Thought Without Language: an Interpretationist Approach to the Thinking Mind DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Michael Dean Jaworski Graduate Program in Philosophy The Ohio State University 2010 Dissertation Committee: Neil Tennant, Advisor William Taschek Ben Caplan Copyright by Michael Dean Jaworski 2010 Abstract I defend an account of thought on which non-linguistic beings can be thinkers. This result is significant in that many philosophers have claimed that the ability to think depends on the ability to use language. These opponents of my view note that our everyday understanding of our own cognitive activities qua thought bestows upon those activities the propositional structure of sentences and the inferential norms of public linguistic practice. They hold that our attributions of thought to non-linguistic beings project non-existent structure onto the cognitive activities of those beings, and assess the beings’ activities according to standards to which the beings bear no responsibility. So, despite the complex neural and behavioral activities of many non-linguistic beings, my opponents hold that those beings are not properly described as thinkers. To respond to my opponents successfully, one must not merely cite scientific and folk practices of thought attribution that permit thought to be attributed to some non- linguistic beings. My opponents’ insights might be taken to demonstrate a need to revise those practices, or to treat the attributions of thought to non-linguistic beings made within those practices as instrumentally valuable but technically false. Instead, my strategy is to acknowledge the language-like structure and norms of thought, and show that a non- linguistic being’s cognitive activities might nonetheless have that structure and be subject ii to those norms. I identify seven features pertaining to the structure and normativity of thought---intensionality, extensionality, control, reflection, objectivity, conceptual composition, and the institution of standards---that those who share my opponents’ intuitions might deem necessary for any cognitive activity to count as thought. I argue that the motivations for the reflection requirement rest on confusions about the nature of entertaining a proposition, and I reject some interpretations of the institution requirement. But I accept the other five requirements, and a properly-interpreted institution requirement, and show how a non-linguistic being can meet them. On the account I defend, a non-linguistic being counts as a thinker given that it obtains information from at least two sensory modalities, behaves in ways that are not immediate, invariant responses to stimuli, has been through a learning process in which its cognitive system underwent modification to better conform to standards of truth and rationality and track flourishing- relevant categories, and displays a pattern of cognitive and behavioral activity in which a rational pattern can be found. I am guided in this process by reflection on the practical purposes that are served by our folk practice of thought attribution, chief among them the coordination of rational social living. I argue that these purposes place strictures upon the nature of thought that could potentially conflict with the structure cognitive science might find in cognition, but that the folk notion requires no legitimization from science. Furthermore, which cluster of attributions correctly describes a subject is always partially determined by attributers’ varying conceptions of ideal rationality and interpretations of how to render odd behavior iii rationally explicable. These commitments yield my approach to the theory of thought, “Non-Scientific Interpretationism”. iv Acknowledgments I thank those current and former members of the Ohio State University Philosophy Department who have served as experts on my various committees over the years: Neil Tennant (advisor), William Taschek, Louise Antony, Kevin Scharp, and Ben Caplan. v Vita 1998……………………………………B.A. Philosophy, Bowling Green State University 1999-2007……………Graduate Teaching Associate/Lecturer, The Ohio State University 2007…………………………...Lecturer, Ohio University-Lancaster, Pickerington Center 2007-present……………………………Lecturer, The University of Texas-Pan American Fields of Study Major Field: Philosophy vi Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... v Vita ..................................................................................................................................... vi Chapter 1: Thought in Science, Philosophy, and Everyday Practice .................................. 1 Introducing the Issue ....................................................................................................... 1 Thought in Everyday Practice ......................................................................................... 8 The structure of interpretive practice ........................................................................... 8 The structure and norms of the everyday conception of thought ................................ 9 The justificatory standards of interpretive practice ................................................... 12 The purposes of interpretive practice ........................................................................ 18 Thought in Science ........................................................................................................ 20 Behaviorism and Cognitivism ................................................................................... 20 Classical Cognitivism and its Rivals ......................................................................... 21 Scientific Practices and Thought Attributions ........................................................... 24 vii Thought in Philosophy .................................................................................................. 27 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 33 Chapter 2: A Defense of Non-scientific Interpretationism about the Thinking Mind ...... 35 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 35 First Choice Point: Underdetermination by Data .......................................................... 36 Second Choice Point: Underdetermination and Scientific Pragmatic Factors .............. 42 Third Choice Point: Dogmatic Realism vs. Interpretationism ...................................... 46 Pattern, Noise, and Interpretation as Discovery of Facts about Minds ......................... 54 Final Choice Point: Scientific or Non-scientific Interpretationism ............................... 57 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 67 Chapter 3: From Requirements for Thought to Arguments for Linguistic Priority .......... 69 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 69 Purported Requirements a Subject Must Meet to Count as a Thinker .......................... 72 From the Seven Requirements to a Requirement of Language Use ............................. 76 Considerations that Davidson Marshals in “Thought and Talk” ............................... 78 Considerations that Davidson Marshals in “Rational Animals” ............................... 95 Arguments for sub-conclusion 1................................................................................ 98 Arguments for sub-conclusion 2.............................................................................. 107 Considerations from Davidson’s later essays .......................................................... 113 viii The Institution of Norms in the Social Practice of Language ................................. 120 The Kripkenstein Challenge .................................................................................... 123 Brandom’s Institutional Considerations .................................................................. 132 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 137 Chapter Four: The Failure of Arguments from the Requirements to Linguistic Priority 139 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 139 The Intensionality Requirement .................................................................................. 140 Intensionality and the Network Argument .............................................................. 141 Intensionality and the Holism Argument................................................................. 148 Intensionality and the Generality Argument ........................................................... 154 The Extensionality Requirement ................................................................................. 160 The Objectivity Requirement ...................................................................................... 166 Objectivity and the Reflection Requirement ..........................................................