Belief-attribution
and Rationality: a Dilemma for Jerry Fodor
Pierre
Jacob
Introduction: beliefs and
belief-ascriptions
In
the present paper, I will assume that human beings do have beliefs and other
propositional attitudes.1 With token physicalists
generally, I will assume that an individual's beliefs - particular mental state
tokens - are brain state tokens of the individual. Furthermore, I will
distinguish beliefs, utterances whereby individuals express their beliefs, and
belief-ascriptions or belief-reports whereby beliefs are attributed by one
person to another.
Beliefs
may represent states of affairs, and so may utterances whereby beliefs are
expressed: Sarah's belief that London is pretty, as it might be, represents the
fact that a particular city bears the property expressed by the English
predicate "pretty". And so does the sentence she may utter to express
her belief. The fact that Sarah has this belief - if she does - may explain why
she does certain things, why e.g., she utters the French sentence "Londres
est jolie" which means that London is pretty.
A
belief-report - such as "Sarah believes that London is pretty" - is a
(linguistic) representation of a belief (itself a mental representation of a
state of affairs). Although Sarah may not speak a word of English, still she
may hold a belief which an English speaker may report as the belief that London
is pretty. The belief-ascriber would then use an English sentence to
characterize the content of Sarah's belief. A belief-report is an utterance
which expresses the belief-ascriber's belief about the ascribee's belief (about
London, as it might be). Let us say that a person expresses her belief by
making an assertion. So if Sarah, having learnt enough English and Roman
history, were to utter the sentence "Cicero was a Roman orator" she
would thereby express her belief that Cicero was a Roman orator.
Beliefs
are paradigmatic psychological states with content ("propositional
attitudes" as they have come to be called since Russell) and they play
basically three roles. First, beliefs help explain what a person does
intentionally. Second, a person B may derive indirectly information
about aspects of the world not directly observable to her by forming a higher
order belief about A's belief about some aspect of the world not
directly observable by B. Finally, a person's beliefs are subject to
evaluation for consistency and/or rationality. Assessment of a person's
rationality involves primarily examination of the logical relationships between
his or her beliefs.
1. Modes of Presentation and Frege's Constraint
On
our unsophisticated conception of what it takes a person to be minimally
rational, we would not take Sarah to be irrational were she to express her
belief that, unlike Tully, Cicero was a Roman orator, by uttering the sentence
"Cicero was a Roman orator but Tully was not" or "Cicero, not
Tully, was a Roman orator", even though (we know that) Cicero was no other
than Tully. What Sarah would thereby display is ignorance, not irrationality:
she might well be rational and lack the knowledge that "Cicero" and
"Tully" are two English names of one and the same Roman orator.
Lacking a belief is not the same thing as holding two contradictory beliefs.
Using the Fregean notion of a "mode of presentation" (which Frege
himself called a Sinn), we might say that Sarah believes of Cicero that
he was a Roman orator under one mode of presentation and she disbelieves it
under another mode of presentation. However, on the same unsophisticated
conception of rationality, Sarah would display irrationality were she to hold
the belief she would normally and sincerely express by means of her utterance
of "Cicero was and Cicero was not a Roman orator". Her linguistic
behavior would then leave no room for a distinction between two modes of
presentation of Cicero.
Now,
there are, in the philosophical literature, two rival views of the proposition
literally (or explicitly) expressed by the utterance of a sentence containing a
singular term (such as a proper name, an indexical or a demonstrative pronoun):
the Fregean view and the theory of direct reference (TDR). According to the
former, the proposition explicitly expressed by the utterance of a sentence
containing a singular term contains a mode of presentation of the referent of
the singular term. According to the latter, the proposition explicitly
expressed by the utterance of a sentence containing a singular term contains
the referent itself. On the latter view, such an utterance expresses what D.
Kaplan (1979: 387) calls a Russellian "singular proposition".
