Frank Ramsey: Truth and Success

F RA N K RA M S EY FRANK RAMSEY Truth and success Jérôme Dokic and Pascal Engel First published 2001 as Ramsey: Vé...

Author: Jérôme Dokic | Pascal Engel

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F RA N K RA M S EY

FRANK RAMSEY Truth and success

Jérôme Dokic and Pascal Engel

First published 2001 as Ramsey: Vérité et succès by Presses Universitaires de France 6 Avenue Reille, 75685 Paris, France First published in English 2002 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 2001, 2003 Jérôme Dokic and Pascal Engel All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-21783-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-27343-5 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–28719–7 (Print Edition)

T O H U G H M E L LO R A N D N I L S - E R I C S A H L I N

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

1

Acknowledgements References and abbreviations

ix x

Introduction: a meteor in the philosophical sky

1

Belief, probability and truth

4

1.1 Logic and the foundations of mathematics 4 1.2 Probability and the logic of decision 6 1.3 Human logic 13 1.4 Truth, belief and action 18 Chapter summary 25

2

Realism and pragmatism

27

2.1 Knowledge 27 2.2 Laws and causality 30 2.3 Conditionals and the Ramsey test 34 2.4 Theories and Ramsey sentences 35 2.5 Universals and reality 38 Chapter summary 44

3

Ramsey’s Principle

45

3.1 Success semantics 45 3.2 Some complications 48 3.3 The limits of pragmatism 49 3.4 Success semantics and teleosemantics 51 Chapter summary 54

4

The satisfaction of desires

55

4.1 The problem of the satisfaction of desires 55 4.2 An asymmetry between desire and belief 56

vii

CONTENTS

4.3 Satisfaction as extinction 60 4.4 Motivational foundationalism 61 4.5 Toward an anti-reductionist conception of desire 62 Chapter summary 64

5

The situation of action

65

5.1 The cognitive overload objection 65 5.2 The perception of instrumental relations 66 5.3 Action as a source of knowledge 69 5.4 The Principle of Informational Equilibrium 74 Chapter summary 77

Conclusion: the future of pragmatism Notes Bibliography Index

79

82 93 102

viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The present book is a revised and slightly augmented version of a book which appeared in French (Ramsey: Vérité et succès, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001). We are indebted to a number of people, both for the French version of this book and for the present one. We first learnt about Ramsey through the writings of Donald Davidson, Richard Jeffrey and John Vickers. We owe them much. Our deepest debt is to Hugh Mellor and to Nils-Eric Sahlin, to whom we dedicate this book. Not only would this book not have been possible without their pioneering work on Ramsey, but they also gave us much advice, encouragement and help with both the substance of this manuscript and its publication. Many thanks to Tim Crane for his support, and to Tony Bruce and Muna Khogali for their patience and their help. We also thank Kevin Mulligan and Pierre Livet for their remarks on the French version, the participants in Nils-Eric Sahlin’s seminar in Lund, especially Ingar Brinck and Anna-Sofia Maurin, as well as Manuel Garcia Carpintero, Josep Luis Prades and participants in a seminar in Barcelona for their remarks on versions of Chapter 5. Pascal Engel also thanks Mathieu Marion, François Schmitz and Jacques Dubucs, with whom he translated Ramsey’s essays into French.

ix

REFERENCES AND A B B R E V I AT I O N S

The references are indicated in the bibliography. We have used the following abbreviations for Ramsey’s works: FM: F: PP: NPPM: OT: U: FP: TP: K: T: GPC: TFM:

Braithwaite edition of Foundations of Mathematics (1931) Mellor edition of Foundations (1978) Mellor edition of Philosophical Papers (1990) M.C. Galavotti edition of Notes on Philosophy, Probability and Mathematics (1991) N. Rescher and U. Majer edition of On Truth (1991) “Universals” (FM, F, PP) “Facts and propositions” (FM, F, PP) “Truth and probability” (FM, F, PP) “Knowledge” (FM, F, PP) “Theories” (FM, F, PP) “General propositions and causality” (FM, F, PP) “The foundations of mathematics” (FM, F, PP)

Unless indicated otherwise, the references to Ramsey’s papers are to PP.

x

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION A meteor in the philosophical sky

The philosopher and mathematician Frank Plumpton Ramsey (1903– 30) is the least well known of the Cambridge philosophers who contributed to the rise of analytic philosophy during the first half of the twentieth century. This is due in part to the shortness of his life and career – he died at the age of 26 – and also probably to the fact that his work has long seemed to be mainly of technical interest. He was, however, recognised by his contemporaries as one of the most remarkable and productive minds of his generation. From his very first years in Cambridge, he was admitted into the famous group of the Cambridge Apostles, appointed as a fellow of King’s College at the age of 21 and as a lecturer in mathematics two years later. His contributions ranged over most of the domains which were at the centre of intellectual interest in Cambridge at that time: mathematics, logic and what was not yet known as analytical philosophy, but also economy. He quickly became one of the main interlocutors of Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein, and especially Keynes, who all recognised his genius at once. When he died (of jaundice) in 1930, his friend and disciple Richard Braithwaite published a collection of his main essays, under the title Foundations of Mathematics. Some of these essays, such as the one which gives its title to the volume, and which discusses Russell’s theory of types, or “Universals” and “Facts and propositions”, which discussed Russell and Wittgenstein’s early doctrines, quickly became classics. But others, such as “Truth and probability”, which establishes the foundations of the subjective theory of probability, or “Theories”, only later revealed their riches and their scope. It was only when Ramsey’s theory of probability and decision was rediscovered by mathematicians and economists who, following Von Neumann and Morgenstern (1944), founded the modern versions of game and decision theory, that the importance of the former essay was understood. It was only when Carnap drew the attention of philosophers of science to the originality of Ramsey’s conception of scientific 1

INTRODUCTION

theories in the latter essay, that this conception came to be appreciated. Ramsey’s essays on taxation and savings, which today belong to the classics of mathematical economy, had more or less the same fate. Ramsey’s contributions would be considerable even if they were limited to these apparently diverse fields and considered separately. But the publication of his posthumous writings in the 1990s and a number of commentaries on his work revealed the systematic character of his thought, even when his doctrines take only the form of sketchy notes or (in many cases) of merely elliptical suggestions. Since Hugh Mellor’s (1983) and Nils-Eric Sahlin’s (1990) pioneering work in particular, it is today possible to talk of Ramsey’s philosophy as forming a more or less systematic whole. The aim of this book is to present the main lines of this philosophy and to discuss some of its recent developments. We intend to show in particular that most of Ramsey’s specific doctrines on logic, the nature of belief, truth, action, probability, decision, theories, universals and knowledge played a major role in shaping a number of doctrines currently discussed within contemporary analytic philosophy. Indeed, Ramsey may have been one of the first self-conscious “technical” analytic philosophers in the contemporary sense.1 We shall, however, say little here about his contributions to mathematics and logic, because they would require a separate treatment, and we shall, for the same reason, also leave aside his contributions to mathematical economics. This book is not meant to be a contribution to Ramsey’s scholarship, this has been done elsewhere and much better by other writers, to whom we are indebted, in particular Hugh Mellor and Nils-Eric Sahlin.2 Because Ramsey’s work is so creative, there is a temptation to find, in many sectors of contemporary philosophical research, what Davidson has called “the Ramsey effect”: for any theory that X believes to have discovered, it is likely that it was anticipated in some form by Ramsey.3 Although we wanted to indicate, in the first part of the book, how pervasive the Ramsey effect can be, we have tried to resist the temptation, and we have concentrated our attention upon a specific set of his views: his “pragmatist” thesis that the truth of an agent’s belief guarantees the success of his actions. From it one can draw a principle for the analysis of the contents or of the truth conditions of beliefs: a belief ’s content is constituted by the success conditions of the actions of an agent. This thesis, that may be called Ramsey’s Principle, was rediscovered not only by Ramsey’s main interpreters, Hugh Mellor and Nils-Eric Sahlin, but also by a number of philosophers who attempted to give a naturalistic analysis of intentional mental states in “teleological” or “teleosemantical” terms, such as David Papineau (1987, 1993), Ruth Millikan (1984, 1992) and Fred Dretske (1988). According to this analysis, the success conditions of a belief are constituted by functions,

2

INTRODUCTION

in the biological sense, that are somehow associated with this belief within an organism, and by their contribution to the survival of this organism. This evolutionary conception of mental representation has received many sophisticated formulations which we shall not discuss in detail here. But it seems to us that in tracing its origins in Ramsey, and by discussing its relationships with Ramsey’s own formulations of a similar (but, as we shall see, distinct) doctrine, we shall have the means to evaluate it. Overall, the study of Ramsey’s philosophy allows us to understand better the originality of his own form of pragmatism, its links with Peirce’s pragmatism, and its distance from more well known versions of this doctrine. Just like Galois or Herbrand, who also died in their twenties, Ramsey was a meteor in the sky of philosophy and mathematics. But the trace that he left is still visible from all sides. Actually Ramsey would not have approved of this image of a star in the philosophical heavens. Unlike Wittgenstein, who liked to see a “W” in the constellation of Cassiopeia, Ramsey would have been unimpressed if he could have contemplated his own star. He was more rooted down to the earth: Where I seem to differ from some of my friends is in attaching little importance to physical size. I don’t feel in the least humble before the vastness of the heavens. The stars may be large, but they cannot think or love; and these are qualities which impress me far more than size does. I take no credit for weighing nearly seventeen stone. My picture of the world is drawn in perspective, and not like a model to scale. The foreground is occupied by human beings and the stars are all as small as threepenny bits. I don’t really believe in astronomy, except as a complicated description of part of the course of human and possibly animal sensation. I apply my perspective not merely to space but also to time. In time the world will cool and everything will die; but that is a long time off still, and its present value at compound discount is almost nothing. (“Epilogue”, PP: 249)

3

B E L I E F, P R O B A B I L I T Y A N D T R U T H

1 B E L I E F, P R O B A B I L I T Y A N D TRUTH

1.1 Logic and the foundations of mathematics Ramsey’s philosophical and mathematical background was almost entirely shaped by the intellectual atmosphere of Cambridge during the 1920s, and by the writings of the great Cambridgians who surrounded him: Russell, whose Principia Mathematica he read quite early; Moore, whose essays he discussed and with whom he participated in the Moral Sciences Club; John Maynard Keynes, his mentor, whose Treatise on Probability he discussed as soon as it was published (1921); C.D. Broad, whose Scientific Thought had appeared in 1923; his friend Richard Braithwaite, but also logicians such as W.E. Johnson1 and philosophers such as C.K. Ogden. Russell and Moore had launched a perestroïka in all sectors of philosophy. Ramsey borrowed their conception of philosophy as analysis, definition and clarification. Like Russell, he held that logic is the essential instrument of such an enterprise. Thus he considered Russell’s theory of definite descriptions as a “paradigm of philosophy” and he largely subscribed to his program of replacing “inferred entities” by “logical constructions”.2 The philosopher, however, to whom he considered himself to be the closest, was Wittgenstein. In 1921, C.K. Ogden associated Ramsey with the translation of the Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung, and he reviewed the book for Mind in 1923 (FM). He met Wittgenstein in Puchberg the same year, and then again in Vienna in 1924, and they started an extensive correspondence, before meeting again in Cambridge in 1929. Wittgenstein said that one of the reasons why he returned to Cambridge was the possibility of discussing with Ramsey, and that the latter’s criticisms contributed very much to the evolution of his own ideas. The influence was mutual and deeply felt on each side.3 One of Ramsey’s first essays, “The foundations of mathematics” (1925), defends Russell and Whitehead’s logicist program against Brouwer’s intuitionism and Hilbert’s formalism, through the use of certain of Wittgenstein’s views. From the latter, Ramsey borrows the idea that the

4


propositions of mathematics are not, contrary to what Russell held, utterly general propositions, but mere tautologies, completely devoid of any factual content. Two of Russell’s axioms pose a problem in this respect: the axiom of reducibility and the axiom of choice. Russell was led to postulate the second from his solution to the paradoxes of set theory, such as the one that he had discovered in 1901 – the paradox of the set of all sets which do not contain themselves. The solution consisted in distinguishing first a hierarchy of types of entities (individuals, sets of individuals, sets of sets of individuals, etc.) and to forbid the formation of sets which would give rise to paradoxes by rejecting as meaningless statements, to the effect that x is a member of y when the type of x is not directly below the type of y. Later, Russell combined this “simple” hierarchy of types with a hierarchy of “propositional functions” of various “orders”, which is called the “ramified” theory of types. But the price to pay for this second hierarchy is that certain parts of mathematics can no longer be expressed within the system. They can, however, be restored through the axiom of reducibility, which says that for all functions, whatever their order, there is an equivalent predicative function.4 According to Ramsey, however, this axiom is probably false and moreover it is not a tautology. He is thus led to propose another theory of types, sometimes called the “ramsified” theory, which gets rid of Russell’s ramified hierarchy, and which redefines the notion of predicative function as a truth function, finite or infinite, of atomic functions of individuals or of propositions, which makes the axiom of reducibility redundant, and also avoids the use of the identity sign in the definition of classes (in this, Ramsey was also following Wittgenstein’s criticism of Russell). Another important Ramseyan contribution consists in his distinction between two kinds of paradoxes: the purely logical ones (such as Russell’s class paradox) and the “semantical” ones, such as the Liar. He holds that the simple theory of types solves the first ones, but that it is irrelevant for the second. For these, Ramsey proposes to replace the hierarchy of functions by a hierarchy of symbols, thus sketching the linguistic hierarchy of languages and metalanguages later used by Tarski in order to solve the semantic paradoxes. In FM as well as in ML (1926), Ramsey seems to adopt without reservation the program of reduction of mathematics to logic. He seems to subscribe to a form of mathematical platonism or to what Dummett (1978) calls a “realist” view of the meaning of mathematical statements, according to which the truth conditions of these statements transcend their verification conditions. His acceptance of the axiom of infinity seems to testify to this. He also supports the (Wittgensteinian) thesis that a general proposition is equivalent to a conjunction (possibly infinite) of atomic

5


propositions. In 1929, however, he seems to be a convert to an intuitionist and finitistic position; he ceases to consider the law of excluded middle as a tautology, and shows an increasing interest in Brouwer and Weyl’s work.5 But if one considers his other doctrines, in particular his criticism of the “absolute” conception of truth and its reduction of the notion of truth to the notion of judgement or of assertion, as well as his reference to Peirce’s pragmatism, this change is by no means surprising. As early as in “Truth and Probability” (1926), he accepts a distinction (taken from Mill) between formal logic proper, which he considers with Wittgenstein as purely made up of tautologies, and which he calls “the logic of coherence”, and inductive logic, or “the logic of truth”. If the latter “human” logic, which deals with probability and belief, has a meaning, there are, Ramsey tells us, some propositions the truth or the falsity of which is not clear, because their truth conditions depend upon our merely probable beliefs and upon our actions, which are finite. In the wide sense, which includes the logic of partial belief, logic cannot be considered as consisting merely in tautologies, and one will have to consider another sort of inference than purely deductive inference.

1.2 Probability and the logic of decision “Truth and probability” is generally considered as the most pioneering of all of Ramsey’s essays. One finds in it the foundations of what was to be called the “Bayesian” or “subjective” conception of probabilities and of decision theory. There Ramsey describes a method for measuring the beliefs and desires of agents based on their betting behaviour, and he shows that if one adopts certain principles of rationality for agents, the measure of their degrees of belief will satisfy the laws of probability. Of course Ramsey is not the sole inventor of the subjectivist or “personalist” conception of probabilities, for it can be traced back to Pascal, Bernoulli, Bayes, Hume, and even, to a certain extent, to Cournot.6 Likewise, he is far from being the first to remark that degrees of beliefs can be measured through betting quotients.7 And at about the same time, Bruno de Finetti, who is today considered, with Ramsey, to be the main founder of the subjective theory, developed similar ideas.8 Although Ramsey was the first to give these ideas their complete expression, they were rediscovered only during the 1950s, in particular under the influence of Von Neumann and Morgenstern, and especially of Savage, Carnap and Jeffrey. Today they belong to the usual equipment of game and decision theorists and of rational choice theorists.9 At the time when Ramsey wrote, there were two kinds of theories of probability discussed at Cambridge: the frequency theory, the main exponent of which was Venn, and Keynes’ (1921) “logical” theory. Writing 6


about the first, which associates the probability of an event to its frequency, he admits that it corresponds to the meaning of the word “probability” in ordinary language as well as in the sciences, such as statistical mechanics. He leaves it on one side wanting to return to it once he has formulated his theory of partial belief, in order to make comparisons. He attacks frontally, however, Keynes’ theory. According to Keynes the probability of a proposition is always relative to a given set of propositions, which constitute the evidential reasons for which we assert it. The probability of a given h is a relationship, the degree or the intensity of which lies between 0 and 1 and P(a/h) = 1 if and only if a is a logical consequence of h.10 Ramsey raises two criticisms against Keynes. The first is that, for practically every pair of propositions, such as “This is red” and “This is blue”, we do not have the slightest idea of the probability relation between them. The second is that, contrary to what Keynes holds, we cannot perceive these probability relations through introspection: we simply suppose that our beliefs are true, then assign a degree of belief to our hypotheses. The problem is to know how it can be measured. The first step consists of reconsidering the notion of belief. On this point we have to anticipate what Ramsey will say in “Facts and propositions”. In the tradition of British empiricism, and in particular in Hume, it is natural to associate belief with a certain “vivid idea” in our mind or with a certain introspectible feeling towards some representations. But Ramsey objects, together with Russell and Moore, to such a conception, and considers belief to be a propositional attitude, involving a relationship to a proposition, of the form “X believes that p”. The degree of belief is thus ascribed to the attitude, not to its propositional object. Ramsey considers the view that a degree could be assigned to the intensity of the feeling of belief, in the sense in which one says, for instance, that one “strongly”, or “weakly” believes something. But we then fall back upon the difficulties of Keynes’ position, for certain very strong beliefs are accompanied by virtually no feeling. There is no hope to measure perceptible degrees of belief by relating them to degrees of probability. The solution consists in relating belief to its objective, and not to its subjective, properties, in particular to its “causal properties” or to its causal “efficacy”: the degree of a belief lies in “how far we should act” on it. This conception of belief is not new. It is already present in Hume, in so far as Hume considered two independent factors which cause actions: beliefs and desires. According to the so-called “Humean theory of motivation”, an agent’s actions are a function, in the causal sense, of certain desires and values, and of the instrumental beliefs of the agent about the means through which he will be able to bring out the satisfaction of these desires. It is this Humean conception which is the basis of modern decision theory.11 The conception of belief as a disposition to act 7


was first explicitly proposed by Alexander Bain, and taken up by Peirce. It is in reading the latter that Ramsey became familiar with this view, which forms one of the main bases of pragmatism.12 A familiar objection to it, voiced by Russell, is that not all beliefs lead to action.13 To this Ramsey answers that the point is not that “a belief is not an idea which does actually lead to action, but one which would lead to action in suitable circumstances; just as a lump of arsenic is called poisonous not because it actually has killed or will kill anyone, but because it would kill anyone if he ate it.” (TP: 66). The true nature of belief as a disposition to act is that it can be expressed by counterfactual conditionals. Not only is a belief a disposition to act if certain circumstances were present, but also a disposition, on the part of the subject, to act as if the proposition believed were true. This point will also be at the core of Ramsey’s analysis of causal statements (see below §2.2). Now, what kinds of actions could constitute the observable effects of causal determinants such as beliefs and be correlated to degrees of probability? Clearly “the old established way of measuring a person’s belief is to propose a bet, and see what are the lowest odds which he will accept.” (TP: 68). Thus suppose that Jones is ready to bet at 3 to 1 that a certain proposition p, say that it will rain tomorrow, is not true. The degree of belief that he assigns to ¬ p is 3/ (3+1), i.e. 0.75. In three cases out of four, Jones believes that it will not rain. Hence his degree of belief in p, that it will rain, is 0.25. Ramsey, however, notes that the betting method is not completely reliable, because money has diminishing marginal utility, and because individuals might be more or less aversive to risk.14 For the method of assigning precise quantities to beliefs to work, we also need to know the nature of the utilities, desires, and values that an agent is ready to associate with certain results of his actions. Here too Ramsey is a Humean: he proposes to take as a basis “a general psychological theory, which is now universally discarded, but nevertheless, comes […] fairly close to the truth in the sort of cases with which we are most concerned, […] the theory that we act in the way we think most likely to realise the objects of our desires, so that a person’s actions are completely determined by his desires and opinions” (TP: 69). The theory, he tells us, is an idealisation: “we seek things we want, which may be our own or other people’s pleasure, or anything else whatever, and our actions are such as we think most likely to realise those goods” (ibid.). Ramsey here clearly formulates what is today known as the “Bayesian” principle of the “maximisation of expected utility”, that agents choose the act which is for them the greatest utility, given their desires and their degrees of beliefs, and whatever these utilities can be. It is not necessary, as he points out, to take the utilitarian view that the ultimate goods of an agent are

8


his quantities of pleasure, but we have only to suppose that agents seek “goods”, without any specification of their nature. Modern decision theory speaks in this neutral sense of the “preferences”, “desirabilities” or “utilities” of agents (Jeffrey, 1965). Ramsey’s problem can be formulated thus. The choices made by an agent between bets are the results of two psychological factors, the values that he places on their results and the probabilities that he assigns to these results. Given the degrees of belief of the agent (his subjective probabilities), it is easy to calculate his values (his subjective utilities) from his choices, and given his values, it is easy to infer his degrees of belief. But from his choices only, how can one calculate his values and his beliefs?15 We should note here that the degrees of belief and the degrees of desire need not be properties of real states of individuals, but could well be theoretical entities postulated in order to explain choice behaviour. Ramsey’s decision theory is thus open to an instrumentalistic interpretation of the common sense psychology of belief and desires, instead of a realist one. We shall come back to this (see infra, §2.4). We need also to spell out the exact nature of the entities which are the terms of the preferences or the choices observed. Here contemporary decision theory often speaks of acts, of states of the world or events, and of consequences. Using a surprisingly contemporary vocabulary, Ramsey talks here of possible worlds, which are the situations which the agent considers to be results of his choices, and he refers to propositions as the objects of partial beliefs.16 The questions encountered by an agent are questions of the following kind: would you prefer a possible world α whatever happens, or a world β if p were true, or a world γ if p were false? If the agent were certain of the truth of p, he would simply choose according to the utility for him of α and β. But in the case which occupies us, we must leave room for the fact that the agent is uncertain about the truth of p, and it is here that our problem starts (TP: 73). The key to Ramsey’s operational method consists in postulating the existence of “ethically neutral” propositions, where “an atomic proposition is said to be ethically neutral if two possible worlds differing only in regard to the truth of p are always of equal value” (TP: 73). Let us suppose for instance that an agent is confronted with two options: getting 100 euros if a certain event E happens, and getting nothing if E does not happen. If the agent is indifferent towards the two choices, this shows that he judges E as being as probable as not E, and that he assigns to it a probability of ½. The discovery of such an ethically neutral proposition solves the problem of the separation of subjective probabilities from subjective utilities. Ramsey then gives a set of axioms which guarantee the existence of a utility function determining the measure of an agent’s values. These are:

9


There is an ethically neutral proposition p believed to degree ½ (basic ontological axiom). (2) If p and q are such propositions and the option α if p, δ if not p is equivalent to the option β if p, γ if not p, then α if q, δ if not q is equivalent to β if q, γ if not q, that is to say αβ = γ δ. (2a) If αβ = γ δ then α > β is equivalent to γ > δ and α = β is equivalent to γ = δ (where “>” denotes the preference of one world to another; these two axioms state when two bets are of equal value). (3) If the option A is equivalent to option B and if B is equivalent to C, then A is equivalent to C (axiom about the transitivity of preferences). (4) If αβ = γ δ and γ δ = ηζ, then αβ = ηζ (axiom about the transitivity of values distances). (5) For all triples (α, β, γ ) there is a unique x such that αx = β γ . (6) For every pair (α, β) there is a unique x such αx = xβ (uniqueness axioms). (7) Axiom of continuity: any progression has a limit. (8) Archimedian axiom: as small as the distance in value between a and b can be, and as large as the distance between c and d can be, there is an integer n such that n times d(a, b) is larger or equal to d(c, d).17 (1)

