Prinz's Naturalistic Theory of Intentional Content
| Autor | Marc Artiga |
| Cargo | LOGOS/Universitat de Girona |
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CRÍTICA, Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofía. Vol. 46, No. 136 (abril 2014): 69–86
PRINZ’S NATURALISTIC THEORY OF INTENTIONAL CONTENT
MARC ARTIGA
LOGOS/Universitat de Girona marc.artiga@gmail.com
SUMMARY: This paper addresses Prinz’s naturalistic theory of conceptual content, which he has defended in several works (Prinz 2000, 2002, 2006). More precisely, I present in detail and critically assess his account of referential content, which he distinguishes from nominal or cognitive content. The paper argues that Prinz’s theory faces four important difficulties, which might have significant consequences for his overall empiricist project.
KEY WORDS: concepts, naturalism, empiricism, intentionality, counterfactuals
RESUMEN: Este artículo discute la teoría del contenido conceptual de Prinz, que él ha defendido en diversas obras (Prinz 2000, 2002, 2006). Más concretamente, presento en detalle y evalúo críticamente su teoría del contenido referencial, que él distingue del contenido cognitivo o nominal. El artículo argumenta que la teoría de Prinz tiene cuatro problemas importantes, que pueden tener consecuencias significativas para su proyecto empiricista.
PALABRAS CLAVE: conceptos, naturalismo, empiricismo, intencionalidad, contrafácticos
1 . Introduction
Prinz is well-known for his outstanding contribution to the revitalization of concept empiricism in philosophy. Over the last decade, he has developed a sophisticated theory of concepts (e.g. Prinz 2000, 2002, 2006, 2008) which he has applied to other domains like a theory of emotions (2004) and a theory of morality (2007). In a nutshell, his version of conceptual empiricism is based on the idea that concepts are perceptually derived representations that he calls “proxytypes”. Proxytypes are structured representations couched in modality specific formats that we employ in thought. As Prinz suggests, “all (human) concepts are copies or combinations of copies of perceptual representations” (Prinz 2002, p. 108).
In this paper I would like to present and discuss in some detail Prinz’s naturalistic theory of conceptual content. Surprisingly, this is an aspect of his theory that has not been much discussed in the literature, even if it is a key premise in many of his arguments. For instance, when Prinz (2006) argues that we can perceive abstract entities (what he requires in order to explain the fact that we can think
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about abstract entities), he supports his argument with a particular view of how conceptual content is determined. Similarly, he has also employed this account in his theory on emotions (Prinz 2004, pp. 93-94), among other places. Indeed, it is not unreasonable to think that the plausibility of his empiricist theory of concepts partially depends on whether perceptually derived representations can represent all the entities that we have concepts of. So his theory of representational content plays an essential role in the framework he wants to put forward. In this essay, I would like to show that his own theory of content determination falls prey to striking difficulties.
More precisely, here I will focus on Prinz’s account of referential content, which Prinz distinguishes from something he calls “nominal content” (Prinz 2000) or “cognitive content” (Prinz 2002). A concept’s referential content is the property, object or state in the world a concept refers to. For instance, the referential content of the concept
DOG is dog (or, perhaps, doghood) and the referential content of the concept OBAMA is the individual Obama. There are three main reasons for focusing the discussion on referential content. First of all, Prinz provides an original theory of referential content, while he does not seem to offer any innovative account of nominal or cognitive content. Secondly, Prinz’s theory of referential content is employed in many of his arguments in which a theory of content is playing an important role. Finally, an account of nominal content (which, in any case, Prinz has not developed in much detail; see Prinz 2000) will probably ride piggyback on a theory of referential content, so some of the problems of the former will probably carry over to any substantive theory of nominal content.
