metalinguistic dualism and the mark of the mental

A R N O L D B. LEV ISO N

M E T A L I N G U I S T I C D U A L I S M A N D T H E M A R K

O F T H E M E N T A L

ABSTRACT. In this paper I argue against the view, defended by some philosophers, that it is part of the meaning of "mental" that being mental is incompatible with being physical. I call this outlook metalinguistic dualism (MLD for short), and I distinguish it from metaphysical theories of the mind-body relation such as Cartesian dualism. I argue that MLD is mistaken, but I don't try to defend the contrary view that mentalistic terms can be definitionally reduced to nonmental ones. After criticizing arguments by certain philosophers which purport to establish MLD, I formulate a criterion for a phenomenon's being mental. I then show that this criterion is neutral between monistic and dualistic theories of the mind-body relation. Since if MLD were true it should be impossible to construct such a criterion, I conclude that it is false (i.e., if it is intended as a descriptive thesis about our language). The significance of my paper is that if I am right then I remove one important type of objection to aposteriori, noneliminative forms of the identity theory of mind, namely that such theories ought to be rejected merely on the basis of semantical considerations about the word "mental". Beyond that, I believe that my criterion of mental phenomena correctly captures our intuitions about the nature of the distinction between mental and nonmental phenomena.

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Some ph i l o sophe r s s e e m to be l i eve tha t it is pa r t of the m e a n i n g of the

word " m e n t a l " tha t be ing m e n t a l is i n c o m p a t i b l e wi th be ing phys ica l . L e t us cal l this v iew me ta l i ngu i s t i c dua l i sm ( M L D for short) . I wan t to show he re tha t M L D is a m i s t a k e n thesis. This does no t m e a n , h o w e v e r , tha t I wish to de f end the c o n t r a r y v iew tha t " m e n t a l " can be def ined in t e rms of, o r o the rwise be r e d u c e d to, s o m e set of phys ica l (i.e., n o n m e n t a l o r t op i c -neu t r a l ) p r ed i ca t e s . I be l i e ve tha t it is poss ib le w i thou t i ncons i s t ency to r e j e c t bo th M L D and any such r educ ib i l i t y thesis . I n d e e d , the in te l l ig ib i l i ty of n o n r e d u c t i v e ve r s ions of the iden t i t y t h e o r y of m ind such as D a v i d s o n ' s a n o m a l o u s m o n i s m or Fe ig l ' s neu t r a l i den t i t y t h e o r y seems to d e p e n d u p o n this be ing the case. t T h u s a n o t h e r way to d e s c r i b e m y a im in this p a p e r is to say tha t i wish to d e f e n d these o r s imi lar apos t e r i o r i a p p r o a c h e s to the m i n d - b o d y p r o b l e m spec i f ica l ly f rgm the o b j e c t i o n tha t t hey a re necessa r i ly false o r sense less m e r e l y in v i r tue of the m e a n i n g of the w o r d " m e n t a l " , and h e n c e m a y be r e j e c t e d on tha t bas is a lone .

O n e w e l l - k n o w n p h i l o s o p h e r who has a d v o c a t e d M L D in ce r t a in

Synthese 66 (1986) 339-359 @ 1986 by D. Reidel Publishing Company

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publications is Richard Rorty. 2 He has written a very clear statement of the thesis of MLD:

We cannot define "menta l" as something that might turn out to be either mental or physical, because we cannot define any term as something that might turn out to refer to what is denoted by a contrary term. It is part of the sense of "menta l" that being mental is incompatibl e with being physical, and no explication of this sense which denies this incompatibility can be satisfactory. (IMM, 402)

A similar outlook has been expressed by Paul Feyerabend. 3 Comment- ing on what he saw as "the dilemma of any identity hypothesis concerning mental events and brain processes," Feyerabend once wrote:

• . . [T]his hypothesis backfires. It not only implies, as it is intended to imply, that mental events have physical features; it also seems to imply ; . . that some physical events, viz. central processes, have nonphysical features...

Feyerabend has presupposed here that if we say that an event is mental we seem to imply that it has "nonphysical features," and this is the thesis of MLD.

Since MLD is a semantical thesis about the meaning of the word "mental", it implies nothing as to the actual existence or nonexistence of mental entities (substances, events, properties, etc.). Hence it should not be confused with metaphysical views about the mind-body relation such as Cartesian dualism - the theory that while both mental and physical entities exist they belong to separate realms of reality. We should also avoid confusing MLD with the metaphysical outlook known as eliminative materialism (EM hereafter), with which the names of Rorty and Feyerabend are associated. 4 However, there is an important connection between MLD and EM. If we do not believe in the existence of nonphysical entities, then if we also accept MLD, we must in consistency deny that there are any mental phenomena, or that anything is really mental. For instance, we have to deny that a person's pains, thoughts, emotions, and so on, are mental• This of course is the thesis of EM. But MLD, just by itself, does not entail EM. Thus someone who believed in the existence of nonphysical or purely spiritual phenomena could also consistently accept MLD. In that case he would be a metaph)sical dualist (if he also believed in the separate existence of matter) or an "idealist" (if he did not believe in matter).