(The α and β, etc. are possible worlds, the A, B, etc. are options). To calibrate the scale of values between A and B, when A is preferred to B, one finds an ethically neutral condition N with probability ½, and one identifies the middle point on the scale as the desirability of the choice A if N, B if not. To identify the point ¼ on the scale, one finds an option C which is desired exactly as much as the choice, and one identifies the point ¼ as the desirability of a second choice: A if N, C if not. The point ¾ is identified as the desirability of a third choice: C if N, B if not. And so on. Probabilities can then be measured. If the agent is indifferent between getting α for certain, and β if p is true and γ if p is false, the degree of the belief in p will be the quotient (α – γ )/(β – γ ). In other terms the degree of belief in p will be “the odds at which the subject would bet on p, the bet being conduced in terms of the differences of values as defined” (TP: 76), or, as it is often said, his betting quotient on p.18 Once we have supposed that there exists a probability function P(.) defined on propositions, a utility function U(.) defined on values, and that a rational agent acts by maximising his expected utility (which is the sum of the products of his probabilities and of his subjective probabilities),19 we still have to show that these subjective degrees of belief correspond to the laws of the probability calculus and that an agent’s preferences obey certain axioms. These demonstrations are called “representation theorems”. From the previous axioms one can derive the “fundamental laws of partial belief ”: 10


(1) degree of belief in p + degree of belief in not p = 1. (2) degree of belief in p given q + degree of belief in not p given q = 1. (3) degree of belief in (p and q) = degree of belief in p × degree of belief in q given p. (4) degree of belief in (p and q) + degree of belief in (p and not q) = degree of belief in p. These are the elementary principles of the probability calculus. The way Ramsey establishes this is only mentioned in passing in (TP: 78), but it has become the fundamental tool for the Bayesian theorists of probability for showing that the degrees of belief as they define them satisfy the axioms of probability, i.e. can be represented by a unique probability measure. This is done by using the concept of coherence. The laws of partial belief must be necessarily true of any coherent system of belief. If a system of beliefs, or of preferences, is not coherent, a clever bookie could make a bet against the agent, who would lose whatever happens. A “Dutch Book” could be made against him.20 That coherence in the degrees of belief and in the preferences yields the probability axioms not only corresponds to Ramsey’s representation theorem, but is also a criterion of rationality. Coherence – or, as Ramsey calls it, “consistency” – within subjective probabilities, utilities and preferences is rationality.21 Of course, coherence or consistency is a traditional criterion of rationality. But he usually pertains to deductive relations between full beliefs. Ramsey makes an important step in extending it to partial belief. With him rationality ceases to be a feature of beliefs which are certain, or which are closed under logical implication in the deductive sense. The result is an important change in our conception of logic. Formal logic rests upon the principle that if p and not q are inconsistent, q follows from p, and is a tautology, logic being constituted by objectively necessary propositions. But if we extend formal logic as “the logic of consistency”, which bears only on full beliefs (true or false, or of degree 1 or 0) in order to make it include the “logic of partial belief ”, this objective interpretation of logic is lost. For Frege and Russell, logic had to state absolutely necessary axioms or “the laws of being-true” and was the certain basis of knowledge. Ramsey, in renouncing this conception, rejects the foundationalist epistemology which goes with it. But he also rejects Wittgenstein’s conception of logic according to which logic says nothing about what there is, and is made of pure tautologies. If we believe p & q to degree 1/3 and p & not q to the extent of 1/3, then we are bound by consistency to believe not p also to the extent of 1/3. This is the νγκη λγειν; but we cannot say that if p & q is true to degree 1/3, and p & not q is 1/3 true, not p must 11


also be 1/3, for such a statement would be sheer nonsense. There is no corresponding νγκη εναι. Hence, unlike the calculus of consistent full belief, the calculus of objective partial belief cannot immediately be interpreted as a body of objective tautology. (TP: 83) As we have seen, Ramsey contrasts the “logic of consistency” which he assimilates to formal logic in the narrow, deductive sense, with “the logic of truth” or “human logic”. The first tells us whether our (full) beliefs are consistent with each other. The second tells us also whether our beliefs are consistent with the facts. Of course, the logic of partial belief is also a logic of consistency, since it rests upon a criterion of coherence between partial beliefs. So the distinction between a logic of consistency and a logic of truth does not coincide with the distinction between full beliefs and partial beliefs. But the latter, human logic, is a logic of subjective probability, and not a logic of the objective relations between propositions. It tells us how we can sometimes be “humanly right” to entertain a certain degree of belief on inductive grounds, and it must be prepared sometimes to go against formal logic (TP: 87). Human logic, then, should be also an inductive logic, or logic of discovery. The reason why it is “human” is that it “tells us how humans should think”. The criterion of this “should” is clearly pragmatic: for it is not clear “that consistency is always advantageous: it may well be better to be sometimes right than never right” (ibid.). Here too we have a contrast between two views of the normativity of logic. On the first view, which is represented by Frege, the laws of logic are normative because they are “the laws of being true”: they prescribe absolutely what one ought to think.22 On the second view, Ramsey’s, logic is also concerned with what one ought to believe, or what it would be reasonable to believe. Ramsey tells us that he is unable to assign to this idea any other meaning than “that reasonable opinion [is to be identified] with the opinion of an ideal person in similar circumstances”. But he adds: What, however, would this ideal person’s opinion be? […] The highest ideal would be always to have a true opinion and be certain of it; but this ideal is more suited to God than to man. We have therefore to consider the human mind and what is the most we can ask for it. (TP: 89–90) So, unlike Frege’s logic, “human logic” so conceived would have to be psychologistic, because it would be essentially tied to the actual human capacities to think. We do not pretend by saying this that Ramsey is ready 12


to come back to the psychologistic conception of logic that Mill and other naturalisitic thinkers of the nineteenth century entertained. For he does not identify beliefs with mental representations in the mentalistic sense. Rather he identifies them, as we have seen, with dispositions to act or to habits. But these habits clearly have a naturalistic underpinning, for they are the rules which humans actually follow, and not the ideal rules of ideal thinkers.23 But if this human logic is a logic of subjective probabilities, anchoring what it is rational to believe into actual rules and habits, how can it be, nevertheless, objective and not simply a catalogue of changing recipes? Ramsey mentions a way of objectifying subjective probabilities, by associating partial beliefs (which bear on the probability that an individual attributes to an isolated event) to frequencies (which bear on classes of events). This does not amount to coming back to an objectivist frequency conception, but to admitting that there are connections between the two kinds of probabilities. He proposes to say that partial belief involves relations to ideal frequencies, in the sense that a belief in p of degree m/n is the kind of belief which leads to the action which would be the most successful if it were repeated n times among the m circumstances in which the proposition p is true. Unlike the other main theorist of the subjective approach, de Finetti, Ramsey does not hold that the meaning of the word “probable” is purely subjective. His subjectivism is not incompatible with the claim that beliefs are real dispositions, correlated with objective facts.

1.3 Human logic It might also be thought that Ramsey’s procedure of measuring degrees of belief is subjectivistic in another sense, because it seems to tie our reasons to believe to our reasons to act. A central tenet of pragmatism, as it is ordinarily conceived, is that the latter kind of reasons can dominate, and sometimes override the former kind of reasons. William James’ “Will to Believe” doctrine, in particular, is often understood in this sense, since it says not only that we can sometimes believe under the control of our will, but also that we might have good reasons to do so. But if our reasons to act can change according to the circumstances, it is unclear that they can be objective, and if such reasons dominate our reasons to believe, the latter can hardly be objective either.24 Another classical case of dominance of reasons to act upon reasons to believe is Pascal’s Wager. Rational action, says the Wager Argument, consists in adopting a belief – in the existence of God – which has a high degree of utility (indeed a maximal degree) in spite of the fact that our corresponding degree of belief in His existence can be very low, hence with little justification in the epistemic sense. 13


Indeed it has often been said that Pascal’s Wager Argument is the ancestor of the Bayesian conception of rational belief.25 The fact, however, that our beliefs lead to the actions which would be the most useful for the agent, given his preferences – and which, accordingly, satisfy the normative principles of rational action – is one thing. The fact that these beliefs are in themselves justified or reasonable in the epistemic sense is another thing. That a belief can be rational in the practical sense because it is useful does not make it automatically rational in the epistemic sense. Ramsey would not follow Pascal in the part of his argument where he seems to imply that believing in God could be the product of a rational decision. For he holds, following Peirce, that belief is a habit of action which is essentially involuntary. It is with respect to these habits that our beliefs can be evaluated for their epistemic value. But this does not mean that this value is completely independent from its utility in the long run. Let us try to spell this out more fully. “Human logic”, or the logic of truth, is devoted precisely to this aspect, which concerns the justification of our inductive beliefs, which form the major part of our beliefs. Two aspects of this justification are particularly important. This first concerns our reasons for revising our beliefs, in the contexts where we learn something and modify our previous beliefs to acquire new ones. Here the fundamental notion of the logic of partial belief is that of a degree of belief in q given p, which is called the conditional probability, noted P (q/p). Here Ramsey points out that This does not mean the degree of belief in “If p then q” or that in “p entails q”, or that which the subject would have in p if he knew q, or that which he ought to have. It roughly expresses the odds at which he would now bet on p, the bet only to be valid if q is true. (TP: 76) In the usual context where I register some new information, some of my degrees of belief after the observation must be inconsistent with my previous ones. Consistency prescribes the rule: If p is the fact observed, my degree of belief in q after the observation should be equal to my degree of belief in q given p before, or by the multiplication law to the quotient of my degree of belief in p & q by my degree of belief in p. (TP: 88)

14


This is none other than the Bayes’ rule or the rule for conditional probabilities: P(q/p) = P(p & q) / P(p) But for this kind of conditional beliefs to be justified, and for an agent to infer regularly from the observation of p to the truth of q, he needs to have the habit of forming this opinion, and the question is whether this habit is reliable. To this Ramsey answers: Let us take a habit of forming opinion in a certain way; e.g. the habit of proceeding from the opinion that a toadstool is yellow to the opinion that it is unwholesome. Then we can accept the fact that the person has a habit of this sort, and ask merely what degree of opinion that the toadstool is unwholesome it would be best for him to entertain when he sees it: i.e. granting that he is going to think always in the same way about all yellow toadstools, we can ask what degree of confidence it would be best for him to have that they’re unwholesome. And the answer is that it will in general be best for his degree of belief that a yellow toadstool is unwholesome to be equal to the proportion of yellow toadstools which are in fact unwholesome. (TP: 91) This illustrates clearly the link between the degree of belief, the objective frequency and the utility of the belief: the conditional beliefs which are the most reliable are those which have the best success conditions, and which are correlated to the highest relative frequency. Such conditional beliefs are those which have the form of laws, and which are habits of action maximising success. So Ramsey here formulates two principles. The first one is the following: Beliefs are more likely to be true when their success conditions are warranted. This is a version that we are going to call Ramsey’s Principle.26 The second principle is a principle of justification of induction, and more generally of any kind of inference. It says that “a type of inference is reasonable or unreasonable according to the relative frequencies with which it leads to truth and falsehood”.27 It forms the basis of what is usually called a pragmatic justification of induction: “On this view we should establish by induction that induction was reasonable, and induction being reasonable this would be a reasonable argument” (ibid.). This idea, 15


which is, according to Ramsey, taken up by him from Peirce, is opposed both to Humean scepticism about induction and to Wittgenstein’s view, who held in the Tractatus (6.361, 6.363, 6.3631) that one can only give a psychological justification of induction. It is nevertheless close to Hume’s own “sceptical solution”: “the distinction between good and bad reasoning is that between health and disease” (OT: 123). “Truth and probability”, therefore, sets up a philosophical paradigm, which connects the concepts of belief, truth, probability, utility and action. Ramsey is not the inventor of this paradigm, since it can be traced back to Peirce and to Hume. But Ramsey’s version articulates it fully, and it is the one which will become dominant within the logic of decision and within much of contemporary philosophy of science. This is not to say that Ramsey’s approach is evident. There are three main problems. First, it is often objected that we can in all circumstances measure our degrees of belief. Ever since Locke proposed his famous doctrine of degrees of assent, a number of writers have doubted that we could have anything other than full beliefs, and held that belief implies an assent to p or to not p, but not to p or to not p to a given degree.28 Moreover, it is often objected to Bayesians that if we had to calculate the degree of any one of our beliefs, we would quickly reach combinatorial explosion.29 Second, the betting quotient method of measurement is not unproblematic. The definition of an ethically neutral proposition implies that an agent is indifferent with respect to two bets (between A if p, B if not p, and A if not p, B if p), but in certain situations one cannot be indifferent to p because of its possible consequences. Ramsey tries to exclude such cases by stipulating that A and B are mutually exclusive worlds, but this stipulation is very strong: how can one be sure that the alternatives are mutually exclusive? In the third place, no type of behaviour, whether it is a betting behaviour or not, indicates a degree of belief associated to a specific content, because only certain combinations of beliefs and desires can account for a given behaviour, so that many kinds of such combinations will be plausible. Such holism of belief and other propositional attitudes is a familiar obstacle for any operational method of determination of the content of mental states on the basis of behaviour (Davidson, 1980, 1984). The fact that there are several alternative methods for measuring probabilities and utilities, such as Von Neumann and Morgenstern’s (1944), Savage’s (1954), or Jeffrey’s (1965) indicates the extent of these difficulties.30 The numerous experimental studies of human decision making show how problematic is the application of these normative principles to the behaviour of real agents.31 When Ramsey tells us that “all our lives we are in a sense betting” and that “whenever we go to the station we are betting that a train will really run, and if we had not a sufficient degree of belief in this we would decline the bet and stay at 16


home” (TP: 79), should we take him seriously? To such doubts one can answer, as Bayesians often do, that the principles of the logic of decision are essentially normative or ideal, in the sense that they prescribe the way in which a rational agent should behave, and that they are not intended to describe actual behaviour. The same question can be raised for the applications of the Bayesian methodology to the philosophy of science, which have generated a huge literature: are they idealisations or do they have a genuine descriptive power?32 The first answer is problematic from Ramsey’s own point of view, for “human logic” by definition cannot go farther than what is recognised as human, and so cannot bear on ideal agents. In fact Ramsey, although he agrees that he is giving idealisations, intends to give a descriptive theory, by defining certain mental states, beliefs and desires, in terms of their causes and of their effects upon our actions. A last, and quite common, objection to Ramsey’s framework that we might consider is that his conception of rationality as coherence of preferences, which has been fully developed with the contemporary framework of Bayesianism and decision theory, is too narrow to encompass what we mean by “rationality”. It is often argued that not only does it fail to account for quite obvious senses of the word “rational” or “reasonable” that we use in daily life, but also that it fails as a general reduction of reason to instrumental reason, just as any broadly “Humean” conception of rationality fails as an account of practical reason.33 Sometimes, Ramsey seems to indulge in such indifference to ultimate ends or values, as when he famously says in his “Epilogue” (a text written for the Cambridge discussion society also entitled “On there being nothing to discuss”): Most of us would agree that the objectivity of good was a thing we had settled and dismissed with the existence of God. Theology and Ethics are two famous subjects which have realized to have no real objects. (PP: 247) And at the end of this text (the sequel to the passage quoted at the end of our introduction above) he says: I find, just now at least, the world a pleasant and exciting place. You may find it depressing; I am sorry for you and you despise me. But I have reason and you have none; you would only have a reason for despising me if your feeling corresponded to the fact in a way mine didn’t. But neither can correspond to the fact. (PP: 250) 17


Such passages certainly indicate that Ramsey had a strongly anti-realist view of ethics. But it is far from clear that an expressivist view in ethics has to claim that “reason” only means instrumental reason or the coherence of axioms for our preferences, and that it implies a reductionist conception of reason.34 In any case, even if Ramsey had shown that rationality needs at least something like his axioms for decision theory, this would be an important achievement.

1.4 Truth, belief and action Ramsey’s descriptive theory of belief is developed in “Facts and propositions”, where it is associated with a specific conception of truth. There Ramsey seems to give one of the first explicit formulations of what is today called a “redundancy” conception of truth. According to this conception, there is no more to the concept of truth than what is expressed by the familiar equivalence between “It is true that p” and “p”, and this equivalence shows that the word “true” is purely redundant or superfluous, and can be dispensed with. The redundancy conception of truth belongs to the family of “deflationist” or “minimalist” theories of truth which have in common the claim that truth is not a genuine predicate of assertions, thoughts, or sentences, but a mere formal or logical device of assertion or of quotation, with no substantive content. Truth, on these views, is not a genuine property of our statements, and it cannot be given any metaphysically deep definition such as correspondence, coherence, warranted assertibility or utility. There are many versions of such views, which have been held, in more or less precise forms, by Frege, Wittgenstein, Ayer and the positivists, and which have received, in contemporary philosophy, a number of elaborate and sophisticated versions.35 Ramsey seems to defend a view of this kind when he says, in an obviously deflationary and anti-metaphysical mood: There is really no separate problem of truth, but merely a linguistic muddle. Truth and falsity are ascribed primarily to propositions. The proposition to which they are ascribed may be explicitly given or described. Suppose first that it has been explicitly given; then it is evident that ‘It is true that Caesar was murdered’ means no more than that Caesar was murdered, and ‘It is false that Caesar was murdered’ means that Caesar was not murdered. They are phrases which we sometimes use for emphasis or for stylistic reasons, or to indicate the position occupied by the statement in our argument. So we can say ‘It is a fact that Caesar was murdered’ or ‘That he was murdered is contrary to fact’. (FP: 38) 18


The redundancy theory of truth is sometimes called a “disappearance” theory, or a “No-truth theory” (Prior, 1971: 10) for it proposes to get rid of the word “true” (or “false”) and to eliminate it from our language. But, as Ramsey notes, this raises an obvious difficulty for “unspecified” or “blind” truth ascriptions such as “He is always right”, or “What you said is true”, or “This theory is true”. Ramsey suggests paraphrases of the form (1) For all p, if he asserts p, p Here he clearly takes inspiration from Russell’s technique of paraphrasing sentences containing descriptions of the form “The so and so” into quantified sentences, a device that he also uses in his analysis of theories (see §2.4). The problem, however, with such an analysis is that the quantifier “For all p” in (1) functions in its first occurrence as a quantifier on propositions, and a number of philosophers find this kind of quantification dubious. Another difficulty is that the last occurrence of “p” in the paraphrase above must express a well-formed sentence containing a verb, and that we have to reintroduce “is true” for the sentence to be correct, thus losing any benefit of eliminating it. Elsewhere Ramsey suggests that in order to remove the ambiguity introduced by his paraphrase between variables in nominal position (first occurrence of p in (1)) and in sentence position (last occurrence of p in (1)), we should consider these variables as pronouns, as in “If John loves Mary, then he wants to date her”. The variable p could thus be considered as a prosentence (OT: 10). Without apparently being aware that they had to be anticipated by Ramsey himself on this point, Prior and others have taken up this suggestion and proposed various versions of the so-called “prosentential” theory of truth. The appropriate paraphrases would then be of the form (2) For all p, if John says tthat, then tthat Here, “tthat” is the appropriate concocted pro-sentence. It is not really clear that such paraphrases really succeed in eliminating the word “true” from our vocabulary, but we cannot expand on this in these discussions.36 Ramsey’s apparent eliminativism about truth seems here to agree well with his radicalism in many areas – once a philosophical notion has been logically “defined”, there is not much left to discuss about it.37 It is not, however, clear that he defends a redundancy conception of truth, nor even a deflationist one. First, as it is often remarked, the redundancy conception of truth, when it relies upon the familiar equivalence 19


(E) It is true that p if and only if p presupposes that the content of the proposition that p is already known by us, and that it is used. This is different from the familiar Tarskian form of this equivalence: (T) ‘p’ is true if and only if p which only quotes the sentence ‘p’. This is why the schema T is said to register the fact that “true” is a device which allows us to “disquote” the sentence quoted on the left-hand side of the biconditional “if and only if ” in order to get simply p. According to the so-called “disquotational” theory of truth, there is no more to truth than this particular logical property of disquotation. Now, as it has been remarked by Michael Dummett, it is not possible to have both a redundancy conception of truth and to hold, on the basis of equivalences such as E or T that such equivalences allow us to state the truth conditions of our sentences.38 Ramsey is clearly aware of the fact that if one holds that “It is true that p” means no more than “p”, one needs to presuppose that one knows the content of or the meaning of the sentence “p” or the proposition that this sentence expresses: It is perhaps also immediately obvious that if we have analysed judgement we have solved the problem of truth; for taking the mental factor in a judgement (which is often itself called a judgement), the truth or falsity of this depends only on what proposition it is that is judged, and what we have to explain is the meaning of saying that the judgement is a judgement that a has R to b, i.e. is true if aRb, false if not. (FP: 39) And he sets himself the explicit task of trying to account for the truth conditions, or the content of beliefs, or judgements. If he defended a redundancy theory, he would have simply to take for granted the content of judgements, which he obviously does not. He attempts, in FP to give a “logical analysis” of the notions of judgement, belief and assertion of the form X believes that p, and to spell out the relationship which exists between “the objective factor” (the proposition which is believed or the fact which is described) and the “mental factor” constituted by the corresponding psychological state. Russell had undertaken such an analysis, and rejected the idea that the objective factor could be an entity such as a proposition or a thought in the Fregean sense. According to Russell the objective factor was constituted 20


by facts, and by our relation to their constituents. But this led to the obvious objection that the contents of negative judgements should place us in contact with mysterious entities: negative facts.39 Like Wittgenstein (Tractatus, 5.5151), Ramsey rejects these, and the idea that facts could be the objects of beliefs. Facts are usually described in two sorts of ways: either through definite descriptions, such as “The death of Caesar”, or through nominalised expressions, such as “The fact that Caesar died”, which seem to be equivalent to the former. But according to Ramsey, they are not equivalent: when we talk about the death of Caesar we talk about an event, whereas when we say: “He was aware that Caesar had died” we are talking about an event as characterised in a certain way (FP: 37). Anticipating here Davidson’s analysis of action sentences as involving an implicit quantification over events,40 Ramsey writes: The connection between the event which was the death of Caesar and the fact that Caesar died is, in my opinion, this: ‘That Caesar died’ is really an existential proposition, asserting the existence of an event of a certain sort, thus resembling ‘Italy has a king’ which asserts the existence of a man of a certain sort. The event which is of that sort is called the death of Caesar, and should no more be confused with the fact that Caesar died than the King of Italy should be confused with the fact that Italy has a King. (FP: 37) Now it is at this point that the analysis of phrases such as “the fact that p” has to be brought together with the sketch of a redundantist view of truth proposed by Ramsey: for to say that p is a fact, or that it is a fact that p, does not amount to any more than saying that it is true that p, which in turn amounts to assert the proposition, or to make the judgement, that p. It is in this sense that Ramsey tells us that “there is no separate problem of truth”. By this he does not mean that this problem vanishes, or that truth is explained away, but he means that the problem of truth is not separate from the problem of the analysis of judgement, or of assertion, or of the content of belief. But the fact that the meaning of the word “true” is in itself transparent in the equivalence E does in no way imply that we are dispensed of the task of analysing the truth conditions of beliefs. It does not imply either, contrary to what a number of Ramsey’s readers have suggested, that the problem of truth disappears, or that the notion of truth is vacuous. What Ramsey actually says is that the problem of truth is transferred to the problem of the truth conditions of beliefs. This is why he says, in the passage quoted above, that “if we have analysed judgement, we have also solved the problem of truth”. It is also here that the theory of the “objective factor” in belief is connected to the theory of 21


the “mental factor”, for to articulate the former with the latter, Ramsey invokes the “pragmatist” theory of belief. The essence of pragmatism I take to be this, that the meaning of a sentence is to be defined by reference to the actions to which asserting it would lead, or more vaguely still, by its possible causes and effects. (FP: 51) What is this “pragmatist conception”? In this very passage Ramsey tells us that his pragmatism “is derived from Mr Russell”. He cannot mean by that that he derives from Russell a pragmatist conception of truth, for Russell is notoriously one of the most trenchant critics of this conception.41 What Ramsey seems to take from Russell is rather his view in The Analysis of Mind, that “the differentia of belief consists in its causal efficacy”. In other terms, what we believe is determined by what the belief causes us to do.42 Russell makes a distinction between what a belief actually causes us to do, and what it disposes us to do. It is probably by combining this Russellian suggestion with Peirce’s conception of belief as a disposition to act that Ramsey came to his “pragmatist” conception. Now what exactly is this conception? The truth conditions, or the content of a proposition believed, are determined by the actions to which this belief would lead and by the actions which, from the point of view of the agent, are useful. This is what we called Ramsey’s Principle. In FP, Ramsey invites us to consider a chicken43 who “believes” that a certain sort of caterpillar is poisonous, and which abstains from eating it because of the unpleasant experiences. Applying here the Ramseyan theory of decision, we can construct the following “decision matrix” for this chicken (borrowed from Sahlin 1990: 72):

