intentionality and causal analysis

Intentionality and Causal AnalysisAuthor(s): C. G. PradoSource: Noûs, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Sep., 1972), pp. 281-287Published by: WileyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2214776 .

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INTENTIONALITY AND CAUSAL ANALYSIS 281

3Pp. 27-30 of the paperback edition. 4 I have argued for this interpretation on several occasions. See "Kant on the

Mathematical Method", The Monist vol. 51 (1967), pp. 352-375 (reprinted in Kant Studies To-Day, ed. by Lewis White Beck, Open Court, La Salle, Ill., 1969, pp. 117-140); my papers in Deskription, Analytizitdt und Existenz, ed. by Paul Weingarter, Pustet, Salzburg and Munich, 1966; "On Kant's Notion of Intuition (Anschauung)", in The First Critique: Reflections on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, ed. by Terence Penelhun and J. J. MacIntosh, Wadsworth Publishing Company, Belmont, Calif., 1969, pp. 38-53; "Kantian Intuitions," Inquiry (1971, forthcoming); "Kant's 'New Method of Thought' and his Theory of Mathematics," Ajatus vol. 27 (1965), pp. 37-47; "Kantin oppi matematiikasta" (in Finnish), Ajatus vol. 22 (1959), pp. 5-85.

5 See, e.g., T. E. Wilkerson, "Transcendental Arguments," The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 20 (1970), pp. 200-212, especially p. 200.

6 Moltke Gram, Nous vol. 5 (1971), pp. 15-26. Unspecified references in the sequel are to this paper.

7Most explicitly in "Quantifiers, Language-Games, and Transcendental Arguments," forthcoming in the Proceedings of the New York University Meta- physics Colloquium for 1970-71. See also "Language-Games for Quantifiers," American Philosophical Quarterly, Monograph Series, vol. 2: Studies in Logical Theory, Blackwell's, Oxford, 1968, pp. 46-72, and "Kant on the Mathematical Method" (above note 4).

8See "Kant on the Mathematical Method" (note 4 above), and "Information, Deduction, and A Priori," Nouis vol. 4 (1970), pp. 135-152.

9 Op. cit. (note 5 above), especially pp. 202-3. 10 Essentially the same point was made by Roger Buck in his comment on

Gram's paper at the Symposium on Transcendental Arguments, APA Western Division Meeting, Chicago, May 7, 1971.

Intentionality and Causal Analysis C. G. PRADO

QUEEN S UNIVERSITY

In A Materialist Theory of the Mind (Routledge, 1968) D. M. Armstrong offers a reductionist account of intentionality. Arm- strong is not concerned with linguistic but rather with psycho- logical intentionality or 'directedness'. The question he asks is how a thought or perception qua mental state-"points" to its object. Armstrong must answer in a way at least consistent with his reductive materialist principles. The peculiar relatedness of some conscious states to things in the world-usually the causes of those states-must be shown to be explicable without recourse to irreducible intentional relations or mysterious acts of the soul.

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A thought or perception of x can relate to x only in ways reducible to causal connections and physical dispositions.

Armstrong's general reductivist strategy is to give an account of our mental concepts in terms of topic-neutral causal concepts, and then to go on to argue that those topic-neutral causal concepts are co-extensive with certain physical causal concepts. His model for this identity is the discovered contingent identity of the gene and the DNA molecule. His model for the reduction of perception and will to causal concepts is the goal-directed and information- sensitive or controlled behaviour of homing rockets and thermostats. Human purposive behaviour is to be understood as simply very complex goal-directed and information-sensitive activity, and such concepts as that of the will as unspecified causal concepts which science is slowly filling in in terms of neural and anatomical goings- on.

Summations of Armstrong's theses tend to suggest rather crude views. Reviews of A Materialist Theory of the Mind have tended to suggest that the crudeness of the views is not a function of unfair summations. (See, e.g., William Kneale's review in Mind, Vol. LXXVIII, No. 310, and Charles Taylor's review in The Philo- sophical Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 74.) In any case, at the risk of being unfair I shall briefly sketch Armstrong's account of intentionality, restricting myself, as does Armstrong, to perception.

The account of intentionality turns on two theses: that to perceive is simply to acquire true or false beliefs (209), and that purposive behaviour is mentally caused goal-directed activity (139-44). At a deeper level of analysis, perception is the acquisition of causally operant states which determine behaviour itself produced by certain other mental states/causes or Armstrongian purposes. (Ch. 11) The latter are purposes only in that they are mental causes terminated by Armstrongian ends: i.e. specific states of affairs perception of which terminates the operation of the causes in question. (139-44) That the causes of behaviour are so affected or 'guided' by the causal action of states the acquisition of which is perception is what makes the mental causes of behaviour, and hence behaviour, "information-sensitive".