According to EM, the traditional linguistic practice of calling a person's thoughts, sensations, emotions, and so on, "mental", has only a

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cultural basis. As neurophysiology or other forms of empirical science progress and we learn more about how the brain and nervous system actually work, this linguistic practice will die out. At least, it will be abandoned for scientific purposes. Opponents of this view have claimed that the fact that thoughts and sensations are mental is no more or less dependent on linguistic practice and culture than physical facts such as the fact that San Francisco is west of New York City. In addition, critics have argued, there is little significant difference between saying that thoughts and sensations exist but as a matter of fact are not really mental, as eliminative materialists hold, and saying that thoughts and sensations exist but as a matter of fact have only physical (i.e., nonmental or topic-neutral) properties, as reductive materialists believe. 5 Moreover , some critics of EM have claimed that it is analytic that thoughts and sensations are mental. So for the eliminative materialist to deny that any events or states of an individual are mental is tantamount to denying that there are any thoughts or sensations, which clearly is absurd. 6

While criticisms of these types may create real problems for EM, they have no direct bearing on MLD, and would only tend to re-establish metaphysical dualism if MLD is not refuted. Moreover , MLD is a genuine obstacle in the path of those who believe that mental entities exist, do not believe in the existence of any purely nonphysical entities, and would like to accept the thesis of the irreducibility of mentalistic terms to nonmentalistic ones. 7 Merely to adopt an "intentionali ty" criterion of mentalistic terms, as Davidson has done, does not solve the problem, since sensation terms like "pain", "t ickle", " i tch", and so on, do not seem to involve intentionality (reference to an object) although they do seem to imply mentality. 8 Yet it is precisely these terms - the so-called phenomenal ones - that provide the strongest support for MLD. Furthermore, as Davidson concedes, every phenomenon is "menta l" by his criterion - a result which seems to show that the intentionality criterion is inadequate for distinguishing mental entities from nonmental ones. 9 But this is something we must be able to do if we are not to beg the question against MLD.

A word about the organization of my discussion. In the next section I try to show that Rorty 's arguments for MLD, although they provide the best extended defense of that position in the literature, are inconclusive. In section 3, I construct a criterion of mental phenomena which is consistent with Rorty 's principles (except that I allow myself the use of

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logical modalities in formulating the criterion, for Rorty's objections to this procedure cf. IMM, 414ff), and is adequate for distinguishing mental from nonmental phenomena in general. I argue in section 4 that this criterion is neutral between dualistic and monistic views of the mental-physical relation. Since the criterion reflects the traditional or standard meaning of the word "mental", or so I claim, it follows if I am right that MLD must be mistaken. It cannot be true that merely in virtue of the meaning of the word "mental", being mental is incompatible with being physical. Here I mean "physical" as judged by some logically independent criterion of physicalness, such as having spatial location, having an explanation in accordance with physical laws of nature or being predictable in accordance with such laws (at least in principle), being in the causal and therefore spatio-temporal network, or some similar characteristic. 1° This is not to deny, of course, that there may be other apriori reasons for believing in mental-physical incompatibility, but there is no room in the present essay to consider this question.

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In one of his influential papers on the mind-body problem, Rorty proposed a criterion of a mental event in terms of a certain notion of "incorrigible report". First, I shall explain what Rorty meant by this term, and second how he used it to formulate his criterion.

Rorty viewed an incorrigible report as an expression in language of an incorrigible belief, the notion of which he defined as follows:

S believes incorrigibly that p at t if and only if (i) S believes that p at t.

(ii) There are no accepted procedures by applying which it would be rational to come to believe that not-p, given S's belief that p. (IMM, 417).

Thus suppose that Mr. Jones says "I am now having a sensation of blue." Let us assume that he is sincere in what he says, that he understands the language he is using, and that he makes no linguistic error. For convenience, I shall call such statements FPRs (short for first-person psychological reports). Let us also assume that Mr. Jones's behavior conforms to what we would expect if he were having a sensation of blue. For instance, upon being instructed to do so, he picks


out the only blue block among a pile of variously colored blocks which have been laid out before him.

It is consistent with these assumptions that Mr. Jones does not have what we have when we say that we are having a sensation of blue. It is logically possible that Mr. Jones has an experience of green in the same circumstances in which we would have a sensation of blue and that he has a sensation of blue in the same circumstances in which we would have a sensation of green; but he has learned to call blue what we call green and conversely. There are "no accepted procedures" , as Rorty says, whereby it would be rational for us, in the circumstances im- agined, to come to believe that Mr. Jones is not having a sensation of blue, given his belief that he is having a sensation of blue. Thus his belief that he is having a sensation of blue is "incorrigible" in Rorty 's sense.

By contrast, suppose that Mr. Jones believes that he is seeing a dog in the road. There are accepted procedures whereby it would be rational for us to come to believe that Mr. Jones is not seeing a dog in the road, despite his sincere belief that he is. For instance, we could use our own powers of empirical observation to check whether his belief is true. If there is an animal in the road which looks like a dog but is really a fox, and there is no other animal in the road that Mr. Jones is in a position to see, then we would be justified in concluding that his belief that he sees a dog in the road is false. Thus this belief of Mr. Jones' would not be incorrigible in Rorty 's sense.

A belief like "I see a dog in the road" should be distinguished, of course, from a belief like "I seem to see a dog in the road," or "I t is to me as if I see a dog in the road." The latter belief would be incorrigible in Rorty 's sense, while the former belief is corrigible.

Notice that Ror ty does not define "incorrigible belief" as "belief that logically implies its own truth." Nor does he define it as "belief such that if someone has such a belief than he knows what he believes." (Cf. IMM, 414-15, and Rorty 's references, for discussion of these alter- native views of incorrigible belief.) By Rorty 's definition, an incorrigible belief does not have to guarantee knowledge, nor does it have to be true. Nor does it have to be justified or caused in a certain way. For Rorty, it is sufficient for a belief to be incorrigible that it conform to the linguistic convent ion which he describes. (This is also necessary.) Let us call this the pragmatist 's doctrine of incorrigible belief, in order to distinguish it from the other views I have just described.