Eat Refrain

Poisonous

Edible

Upset stomach Avoids upset stomach

Good dinner Missed dinner

Here, the columns indicate states of the worlds, the rows indicate possible actions, and the cells the consequences of taking these actions. The theory tells us that if the chicken does not know whether the caterpillar is poisonous or not, it should act so as to maximise its expected utility. The problem here is not, unlike in the analysis presented in §1.2, that of assigning degrees of belief (or desire), but of knowing what the chicken fully believes, namely whether it believes that the caterpillar is 22


poisonous or not, for its action itself is useful or not if and only if the caterpillar is poisonous or not. In the circumstance in question, the chicken would do better to refrain from eating that caterpillar. Giving a degree to a given belief p is one thing, analysing the content of the belief is another. This indicates the limits, in the practical context, of the ascription of degrees to beliefs and to desires, for we are here dealing with the truth conditions of beliefs and not with their probabilities.44 And the truth conditions are clear: a belief that p is true, if and only if it is useful to do the things of which the truth of p is a necessary and sufficient condition. In other terms: Any set of actions for whose utility p is a necessary and sufficient condition might be called a belief that p, and so would be true if p, i.e. if they are useful. (FP: 40) To which Ramsey adds in a footnote: It is useful to believe aRb would mean that it is useful to do things which are useful if, and only if, aRb; which is evidently equivalent to aRb. (ibid.) This makes clear the link between Ramsey’s Principle, which tells us that it is true that p if and only if p is such that it leads to useful actions, and the principle of equivalence for truth E. We can formulate what Ramsey says thus : (ER) A belief that p is true iff p is useful, and p is useful iff p45 Dropping “iff p is useful” from ER leads us back to E and to the minimalist platitude that the belief that p is true if and only if p. But Ramsey’s theory is not limited to this minimalist platitude, since it equates the condition for the truth of p with its utility condition. So he does not hold a simple redundantist view. If we had to give a label to his conception, we would rather call it quasi-redundantist, or quasi-minimalist, for unlike the simple redundancy view, it complements the equivalence principle with an account of the truth conditions (and this is another way of saying that for Ramsey truth cannot consist in just the redundancy of the truth predicate). So if we leave aside the question of the chicken’s degrees of belief, what is the difference between its belief that the caterpillar is poisonous and its belief that it is not? The difference is not due to the relationship 23


between the chicken and a positive fact in one case, and a negative fact in the other, but to the fact that the chicken is in a state of believing that the caterpillar is poisonous in one case, and in a state of disbelief with respect to the same content in the other. According to Ramsey, there is no difference between believing that not p and disbelieving that p (FP: 43– 4). In terms of his causal theory of belief, these two states have the same causes and the same effects. Believing that the caterpillar is not poisonous just means not believing that it is, which in turn means that a rational and hungry chicken would eat the caterpillar.46 The two mental states are defined by their causal properties. Here Ramsey uses his Peircean theory that beliefs are causal dispositions to act, and he also makes quite clear the relationship between the truth of a proposition (objective factor) and the causal nature of belief (mental factor), as well as the link between these two factors and the redundancy of truth: for to take a proposition as true is nothing else than to believe it and to be prepared to act upon it, and to take it as false is nothing else than disbelieving it and not be reluctant to act upon it. It is in this sense that the problem of truth is not “separate”: it is transferred to the problem of the nature of belief. A suspicion, however, parallel to that which we raised above for the subjectivist conception of probability, may arise. Does such a view imply that truth is something subjective, and, since the truth conditions of beliefs are determined by the conditions of success or utility of desires, don’t these truth conditions become something relative to desires, which are by essence subject to change? Isn’t it one of the calamitous consequences of a pragmatic conception of truth that it defines truth by utility? Let us note here that the same suspicion can be entertained if one attributes to Ramsey a simple redundancy conception of truth, for if the word “true” can be eliminated, and truth be reduced to assertion or judgement, truth does not seem to be a real property of our judgements and beliefs, and we are thus led to a form of non factualism or of anti-realism about truth.47 But the suspicion is unjustified, for Ramsey never conflates his “definition” of truth through the platitude expressed by the equivalence E, nor his analysis of the truth conditions of belief in terms of utility, with a definition of truth in terms of utility. On the contrary the truth conditions of a belief are in no way subjective or non-factual, for they would not be truth conditions at all. They are real, and objective, because beliefs are real states of agents, defined in terms of the desires which are related to them and in terms of the kinds of actions that they can cause. The point is not (and we shall come back to this below) that beliefs are defined through desires and potential actions, but that the latter and the former are interdefined. Ramsey is not proposing to reduce, in behaviourist fashion, beliefs to behaviour. What he is proposing is, as many 24


commentators have remarked, a functionalist conception of belief: beliefs are determined by their causal role, together with the causal role of desires, and their joint production of actions.48 It follows that if the truth conditions of a belief are (inter)defined through the associated desires and the resulting actions, and if beliefs are real states, then these truth conditions are real and the truth of beliefs has to be defined through the existence of objective conditions in the world. Ramsey’s pragmatic conception of truth conditions does not imply that the contents of beliefs are subjective. On the contrary, he insists that beliefs have the function of representing real states of the world. According to his famous metaphor in “General propositions and causality” (GPC: 146), beliefs are “maps by which we steer”. They would not be maps if they did not have the function of describing the environment. Actually in his posthumous manuscript On Truth, Ramsey is quite clear that he wants to defend a correspondence theory of truth: Although we have not yet used the word ‘correspondence’ ours will probably be called a Correspondence Theory of Truth. For if A is B, we can speak according to common usage of the fact that A is B and say that it corresponds to the belief that A is B in a way in which if A is not B there is no such fact corresponding to it. (OT: 11) He adds that although “this account of truth is merely a truism” or “a platitude” it will not detract from being a correspondence account. Ramsey has a realist conception of truth and of truth conditions. But his kind of realism is distinct from the kind of realism which underlies a full-blown correspondence theory of truth. It is a form of pragmatist realism, which associates truth to belief-habits and to actions.49 In the next chapters we try to spell out the principles of this pragmatism.

Chapter summary In this chapter, we have introduced Ramsey’s conception of the relationship between belief, truth and action. Beliefs, together with desires, are the causal determinants of action. They have degrees, which can be shown to correspond to subjective probabilities and measured through the operational method of betting quotients. To classical logic (or the “logic of consistency”) one must add a “human logic” of degrees of belief and of inductive inference. Ramsey’s theory of degrees of belief, however, is distinct from his analysis of the contents or of the truth conditions of beliefs. The truth conditions of a belief are the set of actions which are useful if and only if this belief is true. We call this Ramsey’s Principle. But 25


this pragmatist principle, which is about the truth conditional content of beliefs, should not be confused with a pragmatist definition of truth. Ramsey has a redundantist definition of truth: there is no more to truth than the principle “It is true that p if and only if p”. But this definition is only quasi-minimalist, for it is coupled with a perfectly objectivistic conception of truth conditions as utility conditions and of truth as correspondence.

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R E A L I S M A N D P RAG M AT I S M

2 REALISM AND P RAG M AT I S M

2.1 Knowledge We have seen how Ramsey drew from his views on subjective probability a pragmatist conception of the justification of inductive beliefs (§1.2). In two short notes, “Reasonable degree of belief ” (1928) and “Knowledge” (1929) he also draws the consequences of this conception for an analysis of the concept of knowledge. According to the traditional analysis, taken up by Russell (1910, 1912), knowledge is justified true belief. Russell, anticipating in this Gettier’s famous counterexamples, showed that there are cases of justified true beliefs which fail to be knowledge, since one could get such beliefs by accident.1 Ramsey suggests a solution to this problem, which anticipates what is today known as the “causal” and “reliabilist” conception of knowledge. He first defines the notion of “reasonable degree of belief ” by following Peirce’s definition: belief is a habit, not an individual judgement produced on a specific occasion, and it is reasonable when the proportion of cases in which this habit leads to truth is high (PP: 97). Several conditions, however, must also be met for a belief to be reasonable: (a) it cannot be an isolated habit, which can lead to misleading experiences, but it must be a second-order habit, the habit of forming such habits, (b) actual cases are not enough, so the proportion must be of possible cases, (c) we do not always consider isolated beliefs, but often assume a theory of the world, with laws and chances. The problem, then, is: when are such habits reasonable and justified? Ramsey’s answer is this: I have always said that a belief was knowledge if it was (i) true, (ii) certain, (iii) obtained by a reliable process. But the word ‘process’ is very unsatisfactory; we can call inference a process, but even then unreliable seems to refer only to a fallacious method not to a false premiss as it is supposed to do. Can we say that a memory is obtained by a reliable process? I think perhaps we can

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if we mean the causal process connecting what happens with my remembering it. We might then say, a belief obtained by a reliable process must be caused by what are not beliefs in a way or with accompaniments that can be more or less relied on to give true beliefs, and if in this train of causation occur other intermediaries beliefs these must all be true ones. (K: 110) It is not clear that Ramsey is here giving a definition of knowledge in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. But we shall suppose here that he is trying to define at least the conditions of justification for beliefs.2 Condition (i), truth, has to be interpreted along the lines of Ramsey’s quasi-minimalist theory: “That p is true” amounts to p, but p itself is true if and only if it leads to successful actions (according to ER, §1.3 above). How are we to interpret (ii)? Ramsey means by “certain” that the subject believes fully that p, and not that he assigns some degree to it.3 Condition (iii) is what makes Ramsey’s conception of knowledge a causal one. If we formulate this condition in contemporary fashion,4 the relationship between an individual and the content of her belief p must be that of an appropriate causal process intervening between the state of affairs that the belief represents (the objective factor referred to in FP) and the internal state of the subject (the mental factor). This process is not, as Ramsey makes it clear, necessarily a belief: it can be a perception, a memory, or a reliable mechanism of some kind to which the subject has no access, but which leads her systematically to true beliefs. In other words, it is the reliability of this causal relation which defines justification: (RB) X is justified in believing that p = There is a reliable causal relation between the truth of p and X’s belief that p Since it can be established that this relationship is reliable independently from the subject’s conscious beliefs and from her internal access to those, Ramsey’s conception is, in contemporary terminology, an externalist one. But this externalist condition faces a familiar objection: a belief which would be the product of a reliable process without the subject knowing that it is reliable would not be knowledge. Let us suppose, for instance, that I enjoy reliable powers of vision, but that a neuroscientist informs me, deceptively, that he manipulates my visual cortex and thus my perceptions. In such a case, I see normally and reliably, but I do not know that I see correctly, since I believe (wrongly), on the basis of the scientist’s authority, that my visual powers are impaired. So it seems that we have to add to the externalist condition RB above an internalist proviso:

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I must also know that my visual powers are reliable. There are remarks by Ramsey that seem to point in this direction: We say ‘I know’, however, when we are certain, without reflecting on reliability. But if we did reflect then we should remain certain if, and only if, we thought our way reliable (supposing us to know it; if not, taking it merely as described it would be the same, e.g. God put it into my mind: a supposedly reliable process). (K: 110) This seems to involve the condition that one must be conscious or aware of the reliability of one’s way of knowing, and thus that one must know that one knows. (Ramsey would thus subscribe to what is today called the “KK thesis” in epistemic logic: if one knows that p, then one knows that one knows that p).5 At this point, however, we encounter a dilemma. On the one hand, if this knowledge about the reliability of our processes is itself defined in terms of reliable processes, and the subject must reliably know that RB holds, i.e. (RB*) X knows that RB Now RB* will be justified only if the subject believes it reliably, i.e. if he knows that RB*, and we start an infinite regress in the chain of justifications, comparable to the one which is familiar from foundationalist conceptions of justification. If, on the other hand, RB is not itself defined in externalist, but in internalist terms, as involving a conscious access of the subject to his reliable processes, then a similar regress threatens, but in the internalist sense. This seems to show that reliability may be a necessary condition for justification, but not a sufficient one. These difficulties arise because we have read into Ramsey’s proviso an instance of the principle that in order to know that p one must know that one knows that p. Actually, however, Ramsey seems to require less than that, when he says: “For to think our way reliable is simply to formulate in a variable hypothetical the habit of following the way.” (K: 110). By a “variable hypothetical” Ramsey means a conditional statement of the form “All Fs are Gs”, a general belief expressing a rule of action (see below, §2.2). So it can be suggested that when he talks of “thinking our way reliable” he means something weaker than (RB*), namely the availability of a rule of action. We could thus say that the condition that he imposes on knowledge is that our true beliefs be not only reliable, but also lead to success.6 There is an evolutionary reading of this: a species whose cognitive mechanisms would not be reliable would not succeed. For simple habits (so to say, first-order habits), there is no need of a 29


reflective knowledge of one’s habits. But for more complex species, there are second-order habits, the habits of forming habits (see condition (a) above), which means “self-control”. And this may involve reflective knowledge of one’s habits. Self-control, Ramsey tells us, commenting upon Peirce, means “not acting on the temporarily uppermost desire, but stopping to think it out”, and “forming as a result of a decision an habit of acting […] in a definite way adjusted to permanent desire”.7 To have second-order habits, about our reliable ways, is to have the general habit of forming general habits. This does not involve the capacity to know, in every circumstance, that our habits are reliable. But if this habit or capacity is itself reliable, we are justified, in the same way as we are inductively justified to believe our inductive beliefs, according to the pragmatic justification of induction.

2.2 Laws and causality Until now, we have envisaged only the truth conditions of atomic beliefs, of the form “Fa” or “Not Fa” (This caterpillar is (not) poisonous). To believe that Fa is to be disposed causally to perform action which succeeds if and only if Fa is true. Conjunctive beliefs do not raise problems, and neither do disjunctive ones: to believe that p or q is to express, through one’s actions, one’s agreement with the possibilities that p and q are true, that p is false and q true, and one’s disagreement with the possibility that p and q be both false. For Ramsey’s theory to be complete, it must account for the truth conditions of general beliefs, of the form “For all x, φ x” whose role in the acquisition of knowledge is all the more important that they usually represent laws and conditional propositions of the form “If p then q”, which express causal relations, relations between beliefs and inferences. In (FP: 49), Ramsey followed Wittgenstein’s analysis, for whom a general universal proposition of the form “For all x, φ x” is simply the logical product of atomic propositions (i.e φ a & φ b & φ c, …) and an existential general proposition of the form “There is an x such that φ x” is the logic sum of such propositions (i.e φ a ∨ φ b ∨ φ c, …).8 In 1929, however, Ramsey rejects this analysis, because it implies, if variables range over infinite sets of objects, that these propositions be infinite disjunctions or conjunctions. Ramsey rejects this view, for three reasons. First, as we have already seen (§1.1) he now adopts intuitionism and finitism in the philosophy of mathematics (PGC: 151). Second, if conjunctions are allowed to be infinite we lose any means of knowing them, so it is hard to see what role they could play in our knowledge. According to Wittgenstein they could not even be expressed, which Ramsey summarises with his scathing irony, parodying the last proposition of the Tractatus:

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But what we can’t say, we can’t say, and we can’t whistle it either. (GPC: 146) The third reason is more properly tied to his pragmatist conception of truth conditions and to Ramsey’s Principle. If our general beliefs were infinite conjunctions, they could not be true if they were to lead to actions, since they would have to be associated with an infinity of such actions; but by definition the actions which are to be associated with our true beliefs are finite. It is at this point precisely that Ramsey invokes his image of beliefs as maps: A belief of the primary sort is a map of neighbouring space by which we steer. It remains such a map however much we complicate it or fill in details. But if we professedly extend it to infinity, it is no longer a map; we cannot take it in or steer by it. Our journey is over before we need its remoter parts. (GPC: 146) Unlike beliefs of the primary sort (atomic beliefs), general beliefs such as “All men are mortal” are neither true nor false, and they lack any cognitive content: rather, they express rules for action or attitudes that we take towards these propositions. They are not maps, but instructions in order to form them. What is it to believe that All men are mortal? It is, in the case where such a being is present, to consider that if he is a man, then he is mortal. Conditional propositions of this kind are not judgements, but rules for the formation of judgements, or what Ramsey calls “variable hypotheticals” of the form “If I meet a φ, I shall regard it as a ψ”. Ramsey adds that one cannot negate this judgement, but only disagree with it (GPC: 148–9). As a number of commentators have remarked, the analogy between this idea and Wittgenstein’s conception of laws as rules of inference, which he held in the 1930s: “An hypothesis is a law for forming propositions”, but it is not a genuine proposition.9 More generally, Ramsey’s view is in the spirit of the “projectivist” picture originally sketched by Hume for our concepts of causality and of value: just as for Hume, our causal statements and our statements about values are not descriptive of facts, but projections of our attitudes onto the world, for Ramsey our general propositions are but projections of our singular belief habits, just as our beliefs about probability are projections of our subjective degrees of confidence.10 What is then, for Ramsey, a causal law? Since Hume, the classical problem is how to distinguish genuine laws from mere accidental regularities, or of the distinction, in Ramsey’s terminology, of “universals of laws” such as Sugar dissolves in water, from “universals of fact” such as 31


All the people in this room are red-haired.11 This question was a matter of controversy in Cambridge when Ramsey wrote. Johnson held that universals of law had a wider range of applications than universals of facts. Braithwaite held that the difference was due to the fact that genuine laws are accepted on the basis of evidentially correct data.12 In “Universals of laws and of facts” (1928), Ramsey holds that the difference is due to the fact that a genuine law would remain a law even if we were omniscient (PP: 143). The “ultimate laws of nature” are the “consequences of those propositions which we should take as axioms if we knew everything and organized it as simply as possible in a deductive system” (GPC: 150). This idea, which can be traced back to Mill, has been taken up by David Lewis (1973). Ramsey himself rejects it later and defends his conception of laws as rules because “it is impossible that we know everything”. Lewis, however, points out that the conception of laws as axioms of a complete deductive system does not necessarily have this implication of omniscience: it suffices to say that a contingent generalisation is a natural law if and only if it appears as a theorem (or as an axiom) in each of the deductive systems which realises the best combination of simplicity and strength.13 Formulated thus, this conception faces nevertheless several objections, one of which is that there is no guarantee that we could reach the “best combination” in question. In contemporary philosophy there are two great families of theories of laws of nature: the “Humean” theories according to which laws are contingent regularities holding between events, and “universalist” theories, which take laws to be relations between real universals. To the second group belong the conceptions of philosophers like Armstrong and Dretske. To the first belong the views of Braithwaite, Lewis and Ramsey himself.14 His first, as well as his second conception of laws seem to place him within the anti-realist camp. He remarks, against a conception of laws as relations between universals: But may there not be something which might be called real connections of universals? I cannot deny it, for I can understand nothing by such a phrase; what we call causal laws I find to be nothing of the sort. (GPC: 160) This remark is related to his scepticism about the very distinction between universals and particulars (see below §2.5). To what extent, then, can we consider Ramsey’s conception of laws as realist? It is not realist in the sense in which causal conditionals would get a definite truth value. In “Law and causality” (PP: 160–1), he considers a situation where the human

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race would (wrongly) suppose strawberries to give stomach-ache, and for this reason never eats them. In such a situation their belief that (a) If I eat strawberries I shall have pain would be true, since they never try to disprove it by eating strawberries. But we are tempted to say here that it is nevertheless true, and a fact, that (b) If they had eaten strawberries they would not have had pain thus giving a realist reading of this counterfactual conditional. Ramsey, however, rejects this reading. If we regarded the unfulfilled conditional as a fact we should have to suppose that any such statement as “If he had shuffled the cards, he would have dealt himself the ace” has a clear sense true or false, which is absurd. We only regard it as sense if it, or its contradictory, can be deduced from our system. Otherwise we say “You can’t say what would have happened”, which sounds as a confession of ignorance, and is so indeed, because it means that we can’t foretell what will happen in a similar case, but not because “what would have happened” is a reality of which we are ignorant. (PP: 161) So what is the difference between the beliefs of the strawberry abstainers and ours, if their system of beliefs (a) fitted all the facts known to them, and if we cannot say that the counterfactual conditional (b) is true? Ramsey here answers by invoking Peirce’s conception of truth as a limit of inquiry: We do, however, believe that the system is uniquely determined and that long enough investigation will lead us all to it. This is Peirce’s notion of truth as what everyone will believe in the end; it does not apply to the truthful statement of matters of fact, but to “the true scientific system”. (ibid.) Causal laws, therefore, even if they do not describe universal facts, nevertheless describe regularities upon which our theories will, in the end, converge. In this sense there is no reason not to consider the causal laws as describing reality, even though they are not literally true. By acting (and in the case of strawberry abstainers, by trying out the experiment of eating strawberries) we increase the weight of our probabilities: “If q is

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relevant to p, it is good to find out q before acting in a way involving p” (ibid.).

2.3 Conditionals and the Ramsey test Laws as “variable hypotheticals” have a conditional form. It is a familiar fact that the very distinction between laws and accidental generalisations has to be formulated in terms or counterfactual conditionals. For instance the law “Sugar dissolves in water” supports the counterfactual “If this lump of sugar had been put into water it would have dissolved”, whereas “All the people in this room are red-haired” supports no counterfactual such as “If you had been in this room you would have been red-haired. As we saw, many of our causal beliefs, as well as our changes of beliefs, have a conditional form, when we envisage the conditional probability of q given p. Most of the contexts in which we have to take decisions are similarly conditional; the chicken decides not to eat the caterpillar, because if he eats it, he will upset his stomach. The question of the nature of conditionals is one of the most debated in philosophy. One main concern is whether indicative conditionals of the form “If p, then q” have truth conditions, and have the truth conditions of the Philonian conditional or the material implication p ⊃ q. The context in which Ramsey discusses this question is, once again, one in which he deals with deliberation and on what conditional beliefs one should act. His contribution to the analysis of conditionals occurs in a footnote to GPC: If two people are arguing “If p will q?” and are both in doubt as to p, they are adding p hypothetically to their stock of knowledge and arguing on that basis about q; so that in a sense “If p, q” and “If p, ¬ q” are contradictories. We can say that they are fixing their degrees of belief in q given p. If p turns out false, these degrees of belief are rendered void. If either party believes ¬ q for certain, the question ceases to mean anything to him except as a question about what follows from certain laws and hypotheses. (GPC: 155) Ramsey proposes a test for determining the acceptability conditions (and not the truth conditions) of indicative conditionals of the form if p, q will result. He does not explicitly consider counterfactual conditionals, but he makes clear that the same test applies to these as well.15 In order to know whether a conditional sentence is acceptable in a given state of belief, one first adds the antecedent hypothetically to one’s stock of beliefs. Then, if the antecedent together with the already accepted sentences lead 34


to a contradiction, one makes some adjustments, which are as small as possible without modifying the hypothetical belief in the antecedent, in order to maintain consistency. Finally, one considers whether or not the consequent of the conditional is accepted or rejected. This is not exactly what Ramsey actually says, but his suggestion has been developed under the name of the Ramsey test for conditionals: (RT) Accept a sentence of the form “If A, then C” in a state of belief K, if and only if the minimal change of K needed to accept A also requires accepting C. The Ramsey test has been developed systematically within the contemporary literature on the logic of conditionals and belief revision.16 The Ramsey test, however, seems to conflict with Ramsey’s Principle, since the latter says that the truth conditions of our beliefs are determined by the successful actions to which they would lead, whereas the former denies that conditionals have truth conditions. Ramsey’s Principle says that a conditional of the form If p then q expresses a disposition to infer q from p and to act, on the basis of p, as if q were true. Now if, according to RT, a conditional sentence of this form is not true, but expresses a degree of conditional belief by which we are ready to raise the conditional probability of q given p, then these conditionals do not have truth values, and hence no utility conditions. We must remember, however, that Ramsey’s Principle does not apply to partial belief, and we must make a distinction between simple indicative conditionals of the kind If Mary has gone, then John is here, which are maps or pictures of reality by which we guide our actions, or conditional dispositions to act, from causal or general conditional beliefs (“variable hypotheticals”) of the kind If it’s the postman, he rings twice, which are habits of inference, that is conditional dispositions to acquire conditional dispositions.17 These general beliefs govern our particular evaluations of simple conditional propositions, and guide our actions and the revision of our particular beliefs. They do not describe facts, but rather the attitudes that we are prepared to take to extend the maps by which we steer.

