that they can refer to a category even if they cannot distinguish it from another categories [sic] whose members are superficially similar. This is a fundamental antiverificationist conviction. Limits on one’s ability to distinguish things should not carry limits on one’s ability to refer to things. Recent philosophical efforts to find an adequate theory of intentionality can be regarded as efforts to make sense of antiverificationist convictions. A good theory makes sense of those convictions by making them come out true. (2002, p. 260-261)

Decoupling intentional content from cognitive content means that Prinz can avoid placing

any epistemic conditions on successful reference, such that one can successfully refer to

water without knowing anything about its chemical composition or to whales despite

believing that they’re fish.

Prinz straightforwardly identifies the cognitive content of concepts with the

proxytypes themselves. Two individuals have concepts with the same cognitive content

when they have type-identical proxytypes. Proxytypes are type-identical when they are

constituted by sensory detection mechanisms cued to the same sets of appearances. For

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example, two individuals share the same dog concept (in the sense of cognitive content)

if it is activated by the same set of dog detecting appearances (e.g., furry, barks, fetches,

etc.). In such a case, not only do the two individuals track the same category (assuming

they do), they conceptualize it in the same way as well.3

For intentional content, Prinz endorses a modified covariational (aka,

informational semantic) theory of intentionality, influenced mainly by the work of

Dretske (1981).4 Covariationist accounts traditionally work on the assumption that

concepts are amodal, unstructured symbols (as in Fodor’s informational atomism or

Dretske’s indicator semantics), but Prinz argues that there are no compelling reasons why

structured proxytypes couldn’t play that role directly, i.e., enter into reference-endowing

co-variation with individuals and kinds, eliminating the need for amodal symbolic

middlemen.

Assuming that concept C is a proxytype, Prinz offers the following conditions for

C’s intentional content:

X is the intentional content of C iff

1. X’s nomologically covary with tokens of C, and 2. an X was the incipient cause of C.

An example to flesh out the definition: my <C> concept refers to carrots because it is

reliably tokened when in the presence of carrots. It doesn’t refer to vegetables (even

though all carrots are vegetables) because vegetables wouldn’t cause <C> to be tokened

in proximate counterfactual worlds that lacked carrots. Prinz’s definition requires

nomological covariance, which is a counterfactual supporting relation. Importantly, <C>

doesn’t refer to carrot appearances (or the retinal image caused by carrots) because <C>

would still be tokened in a proximate counterfactual world where carrots looked different

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(and thus cause different retinal images). In this case, the concept <C> would have a

different cognitive content in the proximal counterfactual world since it would use

different appearances to track carrots, but it would have the same intentional content and

thus be ‘the same concept’ in that sense. And since carrots were the incipient cause of

my forming <C>, it refers to carrots even if I can’t tell the difference between carrots and

parsnips and so routinely mistake parsnips for carrots.5

While the identity conditions for cognitive and intentional contents are

independent in the sense laid out above, each sort of content can be said to refer to a type:

the cognitive content picks out appearances, while the intentional content picks out kinds

and individuals in the world. And these two types are obviously connected in the

psychological explanation of human cognition and behavior: we use appearances

(cognitive content) to track individuals and kinds in the world (intentional content).6

Part 2: minimum requirements for intentionality

One can generalize Prinz’s definition so as to leave open the question of what sort

of states can be bearers of intentional content: a state M has intentional content X iff M

nomologically co-varies with instances of X. The general formulation raises the

following question: what sort of M states are suitable candidates for entering into

intentionality-conferring nomological co-variation? I’ll review a number of prominent

candidates for necessary conditions for intentionality, including propositional attitudes,

concepts, and perceptions. As we’ll see, Prinz rejects each of these more demanding

candidates. Taking the long way through the alternatives that Prinz rejects is worth the

effort since it will help make sense of the positive position he eventually endorses.

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One popular proposal for distinguishing internal states capable of bearing

intentional content from mere sensory reactions is to claim that genuine intentionality can

occur only within a psychology that has propositional attitudes, i.e., beliefs and desires.

Dretske (1988, 1995) is representative of this approach. Dretske distinguishes mental

representations capable of bearing intentional content from mere sensory registrations by

claiming that the former are found only in cases where the organism can learn. Learning

requires categorization, and categorization for Dretske requires propositional judgment.

