Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency Pierre Jacob

Millikan’s teleosemantic approach constitutes a powerful framework for explaining Author the continued reproduction and proliferation of intentional conventional linguistic signs, and thereby the stability of human verbal intentional communication. While Pierre Jacob this approach needs to be complemented by particular proximate psychological [email protected] mechanisms, Millikan rejects the mentalistic psychological mechanisms, which are part of the Gricean tradition in pragmatics. The goal of this paper is to assess the Institute Jean Nicod balance between Millikan’s teleosemantic framework and the particular proximate Paris, France psychological mechanisms that she favors. Commentator Keywords Acceptance (compliance)/understanding | Communicative/informative intention | Marius F. Jung Conventions | Coordination | Direct/derived proper function | Etiological theory of mjung02@ students.uni-mainz.de functions | Imitative learning | Mindreading | Natural signs | Perception theory of Johannes Gutenberg-Universität verbal understanding Mainz, Germany

Editors

Thomas Metzinger metzinger @uni-mainz.de Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany

Jennifer M. Windt [email protected] Monash University Melbourne, Australia

1 Introduction

In this paper, I wish to revisit a topic that I ad- cording to which functions are selected effects dressed many years ago (cf. Jacob 1997) from a (Millikan 1984, 1989b; Neander 1991, 1995, novel perspective. Much philosophy of mind of 2004; Wright 1973): the function of a trait is the latter part of the twentieth century has the effect caused by the trait that explains the been devoted to naturalizing intentionality or continued reproduction (survival or prolifera- the contents of mental representations. One of tion) of past tokens of this trait. the landmarks of naturalistic philosophy of Millikan’s teleosemantic approach is par- mind of the past thirty years is unquestionably ticularly impressive for two related reasons. Ruth Millikan’s teleosemantic framework. Tele- First, it applies in a single stroke to the con- osemantic theories are teleological theories that tents of intentional mental representations, seek to explain content by appealing to the whose function is to mediate between pairs of functions of representations. Like most teleose- cognitive mechanisms located within single mantic approaches, Millikan (1984, 2004) em- brains, and also to the meanings of intentional braces an etiological conception of function, ac- conventional linguistic signs, whose function is

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 1 | 22 www.open-mind.net to mediate between pairs of cognitive mechan- of the distinction and assume that (whether ul- isms located in the brains of distinct individu- timate explanations are causal explanations or als. Second, her overall teleological (or teleo- not) ultimate and proximate explanations are functional) approach, based on the etiological complementary, not competing, explanations. theory of functions, is meant to offer an account Given that why-questions are fundamentally of the proliferation or continued reproduction of different from how-questions, it is likely that ul- both biological entities and non-biological cul- timate explanations offer few (if any) con- tural things, such as linguistic and non-lin- straints on proximate explanations, and vice guistic conventions. versa. I will further assume that the distinction Following Mayr (1961), evolutionary biolo- carries over from biological to cultural evolution gists and philosophers have long argued that and applies to the evolution of human commu- the distinction between so-called ultimate and nication (cf. Scott-Philipps et al. 2011). In par- proximate explanations of biological traits (e.g., ticular, Millikan’s basic teleosemantic account behaviors) is central to evolutionary theorizing. of the proliferation of intentional conventional Roughly speaking, ultimate explanations ad- linguistic signs can usefully be construed as a dress why-questions: for example, why do birds kind of ultimate explanation of human (verbal sing? Why does singing confer a selectional ad- and non-verbal) communication. Its main task vantage (or greater fitness) to birds? Proximate is to address questions such as: what is the evol- explanations address how-questions: for ex- utionary or cultural function of human commu- ample, what are the particular external circum- nication? Why do humans engage in communic- stances which trigger singing in birds? What are ation at all? As with other kinds of ultimate ex- the internal brain mechanisms that allow birds planations, it needs to be supplemented by spe- to sing? cific proximate explanations whose role is to The distinction between ultimate and disclose the particular human cognitive capacit- proximate biological explanations raises some ies and mental processes whereby humans pro- deep scientific and philosophical questions. One duce and understand intentional conventional such question is whether ultimate explanations signs. should be construed as non-causal answers to The goal of this paper is to assess the bal- why-questions. Some philosophers have argued ance between Millikan’s broad teleosemantic ap- that ultimate explanations are selectional ex- proach to the cooperative function of human com- planations based on natural selection. Natural munication and the choice of particular proximate selection can account for the prevalence of some psychological mechanisms that she endorses. In trait in a population of individuals, but it can- particular, I will focus on her anti-mentalistic not track the causal process whereby the trait is view, namely that verbal understanding of an- generated in each individual in the first place other’s utterance is a kind of direct perception of (Sober 1984, pp. 147–152; Dretske 1988, pp. 92– whatever the utterance is about, and her correlat- 93; Dretske 1990, pp. 827–830). Other philo- ive rejection of the basic Gricean pragmatic as- sophers have replied that selectional explana- sumption that verbal understanding is an exercise tions are causal explanations, on the grounds in mindreading. One of the distinctive features of that no token of a trait whose type has been se- the human mindreading capacity is that it en- lected for fulfilling its (etiological) function ables individuals to make sense of two kinds of could proliferate unless it was linked by a causal agency: instrumental and communicative agency. chain to the earlier production of the selected In order to make sense of an agent’s instrumental effect by ancestor tokens of the same type of action, one must represent the contents of both trait (Millikan 1990, p. 808).1 her motivations and epistemic states. In order to In this paper, I will not address such per- make sense of an agent’s communicative action, plexing issues. I will simply accept the validity as Grice has basically argued, the addressee must infer what the agent is trying to convey, i.e., her 1 For further discussion cf. Jacob 1997, pp. 256–269. communicative intention, whose very fulfilment

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 2 | 22 www.open-mind.net requires that it is recognized by the addressee. • The Gricean mentalistic tradition also rests What is distinctive of human intentional commu- on the assumption that verbal understanding nication is that it enables the communicative is an exercise in mindreading, whereby the agent to cause her addressee to acquire new psy- addressee recognizes the complex psycholo- chological states, and thereby to manipulate his gical state that underlies the speaker’s com- mind. municative act. I’ll call this the mindreading Thus, I shall examine the contrast thesis. (Clearly, the mindreading thesis is between the particular proximate mechanisms presupposed or entailed by the separability favored by Millikan and the Gricean prag- thesis.) matic tradition. In the first section, I shall • Third, the Gricean mentalistic tradition fur- spell out the basic Gricean mentalistic frame- ther rests on a fundamental hypothesized work. In the second section, I will spell out asymmetry between what is required for un- Millikan’s teleosemantic machinery. In the derstanding instrumental non-communicative third section, I will examine Millikan’s view agency and communicative agency. An agent that verbal understanding is an extended form intends her instrumental action to satisfy her of perception. In the fourth section, I will ex- desire in light of her belief, and the desirable amine the extent to which Millikan’s account outcome of her instrumental action can be of conventions can support her rejection of the recognized even if the agent fails to fulfil her Gricean assumption that verbal understanding goal or intention. But the intended effect of a is an exercise in mindreading. Finally, in the speaker’s communicative action, which is the last section, I will show that recent develop- addressee’s understanding of what she means, mental findings in the investigation of early cannot be achieved unless the speaker’s in- human social cognition are relevant to the tention to achieve this effect is recognized (cf. controversy between Millikan and the Gricean Sperber 2000, p. 130). Unlike purely instru- tradition over the choice of proximate mechan- mental agency, communicative agency is os- isms underlying human communication. tensive in the following sense. A speaker’s communicative act is ostensive because its 2 The Gricean mentalistic picture of desirable outcome cannot be identified unless communicative agency the addressee recognizes what the speaker in- tends to make manifest to him, i.e., what The Gricean mentalistic tradition rests on three Sperber & Wilson (1986) call the speaker’s basic related assumptions.2 informative intention. Thus, the Gricean tra- dition rests on the thesis of the ostensive • The first is the assumption that the complete nature of communicative agency (Sperber & process whereby an addressee contributes to the Wilson 1986). full success of a speaker’s communicative act should be decomposed into two separable psycho- 2.1 The mindreading thesis logical sub-processes: a process of understanding (or comprehension) of the speaker’s utterance On the picture of pragmatics which is part of the and a process of acceptance, which in turn can be Gricean tradition of the past forty years broadly construed as the addressee’s acquiring either a conceived, a human agent could not achieve a new belief or a new desire for action (depending verbal or non-verbal act of intentional communic- on the direction of fit of the speaker’s utterance). ation unless she had a complex psychological I’ll call this the separability thesis. state, which Grice (1957) called the “speaker’s meaning” and which he construed as a set of 2 Although the relevance-based approach advocated by Sperber & 3 Wilson (1986) and Wilson & Sperber (2004) departs in some inter- three interrelated intentions. First of all, by pro- esting respects from Grice’s (1969, 1989) own approach, I will non- ducing an utterance (or any other piece of ostens- etheless call their approach “Gricean” because, in the context of the present paper, the continuities between the two frameworks are far 3 For brevity, I’ll use “speaker” instead of “communicative agent”. But more important than the discontinuities. of course not all communicative actions are verbal.

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 3 | 22 www.open-mind.net ive communicative behavior), the speaker must ive intention that he recognize the speaker’s in- have the basic intention (i) to act on her ad- formative intention. By recognizing the dressee’s mind, i.e., to cause him to acquire a new speaker’s informative intention, the addressee belief or a new desire (or intention) to perform comes automatically to both fulfil the speaker’s some action. Second, the speaker must intend (ii) communicative intention and to understand (or her addressee to recognize the content of her basic comprehend) the speaker’s utterance. But for intention. Third, she must further intend (iii) her the addressee to recognize the speaker’s inform- addressee’s recognition of her basic intention (in ative intention is not ipso facto to fulfil it. So accordance with (ii)) to play a major role in his the second process needed for the success of the fulfilling her basic intention (i). speaker’s communicative act involves the ad- In the following, I will adopt (Sperber & dressee’s fulfilment of the speaker’s informative Wilson’s (1986) simplified two-tiered account, intention, whereby the addressee either accepts according to which a communicative agent who a new belief (in accordance with the content of produces an utterance has two (not three) inter- the speaker’s assertion) or forms a new desire to related intentions: an informative and a com- act (in accordance with the content of the municative intention, the first of which is nested speaker’s request; cf. Jacob 2011). within the other. She has the informative inten- tion to make some state of affairs manifest to 2.2 The separability thesis her addressee and also the further communicat- ive intention to make her informative intention While the relevance-based account of commu- manifest to her addressee. So in this framework, nication clearly presupposes the mindreading the speaker’s communicative intention is ful- thesis, Sperber (2001) has offered further sup- filled by the addressee as soon as the latter re- port in favor of the separability thesis. Follow- cognizes (or understands) which state of affairs ing Krebs & Dawkins (1984), Sperber (2001) it is the speaker’s informative intention to make has argued that for cooperative communication manifest. But more is required for the speaker’s to stabilize in human evolution, it must be ad- informative intention to be fulfilled: the ad- vantageous to both senders and receivers. Since dressee must further accept the speaker’s epi- the interests of speakers and hearers are not stemic or practical authority. Depending on the identical, the cooperation required for the sta- direction of fit of the speaker’s utterance, the bilization of communication is vulnerable to de- addressee must either believe the fact which it ception. When her utterance is descriptive, the is the speaker’s informative intention to make speaker can speak either truthfully or untruth- manifest to him, or he must acquire the desire fully. The addressee can either trust the speaker to act so as to turn into a fact the possible state or not. The speaker is better off if her addressee of affairs which it is the speaker’s informative trusts her and worse off if he distrusts her, intention to make manifest to him. whether or not the speaker is truthful. If the In a nutshell, much of (Sperber & Wilson’s addressee trusts the speaker, then he is better (1986) relevance-based framework rests on their off if the speaker is truthful and worse off if the insightful recognition that, on the broad speaker is not truthful, while the addressee re- Gricean picture of the speaker’s meaning, the mains unaffected if he distrusts the speaker. task of the addressee can be usefully divided Clearly, not every speaker is (or should be) into two basic psychological processes: one is granted equal epistemic or practical authority the process whereby the addressee understands on any topic by every addressee. As Sperber et (or recognizes) the speaker’s informative inten- al. (2010) have further argued, given the risks of tion and the other is the process whereby he deception, it is likely that human cooperative fulfils the speaker’s informative intention. The communication would not have stabilized in hu- first process involves the addressee’s recognition man evolution unless humans had evolved of the speaker’s informative intention, whereby mechanisms of epistemic vigilance, whereby the addressee fulfils the speaker’s communicat- they filter the reliability of descriptive utter-

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 4 | 22 www.open-mind.net ances. Focusing on a speaker’s assertions at the argued that carrying information could not be a expense of her requests, a speaker’s epistemic teleological function of a sign on the following authority depends to a large extent on the ad- grounds. Whether a sign carries information dressee’s evaluation of her reliability (or trust- about some property depends on how the sign worthiness), which in turn depends jointly on was caused or produced. But according to the the addressee’s evaluation of the speaker’s com- etiological theory of functions, the function of a petence on the topic at hand and on the ad- sign is one of its own effects, i.e., the selected ef- dressee’s representation of how benevolent are fect that explains the continued reproduction of the speaker’s intentions towards him. According tokens of signs of this kind. How a sign was to Sperber et al. (2010), an addressee’s epi- caused cannot be one of its effects, let alone its stemic vigilance can apply to either or both the selected effect. If and when a sign happens to source of the information being communicated carry information about something, carrying in- and its content. formation cannot be its selected effect, i.e., its etiological function.4 3 Millikan’s teleosemantic machinery Second, Dretske’s (1981) informational se- mantics could only be suitably naturalistic in 3.1 Teleosemantics and informational the required sense if information is construed as semantics the converse of nomological covariation (or ne- cessity), i.e., as an entirely non-intentional One of the first attempts at a naturalistic ac- and/or non-epistemic commodity. But as Mil- count of content (or intentionality) in the philo- likan (2004, pp. 32–34) argues, if signal s could sophy of mind was Dretske’s (1981) informa- not carry information about F unless the prob- tional semantics, according to which a sign or ability that F is instantiated when s is tokened signal s carries information about property F iff were 1 (in accordance with some natural law), there is a nomic (or lawful) covariation between then no animal could ever learn about F from instances of F and tokenings of s. As Millikan perceiving tokens of s. (1984, 2004) emphasized shortly after, informa- In her 2004 book, Millikan elaborates a tional semantics faces the puzzle of accounting notion of natural sign that is more “user- for the possibility of misrepresentation. If the friendly” precisely because “it is at root an epi- conditional probability that F is instantiated stemic notion” (Millikan 2004, p. 37). On Mil- given s is 1, then how could s ever misrepresent likan’s (2004) account, natural signs (e.g., instances of F? This puzzle is neatly solved by tracks made by quail) are locally recurrent signs teleological approaches: if a representation has a within highly restricted spatial and temporal function, then it can fail to fulfil its function domains: relative to one local domain, such and thereby misrepresent what it is designed to tracks are natural signs of quail. Relative to a represent (Millikan 2004, Ch. 5). According to neighboring domain, the very same tracks are Dretske’s (1988, 1995) own later attempt at pre- made by pheasants and are therefore natural serving informational semantics as part of tele- signs of pheasants, not quail. Locally recurrent osemantics, a sign or signal s could not repres- signs afford knowledge of the world for animals ent some property F unless s had the function who can learn how to track the circumscribed of carrying information about (or indicating) in- domains relative to which they carry reliable in- stances of F. formation. Furthermore, locally recurrent nat- Millikan’s (1984, 2004) teleosemantic ap- ural signs can form transitive chains (or be pro- proach sharply departs from Dretske’s (1988, ductively embedded) within circumscribed do- 1995) information-based framework in at least 4 For significant discussion and defense of the view that it is the etiolo- two fundamental respects. First of all, in Mil- gical function of mental representations to carry information, in re- likan’s earliest (1984) teleosemantic framework, sponse to Milikan’s criticisms, cf. Neander (1995, 2007), Godfrey- there was no room for information-theoretic no- Smith (2006) and Shea (2007). Cf. the recent exchange between Neander (2011) and Millikan (2011) For a criticism of Millikan’s tions at all. In her later (1989a, 2004) work, she view, cf. Pietroski (1992) and see Millikan’s (2000) reply.