The
Fregean notion of a mode of presentation has been designed to account for the
linguistic and psychological intuition according to which a person may believe
of one and the same object both that it has and that it does not have a given
property. Indeed, modes of presentation obey what Schiffer (1978: 180 and 1992:
502-3) calls "Frege's Constraint":
Frege's Constraint:2
First
it says that a rational person x may both believe and disbelieve that a
certain thing... y is such and such only if there are distinct modes m
and m' such that x believes y to be such and such under m
and disbelieves it to be such and such under m'. Then it says that there
are distinct modes of presentation m and m' such that a rational
person x believes y to be such and such under m and
disbelieves y to be such and such under m' only if x fails
to realize that m and m' are modes of presentation of one and the
same thing. In other words, you cannot rationally believe and disbelieve
something under one and the same mode of presentation, or under modes of
presentation that you realize are modes of presentation of the same thing.
No
philosopher I know of denies that something like Frege's notion of a mode of
presentation of the referent of a singular term is involved in a person's
thought about an object. However, what distinguishes the advocate of TDR from
Frege and neo-Fregeans is that the former, unlike the latter, holds that the
proposition explicitly expressed by the utterance of a sentence containing a
singular term, unlike the thought expressed, contains no mode of presentation
of the referent.
2. Fodor's Three Assumptions
My
goal in the present paper is to examine a view of belief-ascriptions recently
defended by Jerry Fodor in a short paper, "Substitution Arguments and the
Individuation of Beliefs" (SAIB for short). Fodor's view of
belief-attribution bears a strong family resemblance to TDR according to which
the propositional contribution of a singular term is always its referent, not some
mode of presentation of the referent. Always, that is in all contexts,
including contexts of propositional attitude attributions such as "Sarah
believes that Cicero was a Roman orator". I will argue that Fodor faces a
dilemma: either he must revise his Formality Condition or he must weaken his
rejection of Content Holism - or he must do both. In order to do so, I shall
first lay out the three major assumptions which underlie Fodor's view of
scientific psychology.
2.1.
The Language of Thought Hypothesis
One
of Fodor's great ambitions is to naturalize content (or intentionality), that
is to offer sufficient conditions for some symbol to be a representation or to
have content. His strategy is twofold: first, he wishes to reduce all non
mental contents to mental contents. This first semantic reduction proceeds in
two steps: first step, reduce the semantic properties of linguistic symbols to
the contents of propositional attitudes; second step, reduce the contents of
propositional attitudes to the semantic properties of mental symbols - which,
of course, presupposes the existence of a language of thought.
Once
non-mental content has been reduced to the semantic properties of mental
symbols, then reduce the latter to the notion of information (or nomic dependencies
between properties) via what he calls the Causal Asymmetric Dependence
Condition. Suppose that the tokening of my mental symbol 'horse' (my concept of
a horse) nomically depends on horses or on the instantiation of the property of
being a horse. Then my 'horse' symbol would nomically depend on horses (or on
the property of being a horse). Sometimes my 'horse' symbol is prompted by a
donkey (something which instantiates the property of being a donkey). What the
Causal Asymmetric Dependence Condition says is that all non-horse caused
'horse' symbols (such as my donkey-caused 'horse' symbol) asymmetrically depend
on my horse-caused 'horse' symbols. If horses did not cause me to token my
'horse' symbol, donkeys (and other things) would not cause me to token my
'horse' symbol either. However, the converse is not true: my horse-caused
'horse' symbols do not so depend on my non-horse caused 'horse' symbols. The
Causal Asymmetric Dependence Condition on content seems to state in
non-semantic terms sufficient conditions for a symbol to possess some semantic
property. It is, I think, clear how Fodor's approach to the naturalization of
mental content pushes him towards an atomistic theory of content and away from
Content Holism.
2.2.
