Narrow Content II

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Narrow Content II

• Advanced Topics in Mind and Knowledge Lecture 5

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Conceptions of Narrow Content

• Last week we looked at three different
  conceptions of what narrow content is supposed to
  be
• A mapping from contexts to truth values (Fodor)
• Notional worlds (Dennett)
• Determined by the role of mental states in
  thinking (Conceptual Role Semantics)
• This week, we will look at two arguments for the
  existence of narrow content.
• First, Fodors (1987) causal argument.
• Second, Loars (1988) two contents argument.

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Fodors Causal Argument

• Fodor (1987) advocated narrow content because he
  thought it was required by scientific psychology
  
• Supposedly, scientific psychology takes mental
  states to supervene upon brain states.
• So we need a notion of mental content which
  depends only upon brain states, i.e. of narrow
  content.

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Why supervenience?

• Why does Fodor think that psychology requires
  mental states to supervene on brain states?
• Because this is the best idea that anyone has
  had so far about how mental causation is
  possible (1987).
• So while common sense, says Fodor, denies
  supervenience and individuates mental content
  relationally, scientific psychology accepts
  supervenience and individuates mental content
  non-relationally.
• Relational properties e.g. being next to, having
  H2O around you, weight.
• Intrinsic (non-relational) properties e.g. size,
  mass, number, physical structure.

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Fodors Causal Argument

• The argument itself proceeds as follows
• P1. Mental states causally explain behavior by
  virtue of their content .
• P2. An objects causal powers must be intrinsic
  properties.
• P3. Broad content characterises relational
  properties.
• C. Broad content cannot explain behaviour. So we
  need narrow content to do so.

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An Objection to Premise 2

• The causal powers of Bring me water vary
  according to whether H2O or XYZ is brought.
• Reply identity of causal powers has to be
  assessed across contexts.
• Bring me water has the same causal powers in
  both cases, as it would have resulted in H2O on
  Earth and XYZ on Twin Earth, regardless of which
  planet it was uttered on.

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In Support of Premise 2

• Define H-particles as those which exist when my
  coin is heads up, and T-particles as those which
  exist when my coin is tails-up.
• Flipping the coin results in a change in the
  properties of all the particles in the universe!
• But its only a Cambridge change, one that is
  purely relational (like becoming the tallest
  person in the room because someone else left).
• So being an H-particle or a T-particle is a
  purely relational property.

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Causal Powers I

• Do H-particles and T-particles have different
  causal powers? If so, this contradicts premiss 2.
• But if they do, then I can affect the causal
  powers of all the particles in the universe just
  by flipping a coin.
• Surely this isnt right?

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Causal Powers II

• Fodor it isnt, and the reason lies in the fact
  that there is no causal mechanism or natural law
  which connects coin flipping to the causal powers
  of particles.
• Likewise, theres no causal mechanism or natural
  law which connects the microphysical structure of
  natural kinds (or the relevant features of a
  language community) with the causal powers of
  mental states.

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Anther Objection to Premise 2

• Some causal powers are relational properties.
  E.g. being a planet is a causally efficacious
  property, but something is only a planet relative
  to a solar system.
• Fodor (1991) agrees that some relational
  properties are causally efficacious, but only
  those logically connected to the effects.

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Loars two contents Argument

• Like Fodor, Loar is motivated to give an account
  of narrow content in order to underwrite
  psychological explanation.
• Unlike Fodor, he believes that both commonsense
  psychological explanation requires narrow
  content.
• Loar also wants to accommodate Burges thought
  experiments as demonstrating the existence of
  wide content.
• How can this work?

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Social versus Psychological Content

• Loar distinguishes between psychological content
  and social content.
• Psychological content is whatever individuates
  beliefs and other propositional attitudes in
  commonsense psychological explanations so that
  they explanatorily interact with each other.
• Social content is given by oblique ascriptions
  of beliefs, e.g. Alf believes he has arthritis
  in the thigh.

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Londres est jolie I

• Loar argues that social content and psychological
  content are not the same
• Pierre grows up monolingual in France, where he
  hears about Londres and becomes disposed to say
  Londres est jolie.
• He later visits a pleasant part of London, and
  finding it pretty learns to say London is
  pretty.
• But Pierre doesnt realise that LondonLondres.

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Londres est jolie II

• How many beliefs does Pierre have to the effect
  that London is pretty in this situation?
• Loar Clearly there are two beliefs, and they
  are as distinct as my beliefs that Paris is
  pretty and Rio is pretty. Those beliefs would
  interact differently with other beliefs in
  ordinary psychological explanation.
• After all, Ive never been to Rio isnt it
  (just about) possible that Paris actually is Rio?
• Wide content doesnt distinguish between the two
  beliefs, so we need a notion of narrow content to
  do so (as context-independent realisation
  conditions).

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How Narrow is Psychological Content?

• Loars example seems quite persuasive, but does
  it deliver an account of narrow content?
• Stalnaker (1990) argues that it does not we can
  equally characterise both social and
  psychological content as wide.
• We can characterise psychological content in
  terms of counterfactual dependencies on
  environmental factors, and use the same example
  to distinguish it from social content.
• According to Stalnaker, Loars argument
  demonstrates a legitimate problem about belief
  ascription, not for externalism.

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Introspection and Narrow Content

• Loar (1988) also offers an argument for narrow
  content based upon introspective awareness, which
  we will return to in the second part of the
  course, on Externalism and Self-Knowledge.
• Next week we will look at two-factor theories
  of content, which recognise and assign
  significance to both narrow and broad content.