intentionality and the language of thought

8/9/2019 Intentionality and the Language of Thought

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Intentionality and the Language of Thought

Author(s): Stephen SchifferSource: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 87 (1986 - 1987), pp. 35-55Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Aristotelian SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4545054

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III*-INTENTIONALITY AND THELANGUAGE OF THOUGHTby Stephen SchifferI

Ralph, a friend of mine, is so dumb as to believe that wormssnore. Now it's reasonableto supposethat there is someinternalstate of Ralph's that is hisbelief, and, moreover,that this state isa physical state, no doubt a neural state of a certain kind. Let nbe the neural state-token that happens to be Ralph's presentbelief that worms snore;then a philosopher is apt to raisethesetwo questions:

(a) What makes n a belief?(b) What makes n a belief that wormssnore?

I shall be concerned with a particularway of trying to answer(b), but it will be a good idea if I firstsay something about (a), ifonly to get it out of the way of the issues I want to focus on.Most materialistically minded philosophers nowadays feelthat they know how to answer (a). What makes n a belief, theyfeel, is that it has a certainfunctionalproperty-i.e.t's a token ofaphysical state-type that is counterfactually related to sensoryinput, behavioral output, and to other internal states in suchand such ways. They may not feel that they know exactly whatfunctional propertya state must have in orderto be a belief, butthey feel confident that there is one. I'm going to go along withthis consensusfor the purposesof this talk, and, as will soon beclear, my going along with this is a concession to the positionthat I'm going to be critical towards.This brings us to (b), the question of what accounts for n's

having the content t has. And the first thing to notice about (b)is that it's a very big and very sexy question, and one that'sin the limelight of contemporary philosophy. For to know theanswer to (b) would be to have nothing less than a completetheory of intentionality,i.e. a complete theory of the contentof mental states. If one had an answer to (b) one would know

* Meeting of the AristotelianSociety held at 5/7 Tavistock Place, LondonWCI,onMonday, 10 November,1986 at 6.00 p.m.


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INTENTIONALITY AND THE LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT 37therefore has that state of affairs as its truth condition. So Ipropose that we attend not to (b), but to the closely relatedquestion:

(c) What is it for a state of affairsa to be the truth onditionfa mental representation m?(Thus, with respect to (b) the question becomes: What makesthe possiblestate of affairsthat wormssnorethe truth conditionof Ralph's state n?)Perhapswe can answer (c) without havingthereby arrived at a completenswer to (b), but no answer to thegeneralization of (b) can fail to answer(c), and an answer to (c)would be pretty close to a complete theory of the content ofmental states.

IIThis brings me to the specific topic of my talk: a particularprogramme foranswering (c) and thus, to a largeextent, (b). I'llcall this programme the strong anguage f thought ypothesis,r'SLT', forshort.The theoryisa child ofourcomputerage and ofthe advent ofcognitive psychology, and itsparentsincludeJerryFodor, Hartry Field, Fred Dretske, Gilbert Harman, andothers; still other materialistically inclined philosophers likeRobert Stalnaker and Brian Loar subscribe to importantelements of it. The programme may be defined by these twoclaims:

[1](i) We think in a language f thought,a neural system ofmental representation, and consequently every mentalrepresentation is (or involves-a qualification we mayignore) a formula of one's language of thought.(ii) It is possibleto account forwhat makesa stateofaffairsthe truth condition of a mental representationin whollynaturalistic terms; i.e. without recourse to any intentionalor semantic notions.

Although it isn'tstrictlyentailed by [1], the idea behindSLT isacomplete reduction of meaning and intentionality to therepresentational features of expressions in the language ofthought. 'The picture', as Colin McGinn has neatly depicted it,'is that the innersentencesare the basicobjectsof interpretation;


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38 STEPHEN SCHIFFERtheir content confers content upon thoughts; and thoughtstransmit their content to outer speech."

We need now to see what these two claims come to, andgetting clear on that will enable us to state our issue in a clearerand more useful way.The firstclaim is that we thinkin a languageofthought; somegloss is required, but, happily, our purposes can be servedwithout too much precision.Mental representations, we've already noticed, are easilypurchased: Ralph's neural state n is a mental representationsimply, and trivially, byvirtue ofbeing a belief,and it representsthe possible state of affairs that worms snore simply, andtrivially, by virtue of having that state of affairsas its truthcondition. So it should be clear that, to saythat there are mentalrepresentationsisn't yet to say that there is a systemof mentalrepresentation,let alone one that is sufficiently anguage-liketowarrantmetaphorical talk of a language of thought. But we'renot too far from that further claim. For as regards Ralph'srepresentational state, it's plausible to suppose that there's apartof it which representsworms,and another which representssnoring,and that it's because these partsare related in a certainway that the whole representsthe possible state of affairs thatwormssnore. In short, it's plausible to supposethat our internalstates of representation 'have elements and structurein a waythat is analogous to the way in which sentences have elementsand structure',2that these states, in other words, belong to alanguage-like systemof internalrepresentation,a system whichmight with appropriateness be called a language f thought.But, to continue the story, suppose that not only does Ralphbelieve that worms snore, he desiresthis as well. In this case, hisbelief and his desire have something in common: both involverepresentationsof the same state of affairs.But of coursethere'salso something that's different:one state is a belief, the other adesire; and so it's plausible to suppose that when you believethat p you stand in a certain relation to an internal represen-tation that p, and that when you desire that p you stand in

'The Characterf Mind (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 70.2Gilbert Harman, 'Is there Mental Representation?', in Wade C. Savage (ed.),PerceptionndCognition:ssues n theFoundationsf PsychologyMinneapolis, University ofMinnesota Press, 1978), p. 58.