Intentional Realism
Common
sense, I believe, assumes that propositional attitudes can be causes of
intentional actions. Furthermore, my belief that the cup in front of me
contains tea (together with my desire for a sip of tea) may cause me to pick up
the cup in virtue of its content. I will call Intentional Realism the view that
intentional behavior falls under ceteris paribus psychological intentional
laws: intentional behavior can be nomologically explained by psychological
intentional laws. The antecedent of such laws will typically refer to (or
quantify over) the content of an agent's propositional attitude and its
consequent will mention the agent's behavior. So I do something intentionally
because (among other things) of what I believe. For an advocate of Intentional
Realism, the connection between what I believe and what I do (when I do what I
do because I believe something) is covered by a ceteris paribus
psychological intentional law.
2.3.
The Formality Condition
According
to the second step of the semantic reduction alluded to in 2.1., the content of
a propositional attitude reduces to the semantic property of a symbol of the
Language of Thought. Now, Fodor assumes that semantic properties of symbols are
not causally efficacious per se. Only syntactic properties of symbols are.
Mental processes are purely formal (or syntactic) operations on mental symbols.
In other words, mental symbols undergo causal processes in virtue of their
syntactic, not their semantic, properties. This assumption is known as the
Formality Condition. It is characteristic of the so-called Computational Theory
of the Mind.5
If
you wonder how the Formality Condition is consistent with Intentional Realism,
you are like Stich (1983: 188). The reason the two views are consistent is that
psychological intentional laws and cognitive processes do not belong to the
same level. The Formality Condition applies to mental processes. Intentional
Realism applies to psychological laws. The latter are supposed to be
"implemented" by the former in much the same way that biochemical
processes implement Mendel's laws of inheritance of hereditary features.6
Now,
importantly for my present purpose, Fodor takes Intentional Realism to be
inconsistent with what he calls (Fodor 1987: 56) Content Holism, "the idea
that the identity - specifically, the intentional content - of a propositional
attitude is determined by the totality of its epistemic liaisons", where
proposition q is an epistemic liaison of proposition p for an
agent A if A takes the truth of q to be relevant to the semantic
assessment of p. So he rejects Content Holism and espouses Content
Atomism or what he calls the "denotational" theory of content.
3. Frege's Puzzle and Belief-ascriptions
Consider
utterances of sentences (1) and (2) which differ from each other in that in (2)
"Cicero" is replaced by the coreferential name "Tully":
(1) Cicero was a Roman orator.
(2) Tully was a Roman orator.
On TDR, an utterance of (1) expresses the same
proposition as an utterance of (2). Now, consider an utterance of (3) and an utterance
of (4):
(3) Sarah believes that Cicero was a Roman orator.
(4) Sarah believes that Tully was a Roman orator.
Sentence (1) is a syntactic constituent of (3) and (2)
is a constituent of (4). According to TDR, both singular terms
"Cicero" and "Tully" contribute nothing other than their
respective referent to the propositions respectively expressed by an utterance
of (3) and by an utterance of (4). Now, since "Cicero" and
"Tully" have the same referent, the proposition expressed by an
utterance of (3) is no other than the proposition expressed by an utterance of
(4).
In
"On Sense and Reference", Frege advances the following argument
against TDR:
(Ia) If an utterance of (1) and an utterance of (2)
did express the same proposition, then belief-ascriptions (3) and (4) ought to
have always the same truth-value (for a given assignment of referent to
"Cicero" and "Tully").
(IIa) (3) and (4) may have different truth-values.
(IIIa) Conclusion: an utterance of (1) and an
utterance of (2) do not express the same proposition.
Frege concludes that the contribution of a singular
term to the proposition expressed by the utterance of a sentence containing it
is its sense (Sinn) or the mode of presentation of its referent.
4. Salmon's response
In
his book, Frege's Puzzle, Salmon (1986), who argues for TDR, rejects
premiss (IIa) of the Fregean argument. In favor of premiss (IIa), common sense
has it that Sarah, a perfectly rational person, could well assent to the
proposition expressed by an utterance of (1) or she could express that
proposition by uttering (1). Concomitantly, she might rationally dissent from
the proposition expressed by an utterance of (2) and rationally utter the
negation of the proposition expressed by an utterance of (2).