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 5 | 22 www.open-mind.net mains. For example, retinal patterns can be a structure, length, and diameter into a particular natural sign of tracks in the ground, which in wooden material at a particular time and place. turn may be a natural sign of quail within a cir- If so, then driving this particular screw into this cumscribed local domain. Perception is what particular wooden material at a particular time enables non-human animals and humans alike and place will be the derived proper function to track the meanings of locally recurrent nat- that this particular screwdriver inherits from ural signs in their circumscribed domain of the agent’s intention. validity and thereby to acquire knowledge of the world (Millikan 2004, Ch. 4). 3.3 The sender-receiver framework The application of Millikan’s (1984, 2004) teleosemantic framework to the meanings of in- According to the sender-receiver framework, a tentional conventional signs results from the sign or signal R can be an intentional represent- combination of three related ingredients: (i) the ation (as opposed to a natural sign) only if it is etiological view of functions; (ii) acceptance of a relatum in a three-place relation involving two the sender-receiver structure as a necessary con- systems (or mechanisms), one of which is the dition on the contents of intentional representa- sender (who produces R), the other of which is tions; and (iii) a naturalistic account of the re- the receiver (who uses R). By application of the production of conventions. etiological view of functions, the sender (or pro- ducer) and the receiver (or consumer) have co- 3.2 The etiological conception of evolved so that what Millikan (1984, 2004) calls functions the Normal conditions for the performance of the function of one depends on the performance As I said above, on the etiological view, the of the other’s function and vice versa. In a nut- function of some trait is its selected effect that shell, the producer and the consumer are co- explains the continued reproduction of past operative devices, whose interests overlap and tokens of this trait. This is what Millikan whose activities are beneficial to both. Thus, (1984) calls a device’s direct proper function. the cooperative ternary sender–receiver struc- But a device may also have what she calls a de- ture naturally applies to the contents of inten- rived proper function. For example, it is the dir- tional mental representations that mediate ect proper function of the mechanism of color between cognitive mechanisms located within a change in the skin of chameleons to make them single organism.5 undetectable from the local background by In virtue of the fact that intentional men- predators. It is a derived proper function of this tal representations can have two basic directions mechanism in a particular chameleon, Sam, at a of fit, the evolved cooperation between the pro- particular place and time, to make the color of ducer and the consumer can take two basic its skin match the color of its particular local forms. If and when the representation is de- background at that time so as to make it un- scriptive or has a mind-to-world direction of fit, detectable by predators there and then. the producer’s function is to make a sign R, While Millikan’s teleofunctional framework whose content matches some state of affairs S, based on the etiological approach to functions for the purpose of enabling (or helping) the con- primarily fits biological traits, it applies equally sumer to perform its own task when and only to non-biological items such as non-bodily tools when S obtains. If and when the representation —including public-language forms. For example, is directive (or prescriptive) or has a world-to- screwdrivers have the direct proper function of mind direction of fit, the producer’s function is turning (driving or removing) screws. This is to produce a representation whose content will the effect of screwdrivers that explains their guide the consumer’s action, and it is the con- continued reproduction. Clearly, a screwdriver may also be intentionally used for the purpose 5 Cf. Godfrey-Smith (2013) and Artiga (forthcoming) for further elab- orate discussion of the requirement of cooperation as a condition on of driving a screw with a particular metallic application of the sender-receiver structure.

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 6 | 22 www.open-mind.net sumer’s function to make the world match the plains its continued reproduction), a particular content of the sign by its own activities. Fur- token of some public-language form may also thermore, Millikan (1995, 2004) has argued that have a derived function or purpose, derived the most primitive kinds of intentional mental from the purpose of the speaker who produced representations (shared by humans and non-hu- it at a particular place and time. Thus, a token man animals) are what she calls pushmi-pullyu of a public-language form has two kinds of pur- representations, which are at once descriptive poses: a memetic purpose and the speaker’s and prescriptive, with both a mind-to-world and purpose, which may or not coincide (cf. Millikan a world-to-mind direction of fit. 1984, 2004, 2005).

3.4 Conventional patterns 4 Is verbal understanding an extended form of perception? The third component of Millikan’s teleose- mantic approach to the meanings of intentional 4.1 Perceiving the world through conventional signs involves her (1998) natural- language istic account of conventions. On her account, so- called natural conventionality rests on two ele- One basic problem raised by Millikan’s account mentary characteristics: first, natural conven- of the proliferation of intentional conventional tions are patterns that are reproduced (or that signs is that one and the same linguistic form proliferate). Second, they are reproduced (or detached from its context of use may belong to “handed down”) “owing to precedent determ- different memetic families (or chains of repro- ined by historical accident, rather than owing to ductive events). In the reproductive process, properties that make them more intrinsically what gets copied from one pair of sender-receiv- serviceable than other forms would have been” ers to the next is not merely a linguistic form (Millikan 2005, p. 188). The fact that conven- (e.g., “clear”), but the use of a linguistic form tions rest on historical precedent to a large ex- embedded in a particular context. This is why tent accounts for their arbitrariness.6 On the on Millikan’s (2005, Ch. 10, section 3) view, the basis of her naturalistic account of the contin- boundary between semantics and pragmatics is ued reproduction of natural conventions, Mil- blurry and the process whereby a hearer tracks likan further offers a purportedly naturalistic the memetic lineage of a conventional sign is a account of the continued reproduction of con- pragmatic process. On the teleosemantic ap- ventional public-language signs, whose function proach, the hearer’s task is to retrieve the ap- is to coordinate the transfer of information propriate context necessary for recognizing the between speakers and hearers. She thereby ex- correct memetic family (or lineage) to which a tends the cooperative ternary sender–receiver particular conventional sign belongs. In a nut- structure to the meanings of intentional conven- shell, the hearers’ task is to track the domains tional signs (or public-language forms) that me- of intentional conventional signs. diate cognitive mechanisms located within pairs Thus, it would appear that the hearer’s of distinct organisms. task is quite similar to what is involved in Conventional public-language forms are tracking the restricted domain over which the tools or memes in Dawkins’s (1976) sense: they information carried by a locally recurrent nat- have been selected and have accordingly been ural sign (e.g., tracks made either by quail or by reproduced because they serve coordinating pheasants) is valid. Since tracking the local do- functions between a sender (the speaker) and a mains over which the information carried by receiver (the addressee), whose interests overlap. locally recurrent natural signs is a perceptual But like any other tool, in addition to its direct task, it is not surprising that Millikan has per- memetic (or “stabilizing”) function (which ex- sistently urged that “in the most usual cases understanding speech is a form of direct percep- 6 Including the arbitrariness of the relation between particular word- types and what they mean (sense and/or reference). tion of whatever speech is about. Interpreting

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 7 | 22 www.open-mind.net speech does not require making any inferences that verbal understanding is an extended form or having any beliefs about words, let alone of perception (of whatever speech is about) itself about speaker intentions” (Millikan 1984, p. is puzzling for at least three related reasons.8 62).7 Millikan (2004, p. 122) nicely illustrates First of all, as Millikan (2004, Ch. 9) herself re- her view that verbal understanding is an exten- cognizes, there is a major difference between the ded form of perception: content of a perceptual representation of some state affairs and the verbal understanding of the rain does not sound the same when heard content of another’s testimony about the very falling on the roof, on earth, on snow, and same state of affairs. At an appropriate distance on the water, even though it may be dir- and in good lighting conditions, one could not ectly perceived as rain through any of perceive a cup resting on a table without also these media. Exactly similarly, rain has a perceiving its shape, size, color, texture, con- different sound when the medium of trans- tent, orientation, and spatial location with re- mission is the English language (“It’s rain- spect to the table, to any other object resting ing!”). And it sounds different again when on the table, and especially to oneself. As Mil- the medium of transmission is French or likan (2004, p. 122) recognizes, unlike the con- German. tent of testimony, the content of ordinary per- ception can be put at the service of action pre- In a nutshell, “during Normal conversation, it is cisely because it provides information about the not language that is most directly perceived by agent’s spatial relation to an object that is po- the hearer but rather the world that is most tentially relevant for action. But if an addressee directly perceived through language” (Millikan located in a room next to the speaker’s room 2005, p. 207). understands the content of the latter’s utter- Furthermore, both ordinary and extended ance of the sentence “There is a cup on the perception rest on translation, not inference: table”, he may endorse the belief that there is a “the first steps in perception involve reacting to cup on the table without having any definite ex- natural signs of features of the outer world by pectation about the shape, size, color, texture, translating them into inner intentional repres- content, orientation, and spatial location of the entations of these outer features, for example, of cup with respect to himself, the table, or any- edges, lines, angles of light sources in relation to thing else. the eye” (Millikan 2004, p. 118). In normal Second, the thesis that verbal understand- verbal communication, translation plays a two- ing is an extended form of perception ought to fold role in mediating transfer from the be restricted to the hearer’s verbal understand- speaker’s belief to the addressee’s belief. First, ing of the meanings of descriptive utterances of the speaker of a descriptive utterance translates indicative sentences with a mind-to-world direc- her belief into a sentential conventional sign. tion-of-fit, which describe facts (or actual states Secondly, the addressee translates the content of of affairs). It cannot without further modifica- the speaker’s utterance into his own new belief tions be directly applied to the hearer’s verbal (Millikan 1984, 2004, 2005). understanding of the meanings of prescriptive utterances of imperative sentences whereby a 4.2 Ordinary and extended perception speaker requests an addressee to act so as to turn a possible (non-actual) state of affairs into Clearly, Millikan’s thesis that verbal under- a fact (or an actual state of affairs). Prescript- standing is an extended form of perception is ive utterances, which have a world-to-mind dir- not consistent with the Gricean thesis that ection of fit, fail to describe any fact that could verbal understanding is an exercise in be directly perceived at all. So the question mindreading. But on the face of it, the thesis arises whether Millikan would be willing to en-

7 Cf. Millikan (2000, Ch. 6), Millikan (2004, Ch. 9), Millikan (2005, Ch. 10). 8 Cf. Recanati (2002) for a defense of Millikan’s thesis.

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 8 | 22 www.open-mind.net dorse the revised two-tiered thesis that (i) a ances containing at least four kinds of conven- verbal understanding of a speaker’s descriptive tional expressions considered by Millikan (2004, utterance is the perception of whatever the ut- Chs. 10–12): so-called unarticulated constitu- terance is about and (ii) a verbal understanding ents in Perry’s (1986) sense, incomplete definite of a speaker’s prescriptive utterance is to intend descriptions, quantifiers, and possessives. Con- to perform whatever action is most likely to sider first an utterance of (1): comply with the speaker’s request. Finally, testimony enables a speaker to (1) It is raining. convey beliefs whose contents far outstrip the perceptual capacities of either the speaker or It is unlikely that by an utterance of (1) a her addressee. For example, an addressee may speaker means to assert that it is raining some- understand that the speaker intends to verbally where or other at the time of utterance. In- convey to him her belief that there is no stead, she is likely to mean that it is raining at greatest integer, that democracy is the worst the time of utterance and at the place of utter- form of government except all those other forms ance (which remains unarticulated in the sen- that have been tried from time to time, or that tence). If by an utterance of (1), the speaker religion is the opium of the people. But it does could only mean that it is raining at the place not make much sense to assume that either the of utterance, then Millikan’s claim that a hearer speaker or her addressee could perceive what need not represent any of the speaker’s psycho- the speaker’s utterance is about. logical states for the purpose of tracking the local domains of intentional conventional signs 4.3 Tracking the domains of intentional might be vindicated. However, by an utterance conventional signs of (1) on the phone, a speaker located in Paris may mean that it is raining in Chicago, not in Furthermore, the thesis that verbal understand- Paris. Similarly, a French speaker located in ing is an extended form of perception clearly Paris may use the incomplete description “the rests on the assumption that the process President” to refer, not to the French President, whereby the hearer of a speaker’s utterance but instead to the President of the US. tracks the memetic family of the intentional For the purpose of understanding an utter- conventional sign used by the speaker is basic- ance of a sentence containing a universal quan- ally the same as the process whereby human tifier, as shown by example (2), the hearer must and non-human animals track the meanings of be able to properly restrict the domain of the locally recurrent natural signs in their circum- quantifier: scribed domain of validity. As I mentioned above, Millikan (2004) argues that perception is (2) Everyone is asleep. the basic process whereby animals track the meanings of locally recurrent natural signs in By an utterance of (2), the speaker pre- their circumscribed domain of validity. Cru- sumably means to assert, not that everyone in cially, one can track the meanings of locally re- the universe is asleep, but that everyone in current natural signs within their circumscribed some restricted domain (e.g., a relevant house- domain of validity without representing an hold) is asleep.9 The relevant restricted domain agent’s psychological state. So the question is the domain the speaker has in mind. Finally, arises whether a hearer of a speaker’s utterance by using the possessive construction “John’s could always track the memetic family of the in- book”, the speaker may have in mind many dif- tentional conventional signs used by a speaker ferent relations between John and the book: she without representing any of the speaker’s psy- may mean the book written by John, the book chological states. In particular, as Recanati (2007) has ar- 9 A nice example suggested by a referee is “There is no beer left”, where the audi- ence does not take the speaker to mean that there is no beer left in the universe, gued, the question arises for descriptive utter- but instead in some properly restricted domain (e.g., some relevant fridge).