But, what is a naturalistic theory of referential content? The main goal of Prinz’s theory of conceptual content is to explain in virtue of what process conceptual states acquire their (referential) content. That is, it seeks to explain why the concept DOG means dog rather than cat or Paris. Prinz wants to describe the process by means of which mental states come to have certain meanings. That the theory is naturalistic roughly means that the fact that a given state has a certain referential content has to be explained without appealing to other unanalysed intentional notions. In other words: the project is to explain in non-intentional terms (in terms of causation, information, covariance and the like) why certain states refer to certain entities. This is a traditional project in philosophy that has generated an extensive philosophical literature (for reviews, see Adams and Aizawa 2010 and Neander 2012). Here I would like to outline and discuss Prinz’s contribution to this important topic.
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PRINZ’S NATURALISTIC THEORY OF INTENTIONAL CONTENT 71 2 . Prinz’s Account
First of all, it is worth pointing out that, in his empiricist approach to concepts, Prinz combines a non-atomistic theory of conceptual structure with an informational theory of content. That is, on the one hand, Prinz thinks that concepts are structured representations, composed of a set of perceptually derived representations. Concepts are individuated by taking into account a fuzzy network of associated representations. Nonetheless, at the same time, he holds that the referential content is determined by some sort of causal-informational connection that concepts have with their referents. Thus, while concepts are structured representations, their content is determined by a direct relation between representations and their representata.
More precisely, Prinz’s account of content determination tries to combine Fodor’s (1990) Asymmetric Dependence Theory and Dretske’s (1981, 1986) Informational Theory, as he himself admits at several places (e.g. Prinz’s 2006, p. 94). According to him, for a concept C to have X as its content (that is, for C to mean X) two conditions need to be met: (1) X must be C’s incipient cause and (2) there has to be a nomological covariance between C and X. Let us look more carefully at each condition.
2 . 1 . Incipient Causes
Prinz shares the widespread intuition that the naturalization of content should appeal to some kind of causal relation (see Stampe 1977). However, not any causal relation between an entity and a concept will do. For instance, a naïve causal theory that merely states that C means X iff C is caused by X would run into serious problems. First of all, this theory would entail that concepts have a highly indeterminate content. Certainly, snakes cause tokens of my concept
SNAKE; but so do lizards or wooden sticks at dusk. In this case, the naïve causal theory would imply that my concept SNAKE means snake or lizard or wooden stick. The second striking difficulty of the naïve causal theory is that it fails to account for misrepresentation. Misrepresentation typically occurs when a concept is caused by something that is not in its extension. Since on this naïve theory any entity that causes a concept is immediately included in its extension, the most common situation that gives rise to misrepresentation is automatically ruled out.1 Consequently, merely appealing to some
1 Notice that the problem of error and the problem of indeterminacy are different. In principle, a theory can solve the former without solving the latter, if it allows for some cases of misrepresentation.
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causal relation is insufficient. Prinz has to specify in more detail which is the causal relation that determines content.
Drawing on etiological theories of direct reference (Kripke 1980) and inspired by Dretske’s (1981) appeal to a learning period, his suggestion is that the entity that causally originated the concept is specially important in determining reference. So he claims that the relevant cause must be the first one. This is why his first condition for content determination appeals to what he calls the “incipient cause”: X is the incipient cause of the concept C iff X caused the formation of concept C. That is:
INCIPIENT CAUSE: X is the incipient cause of C iff X is the first cause of C (i.e., X originated the creation of C).
According to Prinz, a necessary condition for C to mean X is that X has been the originating cause of the concept.
Still, the mere appeal to the incipient cause is insufficient for providing an adequate account of content (we will see that one of the main reasons has to do with problems of indeterminacy). For this reason, Prinz resorts to the tradition that postulates a covariance relation between a concept and its referent.
2 . 2 . Nomological Covariation
The intuition that reference is determined by some sort of covariance is also common in the literature and has led to a range of different proposals (e.g. Dretske 1981, 1986; Rupert 2008; Eliasmith 2000). However, Prinz’s notion of nomological covariance differs from other proposals in not being based on a covariance within the actual world, but across possible worlds. Prinz (2002, p. 241) defines nomological covariation in the following way:
NOMOLOGICAL COVARIATION: Xs nomologically covary with concept C when Xs cause tokens of C in all proximate possible worlds where one possesses that concept.22 Prinz sometimes adds a “ceteris paribus” condition, so that he sometimes defines...
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