States of Mind W. V. Quine The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 82, No. 1. (Jan., 1985), pp. 5-8. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X%28198501%2982%3A1%3C5%3ASOM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H The Journal of Philosophy is currently published by Journal of Philosophy, Inc..
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THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY i r O L U M E LXXXII, NO.
1, JANL'ARY 1985
STATES O F MINDX NLESS a case is to be made for disembodied spirits, we can argue that a dualism of mind and body is a n idle redundancy. Corresponding to every mental state, however fleeting or however remotely intellectual, the dualist is bound to admit the existence of a bodily state that obtains when and only when the mental one obtains. T h e bodily state is trivially specifiable in the dualist's own terms, simply as the state of accompanying a mind that is in that mental state. Instead of ascribing the one state to the mind, then, we may equivalently ascribe the other to the body. T h e mind goes by the board, and will not be missed. Not that we would continue to refer to the bodily state as the state of accompanying a mind in the mental state. T h a t formulation was for the dualist's benefit, to show him that the bodily state was undeniable from his own point of view and specifiable in his own terms. For our part, we just appropriate the mentalistic terms themselves and construe them as referring to those bodily states. We even continue to speak of the states as mental. T h e only change is that we reckon mental states as states of the body rather than as states of another substance, the mind. If this effortless physicalism smacks of trickery, we may do well to reflect o n how we learn the mentalistic terms in the first place. All talk about one's mental life presupposes external reference. Introspect our mental states as we will, how d o we know what to call them? How did we learn to call our anxieties anxieties, our dull aches dull aches, our joys joys and our awareness awareness? Why do we suppose that what we call joys and anxieties are what other people call by those names? H o w d o we know what we are talking about? Clearly the answer is that such terms are applied in the *This is a n outgrowth of my piece in a colloquium of the American Philosophical Association, Detroit, 1980. Burton Dreben lately suggested some changes and urged publication. T h e key idea of the first half was briefly noted meanwhile in my Theories and Thzngs (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1981), p . 18.
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THE J O ~ R N A LOF PHILOSOPHY
light of publicly observable symptoms: bodily symptoms strictly of bodily states, and the mind is as may be. Someone observes my joyful or anxious expression, or perhaps observes my gratifying or threatening situation itself, or hears me tell about it. She then a p plies the word 'joy' or 'anxiety'. After another such lesson or two I find myself applying these words to some of my subsequent states in cases where n o outward signs are to be observed beyond my report itself. Without the outward signs to begin with, mentalistic terms could not be learned at all. T o apply these terms to the state of the body is just to put them back where they belonged to begin with. I a m not applying the terms to behavior. A mental state is not always manifested in behavior. Physically construed, it is a state of nerves. We can say which state it is, however, and tell one from another, without knowing the neural mechanism. We specify it with help of the mentalistic term, which in turn was learned on the strength of behavioral signs. T h u s the net result, if we shortcut the mental bit, is that the behavior provides incomplete and sporadic symptoms whereby to identify and distinguish various complex states of nerves whereof the neural detail may still be a matter of conjecture; and it is these states that the mental terms may be seen as denoting. Mental states, construed as states of nerves, are like diseases. A disease may be diagnosed in the light of observable signs though the guilty germ be still unknown to science. Incidentally, diagnosis depends heavily on symptoms reported by the patient; and such is the way, overwhelmingly, with the detection of mental states. What now can we make of the difference between identifying the mental states with the states of nerves, as I just did, and repudiati n g them rather in favor of states of nerves? I see n o difference. In either case the states of nerves are retained, mental states in any other sense are repudiated, and the mental terms are thereupon appropriated to states of nerves. So I may as well persist in calling my proposed reduction of mind to body a n identificaiton of mental states with bodily ones, neural ones; a construing of the mental as neural. There is no presumption that the mentalistic idioms would in general be translatable into the anatomical and biochemical terminology of neurology, even if all details of the neurological mechanisms were understood. T h u s take belief. Assessed on its objective manifestations, belief is a very mixed bag. L i p service is our most convenient clue to belief, but is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition. Acceptance of wagers is a firmer sign, and the accepted
STATES OF MIND