2.4 Theories and Ramsey sentences Ramsey’s non-cognitivist or non-factualist conception of laws is even more salient when he deals with the classical problem of the nature of scientific theories in his article “Theories” (1929). Against the realist conception according to which theoretical terms such as “photon” or “gene” denote real unobservable entities, Ramsey stands clearly on the anti-realist side, holding that such terms do not have a separate denotation, but have a 35


meaning only within statements which help to predict observations. Ramsey was quite aware of the anti-realist and instrumentalist tradition, and he had read Mach, Poincaré and Campbell. Along with his treatment of causal laws, he takes theoretical statements in science as hypotheses which are neither true nor false, but which are rules or axioms from which one can derive observational consequences. Ramsey’s conception, which has been popularised by Braithwaite (1953), is distinctive for his attempt at giving, in the spirit of Russell’s paraphrases for definite descriptions and classes, an elimination procedure for theoretical terms. It can be described sketchily thus. Let us suppose that we have a theory T containing terms such as “ molecule”, “temperature”, “pressure”, “mass”, “speed”, etc. and let us write it down, omitting the laws which connect up these entities, in the following way: T {t1, t2, … tn} Replace every term t1 … tn with variables x1 … xn respectively: T {x1, x2, … xn} and prefix the latter formulas with quantifiers: (R) ∃ x1 ∃ x2 … ∃ xn T {x1, x2, …, xn} R is called the Ramsey sentence of the theory T. It simply says that there are properties or classes of entities, which have between them, and with the observational terms of T, diverse relationships (which we can include in R). The theoretical terms have thus been replaced by general existential sentences where the terms do not denote any more theoretical entities, but specify the relationships between these entities and observations. Under this perspective, a theory is not, properly speaking, eliminated nor defined explicitly, but implicitly defined by these Ramsey sentences. As Ramsey says, “they are not strictly propositions by themselves, just as the different sentences in a story beginning ‘Once upon a time’ have not complete meanings and so are not propositions by themselves” (T: 131). This procedure has evident instrumentalist, or even fictionalist implications, and it has been considered as one of the cornerstones of positivistic philosophy of science.18 It also gives a clear meaning to the familiar idea that theoretical terms acquire their function only within a theory, as well as to the idea that their reference is theoretical and that a theory can be incommensurable with respect to another (Sahlin, 1990: 146–51).

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It is also interesting to see what consequences it can have in the other domains with which Ramsey had been dealing, such as utility and decision theory, as well as psychology. As we have already suggested (see p. 9 above), the very notions of “utility”, “value”, “degree of belief ” or “probability” can be considered as unspecified theoretical terms, related, through Ramsey’s operational method of measurement, to observable consequences in betting behaviours. Just as one can be an instrumentalist about theories in physics, one can be an instrumentalist in economics,19 or in psychology. The last case has been the focus of attention of much recent work in the philosophy of mind. Psychological entities, such as those of belief, desire, or intention, can be taken to belong to the vocabulary of a psychological theory. Our common sense “folk psychology”, where such terms are pervasive, can be considered as defining implicitly such psychological entities. Here again, David Lewis, who is perhaps (with Davidson) one of the more consciously Ramseyan among contemporary philosophers, has used this idea in defence of his own functionalist conceptions in the philosophy of mind: beliefs and desires are defined by their “causal” or “functional” roles within a network of other mental terms, serving as intermediaries between perceptual inputs and behavioural outputs. Lewis suggests that we can take the set of common sense platitudes about the causal relationships between mental states, sensory stimuli and behaviour, such as the platitude which says that pain is the state in which an individual who undergoes certain physical causes and which has, as a result, other mental states and performs certain actions. “Pain” then is a theoretical term within our folk theory T where the Ramsey sentence ∃ x1 … ∃ xn T {x1, … xn} specifies n causal roles, and which is such that there will be n physical states which realise these causal roles.20 The link between Ramsey’s conception of theories and his own dispositional-functional conception of beliefs and desires as defined by their causes and their effects, thus becomes clear, even if Ramsey himself did not pretend, unlike Lewis, to use this definition in order to reduce mental states to physical states, in the materialist fashion. The scope of the Ramseyan instrumentalistic procedure is not limited to psychology. It has been used in a number of other areas. Davidson’s procedure of radical interpretation is a self-conscious exercise in the construction of a theory which relates the propositional attitudes of speakers to the meanings of their sentences and to their behaviour.21 In a quite different context, meta-ethics, Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit (1995) have defended a “moral functionalism” according to which our folk moral

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vocabulary is implicitly defined by a set of platitudes which one could arrange in a network described by a Ramsey sentence. A worry, however, may arise. If beliefs, desires and other entities which would lend themselves to a Ramseyan procedure, are just defined by their connexions within a theoretical network, doesn’t it follow that they are just fictitious and carry no ontological weight, according to the instrumentalist or anti-realist ploy? Ramsey sometimes seems to draw this conclusion.22 But it does not follow. For if theoretical entities themselves are only “fictions”, the causal roles which they instantiate are real: our beliefs are real states which cause our actions. In this sense they are anything but fictions.

2.5 Universals and reality Although Ramsey’s conceptions have an obvious anti-realist and nominalistic ring, it would be wrong to interpret his views only in this sense. For his rejection of realism about theoretical entities does not imply that he espoused full-blown nominalism with respect not only to these entities, but also to universals. But he does not claim that universals do not exist, and that only particulars do. Indeed, in “Universals” (1925), he rejects the very distinction between universals and particulars. The problem of universals had been actively discussed in early twentieth century British philosophy by McTaggart, Moore, Stout, Johnson and Russell. Russell argued that even a nominalist who attempts to reduce universals to resemblances between particulars has to accept at least one universal, resemblance. In Principia Mathematica, this distinction was implicit in the distinction between propositional functions and individual variables. It implied, according to Russell, an asymmetry between the predicative term and the subject term within a proposition: the latter can never function as a predicate.23 Johnson held that “is wise” can function as subject in “Wisdom is a characteristic of Socrates” as well as predicate in “Socrates is wise”. Ramsey rejects both conceptions. He tells us that the two sentences (1) Socrates is wise (2) Wisdom is a characteristic of Socrates “assert the same fact and express the same proposition”, that they “have the same meaning”, and that the difference between them is “a matter either of literary style”, or “of the point of view from which we approach the fact”, or of “our centre of interest” (U: 12).

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Hence there is no essential distinction between the subject of a proposition and its predicate, and no fundamental classification of objects can be based upon such a distinction. (ibid.) Ramsey’s essay has been considered, justly, as a classic of contemporary ontology and logical analysis. One can draw at least four consequences from this famous argument. But it is not clear that he intended himself to draw such consequences. The first, and the most discussed in contemporary philosophy, is the denial of the asymmetry between subjects and predicates. As Geach (1962, 1968), Dummett (1973), Strawson (1973) and others have argued, this denial goes against one of the main dogmas of contemporary logic: since Frege, the basic structure of propositions is that of atomic propositions of the form Fa. The whole theory of quantification is based upon it. If we had to reject it, it seems that we would have to accept that names could be, like predicates, negated. But “non-Socrates” is a nonsense. Nevertheless, it is not clear that Ramsey had intended his argument to be critical of the whole substructure of contemporary logic.24 Another, related consequence, is that Ramsey’s thesis blurs the distinction between quantification into name position and into predicate position, which is all important for writers like Quine, who want to prevent quantifications of the form (2). But Ramsey was certainly not attempting to defend such quantifications when he stressed the equivalence between (1) and (2).25 A third consequence, which Ramsey draws explicitly, is that there are no complex universals. He illustrates this with relational propositions of the form “aRb”. Should we say that, in addition to a proposition asserting a relation R between a and b, there is also the proposition asserting the possession by a of the complex property “having R to b”, and also the proposition asserting the possession by b of the complex property that a has R to it? But, says Ramsey, there is only one proposition, and there are only three constituents of the same fact. “The theory of complex universals is responsible for an incomprehensible trinity, as senseless as that of theology” (U: 14). A fourth consequence of Ramsey’s argument is even more general. Ramsey tells us that he is not simply arguing, like Russell did against philosophers who have been misled by the subject-predicate distinction and have denied the existence of relations, from a distinction about logical form to an ontological thesis. He holds an even more radical view:

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I shall argue that nearly all philosophers, including Mr Russell himself, have been misled by language in a far more reaching way than that; that the whole theory of particular and universals is due to mistaking for a fundamental characteristic of reality what is merely characteristic of language. (U: 13) The point here is that the ontological problem of universals itself is taken to be a piece of nonsense. So this anti-metaphysical consequence seems to be for him the main upshot of his argument. Ramsey admits, however, that his argument is not “immediately conclusive”, and it is dubiously so. He does not distinguish clearly three different levels of analysis: (a) the level of linguistic meaning, (b) the level of logical form, and (c) the ontological level. He seems to assume that there is a straightforward parallel between logical, grammatical and ontological distinctions.26 He seems to say that because (1) and (2) have the same meaning, they have the same logical form, and hence do not imply any ontological distinction. One can agree with the claim that (1) and (2) have the same meaning, but it is not clear that they exemplify the same logical form; although (1) is clearly of predicative form, (2) could be analysed as being of relational form: (2’) Is a characteristic of (wisdom, Socrates) Alternatively (2) could be analysed as a monadic predication: (2”) Wisdom is-a-characteristic-of-Socrates But then (2”) and (1) do not have the same meaning, for they do not imply the same things: the second does, but the first does not imply that there is an entity identical with Socrates and which is wise.27 So it is not clear that identity of meaning implies identity of logical form. It not clear either that we can argue from distinctions about logical form to ontological distinctions. For instance the discussion of complex universals and properties, such as conjunctive properties (being blue and a tea cup), disjunctive properties (being blue or green, or being blue before t or green after t), and of corresponding facts (conjunctive, disjunctive facts) has been at the centre of recent work in ontology. Like Ramsey (and Wittgenstein), Armstrong (1997), for instance, rejects the doctrine that there could be as many ontological entities as there are analyses of a proposition (according to the maxim that “there is no free ontological lunch”). But his arguments in favour of or against some universals are not merely linguistic. Contrary to what one might call the classical stance 40


in analytic philosophy, of which Ramsey in “Universals” is one of the most brilliant representatives, much of contemporary ontology rejects the assumption that one can get at ontological issues through linguistic distinctions, and conversely that one can get rid of the former through the latter. Actually, it is not clear that Ramsey’s argument in “Universals” implies that there is no ontological distinction between universals and particulars, and that it makes no sense to talk of universals. For one can argue that his pragmatism requires the existence of such entities. At least one philosopher, among those whose work Ramsey was acquainted with, held that there are real universals, namely Peirce. Peirce takes universals as habits of nature, as “would be” or dispositions. The hardness of diamond is a real fact, because the diamond would resist to pressure if it were hit. According to Peirce, there are real genuine laws, and counterfactual conditionals express facts. To grant the existence of universals is the same thing as granting the existence of real vagueness.28 There is no evidence that Ramsey, in spite of his admiration for Peirce, was aware of these realistic doctrines associated with his pragmatism, and it is unlikely, given his view of laws and his denial that counterfactual conditionals have truth conditions, that he would have subscribed to Peirce’s “Scotistic” conception of universals and of real possibilities which have a form of esse in futuro. Nevertheless, Ramsey held that beliefs are real habits of action, which are true if and only if they are successful. Not all of our beliefs habits are good and useful, but those which are associated to our true beliefs in the long run, are true maps of reality. Our inference rules and our laws, although they are not maps, are in the end justified by the success of our actions. Drawing explicitly on Peirce’s view of inference, Ramsey writes: The human mind works essentially according to general rules and habits; a process of thought not proceeding according to some rule would simply be a random sequence of ideas; whenever we infer A from B we do so in virtue of some relation between them. We can therefore state the problem of the ideal as: “What habits in a general sense would it be best for the human mind?” (TP: 90) And he answers, as we have seen, about the habit of making inductions, that “given a habit of a certain form, we can praise or blame it accordingly as the degree of belief it produces is near or far from the actual proportion in which the habit leads to truth” (TP: 92). Now, let us put together the principles that we have formulated so far:

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(1) The truth conditions of a belief are its utility conditions (Ramsey’s Principle). (2) Our belief habits are good or bad depending on their truth conduciveness. (3) Truth is what is reached at the limit of scientific inquiry. It is legitimate to conclude that, at the limit of scientific inquiry, our inferential habits will correspond to real features, and not simply to temporary features of the human mind. Induction and the logic of truth will put us into contact with real universals. The validity of this reasoning depends, of course, upon how the controversial Peircian notion of “truth at the end of inquiry” is to be understood. As it is usually understood today, it is an idealisation about what we would think if we were placed under ideal circumstances. It is thus understood as a kind of (ideal limit) epistemic theory of truth. As we saw above (§2.2), Ramsey at one time entertained this idea with respect to the “true scientific system” of all laws, although he rejected it later. Peirce, however, often talks of the end of inquiry as a state which we are bound to reach some day, not as a hypothetical epistemic limit.29 Ramsey, as we saw above, certainly did not defend any anti-realist or epistemic conception of truth. If we are right in holding that Ramsey had on the one hand a realist theory of the truth conditions of belief and a realist conception of truth (see above §1.3, and Chapter 3), then there is no inconsistency between his views and a realist conception of universals. Ramsey’s pragmatism, and much of what is important in Peirce’s pragmatism, should be distinguished carefully from three kinds of conceptions which are usually associated with pragmatism. The first is the idea, current since Berkeley and present in the whole tradition from Hume to Mach and to the logical positivists, according to which our knowledge is mainly a manipulation of signs, which facilitate our predictions and our actions. As we have seen, this picture corresponds to a form of projectivism and of anti-realism which has been well described by Simon Blackburn: Ramsey was one of the few philosophers who have fully appreciated the fundamental picture of metaphysics which was originally sketched by Hume. In this picture the world – that which makes proper judgement true or false – impinges on the human mind. This, in turn, has various reactions: we form habits of judgment and attitudes, and modify our theories, and perhaps do other things. But then – and this is the crucial mechanism – the mind can express such a reaction and ‘spread itself on the world’. That is, we regard the world as richer or fuller through 42


possessing properties and things that are in fact mere projections of the mind’s own reactions: there is no reason for the world to contain a fact corresponding to any given projection. So the world, on such a metaphysic, might be much thinner than common sense supposes it. (1980, 1993: 75) Blackburn describes this position as a “quasi-realism”, because although it denies the reality, in such and such a region, of certain entities or properties, it nevertheless legitimates their use as if they were real. As we have seen, several Ramseyan doctrines fit that perspective: to believe that p is to be disposed to act as if p were true (beliefs and degrees of beliefs are projections out of our dispositions to act); “that p is true” does not mean anything more than p (truth is a projection out of our assertions); general beliefs of the form “For all x if φ x, then ψx” are not true or false, but projections from our dispositions to judge singular beliefs “if φ a, then ψa”; our probability judgements are projections of our degrees of belief, and our theories are but predictive instruments. We have seen, however, that even if Ramsey’s doctrines can be fitted into this mould, he does not subscribe to an anti-realist conception of truth, and he does not have a merely expressivist conception of our inferential habits. He certainly rejects any simple correspondence theory of truth, because he is aware of the difficulties of the notion of fact, but he does not reject it altogether (see above §1.3). And he refuses to say that our inferential dispositions are nothing but expressions of our attitudes. The second “pragmatist” conception to which Ramsey’s views can be associated is James’, and the traditional definition of truth as utility. This definition, says Ramsey, seems to agree perfectly with his own, and with Ramsey’s Principle (see above, ER). But, as we saw, Ramsey’s Principle says that truth conditions are utility conditions, but it does not imply that the essence of truth is utility. In On Truth, Ramsey explicitly rejects James’ definition, and says that it is incorrect under James’ formulation: Let us take, for example, the belief in hell. To say a man believes in hell means, according to the pragmatists, that he avoids doing those things which would result in his being thrown into hell, and which he would not avoid on account of any other consequences they may have. Such conduct will be useful to the man if it really saves him from hell, but if there is no such place, it will be a mere waste of opportunities for enjoyment. But besides this primary utility there are other ways in which such conduct may or may not be useful to the man or others; the actions from 43


which a belief in hell would cause him to abstain might bring disasters in their train either for him or for others even in his present life. But these other consequences of the belief, whether useful or not, are clearly not relevant to its propositional reference or truth, and if the pragmatist definition makes them relevant this only shows that the definition must be corrected by qualifying clauses or even abandoned altogether. (OT: 91) Ramsey criticises James for including in the truth conditions of the belief in hell the set of all its consequences direct and indirect and to make the truth of this belief depend not “on the question whether hell really exists, but on something quite different” (OT: 92). The belief in the existence of hell is useful and has the consequences that it has only if hell really exists. This is why he rejects James’ claim according to which “truth is the expedient in the way of our thinking” (OT: 92). Finally, the thesis that truth is but an “expedient” is often associated to a third variety of pragmatist views. Contemporary “neo-pragmatists” like Rorty have often tied this thesis to a deflationist conception of truth as the simple endorsement of our assertions as useful (truth, according to Rorty, is a little pat on the back of our favourite assertions: “p is true” just means “I like p”).30 It is a purely projectivist conception of truth (not to be conflated with Blackburn’s) which can only lead to a form of relativism, since there will be as many “truths” as there are evaluations by individuals, or by communities, of their own assertions. It should be clear that Ramsey is committed to no such absurdity.

Chapter summary In this chapter, we have analysed Ramsey’s conception of knowledge, of causality, of scientific laws and theories and of universals. Although there are strongly projectivist and anti-realist elements in his views, we have tried to show that they are not incompatible with a realist conception of knowledge (as reliability) and of universals (our inferential habits, when successful and leading to true belief, track real properties of the world). Ramsey’s pragmatism is of a realist kind.

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RA M S E Y ’ S P R I N C I P L E

3 RAMSEY’S PRINCIPLE

3.1 Success semantics Now that we have presented and explained the fundamental principles of Ramsey’s philosophy, we wish to discuss in more detail one of these principles, namely what we have called “Ramsey’s Principle”, which we have shown to be at the heart of his conception of belief, truth and action. We have encountered in the previous chapters several versions of this principle: (a) Beliefs are more likely to be true when their success conditions are warranted. (b) “Any set of actions for whose utility p is a necessary and sufficient condition might be called a belief that p, and so would be true if p, i.e. if they are useful” (FP: 27). (c) “The essence of pragmatism I take to be this, that the meaning of a sentence is to be defined by reference to the actions to which asserting it would lead, or more vaguely still, by its possible causes and effects” (FP: 51). (d) “For a belief that A is B, means on this view, a belief which is useful if and only if A is B, i.e. if and only if it is true; and so conversely it will be true if and only if it is useful” (OT: 91). (e) (= ER) A belief that p is true iff p is useful, and p is useful iff p. For a reason which is considered in a paragraph below, let us neglect formulation (a). As Ramsey himself admits, (c) is still vague. The most interesting formulations are (b) and (d). Several writers, and in particular Whyte (1990), Mellor (1991) and Papineau (1987) and (1993), have extracted from these the principles of a success semantics. We do not claim that all the principles of such a view are present in Ramsey, but they seem to us to be much in the spirit of his work. Let us consider the principle that “truth is the property of a belief that suffices for your getting what you want when you act on it” (Whyte, 45


1990: 149). When an action results in getting what one wants, i.e. when it leads to the satisfaction of one’s desires, the action can be said to be successful. So, according to this principle, there is an internal relation between truth and success: (RP) True beliefs are those that lead to successful actions whatever the underlying motivating desires. “RP” stands for what we shall now take as the definitive reading of Ramsey’s Principle. As we have seen in earlier chapters, this is not meant to be a definition of truth. Ramsey had an independent conception of truth from RP: he did not defend a pragmatist definition of truth, but argued instead for a version of the redundancy theory of truth. However, in “Facts and propositions”, he exploited the idea that there is an internal relation between truth and success to suggest a pragmatist theory of the contents of at least some beliefs. The content of a belief is fixed by the conditions under which it is true. Now Ramsey was certainly interested in the claim that a belief ’s truth conditions are determined by its success conditions.1 RP’ is an alternative (but equivalent) formulation of RP which highlights this specific claim: (RP’) A belief ’s truth conditions are those that guarantee the success of an action based on that belief whatever the underlying motivating desires. “Success semantics” is the philosophical project of deriving truth conditions from success conditions. Ruth Millikan expressed a similar idea (without mentioning Ramsey), which she applies in the following quote to visual representations rather than beliefs: The same percept of the world may be used to guide any of very many and diverse activities, practical or theoretical. What stays the same is that the percept must correspond to environmental configurations in accordance with the same correspondence rules for each of these activities. For example, if the position of the chair in the room does not correspond, so, to my visual representation of its position, that will hinder me equally in my attempts to avoid the chair when passing through the room, to move the chair, to sit in it, to remove the cat from it, to make judgements about it, etc.

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(1993: 92) Truth conditions are not to be identified with the results of action, which change according to the desire (or set of desires) involved. They are to be identified with the invariant conditions in the world that guarantee success whatever goal is pursued. According to Ramsey’s Principle, these conditions are nothing but the state of affairs corresponding to the belief or, more simply and less emphatically, the belief ’s truth conditions. As Whyte (1990) points out, success semantics is about full beliefs rather than partial ones, whose degrees of subjective probability are inferior to 1: Suppose, for example, that Plumpton’s degree of belief [that there is chocolate in the fridge] is only fifty percent. That partial belief could combine with, say, a desire not to expend energy on a fruitless trip to the fridge, to cause Plumpton to stay seated in front of the television. But it isn’t part of the success condition of Plumpton’s sitting either that there is chocolate in the fridge or that there isn’t. (1990: 156)2 Indeed, the truth of partial beliefs cannot guarantee the success of all actions caused by them. Given that most of our beliefs are partial, RP should be considered as delivering their contents by reference to actions that would be caused by them in a possible world in which they are full beliefs. The relationship between success semantics and decision theory is then the following. Success semantics is in a sense more fundamental than decision theory. Decision theory describes the contributions of partial beliefs to actions, but it presupposes the contents of these beliefs, as they are first determined by success semantics. This is why RP and RP´ are distinct from the formulation (a) above (first introduced on p. 15 of Chapter 1). RP involves a universal quantifier on desires (“whatever the underlying motivating desires”), and thus on the actions that are caused by them in the presence of appropriate beliefs. Such a quantifier is crucial, for a given false belief can lead to successful action. Let us imagine that I am trying to sweeten my coffee. I believe that the white powder I am pouring into my coffee is sugar. It happens that my desire is satisfied: my coffee is sweetened. My action was based on a false belief, though: the white powder was saccharine and not genuine sugar. Although my belief is false, it seems useful in this particular situation, for it leads to a successful action.3 47


The pragmatist credo is that a false belief can only be useful locally, and by accident. A false belief cannot properly guide our behaviour in every possible situation. In contrast, truth systematically promotes the success of action, on a large scale. Truth offers a guarantee of success that falsity cannot hope to deliver. Thus, in the example above, it is only accidentally that my coffee has been sweetened, and my desire satisfied. If my belief that what I have here is sugar had been involved in other projects, such as the project of caramelizing a cake, it would have led to a failed action, for saccharine does not caramelize. The claim that true beliefs guarantee the success of action whatever desire and action are involved allows the pragmatist to answer one of the most widespread objections against his approach.4 As is well-known, a false belief can have many evolutionary advantages. Suppose for instance that natural selection has determined some organisms to overestimate their strengths in a situation of imminent combat. These organisms have false beliefs (or representations) about their own physical strengths; perhaps they even feel as if they are invincible. Such beliefs are nonetheless useful if they give their subjects the courage to defend themselves and thus the possibility of limiting bodily damage. They are biologically advantageous. However, nobody will deny that the same beliefs, such as the belief that one is invincible, will have disastrous consequences in other (real or hypothetical) situations. Another famous objection raised by Russell against pragmatism is that many true beliefs are useless (see p. 8 above). Russell concluded that truth should not be identified with utility. This is true, of course, but this does not contradict RP, which is about possible beliefs, be they real or not. The pragmatist conception is compatible with the existence of beliefs that are fully detached from the subject’s current practical interests, or with a disinterested search for truth. Once again, pragmatism is not about the reasons for which one comes to believe anything. The pragmatists only claim that one should identify our beliefs’ truth conditions with the success conditions of actions that could be accomplished on their basis, independently of whether they are actually accomplished or not.