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INTENTIONALITY AND THE LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT 39a certain other relation to an internal representationthat p.Thus, to change the metaphora little, to saythatwe think in alanguage of thought is to say that the brain is a computer, aninformation-processor,and thus thinks (i.e. processes) in aninner machine-language, the 'brain's language of synapticinterconnectionsand neuralspikes'.3And it'sto say, finally, thatto believe thatp is to stand in a certain relation to a formulaofthe neural code which representsp; that to desire that p is tostand in a certain other elation to a formula of the neural codewhich represents p; and so on for the remaining kinds ofpropositional attitudes.Notice that [1]-(i), the empirical hypothesis that we think in alanguage of thought, is consistent with anyphilosophical theorythat is itself consistent with our thoughts having physicalrealizations. For example one could hold the Brentanoesquethesis that believing is an irreducibly mental relation topropositions, while accepting that the physical state-tokens hatrealize our beliefs have sentential structure. For such a theoristthere would be no question of giving a naturalistic account ofwhat determines truth conditions in the language of thought;the theoristwould accept [I]-(i) but not [I]-(ii). That's why I'mcalling the programme that I'm in the midst of describing thestronglanguage of thought thesis;one can accept that we think ina languageof thoughtwithout thinkingthat the representationalor truth-theoretic featuresof neuralexpressionsenjoy any sort ofnaturalisticexplication; without thinking, in fact, that one canget any leverage on problems of intentionality from the mereassumption that we process information in a neural code.What exactly does [ l]-(ii) come to? Our questionisthis:Whatmakes a given state of affairs the truth condition of a givenmental representation?Thus (ii) amounts to the claim that wecan complete the following schema in a way that is correct andmentionsnothingon itsright-hand-side hat isn't naturalisticallykosher:

For any state of affairsa and mental representationm, a ismr's ruth condition iff...'David Lewis, 'New Work for a Theory of Universals', Australasian ournalofPhilosophy 1 (1983), pp. 343-377, p. 346.


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40 STEPHEN SCHIFFER

But this is best put in other terms now that it's to be taken inconjunction with the further hypothesis that mental represen-tations are sentences in a language f thought, an innersystem fmental representation.Now that we're dealing with a languagewhich contains an infinity of sentences, what we're reallyconcerned with is the question of what determines the truthcondition of each of the infinitely many sentences in a givenmentalese language.For our purposes, a theory giving the truth conditions for amentalese language M may be viewed as the specificationof afunction which maps each sentence of M onto a possible (orimpossible) state of affairs which is the sentence's truthcondition; that is, the truth condition of the belief one has whenthat sentence is stored in one's head as a belief. So let'sreformulate our question in the following way. We'll first saythat:

For any mentalese language M, an M-function s anyfunction from the sentencesof M to possible(orimpossible)states of affairs.For each systemof mental representationthere will be infinitelymany M-functions. If M is Ralph's language of thought and athe neural formula that realizeshis belief that wormssnore,thenone M-function will map a onto the possiblestate of affairsthatworms snore, another onto the state of affairs that pigs do notthink in Latin, and so on. Thus, let us further say that:

An M-function f is the TC functionfor M'fff, for everysentence a of M, f( a)is a's truth condition.If our beliefs have determinatecontent, then, foreach system ofmental representation M, just one of the infinitely many M-functions is the TC function for M. The demand for anaturalistic account of the truth conditionsof mental represen-tations requires the theorist to specify a physicalisticallycreditable condition C such that

An M-functionf is the TC function forM ifff satisfiesC.Now what isC?It is precisely here hatour workbegins; forSLT,the theory that I'm concerned to examine, isdefined y its claim


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INTENTIONALITY AND THE LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT 41that it can replace this 'C' with the specification of aphysicalistically creditable condition and have the result be atruth. But how is this to be done? It's to this question that wemust now turn. (In what follows I shall, forsimplicity (and as aconcession to SLT), speak of one's believing a neural sentencewhen that formulais tokened in one as a belief, and I'll assume,in conformity with what I earlier said about question (a), thatthere'sno difficultyin giving a naturalisticaccount ofthe belief-relation as that relation which obtains between a person and aneural sentence when the sentence is tokened in the personas abelief.)