In
such a situation, common sense would unhesitantly say that this is a case in
which an utterance of (3) is true and an utterance of (4) is false. Salmon
claims that, if the proposition expressed by an utterance of (3) is true, then
so is the proposition expressed by an utterance of (4). On his view, even
though Sarah might give all conceivable evidence that, although she holds true
the proposition expressed by an utterance of (1), she does not hold true the
proposition expressed by an utterance of (2), nonetheless utterances of (3) and
(4) have the same truth-value. So if (3) expresses a truth, then so must (4).
On Salmon's view then, given that Sarah holds true the proposition expressed by
an utterance of (1), she is committed to holding true the proposition expressed
by an utterance of (2). If she does not, then she must be confused, not quite
rational.
Salmon's
strategy is twofold. On the one hand, Salmon holds that the logical form of the
proposition explicitly expressed by either belief-ascription (3) or (4)
is:
( m) BEL (Sarah, p, m)
where "BEL" is a three place predicate,
"p" is the Russellian singular proposition (expressible by an
utterance of either (1) or (2)) and "m" is the mode of presentation
of the singular proposition (which is no other than the mode of presentation of
the singular term). So the proposition explicitly expressed by an utterance of
either (3) or (4) contains an existential quantification over modes of
presentation of Cicero. It does not refer to any mode of presentation of
Cicero.
On
the other hand, Salmon holds that, in addition to the unique proposition
explicitly expressed by an utterance of either (3) or (4), reference is made to
particular modes of presentation of Cicero in what is communicated by
utterances of (3) and (4). What is communicated by an utterance is richer than
the proposition the utterance explicitly expresses for it includes what is implicitly
communicated. What is communicated by an utterance of (3) and what is
communicated by an utterance of (4) contain a reference to a particular mode of
presentation of Cicero.7 But the mode of presentation of
Cicero referred to by what is communicated by (3) differs from the mode of
presentation of Cicero referred to by what is communicated by (4).
So
an utterance of (3) and an utterance of (4) explicitly express the same true
(let us suppose) general proposition, which contains an existential
quantification over modes of presentation of Cicero. In addition, an utterance
of (3) conveys implicitly the true proposition that Sarah recognizes the
singular proposition under the mode of presentation of Cicero associated with
"Cicero" and an utterance of (4) implicitly conveys the false
proposition that Sarah recognizes the same singular proposition under the mode
of presentation associated with "Tully".
Salmon's
account is strongly revisionistic: if Salmon is right, then ordinary usage errs
in supposing that an utterance of (3) can express a true proposition, and an
utterance of (4) a false proposition. Suppose Sarah gives all conceivable evidence
that she holds false the proposition expressed by an utterance of (2). This
would suggest that an utterance of (4) is false. Then (5) would seem to express
a true proposition:
(5) Sarah does not believe that Tully was a Roman
orator.
Intuitively, (5) seems to deny what (4) asserts.
Salmon assumes a distinction between the proposition explicitly expressed by an
utterance of (4) and what is overall communicated by an utterance of (4).
Salmon seems therefore to face the following dilemma. He may either suppose
that what is denied by an utterance of (5) is the proposition explicitly
expressed by an utterance of (4) or the overall content communicated by an
utterance of (4).
Suppose
he chooses the first possibility. On his view, the proposition explicitly
expressed by an utterance of either (3) or (4) is the true general proposition
to the effect that there exists a mode of presentation of Cicero under which
Sarah believes that Cicero is a Roman orator. Suppose then that he takes the
view that the proposition explicitly expressed by an utterance of (5) is false,
not true. Remember: Salmon had the resources to argue that although an
utterance of (4) is true (if an utterance of (3) is), still an utterance of (4)
may misleadingly convey the false information that Sarah believes that Cicero
was a Roman orator under the mode of presentation of Cicero associated with
"Tully". However, it is hard to see how Salmon could explain how by
expressing a literally false proposition, an utterance of (5) may simultaneously
communicate overall what we take to be true information.
