ON MEANING: LOCATING MEANING IN OBJECTIVIST FRAME
WORKS
Suraiya Menon
M.Phil, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi, India.
ABSTRACT
In this paper the objectivist world-views are being analyzed. The aim is to see where the meaning can be accommodated in these frame-works. Often, meaning of meaning is different in different frame-works. It is not understood by the eliminativists and physicalists.
Key words: Physicalism, Phenomenology, Eliminativism, Objectivist-framework, Meaning .
Section I
In this section, we would try to understand what the meaning of meaning is. We already know that when we are talking to somebody, for example: we are in a philosophical discourse with a friend, we believe that there is some meaning of what we are saying.
So, in this section we will see how the concept of meaning is devised. The frameworks which we will discuss are these:
Physicalist Frame-work: We will focus on JJC mart’s version of it. Firstly, Let us understand what Physicalism is:
“Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on the physical. The thesis is usually intended as a
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Website:metaphysical thesis, parallel to the thesis attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Thales, that everything is water, or the idealism of the 18th Century philosopher Berkeley, that everything is mental. The general idea is that the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and everything in it) conforms to a certain condition, the condition of being physical. Of course, physicalists don't deny that the world might contain many items that at first glance don't seem physical — items of a biological, or psychological, or moral, or social nature. But they insist nevertheless that at the end of the day such items are either physical or supervene on the physical.”
(Link: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#CasAgaPhyIIMeaInt )
The meaning of superveniece needs to be taken in a specific sense as mentioned by Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy here:
“A set of properties A supervenes upon another set B just in case no two things can differ with respect to A-properties without also differing with respect to their B-properties. In slogan form, “there cannot be an A-difference without a B-difference”.”
In this physicalist frame-work, we will be looking into the theory of meaning by considering the Identity philosopher JJC Smart’s take on this.
As according to the above definition of Physicalism, the Physicalist Philosopher JJC Smart tends to attain three objectives from the Physicalist frame–work. He does three things here: He rejects the ontological status of consciousness, he tackles over-determinism and epiphenomenalism, and he rejects dualism.
He says: “When I say that a sensation is a brain process or that lightning is an electric discharge, I am using "is" in the sense of strict identity. (Just as in the — in this case necessary — proposition "7 is identical with the smallest prime number greater than 5.") When I say that a sensation is a brain process or that lightning is an electric dies- charge I do not mean just that the sensation is somehow spatially or temporally continuous with the brain process or that the lightning is just spatially or temporally continuous with the discharge.”
Therefore, he rejects any ontological status to the representations of objects in the ‘Subjects’ consciousness. He rejects the ontological status of consciousness. He rejects our phenomenal experience of the physical world, assuming that they serve no purpose. Thereby, he attempts to tackle epiphenomenalism. He argues for the hard-core identity between what is ‘happening’ and what is ‘appearing’.
Further, he says that,
“Mainly because of Occam's razor, it seems to me that science is increasingly giving us a viewpoint whereby organisms are able to be seen as physicochemical mechanisms: it seems that even the behaviour of man himself will one day be explicable in mechanistic terms. There does seem to be, so far as science is concerned, nothing in the world but increasingly complex arrangements of physical constituents. All except for one place: in consciousness. That is, for a full description of what is going on in a man you would have to mention not only the physical processes in his tissue, glands, nervous system, and so forth, but also his states of consciousness: his visual, auditory, and tactual sensations, his aches and pains. That these should be correlated with brain processes does not help, for to say that they are correlated is to say that they are something "over and above." You cannot correlate something with itself.”
("Sensations and Brain Processes", in Philosophical Review 68 pp. 141-156 (1959))
arguments that he gives are as follows:
“...but it explains why I find Wittgenstein's position (as I construe it) so congenial. For on this view there are, in a sense, no sensations. A man is a vast arrangement of physical particles, but there are not, over and above this, sensations or states of consciousness. There are just behavioural facts about this vast mechanism, such as that it expresses a temptation (behaviour disposition) to say "there is a yellowish-red patch on the wall" or that it goes through a sophisticated sort of wince, that is, says "I am in pain." Admittedly Wittgenstein says that though the sensation "is not a something," it is nevertheless "not a nothing either" (paragraph 304), but this need only mean that the word "ache" has a use. An ache is a thing, but only in the innocuous sense in which the plain man, in the first paragraph of Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic, answers the question "what is the number one?" by "a thing." It should be noted that when I assert that to say "I have a yellowish-orange after-image" is to express a temptation to assert the physical-object statement "there is a yellowish-orange patch on the wall," I mean that saying "I have a yellowish-orange after-image" is (partly) the exercise of the disposition which is the temptation. It is not to report that I have the temptation, any more than is "I love you" normally a report that I love someone. Saying "I love you" is just part of the behaviour which is the exercise of the disposition of loving someone.”