As I said above, an incorrigible report, for Rorty, is an expression in language of an incorrigible belief. But not every expression of an incorrigible belief is a report. Thus an apriori incorrigible statement such as "2 + 2 = 4" is not a r e p o r t - it is not a description of a particular, contingent state of affairs. Similarly for those "appears" or "seems" utterances which merely express hesitation or uncertainty on the part of the speaker - they, too, are not reports (cf. IMM, 418-19).

As Rorty points out, a belief or report which is incorrigible in his sense may be c o r r i g i b l e at some future time, should the incorrigibility convention be overthrown. This could happen, he says, if for example, information provided by a cerebroscope or other neurological evidence should come to override a person's FPRs (IMM, 421). Thus suppose that a cerebroscope shows us that Mr. Jones is having a sensation of green when he reports having a sensation of blue (assuming that such a thing is logically possible). In that case Mr. Jones's FPR that he is having a sensation of blue would no longer be incorrigible. I will say more about this topic in section 4 below.

In IMM Rorty used his analysis of the notion of an incorrigible report in order to formulate a criterion of the mental. He wrote:

. . . [W]e now have a set of necessary and sufficient condit ions for someth ing being a menta l event, namely If there is some person who can have an incorrigible belief in some s ta tement P which is a report on X, then X is a mental event . (IMM, 419, Ror ty ' s emphasis)

However, as stated, this formulation only gives a sufficient condition. For reasons which will emerge later, I will assume that the sufficient condition interpretation is correct. Rorty restricted the scope of this criterion to e v e n t s because he thought that there were what he called mental features such as emotions, long-standing desires, psychological dispositions like jealousy, and similar noneventual mental phenomena, which we could not be strictly incorrigible about. However, he sug- gested that reports of such mental features were "nearly incorrigible," and that it is only because of their close association with the strictly incorrigible mental events that we also call such features mental. Rorty also argued that various traditional criteria of the mental other than incorrigibility, such as intentionality, introspectability, and special access, were unsatisfactory (cf. IMM, 419ff). Hence the incorrigibility criterion was the only genuine mark of the mental.

We now need to consider whether Rorty's analysis of the notion of an


incorrigible belief, together with his claim that incorrigibility of report is the sole criterion of the mental, provide any support for MLD. I shall argue that they do not.

We should notice, to begin with, that Rorty's incorrigibility criterion of the mental, even if it is interpreted as a necessary as well as sufficient condition of a mental event, does not entail that a physical event cannot be incorrigibly reported. Because of the importance of this question, I shall cite two other descriptions which Rorty gave of his criterion and show that they suffer from this same deficiency.

(1) Mental events are unlike any other events in that certain knowledge claims about them cannot be overridden. We have no criteria for setting aside as mistaken first-person contemporaneous reports of thoughts and sensations, whereas we do have criteria for setting aside all reports about everything else. (IMM, 413)

(2) The only thing that can make either an entity or a property mental is that certain reports of its existence or occurrence have the special status that is accorded to, e.g., reports of thoughts and sensations - the status of incorrigibility. (IMM, 414)

Neither of these passages, nor the criterion itself, entails that no physical events can be incorrigibly reported. They entail, rather, that events which cannot be incorrigibly reported are nonmental. But it has not been shown that all physical events are nonmental. For all we know at this point in the development of Rorty's argument, some physical events, viz., central processes, might be mental and thus be incorrigibly reportable. Hence these passages provide no support for MLD. It seems that Rorty needs to provide some independent reason - something that is true only of physical events - for believing that no physical events can be incorrigibly reported, in order to uphold MLD.

Does Rorty provide such a reason? On the surface at least he does not. Thus consider the following passage:

1 h a v e . . . i s o l a t e d [the] incompatibility [between the mental and the physical] as the incompatibility between what we are strictly or nearly incorrigible about and what we are straightforwardly corrigible about, (IMM, 421)

This passage suggests that for Rorty the realm of the physical is "what


we are straightforwardly corrigible about." But the anomalous monist, for instance, could accept this characterization of the physical without a qualm. For him, the fundamental question is whether there is any reason to believe that an FPR such as " I am now in pain" (as uttered, say, by Mr. Jones), logically cannot refer to or quantify over the very same concrete entities (persons and events) as are referred to or quantified over by, [or example, "Mr. Jones is in brain state B," as uttered by a neurologist or other empirical observer. The logical possibility that such diverse reports quantify over exactly the same concrete things could exist even if we had no idea of what would be the criterion of identity or sameness in such cases. Thus, even if we assume that when we call something a mental event we mean that it is incorrigibly reportable by just one person (viz., the persons to whom the event occurs), and that when we call something a physical event we mean that it is corrigibly reportable by more than one observer (at least in principle), it still does not follow that an event's being mental is incompatible with its being physical, or that this is somehow implied by the meaning of "mental" .

Rorty himself clearly recognizes this point in a later work when he writes:

• . . [I]t is relatively easy t o . . . say that something can be corrigibly reportable (by those who know neurology) and incorrigibly reportable (by those who don't) . . . . F o r . . . we are talking about social practices rather than "intrinsic properties of the entities in question" or " the logic of our language." It is easy to imagine different social practices in regard to the same objects, actions, or events . . . . S o . . . we seem to open the way [ o r . . . saying that "sensat ion" and "brain process" are just two ways of talking about the same thing. (PMN, 122).

