Frank Jackson, Possible World Semantics, and Perception

Frank Jackson just gave a series of lectures in my hometown. It is entitled "The Mind-World Problem." The titles of each lectures are "Where is the Mind?" "Narrow Content" and "Anti-Individualism." Jackson's nicely written abstract is posted below:

"The Mind-world problem

Lecture 1: Where is the mind?

Lecture 2: Narrow content

Lecture 3: Anti-individualism

The discussion in the lectures will be structured around the following headings:

Should we be internalists or externalists about the mind?

Is mental content narrow or wide?

Should we be individualists or anti-individualists in the philosophy of mind?

Some will hear these three headings as three different wordings of the one underlying issue. One package deal is internalism, narrow content and individualism; the other package deal is externalism, wide content and anti-individualism. However, I think it is important to unpick the packages. Here is how I will do the unpicking.

I. The debate between internalists and externalists is a debate over the location of mental states. Internalists affirm that mental states are internal states, that they are inside us, being almost certainly states of our brains. The externalist position is not so clear cut. Sometimes the view is that asking after the location of a mental state is something of a nonsense question; all one can sensibly ask about is the location of the person in some mental state. Sometimes the view is that mental states are spread out in space in a way that, in some sense, includes what they are about.

II. The debate between those who hold that mental content is narrow and those who hold that mental content is wide is over whether or not the contents of subjects' mental states supervene on how subjects are from the skin in. The supporter of narrow content affirms that the contents of subjects' mental states supervene on how subjects are from the skin in ?no difference in content without an internal difference; the supporter of wide content holds that internally identical subjects can have mental states with different contents.

III. Individualism is the doctrine that the mental state a subject is in is an intrinsic property of the subject. Anti-individualism is the doctrine that the mental state a subject is in is, in large part, a matter of how the subject is related to his or her environment.

I will be arguing in these lectures that internalism is true, that mental content is narrow, and that anti-individualism is true. I know some will wonder if this is a consistent set of claims. How, for example, can one consistently espouse anti-individualism as just explained, at the same time as holding that content is narrow? Good question. All will, I trust, be clear as the lectures proceed."

I am not going to comment on the above remarks; rather I am interested in a side issue. In carrying out the last lecture, Jackson argues for certain views concerning perceptual content. With the proviso that he does not like all the relevant terminologies, he holds that perceptual contents are both propositional and conceptual, since he thinks this is the only tenable version of intentionalism. When I pressed some familiar questions concerning the differences between perceptions and propositional attitudes like beliefs, he insisted that in regarding perceptual contents as propositional, he does not commit to the view that perceptual contents have anything like sentential structures.

Now, given that Jackson champions a version of possible world semantics, it is not difficult to interpret his response. For him, semantic contents are unstructured, so normal objections against propositional views about perception, even successful, are irrelevant to his position. But what does it even mean to say that propositions are unstructured? It has become an official slogan of possible world semantics at least after Stalnaker. I am not in a position to evaluate the situation, to be sure, but my feeling is that to say propositions are not structured is to undermine the whole point of the idea of propositions. To say something is propositional, it seems to me, is to say that something has propositional structures. In another word, I think a more proper way to think about possible world semantics is to say that it is a kind of eliminativism about proposition. It wants to do semantics without the idea of proposition. If so, then Jackson's view should be understood as follows: perceptual contents, as linguistic ones, are sets of possible worlds; they are non-propositional, since they do not have structures. Jackson himself says that his current view is surprisingly like early McDowell's, but I think when we bear his possible world semantics in mind, it becomes clear that his view and McDowell's one are extremely different.

I suspect that the debate between Fregean/Russellian structural semantics and possible world nonstructural semantics creates the largest chasm in philosophical semantics, by the way.

Perceptual Contents and the Limits of the Linguistic Turn

Most of the things I will say below are not based on solid arguments at the present stage; I just want to outline my larger project for future research.

Philosophy of perception in the Anglo-Saxon tradition nowadays is generally shaped by philosophy of language. This is hardly surprising, since after the linguistic turn no branch in analytic philosophy (I like this label, but I am not going to defend this now) can be isolated from the linguistic approach. I tend to think, contra the currency, that this approach has serious limits when it comes to perceptual contents. It has been over-emphasized, and thereby over-reacted.

Most of us believe that there are rational relations between perceptions and beliefs, and we try to make good sense of this fact (notable exceptions include Donald Davidson and Robert Brandom, who downplay the very idea of perception). Rational relations require certain structures, and many analytic philosophers attempt to start with language and apply the structures to perception, since the latter seems to be much more elusive. Many of them think that if we do not regard perceptual contents as propositional, it would be impossible to account for their rational relations to beliefs. If perceptual contents are propositional, presumably they have to be conceptual, since the constituents of propositions have to be concepts.

But conceptualism seems phenomenologically off key, so nowadays very few philosophers hold this opinion. Bill Brewer changed his mind recently, and John McDowell is also not as resolute as before. In renouncing propositionalism of perception, it is difficult to understand his remarks that perceptions are "intuitional," albeit still "conceptual in form." It is not that this position is not defensible, but at least we can see that linguistic-driven philosophy of perception may go too far.