Armstrong's proposed account of perceiving fails because it precludes the differentiation of the sense-modalities by reducing the perceiving of x to the acquiring of an aptness or propensity to 0. (245-51) The recognizable, though perhaps not further des- cribable, properties that differentiate, say, seeing from hearing are simply precluded by Armstrong's conception of perception as




merely the acquiring of information-or ultimately, as the acquiring of certain non-dispositional bases of dispositions to behave in specific ways.

Even to introspection the perception of x is only an awareness of an extraordinarily abstract, relational state of affairs: i.e. of something "of whose non-relational properties we [have] no direct awareness at all.. . operating to produce certain behaviour." (96) Ultimately, an introspection of a perception is itself simply the acquiring of an aptness or propensity to behave in some way bearing on that state the acquisition of which has been introspected. (95-99, 326-27, 333)

Were the foregoing insufficient, it could also be objected against Armstrong's account of perception that if A and B are said to perceive the same x, but acquire different behavioural dispositions in so doing, the notion of 'the same x' or simply that of a material object-may collapse into that of a postulated common cause of diverse behavioural dispositions.

The second key thesis is that the will is the mental cause of behaviour. Purposive activity is precisely activity with a mental cause. (131-37) Armstrong rejects Ryle's infinite-regress argument by distinguishing between acts and operations of the will. The latter are allegedly purposive only in that they cause action; they are causes lying outside of experience. In short, acts are things we do; operations of the will are things that happen to us. Ryle's regress, then, only goes back as far as acts. "There is no regress involved in saying that actions are caused by the operations of the will".(1 37)

What is important about Armstrong's second thesis, with respect to intentionality, is that "(p) urposive activity. . . is a train of activities initiated and sustained by a mental 'thrust' or causal state", and that an end "is simply the state of affairs such that perception that it has been reached feeds back to the sustaining causal state and stops the causal state operating" (137). A purpose, then, is simply an information-sensitive or information controlled mental cause, and it is intentional or "directed" only in that it is terminated by some specific state of affairs. A purpose "points" to its end simply in that there is some state of affairs which will, under diverse circumstances, terminate that purpose or "satisfy" it.

Armstrong argues that the problem of what makes a certain mental event the perception that a certain situation obtains - the problem of the intentionality of perception - is bound up with the intentionality of the will.



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The notion of the intentional object of a perception is bound up with the notion of an objective (262-63).

Perhaps the best way of making clear what Armstrong is maintaining is to consider his own example. The example is that of a child sorting blocks and putting blue blocks into a box. The immediate problem is deciding "why what we would ordinarily call 'the objective' of the discriminatory behaviour and 'the object' of the perception have a special right to be so called". (263) The point is to explain objectification and why certain internal states are insufficient to explain activity that bears on or adapts itself to the environment. The answer is given in terms of a "causal circuit" which is "involved in purposive behaviour that has as its objective some change in non-relational or relational properties of the object perceived". (loc. cit.) The causal circuit is as follows:

Consider the action of picking up the blue block and putting it in the box... The situation must begin with the blue surface of the block acting upon the perceiver. (Otherwise the object is not seen.) As a result of this effect on the perceiver, he is able, if he is so impelled, to reach out, pick up the block and put it into the box. Now what brings this train of actions, initiated and sustained by a mental cause in the perceiver, to an end ? It is the perception that the block is safely in the box. But this involves the causal action of the blue block in the box on the perceiver. So the thing perceived acts on the perceiver, who in turn brings about some change in the non-relational or relational properties of the situation, and this new situation in turn acts on the perceiver to inhibit further action. This is the causal circuit.... (263)

Armstrong then argues that it is only by taking the blue surface and the putting of the block in the box as object and objective that we "close the causal circuit" and "reach out into the world the full way that the circuit goes". (264) Allegedly we now have a "satisfactory account" of the intentionality of perception or of objectification. A state, S, is a perception in that it is caused by x and is so determined by x (and possibly other mental states) that it directs or determines the behaviour produced by a mental cause, C, in such a way that the behaviour bears on x, alters x, and x in its new circumstances acts on the percipient-agent, producing S., which terminates C operating.

What we have here is an "other person" account of objectification-objectification in the sense that we can designate just this (x) as the object perceived. It is, however, very much open to question whether Armstrong has offered an account of objectifi-




cation or of how x is a such-and-such for the percipient. At one level he has given us a (possible) justification for describing just this or that as what is perceived. At this level the object perceived or intentional object is really no more than a construct out of behaviour and behavioural dispositions.

The objection I want to raise against Armstrong is that his account of the intentionality of perception fails because he is unable to unambiguously pick out the objectives which are crucial for that account and hence is unable to close his causal circuits.

