Normativity is the mother of intention: Wittgenstein, normative practices and neurological representations

New Ideas in Psychology 27 (2009) 133–147

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Normativity is the mother of intention: Wittgenstein, normative practices and neurological representations Mason Cash Department of Philosophy, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816-1352, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Available online 12 June 2008

To many philosophers, a scientific explanation of our contentful intentional states requires us to identify neurological representations that implement intentional states, and requires a reductive explanation of such representations’ contents in terms of objective physical properties. From a Wittgensteinian point of view, however, contentful intentional states are normatively constituted within linguistic, social practices. These cannot be completely accounted for in purely physical terms. I outline this normative thesis, defending it from four objections: that it is not naturalistic, that social norms depend on optional desires to conform, that it over-intellectualizes having intentional states (so excludes animals and infants), and that it cannot account for the causal role of content. I explain the ramifications for scientific psychology and neuroscience, and for interpreting the results of such empirical research. Nothing is objectively a contentful representation, yet some brain states or processes can be normatively constituted as representations with content. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Intention Normativity Representation Neuroscience Cognitive psychology

Working in philosophy d like work in architecture in many respects d is really more a working on oneself. On one’s own interpretation. On one’s way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them.) dWittgenstein, Culture and Value (1980, p. 16e). Experiments and explanations in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience employ the scientific method to explain the neurological processes and structures underlying human judgment, decision making, perception, memory, mental imagery, categorization, language processing and so on. E-mail address: [email protected] 0732-118X/$ – see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.newideapsych.2008.04.010

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Such explanations typically appeal to physical structures or processes in the brain that are representations, and computational operations on the information contained in such representations. I will call this approach Representational and Computational Cognitive Science (RCCS). RCCS is interpreted, at least by reductively minded philosophers, to give a picture of the true nature of people’s contentful intentional states: their beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, and other mental states that are about aspects of the world. From a Wittgensteinian point of view, however, contentful intentional states are not basic physical kinds, and so cannot be completely explained by the kind of reductive naturalistic explanation that many philosophers interpret RCCS to require. Rather, intentional states are normatively constituted within normative, linguistic, social practices (forms of life), and thus cannot be fully accounted for by RCCS. Here I will outline this normativity thesis, as I will call it, the thesis that the meanings of people’s utterances, the contents of their thoughts, and thus the informational contents of neurological representations that are said to implement these thoughts, are all constituted by the normative social practice of ascribing and accepting intentional states as reasons for actions. I will defend it from four prevalent objections that are often mistakenly used to rule out this normativity thesis, often before giving it any serious consideration. My aim here is to show that it provides a coherent and empirically supportable view of human beings and their cognitive abilities, one deserving of serious consideration. I will also show that it avoids some of the conceptual obstacles blocking progress for RCCS, such as the still unfilled desideratum of a naturalistic reduction of content facts to physical facts. We cannot accomplish such a reduction, but this normative view can still be part of a naturalistic cognitive science. I will also explore some of the consequences of this thesis for scientific psychology and neuroscience, and for interpreting the results of empirical research into representational processes in the brain. 1. Representational and computational cognitive science According to Wittgenstein (1953),1 one of a philosopher’s tasks is to assemble reminders (x127), with the aim of giving perspicuous description (x122) of phenomena and the way we speak of them. This is particularly useful for phenomena about which we have become confused, largely by being held captive by a misleading philosophical picture that ‘lay in our language, and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably’ (x115). One such set of confusions is at play in RCCS. RCCS rejects Cartesian dualism in which the mind is pictured as a non-physical substance that contains all our mental states, but simply replaces it with what Dennett (1991, p. 107) refers to as Cartesian materialism, in which the brain is pictured as a purely physical substance that contains all our intentional states. RCCS thus keeps the fundamentally Cartesian notion of the brain as a private ‘inner’ space in which all thinking happens, and of intentional states as things that reside in that private space. RCCS aims at a scientific objective investigation of cognitive processes. The core of this research program is something like this: People’s mental states and processes (their knowledge, beliefs, perceptions, intentions, musings, plans, imaginings and so on) can be about things or have content because of representational structures in the brain and their contents. These representations contain information about things; information that is computationally processed to produce actions sensitive to the information represented. Such contentful representations are caused by perceptual activity, and they are part of processes that cause actions. Their causal connections with people’s perceptions, judgments, utterances and other actions help us determine exactly which mechanisms in the brain are representational, the information such representations contain, and their causal (or computational) relationships with other representations. We can see a good example of this tactic in research on the neurological implementation of the very human ability to think about people’s mental states (such as their intentions, beliefs, desires, etc.). This is often referred to as having a ‘Theory of Mind’, or as having ‘mindreading’ abilities as distinct from mere behavior reading. This ability develops slowly in humans over the first few years of life (Flavell, 1999; Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). The ‘graduation day’ test (Bruner & Feldman, 1993,

1

All Wittgenstein references will be to sections (identified by x) of the Philosophical Investigations unless otherwise stated.