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 9 | 22 www.open-mind.net read by John, the book bought by John, the dressee to act in compliance with the content of book sold by John, the book John likes, the the speaker’s request. book John dislikes, the book John just referred In the terminology of the relevance-based to in the conversation, the book John lost, the framework, a speaker who utters a descriptive book John gave to the speaker, the book the utterance makes manifest to her addressee her speaker gave to John, the book the hearer gave communicative intention to make manifest her to John, and so on. Unless the hearer hypothes- informative intention to make some fact mani- izes what relation the speaker has in mind, he fest to him. The addressee may fulfil the will fail to understand what the speaker means speaker’s communicative intention by recogniz- by her utterance of “John’s book”. In none of ing her informative intention and yet fail to ful- these four cases does it seem as if the hearer fil her informative intention by resisting endors- could recognize the memetic family of inten- ing the relevant belief. A speaker who utters a tional conventional signs, i.e., track their relev- prescriptive utterance makes manifest to her ad- ant domains—unless he could represent the con- dressee her communicative intention to make tents of some of the speaker’s beliefs or assump- manifest her informative intention to make tions. manifest to him the desirability of turning some possible state of affairs into a fact by his own 5 Conventions and belief-desire action. The addressee may fulfil the speaker’s psychology communicative intention by recognizing her in- formative intention and yet fail to fulfil the 5.1 Teleosemantics and the separability speaker’s informative intention by resisting en- thesis dorsing the intention to act in accordance with the speaker’s request. Millikan’s thesis that verbal understanding is an Origgi & Sperber (2000, pp. 160–161), extended form of perception is meant as an al- who subscribe to the Gricean thesis of the ternative to the Gricean thesis that verbal un- separability between verbal understanding and derstanding is an exercise in mindreading. The acceptance or compliance, have argued that the further question arises to what extent Millikan’s direct proper function of either a descriptive ut- teleosemantic account of the proliferation of terance or a prescriptive utterance could not be public language conventions is consistent with to reliably elicit the addressee’s response “at the the Gricean separability thesis, i.e., the distinc- level of belief or desire formation” (i.e., “the tion between verbal understanding and either cognitive outputs of comprehension”), but in- acceptance (belief) or compliance. I will first ar- stead “at an intermediate level in the process of gue that there is a restricted sense in which Mil- comprehension”. Millikan might reply that ac- likan’s teleosemantics seems to be consistent cording to her teleosemantic framework, an ut- with the separability thesis. But I will further terance may have a direct proper function and argue that in a broader sense Millikan’s rejec- yet remain unfulfilled. If so, then the fact that tion of the mindreading thesis undermines the an addressee may fulfil the speaker’s communic- separability thesis. ative intention (by recognizing her informative On Millikan’s teleosemantic account, for a intention) and yet fail to fulfil the speaker’s in- speaker’s descriptive utterance of an indicative formative intention seems entirely compatible sentence to meet the requirement of cooperation with the teleosemantic framework. (and mutual interest) between the sender (or However, to the extent that Millikan ex- producer) and the receiver (or consumer), its plicitly rejects the mindreading thesis, which direct proper function must be to cause the ad- is presupposed by the separability thesis, it is dressee to form a (true) belief. For a speaker’s unlikely that she would find the separability prescriptive utterance of an imperative sentence thesis itself acceptable. On the relevance- to meet the requirement of cooperation, its dir- based approach, it is a sufficient condition for ect proper function must be to cause the ad- securing what Austin (1975) called the “up-

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 10 | 22 www.open-mind.net take” (or success) of a communicative act (or On the other hand, she argues that we use speech act) that the speaker causes the ad- belief-desire psychology, not for prediction, but dressee to fulfil the speaker’s communicative “for explanation after the fact” (Millikan 2004, intention by recognizing her informative inten- p. 22). This is consonant with her (1984, pp. tion. It is not necessary that the addressee 67–69) earlier claim that while human adults further fulfil the speaker’s informative inten- have the ability to reflect on a speaker’s commu- tion. Successful communication does not re- nicative intention if the automatic flow of con- quire the addressee to accept either a new be- versation is interrupted for one reason or an- lief or a new desire, in accordance with the other, normal verbal understanding does not re- speaker’s informative intention. But on Mil- quire representing the speaker’s communicative likan’s teleosemantic framework, failure of the intention. Instead, normal verbal understanding addressee to comply with the speaker’s goal of should be construed as a conventional transfer causing the addressee to accept either a new of information whereby the speaker translates belief or a new desire looks like a failure of her belief into an utterance, whose meaning is the addressee to cooperate with the speaker’s in turn translated back by the addressee into a conventional action, and therefore like a newly acquired belief. breakdown of the speaker’s communicative ac- Thus, Millikan rejects two of the major as- tion. In fact, Millikan (2000, 2004, 2005) has sumptions on which the separability thesis rests. offered two broad grounds for rejecting the She underestimates the gap between the in- mindreading thesis, both of which make it un- terests of speakers and hearers in human com- likely that she would support the separability munication and she minimizes the role of belief– thesis; the second of which is based on devel- desire psychology in the prediction of others’ opmental evidence. I start with the non-devel- behavior. Interestingly, her rejection of both as- opmental argument. sumptions rests in turn on her own competing account of communicative acts. As she puts it, 5.2 Cooperation and social conformity “a surprise of this analysis of the conventional nature of the information-transferring function First, Millikan (2004) rejects the mindreading of the indicative is that believing what you hear thesis as part of her criticism of the reasoning said in the indicative turns out to be a conven- that leads to the separability thesis: she rejects tional act, something one does in accordance the joint assumptions that human predictions of with convention” (Millikan 2005, p. 46).11 First others’ behavior are based on mindreading and of all, Millikan (2004, p. 23) argues that hu- that cooperation in human verbal communica- mans expect others to behave in conformity tion is vulnerable to the risks of deception. On with social conventions, not on the basis of oth- the one hand, she argues that “most aspects of ers’ beliefs and desires. Second, she further social living involve cooperation in ways that speculates that the conventional behaviors that benefit to everyone […] for the most part, social are caused by a disposition to social conformity cooperation benefits both or all parties. There may derive from natural selection the memetic is nothing mysterious about its evolution in this function of serving a coordinating function respect” (Millikan 2004, pp. 21–22). In a nut- (ibid.). shell, Millikan argues that the urge to explain Clearly, being disposed to social conform- how the benefits of human communication are ity and expecting others to be similarly dis- not offset by the risks of deception is misplaced posed may help solve coordination problems (as on the grounds that the interests of speakers shown by driving on one side of the road). How- and hearers are sufficiently similar, if not ever, being disposed towards social conformity identical.10 is not sufficient to comply with social conven- tions. Compliance requires learning, i.e., the ac- 10 As Godfrey-Smith (2013, p. 45) observes, sameness of interests in human cooperation can be safely assumed in small contemporary communities, 11 Note that this quote seems to presuppose the negation of the separ- but not on a large scale, and nor in an evolutionary context. ability thesis.

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 11 | 22 www.open-mind.net quisition of relevant true beliefs about the con- pattern whereby one agent selects her seat at an tents of social conventions. Thus, the basic chal- arbitrary table in a restaurant and her partner lenge for Millikan’s claim that humans expect follows suit and selects his accordingly. One ex- others to behave, not so much in accordance ample of a partially blind conventional leader– with the contents of their beliefs and desires, follower coordination is the couch-moving pat- but in conformity with social conventions, is to tern whereby the leader affords the follower an- offer an account of how humans come to learn ticipatory cues of her next move by ostensibly and thereby know what it takes to act in con- exaggerating her own movements, where the fol- formity with social conventions. lower’s familiarity with the pattern enables him to recognize the leader’s ostensive cues and 5.3 Counterpart reproduction thereby to reproduce the complementary por- tion of the joint action. Another of Millikan’s This issue has been highlighted by the exchange examples of a partially blind conventional between Tomasello’s (2006) comments on Mil- leader–follower coordination is the US mailbox- likan’s (2005) book and Millikan’s (2006) re- flag convention, whereby the leader puts up a sponse, which focuses on Millikan’s (1998) flag after she has placed mail in the mailbox thesis that many conventions, whose function it and the postman picks up the mail after per- is to solve coordination problems, are repro- ceiving the flag. duced by what she calls counterpart reproduc- Much comparative work by Tomasello and tion (or nuts and bolt reproduction). Typical colleagues (reported by Tomasello et al. 2005 coordination problems involve at least two part- and summarized by Tomasello 2006, 2008) ners, who share a common purpose that can be shows that while most communicative gestures achieved only if each partner plays its assigned in chimpanzees are learnt by ontogenetic ritual- role, where both partners can be required to ization, most communicative behaviors in hu- perform either the same act or two distinct man infants are acquired by imitative learning. complementary acts. In counterpart reproduc- As Tomasello (2006) argues, Millikan’s own re- tion, when the respective roles of each partner quirement that the reproduction of a conven- require them to perform two different comple- tional pattern depends on “the weight of pre- mentary acts, one typically adjusts her behavior cedent”, not on its perceived intrinsic superior to the other’s and vice-versa. Counterpart re- ability to produce a desired result, seems better production is exemplified by, e.g., handshake re- fulfilled by a process of imitative learning than production, the reproduction of the respective by a process of trial and error whereby one indi- postures assumed by men and women in tradi- vidual adjusts her behavior to another’s. There tional dancing, the reproduction of social dis- seems to be nothing arbitrary (as there should tances appropriate for conversation, or the re- if it were conventional) about an individual’s production of the use of chopsticks for eating. adjusting her behavior to another’s. While To- Similarly, Millikan (2005, 2006) argues that masello (2006) does not deny that counterpart counterpart reproduction also underlies the con- reproduction plays a significant role in cultural tinued reproduction of conventional public-lan- transmission, he disputes the claim that the guage signs. output of counterpart reproduction qualifies as Millikan (2005) further mentions open, conventional. partially or completely blind, conventional Part of the gap between Millikan and To- leader–follower co-ordinations involved in joint masello lies in what they take to be the proper actions based on shared goals, whereby one unit for the analysis of the mechanism underly- agent (the leader) introduces a component of a ing the continued reproduction of conventional pattern whose completion requires her partner patterns involved in solving problems of co- (the follower) to perform a complementary com- ordination. While Tomasello focuses on the ponent (ibid., pp. 12–14). One example of open learning capacities of single individual minds, conventional leader–follower coordination is the Millikan focuses on what can be achieved by the

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 12 | 22 www.open-mind.net reciprocal adjustments of pairs of cooperative likan’s view that counterpart reproduction un- partners. For example, when Millikan (2005, derlies the proliferation of conventions must 2006) argues that counterpart reproduction un- make room for the role of children’s ability to derlies the continued proliferation of the custom recognize the model’s communicative intention. of using chopsticks for eating in some cultures, she construes the convention of using chopsticks 6 Teleosemantics and the puzzles of as a solution to the problem of coordination early human social cognition between pairs of partners, some of whom buy chopsticks and use them for eating and others 6.1 Millikan’s developmental puzzle who manufacture chopsticks. The latter would not manufacture chopsticks unless the former To further undermine the mindreading thesis, bought them and used them for eating. Con- Millikan (1984, 2000, 2004, 2005) has also ap- versely, the former would not buy them and use pealed to findings from the developmental psy- them for eating unless the latter manufactured chological investigation of early human social them. cognition, showing that “children younger than But of course, as Millikan is aware, this about four, although fairly proficient in the use leaves open the question of how young children of language, don’t yet have concepts of such learn to use chopsticks for eating. As Millikan things as beliefs, desires, and intentions” (Mil- (2006, pp. 45–46) rightly observes, young hu- likan 2005, p. 204). If such children do not have man children understand their native language such concepts, then, unlike adults, they cannot long before they can speak it. Nor can they reflectively engage in tasks of mindreading, i.e., learn to understand by imitating mature speak- in tracking the contents of others’ intentions, ers: as she puts it, “they don’t watch how other beliefs, and desires. To the extent that they can people understand and then copy”. She further engage in verbal understanding, this further argues that young children would never under- shows that verbal understanding cannot rest on stand their native tongue unless “their teachers” mindreading (or belief–desire psychology). spoke to them, but “their teachers” would never As Millikan emphasizes, much develop- speak to young children unless “they had had mental evidence shows that before they are at some reasonably successful experience” with least four years old the majority of human chil- previous listeners. This makes the continued re- dren systematically fail elicited-response false- production of conventional public-language belief tasks. (In the terminology of develop- signs fit the pattern of counterpart reproduc- mental psychologists Baillargeon et al. 2010, eli- tion. But still the question arises: how do young cited-response tasks are tasks in which a parti- children learn to produce words of their native cipant is requested to generate an explicit an- tongue? Vocal imitative learning may well play swer in response to an explicit question.) For an important role (cf. Hauser et al. 2002). In a example, in the Sally-Anne test, after Sally nutshell, according to Millikan the function of places her toy in the basket, she leaves. While conventions is to solve coordination problems. Sally is away, Anne moves Sally’s toy from the She offers an elegant account of the prolifera- basket to the box. When Sally returns, parti- tion of conventions based on counterpart repro- cipants, who know the toy’s actual location, are duction. Her account must make room for the explicitly asked to predict where Sally (who role of imitative learning in the way young hu- falsely believes her toy to be in the basket) will man children learn either to use chopsticks for look for her toy. The evidence shows that the eating or to produce (and not just understand) majority of three-year-olds, “although quite pro- words of their native tongues. As I shall argue ficient in the use of language” (in Millikan’s in section 6.2, evidence shows that imitative terms, Millikan 2005, p. 204), typically point to learning in young children rests on their ability the box (i.e., the toy’s actual location), not to to construe the model’s demonstration as an os- the basket where the agent falsely believes her tensive communicative action. If so, then Mil- toy to be (cf. Wimmer & Perner 1983, Baron-

