REPRESENTATIONAL IDEAS SYNTHESE LffiRARY

STUDIES IN ,

LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, AND

Managing Editor:

JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University

Editors:

DIRK VAN DALEN, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands DONALD DAVIDSON, University of California, Berkeley THEO A.F. KUIPERS, University ofGroningen, The Netherlands PATRICK SUPPES, Stanford University, California JAN WOLEN-SKI, Jagiellonian University, Krak6w, Poland

VOLUME 250 REPRESENTA TIONAL IDEAS

FROM TO PATRICIA CHURCHLAND

by

RICHARD A. WATSON

Department of Philosophy, Washington University, SI. Louis. Missouri. USA

Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V. Llbrary of Congrass Catalog1ng-ln-Publ1catlon Data

Watson. RIchard A.• 1931- Representatlonal ldeas from Plato to Patrlcla Churchland I by Rlchard A. Watson. p. CII. -- (Synthese 11brary ; v. 250) Includes blbllographlcal references and lndex. ISBN 978-94-010-4037-2 ISBN 978-94-011-0075-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-0075-5 1. Idea (Phllosophy) 2. Representatlon (Phllosophy) 1. T1tle. II. Serles. B822.W37 1995 121' .4--dc20 95-11928 ISBN 978-94-010-4037-2

Printed on acid-free paper

AlI Rights Reserved © 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1995 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1995 No part of the material protected by this copyright may be reproduced or utilized in any form of by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. On the featureless Tunisian desert, a long-legged, fast-moving ant leaves the protection of the humid nest on a foraging expedition. It moves across the desert in tortuous loops, running first this way, then that, but gradually pro• gressing ever farther away from the life-sustaining humidity of the nest. Finally it finds the carcass of a scorpion, uses its strong pincers to gouge out a chunk nearly its own size, then turns to orient within one or two degrees of the straight line between itself and the nest entrance, a one-millimeter-wide hole, forty meters distant. It runs a straight line for forty-three meters, holding its course by maintaining its angle to the sun. Three meters past the point at which it should have encountered the entrance, the ant abruptly breaks into the search pattern by which it eventually locates it. A witness to this home• ward journey finds it hard to resist the inference that the ant on its search for food possessed at every moment a representation of its position relative to the entrance to the nest, a spatial representation that enabled it to compute the solar angle and the distance of the homeward journey from wherever it hap• pened to encounter food. C.R. Gallistel, The Organization of Learning, p. 1

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... ix PREFACE ...... xi

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1 1. Appearance and Reality ...... 1 2. Representational Ideas ...... 3 3. Platonic Ideas ...... 5 4. Aristotelean Forms ...... 7 5. Like Knows Like ...... 10 6. Ideas as Effects and Things as Causes ...... 11 7. Resemblance ...... 14 8. Ontological Models ...... 17

CHAPTER 2. DESCARTES ...... 19 1. Image and ...... 19 2. Imagination and Understanding ...... 22 3. Sensations and Images ...... 27 4. Non-Resembling Ideas ...... 30 5. The Priority of Ontology ...... 36 6. What is an Idea? ...... 37 7. What in an Idea Makes it be of its object? ...... 43 8. Summary Conclusion ...... 47

CHAPTER 3. MALEBRANCHE AND ARNAULD ...... 49 1. Faculties, Capacities, and Dispositions ...... 49 2. Act, Content, and Object ...... 52 3. Ideas as Independent Objects ...... 54 4. Ideas as Acts of Mind ...... 61 5. Ideas as Transparent, as Searchlights, and as Grapples ...... 64

VB viii TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 4. LOCKE, BERKELEY, AND HUME ...... 66 1. Primary and Secondary Ideas ...... 66 2. Non-Representational Ideas ...... 68 3. Particular Ideas ...... 73

CHAPTER 5. THE PICTURE THEORY ...... 77 1. Wittgenstein ...... 77 2. Camap ...... 82 3. Goodman ...... 87