IIIOne wants a neat and simple intuitive idea to exploit, and thereis one at hand: it's what I'll call 'the fuel gauge model ofrepresentation'.4 If in believing a neural sentencea one believesthat worms snore, then a representsthe possible state of affairsthat worms snore, and therefore has that state of affairsas itstruth condition. So we are really looking for a theory ofrepresentation,f which mentalrepresentation is a special case.Now representation is not just a feature of mental states; theposition of a needle on the dashboard of your car can representyour petrol tank as being 3/4full. And it is no mystery how theposition of the needle can have this representationalpower therepresentational power of the needle derives from the capacityof the fuel gauge to be a reliablendicator f the amount of fuel inthe petrol tank. More exactly, theposition f theneedle epresentshepetrol ankas being%/ull because nder ptimal onditionsheneedleswheret is(viz.,pointing t '/4') when, ndonlywhen, hepetrol ank s 3/4full of petrol.This strongly suggeststhat representation ngeneralderives from the capacity of a systemto be a reliable indicatorofits context, and that what accounts for the fuel gauge'srepresentationalfeaturesalso accounts for those of one's mentalrepresentations.The generalization appropriate to mental representation isclear and, evidently, not uncompelling:

4See F. Dretske, 'Aspects of Cognitive Representation', in M. Brand and R. M.Harnish (eds.), Problemsn theRepresentationfKnowledgendBelief(Tucson:UniversityofArizona Press, 1986).


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42 STEPHEN SCHIFFER

[2]An M-functionf is the TC function forx's linquamentisMif: for every sentence a of M, under optimal conditions xbelieves a when, and only when, fla) obtains.

In other words:a is the truth condition of a in x's inner code iff underoptimal conditions x believes a when, and only when, aobtains.

By this formula we could discover that a certain sequence ofneural spikesin a frog'sbrain representedthat there was a fly inits visual field, and that a mental representationof mine is truejust in case it is raining-for when my cognitive system isworkingoptimally that mental representationwill be stored asabeliefwhen it is in fact raining, and if it is stored asa belief, thenit is in fact raining. I say that [2] is evidently not uncompellingbecause it is, nearlyenough, the theoryofJerryFodor.5 But is[2]true?I can't resista methodological reflection.It may happen thatone is committed to deliveringa paperand thatone discovers,atthe last minute and to one's horror, that one's theory has anabsurd consequence, a consequence so absurd that, if it'spointed out by a critic it would, without furtherado, be taken asa refutation of one's position. Now the best thing to do in thisdeplorable situation is to point out the disastrousconsequenceoneself, before anyone else can notice it, and embrace it. Thatway one can't be refuted simply by having the consequencespotted; an elaborate argument is now required. However, Ican't claim to have discoveredthis methodologicalmaxim, forIsuspect its employment inJerry Fodor'scheerfulacknowledge-ment that his theory entails that, under optimal conditions,everyone is omniscient and infallible. Omniscient because, ifany state of affairs obtains (and one is functioning as well aspossible),then one believes,and presumablyknows, it; infalliblebecause, under the ideal conditions, one has no false beliefs.Prima facie, this is implausible: suppose that Nancy Reagan

5'Psychosemantics-Or Where Do Truth Conditions Come From', forthcoming.


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INTENTIONALITY AND THE LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT 43sneezed exactly three times on the morning of May 11, 1938,and now assumethatyourcognitive systemisfunctioningaswellas it could possibly function, and that you are situated in theworld as well as you might hope to be; that-pace Fodor- isstillno guarantee that you will believe that Nancy Reagan sneezedexactly three times on the morning of May 11, 1938.Anyway, whatever theseFodorian'optimalityconditions'areit is clear that (i) they never obtain; (ii) we do not have a clue asto what they are; (iii) if they are to be serviceable to SLT theymust be specifiable without mention of anything semantic orintentional; and (iv) while unsatisfied, they are satisfiable;otherwise [2] would be incoherent. So [2] really comes to this:

There is some ('optimality')conditionD-unsatisfied,but satisfiable, and specifiable in naturalisticterms-such that:An M-functionf istheTC function forx'slinquamentisM iff:for everysentencea ofM, wereD to obtain onewould believe a when, and only when,J(a) obtained.But what mightD be?Noticing that 'x'rangesoverall believers,including dogs, one might reasonably decline to wait for ananswer. I think that the deep problem with this proposalis thatit offers a false and blasphemous version of Genesis. It isblasphemous because it implies that God is an imperfectengineer. On the Fodorian version of Genesis God set Himselfthe engineering task of creating little duplicates of Himself;Hewanted to design creatures with cognitive systemssuch that, ifthings went as intended, these creatures, too, would beomniscientand infallible.Obviously, God failed;were it not forGod's incompetence, we would be as omniscient and infallibleas He. On the correctversionofGenesisthere isno incompetence(or at least not very much). God did think that it would be niceto populate the earth with information-processors,and, beingomnipotent and omniscientHimself, of coursecould havemadethese created systemsomniscientand infallible.ButGod did notwant any competition; He likedbeing the only omniscient andinfallible input/output device on the scene, and wanted to staythat way. The engineering task He set Himself was to give Hiscreations a cognitive systemthat was pretty good of itskind,butlimited.These created I/O systems were to have limited input