Concerned with the over-application of intentionality to inappropriate subjects, Dretske

requires that the organism not merely be directed toward its goal by means of sensory

registration of environmental cues and innate behavioral response, but that it be directed

in order to get its goal via appropriate beliefs and desires, including instrumental beliefs

to the effect that the current activity is a way to achieve the goal (1988, p. 116).

A similar take on intentionality is found among contemporary philosophers

working on the evolution of cognition, such as Peter Godfrey-Smith (1996) and Kim

Sterelny (2001, 2003). They link the evolution of intentional agency to the emergence of

a distinction among the organism’s cognitive states between belief-like representations

and desire-like representations of preference. In the following passage, Sterelny

identifies what he takes to be the key difference between genuine intentional agency and

sub-intentional responses (whether innate or learned) to environmental cues:

[What makes genuine intentional agency different is that] “within our mental representations there is a distinction between reports and instructions. Intentional agents have decoupled representations. That is to say, we have internal states that track aspects of our world, but which do not have the function of controlling particular behaviors. Beliefs are representations that are relevant to many behaviors, but do not have the biological function of directing any specific behavior.” (Sterelny, 2003, p. 29)

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Sterelny contends that the capacity to generate representations decoupled from any fixed

behavioral response is the cognitive prerequisite for the sort of flexible, non-stereotyped

mode of connectedness to the world that we identify as intelligent action. Only in cases

of intelligent action is attribution of intentional content properly motivated and

constrained. Deciding in any particular case whether an organism’s behavior qualifies as

intelligent action can be difficult, and disputes over competing explanations (cognitively

sophisticated vs. deflationary) are common and often empirically rather intractable. But

cognitive ethologists have also identified a plethora of examples of flexible, intelligent

behaviors among non-human animals (principally primates and other social mammals,

but also many bird species) for which we are clearly warranted in positing decoupled

representations and employing something analogous to belief/desire explanations.

The claim that perceptual representations embedded in explanations that invoke

propositional attitudes carry intentional content clearly succeeds in identifying a

sufficient condition for intentionality. But is it a necessary condition? In other words, is

belief required for intentionality? Given Prinz’s avowed anti-verificationist inclinations,

it is not surprising that he rejects the notion that supporting beliefs and other

propositional judgments are required for intentionality. If ties to beliefs and other

propositional attitudes were required for intentionality, then beliefs would be required for

concepts to have intentional content. Prinz rejects this dependency: “In fact, there is no

reason to think that concept possession requires having any beliefs at all. Concepts seem

to be ontogenetically and semantically prior to beliefs. Any account that tries to define

the content (intentional or narrow) of concepts in terms of beliefs will have to prove this

priority illusory.” (2002, p. 269)

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The natural next step is to consider concepts as the most basic bearers of

intentional content. In Furnishing the Mind (p. 197, 2002) and, more extensively, Gut

Reactions (pp. 45-49, 2004), Prinz offers the resources for developing a proposal along

these lines. Prinz’s stated aim in the relevant passages is to distinguish concepts from

both percepts and emotions. If intentionality did necessarily involve concepts, a theory

that identified the conditions for concept possession could serve double duty as a theory

that identified constraints on which mental states could count as genuinely intentional.

As noted above, concepts are theoretical entities posited to explain higher order

cognitive abilities, or ‘cognition’ for short. As Prinz uses the term, ‘cognition’ refers to a

class of conscious mental processes or operations, but not all conscious mental processes

count as cognitions. To distinguish cognition from other mental faculties, Prinz invokes

the Kantian distinction between spontaneity and receptivity: “Cognitive states and

processes are those that exploit representations that are under the control of the organism

rather than under the control of the environment.” (2004, p. 45) While we spontaneously

engage in cognition (and it is thus under our endogenous control), perception and

emotion are largely a response to (and thus controlled by) exogenous stimuli from the

environment (including our bodies). Organismic control is dispositional; your <dog>

concept counts as a concept because you “can willfully form thoughts using your dog

concept”, even if its activation on any given occasion is prompted by an encounter with a

dog in the environment.