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 13 | 22 www.open-mind.net

Cohen et al. 1985 and Wellman et al. 2001 for a ing them a full representational theory of mind. meta-analysis). First, she argues that the evidence shows that Millikan assumes that the failure of most mammals (dogs and cats and non-human prim- three-year-olds in such elicited-response false- ates, presumably, as well) lack a representa- belief tasks demonstrates that they lack what tional theory of mind but have the ability to re- she calls a “representational theory of mind”. In cognize the goal-directedness of each other’s be- a nutshell, she assumes that success at elicited- havior. So by parity, very young children should response false-belief tasks is a necessary condi- also be granted the ability to recognize the goal- tion for crediting an individual with a repres- directedness of others’ actions, including speak- entational theory of mind (i.e., the ability to ers’ communicative actions. Second, she argues track the contents of others’ false beliefs). Ac- that communicative actions are cooperative ac- ceptance of this assumption gives rise to Mil- tions. When young children are engaged in some likan’s developmental puzzle, which is “to un- cooperative action (including a communicative derstand how very young children can be aware action) with a caretaker, they can easily keep of the intentions and of the focus of attention of track of the shared goal of the cooperative ac- those from whom they learn language without tion, while tracking the focus of the speaker’s yet having this sort of sophisticated theory of visual attention, without having a full repres- mind” (Millikan 2005, p. 205). Before explaining entational theory of mind. why Millikan’s assumption is contentious, I On the one hand, there is evidence that shall briefly examine Millikan’s solution to her non-human primates recognize the goals of con- own puzzle. specifics engaged in the execution of instru- Millikan’s solution involves three related mental actions (Call & Tomasello 2008). On the ingredients, the most important of which is her other hand, there is also evidence that non-hu- thesis that normal verbal understanding is an man primates—and birds as well—can discrim- extended form of perception (which does not re- inate knowledgeable agents (who know about, quire thinking about a speaker’s intention at e.g., food from visual perception) from ignorant all). Second, she argues that young children can agents (who don’t know about food because understand the goal-directedness of a speaker’s their line of vision is obstructed) in competitive communicative action without tracking the con- situations (Bugnyar 2011; Call & Tomasello tent of her communicative intention. Third, she 2008; Dally et al. 2006; Hare et al. 2001; To- argues that young children can understand the masello et al. 2003). But the question raised by referential focus of a speaker’s attention without Millikan’s puzzle is to understand what enables having a sophisticated theory of mind. As I un- very young human children to make sense derstand it, much of the argument for the pos- jointly of a speaker’s goal and the focus of her sibility of understanding the referential focus of visual attention, when the speaker is performing a speaker’s attention without having a sophist- a communicative action, not an instrumental ac- icated theory of mind rests on the thesis that tion, in a cooperative, not a competitive, con- verbal understanding is an extended form of text. The fact that non-human primates can perception. As I have already expressed doubts represent the goal of an agent’s instrumental ac- about the thesis that verbal understanding is an tion and discriminate a knowledgeable from an extended form of perception, I shall now briefly ignorant agent in a competitive context falls examine the second thesis: that young children short of providing the required explanation. could understand the goal-directedness of a Furthermore, two of Millikan’s assump- speaker’s communicative without tracking the tions are contentious in light of recent findings content of her communicative intention. from developmental psychology. One is her as- Millikan (2005, pp. 206–207) offers two sumption that young children could recognize main reasons for granting young children the the goal-directedness of speakers’ communicat- ability to recognize the goal-directedness of a ive actions without a representational theory of speaker’s communicative action without grant- mind. The other is her assumption that success

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 14 | 22 www.open-mind.net at elicited-response false-belief tasks should be the findings on imitation reported by Gergely et taken as a criterion for having the ability to al. (2002) raise the following puzzle. Many more track the contents of others’ false beliefs (and infants replicated the agent’s head-action when therefore having a representational theory of the teleological relation between the agent’s mind). I shall start with the former, which means and the agent’s goal was opaque (in the amounts to denying the asymmetry between in- hands-free condition) than when it was trans- strumental and communicative agency—which I parent (in the hands-occupied condition). Why earlier dubbed the thesis of the ostensive nature did infants reproduce the agent’s head-action of human communicative agency. more when it was a less efficient means of achieving the agent’s goal of switching the light 6.2 The puzzle of imitative learning box on? The Gricean thesis about the ostensive The first relevant developmental finding, repor- nature of communicative agency and the asym- ted by Gergely et al. (2002), shows that approx- metry between instrumental and communicative imately one-year-old human children (fourteen- agency is relevant to answering this puzzle. Ar- month-olds) selectively imitate an agent’s odd guably, reception of ostensive signals prepared action. First, infants were provided with ostens- the infants to interpret the agent’s action as a ive cues whereby an agent made manifest her communicative, not an instrumental, action. It intention to convey some valuable information made manifest to the infants that the agent in- by looking into the infants’ eyes and addressing tended to make something novel and relevant them in motherese. She then told the infants manifest to them by her subsequent non-verbal that she felt cold and covered her shoulders communicative action. In the hands-occupied with a blanket. She finally performed an odd condition, the infants learnt how contact was head-action whereby she turned a light box in necessary in order to turn on the light bulb, front of her by applying her head, in two which was part of an unfamiliar device. Since slightly different conditions. In the hands-occu- the model’s hands were occupied, the infants pied condition, she used her hands in order to whose own hands were free assumed that that hold the blanket around her shoulder while she they were free to select the most efficient means executed the head-action. In the hands-free con- at their disposal to achieve the same goal as the dition, she ostensibly placed her free hands on model. In the hands-free condition, the model the table while she executed the head-action. could have used her hands, but she did not. So Gergely et al. (2002) found that while 69% of the infants learnt from the model’s non-verbal the children replicated the head-action in the demonstration that they could turn the light on hands-free condition, only 21% did in the by applying their own heads. hands-occupied condition. In the hands-occu- On the one hand, the evidence shows that pied condition, the majority of children used infants construe imitative learning as a response their own hands to turn the light box on. to an agent’s communicative action and that Csibra & Gergely (2005, 2006) further report they selectively imitate a model’s action as a that the asymmetry between infants’ replication function of what they take to be relevantly of the model’s odd head-action in the hands-free highlighted by the model’s communicative act and hands-occupied conditions vanishes if the (cf. Southgate et al. 2009). On the other hand, model fails to provide infants with ostensive further evidence shows that newborns prefer to cues. look at faces with direct gaze over faces with Gergely & Csibra (2003) have reported averted gaze. Right after birth, they display evidence that twelve-month-olds expect agents sensitivity to eye-contact, infant-directed speech engaged in the execution of instrumental actions or motherese, and infant-contingent distal re- to select the most efficient action as a means to- sponsivity. If preceded by ostensive signals, an wards achieving their goal (or goal-state), in the agent’s gaze shift has been shown to generate in context of relevant situational constraints. So preverbal human infants a referential expecta-

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 15 | 22 www.open-mind.net tion, i.e., the expectation that the agent will behavior. Furthermore, ostensive signals to refer to some object (Csibra & Volein 2008, cf. which preverbal human infants have been shown Csibra & Gergely 2009, and Gergely & Jacob to be uniquely sensitive can plausibly be said to 2013, for review). code the presence of an agent’s communicative One further intriguing piece of evidence intention. If this is correct, then little (if any) for the early sensitivity of human toddlers to further work would be left for preverbal infants the ostensive nature of human communicative to infer the presence of a speaker’s communicat- agency is offered by experiments that shed new ive intention after receiving ostensive signals. light on the classical A-not-B perseveration er- ror phenomenon first reported by Piaget (1954). 6.3 The puzzle about early false-belief Infants between eight and twelve months are en- understanding gaged in an episodic hide-and-seek game in which an adult repeatedly hides a toy under one As Millikan has emphasized, much develop- (A) of two opaque containers (A and B) in full mental psychology has shown that the majority view of the infant. After each hiding event, the of three-year-olds fail elicited-response false-be- infant is allowed to retrieve the object. During lief tasks. For example, when asked to predict test trials where the demonstrator places the where an agent with a false belief will look for object repeatedly under container B, infants her toy, most three-year-olds who know the continue to perseveratively search for it under toy’s location point to the toy’s actual location, container A where it had been previously hid- and not to the empty location where the mis- den. Experimental findings reported by Topal et taken agent believes her toy to be. However, in al. (2008) show that minimizing the presence of the past ten years or so, developmental psycho- ostensive cues results in significant decreases of logists have further designed various spontan- the perseverative bias in ten-month-olds. This eous-response false-belief tasks, in which parti- finding is consistent with the assumption that cipants are not asked any question and therefore infants do not interpret the hide-and-seek game not requested to produce any answer. Typical as a game, but instead as a teaching session spontaneous-response tasks involve the use of about the proper location of a toy. the violation-of-expectation and anticipatory- All this evidence strongly suggests that looking paradigms, which involve two steps. In human infants are prepared from the start to habituation or familiarization trials, parti- recognize nonverbal ostensive referential signals cipants are first experimentally induced to form and action–demonstrations addressed to them expectations by being repeatedly exposed to one as encoding an agent’s communicative intention and the same event. Second, in test trials of vi- to make manifest her informative intention to olation-of-expectation experiments, participants make some relevant state affairs manifest to the are presented with either an expected or an un- addressee. But of course this raises a puzzle: expected event. By measuring the time during how could preverbal infants recognize an agent’s which participants respectively look at the ex- communicative intention to make manifest her pected vs. the unexpected event, psychologists informative intention? A novel approach to this get evidence about the nature and content of puzzle has been insightfully suggested by Csibra the infants’ expectations formed during the ha- (2010). According to Csibra, very young infants bituation or familiarization trials. Psychologists might well be in a position similar to that of a can also use the anticipatory-looking paradigm foreign addressee of a verbal communicative act, and experimentally determine where parti- who is unable to retrieve a speaker’s informat- cipants first look in anticipation of the agent’s ive intention for lack of understanding of the action, thereby revealing their expectation meaning of the speaker’s utterance. Nonethe- about the content of the agent’s belief. less, the foreign addressee may well recognize Thus, in a seminal study based on the vi- being the target of the speaker’s communicative olation-of-expectation paradigm by Onishi & intention on the basis of the speaker’s ostensive Baillargeon (2005), fifteen-month-olds saw an

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 16 | 22 www.open-mind.net agent reach for her toy either in a green box or tasks show that preverbal infants expect others in a yellow box when she had either a true or a to act in accordance with the contents of their false belief about her toy’s location. Onishi and true and false beliefs. The puzzle is: how do we Baillargeon report that fifteen-month-olds make sense of the discrepancy between both looked reliably longer when the agent’s action sets of experimental findings? was incongruent rather than congruent with the So far, psychologists have offered two content of either her true or false belief. In a broad strategies for this, one of which assumes study based on the anticipatory looking (as Millikan does) that success at elicited-re- paradigm, twenty-five-month-olds were shown sponse false-belief tasks is a necessary condition to look correctly towards the empty location of the ability to ascribe false beliefs to others, where a mistaken agent believed her toy to be, which is taken to be the output of “a cultural in anticipation of her action (Southgate et al. process tied to language acquisition” (Perner & 2007). Many further subsequent studies show Ruffman 2005, p. 214). Their burden is to ex- that toddlers and even preverbal human infants plain away the findings about preverbal infants are able to track the contents of others’ false without crediting them with the ability to track beliefs and expect others to act in accordance the contents of others’ false beliefs. Thus, the with the contents of their true and false beliefs. majority of “cultural constructivist” psycholo- In a classical experiment by Woodward gists offer low-level associationist accounts of (1998), six-month-olds were familiarized with an the findings about preverbal infants based on agent’s action, who repeatedly chose one of two spontaneous-response tasks. Other psychologists toys. In the test trials, the spatial locations of (including Baillargeon et al. 2010; Bloom & the toys were switched and the infants either German 2000 Leslie 2005; Leslie et al. 2004; saw the agent select the same toy as before at a Leslie et al. 2005; Scott et al. 2010) argue that new location or a new toy at the old location. the findings about preverbal infants show that six-month-olds looked reliably longer at the they can track the contents of others’ false be- former than at the latter condition. Luo & Bail- liefs. Their burden is to explain why elicited-re- largeon (2005) further showed that infants do sponse false-belief tasks are so challenging for not look reliably longer at a change of target if, three-year-olds. The prevalent non-constructiv- in the familiarization trials, the agent re- ist explanation is the processing-load account peatedly reached for the same object, but there offered by Baillargeon and colleagues. was no competing object (for further discussion The core of the associationist strategy is cf. Jacob 2012). This result has been widely in- to account for findings about preverbal human terpreted as showing that six-month-olds are infants based on spontaneous-response tasks on able to ascribe a preference to an agent. Luo the basis of a three-way association between the (2011) further found that ten-month-olds who agent, the object, and its location. It postulates know that an agent is in fact confronted with that infants will look longer in the test trials at only one object (not two) ascribe a preference events that depart more strongly from the to the agent if she falsely believes that she is three-way association generated by the familiar- confronted with a pair of objects, but not if the ization trials. For example, in the test trials of agent knows (as the infants do) that she is con- Onishi & Baillargeon (2005), infants should look fronted with only one object. longer when the agent reaches for her toy in the Thus, the psychological investigation of yellow box if in the familiarization trials the early human social cognition is currently con- agent placed her toy in the green box on three fronted with a puzzle different from that con- repeated occasions. fronted by Millikan: on the one hand, robust The main obstacle for the associationist findings show that the majority of three-year- path is a recent study by Senju et al. (2011) olds fail elicited-response false-belief tasks such based on the anticipatory-looking paradigm. In as the Sally-Anne test. On the other hand, more the familiarization stage, eighteen-month-olds recent findings based on spontaneous-response experience the effect of wearing either an

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 17 | 22 www.open-mind.net opaque blindfold through which they cannot see least three reasons: she could fail to understand or a trick blindfold through which they can see. the meaning of the linguistically-encoded sen- In the first trials of the test phase, the children tence used by the experimenter to ask the ques- are familiarized to seeing an agent retrieve her tion. She could fail to select the content of the toy at the location where a puppet has placed it agent’s false belief in the process whereby she in front of her. The agent’s action is always pre- answers the experimenter’s question. She could ceded by a pair of visual and auditory cues. In fail to have the executive-control resources ne- the last test trial, the agent first sees the pup- cessary to inhibit the prepotent tendency to an- pet place the toy in one of the two boxes; she swer the question on the basis of the content of then ostensibly covers her eyes with a blindfold, her own true belief. I will now argue that solv- and finally the puppet removes the toy. After ing the puzzle about early belief-understanding the puppet disappears, the agent removes her may well depend on acceptance of the Gricean blindfold and the cues are produced. Using an thesis of the ostensive nature of communicative eye-tracker, Senju et al. (2011) found that only agency and the asymmetry between instru- infants who had experienced an opaque blind- mental and communicative agency. fold, not infants who had experienced a trick I now want to offer a speculative solution see-through blindfold, reliably made their first to the puzzle about early false-belief under- saccade towards the empty location in anticipa- standing based on two related Gricean assump- tion of the agent’s action. tions. The first is the asymmetry between the Senju et al.’s (2011) findings are inconsist- non-ostensive nature of instrumental agency ent with the associationist strategy: since all in- and the ostensive nature of human communicat- fants saw exactly the same events, they should ive agency. The second related assumption is have formed exactly the same threefold associ- that the human ability to track the content of ation between the agent, the toy, and the loca- the false belief of an agent of an instrumental tion, and on this basis they should have gazed action must be a by-product of the ability to at the same location in anticipation of the deal with deception (e.g., lying) in the context agent’s action. But they did not. Only infants of human communicative agency. whose view had been previously obstructed by In the typical Sally-Anne elicited-response an opaque blindfold, not those whose view had false-belief task, participants are requested to not been obstructed by a trick blindfold, expec- make sense of two actions performed by two dif- ted the blindfolded agent to mistakenly believe ferent agents at the same time: they must track that the object was still in the opaque container the contents of the motivations and epistemic after the puppet removed it. states of a mistaken agent engaged in the execu- The evidence against the associationist tion of an instrumental action (Sally) and they strategy is also evidence against the assumption must also make sense of the communicative ac- (accepted by Millikan) that success at elicited- tion performed by the experimenter who asks response false-belief tasks is a necessary condi- them “Where will Sally look for her toy?” The tion for having a representational theory of findings based on spontaneous-response tasks mind and being able to track the contents of strongly suggest that much before they become others’ false beliefs. But this assumption is un- proficient in language use, young human chil- likely to be correct if, as several critics of the dren are able to spontaneously track the con- cultural constructivist strategy have argued, the tents of the false beliefs of agents of instru- ability to ascribe false beliefs to others is not a mental actions. So the question is: what is it sufficient condition for success at elicited-re- about the experimenter’s question that biases sponse false-belief tasks. As advocates of the them towards pointing to the toy’s actual loca- processing-load account (Baillargeon et al. tion? 2010) have argued, an agent could have the In Helming et al. (2014), we have argued ability to ascribe false beliefs to others and still that two biases are at work, one of which is a fail elicited-response false-belief tasks for at referential bias and the other of which is a co-