Suppose
Salmon chooses the second possibility. He may assume that what is denied by (5)
is not the proposition explicitly expressed by an utterance of (4) but the
overall content communicated by an utterance of (4). The hard problem then
faced by Salmon would be to explain how something which was merely communicated
by, and was not part of the proposition explicitly expressed by, an utterance
of (4), becomes, in virtue of the presence of the negation (in 5)), part of the
proposition explicitly expressed by an utterance of (5) - part of the
truth-conditions of an utterance of (5).8
5. Fodor's Account
In
SAIB, Fodor considers a variant of Frege's argument against TDR:
(Ib) The content expressed by a complex expression is
a function of the contents of its constituents.
(IIb) The content of an expression is its denotation.
(IIIb) Two expressions with the same content can
always be substituted one for the other salva veritate without altering
the truth-value of the more complex expression.
(IVb) As examples (3) and (4) show, two expressions
with the same denotation are not always substitutable one for the other in a
complex expression without altering the truth-value of the complex expression.
(Vb) Frege concludes that the culprit is assumption
(IIb) and that the content of an expression does not reduce to its denotation.
Because
he wants at all costs to avoid Content Holism, Fodor's goal is to protect (IIb)
from Frege's argument, i.e., to show that the non-substitutability salva
veritate of coreferential expressions in belief contexts is compatible with
the assumption that they have the same content. Since the context in which the
substitution is performed is a belief context, Fodor's defense of the
denotational theory depends on a theory of belief attributions. Before arguing
for his theory, Fodor refines his theory of belief-states as presented
in his 1987 book, Psychosemantics. Believing is now treated as a four
place relation between (a) a person, (b) a proposition (or content), (c) a
vehicle (or mental symbol) and (d) a functional role.
The
propositional content is what in other contexts Fodor and other philosophers
call broad content. The vehicle is a symbol token; it has therefore
syntactic and semantic properties. Two vehicle tokens belong to distinct types
either if they are syntactically different or if they express different
contents. Two vehicle tokens belonging to two distinct types can - just as
symbols of public languages - express one and the same proposition. Fodor's
main innovation resides in his insertion of the functional role as one of the
parameters of the belief relation. The functional role (of the vehicle) is its
inferential role in a belief system: "its causal role in (certain) mental
processes" (SAIB: 168). Two vehicle tokens belonging to one and the same
type will have distinct functional roles if they belong to different belief
systems. Conversely (cf. SAIB, Note 8: 176), two vehicle tokens belonging to
two distinct types (with distinct syntactic or semantic properties) may have
one and the same functional role: they may contribute to the tokening of one
and the same belief within two distinct belief systems.
Since
believing is a four place relation, on Fodor's view, a person may entertain two
different belief-states towards one and the same propositional content. The
difference in belief-state will come from a difference between either the
vehicles or the functional roles. The Fodorian view does not have the
revisionist implications of Salmon's.
From
Fodor's standpoint, one can distinguish more or less specific belief
attributions according to whether they aspire to capture, besides the content,
the vehicle, of the belief. A vehicle-specific attribution will by assumption
be more specific than an attribution which ambitions merely to capture the
content. According to Fodor, the norms guiding an ascriber in his or her
specification of the vehicle are less constraining than the norms guiding the
specification of content (in the sense that the former are subject to more
pragmatic considerations than the latter):
the
embedded formula must express the very proposition that the 'believes'
tpredicate attributes. I think, however, that it is otherwise with the
specification of the vehicle: here everything is slippery and pragmatic.
Roughly, what's required is a degree of isomorphism to the vehicle that is
appropriate to the purposes at hand; and there isn't any purpose-independent
specification of how much isomorphism is enough (SAIB: 171).
