Semantic pragmatism and a priori knowledge (or 'yes we could all be brains in a Vat')

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 31, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 455-480

  Jackman, Henry ^a  

^a YORK UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79954304229     PISSN: 00455091     EISSN: 19110820     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00455091.2001.10717576     Document Type: Review

References (87)

1. H. Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (New York: Cambridge University Press 1981), ch. 1
2. Ibid., 6. This point is stressed in D. Davies, 'Putnam's Brain-Teaser', Canadian Journal of Philosophy 25(1995), 224-7
3. and in M. Hymers, Philosophy and Its Epistemic Neuroses (Boulder, CO: Westview 2000), ch. 1.
4. Reason, Truth and History, 5-6
5. For a discussion of this, see A. Brueckner, 'Brains in a Vat', Journal of Philosophy 84(1986), 152.
6. I am here following C. Wright, 'On Putnam's Proof that We Are Not Brains in a Vat', P. Clark and B. Hale, eds., Reading Putnam (Cambridge: Blackwell 1994), 224, since Putnam himself seems to endorse this reconstruction (H. Putnam, 'Comments and Replies', Clark and Hale, eds., 284). In any case, the objections considered below should be locatable in any of the many acceptable formulations of Putnam's argument available..
7. The connection between externalism and this possibility is made very vivid in the discussion of the 'Swampman' in D. Davidson, 'Knowing One's Own Mind', P. Ludlow and N. Martin, eds., Externalism and Self-Knowledge (Stanford: CLSI Publications 1998).
8. Putnam discusses a related possibility in Reason, Truth and History, 17.
9. The possibility of externalist anti-skeptical arguments backfiring in this way is discussed by Brueckner, 'Brains in a Vat/159; Falvey and Owens, 'Externalism, Self-Knowledge, and Skepticism.' Philosophical Review 103 (1994) 107-37
10. at 126; P. Klein, 'Radical Interpretation and Global Skepticism', LePore, ed., Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Blackwell 1986), 385;
11. and S. Stich, 'Might Man Be an Irrational Animal?' H. Kornblith, ed., Naturalizing Epistemology (Cambridge: The MTT Press 1994), 356.
12. See, for instance, Brueckner, 'Brains in a Vat';
13. T. Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press 1986);
14. Wright, 'On Putnam's Proof;
15. Davies, 'Putnam's Brain-Teaser';
16. G. Forbes, 'Realism and Skepticism: Brains in a Vat Revisited', Journal of Philosophy 92 (1995);
17. G. Ebbs, Rule Following and Realism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1997);
18. H. Noonan, 'Reflections on Putnam, Wright, and Brains in Vats.' Analysis 58 (1998);
19. S. Sawyer', My Language Disquotes', Analysis 59 (1999); Ludlow and Martin; and the numerous papers cited therein.
20. After all, most people (including Putnam himself: Reason, Truth and History, 7) typically do feel that there must be something ultimately wrong with Putnam's argument when it is first presented to them. (Or at least that is my experience with students when they are presented with the argument, and with most of my colleagues with whom I have discussed it.) Their intuition is that there must be something wrong with the argument, even if they cannot pin down precisely what that something might be.
21. For a discussion of some of these, see B. Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Skepticism (New York: Oxford University Press 1984).
22. C. McGinn, 'Radical Interpretation and Epistemology', LePore, ed.;
23. and M. Williams, Unnatural Doubts (Cambridge: Blackwell 1991), xiv, for claims of this sort. However, I will ultimately argue that a commitment to 'semantic extemalism' is perfectly compatible with the hypothesis's intelligibility, and thus that no reductio of semantic extemalism is in the offing.
24. A point that should be familiar from Putnam's own discussions of the feasibility of purely causal accounts of reference. (See, for instance. Reason, Truth and History, 53.)
25. Putnam is less than clear about what these 'virtual vats' should themselves be understood to be. Vats in the image, electronic impulses, and program features have all been suggested by Putnam (Reason, Truth and History, 14)
26. Davidson (according to R. Rorty, 'Pragmatism, Davidson and Truth', Objectivity, Relativism and Truth [New York: Cambridge University Press 1991]), and others. I will try not to take a stand on this issue, and will just treat 'virtual vats' to pick out whatever is causally responsible for the brain's 'vat utterances.' Consequently, the 'virtual vats' should not be understood as in any way fictional in the way that we think of unicorns as fictional, since, whatever they are, they have causes and effects.
27. One might question this use of 'real vat' and thus Putnam's claim that 'the use of "vat" in vat-English has no causal connection to real vats' (Reason, Truth and History, 14).