Prinzean “organismic control”, with its talk of conscious willing and deliberate

activation, requires naturalistic explanation to avoid homuncular regress (i.e., explaining

cognition in terms that presuppose cognition itself). To do so, Prinz contends that states

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being under organismic control can be naturalistically explicated in terms of

representational states being under the “top-down control” of specific psychological

systems and neural structures. Prinz cites work in cognitive neuroscience that identifies

executive centers in the prefrontal cortex as playing the key role in manipulating and

maintaining representations in working memory. Prinz speculates that these executive

centers “may also play a special role in initiating the formation or activation of

representations when those representations are not elicited by environmental

stimulation.” (2004, p. 47) Prinz proposes that cognition be defined as a state that

“includes representations that are under the control of structures in executive systems,

which, in mammals, are found in the prefrontal cortex.” (2004, p. 47)

Given this understanding of concepts as “representations under organismic

control”, does Prinz see concepts as the most primitive bearers of intentional content?

Furnishing the Mind might leave that impression (since his discussion of intentional

content in that work is focused solely on concepts), but in his article “Beyond

Appearances” (2006), Prinz rejects the suggestion that concepts are strictly required for

intentionality. As with belief, conceptualization is sufficient for intentionality, but it is

not necessary. The sort of case Prinz asks us to consider involves perceptual recognition

without conceptualization:

Concepts are representations that can be actively tokened by an organism. In recognition, we often use representations that can only be tokened passively. I can recognize certain things that I cannot bring readily to mind in imagination or reflection. Recognition outstrips conceptualization. (2006, p. 437)

Face recognition offers a clear case where recognition outstrips conceptualization in that

we can recognize many more faces than we can deliberately recall in imagination and

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reflection. The percepts stored in mental files may not be under endogenous control, but

they can be triggered by current perception. When such matching occurs, the current

percept inherits the semantic properties of the mental file, including its referential

content.

While Prinz argues that mere percepts can refer, even without the involvement of

concepts, some sort of recognition seems required for intentionality. Given Prinz’s views

on the conditions that determine intentional content, recognition of some sort looks

promising as a baseline minimum requirement for objective reference. In order for

Prinz’s nomological co-variation account of intentionality to apply in any given case,

there need to be mental files of percepts stored in long-term memory networks set up

(either by evolution or learning) to be set off by individuals and kinds in the world.

In the neurological hierarchy of perceptual processing, sensation precedes

recognition. So it would seem to follow from the recognition requirement that we cannot

literally sense tigers and dogs; we can at best sense their appearances, but sensations

themselves would lack objective reference. Nonetheless, Prinz contends that sensations

can refer to things beyond appearances. Sensations for Prinz are representations in

dedicated input systems that are consciously experienced. Current cognitive neuro-

scientific theorizing places conscious perception at an intermediary level between low-

level subsystems processing information from sensory receptors and high-level

subsystems that utilize relatively context invariant representations for object recognition.

As such, sensation does not require recognition. However, perceptual processing is not a

one-way street. Neural pathways allow for significant back propagation of

representations from high level perceptual processing subsystems into the intermediate

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level where conscious sensation occurs, thereby enriching the representational potential

of sensations.

After back-projection, sensations are no longer purely bottom-up. They are blends of incoming signals and mental images produced by centers further down the processing stream. The representations used downstream, which have been matched with representations stored in memory, can inherit semantic properties from the stored representations. […] Sensations can take on new meaning once they intermingle with representations coming down from on high. (2006, p. 456)

Despite initial appearances, sensations can support objective reference and intentional

content once they are blended with higher order representations. The intentional content

of high-level perceptual representations can be exported to earlier processing subsystems

so that sensations can refer to objects in the world: “If representation amounts to

functional detection, then representation goes all the way down.” (2006, p. 456)

Part 3: Assessment

How should we assess the viability of Prinz’s position? It’s hard to escape the

suspicion that, in rejecting the more cognitively demanding proposals as identifying

sufficient but not necessary conditions for intentionality, Prinz has over-corrected by

offering necessary but not sufficient conditions. We can illustrate this point by

considering the widespread practice of taxis in the animal world. A taxis is an innate

directional response to a detected stimulus gradient. A mosquito uses its ability to detect

and differentially respond to carbon dioxide concentrations (chemotaxis) in its blood-host

search behavior. Protozoa of the genus Euglena use their eyespot and photosensitive

structures to detect light intensity and direction, and use their flagellum to move towards

the light source (phototaxis) to enhance photosynthesis. The point of considering such