Let
us represent the less specific attribution (the merely content-specific
attribution) by means of a formula such as (A1):
(A1) ( x)( y)((x = a vehicle & y = a role) &
(BEL (Sarah, P, x, y)))
where "P" refers to the content expressible
by an utterance of (1) "Cicero was a Roman orator". Such a formula,
which refers to the propositional content, contains an existential
generalization over both vehicles and functional roles, neither of which is
specified. Such a formula bears affinity to what is traditionally called a de
re attribution; it captures so-called broad content. We can represent a
more specific attribution aiming at specifying the vehicle too by (A2):
(A2) ( y)((y = a role) & (BEL (Sarah, P, c, y)))
where "c" refers to the vehicle (or mental
symbol) in Sarah's head - a symbol "isomorphic" to the English
sentence (1) "Cicero was a Roman orator". Such a formula, which
refers both to the content and to the vehicle, still generalizes over
functional roles. It is closer than (A1) to what is traditionally called a de
dicto attribution and it delivers more specific information about the
belief-state than (A1).
Suppose
an utterance like (3) or (4) is taken to be as little specific as possible -
specifying no more than the (broad) content of Sarah's belief on the model of
the double existential quantification over vehicles and functional roles
(contained in (A1)). On this interpretation, an utterance of (3) and an
utterance of (4) contain no means of referring to the vehicle. The referential expressions
have their ordinary references: they are mutually substitutable salva
veritate in (3) and (4). And it is possible to hold true both an utterance
of (3) and an utterance of (4). Let us now interpret an utterance of (3) as a
more specific attribution aimed at specifying the content and the vehicle of
Sarah's belief-state. In this case, we could represent respectively (3) and (4)
on the model of the simple existential quantification (over functional roles)
contained in (A2). :
(3') ( y)((y = a role) & (BEL (Sarah, P, c, y)))
where "c" refers to the vehicle in Sarah's
head "isomorphic" to the English sentence (1) "Cicero was a
Roman orator".
(4') ( y)((y = a role) & (BEL (Sarah, P, t, y)))
where "t" refers to the vehicle in Sarah's
head "isomorphic" to the English sentence (2) "Tully was a Roman
orator". On this more specific interpretation, in spite of the fact that
"Cicero" and "Tully" are coreferential (or in spite of the
fact that an utterance of (1) and an utterance of (2) have the same truth-value),
(3') would be a true formula and (4') would be a false formula.
6. Fodor's Dilemma
It
follows that Fodor's theory is not open to the objections I voiced earlier
against Salmon's. However, its strength might well turn out to be a weakness
from within the general perspective of Fodor on scientific psychology as
encapsulated by the three assumptions recapitulated above. Consider the fact
that Fodor allows two vehicle-specific attributions to be representable by two
logical formulae with distinct truth-values. He thereby concedes that the
semantics of vehicle-specific belief attributions is not strictly
compositional: the content of an attribution - its truth-value - is not just a
function of the contents (the denotations) of its constituents. It also depends
on a non-semantic aspect of one or more of its constituents - non-semantic at
least by Fodor's standards according to which all of the content of a
belief-state resides in the proposition independent both of the syntactic
properties of the vehicle and of its functional role. The difference between
the truth-value of (3') and (4') can be attributed to a difference between the
syntactic properties of the mental symbols (or the vehicles) in Sarah's head
respectively "isomorphic" to "Cicero" and to "Tully".
From Fodor's standpoint on scientific psychology, one can assume that the
explanatory success of a belief-ascription depends on the ability of the
ascription to refer jointly to the intentional content and to the syntactic
properties of the vehicle whose semantic property is the content referred to in
the ascription, since according to the Formality Condition, the causal
properties of a mental symbol are its syntactic properties.
Now,
consider a ceteris paribus commonsense psychological generalization such
as "If a person X forms the perceptual belief that a 400 kgs bull
is galloping onto her, other things being equal, she will acquire the desire
(or the intention) to distance herself from the bull's trajectory". The
antecedent of such a generalization contains a belief-ascription which, from
Fodor's point of view, is analyzable as a relation between a person X,
proposition P (that a 400 kgs bull is galloping onto the person X),
a vehicle and a functional role. The consequent contains a desire-attribution
analyzable as a relation between the person referred to in the antecedent, the
proposition Q (that X locate herself at a respectable distance from the
trajectory of the bull referred to in the antecedent), a vehicle and a
functional role.
