aliens, dreams and strange machines

251 Pages·2013·1.96 MB·English

A , D S M :
LIENS REAMS AND TRANGE ACHINES
An Investigation into Thought, Interpretation and Rationality

Christina Cameron
Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, 3rd April 2013
This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
P
REFACE

Declaration:
This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the
outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text.
No part of this dissertation has been submitted for any other degree or qualification.
It is approximately 78 000 words, including appendices and references.

Acknowledgements:
First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Jane Heal, without whom this thesis would
not exist. I am grateful for her willingness to read and reread the many drafts I have
produced, for her enthusiasm in discussing aliens, and for her encouragement when I
wanted to give up. She has helped me to work out what I think about thought, and then to
express my ideas far more clearly than I could have done without her aid.
Thanks also to Simon Blackburn and to Tim Crane, my shadow supervisor, for all their help
and advice.
Lucy Campbell, Chris Cowie, Alexander Greenberg and Lorna Finlayson each provided
invaluable comments on parts of my thesis, and I have also benefitted from helpful
discussions with Adrian Boutel, Tim Button, Hallvard Lillehammer, Steven Methven,
Sebastian Nye, Adam Stewart-Wallace, Robert Trueman and Nathan Wildman.
Many of the above have also given me much non-philosophical help and encouragement, in
which they were joined by Claire Benn, Amanda Cawston, Cley and Jane Crouch, Rachel
Hilditch, Raymond Geuss, Lesley Lancaster, Basim Musallam, Remi Oriogun-Williams and
Francis Young. This help has taken many forms, from free food and tea delivery, to help in
proof-reading and computer aid, to impromptu counselling sessions. I am profoundly
grateful to all of them, and would not have got to this stage without them.
Finally, I would like to thank my parents, for supporting me in so many ways throughout
my education, and for always being there when I needed them.

This thesis was funded by the AHRC.
S
UMMARY

Interpretationism about the mind claims that we can gain a philosophical understanding of
the nature of thought by considering how we interpret the thoughts of others. My thesis
aims to develop a version of this theory which is plausible in the sense that:

(1) it has the potential to retain certain advantages attaching to theories of mind
which focus on the behaviour, rather than the internal make-up of candidate thinkers;
(2) it can fend off certain apparent counterexamples.

The thesis is split into four parts.

Part I explains why one might want to answer ‘No’ to the question ‘Are there particular
sorts of internal organisation which a being must have in order to count as a thinker?’ It
then introduces interpretationism as a position which will allow us to answer ‘No’ to this
question. My version of interpretationism claims that a being has a thought iff it is
interpretable as having that thought, and that all thinkers are rational. Both claims face
several apparently obvious counter-examples. Parts II and III address these
counterexamples by developing the crucial notions of interpretability and rationality.

Part II starts by considering the problem of seemingly hidden thoughts which occur during
dreams, and uses this to develop an account according to which a subject is interpretable as
having a thought if either a) there is sufficient evidence concerning the thought in the
subject’s actual situation and actions, or b) there would be sufficient evidence in at least one
suitable counterfactual situation. I consider and reject an objection that this understanding
of interpretability is incompatible with a commitment to the holism of interpretation, and
then show how it can be used to address further proposed counter-examples, such as cases
involving deception or paralysed thinkers. However, I agree with Block (1981) and
Peacocke (1983) that their string-searching machine and Martian marionette must be
counted as thinkers by this account. I argue that these are not counterexamples to the theory,
however, because the intuitions against counting such beings as thinkers can be discredited.

Part III uses considerations about human limitations and propensities towards reasoning
errors to argue that the interpretationist cannot adopt a deontological understanding of
rationality that seems prevalent in the literature, nor a purely consequentialist account of
rationality. I explain how Cherniak’s (1986) conception of minimal rationality may be
adapted for the interpretationist’s purposes. I then consider and reject the idea that the
emphasis on the rationality of thinkers will leave us unable to fit paradigmatically non-
rational thoughts and thought processes (dream thoughts, imaginings and association) into
our account.