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 18 | 22 www.open-mind.net operative bias. The referential bias itself turns without representing any of the speaker’s psy- on two components. On the one hand, the ex- chological states; (iii) the overlap between the perimenter could not ask the question “Where interests of speakers and hearers undermines the will the agent look for her toy?” unless she re- separability thesis; (iv) humans can predict oth- ferred to the toy. On the other hand, the experi- ers’ behavior out of social conformity; (v) devel- menter shares the participants” correct epi- opmental psychology supports the view that stemic perspective on the toy’s location. In an- neither verbal understanding nor language ac- swering the experimenter’s question, parti- quisition requires a representational theory of cipants have the option of mentally representing mind. either the toy’s actual location or the empty Millikan’s major teleosemantic contribu- location (where the mistaken agent believes her tion has been to open an entirely novel ap- toy to be). The experimenter’s question may proach to the continued reproduction of inten- bias young children’s answer towards the actual tional conventional public-language signs. As location by virtue of the fact that the experi- was shown by the discussion of whether her menter both referred to the toy (whose actual view of the proper function of descriptive and location they know) and shared the parti- prescriptive utterances is consistent with the cipants’ correct epistemic perspective on the separability thesis, there is room for disagree- toy’s actual location (at the expense of the mis- ment about particular psychological mechan- taken agent’s incorrect perspective on the isms within a teleosemantic approach. I do not empty location). What we further call the co- think that Millikan’s teleosemantic framework operative bias is the propensity of young chil- for addressing the continued reproduction of in- dren to help an agent with a false belief about tentional conventional signs mandates the par- her toy’s location achieve the goal of her instru- ticular choice of proximate psychological mech- mental action by pointing to the actual location anisms that she recommends. One of the major (cf. Warneken & Tomasello 2006, 2007; Knud- challenges for the scientific investigation of cul- sen & Liszkowski 2012), in accordance with tural evolution is to make sure that the proxim- their own true belief about the toy’s actual loc- ate psychological mechanisms that underlie the ation. If so, then young children might interpret continued reproduction of human cultural con- the prediction question “Where will Sally look ventions are supported by findings from experi- for her toy?” as a normative question: “Where mental psychological research, in particular de- should Sally look for her toy?” Of course, the velopmental psychology. correct answer to the normative question is the toy’s actual location, not the empty location Acknowledgements where the mistaken agent believes her toy to be. I am grateful to the editors for inviting me to 7 Conclusion write this essay, and to Ned Block, Carsten Hansen, Georges Rey, Dan Sperber and two an- The goal of this paper was to assess the gap onymous reviewers for their comments. between Millikan’s particular views about some of the proximate psychological mechanisms un- derlying human communication and three core assumptions of the Gricean approach: the mindreading thesis, the separability thesis, and the ostensive nature of communicative agency. I have criticized five of Millikan’s basic claims about psychological mechanisms: (i) verbal un- derstanding is best construed as an extended form of perception; (ii) hearers can track the domains of intentional conventional signs

Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 19 | 22 www.open-mind.net

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Jacob, P. (2015). Millikan’s Teleosemantics and Communicative Agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570160 22 | 22 Communicative Agency and ad hominem Arguments in Social Epistemology A Commentary on Pierre Jacob

Marius F. Jung

A central point in Jacob’s paper focuses on the incompatibility of Grice and Mil- Commentator likan’s account of communicative agency. First, the Gricean mindreading thesis is incompatible with Millikan’s direct perception account. Second, the account of co- Marius F. Jung operative devices, defended by Millikan, contradicts the Gricean separability [email protected] thesis in a broad sense. While I agree with Jacob that these positions are indeed incompatible, I will shift focus and concentrate on issues concerning social epi- Johannes Gutenberg-Universität stemology with regard to communicative agency. A main issue in social epistemo- Mainz, Germany logy concerns the accessibility of the speaker’s reliability. How could the hearer remain epistemically vigilant without using fallacious reasoning? (i) I argue that Target Author the hearer, in order to be epistemically vigilant, could commit a local ad hominem attack, a process of inductive Bayesian reasoning which is an epistemic tool for Pierre Jacob assessing the speaker’s reliability. (ii) Compared to this, a global ad hominem at- jacob @ ehess.fr tack is a fallacious kind of reasoning, because it undermines knowledge transmis- Institute Jean Nicod sion and it cannot be calculated in Bayes’ Theorem. (iii) The account of a local Paris, France ad hominem attack fits with Grice’s mindreading thesis, which is incompatible with Millikan’s account of direct perception. (iv) The Gricean separability thesis Editors could better explain occurrences of ad hominem attacks than Millikan’s assump- tion that speaker and hearer are cooperative devices. Thomas Metzinger [email protected] Keywords Bayesian reasoning | Communicative intention | Cooperative devices | Direct per- Johannes Gutenberg-Universität ception | Epistemic injustice | Epistemic vigilance | Global ad hominem argument | Mainz, Germany Informative intention | Local ad hominem argument | Mindreading | Personal at- tack | Positive reasons | Separability thesis Jennifer M. Windt jennifer.windt@ monash.edu Monash University Melbourne, Australia

1 Introduction: Grice’s individualistic account of meaning and epistemic trustworthiness

One of the main findings of Jacob’s paper is a thesis, and the ostensive nature of communica- detailed elaboration of the differences between tion are not supported by Millikan’s account of Millikan’s (1984, 2004, 2005) communicative the direct perception of speaker’s intention, agency and the Gricean (Grice 1957, 1969, which supports a non-inferential model of the Sperber & Wilson 1986) account of speaker’s understanding of intentional signs. Furthermore, meaning and intention. Jacob argues that the the Gricean account is incompatible with Mil- Gricean mindreading thesis, the separability likan’s claim that speaker and hearer are co-

Jung, M. F. (2015). Communicative Agency and ad hominem Arguments in Social Epistemology - A Commentary on Pierre Jacob. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(C). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570184 1 | 13 www.open-mind.net operative devices; the claim that the prediction (1) Speaker: “Our party will ensure that of another’s behavior could be explained taxes go down”. through reliance on socially established con- formities and conventions and that modern de- The speaker S means (1) iff S utters (1) velopmental psychology could get along without with the intention that a hearer H will gain the any theory of mind. belief that S’ party will make sure that taxes go A very influential account of naturalizing down, if (i) the hearer H recognizes the the content of intentional mental representa- speaker’s intention (1) and (ii) because of that tions is Millikan’s teleosemantic framework she gains the belief that S’ party will make sure (Jacob 2010). According to this view, the con- that taxes go down, (iii) since she recognizes tent of intentional mental representations can that the speaker’s intention is exactly that (cf. best be naturalized by relying on the history of Grice 1957, 1969). the biologically-selected functions of these rep- Since Gricean meaning is individualistic resentations, namely the direct proper functions and subjective it is important to note which un- (cf. Millikan 1984, 1989). Interestingly, Jacob derlying cognitive states constitute this mean- focuses on Millikan’s concept of communicative ing. As Jacob puts it—relying on Sperber & agency, which is strongly connected to the tele- Wilson’s (1986) interpretation of the Gricean osemantic framework, and argues that there are account2—there are three main assumptions several aspects of the Gricean individualistic ac- upon which the psychological theory of meaning count of meaning that are more plausible than is based, namely the separability thesis, the Millikan’s when it comes to explaining social mindreading thesis, and the asymmetry between communicative agency. The most illuminating an informative and communicative intention. finding of Jacob’s paper is the modern and pre- Together with Jacob I shall focus on Sperber cise presentation of the actuality of the Gricean and Wilson’s account, which argues that the separability thesis and the mindreading ac- Gricean theory can be summarized as a recip- count, because it is explanatorily fruitful not rocal process of intentions. The informative in- only for philosophy of language, but also for so- tention is an intention of a speaker who wants cial cognition, social epistemology, informal lo- to inform a hearer about some state of affairs. gics, and the relation between these different In order to be successful, the speaker has also studies. the intention that the hearer recognize the in- I generally agree with Jacob’s main find- formative intention (Grice 1957). This means ings, nevertheless I will address some further is- that at first the hearer has to understand the sues of Millikan and Grice’s account with regard informative intention. If she understands it, the to philosophical problems in social epistemo- communicative intention of the speaker has logy. Before I respond to these in detail, I first been fulfilled. But the informative intention will focus on the Gricean account and its implica- only be fulfilled, if the speaker is trustworthy: a tions for social epistemology. necessary condition for accepting a speaker’s ut- The well-known Gricean (Grice 1957) ac- terance. In effect, the hearer gains a new belief. count of the meaning of an utterance focuses on The assessment of her trustworthiness depends analysis of the speaker’s meaning in a conversa- on the hearer of that intention (Sperber & tion. A speaker S means something unnatural if Wilson 1986). She must admit that the speaker she intends something by the utterance of a sen- has to be reliable in order to be trustworthy, or, tence.1 Let us suppose that the speaker is a to put it in Jacob’s (this collection, p. 4) words, politician with a specific agenda and with a “the addressee must further accept the speaker’s propensity for aggressive propaganda. She ut- epistemic or practical authority”. But a question ters the following: arises: on which kind of epistemic practices does the hearer have to rely in order to accept the 1 Grice (1957) distinguishes between a natural and an unnatural meaning. Un- natural meaning is always characterized by the speaker’s intention. The nat- 2 I follow Jacob in relying partly on Sperber & Wilson (1986) when I ural meaning of a sign characterizes meaning that is independent of a speaker. talk about the Gricean account.

Jung, M. F. (2015). Communicative Agency and ad hominem Arguments in Social Epistemology - A Commentary on Pierre Jacob. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(C). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570184 2 | 13 www.open-mind.net speaker as an epistemic authority? I will ad- Millikan’s account of speaker and hearer as co- dress this question in the following commentary. operative devices is less plausible (cf. section 6).

In order to answer it, I will argue that 2 Epistemic intentions and epistemic (i) a hearer could commit a local ad reliability hominem attack, a process of inductive Bayesian reasoning that secures epi- The utterance of a speaker depends on two dir- stemic vigilance. Roughly, an ad hom- ections of fit. The first can be characterized as a inem attack is an argument that con- mind-to-world-relation. Here, the speaker has siders rather personal properties of an the intention of conveying some states of affairs utterer than the argument itself. (ii) A about the actual world. This direction of fit im- fallacious kind of the personal attack is plies that the speaker wants to share some epi- the global ad hominem attack, which un- stemic notions. If she is successful in doing so, dermines every testimony of a speaker the hearer will gain a true belief. This class of because of its personal traits. (iii) The utterances is descriptive. Gricean account of mindreading could The second is a world-to-mind direction of better account for an inductive inference fit of the speaker’s utterance. Here the speaker model than Millikan’s direct-perception- wants to convey some of her desires to the account. (iv) Practices of ad hominem hearer, who acts in a particular way in order to attacks, I will argue, support the Gricean fulfill the speaker’s desire. The intention is ful- separability thesis, while Millikan’s co- filled if the hearer gains a new desire to act in operative devices account is less plaus- order to fulfill the speaker’s desire (Sperber & ible. Wilson 1986). This kind of direction of fit is un- important for the following account. Here I shall The structure of this commentary will be focus on descriptive utterances. as follows: first, I focus on Grice and Millikan’s Before I address some implications of epi- framework and its implications for social epi- stemic intentions, I shall focus on the separabil- stemology, namely the problem of epistemic reli- ity thesis. This thesis addresses the problem of ability (cf. section 2). In section 3 I shall an asymmetry of interests between hearer and present Lackey’s account of a social epistemolo- speaker. Since the interests are not identical, gical dualism, a hybrid theory in which Lackey the speaker could deceive the hearer. And the tries to connect the most plausible findings of other way around: the hearer could distrust the social epistemological reductionism and anti-re- speaker even though she utters a true sentence. ductionism. Then I argue that the Gricean ac- Sperber et al. (2010) claim that some amount of count of informative intentions and Lackey’s distrust is a stabilizator in the evolution of hu- positive reason component could lead to the per- man communication, which they call epistemic sonal attack or ad hominem argument (cf. sec- vigilance. Imagine that humans believed almost tion 4). In section 5 I argue that there are two everything they were told. Since not every possible commitments of ad hominem argu- speaker has the propensity to speak the truth, ments, to be specific, the global and the local ad hearers would have a lower amount of know- hominem attack (cf. section 5.1, section 5.2). In ledge because they would have no tool for dis- the Gricean account of the mindreading thesis is tinguishing a reliable testimony from a non-reli- compatible with the drawn picture of our social able one. Communication would be very impre- epistemological practices, because it supports cise, because knowledge agency would be less the inductive inference model, while Millikan’s successful. Hence, epistemic vigilance is a pre- account of direct perception could not account condition for cooperative communication, be- for this. The Gricean separability thesis fits cause both speaker and hearer check the reliab- nicely with the positive reasons component and ility of knowledge transition. I agree with Sper- the reliance on ad hominem arguments, while ber et al. (2010) that epistemic vigilance is a