It appears, then, that Rorty's argument for MLD - the thesis that it is part of the sense of "menta l" that being mental is incompatible with being physical - is a non sequitur. The fallacy seems to consist in inferring the incompatibility of being mental with being physical, which are first-order properties of concrete phenomena, from the incompatibility of being corrigible with being incorrigible, which can only be higher-order properties of statements or propositions.

However, it might be objected to this argument that Rorty misstated his thesis when he characterized the physical as "what we are straightforwardly corrigible about." What he should have said is that the physical is what is not incorrigibly reportable by any person. If this is the criterion of the physical then it does of course follow that being mental


(i.e., being incorrigibly reportable by just one person) is incompatible with being physical (i.e., not being incorrigibly reportable by any person).

This interpretation of Rorty's intention is supported by such passages as the following:

. . . "[I]mmaterial" gets its sense from its connection with " m e n t a l " . . . . The notions of "ghostly stuff" and of "immaterial substance" would never have become current if Descartes had not been able to use cogitationes as an illustration of what he intended. (IMM, 402)

If "immaterial" gets its sense from "mental", the same may be true of "nonphysical". In that case Rorty could argue that the term "physical" gets its sense from its usefulness for providing a contrast with the things we call "mental". If so, then Rorty is correct in saying that some kind of mental-physical incompatibility is built into the meaning of these terms.

Considered as a descriptive claim about our language, the thesis that "physical" is dependent for its meaning on its usefulness in providing a contrast with the things we call mental has been extensively criticized by David Rosenthal. 1~ Rosenthal has argued that the mental-physical ,~ contrast is relative to certain contexts. In addition to the mental- physical contrast, there are also the biological-physical contrast and the chemical-physical contrast. But none of the latter contrasts is usually taken to imply that the kind of phenomena being contrasted with the physical are "nonphysical" in a metaphysical sense, i.e., purely spiritual or immaterial phenomena. For instance, few biologists today believe that the phenomena of life depend on a purely spiritual principle or element. And we are often told that chemistry can be reduced theoretically to physics. Something similar could be true of the mental- physical (or the psychological-physical) contrast. Hence no support for MLD can be derived from the mental-physical contrast as employed by empirical psychology. And while no doubt there is a sense of "mental" in which it means "spiritual", it is far from clear that what is implied is "purely spiritual" or "immaterial" in a metaphysical sense. In most of the accounts of ghostly phenomena that I have read about, the phenomena or their effects can be detected by the senses. Often "ghosts" are described as having some shape, however unstable; they can be heard to speak or moan, and so forth - all physical phenomena considered just as such. Moreover, the various criteria of physicalness that I listed above in section 1, such as being in the causal and therefore

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in the spatio-temporal order, or being explainable in accordance with physical laws of nature, do not seem to imply either that physical events are or that they are not incorrigibly reportable. If so, then to define a physical event as one that cannot be incorrigibly reported by any person would be to give a merely stipulative definition of "physical," and this would be to beg the question against reductive materialists like Smart and Armstrong, as well as against nonreductive identity theorists like Davidson or Feigl.

To sum up my argument in this section, Rorty's argument for MLD is either a non sequitur, or it involves a false premise about the significance of the mental-physical contrast, or it is a petitio principii, i.e., it employs a stipulative definition of "physical" which trivializes the thesis.

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In this section I shall construct a criterion of the mental which expresses our intuitions about the nature of mental phenomena but does not entail that dualism is true if mental entities exist (or if anything is really mental).

In order to avoid any appearance of begging the question against materialism, I shall base my criterion on the widely accepted notion that something is mental if some person has "special authority", an authority he has just by being the person he is, to report or declare it. By this test (merely a sufficient condition), a person's contemporaneous sensations and thoughts, his explicitly formulated plans and goals, and similar items, would be mental. He could be said to have this special authority either in virtue of the fact that he is the originator (auctor) of the item, as in the case of his own intentions, decisions, goals, and the like, or because he is in an epistemically privileged position with respect to it. But here we must tread very carefully. A fluttering in someone's stomach (Rorty's example, cf. IMM, 413) should not turn out to be a mental event on anyone's account; yet it might be claimed that a person has "special authority" to report such an event, since no one else can have his sensation of it. But I shall argue that it is logically impossible for anyone to have "special authority" to report a fluttering in his stomach, or any similar bodily episode, in that sense of "special authority" (shortly to be explained) which is peculiar to the demar- cation of the mental. It is not a fluttering in one's stomach, but one's

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sensation as of a fluttering stomach, which one has special authority to report in this sense. Having such a sensation is consistent with one's not having a stomach (i.e., in principle), and therefore with not having a fluttering in one's stomach. Thus, in principle, a sensation of a fluttering stomach could be had even if one's stomach had been detached from one's nervous system. Hence one's special authority to report having a sensation as of a fluttering stomach does not extend to any events occurring wholly in the region of one's stomach.

I shall say that a person has "special authority" to report an event, in the sense relevant to demarcating the mental, if and only if it is a paradigm mental event (PME hereafter). Furthermore, an event, X, is a PME, I shall say (here adopting Rorty's account), if and only if there is some person who can have an incorrigible belief in some statement P which is a report on X. But I shall give an analysis of the notion of incorrigible belief in epistemic rather than in pragmatic terms (for reasons which will be made clear in the next section).