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44 STEPHEN SCHIFFER

access; limited memory storage; limited deductive and induc-tive abilities. Under optimal conditions they might succeedin not breaking a leg, but they would not be omniscient orinfallible.6The intuitive idea with which we started our search for anaturalistic determination of mentalese truth conditions wasthat representation in general derives from the capacity of asystem to be a reliable indicator of its context. The thoughtoccurs that Fodor's account isn't the best application of theintuitive idea.There's another problem with Fodor's approach noticingwhich may help to put us on a more promising track. Anyreliability theory ofmental content must takeaccount of the factthat we are reliable indicators of our enviromment only withrespectto some four beliefs. IfRalph islookingata dog, then it'sa good bet that he believes that he is;and if he believes that he'slooking at a dog, then it's again a good bet that he is. But thisreliability doesn't extend to Ralph's belief thatJesus Christwasa deity, and if I have exactly eleven shillings in my left pantspocket there's no reason whatever to believe that Ralph willbelieve that. So if we're to account for mentalese truthconditions in terms of reliability we can't hope to proceed, as itwere, belief by belief, but must see reliability considerationsworking through the systematiconnectionshat obtain amongmentalese expressions. In other words, if we're to makesomething of a reliability account of truth conditions for thelanguage of thought we'd better be approaching this from thepoint of view of the language as a whole,and not proceeding,asFodor does, mental representation by mental representation.This need fora more holistic, or system-oriented,application ofreliability considerations is satisfied in the next suggestion,which tries to improve on Fodor.For any mental representationa and stateof affairsa, we canspeak of

6An account like Fodor's,but divorced fromthe language of thought hypothesisandentailing only infallibility (asopposed to thatand omniscience)wassuggestedby RobertStalnaker in InquiryCambridge:M.I.T. Press, 1984). I criticize Stalnaker'saccount in'Stalnaker's Problem of Intentionality', forthcoming in PacificPhilosophicalQuarterly.That journal issue will also contain a critique of Stalnaker'sposition by Hartry Field,and a reply to Field and myself by Stalnaker.


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INTENTIONALIT' AND THE LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT 45the probability that a obtains given that one believes u,

and ofthe probability that one believes u given that a obtains.Distinct M-functions may then be compared with respect towhat we might call head-worldH-W) and world-headW-H)reliability.

The head-worldeliability fx (thinkinginM) with respect toan M-functionf measures,for each a ofM, the likelihoodthatfJa) obtains given that x believes a.The world-headeliability fx (thinkinginM) with respect toan M-functionf measures,for each a ofM, the likelihoodthat x believes a given thatf(a) obtains.

The thought then to be refined would be that:[3]An M-functionf istheTC function forx'slinguamentisM ff(somefavoredbalance of) the H-W and W-H reliability ofx (thinking inM) with respecttof isgreater than that withrespect to any other M-function.7

One might try to motivate this in the following sort of way.Suppose that Ralph thinks in English, and that, therefore, theTC function for his language of thought is, so to say, the'homophonic' one that maps 'snow is white' onto snow's being

'One refinement that would have to be made would be to imposerestrictionswhichrequired the agent to be relevantlyeliable; i.e. reliable in ways that mattered to us: weshouldn't count an M-function as the TC function for M because it mapped eachsentence of M onto the state of affairs that sugar is sweet. Perhaps an intuitivelyacceptable way of getting this restriction would be to restrict the notion of an M-function, and thus the values of 'I, to recursivelyspecifiable functionsdetermined bypossible compositional semantics for M, each of which secured, in effect, that M hadsome suitable degree of expressive power. I shouldn't want to deny that SLT mightfounder in the attempt to spell out this 'relevance' requirementprecisely;my presententerprise is that of making trouble for [3] even on the assumption that we are onlyconcerned with relevant reliability, however that gets spelled out. (See furtherHartryField, 'The Delationary Conception of Truth', forthcoming; Brian Loar, Mind andMeaning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), sec. 8.3; and StephenSchiffer, 'Truth and the Theory of Content', in H. Parret and J. Bouveresse(eds.),MeaningandUnderstandingBerlin:Walter de Gruyter, 1981).)