Part IV shows why interpretationism so developed is well placed to retain the advantages of
a theory of mind which focuses on behaviour, and outlines potential avenues for further
research.
Contents
Page
Part I: Introducing Interpretationism
1

Chapter 1: A Central Question 2
1. Visit to an alien earth 2
2. Two camps in the philosophy of mind 4
3. Reasons for answering ‘No’ 9
3.1 Knowledge of minds 10
3.2 Avoiding chauvinism 13
3.3 Origins and uses of psychological concepts 14
4. Conclusion 16

Chapter 2: Interpretationism 18
1. Four claims 19
2. The interpretationism in interpretationism 22
3. Varieties of interpretationism 33
3.1 Derivative interpretationism 33
3.2 Analytic interpretationism 34
3.3 Dependence interpretationism 37
3.4 Cartographic interpretationism 38
3.5 Conclusion to section 3 40
4. Problems for interpretationism 41

Part II: Interpretability
43

Chapter 3: The Interpretation of Dreams 44
1. The problem 44
2. Some bad solutions 45
3. Ways of employing counterfactuals 48
4. Malcolm on dreams 55
5. Conclusion 63

Chapter 4: The Holistic Nature of Interpretation 64
1. The directability of thought 65
2. Dennett’s famous claim 68
3. Holism 70
4. Conclusion 75
Chapter 5: Possibility, Deception and Paralysis 76
1. The task 77
2. A general problem 82
3. Deception 86
4. The locked-in cosmologist 93
5. Conclusion 98

Chapter 6: String-Searching Machines and Martian Marionettes 100
1. The thought experiments 101
1.1 The string-searching machine 101
1.2 The Martian marionette 103
2. Physical impossibility 104
3. Inappropriate histories: option 1 105
4. Inappropriate histories: option 2 112
5. Allowing strange thinkers 115
6. Conclusion 123

Part III: Rationality
124

Chapter 7: The Rationality Claim 126
1. The nature of the task 126
2. The role of rationality 127
2.1 An argument from probability 128
2.2 An argument from requirements for interpretation 130
2.3 An argument directly from the nature of thought 132
3. Varying requirements 133
4. Conclusion 134

Chapter 8: The Standard Picture 135
1. Outlining the Standard Picture 136
2. Using the Standard Picture 139
3. Normal human irrationality 142
3.1 Human limitations 142
3.2 Data from the heuristics and biases program 143
3.3 The resulting argument 146
4. Responses 146
4.1 SCR and the heuristics and biases program 146
4.2 SCR and human limitations 154
5. Conclusion 156

Chapter 9: Consequentialism 158
1. Some varieties of consequentialism 159
2. CRC, human limitations and the results of the heuristics
and biases program 163
3. Rejecting CRC 164
4. Conclusion 171

Chapter 10: Achievements, Patterns and Purposes 173
1. Rationality as an achievement 174
2. Sometimes getting it right 177
3. Patterns 186
4. Back to heuristics, biases and limitations 192
5. Additional achievements? 192
6. The purposes of interpretation 299
7. Conclusion 202

Chapter 11: Dreams, Imagination and Association 204
1. Another problem with dreams 205
2. Imagination 206
3. Association 209
4. Verbal reports 210
5. Non-linguistic creatures 212
6. Explanatory incompleteness 215
7. Conclusion 219

Part IV: Concluding remarks
221

Chapter 12: Fulfilling the Promises 222
1. Origins and uses of psychological concepts 222
2. Knowledge of minds 224
3. Avoidance of chauvinism 227
4. Conclusion 229

Appendix 1: Sitting on the Fence 230
Appendix 2: Table of Varieties of Interpretationism 232
Appendix 3: The Worth of the Cartographic Approach 234
References 238
P I: I I
ART NTRODUCING NTERPRETATIONISM