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odds even afford a measure of the strength of the belief; but this test is available only if there is a prospect of subsequently finding the answer, acceptably to both parties, and settling the bet. Other behavior, such as searching or fleeing or standing expectantly, can serve tentatively as manifestations of one or another belief, but these manifestations vary drastically and unsystematically with the content of the belief to be ascribed. Other grounds for ascribing beliefs may be sought unsystematically by probing the subject's past for probable causes of his present state of mind, or by seeing how he will defend his purported belief when challenged. T h e empirical content of ascriptions of belief is thus heterogeneous in the extreme, and the physiological mechanisms involved are n o less so. T h e heterogeneity is cloaked under a linguistic uniformity: the connective 'believes that' followed by a subordinate sentence. T h e other idioms of propositional attitude have the same disarmingly uniform structure as the belief idiom, and it cloaks much the same heterogeneity in respect of empirical evidence and neural mechanism. Hence the insistence, from Brentano onward, o n the need for a n independent science of intension.' Even those of us who d o not acquiesce in a metaphysical dualism of mind and body must take the best of what Davidson has called anomalous monism.2 T h e stubborn idioms of propositional attitude are as deeply rooted as the overtly physicalistic ones. O n e of them is almost coeval, it would seem, with observation sentences. T h u s take the observation sentence 'It's raining'. Tom is learning it from Martha by ostension. Martha's business is to encourage T o m in uttering the sentence, or in assenting to it, when she sees that he is noticing appropriate phenomena, and to discourage him otherwise. T h u s Tom's mastery of the physicalistic sentence 'It's raining' hinges on Martha's mastery, virtual if not literal, of the mentalistic sentence 'Tom perceives that it's raining'. Observation sentences, learned ostensively, are where our command of language begins, and our learning them from our elders depends heavily o n the ability of our elders to guess that we are getting the appropriate perception. T h e handing down of language is thus implemented by a continuing command, tacit at least, of the idiom ' x perceives that p' where 'p' ranges over observation sentences. T h i s degree of implicit mastery of one idiom of propositional attitude would seem therefore to be nearly as old as language. T h e I See Roderick Chisholm, ~ k r c ~ z v (Ithaca, zn~ N.Y.: Cornell, 1957), chapter 11.
2Donald Davidson, Action and Events (New York: Oxford, 1980), pp. 214-225.
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THE JOI'RNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
structure of this idiom, moreover-its embedding of a subordinate sentence-would have been clearly dictated by its primitive use i n assessing children's acquisition of observation sentences. Analogical extension of the idiom to other than observation sentences would follow inevitably, and the development of parallel idioms for other propositional attitudes would then come naturally too, notwithstanding their opacity from a logical point of view. Naturalness is one thing, transparency another; familiarity one, clarity another. It' 1' QI.ISE
Harvard Universitv
REDUCTION, QUALIA, AND T H E DIRECT
INTROSPECTION O F BRAIN STATESX
0 the phenomenological or qualitative features of our sensations constitute a permanent barrier to the reductive aspirations of any materialistic neuroscience? I here argue that they d o not. Specifically, I wish to address the recent anti-reductionist arguments posed by Thomas ~ a ~ e lFrank , ' ~ a c k s o na, n~d Howard ~ o b i n s o n .And ~ I wish to explore the possibility of h u m a n subjective consciousness within a conceptual environment constituted by a matured and successful neuroscience. If we are to deal sensibly with the issues here a t stake, we must approach them with a general theory of scientific reduction already i n hand, a theory motivated by a n d adequate to the many instances a n d varieties of interconceptual reduction displayed elsewhere i n o u r scientific history. With a n independently based account of the nature a n d grounds of intertheoretic reduction, we can approach *Research for this paper was supported by a grant from the Institute for Advanced Study, by a research 'study leave from the University of Manitoba, a n d by S S H R C grant no. 451-83-3050. An earller draft was presented to the Conference o n Methods in Philosophy and the Sciences, convened in honor of Ernest Nagel, at the New School of Social Research in April, 1983. My thanks to that audience for their Insightful criticisms a n d helpful suggestions. T h a n k s also to T h o m a s Nagel, Frank Jackson, Daniel Dennett, Philip Hanson, Charles Marks, and Brian Loar for critical discussions of that earller draft. ' "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", Ph~loso$hzcalRevzew, ~ . x x x ~ l4r ,(October, 1974): 435-450; page references to Nagel are to this paper. 2"Epiphenomenal Qualia," Ph~loso$hzcal Quarterly, x x x ~ r ,127 (Aprll 1982): 127-136. 3hlatter and Sense (New York: Cambridge, 1982), p. 4. 0022-362X 85 8201 0008%02.00
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