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white, 'Richard Milhouse Nixon is retired' onto Nixon's beingretired, etc. One might then find that it was very likely thatRalph believed 'I am lookingat a dog' given that he was lookingat a dog; and one might find that it was very likely that Ralphwas looking at a dog given that he believed 'I am looking at adog'. At the same time, one might also find that, howeveroptimally Ralph's cognitive systemwas functioning, it wasveryunlikely that he would believe 'there were 5983 dogs born inLondon in 1973' given that there were 5983 dogs born inLondon in 1973, and very unlikely that all Pisces are greatintellects given that Ralph believes 'all Pisces are greatintellects'. Now what [3] entails is that Ralph's H-W and W-Hreliabilityrelative to the TC functionforEnglish isgreaterthanthat relative to any other E-function. For most (so to speak)E-functions that is obviously correct,and to see thisone needsonlybrieflyto considerany randomE-function-say, one that isjustlike the homophonic TC function except that it derives from acompositional semantics for E that assigns coal to 'snow', andthus maps 'snow is white' onto the state of affairs that coal iswhite, etc. If an E-function is to test [3], it must be a morestudied sort of systematicdeparture from the TC function;butin considering such departures one might come to think thatnone captures the reliabilityofRalph as well asthe TC function.In this light one might consider the E-function which isdetermined by a compositional semantics for English that isexactly like the compositional semantics determining the TCfunction, except that it assignsto 'dog' the propertyof being acanine, as opposed to the property of being a dog. Now thelikelihood that the creature beforeRalph is a canine given thatRalph believes 'that is a dog' may well be greater than thelikelihood that the creature before Ralph is a dog given thatRalph believes 'that is a dog'; but the balance significantlyfavorsthe TC functionwhen one considerswhat willcauseRalphto believe 'that is a dog', or what state of affairs s most likely toobtain given that Ralph believes 'some canines are not dogs'.Anyway, one might think that some refinement of [3] was theway to capture the intuitive idea that content was deterrninedby one's barometricqualities, and one might tryto motivate [3]in the foregoing sort of way. I do not, however, think that anysuch attempt can succeed. My objection to [3], and to natural


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INTENTIONALITY AND THE LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT 47refinements of it, is simply that it is unlikely that there is auniquely most reliable M-function.

If we assume that our thoughts have determinate truthconditions, then my objection is that the right-hand-sideof [3]fails to state a necessary condition: there will be M-functionsother than the TC function forM that capture one'sreliabilityas well as the TC function. As regardsRalph, still thinking inEnglish, the point isthatE-functionsotherthan theTC functionwill captureRalph's H-W and W-H reliabilityas well as theTCfunction. Why think that this is so?Why think that this is notso?Surely the burdenof proofis onthe proponent of the reliability strategy to show that there willalways be a uniqueM-function such that one's reliability withrespect to that function is greater than one's reliability withrespect to any other M-function. But I don't have a clue as tohow one would even begin to try to establish this.Ralph, we lately noticed, is H-W orW-H reliablewith respectto certain matters, but not others. If Ralph drank coffee thismorning, then it's a good bet that he believesthat he did;but it'sunlikely that he will have any beliefabout the exact number ofhydrogen molecules in his first cup of coffee. If Ralph believesthat his middle name is 'Ignatz', then it very probably is;but ifhe believes that Fodor's theory of psychosemantics is correct,then.... Intuitively it seems that there could be studieddepartures from the TC function for E that left Ralph'sreliability undiminished.But can this be shown? Can we actually construct an E-function g such that it was clearlythe case that (a)g # the TCfunction for E and that (b) Ralph's H-W and W-H reliabilitywith respectto g was at least equal to thatwith respect to the TCfunction?I think one can, and will now go on to constructjustsuch a counterexample. The counterexample may at firstseemtrivial, since it will involve an E-function that differsfrom theTC function in just one very small respect. But on reflection itshould be clear that that'sjust the sort of counterexample wewant. For if we can find the sort of function we're looking forthat differsonly a little fromtheTC function, then it ought to beclear to us how we can ramify the differences n accordancewiththe principle of the counterexample to get evermore interestingcounterexamples. Besides, there'san important heuristicpoint


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48 STEPHEN SCHIFFERto bear in mind: it would be impossible to construct a clearcounterexample based on a functionthatdifferedradicallyfromthe TC function;forthe complexity of the argumentthat wouldthen be required would obscure its force. This said, let me nowshow that it's actually pretty easy to see that E-functions otherthan the TC function for E can capture Ralph's barometricqualities as well as it. My example was suggestedby, but differsfrom, a well-known counterexample of Tyler Burge's tofunctionalism my adaptation, of course, will not involve acounterexample to functionalism, but to the SLT theorist'sproposal [3]).8Alfred is a literal speaker of English, and uses the word'arthritis'pretty much just like anyone else, but for one smalldifference. Alfred, like a lot of other people, doesn't know thatarthritis is limited to inflammation of the joints; Alfred alsoapplies the word to rheumatoid ailments not in thejoints. So it'snot surprisingthat, noticing an ailment in histhigh which seemsto him symptomaticallylike the diseasein his handsand ankles,Alfred says to his doctor, 'I have arthritis in the thigh'. HereBurge claims, and I think rightly, that Alfred is expressing hisfalse belief that he has arthritis in the thigh, and that,consequently, like the rest of us he meansarthritis y 'arthritis'.The problem for [3] posed by Alfred emerges clearly if wesupposethat Alfred, like Ralph, thinksin his spokenidiolect, E.The TC function for E will be determined by a compositionalsemantics for E that assigns the condition arthritiso 'arthritis',and thus maps 'I've got arthritisin the thigh' onto the state ofaffairsof Alfred'shaving arthritis in histhigh. Now letg bean E-function that's just like the TC function, except that it isdetermined by a compositional semantics for E that assigns to'arthritis' the condition we'll call shmarthritis, hich isjust anyarthritis-like rheumatoid ailment. Thus g maps 'I've gotarthritis in the thigh' not onto Alfred's having arthritis in thethigh, but onto the state of affairsof his havingshmarthritisn thethigh. (So 'Alfredhas arthritis in his thigh' isfalsewith respect tothe TC function but truewith respect tog.) The problemfor [3],