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p. 269) for such developing abilities is a child’s ability to pass the kind of false belief task originated by Wimmer and Perner (1983) and refined by Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith (1985). This is often referred to as the ‘Sally–Anne’ test. These studies have preschool children watch as one character (Sally) places an object, such as a chocolate, in a basket and then leaves the room. They then see another character (Anne) hide the object by moving it from the basket to a box. These experiments examine where children expect Sally to look for the object on her return. Younger children, those under four years, and subjects with autism who are much older than this (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985), regularly expect that Sally will look for the object in what they know to be its actual location, in the box where Anne moved it to. In contrast, older preschool children will expect Sally to look in the basket, where she left the object. These older children understand that Sally’s beliefs can model the world in a way that is different from their own beliefs about the world. This difference is explained by positing that those who pass this test and show they can mindread have developed a representational mechanism, often described as a Theory of Mind module (e.g. Leslie, 1991), that represents the contents of others’ states of mind. The next step then would be to try to identify the structure or process in the brain that actually does this job of representing others’ beliefs. Gallagher and Frith (2003), for example, give a review of functional neuroimaging studies indicating that one key brain region involved in mindreading is the anterior paracingulate cortex (APC). This region seems active when human subjects engage in thinking about others’ mental states and in activities that involve thinking about the subject’s own mental states (Gallagher & Frith, 2003, p. 80). It is very tempting to conclude that we are coming close to identifying a neurological state or process that itself is a representation of such thoughts. We might expect that once neuroimaging techniques get more precise, we will be able to distinguish different kinds of activity in this area, and associate the different activities with different representational contents. A representation with the content that Sally thinks the chocolate is in the basket will be one pattern of activity and a representation with the content that Sally thinks it is in the box will be a distinct pattern of activity. This is one example among many of RCCS explaining human cognitive abilities by identifying representational brain states or processes. When we finally nail down the neurological details of cases like this, it is expected, we will have objective, scientific, naturalistic, explanations of what intentional states and mental processes really are and of how they really work. These expectations, however, are based on problematic notions of what intentional states are, and of the relationships between people’s mental states, their actions, and their neurological states, as I will explain in the next sections. 2. RCCS is based on a misleading philosophical picture For Wittgenstein, our focus should be on whole persons and their mental abilities, rather than on minds and mental states or brains and brain states. Sprague (1999) gives a detailed summary of the contrasts between what he calls Cartesian and physicalist ‘mindism’ and the ‘personism’ advocated by Ryle (1949) and Wittgenstein. One of the principal differences is a shift from thinking of a person as a body controlled by a brain to thinking of a person as an agent, a doer of deeds. Another fundamental difference is the shift from attempting to explain what minds are and how intentional states have contents, to explaining what human agents can do and how we are able to do such things. Søren Overgaard (2004) argues that x308 of the Philosophical Investigations is crucial in understanding this contrast. Here Wittgenstein remarks: How does the philosophical problem about mental processes and states and about behaviourism arise? – The first step is the one that altogether escapes notice. We talk of processes and states and leave their nature undecided. Sometime perhaps we shall know more about them – we think. But that is just what commits us to a particular way of looking at the matter. For we have a definite concept of what it means to learn to know a process better. (The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very one that we thought quite innocent.) Although Wittgenstein’s targets in this passage are Cartesian dualism and behaviourism, the description applies equally well to RCCS. The ‘decisive movement in the conjuring trick,’ Overgaard and Sprague each argue, is accepting that our talk of mental process and states can be taken at face