One way of defining "incorrigible belief" in epistemic terms is as follows:

At time t, S believes incorrigibly that p if and only if (i) at t, S believes that p

(ii) necessarily, if at t S believes that p, and "'p" is true at t, then at t S knows that p.

For instance, suppose that at time t S is having agonizing pain. How could he fail to know that he is having agonizing pain, if he believes that he is and his belief is true? Several reasons might be given. First, it might be said that it is senseless to speak of "knowledge" in such a case, since it is logically impossible for a person to be in error about being in agonizing pain, given that he is in agonizing pain. According to this view, we are entitled to speak of someone's knowing something only if it is logically possible for him to be mistaken about what he claims to know. Second, even if we waive this objection, it might be said that there are no beliefs which are incorrigible in the sense of the definition, since it is never the case that mere true belief is sufficient for knowledge. This is because either there are certain conditions of justification or certain causal conditions pertaining to how a person acquired his true belief which must be satisfied before he can be said to know what he believes.

If these objections are correct, I can give up the word "knows" in


clause (ii) of the definition, and insert in its place " . . . logically cannot be unjustified in believing . . . . " With this adjustment, the definition of "incorrigible belief" is as follows:

At time t, S believes incorrigibly that p if and only if (i) at t, S believes that p

(ii) necessarily, if at t S believes that p, and " p " is true, then at t S logically cannot be unjustified in believing that p.

If we are asked what "bel ieves" means in this context, we can reply: " . . . is disposed to report t h a t . . . " or " . . . is explicitly accepting that . . . . " Unlike Rorty 's definition, these definitions require that a person's belief must be true in order to be incorrigible. If necessary, we can add to the definition the condition that a person's belief must have been caused in the right way (otherwise he might not be epistemically justified in believing what he does). 12

Returning now to the notion of a PME, we can say that an event is a PME if and only if it is epistemically incorrigibly reportable, in the sense of the above definition, by just one person. (In the next section I shall argue that this characterization of "incorrigible belief" and " P M E " does not beg any questions against materialism.)

PMEs correspond to Rorty 's "mental events". However , not all mental events are of this paradigm kind. Thus suppose that a person is having a visual image of a tree which has exactly 776 leaves in view. The latter is a type of mental event that can' t be incorrigibly reported even in Rorty 's sense of "incorrigibility". For there is a rational procedure for rejecting a person's report that he is having a visual image of a tree with exactly 776 leaves in view. For instance, we could check on his ability to do fairly large arithmetical sums without making any mistakes. If he is prone to error in balancing his checkbook, for example, we would be justified in rejecting his report, or at least in suspending iudgment. This is the reason why I did not want to accept Rorty 's criterion of a mental event as providing a necessary condition (see section 2 above). An adequate criterion of mental events must capture nonparadigm as well as paradigm mental events. And a criterion of mental phenomena in general must pick out what Ror ty calls "mental features," e.g., psychological dispositions like jealousy, motives, long-standing desires, and so forth. It should also capture unconscious mental processes of the Freudian type (if there are any).

We can arrive at a criterion which has the generality we need if we


assume that all the phenomena we intuitively call "menta l" are either PMEs or else conceptually connected with them in some specifiable way, while nonmental phenomena satisfy neither condition. By saying that a phenomenon is "conceptual ly connec ted" with a PME, I mean that there is some description, a, of a PME, A, under which it is a PME; and there is some description, b, of a nonparadigm mental phenomenon, B, such that, logically necessarily, b occurs only if a occurs. I am using "logically necessarily" in a broad sense which includes intensional meaning connections as well as connections which can be represented in logical form, but excludes merely nomological connections.

For instance, suppose that a person is disposed to be jealous, but he is unaware of this fact. Not only does he lack special authority to report his having this disposition, but an external observer would be in a better position than he is to judge whether or not he had it. Hence his having a jealous disposition is not a PME. Nevertheless, it seems to be a conceptual truth, in the sense just defined, that, logically necessarily, if a person has a jealous disposition then under appropriate triggering conditions he will experience certain uncomfortable sensations or feelings which in principle he would have special authority to report and which would be described in English as jealous feelings.

Similarly for unconscious mental processes of the Freudian variety. Presumably, a person could not be said correct ly to have an "unconscious wish" in an episodic sense, e.g., to kill his father and have sexual intercourse with his mother, unless his having certain conscious feelings of guilt or anxiety, which he would have special authority to report, were conceptually tied to the unconscious ones. Otherwise, there would be no justifying rationale, so far as I can see, to posit unconscious mental processes as opposed to nonmental, merely neural processes, which perhaps cause the conscious ones.

In order to deal with cases of nonparadigm mental events such as a person's having a visual image of a tree with exactly 776 leaves in view - a type of experience which I am assuming he has no special authority to report - I need to introduce a distinction between what 1 shall call natural and logical complexes. By a "natural complex" I mean a contingent state of affairs such that we cannot conceptually analyze it or break it down into its component parts without disrupting its natural unity, at least in imagination. The case of a person having a visual image of a tree with exactly 776 leaves in view is an example of such a

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natural complex. On the other hand, a logical complex consists either of a conjunction, disjunction, or other logical combination of components, which may be analyzed or broken down into its constituents without altering the unity of any natural complex, even in imagination. For instance, we do not in any way affect the unity of any natural complex or any concrete thing if we break down the conjunctive event complex;

Mr. St. Helens' erupting at the very moment that John has a sensation of red, 13

into two separate components, namely: (i) Mr. St. Helens' erupting at t, and (ii) John's having a sensation of red at t. Each of these components may be said to designate a particular concrete event.