The trouble is that for Armstrong, an objective, what an agent intends, is simply some state of affairs "such that perception that it has been reached feeds back to the sustaining causal state and stops the causal state operating". (139) Armstrong runs into the problem of how to differentiate objectives from insurmountable obstacles, and decides that an objective is simply a state of affairs that terminates purposive (i.e. mentally caused, information- sensitive) behaviour under diverse circumstances. (See 139-44; cf. R. H. Kane, "Minds, Causes, and Behaviour", Review of Meta- physics, Vol. XXIV, No. 2, December 1970). Now in the causal circuit that allegedly explains intentionality, what makes a perception/mental state "point" to its object is the propensity of that state to direct mentally caused behaviour on just that object. The object thereby becomes part of an objective perception of the attainment of which terminates the operant mental cause. The role of a purpose is to explain how x, in the new circumstances resulting from the behaviour in question, comes to affect the percipient- agent as it does: i.e. in such a way that the operant mental cause is terminated. In other words, x-in-its-new-circumstances is just that state of affairs which, under diverse circumstances, terminates the mental cause and is hence an Armstrongian objective.

All that is necessary to frustrate Armstrong's program is that there be more than one state of affairs which will, under diverse circumstances, terminate the operations of a mental cause. In such cases, we would be unable, given Armstrong's principles, to pick out the requisite objective. Both states of affairs would be Armstrongian objectives. We might then have to say that something an agent did not intend was intended by that agent. But of greater immediate importance, as either state of affairs would close the causal circuit, we might then not be able to say what the object of perception was. If the objective is not unambiguously identifiable, the behaviour produced cannot be said to bear on just this or just that. If this is the case, then the perceptual state does not "point"



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unambiguously to anything. There cannot be any appeal to the agent's own knowledge of his objective, of course, as Armstrong's account would then be rendered circular and non-reductive. (See 141)

The clearest sort of example of a state of affairs which is not what an agent intends but which systematically terminates an Armstrongian mental cause is that in which some obstacle regularly frustrates an agent's intentions. A case in point is telephoning one's home and finding the line busy. Given the knowledge that a teenaged daughter talks for hours on the telephone, perception of a busy-signal might as systematically terminate an operant mental cause as would perception of the intended state of affairs: the telephone's being answered.

Armstrong may respond that the example is not a counter- instance in that the telephone's being answered would terminate the mental cause across a broader range of diverse circumstances. I do not see that there is much else he can say. However, such a response suffices to bring out the force of the objection: we would ask what basis Armstrong has for arguing that the busy- signal would terminate the mental cause in fewer cases, and hence for selecting the telephone's being answered as the proper objective. It seems to me that the only possible answer is that the busy-signal is not what the agent intends.

The foregoing leads immediately to another worrying point. Armstrong relies heavily on purposes. Something is a perception, and intentional, only against the backdrop of a purpose. But we are told very little about the intentionality of purposes. A mental state is a purpose, and intentional, and "points" to something only in that there is some specific state of affairs-and note that it will almost always be a future state of affairs perception of which will terminate the mental state/cause in question. But in virtue of what are some states of affairs and some mental states or causes so related that perception of the former terminates the latter? In arguing against the Rylean conception of dispositions Armstrong appeals to the principle of Sufficient Reason. (87) Surely it is fair to ask for the reasons why some states of affairs have a special causal efficacy with respect to some mental states or causes ? Here, as in the matter of the identification of objectives, Armstrong seems to be presupposing what he is attempting to analyze. I see no alternative to saying that what relates certain states of affairs to certain mental states in the way in question is that the former are what agents intend.




What the foregoing points come to is that not only does Arm- strong seem to face the insurmountable problem of being unable, given his principles, to unambiguously identify an objective, he seems unable to say, for anything labeled an objective in his system, why it is such. That is, he has not given any reason why a state of affairs that perhaps does terminate a given mental cause should do so. Even allowing that Armstrong can close his causal circuits, invoking them seems to amount to no more than offering a description of a piece of behaviour which bears on some particular thing. Nothing is explained. The directedness or intentionality of purposes explains why behaviour bears on just this or that- whatever is a such-and-such for us in virtue of the intentionality of perception. What Armstrong requires is an account of why a given mental state or cause "points" to a state of affairs and is therefore terminated by perception of that state of affairs. It is not enough to pick out as the objective the state of affairs that does terminate the mental state or cause. So long as the account in question is not forthcoming, Armstrong fails to deal with intentionality -or at worst is guilty of presupposing and using precisely what he is trying to analyze.

Notices

CONFERENCE ON FORMAL ONTOLOGY

A conference on formal ontology will be held at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, on October 14th and 15th, 1972. Principal speakers will be Nino Cocciarella, Donald Davidson, Rolf Eberle, Bas C. van Fraassen, and Montgomery Furth. The conference is sponsored jointly by the Department of Philosophy at Victoria and by the Canada Council.

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Information about philosophical translations in progress is collected by the SIU Translation Center, and published quarterly in The Philosopher's Index. Notification of translations should be sent to: Dr. Fritz Marti, Director, Trans- lation Center, Humanities Division, SIU, Edwardsville, Ill. 62025.

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intentionality and causal analysis

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