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value. Our language, in the way we speak of intentional states, reinforces this misleading conception of intentional states as neurological objects. We use nouns to speak of beliefs, desires, ideas and fears. We talk, and so think, of these as things people have. RCCS aims to show that intentional states are not meaningful objects in Cartesian minds, but rather meaningful objects in brains. Thus RCCS assumes that intentional states are neurological representations of some kind, and expects that their precise nature will be better understood as we understand more about brains and how they work. Although he is a critic of the ‘computational’ aspects of RCCS, Searle (1990, 1992), nonetheless, gives a good example of this view. Searle is convinced that an ascription of intentionality must be either true or false (it is true of humans and possibly some animals, but false of programmed computers), and what makes it true is a brain state with ‘intrinsic intentionality’; a brain state that really does have intentional content, it really is about something (Searle, 1992, pp. 78–82). A view such as this motivates the expectation that someone equipped with a brain-scanner and a sophisticated account of neuroscience could in principle confirm whether a person does have the intentional state ascribed. The problem with such views is that we have substituted a neurological state for a state of a Cartesian mind, but kept the Cartesian assumptions about the private and ‘inner’ nature of mental states in place and thus keeping all the problems with the alleged privacy of such mental states. Intentional states, by Wittgenstein’s so-called ‘private language argument’ (x243 ff.), cannot be such essentially private internal states. Private entities accessible to only one person cannot stand in any law-like association, for instance with the kind of linguistic symbol that we use to talk about intentional states. Wittgenstein argues this with his famous example of the diary-keeper who associates the symbol ‘S’ with a private sensation (x258). The point is that if my intentional state (the sensation, for the diarykeeper) were completely private, there could be no difference (not even in principle) between my correctly making the association between that intentional state and an expression of our public language like ‘S’, and it merely seeming to me that I make the association correctly. We could have no criteria by which to tell the difference between these two cases. And this lack of criteria for correctness means that here we cannot speak of being correct or of being incorrect, for instance when ascribing an intentional state to anyone, including to ourselves. But we do have criteria for the correct use of words like ‘pain’, ‘belief’, and ‘intention’. We successfully teach children to correctly use such mental state terms to speak about their own intentional states and those of others (x257, x269). However, we could not achieve such teaching if ascriptions referred to private ‘inner’ states and processes, since observing and thus correcting others’ usage would be impossible. Thus the correct use of such terms cannot depend upon the presence of private ‘inner’ referents. So although the grammar of terms like ‘belief’ and ‘desire’ may lead us to think that the truthmakers of ascriptions of such intentional states are the intentional states themselves, as private ‘inner’ states or processes, this is a misleading picture (x305). Wittgenstein remarks that ‘this picture of the inner process.with its ramifications stands in the way of our seeing the use of the word as it is’. The notion that an ascription of an intentional state is true if the person has a particular neurological representation is based on this same misleading picture. We should resist the inclination to think of ascriptions of intentional states as referring to such ‘inner’ neurological states. If the correctness of an ascription of an intentional state depended upon the presence of a neurological state or process, then we would not be able to teach children to correctly use mental state terms until we had a more well-developed account of the nature and contents of neurological representations and had taught them to use it along with the kind of brain-scanner we cannot yet construct. The fact that we can talk correctly about our own mental states and those of others, and can teach children to do so, without yet having any well-developed neuroscience or brain-scanner, shows that such talk does not depend for its correctness on the presence of such neurological states or processes. Wittgenstein remarks (x580) that inner private states stand in need of outward public criteria. Ascriptions of intentional states depend upon agreed-upon publicly observable criteria of the intentional state, such as events that the person perceives, how they behave, how they speak, and so on. As Racine and Carpendale (2007) point out, a shared linguistic practice undergirds a child’s developing competence with using such mental state terms. Such practices depend upon the fact that a person’s mental states are expressed in their behavior, which is a prominent theme in the Philosophical Investigations. Such outward expressions of intentional states are integral to ascriptions of intentional states and judging the appropriateness of such ascriptions.