This is a very important paragraph, in the sense that, it explains the dispositional theory of meaning. This dispositional theory of meaning is one to which most of physicalists subscribe. This dispositional theory is of concern to us because we are attempting to locate meaning in the physicalist frame-work, and physicalists explain meaning through “Dispositional theory”.
The Dispositional theory as explained by Stanford encyclopaedia is as follow:
intentionality. According to a dispositional theory of intentionality, a mental concept would mean what it does because thinkers are disposed to employ the concept in thought in a certain way. So a dispositional theory seems to hold out the best promise of a theory of intentionality that is compatible with physicalism.”
There are a few problems with this theory: When they are talking about dispositions, the question comes that whose disposition they are talking about. Do similar electrons have different dispositions? If yes then, how? If not then, how their combinations can have different dispositions. Is he saying that as long as the electrons are there in the iron rod he has no phenomenological experience so, when I have sensations they are nomological danglers because I am displaying some characteristics which are not displayed micro level? In this ways, Intentionality can be studied in physicalist terms, how much justified it is, is a different question. My concern is about meaning. And I am wondering where will the Meaning lie? Meaning has a very important role in truth claims. And if there is anything propositional in nature, the dispositional theory would be problematic. When meaning is a matter of disposition then, there can no truth-claims. i He adds,
“but it does seem to me as though, when a person says "I have an after-image," he is making a genuine report, and that when he says "I have a pain," he is doing more than "replace pain-behaviour," and that "this more" is not just to say that he is in distress. I am not so sure, however, that to admit this is to admit that there are nonphysical correlate of brain processes. Why should not sensations just be brain processes of a certain sort?”
Therefore, an important point that comes out is that even Frege will not fit into Physicalist our attempt to locate the meaning we will go through will not fit in this physicalist frame-work because Frege’s view is this:
“Even an unphilosophical person soon finds it necessary to recognize an inner world distinct from the outer world, a world of sense-impressions, of creations of his imagination, of sensations, of feelings and moods, a world of inclinations, wishes and decisions. For brevity I
want to collect all these, with the
exception of decisions, under the word “idea". Now do thoughts belong to this inner world? Are
they ideas?
They are obviously not decisions. How are ideas distinct from the things of the outer world? First: Ideas cannot be seen or touched, cannot be smelled, nor tasted, nor heard. I go for a walk with a companion. I see a green .field, I have a visual impression of the green as well. I have it but I do not see it. Secondly: ideas are had. One has sensations, feelings, moods, inclinations, wishes. An idea which someone has belongs to the content of his consciousness. The field and the frogs in it, the sun which shines on them are there no matter whether I look at them or not, but the sense impression I have of green exists only because of
me, I am its
bearer. It seems absurd to us that a pain, a mood, a wish should rove about the world without a bearer, independently. An experience is impossible without an experient. The inner world presupposes the person whose inner world it is.Thirdly: ideas need a bearer. Things of the outer world are however independent... Fourthly, every idea has its own bearer”
(The Thought: A Logical Inquiry; by Gottlob Frege, Mind, New Series, Vol. 65, No.259. (Jul., 1956), pp.289-311.)
“A third realm must be recognized. What belongs to this corresponds with ideas, in that it cannot
be perceived by the
senses. ..[But different] in that it needs no bearer... Thus the thought, for example, which we expressed in the Pythagorean Theorem is timelessly true, true independently
of whether anyone takes it
planet which, already before anyone has seen it, has been in interaction with other planets.”
(The Thought: A Logical Inquiry; by Gottlob Frege, Mind, New Series, Vol. 65, No.259. (Jul., 1956), pp.289-311.)