3.2 Some complications The application of RP raises a number of difficulties which have to be at least briefly mentioned (see Whyte, 1990). First, it rarely happens that an action is caused by only one belief and one desire. An action is most often caused by a set of desires and beliefs (see p. 16 above on belief and desire holism). Of course, if one is ready to consider desires and beliefs as cognitive particulars, one can suppose that a finite number of beliefs and

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desires is causally involved in any particular case of action, even though the intervention of one more desire or belief could make the agent act differently, or give up acting. For instance, a thirsty agent moves towards the refrigerator because she believes that she is going to find something to drink there. In another situation, the subject believes that the drink in the refrigerator is poisonous, and refrains from taking it. In yet another situation, the subject drinks it despite the latter belief because he wants to commit suicide, and so on. In each situation, the action is caused by a finite number of cognitive and conative propositional attitudes.5 RP should then be considered as concerning a set of beliefs and desires, rather than an individual belief and an individual desire. A set of desires can be said to be satisfied if and only if each desire in the set is satisfied. Ramsey’s Principle determines the truth conditions of a set of beliefs collectively. These conditions are the product of the truth conditions of each belief in the set. Now it is possible to isolate the truth conditions of a particular belief in considering other sets to which the belief belongs, and thus other possible actions involving the belief. The truth conditions of the belief is the invariant of the truth conditions of all the sets to which it can belong.6 Another complication concerns the permanent circumstances of action, namely those that are always associated with the success conditions of our actions. For instance, forces of gravity are part of the success conditions of most of our earthly actions. The forces of gravity, though, are not part of the truth conditions of the beliefs that are typically involved in these actions. Here too, it is necessary to make a reference to possible situations in which the truth conditions of our beliefs can be dissociated from the permanent circumstances, for instance by considering a hypothetical subject floating in outer space. Once again, the identification of a belief ’s truth conditions involves counterfactual reasoning about the success that such-and-such action would have, namely its success in some possible world relevantly different from the actual world. In a nutshell, the specification of a belief ’s truth conditions is based on a method of variation that is not unfamiliar in philosophy of science. One can isolate these conditions by considering many relevant variations or transformations of a given situation in which the belief plays a behavioural role. The belief ’s truth conditions will eventually emerge as the invariant of all these transformations.

3.3 The limits of pragmatism According to the pragmatist, a belief must be able to fully manifest itself in behaviour. It must have a substantial impact on the subject’s possible

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actions. Obviously, the more abstract the belief is, the more indirect its impact on behaviour will be, i.e. the more it will depend on other beliefs, desires and emotions that can be ascribed to the subject. However, if one knows the impact that a particular belief has on behaviour whatever the rest of the cognitive context, one knows its truth conditions. The manifestation requirement is non-negotiable. Only a form of mentalism can violate it by endorsing the suspect thesis that a belief has an essentially private dimension that can never be fully manifested in behaviour. However, pragmatism encourages a particularly strong reading of the manifestation requirement. Ramsey, like Peirce, claims that the role of a belief in action is that of a guide; it orients the agent’s behaviour in the world. Now, only a true belief is capable of guiding the agent, relative to the state of affairs which the belief corresponds to. Once again, the belief ’s truth conditions are fully determined by the success conditions of a set of real and hypothetical actions. According to the pragmatist, any belief has an instrumental value, even if it is not actually exploited by the subject. Such a value can be direct or indirect. It is direct when the belief plays a role in action by yielding, together with some desire, a primary reason to act.7 It is indirect when the belief itself is detached from behaviour, but its constituents (namely the various objects and properties composing its content) can be separately defined by their roles in other beliefs having a direct instrumental value.8 A possible objection against the pragmatist approach is that some concepts cannot be fully explained by their roles in the agent’s practical life. For instance, John Campbell (1994) has suggested that we have the means of representing space in a purely detached way, which is not merely a by-product of our practical ability to orient ourselves in the world. The distinction just drawn between a direct and an indirect instrumental value is not enough to dispose of Campbell’s objection. For this objection is about the nature of spatial concepts, and not just about spatial beliefs which happen to be detached from current orientation behaviour. A related problem concerns the behavioural manifestation of sophisticated beliefs, such as beliefs about particular past times, or beliefs about numbers. It is plausible that these beliefs presuppose the mastery of some symbolic system capable of representing the time line, or the series of numbers. It seems that no non-linguistic behaviour can fully manifest the contents of these beliefs. For instance, the temporal beliefs which manifest themselves in non-linguistic behaviour can always be described as involving primitive temporal notions (such as notions of temporal phases, which can structure the agent’s temporal life even if she is not able to draw a distinction between two numerically distinct yet qualitatively similar phases).9 Only pieces of linguistic behaviour can

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manifest my belief that in March 1998 I enjoyed a breakfast in a Sicilian palace, for instance, my assertion to this effect. Now, can we identify the truth conditions of my belief that in March 1998 I enjoyed a breakfast in a Sicilian palace with the success conditions of my assertion, considered as an action (a speech-act)? But what are the success conditions of an assertion? The assertion is successful only if it is true, which seems to bring us directly back to where we started. The pragmatist faces a dilemma. On the one hand, my belief ’s truth conditions are under-determined by my non-linguistic behaviour. On the other hand, they are too closely related to the “success conditions” of my linguistic behaviour. This objection, which points to the limits of pragmatism, is serious. It is based on a dichotomy between linguistic behaviour, typically speechacts, and non-linguistic behaviour. Obviously, a belief manifests itself more directly in an assertion than in a piece of (non-linguistic) bodily behaviour. It is worth pointing out that some authors even defend a quasi perceptual conception of linguistic understanding, which is claimed to allow for a kind of direct access to the other’s thoughts.10 Independently of this conception, though, one may protest against what seems to be a presupposition of the anti-pragmatist objection, namely that the nonlinguistic behaviour of beings endowed with language can be fully described, in intentional terms, without making any reference to concepts whose possession requires the mastery of language. The claim that language-dependent concepts, such as the concepts of particular past times and the concepts of numbers, can manifest themselves only in linguistic behaviour, while leaving non-linguistic behaviour intact, is not very plausible. In other words, the anti-pragmatist objection seems to be based on a particularly narrow conception of non-linguistic behaviour.

3.4 Success semantics and teleosemantics In the previous chapter, we have sketched a teleological picture according to which our cognitive mechanisms, in particular the mechanisms of formation of our beliefs and desires, have been selected for because, in the long run, they are mechanisms that produce true beliefs and can lead to successful actions, and thus to satisfied desires. RP seems to fit this picture quite well. According to many writers, the natural development of RP is a theory of the biological contents of beliefs and desires. RP should be supplemented by a teleological account of our beliefs and desires. Success semantics is necessarily a “teleosemantics”, for the contents of our beliefs (and desires) are determined, at least in part, by their biological functions, including adaptative ones.11

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However, there is some controversy about the nature of the partnership between Ramsey’s Principle and teleology. There are at least four options:12 (a) The contents of beliefs and desires are directly defined by their biological functions or purposes. (b) Teleological considerations are relevant for explaining the normal functioning of the formation mechanisms of beliefs and desires, in particular their causal roles in the production of action. (c) Ramsey’s Principle needs a teleological definition of the satisfaction conditions of desires, from which it can derive a definition of the truth conditions of beliefs. (d) Ramsey’s Principle, in its absolute version, is in fact false. Truth guarantees success only in a normal context, and teleological considerations are needed to define what a normal context is (relative to the organism). The first option has been defended by Papineau (1993, 1994). According to him, beliefs have the biological functions of leading to success when they are true. This is what he calls their primary purposes, to be distinguished with their secondary purposes. For instance, the belief that one is not going to be injured in the ensuing conflict, though false, has the secondary purpose of getting people to fight effectively. Success semantics comes into the picture precisely to isolate primary purposes, since it equates the truth conditions of beliefs specifically with the conditions under which beliefs contribute to the satisfaction of desires. According to defenders of option (b), beliefs do not have biological functions from which one could directly read off their contents. For instance, Millikan argues that the content of a representation does not rest “on the function of the representation or of the consumer, on what these do”. There is not such a thing “as behaving like a representation of X or as being treated like a representation of X” (1993: 89). Millikan introduces a distinction between the production and the consumption of representations in a cognitive system. She deplores, rightly to our mind, that most theories of representation almost exclusively focus on the production conditions of representations to the detriment of their consumption conditions. This is particularly true of “informational” or “causal co-variance” theories, which try to define the content of a representation by reference to what causes the representation.13 In contrast, according to Millikan, the content of a representation is entirely fixed by the ways it is used in the cognitive system to which it belongs. Of course, one can invoke teleological considerations in order to deal with the conditions under which the representation is produced. For instance, one can suppose that one of the functions of the visual system is to produce 52


representations that accord with reality, in other words, veridical representations. This function of the visual system, though, does not enter the definition of the content of a particular visual representation, which is determined by the way it is consumed, eventually by the kinds of behavioural control it can exert. Millikan nonetheless claims that other teleological considerations are relevant to defining the contents of our beliefs. The consumer part of a cognitive system has a biological function which has been selected for by evolution. According to Millikan, it is not directly the function of the consumer part which determines the content of a belief, for the use of a given belief can have an indefinite number of results, depending on the subject’s context and other propositional attitudes. Rather, the content of a belief is determined by the “Normal conditions” of functioning of the consumer part. The phrase “Normal conditions” is a term of art in Millikan’s account. The conditions under which a system is functioning “Normally” are not necessarily those in which the subject is most often (this would correspond to the statistical sense of “normally”), but (roughly) those in which it exerts the function for which it or its ancestors have been selected in the past. Options (c) and (d) constitute quite different arguments for teleosemantics. According to (c), Ramsey’s Principle cannot get off the ground without an independent account of the satisfaction conditions of desires. RP defines the contents of beliefs in terms of the satisfaction conditions of the underlying motivating desires, i.e. of their contents. The partnership between RP and teleology should be understood as follows: success semantics is a theory of the contents of beliefs, and teleosemantics is an account of the contents of desires. According to (d), RP should be rejected in its absolute form. Truth does not guarantee success in every situation; at best, truth leads to success in a normal environment. RP should then be relativized to the context. Now, an environment is “normal” only if the agent has adapted to it. The notion of adaptation is teleological, which means that success semantics must also be a teleosemantics. In Chapters 4 and 5 respectively, options (c) and (d) will be rejected. Against (c), we shall argue that there is no need for an antecedent account of the satisfaction conditions of desires. Against (d), we shall claim that when the notion of adaptation is well-understood, there is no need to relativize Ramsey’s Principle to circumstances. This leaves us with options (a) and (b). We cannot go into details here, but let us remark that on either account, there is a sense in which teleological considerations play only a “pre-semantic” role.14 Perry (1997) introduces the distinction between semantic and pre-semantic uses of context. In the case of the interpretation of utterances, context is used pre-semantically in order to 53


determine the language, the words and the linguistic meaning. For instance, the considerations that make a given proper name, say “Emile Ajar”, connected to a particular man, in the case in point Romain Gary, play a pre-semantic role according to Perry. In general, the considerations operating at the pre-semantic level do not have to enter the definition of the propositional contents of utterances, which is a semantic matter. Thus, it is not part of the meaning of the proper name “Emile Ajar” that it has been introduced as a guise by Romain Gary. Similarly, although teleological considerations are relevant to determine the contents of our beliefs and desires, they play a pre-semantic role. Given an organism with beliefs and desires, i.e. given that their normal causal roles in an organism are in place, RP can be used to derive their truth and satisfaction conditions. Teleological factors are not part of the contents of our beliefs and desires. The success conditions of an action are facts which are coeval with the action; typically, in themselves they have nothing to do with the historical conditions in which our cognitive system has evolved.

Chapter summary In this chapter, we have re-formulated Ramsey’s Principle as a categorical principle of a “success semantics”: a belief ’s truth conditions are those that warrant the success of actions based on that belief, whatever the underlying desires. We defended it against some obvious objections, in particular that it is incompatible with the existence of detached beliefs and that it cannot yield an account of the contents of a single belief. We mentioned the problem of language-dependent beliefs. Finally, we distinguished four senses in which RP has to be supplemented by biological-teleological considerations. Two of them will be rejected in the next chapters. In general, we do not claim that biological and evolutionary considerations do not play any role in a theory of mental representation. However, if the arguments to be developed in Chapters 4 and 5 are correct, the fact that evolution has selected our cognitive mechanisms, our aptitude to have beliefs and desires, does not show that biological functions and evolutionary considerations can directly determine the contents of our beliefs and desires. Although we think that some teleological considerations are relevant to success semantics, there is a sense in which they play only a pre-semantic role.

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4 T H E S AT I S FAC T I O N O F DESIRES

4.1 The problem of the satisfaction of desires In this chapter, we shall discuss another objection to Ramsey’s Principle (RP), according to which one is trapped in a vicious circle if one tries to apply it to derive our beliefs’ truth conditions. According to Ramsey’s pragmatism, the truth conditions of our beliefs are those that guarantee the success of our actions. An action is successful only if the underlying motivating desires are satisfied. Thus, RP determines the truth conditions of our beliefs by reference to the satisfaction conditions of our desires. Now the relevant question is whether it is possible to identify the latter conditions independently of the former. Desire is, like belief, a propositional attitude, which means that it possesses a representational content corresponding to a state of affairs. From the subject’s point of view, her belief describes the world as it is, while her desire describes the world as it should be. This difference is related to what Searle (1982) calls the “direction of fit” of these attitudes. Belief has a mind-to-world direction of fit, for the subject of a belief aims at fitting the world (beliefs aim at truth), but desire has a world-to-mind direction of fit, since it is the world that should fit the subject’s desire (desires aim at their own satisfaction). Is the fact that beliefs and desires are both propositional attitudes (although with different directions of fit) an obstacle to deriving truth conditions from satisfaction conditions? Let us suppose that we try to determine the satisfaction conditions of our desires by turning Ramsey’s Principle on its head, as follows: (D) The satisfaction conditions of a desire are those that are guaranteed by any action based on true beliefs. It may seem obvious that in the context of a substantial theory of content, this principle does not do any additional work compared to

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Ramsey’s Principle. In fact, D and RP are not two distinct principles, but alternative formulations of the same principle. As Papineau (1993: 71) puts it, “simply adding D to [RP], without offering any further hold on representational notions, is like trying to solve a single equation with two unknowns”. Two quite different strategies can be envisaged to solve the problem of determining the satisfaction conditions of our desires. According to one strategy, these conditions can be identified without any prior knowledge of our beliefs’ truth conditions. As we shall see, this strategy embodies a reductionist conception of desires, according to which our most fundamental desires are autonomous from our beliefs. Another strategy concedes that D is the only way to the determination of our desires’ satisfaction conditions. Indeed, the joint application of RP and D results in a circle, but it is claimed that such a circle need not be logically vicious. This strategy promotes an anti-reductionist conception of desires, according to which there are no “cognitively pure” desires. This is the conception towards which we are biased.

4.2 An asymmetry between desire and belief According to the reductionist conception of desires, some desires at least are relatively autonomous from beliefs, in the sense that their satisfaction conditions can be identified independently of considerations about the contents of beliefs. One can then ask whether this supposed autonomy enables us to ground the interpretation of beliefs on an antecedent account of desires, in such a way that RP can be substantially applied without circularity. Let us consider the discussion of the notion of belief in recent developmental psychology. A belief is apt to be true or false, which implies that we cannot identify it with a simple, direct cognitive relation between the subject and the world. It must be conceived as involving a (propositional) mental representation that corresponds or not to the world. The child’s understanding of the notion of false belief is typically tested with the socalled “false-belief task” originally devised by Wimmer and Perner (1983).1 In a standard version of this task, one presents a child with two characters, one of which is called “Maxi”. Maxi hides a chocolate bar in a box and leaves the room. The other character, in the absence of Maxi, takes the bar out of the box and puts it in a drawer. The experimenter then asks the child where Maxi is going to search for the chocolate bar when he comes back. If the child answers “in the box”, she may have understood that Maxi has a wrong doxastic perspective on reality. If she answers “in the drawer”, then perhaps she cannot help projecting her own doxastic perspective on the other. In the latter case, the child has difficulties in 56


understanding that Maxi can have a false belief, or more precisely a belief that is contrary to her own. It appears that in general, three-year-olds fail the false-belief task, whereas children from the age of four pass it. It has been suggested that children before the age of four do not possess the representational concept of belief; in other words, they do not conceive of belief as a propositional attitude that can be true or false. According to some developmental psychologists, the young child who does not yet possess the representational concept of belief can still acquire a simpler, non-representational concept of desire. A simple desire is conceived to be a direct cognitive relation between the subject and the world, which does not involve an intermediary level of mental representations. Let us suppose that a child wants the toy on the table. This is a de re desire, for it seems to be essentially directed on a real object. What is peculiar to this kind of desire is that it can manifest itself in single pieces of behaviour – the child keeps an eye on the toy, points to it, would quarrel with other children to get it, and so on. It is then possible to decipher the content of a simple desire by observing it in the behaviour of its subject, without going through a holistic process of interpretation, like in the case of more sophisticated desires such as the desire that the world’s wealth be more fairly distributed. Bartsch and Wellman (1995) attribute to two-year-olds such a conception of desires, as “subjective connections” to the world. Although a child who masters only a conception of simple desires cannot conceive of a desire as being about a non-existent entity, she is able to understand that a particular desire is not satisfied. A non-satisfied desire is still “connected” to the object of desire. It seems possible to understand that a subject S did not get the toy she wanted without ascribing to S a mental representation of a state of affairs, namely without conceiving S’s desire as a propositional attitude. Typically, the satisfaction or nonsatisfaction of this kind of desire can be fairly directly observed in the subject’s emotional behaviour; in many cases, one can just see whether she is happy or frustrated. Can we define a corresponding notion of non-representational belief? Of course there are de re beliefs, analogous to the de re desires which we have just described. Perceptual beliefs, for instance, are typically de re; they involve demonstrative modes of presentation of perceived objects. The demonstrative belief expressed by “This is a toy” depends on the existence of a perceived toy. However, there are crucial differences between de re beliefs and simple desires. First, the truth or falsity of a particular belief is never immediately observable in behaviour, as can be the satisfaction or non-satisfaction of a simple desire. Although a false de re belief is still “connected” to a real object, it cannot be identified with an observable cognitive relation between the subject and the world. 57


Surprise can of course be considered as the natural manifestation of belief, but one should keep in mind that surprise is highly sensitive to the subject’s doxastic background. One cannot decipher the content of a particular belief on the basis of mere observation of surprise in the face of a salient object or event, independently of auxiliary hypotheses about the subject’s other beliefs and desires. Second, it appears that in many cases, the “connection” between a de re belief and reality is not entirely secured by the belief itself, but at a more fundamental level, by specific behaviour related to the object of belief. For instance, the perceptual belief “This is a toy” is based on the observation of the toy, i.e. sensori-motor behaviour which is independent from the belief but contributes to fix its object. I can ascribe to a child at least an existential belief about a particular toy on the basis of mere observation, because I can identify her motivation relative to the toy; for instance, I observe that she cannot keep her eyes off it. In general, though, the identification of a belief on the basis of observation requires a prior identification of some displayed motivation – in the case in point, a motivation which causes the child to keep an eye on the toy. Thus, there is an asymmetry between belief and desire, which concerns the way these mental states manifest themselves in behaviour. One can describe this asymmetry by saying that belief always has a propositional content, whereas desires have either a propositional content (like in the case of the desire that the world’s wealth be more fairly distributed) or an objectual content (like in the case of the desire for the toy). It does not follow that simple desires do not have propositional conditions of satisfaction. In the case of simple desires, content does not fully determine conditions of satisfaction. (In contrast, the content of a belief fully determines its truth conditions.) In our terminology, the content of a mental state is its intentional object; it is the thing, event or state of affairs toward which the mental state is intentionally directed. The subject of a simple desire is intentionally related to an object in the world, rather than a state of affairs that can be factual or not. Besides its objectual content, a simple desire has its own satisfaction conditions. It follows that the ascription of a simple desire to someone involves the use of a propositional representation. For instance, I can work with a primitive conception of desire according to which the other is happy if p and unhappy if not p.2 In this case, I use a propositional representation of the state of affairs corresponding to “p”, namely the satisfaction conditions of the other’s desire. What characterizes a simple desire is that I do not have to ascribe a representation of these conditions to the other. In contrast, an explicit belief-ascription must involve the attribution to the subject of a propositional mental representation, which can correspond or not to what is really the case. 58


Our description of the asymmetry between belief and desire explains why it is possible for a young child to acquire a concept of desire before acquiring a concept of belief (even if it is the concept of a de re belief).3 The possession of a concept of simple desire already enables the child to give rudimentary psychological explanations. As Fodor (1995b: 120, n. 11) puts it, “though you can predict behaviour on the basis of desires only (viz., by assuming that agents will do what is objectively conducive to satisfying their desires) there is no analogue principle that allows you to predict behaviours from beliefs alone”. For our purposes, the relevant question is whether the asymmetry between belief and desire can be exploited in giving a non-circular account of the contents of beliefs in terms of the satisfaction conditions of desires. One suggestion is that the pragmatist theory of content can lean on an independent characterization of the satisfaction conditions of a basic set of simple desires. The contents of beliefs and propositional desires would be jointly determined by RP and D, not from scratch but on the basis of prior observational knowledge of the contents of simple desires. This is of course a reductionist conception of desires, since any propositional desire is eventually reduced to simple desires considered as direct cognitive relations to real objects. As our previous discussion indicates, it is no good objection to this conception that a desire with a propositional content cannot be defined in terms of desires with merely objectual contents. As we have seen, although the content of a simple desire is not propositional (it is not conceived as involving a mental representation of reality), its conditions of satisfaction in a sense are. Of course, the typical description of a simple desire is “She wants this toy”, where the psychological verb is followed by a nominal clause. If this description is to specify a genuine desire, though, the latter must be conceived as satisfied in conditions which one can formulate only in propositional terms. At the level of satisfaction conditions, there is no incommensurability between simple and propositional desires. So the suggestion that the latter can be derived from the former cannot be disposed of by this simple objection. Rather, the problem raised by such a conception concerns the identification of the conditions under which simple desires are satisfied. Since these conditions are not represented at the level of the desire’s content, they must be determined by the mode under which this content is apprehended by the subject.4 However, it is not clear how the desire itself fixes the conditions under which it is satisfied (lest we invoke at this point a conception of satisfaction as extinction; see next section). The desire expressed by “I want this toy” is satisfied in some conditions and not in others, but in general there is no definite answer to what its whole conditions of satisfaction are. Is the child’s desire satisfied when she grasps the toy, when she plays with it, or when she possesses it in a more abstract 59


sense? Or perhaps it is satisfied in all these conditions, or in a highly general condition which is common to them. No purely propositional translation of this desire’s content seems to fit the bill. In other words, its conditions of satisfaction are radically indeterminate. To our mind, this is one of the most fundamental obstacles to reducing all desires to simple ones.

4.3 Satisfaction as extinction Let us turn to Russell’s (1921) suggestion that the conditions under which a desire is satisfied are simply the conditions under which it gets extinct. It seems that a desire’s extinction can be identified, at least in some cases, without calling in a prior account of the truth of beliefs. In fact, it can even be identified without supposing that the desire has an intentional content. Russell’s suggestion thus embodies a more radical version of the reductionist conception of desire. However, it faces several well-known difficulties. First, one should draw a distinction between two quite different interpretations – causal and intentional – of the notion of satisfaction. On the causal interpretation, a desire is satisfied simply when it ceases, in particular when something causes its extinction. On the intentional interpretation, a (propositional) desire is satisfied when its intentional content is realized. In the latter case, unlike the former, there is an internal relation between the desire and its satisfaction. Now it is not at all obvious that intentional satisfaction can be reduced to causal satisfaction. A punch in my stomach will surely destroy my desire to eat oysters. It does not follow that my desire is about a punch in my stomach. That is not what I wanted, although it has caused my the disappearance of my desire.5 Other objections can be raised against the identification of satisfaction conditions with conditions of extinction.6 Some desires persist through their own satisfaction, like the desire to eat salted peanuts. Other desires disappear precisely because they are not satisfied, like in the story of the sour grapes, where the hungry fox turns his back on an inaccessible good, eventually silencing his frustrated desire. In such cases, the causal and the intentional interpretations yield divergent accounts of the satisfaction conditions of desires. To sum up our discussion so far in this chapter, the prospect of founding the interpretation of propositional desires on that of simple desires, or desires that (perhaps like Hume’s passions) do not have intentional contents, does not seem good. At least it is worth exploring another option, toward an anti-reductionist conception of desires.