CHAPTER 6. NEUROPHILOSOPHY ...... 100 1. Patricia Churchland ...... 101 2. Ruth Millikan ...... 109 3. Robert Cummins ...... 111 4. Mark Rollins ...... 114

CHAPTER 7. HAVING IDEAS ...... 122

CHAPTER 8. CONCLUSION ...... 142

NOTES ...... 143 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 157 SUBJECT INDEX ...... 167 NAME INDEX ...... 171 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Likeness Problem in Modern Philosophy was brought to my attention by Richard H. Popkin in the first course I ever took in philosophy. Popkin later directed the dissertation I wrote on the scourge of the likeness problem, Simon Foucher. In between, I was instructed concerning the importance of ontology by . And my first essay on the subject was an M.A. thesis directed by Robert G. Turnbull, all of this taking place at the University of Iowa in the early 1950s. Over the years, I have had many discussions about the matter with them, and with Edwin Allaire, Harry Bracken, Claude Chabert, Phillip Cummins, Alan Gabbey, Reinhardt Grossman, Donald Livingston, Jerome Schiller, Sara Shute, Kathleen Squadrito, Henry Van Leeuwen, and Thomas Vernon. More recently, Robert Cummins brought to my attention the ubiquity of resemblance in contemporary theories of representation. Mark Rollins provided an excellent orientation to recent work. Steven Nadler ar• gued with me about Arnauld and Malebranche, and suggested numerous re• visions, some of which I have made. Jose R. Maia-Neto made astute comments on early drafts. William Lycan and Ruth Millikan, fine-grained philosophers of high accomplishment, responded heroically to my demands for comments on this coarse-grained commentary. And Justin Leiber combed the manu• script for me. At Washington University, I appreciate the enlightened policies of Martin Israel, Dean of Arts and Sciences; Roger Gibson, Chair of the De• partment of Philosophy; and Patty Jo Watson, who provided me with time for research and writing. I thank them all. I also thank the editors of the Ameri• can Philosophical Quarterly in which a shortened version of Chapter 7, "Hav• ing Ideas," appeared (Vol. 31, 1944, pp. 185-197). The first draft was completed during 1991-1992 while I was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, Califor• nia, with financial support provided by the Mellon Foundation, for which I am grateful. I have always benefited from the encouragement of Director Emeritus Gardner Lindzey, to whom I present this book in the guise of a third-quarter report. Finally, I thank Director Philip Converse and Associate Director Robert Scott and their fine staff for maintaining the Center as the place where I am only one among hundreds of scholars who have come to say, "This is where I want to be."

IX PREFACE

The thesis of this book is that ubiquitous isomorphism underlies representa• tion. It is a study in coarse-grained philosophy. Fine-grained analysis exposes many distinctions, but from a certain distance, gross similarities are visible. A structural overview of theories of representational ideas in shows that likeness or resemblance between a representation and its object underlies them all. By "isomorphism" I mean any degree or kind of resemblance, likeness, or similarity of pattern, structure, or relational organization between entities or events as defined in the broadest sense. It is the notion utilized by S. Morris Engle, who starts his exposition by saying that isomorphism is "the common logical structure" that stands between "two ostensibly different phenomena."1 I also use isomorphism in the formal or mathematical sense as defined by Patrick Suppes.2

Isomorphisms are formal correspondences between distinct systems ofmathematical study. The best known such isomorphism is the one discovered by Descartes and Fermat between geometry and algebra: the isomorphism that is the foundation of analytic geometry and calculus. Descartes discov• ered a procedure-the use of Cartesian coordinates-that mapped the entities studied by geometers - points, lines, curves, and surfaces - into the entities of algebra - numbers, vectors (strings of numbers), and equations .... The discovery of this isomorphism is arguably the most seminal discovery in the history of mathematics. 3 In the largest sense, the theory that we know the world by way of resembling representations has never been shaken. Descartes the metaphysical dualist denies that likeness between a mental idea and its material object is necessary for representation, but nevertheless Descartes the scientist describes a causal physiology of in which point-by-point isomorphism is maintained between external bodies, pineal gland vibrations, brain traces, and even sen• sations and ideas. Locke does the same, arguing that our sensory ideas accurately reflect the size, shape, position and motion or rest of perceived bodies. This general causal theory of perception in which patterned information about the external environment is imprinted by an object onto the sense or• gans and transmitted through the nerves to the brain by way of transforma• tions that isomorphically preserve the object's pattern is elaborated today by