Jung, M. F. (2015). Communicative Agency and ad hominem Arguments in Social Epistemology - A Commentary on Pierre Jacob. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(C). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570184 3 | 13 www.open-mind.net feature of a source and the content of informa- a constitutive part of the cooperative devices tion.3 that establish the direct proper function (Mil- Let me go back to the mind-to-world-rela- likan 1984, 2005). tion of fit. If the twofold account given by Sper- ber & Wilson (1986) is correct, the hearer has 3 Social epistemology: Lackey’s dualism gained a true belief (about some state of af- fairs). To count as knowledge, we have to ask Before I present a more detailed account of ad whether the true belief is justified.4 What could hominem arguments, I will say a few words count as a justification? Some social epistemolo- about social epistemology and the position that gists would say that the testimony of the is presupposed in this commentary. Jennifer speaker is sufficient to count as a justification. Lackey’s (2006) account of social epistemology This is the thesis of an anti-reductionism in so- relies upon a kind of dualism, in which she com- cial epistemology which contains the claim that bines anti-reductionism and reductionism. Ac- the speaker must not rely on other sources of cording to her, social epistemology has made knowledge such as perception, inference or the mistake of addressing the debate between memory to justify her belief (Coady 1992). A reductionism and non-reductionism unilaterally. reductionist would say that the testimony can- Reductionism takes epistemic responsibility and not count as knowledge without relying in addi- the rationality of the hearer far too seriously, tion upon other sources of knowledge (Fricker because the hearer has to rely upon other 1995). sources of knowledge like perception, memory, In Millikan’s (2005) account of an inten- deductive inferences, etc. The claim here is that tional conventional sign (which is the content of testimony is not a source of knowledge in the an intentional mental representation), she as- first place, because a hearer could never know sumes that speaker and hearer are cooperative the intentions of a speaker who held accidently devices that have co-evolved. The relationship or intentionally false beliefs. In contrast, anti- between sender and receiver can be character- reductionism always focuses on the speaker’s ized as beneficial in the long term. Millikan pro- perspective and her propensity for credible poses a framework, in which the descriptive rep- testimonials. Proponents of anti-reductionism resentations describe a mind-world-direction, claim that a large amount of our knowledge de- whereas the directive representation describes pends on testimonials. We would know almost the world-to mind relation. The long term bene- nothing if we were as restrictive as the reduc- ficial communicative agency between sender and tionist claims (Coady 1992). Lackey wants to receiver characterizes a function of reproduction combine these two accounts in a kind of dual- of conventional signs. The direct proper function ism. Her dualism contains the presupposition of in this particular case is that the hearer gains a the reliability of the speaker along with positive new belief. Millikan (1984) is well known for reasons to accept the speaker’s testimony, evalu- this teleosemantic account that can deal with ated from the hearer’s perspective. If the misrepresentations. In such a case, the proper speaker utters a true sentence and the hearer function remains unfulfilled. It is unfulfilled if has positive reasons to trust the speaker, then the speaker fails to cause a new belief in the knowledge from testimony is possible. Lackey hearer (Millikan 1984, 2005). But the hearer argues for the following conditional, which con- could also be responsible for the unfulfilled tains three necessary conditions:5 proper function if she mistakenly judges the speaker to be untrustworthy. The hearer is also For every speaker A and hearer B, B justi- fiedly believes that p on the basis of A’s 3 I will address this topic with respect to the ad hominem argument in section 5. testimony that p only if: (1) B believes 4 I will not address Gettier cases with regard to social epistemology. that p on the basis of the content of A’s For the sake of this commentary, I will use the term knowledge as meaning justified true belief. Issues concerning the ad hominem fal- 5 Lackey claims that dualism accounts only for necessary conditions lacy will concern the justification-condition. for a source of knowledge.

Jung, M. F. (2015). Communicative Agency and ad hominem Arguments in Social Epistemology - A Commentary on Pierre Jacob. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(C). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570184 4 | 13 www.open-mind.net

testimony that p, (2) A’s testimony that p to take advantage of testimony without the risk is reliable or otherwise truth conducive, being completely misled” (Clément 2010, p. and (3) B has appropriate positive reasons 545).6 for accepting A’s testimony that p. (2006, Now back to the example: suppose that p. 170) the hearer in question has been confronted with the testimony of politicians in the past. She For the present account it is important that a then hears the following sentence from speaker testimony, given by A, qualifies as a source of S: knowledge that depends on the hearer having positive reasons to think that A’s testimony is (1) “Our party will make sure that taxes reliable. Recall the informative intention and will go down”. the mind-to-world-direction of fit, which is ful- filled if the speaker causes a new belief in the Would you, as a hearer, believe her? hearer. The direct proper function of the co- Consider past cases of political propaganda operation between speaker and hearer in Mil- and ask yourself how reliable the politician, likan’s (1984, 2005) account would be fulfilled. the speaker, really is. At first, let us assume But according to Lackey’s condition (3), the you do not. You are a very skeptical person, achievement of a new belief is only justified if especially when it comes to political issues. Is there are various positive reasons that account it rational to be skeptical, so are you guilty of for the reliability of the speaker’s testimony. prejudice? Let us assume that the speaker is Consider the account of Sperber et al. (2010, p. surprisingly reliable. She speaks the truth. 379) that “the filtering role that epistemic vigil- The party wins and reduces taxes. Have you ance […] in the flow of information in face-to- treated the politician in an epistemic inequit- face interaction” is an important feature of ably way or was it the only way to remain epi- communicative agency. But which kind of filter- stemic vigilant? These questions will be ad- ing do they mean? In other words, what are dressed in the following sections. positive reasons, exactly? Could they be past The hearer who does not believe S’ ut- experiences about the reliability of the speaker terance (1) has committed an ad hominem ar- or even a group to which the speaker belongs? gument, a personal attack against the speaker. According to Walton (2008, p. 170) “[t]he ar- 4 Ad hominem arguments and epistemic gumentum ad hominem, meaning ‘argument injustice directed to the man’, is the kind of argument that criticizes another argument by criticizing I claim that the Gricean account of communica- the arguer rather than his argument.” A tion supports our social practices of committing hearer takes some personal properties, such as ad hominem arguments. The committing of ad being a politician, and infers that the ex- hominem attacks in communicative agency be- pressed sentence is false. It is prima facie ir- comes patent when you look at positive reasons relevant to consider personal traits as indicat- in more detail. During past events of communic- ors of a false testimony t (Yarp 2013; Walton ative agency, a hearer has tested the trustwor- 1998).7 Keeping Walton in mind, we are able thiness of several speakers on the basis of her to generalize ad hominem attacks as follows: personal properties and the context to which these properties have been related (Lackey 6 There is further evidence in developmental psychology that speaks of very early acquisition and practice of epistemic vigilance (cf. Clément 2006; Fricker 2007). The ability of being epi- 2010; Sperber et al. 2010; Mascaro & Sperber 2009). stemically vigilant emerges very early in human Another issue with regard to the positive reasons component in social epistemology is the so-called infant/child-objection. This concerns the development. At the age of three years, infants hearer’s competence in evaluating the speaker’s reliability that small chil- already prefer testimony from a reliable source dren lack, which is often construed as an argument against reductionism (cf. Clément 2010). From that age on, infants (Lackey 2006). For a general discussion see Lackey (2005). 7 As will be seen in section 5.1, there are some exceptions where per- develop a “cognitive filter that enables children sonal properties are relevant.

Jung, M. F. (2015). Communicative Agency and ad hominem Arguments in Social Epistemology - A Commentary on Pierre Jacob. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(C). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570184 5 | 13 www.open-mind.net

Ad hominem attack It fits Fricker’s generalization that the capacity (1) Speaker S gives a testimony t.8 of a speaker to convey true beliefs is under- (2) The speaker’s S property φ is a negative mined. The positive reasons clause of Lackey’s property with regard to trustworthiness. dualism also supports this step of reasoning be- (3) Speaker S has a negative property φ, which cause the character or the identity of a speaker is ascribed as relevant for her testimony t by could be relevant for her evaluation of trustwor- hearer H. thiness in epistemic contexts (cf. Fricker 2007; (C) The testimony t, uttered by speaker S, is Lackey 2006). Crucially, stereotypes and preju- false as assessed from hearer H.9 dices—based upon ad hominem arguments—are paradigmatic cases of epistemic injustices (cf. The arguments of the speaker (implicitly Fricker 2007). But is it not rational for a hearer represented or explicitly formulated) have not to distrust our politician? Jacob (this collection, been challenged seriously by the hearer. She pp. 4–5) claims that “not every speaker is (or just considers personal traits sufficiently to re- should be) granted equal epistemic or practical ject the given argument or proposition.10 The al- authority on any topic by every addressee.” Re- legedly suboptimal personal characteristics of member that the hearer’s positive reason com- the person do not provide any evidence for re- ponent is a remainder of the reductionist ac- jecting the proposition p. The hearer neither count with regard to testimony as a justifier of shows that the deduction of the speaker in- knowledge. Is it not a necessary condition for cludes fallacious reasoning nor that the premises the positive reason component to remain vigil- on which her proposition is based are wrong. In- ant in such contexts? If epistemic vigilance does formal logic does not support the hearer in this not play a role in this context, then Lackey’s situation (Groarke 2011). Has the speaker been suggestion of the necessary condition of positive treated inequitably? Miranda Fricker (2007) reasons on the hearer’s side is implausible. In tries to answer this question and introduces the the following I shall argue that epistemic vigil- notion of epistemic injustice. She generalizes the ance is very important and that the dualistic notion as follows: account could account for it. Nevertheless, one has to accept what I call a local ad hominem ar- Any epistemic injustice wrongs someone in gument in order to be epistemically vigilant in their capacity as a subject of knowledge, our particular case. and thus in a capacity essential to human value; and the particular way in which 5 Two kinds of ad hominem attack testimonial injustice does this is that a hearer wrongs a speaker in his capacity as In the following section I make a suggestion in a giver of knowledge, as an informant. order to disarm the problem of the ad hominem (Fricker 2007, p. 5) argument with regard to the positive reason 8 I assume that a testimony t expresses an argument that contains the component. Does an ad hominem attack always relevant proposition p. include fallacious reasoning? Walton (2008, p. 9 One could of course distinguish between a testimony and an argument. Here I presuppose that a testimony is somehow a 170) claims that “the argumentum ad hominem conclusion of an argument. Fricker (2007, p. 61) supports is not always fallacious, for in some instances this view as follows: “One might be inclined to put a famil- questions of personal conduct, character, iar picture of justification to the fore and argue that in or- der to gain knowledge that p from somebody telling her that motives, etc., are legitimate and relevant to the p, the hearer must in some way (perhaps very swiftly, per - issue.” Even though cases of ad hominem argu- haps even unconsciously) rehearse an argument whose con- clusion is p.” ments might sometimes be informally fallacious, 10 For the purpose of this commentary I will defend a weak view of pro- there are some highly relevant cases in which a positions. The utterance of a speaker expresses a proposition that is true if it represents a state of affairs. There is of course an asym- particular ad hominem attack could be commit- metry between the propositional content of an utterance and the ted in order to remain epistemic vigilant. Since propositional content of the speaker’s belief or thought. I agree with you, as a hearer, have a set of positive reasons Jacob (1987) that it is sufficient to assume similarity between the two. —for instance being aware of the usual verbal

Jung, M. F. (2015). Communicative Agency and ad hominem Arguments in Social Epistemology - A Commentary on Pierre Jacob. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(C). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570184 6 | 13 www.open-mind.net espousals of politicians during an election cam- kind of bias or in posterior beliefs about politi- paign—you are forced to commit a personal at- cians in general: this is called the hypothesis h, tack. Did your reliability assessment rely on fal- and has a particular probability P(h) in isola- lacious reasoning? In the literature there is a tion from evidence e. Evidence e in this particu- common distinction between three types of the lar case is constituted by personal characterist- ad hominem argument: the abusive, the circum- ics, properties, and circumstances of the utter- stantial, and the tu quouqe argument (Groarke ance. The receiving of the new evidence e 2011; Walton 1998, 2008).11 These kinds of per- should update P(h), the probability of the hypo- sonal attacks describe various pragma-dialect- thesis. Individuals ought, according to the ical reasoning in interpersonal communicative normative stipulation, if they receive any evid- relationships. Below (cf. section 5.1, 5.2) I want ence, to let it influence the probability of the to draw a further distinction between two kinds proposition: “[this] normative procedure by of ad hominem attack that are closely connec- which individuals should update their degree of ted to communicative situations explicitly in- belief in a hypothesis h upon receipt of an item volving knowledge transmission. Hence I want of evidence e is given by Bayes’ Theorem: to provide a framework that fits well with social epistemological dualism. “(Harris et al. 2012, p. 316) Before this, I want to address the Bayesian argumentation model, which is presup- P(h|e) describes the conditional probabil- posed by the following account of ad hominem ity of a hypothesis being true after one has re- arguments. Few things have been said about the ceived evidence e. P(e|h) terms the conditional inductive reasoning model which is the underly- probability of receiving evidence e, given hypo- ing mechanism of an ad hominem attack. thesis h. P(e) just describes the evidence in isol- Roughly, one has to consider past experiences ation from the truth-values of the hypothesis h with regard to reliability, constituted by con- (cf. Harris et al. 2012). texts and speaker properties, to adjust this ex- perience for future communication. Harris et al. 5.1 Local ad hominem attack (2012) provide an account that fits well with an inductive model of reasoning, because, poten- I am now able to distinguish two kinds of ad tially evidence is not provided by deductive hominem attack, a local and a global one. I will reasoning. They claim that the evaluation of a thus sketch out some considerations with regard proposition or a given testimony is based on an to the presented Bayesian framework. individual’s probabilities, which could be de- The positive reason component describes scribed formally using Bayes’ Theorem. A big the practice of a speaker’s credibility assess- advantage of this account is that it describes ment. This process of credibility assessing could our subjective evaluations in daily experiences lead to what I will call a local ad hominem at- very well. Often, when we are asked “do you be- tack. Roughly, one commits a local ad hominem lieve S?” we are inclined to say something like argument if one acknowledges someone to be “I am not sure. I guess not”. This could be well trustworthy in general, but with some excep- explained with the Bayesian model, where an tions in particular cases. If you ask the politi- individual’s belief does not have a truth-value of cian what time it is or the straightest way to 0 or 1. The relevant belief is instead estimated the subway station, it is very unlikely that she in one’s subjective degree of that belief, as a would have the intention of deceiving you (Sper- probability between 0 and 1. Let us embed this ber 2001). Hence, one would count her as a in our current considerations. The utterance trustworthy person. Nonetheless, given the par- type of the politician is already embedded in a ticular information about her party and the re- duction of taxes, you might find it unlikely that 11 For some very interesting empirical investigations with regard to she is telling the truth. As long as you do not these three kinds of ad hominem arguments, see van Eemeren et al. (2000) and van Eemeren et al. (2008). dismiss her in general as an eligible bearer of