Similarly, a disjunctive complex such as

Either Socrates' having pain at t or Socrates' walking at t,

is a logical rather than a natural complex, since we can imagine these disjuncts or their designata occurring independently of one another, without disturbing the unity of any natural complex. The same appears to be true of other logical complexes. Thus a token identity theorist can have the event ontology he needs consistently with this distinction between natural and logical complexes.

If we accept this distinction then we can adopt the following criterion (necessary and sufficient condition) of mental phenomena in general:

M is a mental phenomenon if and only if either: (a) M is a PME, (b) Mis a logical complex of components, ml, m2,. • . , m,,

such that each logical component, rrh, of M, entails that some PME occurs,

(c) M is a natural complex (event or state of affairs) and M is such that, logically necessarily, M occurs (as described) only if some PME occurs.

o r

(d) M is a disposition of some individual to undergo, under appropriate triggering conditions, a change or modification which satisfies one of the above conditions. TM

M E T A L I N G U I S T 1 C D U A L I S M 353

We can determine the sufficiency of this criterion by running through our examples. First, a person's having at time t a visual image of a tree with exactly 776 apparent leaves is a natural complex which as described entails his having a visual image of a leafy tree. The latter is a PME, so the former is mental by sufficient condition (c) of the criterion. Second, a person's being jealous is a disposition to undergo certain pangs of jealousy under appropriate triggering conditions. These pangs of jealousy, if he experiences them, would be PMEs, so this disposition is mental by sufficient condition (d). On the other hand, the disjunctive complex:

Socrates' having pain or Socrates' thinking that 2 + 2 = 4,

is mental by sufficient condition (b), since each disjunct denotes a PME. On the other hand, a complex like

Socrates' having pain at t and Othello's being jealous of Cassio at t',

which contains an eventual component and a dispositional component, is mental by condition (b), since the first conjunct is a PME and the second is mental by condition (d).

Finally, unconscious mental entities in the Freudian sense would be natural complexes which would be mental either by condition (c), i.e., if an episode is at stake, or by condition (d) if a disposition is in question.

That the criterion is necessary can be shown by a similar procedure. Mt. St. Helens' erupting at the same moment that John has a sensation of red is not a natural but a logical complex, one component of which is neither a PME nor something which as described entails that any PME occurs. So it fails to satisfy condition (a) of the criterion. It also fails to satisfy condition (b), since although it is a logical complex, it is not one such that each of its components entails that some PME occurs. It also fails to satisfy either condition (c) or (d) of the criterion, since it is neither a natural complex nor a disposition. Hence this event (viz., Mt. St. Helens' erupting at the very moment that John has a sensation of red) is not a mental phenomenon.

A similar conclusion applies to the disjunctive complex:

Either Socrates' feeling pain at t or Socrates' walking at t.

This event is not mental, since it contains a nonmental component and it is not a PME, a natural complex, or a disposition.


Finally, John's stomach's fluttering at t (to come back to Rorty's example) might occur While John is comatose; such an occurrence would be neither a PME (since it is not epistemically incorrigibly reportable), nor a logical complex, nor a natural complex which as described entails that any PME occurs, nor a disposition. Of course, there might be some other description of this event which entails that a PME occurs; however such a description would have to be logically complex, and necessarily it would contain a component, viz., "John's stomach fluttering at t" or some equivalent description, which did not entail that a PME occurred. We can safely conclude, therefore, that John's stomach fluttering at t, which is intuitively a nonmental event, is excluded from the scope of the criterion.

It appears, then, that I have devised a criterion which is arguably adequate for distinguishing mental phenomena in general from nonmental phenomena. Perhaps there are recherchd cases which would require further refinement of the criterion, but the above formulation may be accepted for present purposes. I now have to consider whether this criterion is neutral between dualistic and monistic theories of the mental-physical relation, or whether on the contrary it entails dualism.

.

It seems clear that the concept of an event such that some person has special authority to report it, in the sense I have defined, does not in any way imply or suggest that he has this authority with regard to every description of that event, e.g., a description in neurological terms. So to this. extent the criterion that I have proposed is obviously neutral.

However, when we say that a person has special authority to report an event in virtue of his having some form of conscious awareness of it, i.e., in virtue of its being "private" to him or its being such that "it would make no sense to say that he is hallucinating it or that it might appear to him to be other than it really is," then the claim that the criterion is neutral is no longer obviously correct. For a phenomenon might be epistemically incorrigibly reportable in virtue of its having a "phenomenal property" which no physical event could have, or so it might be claimed. Thus a dualist might say that the esse of certain mental phenomena is percipi; but no physical entity could have this property, since necessarily any physical thing is such that it might exist unperceived by anyone. And he might claim that this necessity is de re,


i.e., an essential feature of any physical thing, and not merely de dicto. However , I do not need to show that this sort of metaphysical dualism is false in order to demonst ra te the neutrality of the criterion. On the contrary, a genuinely neutral criterion should be consistent with metaphysical dualism.

Assuming, then, that the criterion is consistent with metaphysical dualism, what I need to show is that it is also consistent with metaphysical monism. Hence if I can show that my criterion could be adopted consistently even by an identi ty-theory materialist such as Smart or Armstrong~ then this should be sufficient, together with the foregoing considerations, to establish the neutrality of the criterion.

