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Origins of Objectivity This Page Intentionally Left Blank Origins of Objectivity Origins of Objectivity This page intentionally left blank Origins of Objectivity TYLER BURGE CLARENDON PRESS l OXFORD 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX26DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York # Tyler Burge 2010 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Library of Congress Control Number 2009942576 Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc ISBN 978–0–19–958140–5 (Hbk.) 978–0–19–958139–9 (Pbk.) 13579108642 Dedicated with Love and Appreciation to DORLI This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface xi PART I 1. Introduction 3 Individual Representationalism 12 A Different Standpoint 22 2. Terminology: What the Questions Mean 30 Representation 30 Representation-as and Representational Content 34 Representation Failure and Representation As Of 42 Objectivity 46 Particulars, Attributes, Properties, Relations, Kinds 54 Resources and Conditions 56 Constitutive Conditions and Natures 57 Summary 59 3. Anti-Individualism 61 Anti-Individualism: What It Is 61 General Grounds for Anti-Individualism 73 Anti-Individualism Regarding Perception 82 The Shape of Perceptual Psychology 87 Perceptual Psychology Presupposes Anti-Individualism 98 Perceptual Capacities Shared Across Species 101 Individual Representationalism and Perceptual Psychology 103 Perception and Concepts 104 Anti-Individualism and Individual Representationalism 105 PART II 4. Individual Representationalism in the Twentieth Century’s First Half 111 Individual Representationalism in Psychology 112 viii Contents Individual Representationalism in Mainstream Philosophy Before the Mid-Twentieth Century 115 Individual Representationalism in “Continental” Philosophy Before the Mid-Twentieth Century 129 5. Individual Representationalism after Mid-Century: Preliminaries 137 The Demise of Logical Positivism, Behaviorism, and Descriptivism 140 Descriptivism and the Causal Picture of Reference 143 Individual Representationalism and Anti-Individualism: Again 149 6. Neo-Kantian Individual Representationalism: Strawson and Evans 154 Kant 154 Strawson—Two Projects 156 Strawson on Kant 160 Strawson on Solipsism 162 Strawson on Feature Placing 163 Strawson on Particular-Identification in Thought 171 Strawson on Criteria for Representation 176 Postlude: Strawson on Criteria in Identificational Reference 180 Evans on Strawson 181 Evans on Constraints on Objective Reference in Perception 184 Evans on Demonstrative, Perceptual Thought 191 Evans on Conditions for Representing Kinds and Particular Objects 194 Evans on Spatial Representation in Thought 199 Neo-Kantian Individual Representationalism: Summary 208 7. Language Interpretation and Individual Representationalism: Quine and Davidson 211 Quine’s Starting Point: The Argument from Default Neutrality 212 Interlude: Evans’s Critique of Quine on Referential Indeterminacy 216 Communication and Evidence: Quine’s Notion of the Empirical 223 Before Objective Reference: The Pre-Individuative Stage 227 Truth Conditions and Structure 230 The Pre-Individuative Stage: Proximal Stimulation and the Physical Environment 232 Divided Reference: The Supplemental Linguistic Apparatus 235 Quantification 238 Further Elements in Quine’s Individuative Apparatus 250 The Basic Assumption 254 Identity and Resemblance 260 Davidson on Conditions for Objective Empirical Representation 264 Davidson’s Two Arguments 267 Davidson on Belief 276 Contents ix Language-Centered Individual Representationalism: Summary 281 A Retrospective on Individual Representationalism 283 PART III 8. Biological and Methodological Backgrounds 291 Deflationary Conceptions of Representation; Biological Function and Representational Function 292 Representational Function and Natural Norms 308 The Lower Border of Perception: Sensory Information Registration and Perception 315 Perception and the Environment: The ‘Disjunction Problem’ 319 Primitive Agency 326 Perceptual Psychology and the Distinction between Sensory Information Registration and Perception 342 Convergence 347 Lightness Constancy 351 Planar Slant from Planar Surface Texture 355 Depth from Convexity of Image Regions 359 9. Origins 367 Perception as the Individual’s 369 Perception as Sensory 376 Perception as Representation 379 Perception as Objectification 396 Perception as Objectification as Opposed to Perception as Extraction of Form 416 Phylogenetic Distribution of Perceptual Systems 419 Examples of the Sensory-Registration/Perception Distinction 421 Perception, Representation, Propositional Knowledge 430 10. Origins of Some Representational Categories 437 Perception and Body 437 Body Representation as Originating in Perception 438 Singular Applications in Perception of Bodies 450 General Elements in Perception of Bodies: Conditions for Body Attribution 454 Perception of Body and Attribution of Solidity and Generic Shape 465 Perception and Origins of Mathematical Capacities 471 Estimating Numerosity and Ratios of Aggregates 472 Mathematical Tracking of Indexed Particulars 483 The Two Mathematical Capacities 490 Perception and Origins of Spatial Representation 492 x Contents Beaconing 498 Path Integration 499 Landmark Use 507 Map Use 509 Spatial Representation in Navigation by Jumping Spiders and Other Arthropods 514 Perception and Origins of Temporal Representation 518 Association, Computation, Representation 529 11. Glimpses Forward 532 The Epistemic Status of Constitutive Principles Governing Perception 532 The Upper Border of the Perceptual: Perception and Propositional Attitudes 537 Propositional Attitudes, Individual Representationalism, and Conceptualization of Perception 544 Origins, Levels, and Types of Objectivity 547 Bibliography 552 Author Index 583 Subject Index 591 Preface My primary aim in this book is to understand and explain origins of representa- tional aspects of mind, particularly in representation of the physical world. Under what conditions does accurate—objective—representation of the physical world begin? Since the inquiry centers on what it is to represent the physical world in this initial way, and since objective representation of the physical world is the most elementary type of representation, the aim is to understand the nature of representational mind at its lower border. A corollary of this primary aim is to explain the extreme primitiveness of conditions necessary and sufficient for this elementary type of representation—perception. A secondary aim is to show that nearly all prominent philosophical work on this topic over the previous century over-intellectualized these conditions. That is, philosophers claimed that meeting the conditions requires psychological capacities that are much more intellectual than the capacities in fact are. In pursuing the primary aim, I show that perception differs from other sensory capacities. Using a conception of representation as a distinctive psychological phenomenon that is embedded in scientific use, I argue that non-perceptual sensory states are not instances of representation. Calling them ‘subjective representation’ is mistaken, or at best misleading. Perceptual representation that objectively represents the physical world is phylogenetically and develop- mentally the most primitive type of representation. I argue that human beings share representational mind, exercised in perception, with a breathtakingly wide range of animals. Representation of the physical world begins early in the phylogenetic elaboration of life. In Part I, I explain the problem of understanding relevant conditions on objective representation of the physical world. In Part II, I sketch the breadth of the tendency in philosophy and the broader culture to over-intellectualize these conditions. I criticize, in some depth, prominent examples of the tendency. In Part III, I develop conceptions of representation and perception. I explain that representation and perception are psychological “species” or kinds, isolated at least implicitly by science. They are to be distinguished from other sorts of functional information registration—and, in the case of perception, other sorts of functional sensory
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