Nowadays more analytic philosophers of perception are phenomenologically-driven. This approach has its roots in British empiricism and the Phenomenological tradition, to be sure, but still it is partially due to the unsatisfactoriness of the linguistic-driven approach. The problem, however, is that it would be so difficult to cash out the rational relations between perceptions and beliefs without attributing propositional structures to perceptual contents. So a great chasm has been generated. The phenomenologically-driven philosophers generally do not take relevant thoughts of Davidson and Brandom seriously, and vise versa. The L-driven philosophers regard their approach as the only way to avoid something like the Myth of the Given, and the the P-driven philosophers regard their approach as the only way to do justice to perceptual experience. So in his 2006 paper, Tim Crane boldly asserts that his "interface philosophy" in Putnam's sense will not give arise any metaphysical or epistemological anxieties. This might be true, but we cannot know this without arguments.

There are a lot more to be said about this divide, but I shall stop for now and shift to something more positive. Let me start with David Chalmers' recent effort to apply his two-dimensional framework to perceptual contents. It assigns three different kinds of content to experiences: Fregean, Russellian, and Edenic. Details aside, Chalmers' picture has the merit that it is both heavily linguistic- and phenomenologically-driven: the 2D framework is linguistic enough, and the reason he adds Edenic content in the case of perception is that he thinks Fregean content itself is not phenomenologically adequate enough. Now, I tend to think that Chalmers' picture is still too linguistic. It relies crucially on both Fregean content and Rusellian content, and presumably they are propositional in nature. This is not clear, for Chalmers emphasizes at the end of the 2006 paper that his Fregean and Russellian contents need not be conceptual, and I take this to be also a reservation about propositionality. Still, Chalmers' analyses of perceptual contents are based on his view on linguistic contents, and he tries to make the whole picture phenomenologically more adequate by adding something else.

I have no good argument to raise against his view now, but I think it sounds more right to say that perceptual contents are not propositional at all. Consider an argument paralleled to the one often used by the L-driven philosophers: since perceptual contents are both spatial and temporal, in order to secure the rational relations between perceptions and beliefs, the contents of belief have to be conceived as both spatial and temporal in character. But this does not sound right. If not, however, why should we accept the argument that since beliefs are propositional, perceptual contents must be conceived as propositional as well in order to account for the rational relations? As analytic philosophers, we are too used to the idea that contents are propositional, so when applying to perceptions, it might sound weird, but still somewhat acceptable. But if so, how do we accommodate the parallel argument for the conclusion that the contents of belief are spatial and temporal?

I am more willing to say that perceptual contents are Carnapian, roughly in the sense of Aufbau. I know this idea has generated various problems, and most philosophers today think it only leads to a dead end. Again, I do not have good things to offer for now (But notice that Chalmers himself also elaborates this Carnapian-style project in his Locke Lectures). But I hope the parallel argument outlined above can motivate a more phenomenologically-driven picture. It is true that British empiricists were too naive in relevant regards, and the Phenomenological tradition seems to lack enough attentions and apparatus concerning linguistic structures, but still to attribute propositional structures to perceptions seems to be as wild as to attribute spatial/temporal structures to beliefs, or so I shall urge.

Don't Try This at Home

I am referring to applying philosophy Ph.D. My main support of this statement is based on my own case, so obviously it would a bad induction. My intention, though, is not to generalize anything substantial from a single case. Rather I want to expatiate on some aspects of my application so that some of my fellow students will be able to distill something important for themselves. Let me start from my statistics.

GRE: V 690 / Q 780 / AW 4.0
TOEFL: R 30 / L 29 / S 28 / W 28
Letters: Taiwan * 1, CUNY * 1, Pittsburgh * 1, Berkeley * 3
Writing Sample: "Disjunctivism, Intentionalism, and the Argument from Illusion"
Applying: 18 Ph.D and 3 MA in the U.S.; 3 MA/M.Phil/B.Phil in the U.K.

Results: U.C. Irvine's Ph.D, CUNY's MA, UCL's M.Phil/Ph.D, and Warwick's MA/Ph.D in phil. of mind. Waitlisted by CUNY's and Indiana Bloomington's Ph.D. Attending CUNY's MA.

Now here goes my comments. My GRE score is fine with regard to philosophy application, except the mediocre AW. My issue topic was about commercial stuffs, and that was too difficult for anyone from non-English speaking countries and whose major is in the humanities. My TOEFL is pretty good (to my own surprise), but it plays no weight in the decision, except damping some skepticisms about the English ability of those who do not have English as their first language.

As for letters, I was told by many western professors that it would be a problem if all of them are from Taiwan, so I keep it minimum. I know the CUNY and Pitts professors at conferences and other occasions, and I spent a semester in U.C. Berkeley. They all assure that the letters will be positive. I did not submit all the letters for every application.