For this purpose I shall once again resort to Rorty. As he says in IMM:

Armstrong points out that there is a prima facie incompatibility between the materialist claim that knowledge of one's own mental states is a result of self-scanning by the brain and the claim that we possess logically incorrigible knowledge of such states. For how could it be logically impossible for the scanning process to go wrong? (IMM, 417)

But Ror ty claims that his pragmatis t ' s view of incorrigibility does not run afoul of this objection.

All we are asserting, when we say that contemporaneous beliefs about our own mental states are incorrigible, is that there is no assured way to go about correcting them if they should be in error. Viewing the matter in this way reduces incorrigibility to what Armstrong refers to as "empirically priviliged access" - an epistemological status relative to the state of empirical inquiry, and one capable of being lost, if, for example, cerebroscopes should come to overrule first-[person] reports. (IMM, 417)

However , my notion of epistemic incorrigibility, explained above in section 3, also may be said to reduce incorrigibility to what Armst rong describes as empirically privileged access (EPA hereafter). For this criterion does not require that an FPR be logically incorrigible, is Moreover , my definition of incorrigible belief seems to be free of certain perplexities to which Ror ty ' s definition is subject. For Rorty, as we have seen, the incorrigibility of an FPR is wholly a mat ter of linguistic convention. But if Armst rong is right in claiming that privileged access consists in a physiological process of self-scanning by the brain, then it can ' t be wholly identified with a linguistic pract ice; it can ' t be a social phenomenon through and through. Consequently, Ror ty ' s notion of incorrigibility cannot be " r educed" to Armst rong ' s EPA. On the other hand, if a physiological process of self-scanning by the brain is a mode of


perception then it could under certain circumstances satisfy the conditions for epistemic incorrigibility as I have defined that notion.

To this argument it might be objected that what Rorty identifies with EPA is not Armstrong's process of brain scanning, but rather the epistemic status which a given practice accords to the result of such scanning. However, I think that the epistemic status of our FPRs would have to be different on Armstrong's view from the status which they must have on Rorty's account. To see this, consider the following analogy. Armstrong's hypothetical brain scanning process may be compared to an organic cognitive process like vision, and a cerebroscope to an infra-red camera. Once we have in our possession a working infra-red camera, our reports of our night time visual obser- vations might come to be rejected, in certain circumstances, in favor of the evidence supplied by the infra-red camera, in just the way that Rorty imagines that a person's FPRs might come to be rejected in favor of the evidence supplied by a cerebroscope. But we would not be tempted to say, I think, that since we have developed infra-red cameras, nighttime visual reports have completely lost their empirical status, or that every such report has become worthless as evidence of nighttime goings-on. Similarly, on Armstrong's account, many FPRs could continue to provide some evidence of one's mental states, even after cerebroscopes were introduced, so long as the evidence provided by the latter did not contradict the FPRs. But on Rorty's view, the change of status of a person's FPRs caused by the introduction of cerebroscopes must be much more radical. In order for cerebroscopes to override a person's FPR, a change in the conventions in accordance with which FPRs are protected from empirical refutation would have to take place. FPRs would become corrigible and hence no longer reports of anything mental. However, my notion of epistemic incorrigibility is consistent with the claim that certain FPRs could continue to be reports about a person's mental states even if cerebroscopes were introduced. Since my incorrigible FPRs are true by definition, if we were persuaded by neurological evidence that a particular FPR were false, we would be logically compelled to conclude that it never was really incorrigible and hence that it never really was a report of a person's mental state (except in intention).

This argument presupposes of course that it is not necessarily true that an FPR is incorrigible (immune to empirical refutation), a claim


that many philosophers reject. But this is Armstrong's presupposition; it is not a presupposition o! my criterion. 16 All that I have tried to show by this argument is that my criterion is logically consistent with a materialist outlook such as Armstrong's, i.e., that it does not entail that mental entities are nonphysical if they exist. Since if MLD were true it should be impossible to construct such a criterion, 1 conclude that MLD is false. It is not a part of the sense of "mental" (Joe., "being incorrigibly reportable") that being mental is incompatible with being physical. 17

N O T E S

Cf. 'Mental Events', by Donald Davidson, in Lawrence Forster and J. W. Swanson (eds.), Experience & Theory, University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst: (1970), 79-101. Also, 'Some Crucial Issues of Mind-Body Monism', by Herbert Feigl, Synthese 22 (1971), 295-312. 2 'Incorrigibility as the Mark of the Mental', The Journal of Philosophy 57 (1970), 399-424. This article is referred to hereafter as IMM. Cf. also Rorty's companion piece, 'Wittgenstein, Privileged Access, Incommunicability', American Philosophical Quarterly 7 (1970), 192-205. Rorty's more recent views on this subject are expressed in his book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton (1979) (referred to hereafter as PMN). 3 'Comment: Mental Events and the Brain', The Journal of Philosophy 50 (1963), reprinted in C. V. Borst (ed.), The Mind/Brain Identity Theory, St. Martin's Press, New York (1970), 140-4l. Cf. also 'Materialism and the Mind-Body Problem', by Paul Feyerabend, The Review of Metaphysics 17 (1963), also reprinted in Borst, op. tit., pp. 144-56. 4 Rorty advocated eliminafive materialism in IMM as well as in his earlier article, 'Mind-Body Identity, Privacy and Categories', The Review of Metaphysics 19 (1965). On Feyerabend, see references above in note 3. 5 See, e.g., 'What is Eliminative Materialism?', by William Lycan and George Pappas, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 50 (1972), 149-59. In IMM Rorty concluded that the development of due respect for cerebroscopes would mean the discovery that there had never been any mental events. But in PMN he says that "this is overdramatized, and tries to establish more of a difference between eliminative and reductive materialism than (as Lycan and Pappas have shown) there really is." Cf. PMN, 120, ftn. 24. 6 This has been argued by David Coder in 'The Fundamental Error of Central State Materialism', American Philosophical Quarterly 10 (1973), 289-98. 7 This has been recognized by David Rosenthal. Cf. his 'Mentality and Neutrality', The Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976), 386-415, and 'Keeping Matter in Mind', in Peter A. French et al. (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy V, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis (1980), 295-322. Irving Thalberg also discusses MLD, in effect, in 'Immateriality', Mind XCII, (1983), 105-13.