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behaviors is not to rehearse well-worn objections to naturalistic accounts of

intentionality. Indeed, I do not see these cases as counter-examples to nomological co-

variance definitions of intentional content per se. Important here is the distinction

Stalnaker (2003) draws between the conditions for determining the intentional content of

a suitably qualified internal state (a task for semantics), and the conditions for

determining whether a given internal state is qualified for bearing intentional content (a

task for cognitive theory). Thus, even if we maintain Prinz’s semantic theory unchanged,

we still need to enquire as to the requirements for internal states to be capable of carrying

intentional content at all. Taxis behavior makes vivid the need for co-variational theories

of intentionality to offer minimum criteria for internal states to qualify as capable of

bearing intentional content. The type of sensory registration of environmental stimulus

involved in taxis nomologically co-varies with environmentally important (to the

organism) kinds (e.g., blood-hosts for mosquitoes, light sources for euglena). Without

some basis by which to distinguish tactic sensory registrations from states capable of

genuine intentionality, we would have to grant that they do bear intentional content.

There is a strong presumption against attributing intentionality (and thus heavy

duty semantic properties such as reference) to the internal states of such unlikely

organisms as protozoa and mosquitoes; while the organisms can clearly detect and

differentially respond to environmental cues, these states remain sub-intentional. Nor is

this just a bias of common sense opinion against allowing such ‘primitives’ into the

intentionality club. Scientific explanation of tactic behavior need not make any appeal to

representations of distal objects, such that attributions of intentionality would be

superfluous. Further, a certain type of semantic indeterminacy is a fairly sure sign that

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the attribution of intentionality and reference doesn’t fit well. In the case of the mosquito

using its ability to sense and track carbon dioxide concentrations in its blood-host search

behavior, we can characterize its state in the indicative mode as saying “blood host

ahead”, but an equally reasonable alternative is to interpret the state in the imperative

mode as delivering something like a command to its motor control system to “fly in that

direction”. The sort of indicative/imperative indeterminacy illustrated in the mosquito

case is reminiscent of Millikan’s (1996) discussion of ‘pushmi pullyu’ representations

that combine both detector (descriptive) and motor command (directive) functions in one

state. In my view, such states are representations in a sense, but their semantic

indeterminacy makes them incapable of supporting attributions of reference.

Consideration of taxis behaviors motivates the demand that Prinz’s theory of

intentionality provide a basis for distinguishing genuinely intentional states from mere

sensory detectors. The cost of not doing so would be a severely degraded notion of

intentionality. After rejecting a series of more cognitively demanding proposals, Prinz

has settled on the following baseline prerequisite for intentionality: objective reference

requires the involvement of representations stored in high-level perceptual sub-systems,

but these representations can exert their influence at early stages of perceptual

processing, such that perceptual and sensory states can bear intentional content.

Clearly, the states of protozoa during phototaxis, and of eurkaryotes and bacteria

during chemotaxis, will not qualify as carrying intentional content under Prinz’s criteria;

since these organisms lack a central nervous system, there are no mental files stored in

higher-level neural subsystems on hand to contribute their semantic properties. But other

cases don’t offer such simple solutions. It’s not a matter of merely separating organisms

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with sophisticated neural architecture from those lacking such advantages. The same

organism can engage in some behaviors that warrant intentional characterization of their

internal states, and other behaviors that don’t. In his (2010), Tyler Burge gives much

attention to the olfactory homing behavior of salmon. After years in the open ocean,

mature salmon make an extraordinary return to their fresh water natal stream to spawn.

This amazing feat is accomplished roughly as follows: during the smolting period,

salmon "imprint" to the chemical properties of their natal tributary; on the return journey,

salmon use their incredible olfactory sensitivity and serial sampling of the environment to

find their way back to the natal stream. Extensive scientific study of salmon homing

behavior (see Hasler and Scholz, 1988) has established that homing depends on

imprinting of the cues that identify the home stream at the time the young salmon begin

their downstream migration. After three or four years at sea, the salmon recall what they

learned as smolts from their long-term memory.