Frege has not denied that “Ideas” have meaning. He merely mentions that they have no truth claims. I agree with him till where he argues that sciences like mathematics or physics demand propositions which have meaning/sense, a truth claim, and an objective existence. I will later explain in the article why I do not agree that ideas have no truth-claims. There is more to “Ideas” than what is conceived by Frege. They are not as subjective as he says. The mirror neuron– theory, in this regard, is mentioned below. In fact, even Wittgenstein is under the same umbrella when he says that subjective notions have no role in language. It is a general notion that Wittgenstein was influenced by Frege. HE says in philosophical investigation, in point 293 of PI where he gives ‘Beetle in the box’ argument, that subjective notions have zero roles in public discourse. The argument is that no two people have the access to the same subjective notions. This is a highly problematic view. There are two views which go against this notion and are more convincing. These views are as follows:
One, Churchland’s argument in the article, “Eliminative materialism and propositional attitudes” says that when two hemisphere of the same mind can communicate then, with the help of artificial ‘commisure’ of some kind different people can also have access to each others’ ‘experiences’.ii
Two, ‘Mirror Neuron Theory’ says that, “In the early 1990s, a team of neuroscientists at the University of Parma made a surprising discovery: Certain groups of neurons in the brains of macaque monkeys fired not only when a monkey performed an action – grabbing an apple out of a box, for instance – but also when the monkey watched someone else performing that action; and even when the monkey heard someone performing the action in another room.”
(Source: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/whats-so-special-about-mirror-neurons/)
that there must be a third realm of thoughts or abstract entities. In the second case, they would have to believe that there are multiple agencies. In fact, quantum indeterminacy supports the latter position. It holds that the world taken as a whole is not deterministic.iii It was maintained in logical positivism that whatever phenomena are non –mathematical, would not be under the purview of mechanistic explanation (Kafatos, Robert Nadeau and Menas;, 1999).The entire mechanistic and eliminativist philosophers have fallen short of giving any argument to establish that our day to day, socio- cultural and emotional lives are mathematical. So the way these philosophers have solved the issue of life or consciousness (in particular) is such that it would fall under the fallacy of “irrelevant conclusion”. Further, if Eliminativism rejects any kind of order, then even, question arises as to why the atoms combine at all. I could not find the answer in Churchland’s above mentioned paper. Physicalists may rely on dispositional theory. But the question is why the atoms are disposed the way they are disposed. Here, referring to causal determinism is not of much help. In this regard the following argument can be taken into account:
“Once a deterministic path is set in motion, all future events become regimented by that singular path of causation. However, through his affinity for Many Worlds theory, Hawking is trying to have his determinist cake and eat it too. If discrete events are pre-destined by a deterministic chain of causality, then a specific event that transpires in an infinite number of universes must have, in every case, been generated by the same chain of deterministic events in every other universe where it transpires, e.g., if I am typing the word "infinity" in an infinite number of alternative universes, then the sequence of events--from the big bang to the present--that have delivered me to the moment where I am typing "infinity" into this computer must have been identical in all cases. If determinism holds water, then identical events require identical chains of causality”... “If a hardcore determinist like Hawking admits that a singular chain of events literally can and does produce an endless variety of outcomes, then it is not reasonable to insist in the very next breath that any single event can produce one and only one pre-determined outcome. If a single event can produce infinity of possible outcomes, then the universe is, by definition, non-determinate.”
Eliminativism promotes a very peculiar kind of determinism -by maintaining that there is no 'subject'. They maintain that happening of a phenomenon is mere consequent upon, the combination of atoms and the disintegration of these combinations. However, now we know that quantum indeterminacy pervades the world. iv
Existentialism, on its turn, promotes a kind of anarchism; it maintains that one cannot know what is right, that values are constructed by a group of people and imposed on the rest. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard maintained it. In fact, when there is no meaning of life, then, how the actions done by us can be either right or wrong? In fact, it is here that the very debate between action and events arises. The subject is pushed out of our epistemological concerns/ debates.
Section II
This section deals in detail about the lacunae in Frege’s notion and analyses some modern sciences’ contributions in the concept of meaning.
If thoughts are not inside us then, in this case “the thoughts” are as independent to us as the objective world, which includes things like: chair, table etc. Further, human capacity is limited. We do not understand the objective world fully. We do not have foolproof laws to predict its functioning. Therefore, it seems to me that, it is an over-confidence to say that we understand how the “third realm” or the realm of “Thoughts” works. We cannot explain many things in nature, so, it may also be possible that we may not be able to explain many things of the world of thoughts as well. In such circumstances, putting the whole burden of meaning generation on it (the third realm) is highly problematic.
Another thing which I want to argue in regard to meaning generation is this: I think that both logic and intentional behavior are integral to meaning generation in both the worlds: the inner world and the outer world. And neither the inner and outer world are exactly over-lapping, nor the sense of meaning in the two worlds can be exactly over-lapping.
Nadeau and Menas;, 1999; Kafatos, Robert Nadeau and Menas;, 1999)). He takes “truth” to be the frame of reference of propositions. But, when the propositions are about a world where there is no absolute frame of reference then, how the propositions themselves have a static truth – claim.