Davidson, Mental Events. This paper has been reprinted in Essays on Actions & Events, Oxford (1980), 207-25.

3 5 8 A R N O L D B. L E V I S O N

Ibid., p. 211. 1o Thus Bertrand Russell has written: "When the causal relations of an event are known, its position in space-time follows tautologically." Cf. The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, P. A. Schilpp (ed.), Northwestern University Press, Evanston (1944), 705. 11 Rosenthal, 'Mentality and Neutrality'. 12 For an elaboration of this view of incorrigibility, cf. 'Mental Events: An Epistemic Analysis', by Arnold B. Levison and Gary Rosenkrantz, Philosophia 12 (1983), 307-21. Cf. also 'An Epistemic Criterion of the Mental', by Arnold B. Levison, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 13 (1983), 389-407; and 'Materialism and the Criteria of the Mental", by Jaegwon Kim, Synthese 22 (1971), 323-45. 13 On Davidson's criterion of the mental, e.g., "Mt. St. Helens's erupting at the very moment John notices a pencil rolling across his desk, is a "mental description". Since this description picks out a certain eruption of Mt. St. Helens, it follows that this eruption is a "mental event". Cf. Essays on Actions & Events 211. Thus Davidson's criterion fails to distinguish mental from nonmental events, as I remarked above. I have tried to construct my criterion so as to avoid this outcome. 14 This criterion should be distinguished from so-called topic-neutral accounts of the mental, such as J. J. C. Smart gives in his 'Sensations and Brain Processes', Philosophical Review 58 (1959), 141-56, or which D. M. Armstrong defends in A Materialist Theory of the Mind, Humanities Press, New York (1968). As I pointed out in section 1, I do not assume that mentalistic terms can be "analysed" in terms of (or "reduced to") some set of nonmental concepts, whether topic-neutral, behavioral, or any other. Providing a criterion of mental phenomena, as I try to do here, doesn't involve analyzing the concept of the mental. It merely involves giving a list of conditions which is necessary and sufficient for something to fall under that concept (for the concept to apply to it). Thus Rorty's attempt in IMM to provide an incorrigibility criterion of mental events was on the right track in my view, but this criterion does not entail MLD, for it merely distinguishes mental from nonmental phenomena, and not from all physical phenomena (i.e., if we do not equate the physical with the nonmental).

It is true that in PMN Rorty speaks disparagingly of the "pre-Quinean notion of 'necessary and sufficient conditions built into our language' for the application of the terms 'sensation,' 'mental, ' and the like, o r . . . some similar essentialism" (PMN, 120). But I find this objection to the philosophical enterprise of attempting to formulate a satisfactory criterion of the category of mental phenomena unpersuasive. We may believe that people have certain intuitions in virtue of which they apply a category expression like "mental" selectively to some types of phenomena and not to others, without having a belief ("pre-Quinean" or otherwise) in there being necessary and sufficient conditions "built into our language" for the application of such an expression. So far as I can see, there is nothing to prevent us from being creative in attempting to formulate such a criterion, so long as our inventions don't conflict with usage in a way that leads to confusion or incoherence. And if such a criterion can be used to dissolve certain recalcitrant problems in philosophy of mind, the payoff is considerable.

However, Rorty may be correct in suggesting that any attempt to devise a philoso- phically adequate criterion of the mental involves a commitment to essentialism, i.e., the view that there are nontrivial necessary properties of concrete individual things or events (cf. 'Mental Events: An Epistemic Analysis', cited above in note 12, for an endorsement


of event essentialism in this kind of context). In and of itself, however, such a commitment does not entail metaphysical dualism or a belief in purely nonphysical concrete individual things. It all depends on what you take to be an essential property of a mental entity. For instance, if percipi is an essential property of a mental event, and it is not an essential property of any physical event, then metaphysical dualism follows. A contingent identity theorist may reject this form of essentialism without being compelled to reject all forms. ~s However, there seem to be clear examples of logically incorrigible FPRs, e.g., "I am now thinking that 2 + 2 = 4," which must be true if I say it (and understand what I am saying). On my view, logically incorrigible reports may be understood as special cases of epistemically incorrigible reports. 16 But there appear to be clear examples of corrigible FPRs, e.g., a person's reporting himself as having a visual image of a tree with exactly 776 leaves in view. ~7 I wish to thank my colleagues, Joshua Hoffman and Gary Rosenkrantz, for their help with some difficult problems in formulating the criterion of the mental adopted in section 3. I would also like to thank an anonymous referee for Synthese for pointing out several shortcomings in an earlier version of this paper. They of course are not responsible for any errors.

Dept. of Philosophy University of North Carolina Greensboro, NC 27412 U.S.A.

metalinguistic dualism and the mark of the mental

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