28. Both may seem to beg the question at hand by assuming that the vats in the image could not be 'real.' On the other hand, one might try to preserve Putnam's claim by arguing that 'real' could be used as a comparative term picking out a type of vat, and something that was not a 'real' vat could still 'truly' be a vat. On the various uses of 'real' see J. L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1962), ch. 7.
29. Of course, one might try to argue that the categories of P- and V-Vats are somehow more 'natural' than that of C-vats, and that the initial samples only 'project' to such 'natural' properties. See, for instance, D. Lewis, 'New Work for a Theory of Universals', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (1983)
30. and 'Putnam's Paradox', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (1984).
31. However, such a line could hardly be appealed to by Putnam, since such an interest-independent 'ranking' of properties is one of the characteristics of Metaphysical Realism he is most anxious to reject. One of the main themes in Reason, Truth and History is precisely that there are no such 'objective' degrees of similarity.
32. Note that Putnam assumes, in 'Realism and Reason', Meaning and the Moral Sciences (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1978), 127, that the metaphysical realist would describe the brain in the vat as referring to P-Vats rather than C-Vats by 'vat.'
33. H. Putnam, "The Meaning of "Meaning, "' Mind, Language and Reality (New York: Cambridge University Press 1975), 232
34. Putnam, "The Meaning of "Meaning, "' 239.
35. This emphasis on our interests separates him, to his credit, from M. Devitt, Designation (New York: Columbia University Press 1980)
36. and D. Lewis, 'New Work' and 'Putnam's Paradoxes.'
37. For a discussion of such cases, see H. Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism (LaSalle: Open Court 1987), 5-6;
38. E. Thompson, Color Vision (New York: Routledge 1995);
39. G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh (New York: Basic Books 1999).
40. E. Rosch, 'Family Resemblances: Studies in the Internal Structure of Categories', Cognitive Psychology 7 (1975)
41. and G. Lakoff, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1987).
42. I do not have the space to pursue this point here, but if one accepts such 'prototype driven' accounts of concepts and categories, it would be even easier to defend the claim that a term like 'vat' could be truly applied within the new environment. Much the same could be said of the more 'open textured' account of concepts defended in, for instance, C. Travis, The Use of Sense (New York: Oxford University Press 1989)
43. and H. Jackman, 'Semantic Norms and Temporal Externalism', PhD Diss (University of Pittsburgh 1996)
44. and 'We Live Forwards but Understand Backwards: Linguistic Practices and Future Behavior', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 80 (1999).
45. This may require a fairly stable type of switching between the environments, 'virtual vats' only being encountered when one is 'in' one's 'virtual body', etc. The stability of such kind terms is thus dependent on some fairly contingent features of our situation. This is, however, arguably a feature of much of our language. For some suggestive discussions on this theme, see L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell 1953)
46. and J. L. Austin, Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1961).
47. H. Putnam, 'Comments and Replies', 287
48. For Putnam's use of these terms for any account that would allow the brains in the vat to refer to vats with 'vat', see Reason, Truth and History, 3, 5, 15, 16
49. and 'Comments and Replies', 287.
50. This is why the analysis should not be viewed as 'phenomenalistic' (though a phenomenalistic analysis of the terms in one's language might seem more plausible if one didn't have a single experiential environment). The cause of the phenomenon still helps determine the term's extension. Some have argued that non-natural kinds should not be viewed as 'indexical' in this way-S. Schwartz, 'Putnam on Artifacts', Philosophical Review 87 (1978)
51. and 'Natural Kinds and Nominal Kinds', Mind 89 (1980);
52. and M. Devitt and K. Sterelny, Language and Reality (Oxford: Blackwell 1987)
53. and that the extensions of such 'nominal kinds' are 'determined by an analytical specification of superficial features such as phenomenal properties, and/or form, function, or origin' (Schwartz, 'Natural Kinds and Nominal Kinds', 182).
54. Such accounts, however, must assume that we (or at least some member of our community) can know a priori what the relevant functional or formal properties are, and there is no reason to think that this must be (even if it often is) the case. I won't defend this last claim at length here, but the point is developed in H. Kornblith, 'Referring to Artifacts', Philosophical Review 89 (1980)
55. and H. Jackman, 'Semantic Norms.'
56. This example is, of course, an adaptation of Putnam's own discussion of 'pencil' (The Meaning of "Meaning, "' 242-3).
57. Or one could take the more extreme position that such a case would amount to our discovering that there were no, and never had been any, vats. For something like this view, see J. Katz, 'Logic and Language: An Examination of Recent Criticisms of Intentionalism', K. Gunderson, ed., Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science VII (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1975).