"'Individualismand the Mental', in P. A. French,T. E. Uehling and H. D. Wettstein(eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy,Vol. IV. Studies in MletaphysicsMinneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 1979).


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INTENTIONALITY AND THE LANGUAGE OF rHOUGHT 49of course, is that it seems a good bet that the H-W and W-Hreliability of Alfred with respect to g will be no less than thatwith respect to the TC function. First, the probability thatAlfred has shmarthritisgiven that he believes 'I have arthritis'will be greater than the probability that he has arthritisgiventhat Alfred believes 'I have arthritis'.This is clear fromthe factthat often Alfredwill not have arthritis(in a particularplace, ata given time) when he believes 'I have arthritis',but he nearlyalways will have shmarthritis. Second, the probability thatAlfred believes 'I have arthritis'given that he has shmarthritisshould be the same as the probability that Alfred believes thatsentence given that he hasarthritis; ypically,Alfredwill believe'I have arthritis' if he really has arthritis or merely hasshmarthritis.Nor is it likely that this balance betweeng and theTC functionwill be offsetby taking into account Alfred's beliefsabout the 'arthritis' of others, or his general and molecularbeliefsinvolving'arthritis'. Typically, Alfredwill believe 'Joneshas arthritis'just in case Alfred has heardJones say, 'I've gotarthritis'; n theevent, theprobabilitythatJoneshasshmarthritisgiven that Alfredbelieves'Joneshasarthritis'will be no less thanthe probability that Jones has arthritis given that Alfredbelieves 'Jones has arthritis', but the probability that Alfredbelieves that sentence given that Jones has arthritiswill mostlikely be greater than the probability that Alfred believes thatsentence given that Jones has shmarthritis-for presumablyJones is more likely to say 'I've got arthritis' if he really hasarthritisthan if he merely hasshmarthritis.Yet this lastfactcanhardly showthatAlfred'soverallreliability isbettercapturedbythe TC function than by g; for Alfred's reliability under bothfunctions will be much greater with respect to his own bodilystates than with respect to those ofothers.I will not go into detailabout Alfred'sgeneraland molecularbeliefs,but here we shouldprobably expect a standoff it is true that the probability thatarthritis scorrectlycalled 'arthritis' n Englishgiven thatAlfredbelieves 'arthritis is correctly called "arthritis" in English' isgreater than the corresponding probability with respect toshmarthritis;but it isalsotruethat the situation isreversedwhenwe consider what is likely to obtain given that Alfred believes'arthritis is not confined to the joints'.In this way we have a counterexample to the purported


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50 STEPHEN SCHIFFERnecessity f [3]; for we have an example in which a functionsatisfiesthe left-hand-sideof[3], but not its right-hand-side. It'seasyto seehow theexamplealsoseriously hallenges hepurportedsufficiencyf [3]. For, given the factsaboutAlfred,it'squite likelythat, while g doesn't satisfythe left-hand-side of [3] (i.e. it isn'tthe TC function for E), it doessatisfy the right-hand-side.9In a forthcoming book, Remnantsf Meaning,I give anothercounterexamplebased on Kripke's ngeniousaddition/quadditionparadox.0 Ifyou're familiarwith the Kripke, you can workoutfor yourself how my counterexample goes. We take a guy forwhom, like us, 'plus' meansaddition, and considerhisreliabilitywith respect to two functions:the TC function for his languageof thought, which assigns addition to 'plus', and anotherfunction just like the TC function except that it assignsquaddition to 'plus'.One then getsthe counterexampleto [3] byshowing that the relevant reliability considerations fail todistinguish between the two functions.