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4.4 Motivational foundationalism Reductionist conceptions try to show that desires as propositional attitudes derive more or less directly from a foundation of more primitive desires, which unlike beliefs do not have propositional contents. This is a foundationalist stance concerning the motivational domain, analogous to foundationalism in the domain of beliefs. Doxastic foundationalism is typically defined by two main theses. First, there is a distinction among beliefs between those that are self-justified and those that are not, or at least between those that are immediately justified by non-doxastic states like perceptions, and those that are not. Second, the epistemic value of beliefs that are not self-justified is determined by more or less direct rational connections with self-justified beliefs. What we shall call “motivational foundationalism” is defined by two analogous theses. First, there is a distinction between “cognitively pure” desires, which are rationally autonomous from beliefs, and “cognitively derived” desires, which are not. Second, the motivational value of cognitively derived desires is determined by more or less direct rational connections with beliefs and cognitively pure desires. For instance, my desire to meet the person who lives at 31, Sesame Street is a derived desire, in the sense that it is based on my independent desire to meet Mary and my belief that she lives at 31, Sesame Street. Motivational foundationalism can be ascribed to Hume, but it has been recently defended by Dretske (1988). Dretske draws a distinction between pure desires, corresponding to distinguishable states of receptivity of the organism, and derived desires, which are generated by instrumental beliefs about what will secure the objects of pure desires. Dretske writes that “without pure desires […], there would be no desire at all, and hence no motivation, no purpose, no behaviour explicable in terms of an agent’s reasons” (1988: 111). So any desire is either cognitively pure, or can be reduced to cognitively pure desires. Moreover, as Dretske makes clear, cognitively pure desires are motivational states lacking intentional content. Doxastic foundationalism faces familiar difficulties. For instance, how is it possible for a belief to justify itself, given that it is essentially a bipolar state, capable of being true and capable of being false? Perhaps the belief is not strictly speaking self-justified, but justified by its relations to underlying perceptions. If these perceptions are conceived as lacking propositional contents, how will they be able to justify a belief, which is necessarily propositional? The conviction that they have such an ability is a version of the “Myth of the Given” denounced by Sellars (1956) and more recently by McDowell (1994). If, on the contrary, perceptions are conceived as propositional attitudes, how is it possible for them to be self-justified while beliefs cannot be?7

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Analogous problems arise for motivational foundationalism. In fact, the situation is even worse than in the case of beliefs. Motivational foundationalism faces the following dilemma. Either un-derived, basic desires have propositional contents, or they do not. In the second case, it is not clear how they can motivate derived propositional desires, even with the help of beliefs. As we have seen, the conditions of satisfaction of non-propositional desires are radically indeterminate. In the doxastic domain, one can be tempted to think that there is something like nonpropositional perception of states of affairs because the latter are factual entities, and can be conceived as causally responsible for the subject’s experience. There is no analogue sense in which the non-factual states of affairs which constitute the conditions of satisfaction of our desires are somehow “given” to us independently of propositional representations. The first horn of the dilemma is occupied by a non-reductionist version of motivational foundationalism; there are basic desires, but they have propositional contents like beliefs. Of course, this raises once again the problem of circularity, for the contents of basic desires cannot then be taken for granted in the application of Ramsey’s Principle. One can ask whether such a conception is independently plausible, though. It would be analogous to McDowell’s (1994) position in the doxastic domain, according to which perception and judgement have the same kind of (propositional and thus conceptual) content.8 In the motivational sphere, the problem is precisely whether there is something like the distinction between perceiving and judging. McDowell’s image of perception as “openness to facts” is not obviously applicable to basic desires, which are about counterfactual states of affairs.

4.5 Toward an anti-reductionist conception of desire An alternative suggestion is that we should reject the Humean distinction between cognitively pure desires (desires unmotivated by other desires) and cognitively derived ones (desires motivated by other desires and beliefs). Every desire derives from other desires by way of some beliefs. Just as (according to some philosophers) there are no beliefs or experiences that are epistemically fundamental, there are no desires that are motivationally basic. No desire proper is intrinsically unmotivated, just as no belief proper is intrinsically self-justified.9 Is motivational anti-foundationalism compatible with the pragmatist approach? In any case, it does not reject the thesis, also defended by Hume, that desire is an essential component of any action, at the same level as belief but irreducible to it. Motivational anti-foundationalism gives up the notion of a cognitively pure desire, emphasising that there is no asymmetrical semantic dependence between belief and desire. This 62


position is analogous to coherentism in the doxastic domain. Now, coherentism admits of the existence of a circle in the process of justification, but claims that this circle is not logically vicious. Similarly, motivational coherentism accepts a form of circularity in the motivation of our actions, as well as the interdependency between our beliefs and our desires. Of course we have to distinguish between circularity at the level of motivation, and circularity at the level of content. The problem, though, is that the former leads to the latter. For if every desire depends on some belief, then satisfaction conditions cannot be determined independently of truth conditions. However, it is a problem that we can live with, provided that particular applications of Ramsey’s Principle can be informative. RP and its mirror image D together constrain, in a holistic manner, the account of the contents of our beliefs and desires. To begin with, many applications of RP involve desires whose contents can be specified independently of the concepts necessary for describing the truth conditions of the beliefs in question. In this way, we can avoid uninformative, small circles. For instance, an adequate semantic theory should not have as a consequence the false proposition that the presence of saccharine makes true my belief that there is sugar. However, this consequence cannot be excluded by simply pointing out that the presence of saccharine does not make my action successful when it is based on my belief and the desire to put sugar in my coffee. Here, the concept sugar is involved both in my belief and in my desire, so that the joint application of RP and D cannot get off the ground. There are many other cases, though, where these principles can result in informative theorems. In fact, the analogy between the domain of beliefs and that of desires can be pushed further. RP, as a central component of a theory of interpretation of human actions, must be empirically anchored. In Davidson’s theory of interpretation, a fundamental empirical notion is that of holding true a sentence. An interpreter can take as her revisable starting-point particular cases of holding true a sentence in order to determine both the meanings of sentences and the contents of beliefs. Now of course, a sentence is not true because it is held true; the two notions are relatively independent. According to Davidson, they are not entirely independent, though, for it is a normative principle that most sentences held true are in fact true, even if one does not know which ones are.10 As we have seen, the conditions of extinction of desires are not identical with their conditions of satisfaction. However, they seem to play empirical roles analogous to that played by sentences held true in Davidson’s theory. It may be a normative principle of a pragmatist theory of interpretation that most “extinct” desires are really satisfied, even if one does not know which ones are. The extinction of a desire is a symptom of its intentional 63


satisfaction; this normative principle could thus be considered as a regulatory constraint which bears in a holistic manner on the interpretation of the agent’s beliefs and desires. From this point of view, Davidson’s theory and the pragmatist approach are virtually equivalent, although intuitively, a desire’s satisfaction is something that can be more easily spotted in the subject’s behaviour than the more intellectual attitude of holding a sentence true.

Chapter summary In this chapter, we have raised the question of whether the empirical application of Ramsey’s Principle should rest on an independent account of the contents of desires, perhaps itself based on teleological considerations having to do with adaptative functions. What we have seen is that this foundationalist conception of desire runs into various difficulties. We have then suggested that for human beings at least, there are no cognitively pure desires. Not only beliefs and desires can share propositional contents, but any desire depends on some beliefs. In Ramsey’s theory, beliefs and desires are inter-defined in functionalist terms (see p. 24 above). In a sense, beliefs and desires are not detachable parts of behaviour, but necessarily act together in structuring it. Ramsey considered beliefs and desires as propositional attitudes; there is no asymmetry between them from the point of view of the theory of content. We have tried to show that the circle which indeed results from the functionalist conception is not vicious, but indicates the irreducibility of beliefs and desires to states lacking propositional contents.11

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5 T H E S I T UAT I O N O F AC T I O N

5.1 The cognitive overload objection In this chapter, we shall discuss objections that have been raised against Ramsey’s Principle (RP) to the effect that it neglects the fact that human action is normally situated in a context. RP implies that any failure of action is the result of some false belief on the agent’s part. For if all the agent’s beliefs are true, the action cannot be but successful. It is of course plausible that some failures can be traced to false beliefs. I try to drink from a particular glass because I believe that it contains something that will quench my thirst. If my belief is false and the glass is empty, I won’t get what I want. However, it is much less plausible, from a cognitive point of view, to suppose that any possible failure of an action corresponds to some false belief (or representation) on the agent’s part. This supposition seems to imply that “the content of our beliefs fix all the circumstances relevant to the success of our actions”.1 Even in the case of a carefully planned action, one cannot require from the agent that she foresee all the possible impediments to the success of the action. As Brandom puts it, “ignorance is no less a threat than error to the positive guarantee of practical success that [Ramsey’s Principle] seeks to identify with truth” (1994: 175–6). Suppose that I do not get what I want because the glass is glued to the table. According to Ramsey’s Principle, it seems that I should have the belief that the glass is not glued to the table, whose falsity explains the failure of my action. However, the fact that I tried to raise my glass shows at best that I did not have the positive belief that it was glued to the table, but it in no way indicates my having the negative belief needed to vindicate Ramsey’s Principle, namely the belief that it was not glued to the table. In general, there is no guarantee that, in each particular case of action, there is a plausible cognitive level intermediary between a general but trivial belief that there are “no impediments” and a non-denumerable set of beliefs corresponding to each possible failure of the action.

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If the cognitive overload objection is taken seriously, RP cannot be accepted as such. At a minimum, it must be relativized to the action’s context. In other words, the gap between action and success cannot be bridged by the agent’s cognitive state only (namely the set of her beliefs). At best, the truth of a belief guarantees the success of an action only relative to a normal context, whose identity conditions need not be known to the agent. The relativization of RP to the action’s context reflects the agent’s adaptation to a limited range of environments, within which all of her actions actually take place. Thus, the agent does not have to represent invariant environmental features that are nevertheless relevant to the success of her action. The cognitive overload objection also jeopardises a weaker, probabilistic version of RP, according to which the truth of our beliefs raises the probability that actions caused by them will be successful. This version, contrary to the original one, does not say that the truth of our beliefs logically implies the success of the relevant actions; it is enough that it contributes to such success in a substantial way. (This is our formulation p. 15 of Chapter 1, and (a) p. 45 above §3.1.) Even the weaker version of RP does not hold in any context. There might be contexts in which the action fails quite independently of the fact that the agent’s beliefs are true, because of some fatal and unforeseen obstacle. At best, the truth of our beliefs raises the probability that the relevant actions are successful in a normal context. It is crucial that the sense of “normality” is properly defined if RP is to be used in the derivation of our beliefs’ truth conditions. According to some philosophers (including John Perry), a normal context is at least a context to which the agent is “adapted”. It follows that the pragmatist approach has to be completed by a teleological account of the circumstances in which the agent has evolved, insofar as they contribute to the contents of her beliefs. Thus, the objection of cognitive overload, if it is valid, is another argument for the legitimacy of teleosemantics.

5.2 The perception of instrumental relations Of course, Ramsey himself would not be much impressed by Brandom’s and Perry’s objections from situated cognition. If Ramsey’s Principle is relativized to circumstances, it becomes false by definition; any reference to a normal context should be blindly included in the belief ’s truth conditions. The pragmatist approach defines the objective content of a belief; in a Fregean terminology, it is a theory of the determination of reference, which does not necessarily take into account the way reference is apprehended by the subject, namely what Frege would call the sense of

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the belief (or, more precisely, the sense of the sentence expressing the belief). Even if this response is (we think) correct, it does not go far enough. Brandom and Perry make appeal to our pre-theoretical intuitions about the contents of our beliefs. They argue that Ramsey’s Principle delivers truth conditions which are at odds with these intuitions. Let us consider Perry’s illustration of his argument that Ramsey’s Principle in its absolute form amounts to “overburdening” belief: If I am in space or on the moon or in some other situation where gravitational forces are much diminished, the movement we envisage me making in the example will not lead to getting a drink; the water would fly out of the glass all over my face – or perhaps I would not even grab the glass, but instead propel myself backwards. If all possible failures are to be accounted for by false beliefs, the corresponding true beliefs must be present when we succeed. So, when I reach for the glass, I must believe that the forces of gravity are just what they need to be for things to work out right. (1993: 202) The friend of RP might reply that I have a set of beliefs concerning the forces of gravity, even though I do not conceive of them as such, namely at the level of the mode of presentation of reference. For instance, my action of reaching for the glass is at least partly rationalised by the instrumental belief that such a bodily movement will result in the satisfaction of my desire (quenching my thirst). Such a bodily movement is a demonstrative concept grounded on a motor image of a bodily movement, which itself depends on the practical ability to accomplish the relevant movement. On the moon, or in outer space, this ability cannot be properly exercised, and my instrumental belief will be false; this is what explains the failure of my action in this situation. One can then claim that what makes true my instrumental belief, when it is true, really includes the forces of gravity, even if I do not have the conceptual resources to represent them as such. An adequate answer to the cognitive overload objection should designate the appropriate level of generality at which an action’s failure unforeseen by the agent can still be traced to one or several false beliefs. On the one hand, this level should not be too general, as if the agent acted on the basis of the empty belief “All is normal”. On the other hand, it should not be too specific, as if, in the example given above, the agent acted on the basis of the slightly paranoid belief that the glass is not glued

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to the table. On the present suggestion, the appropriate intermediary level is provided by instrumental beliefs. I tried to raise the glass because I believed that such and such bodily movements would cause the glass to be raised. I was wrong indeed; the presence of the glue made my instrumental belief false, and caused the failure of my action. One might have the feeling that this answer to the cognitive overload objection is slightly ad hoc. The mere addition of instrumental beliefs to the set of beliefs ascribed to an agent in order to explain her action is not enough. One must also make the action appear rational – when it is so, of course. Let us say that an action is rational only if the beliefs that played a causal role in the action are epistemically well-grounded. In order for an action to be rational, not only the truth of these beliefs must guarantee the success of the action, but they must also be justified, perhaps even be cases of knowledge. If the instrumental beliefs that are ascribed to the agent in the course of explaining possible failures of her action are not epistemically well-grounded, her action, even if actually successful, might not be fully rational. However, the ascription to the agent of an instrumental belief like “If I make such and such movements, the glass will be raised” is not gratuitous. Such a belief is justified by the agent’s general perception of the situation. More precisely, it is justified by the fact that the glass looks to her as if it can be grasped. In James Gibson’s terms, she perceives an affordance concerning the glass, which appears to her to be graspable in such and such ways.2 Similarly, she sees the distance between her and the glass as bridgeable. In some cases, these perceptual appearances are illusory: the distance cannot be bridged, or the glass cannot be grasped. What explains the failure of the action, in such cases, are non-veridical perceptual representations. Normally, our bodily actions are grounded on direct perception of affordances which are capable of justifying instrumental beliefs. As Bermúdez (1998: 118) puts it, “to say that affordances are directly perceived is precisely to say that instrumental relations can feature in the content of perception”. Most of the instrumental beliefs justified by the general perception of the action’s context are implicit. According to our definition, an implicit belief that p is a belief which has not to be considered by the agent, for instance in the form of a judgement that p, although the agent would be immediately justified if she were to make such a judgement on the basis of her experience. On our account, action can be directly guided by the perception of affordances without the subject having to form explicitly the corresponding beliefs. RP is about the whole set of implicit and explicit beliefs that can be reasonably ascribed to the agent.

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Instrumental beliefs immediately grounded on the perception of affordances have interesting features. Let us suppose that I desire that q. It can be reasonable to try to achieve that p on the basis of relatively weak instrumental beliefs, such as “If I do p, it is quite probable that q”. In such a case, my action is risky, in the sense that its success is not logically guaranteed by the truth of my beliefs. In contrast, let us consider the beliefs immediately justified by the perception of affordances. Normally, they are “absolute” instrumental beliefs, in the sense that they lack probabilistic elements. In a normal context, in which my perception of a chair is clear and distinct, my experience justifies the “absolute” belief that there is a chair in front of me. It would not be plausible to suppose that it can only justify the weaker belief that it is quite probable that there is a chair in front of me. If all that my perception could justify is this weaker belief, it would not count as a perceptual experience of a chair. Similarly, my perception normally justifies the belief that I could sit on the chair if I were to do such and such movements, and not merely the belief that these movements would quite probably result in my sitting on the chair. The perception of affordances yields information about real possibilities of action and reaction. The door appears to me as if it can be opened, and when it cannot be opened, my surprise indicates the presence of an illusion or misinformation. If perceptual affordances justify instrumental beliefs, the latter are most often of the form “If I do p, then q” rather than of the form “If I do p, then probably q”.3

5.3 Action as a source of knowledge Our discussion so far shows that the cognitive overload objection appears less plausible when one considers the perceptual origin of the instrumental beliefs implicitly or explicitly involved in action. In this and the next sections, we propose more general considerations about the nature of success which definitively answer this objection. There is an analogy between action and perceptual knowledge which makes it possible to envisage a “transcendental” argument for the existence of an absolute (not context-relative) level of success and knowledge. As a first and rough approximation, knowledge is the exclusion of alternatives incompatible with the subject’s claim of knowing. In a Cartesian-like epistemology, the subject must exclude all these alternatives, i.e. have knowledge that they are not the case. For instance, knowing that there is a glass in front of me requires knowing that my visual system is in good order, that I am not dreaming, etc., for these alternatives would certainly preclude my knowledge of the glass if they were the case. What is at stake here is a version of what is sometimes called a Principle of Epistemic Closure: 69


(PEC) If I know that p, and q implies that I do not, I should know that q is not the case. Here, q is an alternative with respect to my claim of knowing that p. I cannot be said to know that p if I do not know whether q is the case or not. So every piece of knowledge presupposes many other pieces of knowledge with their own sets of alternatives, which I must rule out in turn. A conception of knowledge based on PEC runs into familiar difficulties. For instance, I cannot know anything on the basis of perception unless I know that I am not dreaming or hallucinating. However, either the latter piece of knowledge cannot be established by perception at all, or it can be established by other perceptual experiences which raise essentially the same problems. So perceptual knowledge is either impossible or circular. The “relevant alternatives” view of knowledge has been proposed in response to these difficulties.4 On this view, knowledge is the exclusion of relevant alternatives only. What counts as a relevant alternative, and thus as knowledge, depends on the context. To borrow an example from Austin, knowledge that a perceived bird is a goldfinch might depend on whether there are other similar birds in fact present in my locality. It is then assumed that the alternative that I am dreaming is not relevant in ordinary contexts in which I claim to know that it is raining by looking out of the window. The “relevant alternatives” view in effect rejects the implication in PEC by relativizing knowledge to circumstances. Some remarks by Michael Williams on epistemic closure suggest an alternative way out of the difficulties associated with PEC, which does not require making knowledge context-dependent.5 These difficulties arise from a temporal interpretation of PEC. On such an interpretation, knowing that it is raining by looking out of the window requires that I first and independently acquire the knowledge that my eyes are in good order. On another, logical interpretation, my knowledge that it is raining and my knowledge that my eyes are in good order can have the same source, for instance my experience of looking out of the window. If I am in a position to acquire the former piece of knowledge, I am also and simultaneously in the position to acquire the latter piece of knowledge. In general, if am in a position to acquire the knowledge that p, I am thereby in a position to acquire the knowledge that not q, for any alternative q incompatible with my knowing that p. It does not follow that these pieces of knowledge are cognitively on a par. The distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge, as well as the distinction between direct and indirect justification, can be invoked

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here. Typically, only the knowledge that it is raining is explicit and based on direct evidence. However, the exclusion of any alternative to the subject’s state of knowing can also be indirectly justified on the basis of her perceptual experience. Indirect justification can be inferential or reflective. The subject can gain knowledge that it is not fake rain by inferring it from her direct knowledge that it is raining. More controversially, she can gain knowledge that she is not dreaming by reflecting on her experience. These pieces of indirect knowledge are rarely, perhaps never, made explicit. The claim under consideration is only that if the subject were to form the corresponding beliefs, they would be indirectly justified by the very same experience which directly justifies her actual belief that it is raining. On the logical interpretation, PEC is essentially correct, but needs a less misleading formulation, in terms of implicit knowledge: (PEC*) If I know that p, and q implies that I do not, I at least implicitly know that q is not the case. I have at least implicit knowledge that p if and only if I am in a position to acquire such knowledge, whether or not I exercise the inferential and reflective capacities needed to actually know that p. The temporal interpretation of PEC is naturally associated with a neutralist conception of perceptual experience. According to this conception, perception is not a genuine source of objective knowledge. The best that I can learn from my experience of looking out of the window is that it seems to be raining. Perceptual experience is neutral with respect to the truth of the objective beliefs that are normally grounded on it, such as the belief that it is raining. Whether or not my belief is true, my experience remains in essence the same. In contrast, the logical interpretation of PEC is naturally associated with the rejection of the neutralist conception of perception – what is sometimes called a “disjunctive” theory of experience.6 When my perceptual experience is veridical, the perceived fact that p manifests itself to me, so that the proposition “It seems to me that p” is not the most precise characterization of what is going on in my cognitive space. There is a real, cognitive distinction between a situation in which a fact manifests itself to me in perception, and a situation in which I am only under the impression that this is so. As a consequence, a transition from my experience of looking out of the window to a belief that I am not hallucinating would be warranted. In Burge’s (1993) terminology, I am entitled to making such a transition, given that the occurrence of the experience implies the truth of the belief.