There is one more problem with Fregean account: it does not tell how we interact with the intangible third realm of thoughts. As regards physical world we have a theory of “Stimulus and response” which is even finding ground in neuroscience researches. In the mirror neuron theory, it is said that, “In the early 1990s, a team of neuroscientists at the University of Parma made a surprising discovery: Certain groups of neurons in the brains of macaque monkeys fired not only when a monkey performed an action – grabbing an apple out of a box, for instance – but also when the monkey watched someone else performing that action; and even when the monkey heard someone performing the action in another room.”
2010.)
Another example is this: Our brain has some neuronal firing when we see the known faces. But when it comes to abstract entities, we see that their existence is under debate. Even when their existence is granted, their completely separate world is under question. And even when they are granted a separate world, our principles of interaction with that word is not known. Therefore, there seems to be a series of problems with the acceptance of third world and unchangeable objective reality. It is one thing to accept an objective reality, but, to consider it unchangeable is a different thing. Now we have seen that objectivist frame-works are not complete, there is more to the notion of meaning than what is explainable in objectivist frame-work.
Section III
Further, on one side there are reductionist world-views as this:
(Hawking, Stephen, and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. New York: Bantam Books,2010)
AI is a far-fetched dream; we do not have a clear concept of meaning as yet. In this regard it is worth to refer to critics of mirror-neuron theory:
““Iacoboni and the other 'action understanding' supporters are conflating two logically independent questions,” Hickok explains. “Their original claim was that mirror neurons provide
the mechanism for attaching meaning to actions like hand and speech gestures. But the second
question – which they conflate with the first – is whether the meanings of actions are coded in
motor systems.” In other words, before we can say for sure whether mirror neurons are necessary
for understanding others' actions, we first need to establish whether these neurons associate
actions with their meanings, code the meanings themselves, or neither.”
““It could be that mirror neurons facilitate your understanding a reaching movement,” Hickok adds, “but don’t themselves represent the semantics of the concept 'reach' generally.” In short,
even if mirror neurons do enable your brain to access the concept 'reach,' that doesn't mean they
themselves are the neurons that encode that concept.”
(Article: What’s so special about Mirror Neurons, by Ben Thomas. Source:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/whats-so-special-about-mirror-neurons/#)
On the other has intentionalists are also noticing one way of meaning generation.
“Intentionality is utterly mysterious from a material stand-point. This is apparent first because intentionality points in the direction opposite to that of causality…..the intentional arrow is located in the field of concepts and awareness, afield which is not independent of , but stands aside of physical space and time.” (Tallis, 2010)
sufficient meaning generation. Objective world/ the physical world are a necessary condition for a language to be there at all. But, a subjective experience of this world is at the base of interaction. What we communicate is phenomenal in characteristic. But, what we communicate about, is physical in characteristic. Without there being a phenomenal aspect of physical reality we cannot even construct a language. Even the physical aspects are communicated phenomenally. For example: we cannot even talk of matters of physics in the physicalist frame-work. Phenomenality cannot be denied. It relates to how we locate ourselves in the world and how we associate the appearances of the world in our experience.
The propositions representing the outer are studied in hard sciences and the propositions relating and representing the interaction of the outer and inner worlds through the medium of “Human subjects” are the subject-matter of the studies in social sciences.
Intentionality or directed-ness is all about contextualization. And context cannot be copied and implanted as a program in any AI, therefore AI is not possible. The theory of meaning cannot be studied in abstraction and language cannot be constructed in isolation.
I propose the following program in this regard:
1. It must be understood that mechanism of meaning generation must be different in outer world and in the inner –world.
2. Dualism cannot be escaped. At the minimum there would be property dualism.
3. There has to be different mechanism of communication of experience of inner world and experience of outer world.
4. Statements about both the worlds can have truth claims.
5. Any account of meaning generation in the inner world would need to take into account “the mirror neuron Theory”. And any account of meaning generation in the outer world would have to take into account the “Stimulus-response theory”.
Section IV
“The whole essence of the human being, including his consciousness, is communicative by its very nature. And this ability defines the essence of consciousness and also its vehicles, the individual and society. People are constantly afloat in an atmosphere of communication. They are eager to say something to each other, to learn or teach, to show or prove, to agree or reject, to ask or order, console, implore, show affection, and so on. Communication arose and developed with the rise of man and the formation of society in the process of labour. From the very first communication was a part of labour activity and satisfied its needs. As time went on, it was transformed into a relatively independent need to share, to pour out one's soul, either in grief or joy, or for no particular reason, a need that recurred day after day and was of vital moral and psychological importance to the individual. Communication is such a vital factor of existence that without it our animal ancestors would never have become people; without the ability to communicate a child cannot learn about, absorb culture and become a socially developed person. The depression caused by loneliness also indicates the exceptional importance of communication for human beings. Not for nothing is solitary confinement of criminals considered to be one of the severest punishments by most peoples of the world. In a situation where he can communicate a person acquires and sharpens his intellect, but in the opposite case he may even lose his reason.”