IVLet's take stock. We began with the thought that, if anaturalistic account of truth-conditionalcontent forMentalesewere possible, it would be in termsof reliability onsiderations:the way in which whatwebelievesoften a reliableguideto thewaythe world s, and likewise back again in the other direction. Icalled this 'the fuel gauge model of mental representation'.Then I suggested that the best way of capturing this reliabilitymodel of representationwas not the 'ideal indication' theory,[2], of Fodor and others, but somethingmorealong the linesof a'maximal reliability' account such as [3]. But the upshot of theobjectionsto [3] suggests that no refinement of it will yield whatSLT isafter: it seems thatreliability as invokedin [3]will always

9In order to simplify itsexposition,I set the example up in a way thatpresupposes hat'arthritis' in E means arthritis, nd this may invite the responsethat one disagreeswiththe Burgean intuition and feels that forAlfred arthritis'meansshmarthritis.ine. We stillhave a counterexample to [3]; for we may may now say that, although g is the TCfunction for E, it still fails to satisfythe right-hand-sideof[3]. But what ifone felt that thesituation was indeterminate?Then it would follow from[3] that the sentences of E hadno meaning! No doubt one could doctor [3] to get a more acceptable result, but otherexampleswhere thereclearlywas no indeterminacy-e.g. the 'quus'examplenext to bementioned-would provide counterexamples to the revision."Saul A. Kripke, Wittgensteinn Rules and PrivateLanguageCambridge: HarvardUniversity Press, 1982).


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INTENTIONALITY AND THE LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT 51fail to selecta uniqueM-function as the TC functionforM in sucha way as to make it perfectly possible that some M-functionother than the TC functionforM may turnout tomaximize therelevant reliability just as well as, or even better than, the TCfunction.I think that any attempt directly to define mentalese truthconditions in terms of reliability (or in terms of reliabilitytogether with ancillary notionssuch as survivability)" is boundto fail for the now familiar reason. At the same time it's prettyhard to see how one could plausibly advance a naturalisticaccount of mentalese truth-conditions that was not somehowimportantly based on reliability facts.But towards the end of his well-known article 'MentalRepresentation','2 Hartry Field briefly entertains (but doesnot actually endorse) a way of basing an account of truth-theoretic notions on reliability that doesn't attempt to de-fine those notions directly n terms of reliability. Accordingto Field, the relevanttruth-theoreticnotionsare not to bedefinedin terms of reliability, but in terms of their roles in a theory thatexplains reliability facts (compare: one shouldn't expect todefine 'gene' in terms of the hereditary phenomena it is used toexplain, but rather in terms of its role in the theory whichexplains those hereditary phenomena). We shall be closeenough forpresentpurposesto the spiritofField'sproposal fwetake his suggestion to be that:

[4]An M-functionf is the TC function for M ifff plays a dis-tinguishedrole in the reliability theoryforthinkers nM. 13" Such an account is entertained in my forthcomingbook, but founderson the sameproblem, which shouldn't be surprising, given that it's the reliability of our survival-relevant beliefs that matters to survival.'2In N. Block(ed.), ReadingsnPhilosophyfPsychologyCambridge:HarvardUniversityPress).

3 Field actually wants to say that 'refers', true', 'truthcondition', etc. arefunctionallydefinedin the sense of 'functionaldefinition'spelled out in 'Mental Representation',op.cit.), and this feature of his suggestionisn't preservedin [4]. To the good, I think. For if'truth condition' is functionally defined, then sentences won't have truth conditionsunless the functional property associated with 'truth condition' by its functionaldefinition has a physicalrealization.Butif[4] isotherwisecorrect,and a mere-and thusphysicalistically respectable-correlation of sentences and states of affairs plays anindispensablerole in a reliability theory, then it would seem highlyarbitrary o insistonsome further condition that may fail to obtain.


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52 STEPHEN SCHIFFERTo say thatf plays a distinguished role in a theory T should betaken to mean not only that the role played by f in T isindispensableto the explanatorypower of T, but also that it's arole that couldn't be played by any other M-function. Thenotion of a 'reliability theory' is quite vague; but it, and part ofthe motivating idea behind[4], may be sketchedin the followingsort of way.There isat leastone, and quite possiblymore thanone, kindofpsychological theory of thinkers n M that we should have a useforthat both involves the innersystemMand couldn'tget offtheground unless we could systematicallyxploit head-world andworld-head reliabilitycorrelationsof thosethinkerswith respectto M. For example, a psychological theory of x's behavior thatonly had recourseto theconceptualoles fexpressions n Mlwouldbe a very limited and unwieldy theory; it would issue only inpredictions of x's bodilymovements,nd it would be virtuallyimpossibleto use becauseof the complexity of the knowledgeofconceptualroles it required nordertopredictthosemovements. 4Any interestingand viable theoryofbehaviorframedin termsofa system of mental representation would have to exploit theways in which mental representationswere reliably correlatedwith extra-cranial states of affairs. 5Now it may well seem that there could be no hope ofsystematicallyxploiting reliabilitycorrelationswith respecttoMwithout assigningreferencesto expressions n M and then goingon to devise a recursivelyspecifiableM-function. But of course

4 The conceptualroleof a subsententialexpression s itscontributionto theconceptualroles of the sentences in which it occurs. The conceptual role of a sentence is acounterfactualproperty that tells us what it would take by way of sensory stimulationsand mentalese sentencesalready believed in orderfora sentence having the conceptualrole to be believed. Thus the conceptual role of a sentence isspecifiableindependentlyof any truth-theoretic semantic properties the sentence might have. See Hartry Field,'Logic, Meaning and ConceptualRole', TheJournalofPhilosophy4 (1977), pp. 379-409,and his 'Mental Representation', op. cit.; Brian Loar, Mind andMeaning,opcit.; NedBlock, 'Advertisementfor a Semantics for Psychology', in P. A. French,T. E. Uehlingand H. K. Wettstein (eds.), MidwestStudies nPhilosophy (Minneapolis:University ofMinnesota Press, 1985); Stephen Schiffer, 'Truth and the Theory of Content', op. cit.,and 'Compositional Semantics and Language Understanding', in R. Grandy and R.Warner (eds.), PhilosophicalGrounds f Rationality:ntentions,Categories, nds (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1986).