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Now let us consider an analogous issue about action. The analogy we are interested in is between PEC and the following Principle of Pragmatic Closure: (PPC) If I am intentionally doing p, and q implies that I cannot succeed, I should know that q is not the case. Here, the phrase “doing p” is used to imply success: just as knowing that p, doing p implies p. PPC is not exactly analogous to PEC, for it does not state that in order to do p, I must do whatever is needed to lift any obstacle to my making it the case that p. This would be utterly implausible, leading to permanent procrastination. PPC is not so obviously wrong. It states that if the truth of q implies the failure of my action of doing p, I should know that q is false. PPC is in fact a stronger version of Ramsey’s Principle, according to which the beliefs underlying a particular action should amount to knowledge, or at least should be sufficiently warranted. It is not enough that the agent holds the beliefs whose collective truth guarantees success; the action counts as rational only if these beliefs are themselves epistemically well-grounded. As in the knowledge case, there is an issue about whether a relativization strategy is needed at this point. In particular, those who still find PPC implausible might try to relativize Ramsey’s Principle to circumstances. I do not need to know that the glass is not glued to the table in order to intentionally raise the glass. I just have to try; if the circumstances are normal, the glass will be raised. My action still counts as intentional and even as rational, even though strictly speaking, it is the outcome of a collaboration with (benevolent) Mother Nature. The alternative option is to distinguish between a temporal and a logical interpretation of PPC. Principle PPC won’t seem plausible if it is interpreted temporally, as if I should know that the glass is not glued to the table before and independently of my action of raising the glass. According to the rival, logical interpretation, I do not have to know that the glass is not glued to the table before acting; rather, my action of raising the glass puts me in the position to know that the glass was not glued to the table (while I was acting). Action itself is a source of knowledge about the absence of any obstacle to it. Such knowledge is not acquired before action; at best, it is a logical consequence of its occurrence. According to the logical interpretation of PPC, intentional action is a source of knowledge relative to a set of beliefs whose collective truth guarantees the success of the action. As with PEC, it does not follow that the agent is explicitly representing all possible obstacles to her action. Most of the relevant beliefs are implicit, in the sense that if they were to be formed, they would be directly or indirectly justified by the agent’s 72


experience of acting. Normally, the agent does not form them, on pain of being distracted from what she’s trying to do. So on the logical interpretation, the consequent of PPC should be qualified in the same way as that of PEC: (PPC*) If I am intentionally doing p, and q implies that I cannot succeed, I at least implicitly know that q is not the case. What is it about the experience of acting which would knowledgeably rule out the alternatives to my intentionally making it the case that p? To begin with, the fact that action is controlled by perception at the subdoxastic level is a source of knowledge about the agent’s orientation relative to the target of her action, the development of the bodily gesture, and many other parameters. Moreover, most of these parameters are not fixed in advance but change during the course of action, which is another indication that the corresponding beliefs cannot be explicit. As we have seen, non-conceptual perception of affordances yields other beliefs which are instrumental in form, about what one can do and what would be the consequences of one’s doing it in the present circumstances. Can all the beliefs underlying an action be implicit? The answer might be positive for spontaneous actions, if they exist. Searle pointed out that there are actions which are not caused by any prior intentions, such as the spontaneous action of pacing about the room while reflecting on a philosophical problem.7 If these actions are genuinely intentional, they must be able to ground a set of beliefs whose collective truth guarantees success. However, none of these beliefs needs to be formed before acting. The distinction between a neutralist and a disjunctive account of perceptual experience has an analogue in the action case. According to a neutralist conception of action, the best that I can do is try to move my body. Action is neutral with respect to its success conceived as the satisfaction of the underlying objective desires, such as the desire to raise my arm. Whether or not I succeed in actually raising my arm, I am doing essentially the same thing, viz. trying to raise it. This conception is naturally associated with the temporal interpretation of PPC, for there is no physical action such that I can know in advance that there will not be any obstacles to its success. Such knowledge is possible only for trying to move one’s body, which in a sense cannot fail. In contrast, the rejection of the neutralist conception of action is in line with the logical interpretation of PPC. According to a disjunctive account of action, a particular action is either a mere trying, which is a failed action, or a genuine (i.e. successful) action. So an action can have intrinsic success-conditions which go beyond the mere trying to do something. The possibility is then open that one’s experience of acting, 73


which is essentially psycho-physical, is a source of knowledge about the action’s external success conditions. To sum up, Ramsey’s Principle in its absolute form is untouched by considerations about situated cognition. In particular, the objection of cognitive overload is answered by distinguishing between implicit and explicit knowledge. Ramsey’s Principle and the stronger Principle of Pragmatic Closure concern in fact all warranted beliefs accessible to the agent, whether or not she actually holds them. The agent must only have the means of forming a set of warranted beliefs whose truth guarantees the success of her action. However, the best argument in favour of Ramsey’s Principle is transcendental, in the sense that it embodies a condition of possibility of intentional and rational action. Some of those, like Perry, who want to relativize the Principle to circumstances invoke the agent’s adaptation to her environment in order to justify their claim that the agent does not act with a full awareness of all possible obstacles. Ironically, the objection of cognitive overload does not stand precisely because agents are normally adapted to their environment. Adaptation is not a purely external relation between an agent and its environment, as if the former happened to “fit” the latter. Rather, adaptation manifests itself in the fact that action is normally a source of knowledge about its own success conditions. This is another aspect of the internal relation between knowledge and action which Ramsey much emphasised. Our actions’ success conditions reflect themselves on the subject’s cognitive state, if only implicitly, because the agent’s contribution and that of Mother Nature are so intertwined that it is impossible to tell them apart.

5.4 The Principle of Informational Equilibrium We have already mentioned that RP is part of a definition of the objective content of a belief or, in a different terminology, of its wide content. The belief that Hesperus is a planet and the belief that Phosphorus is a planet have the same wide content, since Hesperus is Phosphorus. These beliefs have a different “narrow” or “subjective” content, for it is rationally possible to have one belief but not the other. The fact that RP results in a definition of the objective content of a belief, rather than of its subjective content, is explained by the extensional notion of success on which it is based. An action is successful when the motivating desire is satisfied. Now, a desire is satisfied when its content is true, and if a subjective content is true, all the subjective contents having the same objective content are true. From the point of view of truth, there is no difference between these subjective contents; they all have the same objective content, for they all describe the same state of affairs. 74


According to Fodor (1994), this consequence is prima facie problematic, for it seems to sever the essential tie between rationality and success of action. Let us consider Oedipus, who wants to marry Jocasta but does not want to marry his mother. Is his action of marrying Jocasta successful? Of course, this action causes the satisfaction of the desire he would express by “I want to marry Jocasta”. However, Oedipus also has a desire he would express by “I do not want to marry my mother”, whose nonsatisfaction is another consequence of his action. It appears that even prudent behaviour relative to Jocasta cannot lead to the satisfaction of Oedipus’ whole set of desires. From the consideration of such examples, Fodor concludes that the “Fregean” cases, in which the same object is unknowingly presented to the subject in different ways, must be exceptional, lest we give up the plausible claim that there is a constitutive link between rationality and success. In general, one can expect that the subject knows that a = b when the identity of a and b is relevant to the success of her action. Let us examine more closely Fodor’s argument for the necessary exceptionality of Fregean cases. It is based on the following two premises:8 (T1) An agent cannot choose A over B unless she believes she would prefer A to B if all the facts were known to her. (T2) The success of an action is accidental unless the beliefs that the agent acts on are true. These premises imply what Fodor calls the Principle of Informational Equilibrium: (PIE)

Agents are normally in epistemic equilibrium in respect of the facts on which they act. Having all the relevant information – having all the information that God has – would not normally cause an agent to act otherwise than as he does.

In the present formulation, PIE is arguably too strong. It seems to imply that omniscience would not change anything about the preferences and desires of a rational agent, which is not very plausible. If I were omniscient, the question of whether I would prefer A over B might simply not arise any more. The Principle of Informational Equilibrium is best read as excluding situations in which the question of doing A or B makes sense, the agent knows all the relevant facts about this alternative, but changes her mind by choosing B. On this reading, PIE seems to be nothing but a strengthened version of RP, analogous to the one we have defended 75


in the previous section. It entails that a rational agent acts with the belief, or even the knowledge, that no obstacle will prevent her action from leading to success. One might object that even on this reading, this principle implies a most timid conception of rationality, where only decisions made in the absence of risk are deemed rational.9 Let us suppose that there are two boxes, one of which is hiding a ball. One asks a subject, who does not know which box contains the ball, to decide whether to open the first box (A) or the second box (B), with the following matrix in mind:

A B

Contains the ball

Is empty

£1000 £101

£100 £1

According to standard decision theory, it is rational to choose to open A rather than B. Now, the agent who chooses A does not have the belief that if she knew all the relevant facts, she would stick to her decision to open box A. One of the relevant facts is where the ball is, and if it actually is in box B, the omniscient agent would obviously choose to open that box. So PIE seems to imply that the decision to open the first box is not rational, contrary to the recommendations of decision theory. In answer to this objection, one can distinguish between the rationality of an action and the rationality of the reasoning that leads to the action. PIE contributes to determine what counts as a rational, and thus intentional, action. It does not say anything directly about the rationality of the reasoning, probabilistic or not, that can lead to the action. Sometimes it is rational to aim at a result which goes beyond the action itself, in the sense that it is not included in the action’s intrinsic success conditions. A related distinction can be drawn between the action’s internal goal, namely what the agent aims in acting, and its external goal (or goals), namely what the agent aims beyond it. An action’s internal goal is its most immediate aim, which makes it a primitive action, typically a bodily movement. In the example of the two boxes, “getting as much money as you can” is an external goal of the action of opening box A. This action can be successful (the agent succeeds in opening box A) even if the external goal is not (the agent only wins £100). Sometimes, an action can be redescribed in terms of one of its external goals. If I fire the gun by pulling the trigger, my bodily action of pulling the trigger can be re-described in terms of the external goal “firing the gun”. What is interesting about PIE is precisely that it states a necessary (and perhaps sufficient) condition for the legitimacy of such re-description. Decision theory explains in what sense the reasoning that leads to the action of opening the first box is 76


more rational (given the circumstances) than the reasoning that would lead to the action of opening the second box. However, PIE excludes the possibility of re-describing the action of opening the first box as the action of getting as much money as one can, precisely because the truth of the agent’s beliefs does not guarantee the success of her action relative to the external goal “getting as much money as one can”. What the agent does intentionally is merely opening one of the two boxes. If she opens the first box, there is a probability that she gets the maximum amount of money that can be won in this game. She cannot get this amount of money intentionally, though, even if this is a consequence of her action of opening the first box. So PIE does not conflict with standard decision theory. It even complements this theory, since it contributes to the definition of the class of rational actions. Rational agents are normally in epistemic equilibrium relative to the facts on which they act. Perhaps one can add that when they are not in such epistemic equilibrium, i.e. when they act in a situation of uncertainty, PIE plays a normative role in their reasoning. When we aim at an external goal while being uncertain about the results of our action, we should be sensitive to any relevant information that we could obtain about the realization of our aim. What about the problem of identity statements that was raised at the beginning of this section? PIE seems to imply that an action based on ignorance of the truth of some identity statement cannot be fully rational (at least when such ignorance is relevant to the success of the action). The action of marrying Jocasta is necessarily a failure. If Oedipus marries Jocasta, his desire not to marry his mother will not be satisfied, and if he does not marry Jocasta, his desire to marry her will be frustrated. Fodor solves this paradox by supposing that Fregean cases must be rare, since the agents’ rationality is dominant. Against Frege, Fodor claims that it cannot be quite rational to have incompatible beliefs or desires about a given object presented under different modes. Another possibility would be to invoke the causal roles of the attitudes involved in the action. The action of marrying Jocasta is causally motivated by the desire expressed by “I want to marry Jocasta”, not by the desire expressed by “I do not want to marry my mother”, even if Oedipus possesses both desires. In this sense, his action of marrying Jocasta is intrinsically successful, since its causally motivating desire is satisfied. Of course, the same action is a disaster relative to other goals, such as that of not marrying his mother.

Chapter summary In this chapter, we have discussed a specific objection to Ramsey’s Principle, namely that it leads to an intellectualist conception of action, 77


because it implies that the agent must anticipate any possible impediment to her action. In answer to this objection, we have put forward two related points. First, it is necessary to draw a distinction between the explicit beliefs that play a causal role in the action, and the implicit beliefs that are not considered before acting, but the introduction of which the action itself would justify. Second, and consequently, one must realize that action is a source of knowledge about its own success conditions. It is of the essence of pragmatism to emphasise the existence of an internal relation between knowledge and action. In Chapter 2, we have suggested that knowledge depends on both internal and external factors, such as the evolutionary conditions of our cognitive mechanisms. If we are right, there must be a more profound link, at the very level of our motor schemas, between knowledge and action. Ramsey’s Principle, far from being intellectualist, is a bedrock condition of possibility of both knowledge and rational action. This principle does not have to be relativized to the environment to which the agent is adapted. Moreover, if teleological considerations can be invoked in the definition of knowledge, they do not enter the contents of knowledge.

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C O N C LU S I O N The future of pragmatism

There are certain uses of the term “pragmatism” that even philosophers who sympathise with this doctrine would prefer not to be associated with their own enterprises. Peirce himself, in his own time, wished to invent a new word “pragmaticism” to dissociate himself from the “kidnappers” who started to divert pragmatism and transformed it into the kind of anti-realistic vulgarly utilitarian and flatly business-like conceptions that this doctrine often evokes. The misunderstanding reached its peak when Mussolini declared that James’ pragmatism had been very useful to its own political career and that the latter “had taught him that an action should be judged rather by its results than by its doctrinary basis” and inculcated “faith in action, that ardent will to live and fight, to which Fascism owes a great part of its success”.1 Today, as Blackburn (1998: 157) remarks, “pragmatism” often means “the denial of differences, the celebration of the seamless web of language, the soothing away of distinctions, whether of primary versus secondary, fact versus value, description versus expression, or of any other significant kind. What is left is a smooth, undifferentiated view of language, sometimes a nuanced kind of anthropomorphism or ‘internal’ realism, sometimes the view that no view is possible: minimalism, deflationism, quietism”. We hope to have shown that Ramsey’s pragmatism has practically nothing to do with that kind of outlook. He had adopted the Russellian and Wittgensteinian conception of philosophy as clarification but he had little sympathy for the mystical tones of the latter: Philosophy must be of some use, and we must take it seriously; it must clear our thoughts and so our actions. Or else it is a disposition we have to check, and an inquiry to see that this is so; the chief proposition of philosophy is that philosophy is nonsense. And again we must then take seriously that it is nonsense, and not pretend, as Wittgenstein does, that it is important nonsense! (“Philosophy”, PP: 1) 79

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This led him to seek, in philosophy, definitions, preferably logical, of the main notions. This approach belongs obviously to an instrumentalistic or even anti-realist tendency of his thought, which Blackburn calls “Humean”, and which consists in relocating the entities that fictitiously we spread upon the world. To this category belong his operational definitions of subjective probability, of belief and desire, of conditionals, of causality and of laws of nature, of theories, of universals, and of truth, which have had such an important echo in contemporary analytic philosophy from decision theory, logic, to the contemporary minimalistic theories of truth and to the naturalist and causalist conceptions of knowledge. Nevertheless, in spite of the revisionist tone of his thought, which sometimes evokes the positivists’ radicalism in their hunting for nonsense, Ramsey’s pragmatism is utterly distinct from the vulgar relativistic or deflationist forms of the so-called neo-pragmatism.2 His criticism of the distinction between universals and particulars is, as we saw, compatible with a realistic conception of universals. His subjectivist conception of probabilities as degrees of belief is compatible both with the frequentist conception and with the realistic and dispositionalist conception of beliefs as habits of action. Moreover, his minimalist conception of truth and his criticism of the notion of facts, which are often mistaken for a redundancy conception, are compatible with a realistic conception of the truth conditions of beliefs as maps, which is poles apart from the anti-realist conception of truth and of mental content. We have tried to elucidate the meaning of Ramsey’s Principle according to which the truth conditions of our beliefs are their utility conditions. This principle implies that these truth conditions vary systematically with the conditions of satisfaction of desires, but it does not imply that the contents of beliefs could vary according to the subjective fluctuation of desires and human interests. It does not imply either that truth can be reduced to utility. Neither does it follow that the contents of beliefs are reduced to those of desires or to biological functions. In this sense, we believe we have demonstrated that Ramsey defended a form of non-reductionist naturalism. Finally, Ramsey’s Principle, well-understood, allows us to give a precise meaning to the close relationship which exists according to any pragmatist doctrine between belief, knowledge and action. Action is not only the terminus ad quem of knowledge, nor what justifies it. Action is a terminus a quo, the ultimate source of our perceptual and our general beliefs. It does not follow that the truth of our beliefs is to be measured in terms of our interests but that our desires and our actions constrain the contents of our beliefs which nevertheless correspond to an independent reality. Pragmatism is not a theory which would dissolve the real into the imagery or into the desirable, but it is a merciless criticism of these

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dissolutions in the name of our real beliefs and desires. Ramsey would have loved Lichtenberg’s definition of Enlightenment: “A conception of our real needs”. Contrary to what Rorty holds, our true beliefs are not those which we find good in such-and-such circumstances, in such-andsuch contexts, or those that we like as individuals or as members of a community, and truth is altogether different from “a little pat on the back of our assertions”. Our true beliefs are our stable beliefs, those which as Peirce said “would never lead us to disappointment” (Peirce, 1935: 5.569) and which would resist our best efforts, or those of Nature, to falsify them. One can thus see what contemporary philosophy owes to Ramsey, both in terms of methods, of problems and of doctrines. If he thought it fit to call “pragmatism” these doctrines, these methods and these problems, it is for reasons which are altogether different from those which lead the “smooth” philosophies of our time to adopt this term. If his too short life did not allow him to imagine that the very term that he used would in the end almost denote the contrary of what he had been aiming at by using it, we believe it is still possible to use his work as a map by which to steer.

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NOTES

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Introduction 1 See “Philosophy” (PP: 1–7) and “Epilogue”, where he says that “philosophy has become technical” (246). But he is also conscious of the dangers of technicality in philosophy and he warns us against the danger of scholasticism, “the essence of which is treating what is vague as if it were precise” (“Philosophy”, PP: 7). 2 See also Simili (1987) and the collection of papers in Galavotti (1991b). 3 We borrow the phrase from Davidson (1999: 32).

Chapter 1 1 He reviewed Johnson’s Logic in 1922. NPPM show that he read and discussed also the classics of philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer and Mill), and that he even had the charity of reading Oxonian thinkers such as Bradley, Bosanquet and Cook Wilson. For a description of the Cambridge atmosphere in the 1920s, see Levy (1981). 2 On Ramsey’s conception of philosophy see especially “Philosophy” (1929, PP). 3 On this influence, see in particular Sahlin (1995). Their personal relationship, however, was never very good. In his notebooks, Wittgenstein confessed his dislike for Ramsey’s character. 4 A predicative function is a function the order of which is just above that of its argument. 5 This interest is visible in his mathematical work on the Entscheidungsproblem, which led him to an attempt at solving the decision problem for first-order logic, which Church showed in 1931 (after Gödel’s undecidability result) to be unsolvable. From this work Ramsey drew, in “A problem of formal logic” (“Ramsey’s theorem” in PP), which today is the basis of what is known as “Ramsey’s theory”, a branch of combinatorics. On Ramsey’s conversion to intuitionism, see in

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particular Majer (1991), who indicates that Wittgenstein was aware of this change in Ramsey’s ideas. It is well known that Wittgenstein’s return to philosophy at the end of the 1920s was in part prompted by his attending a lecture by Brouwer. Another part might have been Ramsey’s own evolution. 6 See Hacking (1975). 7 The idea can be traced back to Kant’s First Critique (in the Canon of Pure Reason) and can also be found for instance in Emile Borel’s (1924) review of Keynes’ Treatise. 8 De Finetti (1937). On Ramsey and de Finetti, see Galavotti (1991a), von Plato (1994: Chapter 8). 9 Von Neumann and Morgenstern (1944), Savage (1954), Carnap (1956), Jeffrey (1965). Davidson and Suppes (1955) were also early re-discoverers and victims of what Davidson calls “the Ramsey effect” (see introduction, above). For a collection of essays see Gärdenfors and Sahlin (1988). 10 Keynes’ theory, which was later taken up by Carnap (1956), can be traced back to Bolzano, but it is also present in Wittgenstein, as G.H. Von Wright (1982); see Tractatus, 5.15. 11 On the Humean theory, see in particular Snare (1991) and Smith (1994). Historically speaking, it is not clear that the “Humean” theory is Hume’s. It may be even thought that it is decision theory which has been read back into Hume’s view. We cannot here deal with all the complex issues raised by the Humean division between beliefs and desires. See especially Lewis (1986, 1988, 1996) on its relations with decision theory. 12 See Bain (1859), Peirce (1878). Ramsey seems to have known Peirce only through the collection edited by M. Cohen (Peirce, 1923). See (OT: 91–4). 13 See Russell, “William James’ theory of truth” in Russell (1910) and Russell (1921: Chapters 12 and 13). 14 This is well known, in particular, from Allais’s paradox, see Allais (1953), Savage (1954: 101–3), and a number of studies led by Kahneman and Tversky (1982) on risk aversion. 15 This way of formulating the problem is Davidson’s (1980: 234; 1984: 145). Davidson stresses the analogy between this problem and the problem of the interpretation of beliefs and meanings: how, from the actions of an agent (in the case of linguistic interpretation, his utterances), can one determine at the same time what he believes and what he means by his words? 16 Ramsey here makes reference (TP: 73, note 1) to Wittgenstein’s conception of propositions in the Tractatus: every proposition is atomic or molecular, the truth of molecular propositions being determined 83

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by the truth of the atomic propositions which compose them. The contemporary character of Ramsey’s vocabulary is not surprising, if one reflects that Carnap, who introduced in contemporary philosophy the talk of “possible worlds” (which he calls state descriptions) in Meaning and Necessity (Carnap, 1956). Stalnaker (1984) develops fully a Ramseyan conception of belief when he holds that an agent who believes that p places himself within the set of possible worlds compatible with the truth of p, and acts as if p were true. This “pragmatic picture”, as Stalnaker calls it (1984: 15ff) is a direct adaptation of what we call below Ramsey’s Principle. For a formulation of decision theory in terms of propositions, and for the connection with talk of possible worlds, see Jeffrey (1965). 17 We borrow this formulation, which Ramsey does not give, from Sahlin (1990: 30). 18 See Jeffrey (1983: 49–50). 19 The expected utility of an act A is: A (UEA) = Σi PA UA (where ‘P’ is i i the probability and ‘U’ the utility of Ai). 20 If an agent violates, for instance, the axiom of transitivity of preferences (if A>B and B>C, then A>C), or if her subjective probabilities for p and not p respectively add up below or above 1, the bookmaker will be able to propose to her a series of bets where she will systematically lose. In the last case, if for instance the agent assigns P(p) = 0, 6 and P(not p) = 0, 2, the bookmaker can offer her the two following bets: (a) to receive 6 euros if not p, lose 4 euros if p, (b) lose 8 euros if not p, receive 2 euros if p. The agent will lose whether p is true or not, for if p is true she will lose 4 euros if she wins the first bet, and will win 2 euros if she wins the second; she will thus lose 2 euros, and if p is false, she wins 6 euros with (a) and loses 8 euros with (b), again a net loss of 2 euros. 21 This is sometimes called the “Hume–Ramsey” theory of rationality (Gibbard, 1990: 10–18): “The Humean element is that instrumental rationality is all rationality […] Ramsey’s contribution is to interpret its instrumental rationality as a kind of formal coherence among preferences and actions. The conditions of coherence are such things as that one’s preferences form an ordering, and that one always does what one most prefers. On the Hume–Ramsey view, in short, rationality demands no more than a formal coherence of preferences, in a way that can be expressed by a set of axioms” (p.10). 22 Frege, Preface to Grundgezetze der Arithmetik (Frege, 1964). 23 For a similar contrast between “formal” logic and actual reasoning, see Harman (1986), and for the various conceptions of logic as a theory of rationality, see Engel (1991: Chapter 13).

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24 James (1904). On these issues see Williams (1973), Montmarquet (1993), Owens (2000), and Engel (1999), for instance. 25 See for instance Jeffrey (1983: 12), and Jeffrey (1992: 51–2), Hacking (1975: 63–72). 26 This version is not equivalent to what we later shall call “RP”; it is a probabilistic version of RP. For the distinction between RP for full beliefs and for partial beliefs, see §3.1. 27 (NPPM: 301), (OT: 123). 28 See Locke, Essay, IV, xvi. Thus Cardinal Newman, in his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, criticises Locke on this point. The contrast between partial belief and full belief comes out clearly in Kyburg’s “lottery paradox”; see Kyburg (1961). 29 See for instance Harman (1986: 25–6). A subject who would want to revise her beliefs by “conditionalisation” in the sense above, should, for any proposition that she would want to revise, assign probabilities to various conjunctions of p and of other propositions q, r, s which she would have; but the number of these conjunctions is an exponential function of the number of possibly relevant propositions. For ten of them, we would have to record probabilities of over 1,000 such conjunctions. 30 On these differences see in particular Jeffrey (1965). Vickers (1976) contains a full treatment of Ramsey’s approach. 31 See in particular Davidson, Suppes and Siegel (1957), Davidson (1980), Kahneman, Slovic and Tversky (1982), Gärdenfors and Sahlin (1988). 32 See in particular Howson and Urbach (1989), Earman (1992), Maher (1993). 33 See e.g. Gibbard (1990), Hampton (1998). 34 Gibbard (1990) and Blackburn (1993) are examples of such expressivist conceptions. But they do not reduce moral reasons to instrumentalistic reason in a narrowly Humean–Ramseyan sense. 35 See the texts by Frege, Wittgenstein, Ayer, Tarski, and Quine reprinted in Blackburn and Simmons (1999), Prior (1971), Williams (1973), Field (1986), Horwich (1990). For a presentation see Engel (2002a). The redundancy conception was probably suggested to Ramsey by W.E. Johnson, who mentions it in his Logic (I, iv, 1–2). 36 See Prior (1971), C.J.F. Williams (1976), Grover (1992). A similar intuition underlies Davidson’s “paratactic theory” of indirect discourse (see “On Saying that” in Davidson, 1984). See also Künne (forthcoming) for an extended discussion of these theories. 37 This view is prominent in his papers “Philosophy” (1929) and “Epilogue” (1925).

