"Why There Still Has to Be a Language of Thought". Fodor (1987)

Hay traducción castellana como apéndice de Psicosemántica en Tecnos.

"The Appeal to Tacit Knowledge in Psychological Explanation". Fodor (1968)

"Mental simulation, Tacit Theory, and the Threat of Collapse" Davies and Stone (2001)

DRAFT (to be proofread)

-Firstly, A GENERAL QUESTION: Why is (so) important the alternative between theory- theory and simulation? What is at stake?

            One possible aspect of this question might be the idea of knowledge in theory-theory involving laws, generalizations, and/or formal rules. Simulation does not require knowledge in this sense.

It is clear the relevance of unconscious processes in our behaviour and even many psychologists point out how they underlie conscious mental states (and cause them, at least to some extent); the problem is whether to account for those unconscious processes in terms of (tacit) knowledge is justified. It is thought that human beings have a kind of innate unconscious system to produce language; due to this system we “know” how to use language, although we are no aware of the system itself. I think that this system is not “knowledge”, because there are different kinds of unconscious processes or unconscious mental phenomena and not all of them have to be knowledge. In my opinion, a key concept which I have not seen in these papers is memory: tacit knowledge should be something that you have stored in your memory and may be accessible. However, an innate and unconscious Universal Grammar (Chomsky) is not stored in the memory in this way. According to this criterion the ability to predict/interpret/explain the behaviour of other people could depend partly on tacit knowledge, but also on unconscious capacities not stored in memory (for example, mirror neurons and their operations). As a general rule, things that are innate are not stored in memory, but in other systems (or ways); therefore they is no (tacit) knowledge.

Possibly the notion of explicit representation somehow corresponds to the criterion based on memory, although they differ in some respects (interesting: analyzing these differences).

Explicit representation may be another controversial issue:

Does require tacit knowledge explicit representation?

The answer given by Heal is NO. But is more difficult to see why or how Davies and Stone connect this question to “the mirroning relation between causal structure and derivational structure” (it seems to me that this relation is, at least apparently, similar to the relation between syntax (causal) and semantic (inferential) in Fodor).

What does mean explicit representation? (An answer is provided in the article: language-like format, sentence-like representations).

PERSONAL AND SUBPERSONAL LEVELS

 The final goal of the debate, as far as I know, concerns interpretations/predictions/explanations at the level of folk psychology[A1] . Since folk psychology runs at the personal level, this level turns out to be crucial. On the other hand, it may be uncontroversial that there are specific relations between personal and subpersonal levels (for example in so far as it is known that mental personal behaviour is connected to particular neural activity), the point is to figure out the nature of these relations and when they are relevant (autonomy, reduction, etc. –By the way, autonomy is relative, that is, concerns to a particular aspect or description, as there are actual relations-). Therefore, there are also subpersonal levels which can be considered if it is showed that they are relevant regarding the personal level. Several problems might be found in this respect: the distinction between biological (mainly neurobiological) subpersonal levels, physical - chemical levels, and psychological subpersonal levels (information processing mechanisms could be just a theory about these levels but I am not very familiar with this concept) is sometimes not taken into account.

QUESTION:

Although subpersonal levels are always unconscious, can be considered any unconscious mental state as a personal?

---

 [A1]So, related to mindreading, to the theory of mind issue and to social cognition. But also to the computational theory of mind and AI (in Fodor explicitely). 

"Beliefs and Subdoxactic States" Stich (1978)

DRAFT (to be proofread)

So far I thought that, according to functionalism, the key property of intentional mental states was, apart from intentionality itself, their causal role. However, in the Stich paper causality appears connected to subdoxactic states, while the relation between intentional states is mainly conceived in terms of inference[A1] . Moreover, Stich suggests certain link between inference and consciousness (what implies a link between intentional states, esenctialy beliefs, and consciousness), whereas in the standard cognitive-scientific view the link traditionally underlined has been between intentional states and unconscious processes (For instance, Fodor 1987).

Although the link between inference and beliefs is in general clear, sometimes the position of the author is rather confusing, for instance, he admits that “inference relation includes other states in addition to beliefs” (514). It is true that he assume the existence of “specialized and limited” (507) inferential contact between beliefs and subdoxactic states, but in other occasions he emphasizes the opposite view: the two features which distinguishes beliefs from subdoxactic states are the acces to consciousness and inferential integration.