I think my writing sample was ill-chosen. I was motivated by the thought that committee members might generally prefer seeing us to analyze a well-known argument, since it shows that the applicant can confront the argument directly (as opposed to make one's point by insinuating others' remarks), and since the chosen argument is well-known, presumably all members will have some rough ideas about your writing. I still believe in this general guideline, but now I think the argument from illusion is no good for this. It is well-known, to be sure, but it is rather unnoticed or downplayed in the present U.S. community. In conducting my discussions, I concentrate on philosophers like A.D. Smith and Tim Crane (I omit McDowell intentionally), and they are pretty U.K. style (Some U.K. philosophers perform U.S. style, and vise versa). I guess this hurts my application to some extent. There is no denying that what's more important is the quality of the paper, but to better the quality is much more difficult than choosing a more suitable topic. I think I will do philosophy of language for this round, and I hope I can do that with the help from Nathan Salmon and Michael Devitt with their two seminars in CUNY in fall 2010.

I applied to 18 Ph.D programs in the U.S., but I over-reached. The main reason is that unlike most applicants in the western world, I have spent too much in my life for preparing this (6 years at least). So I just wanted to give it a shot, but I failed in the end. I was also rejected by Stanford's and NYU's MA. I know they are tough. Columbia's MA decision is yet to come, but I am not going to wait that one. I will definitely change my stance this round.

My GRE score is going to expire soon, and I really don't want to take it again. So if I fail again at the end of this year, I will write my dissertation in the U.K., and I think this is pretty good. I myself is more U.K. style, and it is difficult for me to turn down my offers from UCL and Warwick. I opt for CUNY mainly because I realized that hard-core philosophy of language is very important for my interests in philosophy of mind and perception (I came to see this by reading David Chalmers' recent works). If I go to the U.K. now, I will rush into my beloved U.K. style philosophy of mind, which is also tied to my interests in Kant and some phenomenologists. I want to force myself to do some more down-to-earth stuffs first, and CUNY is better on this score.

I guess I can continue this self-reflection forever, but I shall stop for now. I truly hope that someone will find some bits of this post useful.

The Only Post This Month

I have not written anything here for a while, not because I do not care this place. I know I do not have many readers, but I will try my best to keep this active. The real reason for not writing anything is that I am still recovering from the fiasco of graduate application this season. I thought I would be fine sooner, but I was wrong. I will try to speed up, and post something about my miserable result soon.

The Qualm concerning Determinism and Quantum Physics

Or worse, "determinism" itself is annoying enough. Most of us can be pretty sure that skepticism about knowledge and the external world is wrong, but still enjoy pinning down where it goes wrong exactly. But this is not true of determinism. Upon reflection, it is easy to find out that our concept of "freedom" is a mess. It is not that arguments for determinism are impeccable; the real trouble is that as a philosopher who believes in free will, I cannot have a clear yet substantial notion of free will. Whenever it goes substantial, it is ruled out by determinism. I have encountered several intricate counter-arguments against determinism, e.g. David Lewis's one, but still, it is difficult to be comfortable with the results. I side with Sellars and McDowell that the Space of Reasons is sui generis, but I feel hopeless when it comes to details.
Maybe Pascal's Wager can come to a rescue here. Maybe we should bet that we are free: if determinism is false, then good for us; if determinism is true, then we are determined to bet on free will anyway. Maybe it is not a coincidence that both the existence of God and free will are postulates in Kant's system. God.
I do not consider compatibilism here, since I think "freedom" in compatibilism is always too thin. This is controversial, to be sure.
But sometimes to bet on determinism makes one feel better; for example, consider the case in which all the admission decisions are determined before we exist.

"Mental Episodes"

"Mental episodes" is a term made popular by Wilfrid Sellars (correct me if I am wrong). I like to use it to cover mental states, events, and processes - they are of course different, but sometimes we want to talk about them without involving metaphysical implications immediately. I am interested in both the nature of mental episodes in general and the contents of my own mental episodes in particular. I predict that I will write about both of them here in the future, but I am not sure.
One kind of mental episodes I possess recently is pretended indifference to those postal rejections, by the way.

Why "Drinking Saké with God"

"Saké" is a kind of Japanese alcoholic beverage that I like. You could find a pretty good entry of it on Wiki. And I don't really believe in God, but I am not going to explain why I am not a Christian. That said, I would like to say something about the name of this blog.
I am applying to philosophy graduate school for the entry of fall 2010 (I will say more about this after I get all the results). If you do not have any idea about how difficult it is, let me illustrate it with a quote from an anonymous writer: "Yale law school gets roughly 2000 applications each year and admits 200 students, and that it's the best, most selective law school in the country. Cornell's philosophy department got 300 applications, and admitted 4, and they're ranked 17. 10% vs 1.3%." Now, I am lucky enough to get admitted by University College, London, but almost shut out by the U.S. programs. For some reasons, I still prefer studying in the U.S., but the waiting is just too torturous, so at some point I shouted to myself, "just go to London for God's sake!" And suddenly the name of this blog came to mind. I noticed the "sake/Saké" pair long time ago, and now it's time to bring it on stage.
But the name also has a meaning distinct from its origin. By "God," I mean something like fate, though again I have no faith in it. Nevertheless, we agnosticists still often have conversations with "God" (whatever that means) when we feel despair. I am pretty despair at this point, so let's drinking Saké with God. You are invited, but no pressure.