Unlike
vehicle-specific attributions such as (3') and (4') whose truth-value and
explanatory role depend - besides reference to content - upon the syntactic
properties of the vehicle, the explanatory success of the generalization may
depend upon the functional role of the attributed belief. The
generalization will successfully explain the behavior of a person who prefers
to maximize the distance between herself and the 400 kgs bull galloping onto
her. But a person may believe that she is on the trajectory of a 400 kgs bull
without believing to be herself that person. Or perhaps one should say that a
person may believe of (or about) herself that she is on the trajectory of a
bull without believing that she is such a person. Imagine a complicated system
of mirrors by means of which a person sees herself on the trajectory of a 400
kgs galloping bull without realizing that she is that person.
Alternatively,
a person may believe that a 400 kgs bull is galloping onto her and nonetheless
prefer to stay still on this trajectory because her belief system includes the
belief that the soul of a person trampled to death by a bull will go straight
to Heaven and, other things being equal, she prefers for her soul to go
straight to Heaven. A person whose belief system includes the belief that the
soul of a person whose body has been trampled to death by a bull will go
straight to Heaven and whose preference system includes the preference that her
soul go straight to Heaven may have the belief that a 400 kgs bull is galloping
towards her. She may have, according to Fodor, a belief with the same
intentional content as the belief of a person who does not believe that the
soul of a person whose body has been trampled to death will go straight to
Heaven. The vehicle by means of which the person X (who believes that the soul
of a person whose body has been trampled to death by a bull will go straight to
Heaven) believes that a 400 kgs bull is galloping onto her may be a mental
symbol token of the same type as the vehicle by means of which a person Y (who
does not believe that the soul of a person whose body has been trampled to
death by a bull will go straight to Heaven) believes that a 400 kgs bull is
galloping onto her. The difference between the belief-states of X and Y when
they both believe that a 400 kgs bull is galloping towards them comes from the
insertion of two vehicle tokens of the same type within two distinct belief
systems.
In
these conditions, Fodor's theory of belief-ascriptions seems to face the
following dilemma: either Fodor takes functional role to be an ingredient of
the causal role of the vehicle; or he takes it to be an ingredient of the
content of the vehicle. First alternative: Fodor assumes that the inferential
potential of a belief (the belief that a 400 kgs bull is galloping towards the
person having this belief) contributes to the causal role of the belief. In
this case, he must concede that the causal role of a mental representation (a
vehicle) does not reduce, contrary to the Formality Condition, to purely
syntactic properties. Perhaps, Fodor could distinguish a narrow causal role
(possessed by a symbol in virtue of its syntactic properties) and a broad
causal role (attributed to the functional role of the symbol). The latter, not
the former, might depend upon the doxastic environment of the vehicle. But this
would imply a broadening (or a liberalization) of the Formality Condition.
Second alternative: Fodor denies that the functional role of a symbol has
causal efficacy and he takes functional role to be an ingredient of the content
of the mental symbol. In this case, he must give up a purely denotational
(atomistic) theory of content and revise his rejection of Content Holism. On my
own view, what Fodor ought to do is both.9
Footnotes
1. This assumption is more controversial than it may
sound at first since some philosophers (such as Churchland 1989) deny it.
2. Schiffer (1992: 502-3).
3. See Fodor 1990a. Intentional Realism too pushes him
towards Content Atomism and way from Content Holism.
4. See Fodor 1987 (ch. 1 and 3).
5. The locus classicus is Fodor 1981b. See also Fodor
1987 (ch. 1).
6. Cf. Jacob 1991a.
7. Salmon assumes that the content implicitly
communicated by an utterance is generated via Gricean mechanisms.
8. The last two paragraphs were prompted by remarks by
Récanati. I have criticized Salmon in detail in Jacob 1991b.
9. I am grateful to the organizers of the NISTADS Workshop on Rationality in Cognitive Science and Social Science and to the different participants.
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