(Chapter 3. Consciousness of the World and the World of Consciousness. Source: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch03-s03.html )
And if nature actually on the principle of sufficient cause and that if over-determinism is genuinely problematic then, what is not living cannot have a language. We need to communicate not because we have the urge to do so, as expressivists like: Ayer would say. We communicate because life is an instinct, as Freud says; and communication many a times is a defense mechanism. Here is a recent research which somewhat substantiates the speculation. There are three quotes in a row from that article:
“A new study concludes that the art of conversation may have arisen early in human evolution, because it made it easier for our ancestors to teach each other how to make stone tools—a skill that was crucial for the spectacular success of our lineage.”
has attacked the problem in a very different way. Rather than considering tool-making as a proxy for language ability, he and his colleagues explored the way that language may help modern humans learn to make such tools.”
“The researchers conclude that the successful spread of even the earliest known tool-making technology, more than 2 million years ago, would have required the capacity for teaching, and probably also the beginnings of spoken language—what the researchers call protolanguage. (Many researchers think that gestural communication was the prelude to spoken language, which might explain its effectiveness in these experiments.) “The ability to rapidly share the skill to make Oldowan tools would have brought fitness benefits” to early humans, Morgan says, such as greater efficiency in butchering animals; and then Darwinian natural selection would have acted to gradually improve primitive language abilities, eventually leading from protolanguage to the full-blown, semantically complex languages we speak today.”
(Human language may have evolved to help our ancestors make tools, By Michael Balter. Source: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/01/human-language-may-have-evolved-help-our-ancestors-make-tools )
BY communication I just mean a meaningful interaction. Studying “Communication” in abstraction seems absurd to me. Communication is a necessity which got us into the Endeavour to devise sophisticated languages. It has to be seen contextually and holistically.
Bibliography
Kafatos, Robert Nadeau and Menas;. (1999). The non-local Universe: New physics and matters of Mind. Oxford University Press.
MacDonald, Cynthia and Graham. (2010). Emergence and Downward Causation. In E. b. Macdonald, Emergence in Mind (pp. 139-168). Oxford University Press. Searle, J. (n.d.). Neuroscience , Intentionality and Freewill: Reply to Habermas. Searle, J. R. (2004). Minds, Brains and Programs. In J. Heil, Philosophy of Mind: A guide and Anthology (pp. 235-252). Oxford.
141-156.
Stephen Hawking,and Leonard Mlodinow. (2010). The Grand Design. New York: Bantam Books.
Tallis, R. (2010). What Neuroscience cannot tell us about ourselves. the New Atlantis , 3-25.
iArgument in this regard is given by Frege, “Error and superstition have causes just as much as genuine knowledge. The assertion both of what is
false and of what is true takes place in accordance with psychological laws. A derivation from these and an explanation of a mental process that terminates in an assertion can never take the place of a proof of what is asserted.”
ii He even says in the very same article that in those circumstances there would be no place to the notion of “Third world”. However, I did not
mention it in the main text because, any such argument is subject to the Frege's criticism which I have already mentioned already.
iii“ In other words, the behaviour of quantum-scale phenomena are downright bizarre:
At the quantum level particles appear, disappear and reappear unpredictably and without having conventionally traversed the distances between
the separate spaces they occupy.
Entangled particles defy the laws of physics by exhibiting what Einstein referred to "spooky action at a distance."
Single particles behave as though they are interacting with other, non-existent particles when fired individually through a double-slit filter.
Quantum phenomena exhibit "complementarily," which means that phenomena will morph depending upon what type of techniques observers
employ to examine the phenomena in question Etc.
Thus, those who believe in an indeterminate universe dismiss the idea that an infinitely complex, but, nonetheless, single chain of causality
rigidly determines all subsequent events that transpire in the universe. For indeterminists, the universe is full of "actors" that often engage in
unpredictable improvisation; their performances often change without notice and, occasionally, in open defiance of the "direction" that is
essential to preserve a deterministic universe. This is true of the micro realm of quantum mechanics, and it is also true of the macro universe that ceaselessly confounds and astounds its unpredictable human observers (McGettigan, 2011).”
iv Searle mentions in his paper titled, “Reply to Habermas” that quantum indeterminacy pervades the world. And that macro-world appears