Jung, M. F. (2015). Communicative Agency and ad hominem Arguments in Social Epistemology - A Commentary on Pierre Jacob. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(C). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570184 7 | 13 www.open-mind.net knowledge, it is vigilant in a rational way to fallacious ad hominem attack because it is con- distrust her in this case. This view could be de- tent as well as context-related and epistemically scribed as a subclass of epistemic vigilance, be- equitable. The normative stipulation of the cause it is an evolved tool that minimizes the Bayesian account that a hearer “should update risks of deception which is—according to Sper- [her] probabilistic degrees of belief in a hypo- ber et al. (2010)—a condition for cooperative thesis in accordance with the prescriptions of communicators. Bayes’ Theorem” (Harris et al. 2012, p. 316) is At this stage, subjective Bayesian probab- fulfilled in the local version. The take home ility comes into play. The general bias of your message of this passage could be presented in a past experiences with regard to politicians, more simplified way: which enters the stage before you have received the evidence, could be described with (h). The Local ad hominem attack (non-fallacious) probability of the hypothesis P(h) is the prob- (1) Speaker S gives a testimony t. ability of your believing her without having re- (2) Speaker’s S property φ is a negative prop- ceived evidence e. Given (1), evidence e de- erty with regard to trustworthiness. scribes that the person is a politician during a (3)Speaker S has a negative property φ that is campaign, which also has a particular probabil- relevant evidence e for a hypothesis h with re- ity, termed P(e). The evidence condition is the gard to the content of the particular testimony part that divides the local ad hominem attack t by hearer H. from the global, because the evidence is able to (C) The testimony t, uttered by speaker S, is influence one’s subjective degree of probability. probably false as assessed by hearer h. 12 The personal traits of the speaker as well as the context of utterance-use serve as evidence e. 5.2 Global ad hominem attack P(h|e) is then the conditional probability of h, if the hearer H receives evidence e. Given the hy- I call the opposite kind of reasoning the global pothesis h, the probability of receiving evidence ad hominem argument, which I claim, is falla- e is described by P(e|h). As presented above, cious. The hearer commits a global attack if she this could be calculated within Bayes’ Theorem does not believe the speaker in general. The (cf. Harris et al. 2012). hearer discredits her any kind of trustworthi- As you can see, the content and the source ness. Consider some stereotypes and prejudices of information, which serve as evidence e, are that could suffice for such a radical conclusion.13 both similarly relevant for a testimony (cf. This behavior is clearly irrational, since it un- Sperber et al. 2010). Buenting (2005) calls this dermines any testimony of a speaker in every kind of reasoning relevance-based with regard to situation. As you can see, this kind of fallacy is the relevant circumstances that could invoke ad neither a content-related nor context-related ad hominem attacks. The context and content of hominem argument. In distinction from the the utterance or proposition in question is im- global attack, here the content does not play portant for assessment. Walton (1998) calls such any role in the evaluation of the speaker’s reli- a context and content-related ad hominem at- ability. First, the evidence e only includes per- tack a credibility function. The proposition in question undergoes an ethotic rating, a kind of 12 As Jacob (1987) suggests, beliefs are shared in different communities with different ideological backgrounds that are themselves con- evaluation of a person’s epistemic input value stitutive of belief-formation. One could defend that the local ad (of her testimony), which can go up or down. hominem attack is an important tool for running a communicative society. If so, we would be using local ad hominem attacks as a form When committing a local ad hominem attack, of self-deception, which would then be somehow an instance of a the rating goes down. Hence the credibility of shared optimism bias. I will not discuss this phenomenon any fur- ther, because it is not a tool or cognitive filter that improves know- the speaker is undermined in a specific case ledge transmission. Hence, positive local ad hominem attacks, one that affects the proposition, which fits with the could argue, have at least a propensity for being epistemically unvi- account of Bayesian argumentation. The local gilant mechanisms. 13 Yarp (2013) suggests that ad hominem fallacies like prejudices could ad hominem argument is an example of a non- be unconscious or at least not transparent to the hearer’s reasoning.

Jung, M. F. (2015). Communicative Agency and ad hominem Arguments in Social Epistemology - A Commentary on Pierre Jacob. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(C). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570184 8 | 13 www.open-mind.net sonal traits and not the circumstances of the ut- ive agency. The focus of this commentary so far terance. Second, the evidence e does not influ- has been communicative agency in epistemic ence the degree of belief that the hypothesis h is contexts and its implications, and in particular true. This is the reason why the belief, formed the personal attack. I will now evaluate whether via the process of a global ad hominem fallacy, Millikan’s account of direct perception or could not be calculated in Bayes’ Theorem. The Grice’s account of mindreading could account normative stipulation that evidence e should af- for ad hominem arguments in epistemic con- fect the probability of a hypothesis h is not sat- texts. My answer is that the Gricean mindread- isfied. ing thesis is more plausible. I then compare the Another reason why this type of personal separability thesis with the cooperative devices. attack is fallacious is because it includes irrelev- The separability thesis fits best with the prac- ant circumstances and personal traits as the tices of ad hominem fallacies. The presupposi- basis of the speaker’s evaluation (Buenting tion of cooperative devices is less plausible. 2005). The speaker, as she is assessed, is not in any way disposed to maximizing the hearer’s set of true beliefs.14 In other words, the hearer un- 6.1 Mindreading vs. direct perception dermines any potential benefit she may gain through any of the speaker’s testimony (Sperber Recall from section 1 that the mindreading 2001), which could be described as a paradig- thesis relies on the twofold account of informat- matic case of epistemic injustice (Fricker 2007). ive and communicative intention. First, the Hence, a general assessment of the speaker’s speaker has to recognize or understand the credibility has nothing to do with the process of speaker’s informative intention, which is the positive reason formation. In other words, the speaker’s communicative intention. For the ful- global ad hominem attack is not an epistemic fillment of the informative intention, the trust- tool, because it lacks any credibility function, worthiness of the speaker has to be accepted. In because the speaker assesses the testimony as other words, in order to fulfill the informative necessarily false, because of her personal proper- intention, the hearer commits neither a local ties. Since it is not an epistemic tool, this kind nor a global ad hominem argument (or she of reasoning is not epistemically vigilant (Sper- would not accept it). But in order to be an epi- ber et al. 2010). To summarize: stemically vigilant agent, the hearer has to make some further inferences, which are induct- Global ad hominem attack (fallacious) ive (as well as the ad hominem fallacies). This (1) Speaker S gives a testimony t. inductive inference model involves some kind of (2) Speaker’s S property φ is a negative prop- mindreading that could affect the reliability erty with regard to trustworthiness. judgment.15 Millikan claims that the acceptance (3) Speaker S has a negative property φ that is of a given testimony as a source of knowledge is ascribed as relevant for every testimony t by a form of direct perception without any kind of hearer H. inference (Millikan 1984; Sperber et al. 2010). (C) The testimony t, uttered by speaker S, is She talks about translation instead of inference. necessarily false as assessed by hearer H. The hearer translates the utterance via direct perception into a new belief (Millikan 2004): 6 Ad hominem arguments and communicative agency Forming a belief about where Johnny I on the basis of being told where he is I just as I agree with Jacob that some aspects of Grice’s direct a process (and just as indirect) as theory of meaning are in a broad sense incom- forming a belief about where Johnny is on patible with Millikan’s account of communicat- 15 Unfortunately, I cannot address in this paper which kind of mindreading is 14 I will not consider the ethical implications of this view any further in supported by this view and how it could perhaps be related to social cogni- this commentary. tion and mirror-neurons. For a general discussion see Jacob (2008, 2013).

Jung, M. F. (2015). Communicative Agency and ad hominem Arguments in Social Epistemology - A Commentary on Pierre Jacob. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(C). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570184 9 | 13 www.open-mind.net

the basis of seeing him there. (Millikan equally eligible interpretations of a particular 2004, p. 120) There is no reason to sup- testimony. Consider again example (1). Here it pose that any of these ways of gaining the is very likely that a hearer represents some in- information that Johnny has come in re- tentions of the speaker that are linked to her quires that one perform inferences. (Mil- psychological states. If one representation is likan 2004, p. 125) that the speaker could deceive the hearer in particular circumstances, the hearer will prob- It is doubtable that these circumstances explain ably commit a local ad hominem attack. To our everyday communicative agency, especially sum up: Ad hominem arguments are ascriptions with regard to epistemic conversations. Accord- that result from inductive inferences that also ing to Millikan, the acceptance of a new belief depend on belief-desire psychology, because the does not involve any representation of the hearer gains a representation of the second-or- speaker’s intention. But in order to assess the der representation of the sentence expressed by reader as benevolent and competent (or reli- the speaker. The representation of the hearer is able), one has to rely—as argued in section 5— a third-order representation of the second-order on inductive inferences which are of course de- linguistic representation of the speaker (cf. rived representations manifested in beliefs about Jacob 1987).16 the speaker’s intention. In epistemic contexts of communication 6.2 Separability thesis vs. cooperative only the mind-to-world direction is involved, devices qua descriptive utterances. One criticism offered by Jacob is that Millikan’s account of percep- The problems addressed so far are closely re- tion could only account for descriptive utter- lated to the separability thesis. The separability ances, hence only for the mind-to world direc- thesis is the claim that the hearer and the tion. Another issue is closely related to this speaker could have different interests, which are kind of criticism. It concerns testimony that has causes of the informative intention remaining very little to do with perceptual capacities. unfulfilled, because there are two cases that With regard to very complex utterances like suggest that the interests of both parties fall (1), I agree with Jacob (this collection, p. 9) apart. In the first, the hearer gains a new belief that “it does not make much sense to assume that is not true, because the speaker has the in- that either the speaker or her addressee could formative intention to deceive the hearer. So her perceive what the speaker’s utterance is about.” informative intention has the aim that the Consider the nature of testimonial reports. speaker gains a false belief and not one about Even some direct perception of a testimony some states of affairs, as described in section 2. about some state of affairs is perceptually im- In the second, the sentence, uttered by the poverished compared to directly perceiving the speaker, is true, but nonetheless denied by the state of affairs in question. Imagine some testi- hearer on the basis of an ad hominem argument monial reports that have been heard through (Sperber & Wilson 1986).17 These two cases do the radio. In such a case, you are not in a per- not support Millikan’s (2005) claim that the in- ceptually close relationship to the reported state terests of both speaker and hearer are balanced. of affairs. If you evaluate the credibility of the If a hearer commits a global ad hominem argu- speaker, it is very likely that you would run ment, it is even harder to ascribe balanced in- through different processes of inductive infer- terests to speaker and hearer. Sperber (2001) ence in order to commit an ad hominem argu- defends a plausible weak version of coincidence ment or avoid one. The more abstract the testi- of interests. It is only necessary that they over- mony, the more implausible it becomes that it has anything to do with direct perception. It 16 According to Jacob (1987), a belief-ascription is not constitutive of the subject’s belief in the first place. becomes even more complicated with complex 17 There are, of course, plenty of other options for different interests indexical utterances or a group of different but (cf. Sperber 2001).

Jung, M. F. (2015). Communicative Agency and ad hominem Arguments in Social Epistemology - A Commentary on Pierre Jacob. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(C). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570184 10 | 13 www.open-mind.net lap in the long term in order to establish suc- inductive reasoning model can be better ex- cessful practices of social knowledge transmis- plained with the separability thesis. sion. Cases of global ad hominem arguments 7 Conclusion could only occur if a speaker understands the informative intention which she combines with In this commentary I have extended the refresh- some particular personal properties of the ing account given by Jacob, who presents speaker in order to reject the testimony in ques- Grice’s individual account of meaning and as- tion. Hence the speaker succeeds in establishing sesses its plausibility with regard to communica- the communicative intention, but fails to fulfill tion and knowledge transmission. I defended the the informative intention. In Millikanean terms, view that one promising way to talk about the direct proper function of the speaker is that testimony as a source of knowledge is offered by the hearer gains a new belief. If the hearer com- Lackey’s dualism. Here, both speaker and mits an ad hominem attack, the direct proper hearer are the important in knowledge transmis- function remains unfulfilled. But the communic- sion. In order to secure this transmission, the ative intention is still fulfilled, and that is all speaker has to utter a true sentence and the that is required for successful communication hearer has to check the speaker’s trustworthi- according to the separability thesis of commu- ness. I distinguished two kinds of personal at- nicative intentions (Sperber & Wilson 1986). tack: The hearer recognizes that the speaker wants to (i) The local ad hominem argument, which inform her of her informative intention, which is not fallacious, focuses on the proposition and means that the communicative intention has personal properties of the speaker, and is a con- been fulfilled. But the informative intention— tent-related, relevance-based attack based upon which is that the hearer gains some new inform- one’s subjective probabilistic estimation of the ation or a true belief—fails, because an ad hom- speaker’s reliability, which can be calculated in inem attack has been committed. This circum- Bayes’ Theorem. stance could be well explained with the separ- (ii) The global ad hominem argument, ability thesis and the weak account of commu- which is fallacious, is an extreme prejudice that nication that we addressed in section 6.1. To denies that the speaker is reliable in any case. It sum up, and in agreement with Jacob, if an ad is not usable as a tool for knowledge transmis- hominem attack has been committed, even a sion, because it violates the stipulation of the weaker version, communicative agency is viol- Bayesian argumentation in which one should in- ated in the Millikan (2004, 2005) framework be- clude some evidence in the subjective probabil- cause the cooperative conventional transmission ity estimation. This extreme kind of a personal is violated in the first place.18 attack could be racism or stigmatizing, for in- The picture I draw with regard to the ad stance. hominem arguments rests on the assumption (iii) Here I argued—in agreement with that trustworthiness has to be assessed by the Jacob—that the Gricean account of mindread- hearer in order to be counted as epistemic vigil- ing is more plausible than Millikan’s account of ant, which would be the reductionist compon- direct perception. To use the inductive model of ent. On the other side, the speaker has to utter reasoning when evaluating a speaker’s reliabil- a true sentence to transmit knowledge to a ity, one also has to rely on the use of belief-de- speaker, which would be the anti-reductionist- sire psychology. It is important to infer the in- component. This view is supported by Lackey’s tentions of the speaker, and to think about dualism. As can be seen, the establishment of a whether she has good reasons or a general dualistic account and all its implications for the propensity to speak the truth. Millikan’s frame- work of direct perception does not account for 18 The question, of course, is in which sense it is violated, in detail, and this, because the direct perceptibility of some how this affects Millikan’s theory of language in general. However, these implications cannot be addressed here.