Why is important the distinction between beliefs and sybdoxactic states? Apparently the reason, according to Stich, would be the acceptance of intuitive psychology theory (which is coherent with this distinction, unlike the theory posited by Harman). But it is a sufficient reason (or ever the only one)? (Stich also suggests the importance to identify a particular psychological state -500, also 514-515-).

In general, the article shows that the concept of inference is problematic and possibly ambiguous (see 512 and 513 –perceptual inference, computational inference, etc.). Stich claims that the use of the concept in this context is an empirical question (513-514), but a matter of definition, I think, rarely is just an empirical question.   

Another interesting point is whether beliefs have to have the form of linguistic representation. In this were the case, then linguistic representation would be a criterion for beliefs (516-517).

Additional question: It is not very clear the relation between simulation and inference: the reason for neglecting the distinction, the author suggests, could be that “like Harman, many of those concerned with cognitive simulation have been so captivated with the promise of inferential accounts of the mechanisms underlying perception and thought that they have failed to note the rather special and largely isolated nature of the inferential processes between beliefs and subdoxactic states” (517). 

ANOTHER QUESTION: THE NON-INFERENTIAL RELATIONS BETWEENS BELIEFS: How are interpreted in this context contradictory beliefs, inconsistency, etc.?

---

 [A1]Could be worhty to note that Fodor posited a kind of nondemostrative inference: "the inference from like effects to like causes" (Fodor 1968, p. 627).

"Multiple Realizability Revisited: Linking Cognitive and Neural States" Bechtel and Mundale (1999). "Neuroscience and multiple realizacíon: a reply to Bechtel and Mundale" Aizawa (2009). "Levels, individual variation, and massive multiple realization in neurobiology" Aizawa and Gillett (in Bickle, ed., 2009, 539-578)

Mental representation: An introduction. Jerry Fodor (1987)

 DRAFT (to be proofread)


CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS BELIEFS.

When Fodor distinguishes two kinds of mental states he presents “propositional attitudes” defending the notion of unconscious mental states (1987, 106) and adds “For example, beliefs and desires, unlike itches and after images, can and often do lead an entirely dispositional existence; and what is entirely dispositional is presumably ipso facto not conscious” (107). While the primary feature of Qualitative mental states is awareness, the essential property of Intentional mental states, such as beliefs and desires, is aboutness (108), that is, they have intentional content. Cognitive science deal with the later kind of mental states (in fact, “from the cognitive scientist´s point of view, consciousness is an embarrassment, a pathological condition of the mental states that he studies” -106-).

CAUSAL AND INFERENTIAL RELATIONS.

 “The intentional mental states seem to be closely implicated in the causation of behaviour; specifically, of intelligent, higher cognitive behaviour” (Fodor 1987, 108).  Cognitive science shares with commonsense or folk psychology the idea that the behaviour of people is explained by their intentional mental states, basically because they play a causal role with respect to this behaviour.

Moreover, there are also causal relations among beliefs and desires (Fodor 1987, 123).

Fodor introduces inferences when considers the, perhaps, “hardest” question “that a theory of mind has to face” (123), namely “what is for a mental state to have

Intentional content” (ibid.). Fodor suggests that the answer can lies in the connection between the intentional content and the inferential role of a mental state. The examples of this inferential role are logical: “conjuntive belief is inferable from both of its conjunts while the discjuntive belief is inferable from either of its disjuncts” (124). This connection will turn out crucial in the Fodor view since it underlies his main aim: a theory which provide a bridge between causal role and intentional content. Such a bridge will be a sort of “parallelism” (124), due to the fact that inferential relations among symbols can be “mimicked” by their syntactic relations[A1] .

[Another question: It is consistent the statement that “Beliefs have their causal roles in virtue of their contents” (Fodor 1987, 111) with the claim that the causal power depend upon the syntax (see 125)?]

---

 [A1]Thus, a semantic relation, such as deducibility (this is the inferential element), can be mimicked by a syntactic relation, such as derivability (see 125). 

"Motor abstraction: a neuroscientifi account of how action goals and intention are mapped and understood". Vittorio Galese (2009)

El concepto de representación: aparece explicitado en una nota en la ´página 487. Coincide con Fodor -y con la nocicón que se maneja en la Ciencia Cognitiva estándar- en que es un tipo de contenido, pero se distancia del modelo simbólico y se acerca a la visión de la corriente conocida como "embodied cognition". La naturaleza prelinguística de estas representaciones es interesante: por una parte también la representaciones simbólicas propuestas por Fodor son prelinguísticas, sin embargo están concebidas siguiendo un paradigma lingüístico (de ahí que hable de "LANGUAGE of thought¨).