Interpretationism is a position in the philosophy of mind which claims that we can
gain a philosophical understanding of the nature of thought by considering how we
interpret the thoughts of others. The purpose of this thesis is to argue that a kind of
interpretationism is plausible in the sense that:
1. it has the potential to retain some advantages attaching to theories of mind
which focus on the behaviour, rather than the internal make-up of
candidate thinkers;
2. it can fend off certain apparent counterexamples.
Part I introduces the interpretationist approach. I begin, in chapter 1, by identifying
a philosophical question to which interpretationism provides a response,
distinguishing between two varieties of answer that have been given to this question,
and then explaining some advantages of the type of answer which focuses the
behaviour of thinkers.
Chapter 2 then argues that interpretationism provides just such an answer, while
also improving upon analytic behaviourism. However, it admits that two notions
which are central to interpretationism, interpretability and rationality, require further
explanation, and that the theory faces several apparently obvious counterexamples.
Part I therefore ends with an outline of how, in the rest of the thesis, I tackle these
problems.

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Chapter 1 – A Central Question
1. Visit to an alien earth

Imagine that some humans visit an Earth-like planet called Analog. On Analog, the
explorers find life, and not only the simplest forms of life (creatures like viruses or
amoeba in our own world); they discover creatures who are thinkers, who have
intentional states such as beliefs and desires. Call these the Analogoids.
A group of humans, then, discover that Analogoids can think. How could
this discovery be made? What sort of evidence would be relevant in making such a
discovery? What evidence would be necessary for the humans to reasonably draw
this conclusion? How certain could they be about their conclusion? And what
consequences would the discovery have for how the explorers could then interact
with the Analogoids?
I will use this thought experiment to guide an investigation into the nature of
thinking. This will concern those mental states most uncontroversially taken to have
intentional content: to be about something. This includes beliefs, desires, hopes,
entertainings, imaginings and so forth. I call such states ‘thoughts’.
My project, then, is to investigate what it takes to be a thinker, and this
investigation will proceed via consideration of the following central question:

Are there particular sorts of internal organisation which a being must have in order
to count as a thinker?

Here, the word ‘internal’ indicates that the organisation of states, mechanisms etc. in
question are supposed to be internal to the creature’s thinking apparatus, and
should not be behavioural events. It is not supposed to rule out that, even while
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answering ‘Yes’ to the above question, we might hold that some being does its
thinking outside of its body, for example because it thinks using a computer which is
connected by radios to a robot body.
The phrase ‘particular sorts’ indicates that the question concerns whether our
concept of thought includes (or should include – the idea that our concept may need
revision should not be ruled out at this stage) a commitment to the idea that thinking
involves certain kinds of organisation which must be described by talking about
more than just the behaviour and possible behaviour of the thinker. Such an
organisation and the states which constitute it will probably be taken to cause, or to
have the potential to cause, certain behaviours. However, the person who answers
‘yes’ to the above question and then gives an account of what is needed in order for
a being to be a thinker must, as Jackson and Pettit (1993) say, ‘tak[e] on a substantial
commitment to the nature of the underlying causes of behaviour.’ (299) Some
examples of such commitments are given in the next section.
If we answer ‘Yes’ to this question then the humans, when they say they have
discovered that the Analogoids are thinkers, are saying that they have discovered
that the Analogoids have such particular sorts of internal organisation (although this
need not be inside anything recognisable as a head). Anything that is evidence of
the existence of such inner stuff is relevant for the making of this discovery. The
behaviour of the Analogoids may therefore be relevant as evidence of what is going
on inside them. It may even be very good evidence, strong enough to warrant
reasonable belief in the explorer’s conclusion. However, no matter how much
behavioural evidence the humans have, they need more information to guarantee
that the Analogoids are thinkers. In particular, somehow looking more directly into
the creatures’ thinking apparatus and finding out what is happening in there is also
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