Xl xii PREFACE

neurophysiologists. The neurophilosopher Paul Churchland contends that from the tremendous amount of information these reports contain about the struc• ture and content of external reality, we can pick and choose representations of the parts we are interested in, and (he contends) thus actually "see" or per• ceive the patterns or structures of external things in which we are interested. If we try hard enough, we can see swarms of atoms instead of chairs.4 Despite the fact that philosophers as famous as Descartes have denied that ideas must resemble their objects to represent them, and the fact that philoso• phers as persuasive as the later Wittgenstein and J.L. Austin imply that it does not even make sense to talk of ideas as entities that do or could resemble their objects, the formula that representation depends on resemblance be• tween the representing entity and the represented entity remains implicit or explicit in contemporary philosophy and is doctrine in neurophysiology. This does not mean, however, that anyone has established that isomorphism of any degree actually is the basis of all or any representation. Isomorphism is not sufficient for one entity to represent another. As dis• cussed below, claims that isomorphism also is not neces• sary for one entity to represent another. Arguments for the insufficiency of isomorphism to support representation are typically ostensive. One penny, for example, does not intrinsically represent all other pennies, although all pennies are structurally isomorphic to one another. Obviously something more is re• quired. Arguments that isomorphism is unnecessary to support representation, however, cannot be ostensive because any entity is like any other entity in numerous ways, so that whenever one entity represents another entity, some isomorphism always exists between them. Just because there is always some likeness between a representation and its object, it is impossible to show that isomorphism is not necessary for one entity to represent another. Of course it is possible that isomorphism is not necessary for one entity to represent another, but ubiquitous isomorphism means that no example of a representation that is not in some way isomorphic with its object can be exhibited, so if the negative conclusion is to be drawn, it must be argued for in some other way. Is this some kind of a priori claim? Apparently. When we try to imagine or conceive of a case of representation without some likeness between represen• tational and represented entities, we cannot do it. Maybe tomorrow, but I doubt it. Indeed, we have reached on the issue what in philosophy is called a predicament, here a predicament of being unable to determine whether or not isomorphism is necessary for representation because it is impossible to elimi• nate it either logically or empirically from any actual or imagined case of PREFACE Xlll representation. The isomorphic predicament is that everything in the world is in many ways like everything else in the world. Let us look at the tradition to see. I am not a scholar of Ancient and Me• dieval philosophy, but I do claim that the pictures drawn below of Platonic and Aristotelean positions are fair structural interpretations. They constitute a kind of "shadow" history.5 That is, they are accurate not necessarily to the true positions of these philosophers, but rather to a general view of them that has been influential in the development of Western philosophy. You can make one test of this by checking to see if the reconstructions herein are more or less like those taught in most introductory courses. From Descartes on, how• ever, I do try to present historically accurate positions, and not merely stereo• typed views of them. These structural interpretations of Ancient and Modem theories of representational ideas are those retained by many philosophers today. They constitute the views that have been and are influential in the development of Contemporary materialist neurophilosophy. Descartes is the crucial case. He is the father of the Modem way of ideas, and he explicitly denies that resemblance is necessary for representation. Thus, by showing that he in fact does depend on resemblance, I go a long way toward establishing my thesis that all theories of how ideas represent their objects depend on resemblance. Please note that I cite very little secondary literature. My purpose is not to contend with other commentators, but rather to follow a philosophical argu• ment. The thesis of this book, then, stands or falls on the basis of whether or not the structural argument herein is logically and philosophically cogent.