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38 Dummett, “Truth” (1959), in Dummett (1978: 7): “If we accept the redundancy theory of ‘true’ and ‘false’[…] the truth table explanation is quite unsatisfactory. In order that someone should gain from the explanation that P is true in such and such circumstances an understanding of the sense of P, he must already know what it means to say that P is true. If when he inquires into this he is told that the only explanation is that to say that P is true is the same as to assert P, it will follow that in order to understand what is meant by saying that P is true he must already know the sense of asserting P, which was precisely what was supposed to be explained to him.” 39 Russell (1910), (1913: Chapter 7). As it is well known the Russellian theory of judgement as “multiple relation” was criticized by Wittgenstein, Tractatus (5.422), and these criticisms led him to renounce this theory. Ramsey was obviously aware of this when he wrote FP. The background of his analysis is Russell’s Analysis of Mind, where Russell’s multiple relation theory of judgement is much less prominent, although it is not clear that he has renounced the view that there are negative facts (see especially p. 276). 40 Davidson, “The logical form of action sentences” in Davidson (1980: 135). Davidson in fact may have found the inspiration for his analysis in that particular passage of Ramsey. 41 See in particular “William James’ conception of truth”, in Russell (1910), the substance of which is taken up by Ramsey in (OT: 91–3). 42 Russell (1921: 244–5). 43 It is not unimportant here that Ramsey allows an animal to have beliefs, for he does not intend to assimilate belief to disposition to only one kind of action, such as linguistic acts of assertion, which in humans are most of the time attached to certain verbal representations, but to a disposition to any kind of action or behaviour. Nevertheless, in (FP: 40), he seems to intend to limit his analysis to beliefs expressed in words and attached to symbols or to other kinds of representations. But it seems to us that his view requires the kind of generality which allows us to talk of a chicken’s beliefs. 44 The distinction between the semantics of full belief and the analysis of degrees of belief is discussed further in §3.1. 45 This is the formulation which Ramsey gives explicitly in (OT: 91): “For a belief that A is B, means on this view, a belief which is useful if and only if A is B, i.e. if and only if it is true; and so conversely it will be true if and only if it is useful”. In Wright’s (1992) terminology, Ramsey does not have a purely deflationist theory of truth, since he proposes an “inflation” of the schema E through Ramsey’s Principle. 46 Sahlin (1990: 74–5).

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47 This implication is explicit in some version of deflationism, such as Richard Rorty’s. See Engel (2002a: Chapter 2). 48 See Loar (1980), Skorupski (1980), Hookway (1980). The connection was first pointed out in Armstrong (1973). 49 For a characterisation of Ramsey’s theory as realist in this sense see Majer (1991).

Chapter 2 1 See Russell (1910), Gettier (1963), Sahlin (1990: Chapter 3). 2 Sahlin (1990: 85) mentions J. Cook Wilson’s (1926) view that knowledge is an undefinable notion. There is ample evidence that Ramsey was acquainted with Cook Wilson’s view (see especially OT: Chapters 4 and 5), but no evidence that he embraced it. For a contemporary version of the thesis that knowledge is a primitive, undefinable notion, which the author takes to be compatible with an externalist epistemology, see Williamson (2000). 3 Sahlin (1990: 91) makes this point, which is confirmed by a similar passage in Chapter 5 of OT (“Knowledge and Opinion”: 56), where he equates “certainty” with a psychological state of “complete conviction”. 4 E.g. along the lines of Nozick’s (1981) conditions or Goldman’s (1967). 5 See Hintikka (1962). For a criticism of this principle, see Williamson (2000: Chapter 4). 6 As Sahlin (1991) states it, Ramsey’s full account of knowledge is that “A belief is knowledge if it is obtained by a reliable process and if it always leads to success”. 7 “Reasonable degree of belief ” (PP: 99). As Ramsey reminds us here (see also PP: 90), self-control is Peirce’s definition of logic. 8 Unlike Russell, who considered that universal propositions cannot be equivalent to conjunctions, since we would have to add: “And these are the only things there are”. Russell accepted the existence of general facts, distinct from particular facts. 9 Wittgenstein (1969: Appendix to Part I). Wittgenstein probably abandoned his early conception of general propositions under Ramsey’s influence. Ramsey’s own conception was probably influenced by Weyl, who takes existential propositions as “orders for judgements” (Anweisungen auf Ur teile) or “summaries of judgements” (Urteilabstrakte). The view is also present in Hertz, Campbell and Schlick. See Majer (1990) and Sahlin (1995). 10 Blackburn (1980) promotes this reading. Peacocke (1986: Chapter 3) gives a “neo-Ramseyan” analysis of general beliefs. Ramsey explains

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the relationship between his analysis of laws and Hume’s analysis in a note to “Laws and causality” (PP: 162–3). 11 The contemporary classical account is, of course, Goodman (1956). 12 Johnson, Logic, II, 1, Braithwaite (1927). See the discussion of these issues by Sahlin (1990: 107–8). 13 Lewis (1973: 73–6). 14 See Armstrong (1983), Dretske (1977), Braithwaite (1953), Mellor (1990) and Van Fraassen (1994). 15 “For instance, in considering what would have happened if a man had acted differently, we are apt to introduce any fact we know” (GPC: 155). It is not clear, however, that the Ramsey test is incompatible with a truth conditional analysis of conditionals: Stalnaker (1969) for instance integrates it within a possible world analysis of truth conditions. 16 See in particular Stalnaker (1969, 1984), Lewis (1973), Jackson (1992), Gärdenfors (1988) (from whom the present formulation is borrowed). An important complication has been brought out by Gärdenfors: the Bayesian principle of conditionalisation and RT are incompatible. See Sahlin (1990: 116–24). 17 See Stalnaker (1984: 101) and Mellor (1993). 18 See in particular Carnap (1966: Chapter 26). 19 Locus classicus: M. Friedman, Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953). 20 Lewis, “How to define theoretical terms” and “An argument for the identity theory”, in Lewis (1983). 21 See in particular “Belief and the basis of meaning”, in Davidson (1984). For a very good analysis of the connections between Davidson’s theory of meaning and his theory of mind as “measurement theoretic”, see Rawling (2001). 22 See “Causal qualities” (PP: 137): “The truth is that we deal with our primary system as part of a fictitious secondary system. Here we have a fictitious quality, and we can also have fictitious individuals. This is all made clear in my account of theories”. He seems ready (p.138) to consider the thought of another individual, or the colours designated by a blind person, as theoretical terms in this sense. This instrumentalistic interpretation is close to what has been called instrumentalism in the philosophy of mind, whose main representative is Dennett (1987). 23 See Russell (1910: Chapter 10), and Russell (1911: 109). 24 On these debates, see Geach (1975), Sommers (1981) and Engel (1991). 25 Although, as we saw in his analysis of truth (§1.4) he was not averse to quantification over propositions and other intentional entities. 88

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26 For this kind of criticism, see in particular Simons (1991). 27 We owe this point to Kevin Mulligan. 28 For a perspective on these issues, see Tiercelin (1992). 29 See in particular Peirce (1935: III, 139): “The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real”. 30 See Rorty (1982).

Chapter 3 1 Whyte (1990), Sahlin (1990), Mellor (1991), and Papineau (1987) and (1993). What is at stake here are the objective contents of our beliefs, and not directly the modes under which such contents are presented to the subject. For this distinction, see Chapter 5, this volume. 2 See also Papineau (1993: 74). 3 See Mellor, “Here and now”, in his (1991). 4 See Russell (1910). 5 As we shall see, this purely causal conception of the roles of beliefs and desires in action should be tempered with the acknowledgement that there are implicit beliefs, which strictly speaking do not cause the action but are somewhat constitutive of them. Implicit beliefs are nondenumerable; see Chapter 5, this volume. 6 Obviously, this method presupposes that for any pair of beliefs, it is always possible that one of this pair only is causally operative in some particular action. 7 We use here the notion of a primary reason in much the sense of Davidson; see Davidson (1980: 5). 8 See Whyte (1990), who claims that Ramsey’s Principle can be used to define, not only our beliefs’ truth conditions, but also (albeit necessarily indirectly) their constituents. Whyte uses another method of variation to extract the semantic contributions of sub-sentential elements to the truth conditions of the whole sentence. 9 For a defence of this claim, see Campbell (1994). 10 See McDowell (1999) and Millikan (1984), for different versions of this conception. 11 Sahlin (1990: 72) mentions this point about the chicken/caterpillar example given in §1.4. Defenders of teleosemantics include Millikan (1984), Dretske (1988), McGinn (1989), Papineau (1987, 1993) and Jacob (1997). 12 We do not dismiss that some of these options can be combined. 13 Roughly, informational or causal co-variance theories define the content of a token representation by reference to the information it 89

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carries, or the information that any token of that type has the function of carrying. Such information is defined in its turn by the laws, most often causal, which link the referent to the production of a token representation. See Fodor (1990) and Jacob (1997). 14 For a more radical argument against teleosemantics, see Whyte (1993). He argues that either a teleological account of content is redundant with respect to a success semantical account, and hence not necessary, or that it has unwanted implications.

Chapter 4 1 See also Perner (1991), and the abundant literature on the child’s “theory of mind”. See, for instance, Baron-Cohen et al. (1993, 2001), Baron-Cohen (1995), Davies and Stone (1995, 1995a), Dokic and Proust (forthcoming). 2 See Child (forthcoming). 3 Is there a “connecting” conception of belief, just as there is a “connecting” conception of desire? For instance, one could mean by “Sam knows it’s a toy” that Sam is connected with a real toy. This conception of non-propositional knowledge does not involve the notion of mental representation; see Bartsch and Wellman (1995: 44– 5). However, there is still a difference between the notion of belief and that of desire. A simple desire is still recognizable as a desire, with its own conditions of satisfaction (even if they are rather indeterminate). The conception of knowledge as a direct cognitive relation is less plausibly described as a primitive conception of belief. It is best described as a conception of various non-doxastic direct relations to the world such as perception or memory. 4 For a defence of the claim that desires have psychological reality in this sense, see Wollheim (1999). 5 The distinction between two notions of satisfaction is related to Wittgenstein’s famous criticism of Russell; see Wittgenstein (1975: §22). 6 See Papineau (1993: 79). 7 See Davidson (1980). 8 For a discussion (and criticism) of McDowell’s position, see Dokic (1998) and Engel (2001). 9 For a defence of this position, see Heath (1997). 10 See Davidson (1984). Davidson’s “Unified theory of meaning and action” (1980a) contains an attempt to formulate a theory of interpretation of beliefs, desires and actions, which has in common with the view defended here that it is anti-reductionist. Another common feature between Davidson’s approach and ours is that 90

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Davidson takes seriously Ramsey’s conception of the relations between beliefs, desires and actions. Where he differs from the account given here, however, is in his attempt to fix at the same time the truth conditions of beliefs, the contents of desires and their respective degrees. But we have distinguished above (§3.1) the categorical account of the contents of beliefs in terms of utility conditions for full beliefs, from the account of the degrees of partial beliefs, and we have restricted the application of RP to the former. Davidson’s interpretation procedure, nevertheless, recognizes the primacy of full beliefs for the determination of their truth conditions, since he starts from the attitude of “holding true” which is a full, not a partial, belief. 11 For an opposing conception, see Whyte 1993a.

Chapter 5 1 Perry (1999: 202). Perry’s objection can be compared to Searle’s (1983, 1992) argument for the existence of what Searle calls “the Background” and “the Network”, i.e. the set of practical abilities and implicit attitudes presupposed by our explicit representations. 2 See Gibson (1979: 21), and Neisser (1991: 201), who writes: “At any given moment the environment affords a host of possibilities: I could grasp this object, sit on that chair, walk through that door. These are examples of affordances: relations of possibility between actors and environments. It is affordances that animals most need to see: here is prey that I might eat, a predator who might possibly eat me, a tree I might climb to escape him”. 3 On this point, see Dokic (1999). Incidentally, it follows that perception can justify full beliefs, which is not without importance for the empirical application of Ramsey’s Principle. (It shows that there are empirical anchors to such application in the actual world.) 4 Dretske (1970), Nozick (1981). 5 Williams (1996: Chapter 8). We do not suggest that Williams would accept the picture of knowledge we are about to give in broad brush – in fact, we merely use this picture in the context of a comparison with action. In any case, Williams’ target is a different version of the Principle of Epistemic Closure, according to which if someone knows that p, and knows that p implies q, then she knows that q. PEC in the text is stronger than this principle, on two counts: it takes into account a larger set of alternatives (namely all alternatives incompatible with one’s knowing, which includes but is not restricted to the set of alternatives incompatible with what is known), and it does not require that the subject know that the alternatives are incompatible with her putative knowledge. 91

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Williams rejects the KK principle (the principle that if one knows, one knows that one knows), which is a consequence of PEC. We cannot go into the discussion of this principle here (but see our remarks above §2.1, where we have suggested that Ramsey’s externalist theory of knowledge does not need this principle). Perhaps PEC should be modified to block the possibility of bootstrapping oneself into knowing that one knows. However, the principle that if someone knows that p, and knows that p implies q, then she knows that q, is too weak, for it neglects the possibility of reflective knowledge, such as the knowledge that I am not hallucinating based on my perceptual experience. If the neutralist conception of experience is rejected (see below), it can be argued that my perception that p, which is essentially factive, is accessible to reflection or introspection, and thus can indirectly justify the belief that I am not hallucinating. 6 Hinton (1973), Snowdon (1988, 1990), McDowell (1982) and Child (1994: Chapter 5). 7 Searle (1983: 84). 8 See Fodor (1994: 42). 9 See Pacherie (1995), for a formulation of this objection.

Conclusion 1 Thayer (1981: 322), from an interview in the Sunday Times, 11 April 1926. 2 For a vigorous criticism of “vulgar” pragmatism, see Haack (1993, 1998).

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INDEX

INDEX

action 2, 4–26, 28, 29, 35–43, 45–78, 28, 79–81, 83, 84, 86, 89, 90, 91; rule of 29, 31; situated 65–78 affordance 68–69, 73, 91 Allais, M. 83 Aristotle 82 Armstrong, D.H. 32, 40, 87, 88 axiom of choice 5 axiom of reducibility 5 Ayer, A.J. 18, 85

Broad, C.D. 4, 17 Brouwer L.E.J. 4, 6, 83 Bruce, T. Ack. Burge, T. 71

Bain, A. 8, 83 Baron-Cohen, S. 90 Bartsch, K. 57, 90 Bayes’ rule 15 Bayes, T. 6, 8, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 88 Bayesianism 6–12, 17 belief: degree of 6–16, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 34, 35, 37, 41, 43, 47, 80, 86, 91; implicit vs. explicit 68–74, 78, 89, 91; inductive 14, 27, 30; instrumental 7, 50, 61, 66–9, 73; map metaphor 25, 31, 35, 41, 80, 81; partial vs. full 12, 22, 47, 85, 91 Berkeley, G. 42 Bermúdez, J.L. 68 Bernoulli, J. 6 bets 6, 8–11, 14, 16, 25, 37, 84 Blackburn, S. 42, 43, 44, 79, 80, 85, 87 Bolzano, B. 83 Borel, E. 83 Bosanquet, B. 82 Bradley, F.H. 82 Braithwaite, R. 1, 4, 32, 36, 88 Brandom, R. 55, 66, 67 Brinck, I. Ack.

Campbell, J. 50, 89 Campbell, N. 36, 87 Carnap, R. 1, 6, 83, 84, 88 causality 7, 8, 22, 24–5, 27, 28, 30–8, 44, 48, 52, 54, 60, 62, 68, 77, 78, 80, 89, 90 certainty 9, 11, 27, 28, 87 Child, W. 90, 92 Church, A. 82 closure: epistemic 69–71; pragmatic 72 cognitive overload 65–6 Cohen, M. 83 coherence 6, 11, 12, 17, 18, 84 coherentism 63 conditional probability, cf. probability conditionals 8, 15, 29–35, 41, 88 consistency, cf. coherence Cook Wilson, J. 82, 87 Crane, T. Ack. Davidson, D. Ack., 2, 16, 21, 37, 63, 64, 82, 83, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91 Davies, M. 90 De Finetti, B. 6, 13, 83 decision theory 1, 6, 7, 9, 17, 18, 37, 47, 76–7, 83 Dennett, D. 88 desire 46, 51–2, 54, 55–64; cognitively pure vs. derived 61–4; de re vs. de dicto 56–60; reductionist vs. nonreductionist conception of 55–6; satisfaction of 55–64

102

INDEX

developmental psychology 56, 57 disjunctive theory of experience 71, 73 disposition 7, 8, 13, 22, 24, 35, 37, 41, 43, 80, 86 disquotation, cf. truth, disquotational theory of Dokic, J. 90, 91 Dretske, F. 2, 32, 61, 88, 89, 91 Dubucs, J. Ack. Dummett, M. 5, 20, 39, 86 Dutch book 11 Earman, J. 85 Engel, P. 84, 85, 87, 88, 90 ethically neutral proposition, cf. proposition, ethically neutral events 21, 32 externalism 28–9, 87, 92 facts 20, 21, 40, 62, 80; negative 20, 21; false-belief task, 56–7 Field, H. 85 finitism 6, 30 Fodor, J. 59, 75, 77, 90, 92 foundation of mathematics 1, 4–6 foundationalism: doxastic 61–2; motivational 61–2 Frege, G. 11, 12, 18, 20, 39, 66, 75, 77, 84, 85 frequency, cf. probability, frequency theory of Friedman, M. 88 function 7, 25; biological 2–3, 51–4, 64, 80, 90; probability 10; propositional 5, 38; utility 9, 10 functionalism 24–25, 37, 63–64 Galavotti, M.C. 82, 83 Garcia-Carpintero, M. Ack. Gärdenfors, P. 83, 85, 88 Geach, P. 39, 88 Gettier, E. 27, 87 Gibbard, A. 84, 85 Gibson, J. 68, 91 Gödel, K. 82 Goldman, A. 87 Goodman, N. 88 Grover, D. 85 Haack, S. 92 habit: belief as 25, 27, 41–2; of action 14, 29, 30, 41–2; second-order 27, 30

Hacking, I. 83, 85 Hampton, J. 85 Harman, G. 84, 85 Heath, J. 90 Hertz, H. 87 Hilbert, D. 4 Hintikka, J. 87 Hinton, J. 92 holism 16, 48–49, 63 Hookway, C. 87 Horwich, P. 85 Howson, C. 85 Hume, D. 6, 7, 16, 17, 31, 32, 42, 60, 61, 62, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 88 Humean theory of motivation 7, 8, 62, 83 induction 15, 16, 30, 41, 42 informational equilibrium 74–8 instrumentalism 9, 36–8, 80, 85, 88 internalism 28–9 interpretation 37, 57, 63, 64, 83, 90, 91 intuitionism 4, 6, 30, 82–3 Jackson, F. 37, 88 Jacob, P. 89, 90 James, W. 13, 43, 44, 68, 79, 83, 85, 86 Jeffrey, R. Ack., 6, 9, 16, 83, 84, 85 Johnson, W.E. 4, 32, 38, 82, 85, 88 justification 27–30 Kahneman, D. 83, 85 Kant, I. 82, 83 Keynes, J.M. 1, 4, 6, 7, 82 Khogali, M. Ack. knowledge 27–30 Künne, W. 85 Kyburg, H. 85, 94, 95 law 6, 30–4 Levy, P. 82 Lewis, D. 32, 37, 83, 88 Livet, P. Ack. Loar, B. 87 Locke, J. 16, 85 logic: of coherence or consistency (formal logic) 6, 12; of truth (inductive or human logic) 6, 12, 13–18, 25 logical construction 4 logicism 4, 5

103

INDEX

Mach, E. 36, 42 Maher, P. 85 Majer, U. 83, 87 Marion, M. Ack. Maurin, A.-S. Ack. McDowell, J. 61, 62, 89, 90, 92 McGinn, C. 89 McTaggart, J. 38 Mellor, H. Ack., 2, 45, 88, 89 Mill, J.S. 6, 13, 32, 82 Millikan, R.G. 2, 46, 52, 53, 89 Montmarquet, J. 85 Moore, G.E.M. 1, 4, 7, 38 Morgenstern, O. 1, 6, 16, 83 Mulligan, K. Ack., 89 Mussolini, B. 79 Myth of the Given 61

pro-sentence 19 Proust, J. 90 Quine, W.V.O. 39, 85

Neisser, U. 91 Newman, J.H. 85 norm, normativity 12, 14, 16, 17, 63, 64, 77 normal conditions, normality 52–4, 66, 67, 69, 72–4 Nozick, R. 87, 91 Ogden, C.K. 4 Owens, D. 85 Pacherie, E. 92 Papineau, D. 2, 45, 52, 56, 89, 90 paradoxes 5, 83, 85 Pascal, B. 6, 13, 14 Peacocke, C. 87 Peirce, C.S. 3, 6, 8, 14, 16, 22, 24, 27, 30, 33, 41, 42, 50, 79, 81, 83, 87, 89 Perner, J. 56, 90 Perry, J. 53, 54, 66, 67, 74, 91 Pettit, P. 37 Plato 5, 82 Prades, J.L. Ack. pragmatism 2, 3, 6, 8, 13, 22, 25–51, 55, 59, 62–4, 66, 78–81, 92 pre-semantic 53–4 Prior, A. 19, 85 probability: conditional 14, 34, 35; frequency theory of 6, 7, 13, 15; subjective 6–13, 25, 27, 47, 80, 84 projectivism 31, 42–4 proposition: ethically neutral 9, 10, 16; general 5, 6, 30, 31, 87 propositional attitude: belief as a 7

Ramsey sentence 35–8 Ramsey test 34–5 Ramsey’s Principle 2, 15, 22–3, 45–4; versions of 45 Ramsey’s theorem, Ramsey’s theory 82 Ramsified theory of types, cf. theory of types rationality: Humean, instrumental 17, 18, 84, 85 Rawling, P. 88 realism 25, 27–44, 79 relevant alternative 69–70 reliability 27–8 representation theorem 10, 11 Rorty, R. 44, 81, 87, 89 Russell, B. 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 19, 20, 22, 27, 36, 38, 39, 40, 48, 60, 79, 83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90 Sahlin, N.-E. Ack., 2, 22, 36, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89 Savage, L. 6, 16, 83 Schlick, M. 87 Schmitz, F. Ack. Schopenhauer, A. 82 Searle, J. 55, 73, 91, 92 self-control 30, 87 Sellars, W. 61 Siegel, P. 85 Simili, R. 82 Simons, P. 89 situation of action, cf. action, situated Skorupski, J. 87 Slovic, P. 85 Smith, M. 83 Snare, F. 83 Snowdon, P. 92 Sommers, F. 88 Stalnaker, R. 84, 88 Stone, T. 90 Stout, G.F. 38 Strawson, P.F. 39 subject vs. predicate 38–44 subjective probability, cf. probability success semantics 45–8, 51–4 Suppes, P. 83, 85

104

INDEX

Tarski, A. 5, 20, 85 tautology 5, 6, 11, 12 teleology, teleosemantics 51–4, 66 Thayer, H. 92 theory of mind 90 theory of types: simple 5; ramsified 5 Tiercelin, C. 89 truth: coherence theory of 18; correspondence theory of 18, 25, 26; deflationism 18, 87; disquotational theory of 20; minimalism 18; prosentential theory of 19; quasi-redundantist or quasi-minimalist theory of 23, 26, 28; redundancy theory of 18– 20, 24, 26, 46, 86 Tversky, A. 83, 85 universals 31–2, 38–44 Urbach, P. 85 utility 8–10, 84

Van Fraassen, B. 88 variable hypothetical 29, 31, 34 Vickers, J. Ack., 85 Von Neumann, J. 1, 6, 16, 83 Von Plato, J. 83 Von Wright, G.H. 83 Wager Argument (Pascal) 13–14 Wellman, H.M. 57, 90 Weyl, H. 6, 87 Whitehead, A.N. 4 Whyte, J. 45, 47, 48, 89, 90, 91 Williams, B. 85 Williams, C.J.F. 85 Williams, M. 70, 91 Williamson, T. 87 Wimmer, H. 56 Wittgenstein, L. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 11, 16, 18, 21, 30, 31, 40, 79, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 90 Wollheim, R. 90 Wright, C. 86

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