58. However, Putnam himself clearly seems unsympathetic with this approach to such cases (see "The Meaning of "Meaning"'). More plausibly, one might think that the term should be understood as indeterminate between the natural and the interactional kind in the way that a term like 'dog' might be understood as indeterminate between an 'evolutionary' and a 'genetic' understanding. The latter of these would allow a 'synthetic dog' which had no genealogical connection to our dogs, but an identical physical and genetic make-up, to be a dog, while the former would not. See H. Putnam, 'Aristotle After Wittgenstein', Words and Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1994), 76-7.
59. The echo from W. James, Pragmatism (1907; Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1975), 106
60. is found in Putnam's work as well - see H. Putnam, Pragmatism, An Open Question (Cambridge: Blackwell 1995), 8
61. and its relation to some of the views presented here are developed further in H. Jackman, 'James' Pragmatic Account of Intentionakty and Truth', Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society 34 (1998).
62. One can see this in recent definitions of 'life', where the properties essential to the kind are all of a functional/interactional sort that can be shared by various 'objects' found within the running of an appropriately programmed computer. See, for instance, the discussion of 'artificial life' in S. Turkle, Life on the Screen (New York: Simon and Schuster 1995).
63. See, for instance, his discussion of 'cat', 'energy', and 'pencil' in H. Putnam', It Ain't Necessarily So', Mathematics, Matter and Method (New York: Cambridge University Press 1975)
64. The Analytic and the Synthetic', Mind, Language and Reality, and The Meaning of "Meaning."
65. (For a useful discussion of these issues, see Hymers.) Fortunately, I think that such worries about our knowledge of the content of our assertions and thoughts can be addressed. I have no space to do so here, but see H. Jackman, 'Semantic Norms, 'Deference and Self-Knowledge', Southwest Philosophy Review 16 (2000)
66. and 'Ordinary Language, Conventionalism, and A Priori Knowledge', Diabetica (forthcoming);
67. for a related discussion, see D. Davidson, 'A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge', LePore, ed.
68. and 'Knowing One's Own Mind.'
69. Reason, Truth and History, 6
70. Reason, Truth and History, 49.
71. For a discussion of this, see, once again, Davies, "Putnam's Brain-Teaser' and Hymers.
72. Wright, 'On Putnam's Proof', 239-40.
73. See also Forbes, 'Realism and Skepticism.' The same sort of intuition, though more explicitly tied to the traditional problem of skepticism, is expressed in Nagel, 73.
74. 'Comments and Replies', 287-8
75. Putnam seems to suggest that a future de-vatting could only be relevant by allowing the brain in the vat access to descriptions such as 'the things I will refer to as "vats" at such and such a future time' (Reason, Truth and History, 16).
76. In much the same way, Putnam claims that the brain in a vat hypothesis would be a coherent one if it predicted a de-vatting some time in the future (Reason, Truth and History, 131). However, even the potential for de-vatting, whether it is actualized or not, is relevant to the interpretation of one's terms. Even if the brain is not de-vatted, it is still disposed to respond to its de-vatting in a particular way, and these dispositions help constitute what it should be interpreted as meaning by its terms.
77. Reason, Truth and History, 55.
78. Or at least the Putnam of Reason, Truth and History did. Putnam's views on the topic of truth have changed since then.
79. See H. Putnam, Representation and Reality (Cambridge: The MIT Press 1988)
80. and 'Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses: An Inquiry into the Powers of the Human Mind', Journal of Philosophy 91 (1994).
81. As Horgan puts it, the relevant sense of idealization must also include an idealization of the cognizer's epistemic vantage point, T. Horgan, 'Metaphysical Realism and Psychologistic Semantics', Erkenntnis 34(1991), 303.
82. That such a qualification is implicit in Putnam's own view of truth is suggested in D. Davies, "Why One Shouldn't Make an Example of a Brain in a Vat', Analysis 57 (1997)
83. and Putnam makes it more explicit in H. Putnam, Representation and Reality
84. 'Reply to Terry Horgan', Erkenntnis 34 (1991)
85. and 'Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses.'
86. For a discussion of this aspect of Putnam's recent writings on truth, see C. Wright, Truth as Sort of Epistemic: Putnam's Peregrinations', Journal of Philosophy 97 (2000).
87. 'Realism and Reason', 127 (Italics, as elsewhere, are Putnam's). Note that not only are the unexperienced vats outside the vat referred to as 'noumenal, 'but it is also assumed that the hypothesis requires that vats in the image do not fall within the extension of 'vat.'