Salmon homing behavior appears to instantiate all of Prinz’s requirements for

intentionality. A representation from a mental file stored in long-term memory is

matched with a sensory input. The stored olfactory representation nomologically co-

varies with the natal stream, and was functionally set up to be set off by that particular

stream. In a counter-factually proximate world where the stream had a different chemical

profile (a different olfactory appearance), the salmon would still use its olfactory

detectors to home towards the stream. Further, the functional co-variation depends on a

number of invariances: between the natal stream and its ‘odor’ or chemical signature, and

between the odor plume and the salmon’s imprinted memory of that cue.

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Despite meeting all Prinz’s requirements, it is doubtful that the salmon

intentionally represents the location of its natal stream. As Dretske (1988) might put it,

salmon homing behavior may well be directed towards the stream without being directed

to the stream. Burge’s verdict on the salmon case focuses on objectification and is worth

quoting in full:

A capacity to localize a distal source of stimulation without serial sampling is a reliable sign of perceptual objectification. Localization is a capacity to determine direction and distance. The salmon has a breathtaking capacity to localize the home stream. These localizations are not representational. The salmon localizes its molting site only by combining sensory and motor capacities to sample serial intensities of proximal stimulation. As far as is known, the salmon’s olfactory system lacks any sensory state that determines both direction and distance of any object or property. The salmon stores a sequence of sensory registration types. Localization through the salmon’s action is just a reliable effect of the system’s serial sampling of intensities and serial responses to registrations of the types of proximal stimulation. (2010, p. 427)

It is not that salmon are too neurologically primitive to have states with intentional

content. Salmon visual systems can objectify and thus produce perceptual states that

refer to attributes in their environment. Burge denies, however, that salmon olfactory

sensing can refer to what they have the biological function of delivering. In the salmon

olfactory case, “[t]here is no systematic, structured capacity in the sensory system that

separates registration of distributions of proximal stimulation from states that specify, and

are as of, environmental attributes.” (2010, p. 426) On the plausible assumption that

Burge’s verdict in the salmon homing case is correct, Prinz’s account is guilty of over-

applying intentional content. Prinz needs to say more to avoid the over-application

problem.

I will close by offering a suggestion as to where Prinz’s account can be

supplemented so as to avoid the over-application problem. Granting Prinz’s claim that

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the semantic properties of high-level invariant representations can extend all the way

down to sensory subsystems, the homing case makes clear that not all blending of high

and low succeeds in creating states capable of bearing intentional content and reference.

Thus, we must examine the links between higher-level perceptual subsystems and

sensations in order to distinguish those links that can establish referential relations to

environmental individuals and kinds from those that can’t. It may matter what kind of

high level invariant representation is blended with intermediate level sensation; not just

any kind of blending will do. In describing the sort of back propagation that allows for

sensations to refer to objects in the environment, Prinz holds that representations from

high-level subsystems are invariant across different contexts and perspectives. Such

invariance is key, since only relevantly invariant representations can acquire semantic

properties via co-variance with individuals and kinds in the environment. But it may be

that only certain invariances will do the job, and that the invariances involved in olfactory

homing are not the right sort to support objectifying reference.

What sorts of invariances are required for objective reference? In discussing the

invariances and constancies generated by high-level perceptual subsystems, Prinz relies

mainly on examples from the visual system. (2006, p. 454) This is not surprising since

the invariances encoded in visual perception are especially apt for purposes of

distinguishing objects from their environmental surround: color constancy, shape and

boundary constancy, size and depth constancy derived from binocular disparity. Burge

suggests that only vision, touch, and hearing provide the right sort of structured

representations required for objectification. (2010, p. 429) A behavior that fulfills its

biological function utilizing sensory states and stored representations that lack

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objectifying invariances will not warrant intentional characterization. As many

philosophers (e.g., Quine, Strawson, Evans) have maintained, intentionality presupposes

objectification, and objectification requires specific sorts of perceptual constancies.

Again, not just any sort will do the job.