Jung, M. F. (2015). Communicative Agency and ad hominem Arguments in Social Epistemology - A Commentary on Pierre Jacob. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(C). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570184 11 | 13 www.open-mind.net abstract cases of testimony and their evaluated speaker’s reliability? Are instances of ad hom- reliability is very implausible. inem attacks bound to a specific type of brain (iv) Last, I argued that the description of through which the relevant representational and speaker and hearer as cooperative devices is im- functional architectures are realized? How could plausible, too. First, we know that the speaker such a phenomenon like the global and local ad could have deceptive intentions. Second, if hominem attack evolve in homo sapiens, and somebody is committing a global ad hominem what are the deeper underlying cognitive mech- attack, the interests of the utterer and her ad- anisms of such attacks? These questions need to dressee fall apart. Nonetheless, the communicat- be answered if we want to understand these im- ive intention still holds. Both parties communic- portant mechanisms and processes of social ate successfully, even if the hearer does not gain knowledge, as well as our communicative society a new belief. So we could conclude with Grice as a whole. and Sperber and Wilson that the communicat- ive intention is sufficient for a successful com- Acknowledgements munication. If the addressee commits an ad hominem fallacy, the proper function is unful- First of all, I am appreciative for the illuminat- filled. But in this case the conventional speaker ing target paper. In addition to that, I would action, which is part of successful communica- like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and tion, has been violated. I have argued that the Thomas Metzinger and Jennifer M. Windt for Gricean account could well explain our commu- their editorial reviews. They really helped to nicative practices regarding epistemic contexts. improve this paper. I am also grateful to In terms of future research, it would be Thomas Metzinger and Jennifer M. Windt for very interesting to see, how the Gricean philo- the opportunity to contribute to this project. sophy of a speaker’s individual meaning and mindreading could be embedded in theories about social cognition, social epistemology and informal logics. Jacob has presented an illumin- ating account of how the Gricean philosophy could be embedded in modern philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences. I propose that one should further reflect on Jacob’s arguments and adopt his conceptual framework, which I think is very precise and explanatorily fruitful. But for my own proposal of a distinction between local and global ad hominem attacks, it will be important to flesh out these accounts with regard to Bayesian reasoning and argu- mentation in epistemic contexts. A good can- didate for elaborating this kind of research is the recent account of predictive processing, which is also based on Bayesian probabilities. In this commentary I have claimed that these personal attacks are inductive mechan- isms. But much more could be said about their functionality or even their instantiation in a cognitive system. Then it would be interesting to see if non-human cognitive systems could commit these kinds of ad hominem attacks. How precise could they be in evaluating a

Jung, M. F. (2015). Communicative Agency and ad hominem Arguments in Social Epistemology - A Commentary on Pierre Jacob. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(C). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570184 12 | 13 www.open-mind.net

References of testimony (pp. 160-189). Oxford, UK: Oxford Uni- versity Press. Buenting, J. M. (2005). The rejection of testimony and Mascaro, O. & Sperber, D. (2009). The moral, epistemic, the normative recommendation of non- fallacious ‘ad and mindreading components of children’s vigilance to- hominem’ arguments based on Hume’s ‘Of Miracles’ wards deception. Cognition, 112 (3), 367-380. and Canadian Law. Auslegung, 27 (2), 1-16. 10.1016/j.cognition.2009.05.012 Clément, F. (2010). To trust or not to trust? Children’s Millikan, R. G. (1984). Language, thought and other bio- social epistemology. Review of Philosophy and Psycho- logical categories. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. logy, 1 (4), 531-549. 10.1007/s13164-010-0022-3 (1989). Biosemantics. The Journal of Philosophy, Coady, C. A. J. (1992). Testimony: A philosophical study. 86 (6), 281-297. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. (2004). Varieties of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Fricker, E. (1995). Telling and trusting: Reductionism and MIT Press. anti-reductionism in the epistemology of testimony. (2005). Language: A biological model. Oxford, UK: Mind, 104 (414), 393-411. Oxford University Press. (2007). Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics Sperber, D. (2001). An evolutionary perspective on testi- of knowing. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. mony and argumentation. Philosophical Topics, 29 Grice, H. P. (1957). Meaning. The Philosophical Review, (1/2), 401-413. 10.5840/philtopics2001291/215 66 (3), 377-388. 10.2307/2182440 Sperber, D., Clément, F., Heintz, C., Mascaro, O., Mer- (1969). Utterer’s meaning and intentions. The cier, H., Origgi, G. & Wilson, D. (2010). Epistemic vi- Philosophical Review, 78 (2), 147-177. 10.2307/2184179 gilance. Mind & Language, 25 (4), 359-39. Groarke, L. (2011). Informal logic. Stanford Encyclopedia 10.1111/j.1468-0017.2010.01394.x of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic- Sperber, D. & Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance, communica- informal/ tion and cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer- Harris, A. J. L., Hsu, A. & Madsen, J. K. (2012). Because sity Press. Hitler did it! Quantitative tests of Bayesian argumenta- Van Eemeren, F. H., Meuffels, v. B. & Verburg, M. tion using ad hominem. Thinking & Reasoning, 18 (3), (2000). The (un)reasonableness of ad hominem falla- 311-343. 10.1080/13546783.2012.670753 cies. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 19 Jacob, P. (1987). Thoughts and belief ascriptions. Mind (4), 416-435. 10.1177/0261927X00019004002 & Language, 2 (4), 301-325. Van Eemeren, F. H., Garrsen, B. & Meuffels, B. (2008). 10.1111/j.1468- 0017.1987.tb00124.x Reasonableness in confrontation: Empirical evidence (2008). What do mirror neurons contribute to hu- concerning the assessment of ad hominem fallacies. In man social cognition? Mind & Language, 23 (2), 190- F. H. Van Eemeren & . B. Garrsen (Eds.) Controversy 223. 10.1111/j.1468-0017.2007.00337.x and confrontation: Relating controversy analysis with (2010). Intentionality. Stanford Encyclopedia of argumentation theory (pp. 181-195). Amsterdam, NL: Philosophy. John Benjamins. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intentionality/#9 Walton, D. (1998). Ad hominem arguments. Tuscaloosa, (2013). How from action-mirroring to intention- AL: The University of Alabama Press. ascription? Consciousness and Cognition, 22 (3), 1132- (2008). Informal logic: A pragmatic approach. 1141. 10.1016/j.concog.2013.02.005 Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. (2015). Millikan’s teleosemantics and communicat- Yarp, A. (2013). Ad hominem fallacies, bias and testi- ive agency. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds.) mony. Argumentation, 27 (2), 97-109. Open MIND (pp. 1-22). Frankfurt a. M., GER: MIND 10.1007/s10503-011-9260-5 Group. Lackey, J. (2005). Testimony and the infant/child objec- tion. Philosophical Studies, 162 (2), 163-190. 10.1007/s11098-004-7798-x (2006). It takes two to tango: Beyond reduction- ism and non- reductionism in the epistemology of testi- mony. In J. Lackey & E. Sosa (Eds.) The epistemology

Jung, M. F. (2015). Communicative Agency and ad hominem Arguments in Social Epistemology - A Commentary on Pierre Jacob. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(C). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570184 13 | 13 Assessing a Speaker’s Reliability Falls Short of Providing an Argument A Reply to Marius F. Jung

Pierre Jacob

When confronted with a speaker’s assertion, her addressee can either fulfill the Author speaker’s informative intention and accept the new belief or not. If he does, he can either accept the new belief on the sole basis of the speaker’s authority or not. If Pierre Jacob not, then the addressee can examine the reliability of the speaker’s assertion. If [email protected] he does, then he can either check the content of the speaker’s assertion with the contents of his own beliefs or scrutinize the speaker herself as the source of the Institute Jean Nicod novel information. If the latter, then he can either examine the speaker’s epistemic Paris, France competence in the relevant domain of discourse or the speaker’s moral benevol- ence (or both). None of the above processes amounts to the addressee producing Commentator an argument, let alone an ad hominem argument. Only if the speaker offers an ar- gument to back her assertion could the addressee commit an ad hominem counter- Marius F. Jung argument in his attempt at rebutting the speaker’s. mjung02@ students.uni-mainz.de Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Keywords Mainz, Germany Argument | Assessment of the reliability of a speaker’s assertion | Authority | Be- nevolence | Competence | Fulfilling the speaker’s informative intention | Know- Editors ledge Thomas Metzinger metzinger @uni-mainz.de Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany

Jennifer M. Windt [email protected] Monash University Melbourne, Australia

In my paper, I probed the gap between the wards bridging the gap between the Gricean Gricean approach and Millikan’s approach to separability thesis and (social) epistemology. human communicative agency. In particular, I In particular, I agree with Marius F. Jung argued in favor of the Gricean separability that the issues of whether and to what extent a thesis, i.e., the thesis that the process whereby communicative agent’s testimony should or can an addressee fulfills an agent’s communicative be assessed as reliable and justified, and thereby intention (by understanding or recognizing her construed as knowledge (and not as mere opin- informative intention) is distinct from the pro- ion) by her recipient, are of fundamental im- cess whereby the addressee further fulfills (if portance. I also agree with him that it is worth- and when he does) the agent’s informative in- while to try and bridge the gap between the tention (by accepting either a new belief or a psychological investigation of the process new desire for action). I am grateful to Marius whereby an addressee assesses the reliability of F. Jung for his valuable comments on my paper, a speaker’s testimony and the major divide in which he tries to offer positive suggestions to- between the reductionist and the anti-reduction-

Jacob, P. (2015). Assessing a Speaker's Reliability Falls Short of Providing an Argument - A Reply to Marius F. Jung. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(R). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958571013 1 | 3 www.open-mind.net ist perspectives in the epistemology of testi- • He links the addressee’s assessment of the au- mony. However, I still want to resist using the thority of the speaker as the source of the particular bridge (or bridges) Jung is building testimony to ad hominem arguments. for me. In the following, I want to briefly ex- • He draws a distinction between local and plain why. global ad hominem arguments. First of all, let us be clear that what we • Finally, he argues that only local, not global, are dealing with here is the addressee’s basic ad hominem arguments are valid methods epistemic task of assessing the reliability of a whereby an addressee can assess the reliabil- communicative agent’s (the speaker’s) testi- ity of the speaker’s assertion. mony or assertion, i.e., utterances with truth- conditional contents, because only assertions I want mainly to take issue with Jung’s very can be assessed for their reliability or be- first assumption: when assessing a speaker’s as- lievability. Only a speaker’s assertions, not a sertion, the addressee is evaluating the reliabil- speaker’s requests, can directly enlarge her ad- ity or believability of her utterance. He is not dressee’s knowledge of the world. For the pur- arguing with her and therefore not producing pose of the discussion of Jung’s epistemolo- an ad hominem argument. (Construing the ad- gical project, we should simply ignore address- dressee’s process of appraisal as an attack ees’ responses to speakers’ utterances of re- against the speaker seems far-fetched to me.) In quests, i.e., of utterances that lack truth-con- accordance with Jung’s second assumption (at ditional contents. (I ignore here the fact that least, on my reconstruction of his train of a speaker’s request may enlarge an addressee’s thought), the addressee’s appraisal can in turn knowledge of the speaker’s own character be seen as a two-fold process: the addressee can traits.) focus on either the content or the source of the Secondly, as I understand it, Jung would speaker’s utterance (or both). If the former, like to directly link the investigation of the ad- then the addressee’s task can be construed as a dressee’s task of assessing the reliability of a consistency check: he checks the compatibility speaker’s assertion to the dispute between the of the truth of the speaker’s assertion with the reductionist and the anti-reductionist perspect- truths of a relevant sub-set of his own beliefs. In ive in the epistemology of testimony. I will re- the latter case, he scrutinizes some of the construct Jung’s basic strategy by means of the speaker’s relevant moral or “personal” proper- six following assumptions. ties (to use Jung’s own phrase). In particular, he will assess the personal authority of the • He construes the addressee’s overall process speaker along two main dimensions: her epi- of assessment of the reliability of a speaker’s stemic competence (or knowledge) about the assertion as an argument. relevant domain of discourse and her moral hon- • As I understand it, he also accepts Sperber esty, i.e., her benevolence towards him. et al.’s (2010) view that the overall process Of course, the addressee’s assessment of whereby an addressee assesses the reliabil- the speaker’s reliability along these two dimen- ity of a speaker’s assertion can be divided sions is an inferential process, which builds on into two component processes: the assess- the addressee’s beliefs about both the content of ment of the authority of the speaker (who is the speaker’s assertion and the speaker’s per- the source of the testimony) and the assess- sonal authority. In an informal sense, it is a ment of the content of the speaker’s asser- reasoning process. But I want to resist the view tion. that this process should be construed as an ar- • He further focuses on the addressee’s assess- gument, let alone as an ad hominem argument. ment of the authority of the speaker as the As Sperber et al. (2010) and Mercier & Sperber source of the testimony, at the expense of the (2011) have interestingly argued (no pun inten- assessment of the content of the speaker’s as- ded), to argue is to try and cause an addressee sertion. to accept a new belief (to endorse the truth of

Jacob, P. (2015). Assessing a Speaker's Reliability Falls Short of Providing an Argument - A Reply to Marius F. Jung. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(R). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958571013 2 | 3 www.open-mind.net some proposition), by providing explicit reasons References for it, i.e., by construing it as the conclusion of a set of premises from which it derives either Mercier, H. & Sperber, D. (2011). Why do humans deductively or inductively. In fact, arguments reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory. Beha- are devices used by a speaker in order to try to vioral and Brain Sciences, 34 (2), 57-111. overcome her addressee’s reluctance to fulfill her 10.1017/S0140525X10000968 informative intention (i.e., his reluctance to ac- Sperber, D., Clément, F., Heintz, C., Mascaro, O., Mer- cept a new belief in accordance with her inform- cier, H., Origgi, G. & Wilson, D. (2010). Epistemic vi- ative intention), on the sole grounds of her au- gilance. Mind & Language, 25 (4), 359-393. thority. If so, then speakers (communicative 10.1111/j.1468-0017.2010.01394.x agents) argue, but an addressee doesn’t: an ad- dressee evaluates the speaker’s argument. Of course, an addressee who disagrees with a speaker’s argument in favor of some proposition P can turn into a speaker and offer counter-ar- guments to try to cause his opponent to change her mind about the truth of P.

1 Conclusion

When a speaker makes an assertion, she com- mits herself to the truth of some proposition. She thereby knowingly takes the risk that her addressee examines the reliability of her asser- tion by either checking the content of the asser- ted proposition or by scrutinizing her epistemic and moral authority. The addressee’s choice is to either fulfill the speaker’s communicative in- tention or not. She can further do it on the sole ground of the speaker’s authority or not. As I see it, the issue of whether the addressee could wrong the speaker by committing some epi- stemic injustice towards her cannot arise in the process whereby the addressee assesses the reli- ability of the speaker’s mere assertion of P. It can only arise if and when the speaker offers some explicit argument in favor of proposition P, in the reasoning process whereby the ad- dressee evaluates the speaker’s explicit argu- ment in favor of P, i.e., the link between P and the premises selected by the speaker to justify P. Only then could the addressee produce an ad hominem counter-argument (either local or global) meant to successfully or unsuccessfully rebut the speaker’s argument for P.

Jacob, P. (2015). Assessing a Speaker's Reliability Falls Short of Providing an Argument - A Reply to Marius F. Jung. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 20(R). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958571013 3 | 3