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Thus any attempt to identify the neurological underpinnings of a particular intentional state cannot identify or correlate the intentional state itself with any neurological state or process. There is no such intentional state, as a discrete item that can be identified with or can stand in a correlation with anything. Rather, any neurological investigation will look at neural states causally related to the publicly observable features by virtue of which that intentional state is typically judged to be appropriately ascribed: the features of the person’s situation that they perceive and the actions they perform in that situation. For instance, identification of the APC as a possible site of neurological representation of others’ thoughts utilizes just such methods, by looking at neural activity in the contexts of tasks the successful performance of which is best explained by ascribing thoughts about another’s thoughts. 3. The normativity thesis However, this does not mean that as we explore such causal connections between perceptions, brain states and actions, that we will find neurological states with intentionality or with particular semantic contents. But this is not because such a causal account is impossible, or that it will inevitably have a ‘gap’ and ‘leave something out’. Rather, as Anscombe (1983) argues, ‘there might come a time in which there is no further puzzle about how each link in the causal chain produces the next one. And still nothing has been said about intentions, beliefs, thoughts or decisions’ (p. 184). This is not just a difference in scale, such that we need to ‘step back’ from the brain level to see the intentional states. People’s intentions, beliefs, thoughts and decisions are different in kind, not just in scale, from causal mechanisms in the brain. The nature of this ‘difference in kind’ can be revealed by considering the nature of the public criteria we use to ascribe intentional states to one another. We ascribe a particular intentional state when a person has seen and done certain things. And to ascribe a particular intentional state to a person is to say that there are certain actions one can expect from that person. For instance, we ascribe the belief that it is raining when the person has seen the rain or complained about the rain. And to believe that it is raining is to be prepared to act in certain ways and to say certain kinds of things. Most importantly for present purposes this ‘preparation’ to act in certain ways is not simply a disposition to act in those ways, but rather a part of a normative practice, in which one should act in those ways. While there is some disagreement about the precise nature of the norms involved,2 and there are many objections (the most significant of which I will rebut presently), the thesis that the contents of intentional states are normatively constituted is becoming increasingly recognized as a reasonable approach to intentionality (e.g. Greenberg, 2005; Haugeland, 1990). On the version of this normativity thesis I will outline and defend here, ascriptions of intentional states are part of the normative social and linguistic practice of what Brandom (1994, p. 142) calls ‘deontic scorekeeping’; keeping track of what we each are committed to doing and saying, and of what we each are thus entitled to expect others to do and to say. This thesis, Brandom claims, draws heavily on several of Wittgenstein’s ‘grand themes’: ‘the insistence on the normative character of language and intentionality, the pragmatist commitment to understanding these norms in terms of practices rather than exclusively in terms of rules, and the recognition of the essentially social character of such norms’ (Brandom, 1994, p. 55). On this view, an intentional state is a normatively constituted status, one ascribed by members of a community according to the norms of a shared social practice of giving reasons for actions. Tracking such a normative status helps us simplify the task of keeping track of what we are entitled to expect one another to be committed to doing and saying. The commitments and entitlements instituted in this practice of ascribing intentional states as reasons for actions follow from the following two complementary norms of the practice, which we each can expect one another to understand and conform to:

2 See Cash (2008) for a detailed defense of the thesis that the norms are intersubjective norms of shared social practices, as opposed to subjective norms of rationality (e.g. Gibbard, 2003) or objective norms of correctness (e.g. Boghossian, 2003, 2005). Some aspects of the defense I give here of the normativity thesis in general echo the more detailed arguments for the social version of the normativity thesis that I present in that paper.

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(1) ascribe only the intentional states that the agent’s situation, actions and utterances entitle you to ascribe; (2) undertake a commitment to performing those actions that ought to follow rationally from the particular intentional states that your actions have entitled others to ascribe to you. According to the norms of the practice of giving reasons for actions, observers are entitled to ascribe particular reasons for particular actions. They may not ascribe any reasons, but if they do, the norms of this practice stipulate that observers should ascribe particular intentional states rather than others, based on what the agent has perceived and done. Furthermore, agents who are felicitously ascribed particular intentional states should perform particular actions. Acting in ways that one knows entitle observers to ascribe particular intentional states to one, commits the agent to acting consistently with those intentional states; to acting as one with those intentional states should act. On the normativity thesis, the normative practice of giving and asking for reasons for actions institutes inferential connections between ascribed intentional states and actions that partly constitute the meanings of words and the contents of intentional states. This shared inferential linguistic practice specifies what precise contentful intentional states one is entitled to ascribe based on a person’s actions. It also specifies what precise kinds of actions one is entitled to expect the agent to be committed to performing if they are appropriately ascribed such contentful intentional states. It is these normatively instituted inferential connections that establish the meaning of an utterance, in establishing what someone who utters it should be committed to thinking, doing and saying. And they establish the content of an intentional state in the same way, by establishing what someone who thinks that should be committed to thinking, doing, and saying. It is important to note that this being a shared normative practice is what enables people to successfully explain and predict others’ actions. On this view, sharing such normative social practices is partly constitutive of being a fully accredited member of a linguistic community. This shared socialization has the consequence that the norms you use to ascribe intentional states to me are the same norms I use to ascribe them to myself (Morton, 2003). And the norms you use to predict my future behavior based on the intentional states my past behavior entitled you to ascribe, are the same norms I follow when conforming to my obligation to act ‘rationally’ on the intentional states I take myself to have. Consider the following example: imagine that in your presence, your colleague Pat looks out the window at the water falling from the sky, uttering sincerely, ‘I don’t want to get wet, but I need to leave and I didn’t bring my umbrella. I wish this rain would stop.’ This action would entitle you to ascribe to Pat the belief that it is raining, the desire not to get wet, the belief that the umbrella is elsewhere, the hope that the rain would stop soon, and so on. You would not be entitled to ascribe to Pat intentional states that conflict with these, such as the desire to get wet, the belief that it is sunny, or the hope that it continues to rain. You would also not be entitled (at least, not without further actions on Pat’s part) to ascribe irrelevant intentional states either, such as the desire to eat a banana, the intention to buy milk on the way home tonight, or the hope that gas prices go down. Furthermore, being a member of the same normative community as you, and thus sharing this normative practice, Pat should know that you ought to ascribe such intentional states based on such actions and utterances. Pat should thus accept that you are entitled to expect Pat to be committed to the particular range of actions that (ceteris paribus) inferentially ought to follow from these intentional states: to stay indoors, to ask to borrow an umbrella, to look out the window despairingly when it starts raining even harder, to complain about the terrible wetting that will happen on going out in the rain, and so on. If Pat then smiled, uttered sincerely ‘Yay! I’d love to get wet in the rain,’ and gleefully tapdanced out into the rain, without raincoat or umbrella, humming the tune of ‘Singing in the Rain’ you would be entitled to think that something was amiss. This would at least entitle you to ask for reasons (‘why the change of mind?’) for this apparent conflict between what Pat seemed committed to doing, and what Pat subsequently did. I cannot here give a detailed explanation of the subtleties of this normative thesis, I have simply sketched it using rather broad brushstrokes; Brandom (1994) provides more detail. I will further clarify some of the details in the following sections, however, by defending this thesis from several common objections.