The flavor of these recommendations is distinctively Kantian. The Kantian

association should not be unwelcome for Prinz, given that he claims both Hume and Kant

as philosophical predecessors for his brand of neo-empiricism: “This story is not just

Humean; it is Kantian. Kant tells us that concepts without percepts are empty.” (2006, p.

450) But Kant made a point of distinguishing percepts from mere sensations. Percepts

are structured by the empirical intuitions of space and time. Without the objectification

offered via empirical intuition, there could be no objects of experience. Prinz’s account

of intentionality needs an analogous requirement in order to pull off his ambitious project

of reviving concept empiricism for a new age.

21

Works Cited

Barsalou, L.W. (1999). Perceptual Symbol Systems, Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 22, 577-660.

Burge, Tyler. (2010). Origins of Objectivity (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes’ Error: Emotions, Reason, and the Human Brain (New

York: Avon Books).Dretske, Fred. (1988). Explaining Behavior (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press)______. (1995). Naturalizing the Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press)Godfrey-Smith, P. (1996). Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press).Frege, Gottlob. (1893). On Sense and Meaning. M. Black, trans. In P. Geach and M.

Black, eds., Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953).

Hasler, A.D. and A.T. Scholz. (1988). Olfactory Imprinting and Homing in Salmon. (New York: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg)

Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

Machery, Edouard. (2007). Concept Empiricism: A Methodological Critique, Cognition, 104, 19-46.

Millikan, Ruth G. (1996). Pushmi-Pullyu Representations, in Philosophical Perspectives, James Tomberlin, ed. (Ridgeview Publishing).

Prinz, J.J. (2002). Furnishing the Mind: Concepts and Their Perceptual Basis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).

______. (2004). Gut Reactions: a Perceptual Theory of Emotion (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

______. (2006). Beyond Appearances: The Content of Sensation and Perception, in Perceptual Experience, Tamar Gendler and John Hawthorne, eds. (Oxford University Press).

Putnam, Hilary. (1975). The Meaning of “Meaning.” In H. Putnam, Philosophical Papers, vol. 2: Mind, Language, and Reality. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Stalnaker, Robert C. (2003) Ways a World Might Be. (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Sterelny, K. (2001). The Evolution of Agency and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press).______. (2003). Thought in a Hostile World (Oxford: Blackwell)

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1 In the texts under review, Prinz does not directly address the question of the origins of intentionality in the manner raised here. However, he does address a number of related issues, such that the position developed in part 2 is suitably constrained by Prinz’s stated views.22 Prinz’s proxytype theory integrates elements from the three leading psychological theories of concepts: exemplar theory, prototype theory, and theory-theory. Exemplar theory holds that concepts are constituted by collections of representative instances of a category; prototype theory contends that concepts are constituted by a representation of the best (most typical) instance of a category; theory-theory holds that concepts are constituted by mini-theories about the essential features and causal-explanatory relations of the categories they represent. Each of the three leading psychological theories of concepts can point to impressive empirical support, and each is best suited to explaining some cognitive capacities, but has difficulty with others. They have typically been considered competitors, but Prinz views them as each offering insight into some aspect of the problem.3 The cognitive content of distinct concepts can be similar rather than strictly identical: to the extent that individuals have differing degrees of overlap in the sets of appearances that trigger their respective concepts, the cognitive content of their concepts will be more or less similar. 4 Traditionally, empiricists have offered similarity or resemblance-based accounts of intentionality, whereby concepts refer to whatever they resemble. The many intransigent problems with the resemblance-based account of intentionality have led many to reject empiricism tout court. But Prinz contends that empiricism about concepts is not intrinsically committed to a resemblance-based theory of intentionality, such that the latter can be jettisoned without having to abandon the former.5 The last point illustrates the theoretical virtues of Prinz’s incipient cause condition; by including this etiological component in his account of intentional content, Prinz is able to explain cases of representational error while at the same time adhering to the antiverificationist desideratum that prohibits epistemic constraints on successful reference.6 Prinz would prefer to substitute the Lockean terms “nominal kinds” and “real kinds” for “cognitive content” and “intentional content” respectively, since the Lockean usage avoids the implication that “cognitive content” is non-referential. For Prinz, concepts are better viewed as referring in two ways (or doubly referential): they refer in one way to appearances, and in another way to the kinds appearances are used to detect.