Gary Fuller

A critique of Dennett

This essay is intended to be a systematic exposition and critique of Daniel Dennetts general views. It is divided into three main sections. In section 1 we raise the question of the nature of a plausible scientific psychology, and suggest that the question of whether folk psychology will serve as an adequate scientific psychology is of special relevance in a discussion of Dennett. We then characterize folk psychology briefly. We suggest that Dennetts views have undergone at least one major change, and proceed to discuss both his earlier and his later views.In section 2 we suggest that Dennett is correctly perceived as an instrumentalist in his earlier works. We think that Dennett later abandons this position because of general worries about instrumentalism and, more importantly, because Dennett became convinced that an instrumentalist conception of folk psychology will not enable us to vindicate the notions of personhood, moral agency, and responsibility. This left Dennett with a dilemma. On the one hand, he does not think that beliefs, etc., will turn out to be genuine scientific posits. On the other hand, he thinks that moral agency would be impossible if we could not treat beliefs, etc. as causally efficacious in some suitable sense.In section 3 we discuss Dennetts resolution of this dilemma. The key to his current view, we suggest, is the illata-abstracta distinction. Dennett holds that both illata and abstracta are real and have causal powers, even though only illata are genuine scientific posits. He suggests that beliefs etc. are abstracta, and are the subject matter of what he calls ‘intentional system theory’. The subject matter of another theory, what Dennett calls ‘subpersonal cognitive psychology’, are illata, which are subpersonal intentional states. The important point is that this distinction lets Dennett have it both ways: (i) Since beliefs are mere abstracta, we need not commit ourselves to the thesis that beliefs will turn out to be posits of an adequate scientific psychology. (ii) Since beliefs have causal power, we are assured of moral and rational agency. We shall argue that Dennetts current view is untenable. If we are right in our arguments, then Dennetts program to produce a scientifically plausible psychology, one that will turn out to vindicate folk psychology (in some suitable sense), is a failure. It fails in the following important ways: (i) What Dennett sketches — intentional system theory cum subpersonal cognitive psychology — is not a plausible scientific psychology. (ii) As a consequence, Dennett also fails to provide a satisfactory foundation for moral and rational agency.

Seeing Things: Defending Direct Perception

Abstract When we experience the world (open our eyes, smell the roses, touch the steering wheel), we come into contact with the world. On one end of this relation is the mental state, the experience. On other end are the objects, events experienced. Though we shall often use examples from vision because of its dominance as a sensory modality, what we say will apply to all senses. If experiences are on one end of this relation, what is on the other end? We will defend the view that when the experiences are veridical and of the world, the world itself is on the other end. The alternative would be some events caused by the world, perhaps in the mind, but not the world itself. So on the view we want to defend, experiencing the world is a two-placed relation. On the view we will reject, experiencing the world is at least a three-placed relation and the world itself (its objects, properties) is never the direct object of perception. We will reply to several objections to the two-placed view of “direct perception”—objections such as “infinite regress” objection, argument from “illusion and hallucination,” and the argument this ordinary language needs a radical reconstruction yielding the distinction between “perception of objects” and “objects of perception.” For the purposes of this paper, we will outline the basic tenets of this view and reply to the reasons that lead Robert French to reject the view.

Physicalism, realization, and structure

In the philosophy of mind and psychology, a central question since the 1960s has been that of how to give a philosophically adequate formulation of mind-body physicalism. A large quantity of work on the topic has been done in the interim. There have been, and continue to be, extensive discussions of the ideas of physicalism, identity, functionalism, realization, and constitution. My aim in this paper is a modest one: it is to get clearer about these ideas and some of their interrelations. After providing some background and history, I shall focus on two related topics: the distinction between a functional property and a structural one and the dispute over whether a realization account of the mental-physical relation provides a better physicalist account than a constitutional account.

Rules in computationalism and connectionism

Connectionist and computationalist theories are contrasted in many ways in the literature. Extremely common among these contrasts are distinctions that in various ways involve rules. For example, connectionist models are not supposed to use explicit rules where computationalist models do. Connectionist models are said to use soft rules, or soft constraints, where computationalist models do not. The authors believe that, while the distinctions that have been offered in the literature make sense, they do not serve to contrast computationalist models as a class from connectionist models as a class. In other words, for each of the distinctions that has been offered, they believe there to exist both computationalist and connectionist models that fall on either side of the distinctions. Thus, both connectionist and computationalist models may be said to use explicit rules, to use soft rules, and so forth.<<ETX>>