International Phenomenological Society

Prcis of The Nature of Mental Things The Nature of Mental Things by Arthur W. Collins Review by: Arthur W. Collins Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 54, No. 4 (Dec., 1994), pp. 901-903 Published by: International Phenomenological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2108422 . Accessed: 28/10/2013 17:45
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and Phenomenological Research Philosophy Vol. LIV, No. 4, December 1994

Precis of The Nature of Mental Things*

ARTHURW. COLLINS

Center GraduateSchool and University The City University of New York

The Nature of Mental Things (NMT) examines the concepts of belief, consciousness, perceptual experience and reason-giving explanation from the standpointof the conviction that all the prevailing schools of contemporary philosophy of mind share a stultifying commitmentto an essentially Cartesian conception of mental realities. Descartes and the classical empiricists thoughtof the conscious mind as an inner realm of non-materialprivatephenomena. Of course, there have been repeatedefforts to reject this conception and to adopta wholly non-Cartesian conceptionof the mind. But these efforts have been vitiated by a persistent focus on the metaphysical status of inner things. In consequence, the prevailing philosophies of mind attemptto correct Cartesianismby substitutinginner physical realities for the spiritual or mental things envisioned by dualists. The underlyingcontention of NMT is that the decisive difficulty in the Cartesianconception is the concept of an inner domain of mental reality. The metaphysical constitution of that inner domain is far less significant and has been an unfortunatedistractionin the thinkingof most modernphilosophersof mind. In the context of the concept of belief, the generalCartesianunderstanding of mental realities issues in the idea that believing is a matterof the presence of inner belief-states. The prevailing philosophies of mind accept this broad conception of belief without critical reflection as if it were something that is establishedbefore any philosophicalstep is taken.Philosophersand cognitive scientists are supposed to have the job of saying just what these inner realities in believers are. Are they, for example, brain-states,or neural states involving inscriptionsof sentences, or functional-stateshaving neural realizations in human believers? NMT rejects all these accounts, and behaviorism and Cartesianismwith them, on the groundthat they all make believing that p into a subject matterabout which the believer could make assertions (and
*

ArthurW. Collins, The Nature of Mental Things (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987).

COLLINSSYMPOSIUM 901

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have beliefs) parallel to the subject matterof p. With the help of imaginary models for discourse about belief, NMT shows that no such inner reality could be the subjectmatterof expressionsof belief of the form "I believe that p." All of the prevailing theories of belief are shown to involve an incoherence that derives from their Cartesiancharacter.They all make conceptual room for reportsof belief that merely assertthe presence of something in the believer. The believer's own report,true or false, would be compatible with any stand, or none at all, on the issue of p itself. Assertions of the form "I believe thatp" are best seen as assertions of p with an accompanyingindicationof guardednessor insecurity.Wherethere is no element of insecuritythe prefacing words, "I believe that..." are not used and belief thatp is expressed simply by assertion of p. In all cases, expression of belief indicates that the speaker will be mistaken in case p is false, of the because he endorsesp or takesp to be true.An adequateunderstanding concept of belief thatp has to give prominenceto the risk of being mistaken and the prospectof being right thatp. This epistemic risk cannot be captured by identifying any reality inside or outside a believer with that believer's belief that p. Thus states of belief cannot be given a real constitution of any kind. The prevailing concept of consciousness itself generates a range of inner "phenomena" on the basis of familiarreasoningthat also has Cartesianroots. Empiricismhas been in the forefrontin adopting a conception of inner phenomena although in strictness,empiricism, since it is committed to grounding all factual claims in perception,ought to admitonly perceivablephenomena of which none are mental. NMT offers a variety of criticisms of the perennial philosophical commitment to inner objects of perceptual consciousness. Much of the philosophical theorizing that accepts such inner mental objects is motivated by the felt need to account for the object in perwhere there is no outerphysical object, or no such object ceptual aberrations of the right sort. The reasoningthat admitsinner surrogatesin the absence of outer objects actually posits inner objects of consciousness that could not help our understanding. Popularphilosophicaltheories engenderinconsistent thatplay such a large role in motiexplanationsof the perceptualaberrations vating the theories. Philosophers must decide whether they think that we have access to innerperceptualobjects and also to outerphysical objects, or, whether,in the mannerof Descartesand the classical empiricists,we have acquaintanceonly with mental items and merely infer or posit an outer world. Both options are shown to fail. Perceptualconsciousness extends only to objects of perceptionwhich do not include any realitiesin the perceiver'smind. NMT also criticizes dominantinterpretations of reason-givingexplanation by philosophersof mind. These turnon the suppositionthat such "belief-desire" explanations must advert to causes within the believer if they really manage to get anythingexplained. NMT develops an essentially teleological
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ARTHUR W. COLLINS

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interpretationof reason-giving. Agents giving their reasons for doing what they have done, or for what they propose to do, are providing intelligibility by indicatingwhat the point, anticipatedoutcome, or objective of their action is. Contemporary philosophersof mind improperlyconvert these references to outcomes into referencesto antecedentsin the effort to provide an item belonging to the temporalframeappropriate to causes. Ordinary speakersgiving reasons for their actions are not proposing wholly speculative and opaquely characterized neuralcauses. NMT shows that teleological explanationis a legitimate and indispensable form of explanationin biological science and computer-sciencewithout any referenceto minds or reasons.The teleological patterndeveloped withoutany appeal to humanpsychology is then shown to fit reason-giving explanation. Furthermore, philosophicalefforts to bringreasons underthe generalheading of causes is shown to be entirely unsuccessful. Analysis of the concept of causality in contexts where it is obviously successful, together with reflectionon naturaldiscourseand thinkingaboutaction, lead us, accordingto NMT, to the conclusion that the effort to impose causality in the context of reason-giving springs from confusion and a faulty conviction that only causality can shed light in this domain.If causalityis set aside, reason-giving explanationno longer appearsto rest on appealsto innerrealities in agents.

SYMPOSIUM903 COLLINS

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