15 my discussionof Hilarious Meadow in 'Truth and the Theory of Content', op.cit.


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INTENTIONALITY AND THE LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT 53differentM-functions yield differentreliability correlations; heprobability thatJ(c) obtains given thatx believesa may be quitedifferent from the probability that f (a) obtains given that xbelieves a. With a suitable M-function J*we could say thingslike:

the probability thatJ (a) obtains given that x believes aand (simplifying a little) that Jf* (a) is about the stockmarket is very high,and other very usefulthings likethat. So a 'reliability theory'forx thinking in M would at least be a theory that enabled us toderive knowledgeof that sort;perhaps, too, it would explain whyx was reliable in the ways thuscaptured.How itwould do all thisis another matter.Finally, the furtheridea is that (a) we shall have no need for atheory that uses an M-function that doesn't directly orindirectly use the function to exploit reliability facts; (b) therewill be a uniqueM-function that enters into the correct and fullyadequate reliability theory for M (and thus a unique M-function that will enter into all of the correct and fully adequatetheories for which an M-function is needed); and (c) it isplausible to identify the TC function forM with that uniquelyneeded M-function.There is much that I find to object to here;'6 but I shall passover all that to the following direct objection to [4]. If theobjections to the 'maximal reliability' account [3] are correct,then they appear to carry over to [4]: those objections seem toshow that there would be no uniquely distinguishedM-functionutilized by the reliability theory for thinkersin M, but that anynumber of distinctM-functions would do equally well. For themoral of the case against [3] is that quite distinct M-functions

16If I were to make someobjections it would include thisone: no M-function isneededin devising the reliabilityaccount-especially no recursivelyspecifiablesuchfunction; amapping of M sentences onto our sentences is all that we would need to get the jobdone. See chaptersVII and VIII of my forthcomingRemnantsf Meaningor, for a littleless than the full story, my 'Compositional Semantics and Language Understanding', op.cit. I hope that it'sclear that nothing hangson the invocation of states ofaffairs;all talkofAl-functions could be replaced, as far as I'm concerned, with talk of 'truth under aninterpretation' or any other suitably extensional and ontologically respectable truth-theoreticdevice. I have set the discussionup using the notion ofM-function merelyasanexpedient.


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54 STEPHEN SCHIFFERwill converge on many of the sentences whose reliability mostmatters to us, and differ in ways that are irrelevant to theconcerns of any use to which we would want to put a reliabilitytheory framed in terms of these distinct M-functions whichcapture relevant reliability to equal degrees. Our interestn agiven M-function is determined by how reliable it makesthinkersin M, and what t makes them reliable about. We seemto have been led to the conclusion that there can be no mostinteresting M-function, and that therefore [4] fails to state anecessarycondition;and as we have seen nothing to rule out thepossibilitythat some M-function other than the TC function forM will be more interesting than it, we have no good reason notto suppose that [4] fails to state a sufficient condition.

VI conclude that SLT looks a good deal more unpromisingthan it looks promising. But if this is so, then what are we toconclude as regards he larger ssuethatgotus intothis-namely,What makes Ralph's neural state n a belief that worms snore?Skipping the arguments, my answeris this.Nothingmakest thecase hatRalphbelieveshatwormsnore, r thatn is a belief hatwormssnore.To ask what makes it the case that Ralph believes thatworms snore is to ask a question with a falsepresupposition.It'sto presuppose that the schema

x believes that p if . . .has a completion that is both true and non-trivial. But no suchreduction of believing is possible, and in this sensepsychologicalfacts such as the fact that Ralph believes that worms snore areirreducible. At the same time, this irreducibility is notontologically objectionablebecause it is only in apleonasticensethat there are psychologicalfactsand properties; .e. the senseof'fact' and 'property' that allows us harmlessly and trivially tomove back and forth between these pairs:

Ralph believes that worms snore/It's a fact that Ralphbelieves that worms snore.Ralph believes that worms snore/Ralph has the propertyof believing that worms snore.I subscribe, then, to two views:


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INTENTIONALITY AND THE LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT 55Ontological hysicalism:here are no extralinguistic rreduc-ibly psychological entities of any ontological category.SententialDualism:there are true but irreducible psycho-logical sentences.

The conjunction of these doctrines entails a nominalism withrespect to psychological facts and properties,and I accept that.There's a lot more to this story, but I guess it'll have to wait.

intentionality and the language of thought

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