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4. Non-reductive naturalism It is my experience that readers often are reluctant to give serious consideration to this thesis that intentional states and their contents are constituted by normative social practices, because they have in mind a conception of naturalistic explanation prevalent in RCCS that gives rise to a common objection to the normative thesis. Jerry Fodor explains this picture of naturalistic explanation of intentionality this way: It’s hard to see.how one can be a Realist about intentionality without also being, to some extent or other, a Reductionist. If the semantic and the intentional are real properties of things, it must be in virtue of their identity with (or maybe of their supervenience on?) properties that are themselves neither intentional nor semantic. If aboutness is real, it must be really something else. (Fodor, 1987, p. 97) Most cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind concerned about this problem take Fodor’s challenge seriously. They hold that representations’ aboutness, their content, is to be explained by reducing them to ‘something else.’ Fodor continues, outlining the constraints on any attempt at such a reduction: Here are the ground rules. I want a naturalized theory of meaning: a theory that articulates in non-semantic non-intentional terms, sufficient conditions for one bit of the world to be about (to express, represent, or be true of) another bit. (Fodor, 1987, p. 98) This conception entails that the contents of intentional states must be mechanistically explained in terms of representations in the brain, and that each representation’s content must be naturalistically reduced to physical properties. Most attempts in RCCS to naturalize semantics thus attempt to reduce facts about semantic contents of particular neurological states to physical facts about that state’s causal powers or causal history. Examples include Cummins (1996), Dretske (1988, 1995), Fodor (1990), and Millikan (1984, 1993). However, there are good reasons to doubt the success of even these most widely lauded attempts. The general problem for RCCS is that these accounts each either fail to account for semantic contents that are specific enough to enable misrepresentation or they tacitly incorporate the kind of normative social practices I outline here and so fail to genuinely reduce particular content facts to physical facts (e.g. Cash, in press; Loewer, 1997). Godfrey-Smith (2006) describes the whole program of naturalizing mental representation as having recently lost momentum, perhaps because the naysayers were right all along. We have been looking for the wrong kind of account (Godfrey-Smith suspects likewise, though the kind he thinks we should look for differs considerably from mine). The normativity thesis offers a different, non-reductive account. If we assume, incorrectly, that abiding by Fodor’s ground rules is the only way to naturalistically explain semantic content, then the approach that follows from the normative thesis appears to fail to be sufficiently naturalistic. The normativity thesis accounts for intentionality by appeal to norms, but norms depend upon the intentional states of agents who follow them. This appears to be circular because it explains intentionality in terms of something that itself is intentional; directly contravening Fodor’s stipulation that we explain intentionality in non-intentional terms. That the normativity thesis thus appears to entail a viciously circular regress is a very common objection (e.g. Hattiangadi, 2006, p. 235). For just this reason, many theorists (e.g. Von Eckardt, 1993, p. 206) dismiss anything like this normative thesis without much serious consideration. The problem here is that although Jerry Fodor says he cannot see how, it is indeed possible to be a naturalist while not being a reductionist. Consider why a naturalistic explanation is a desideratum of contemporary philosophy of mind. Descartes famously separated mental processes from the physical world by explaining them as the operations of a non-physical mind. The objective of physicalist cognitive science is to account for human cognitive abilities without appealing to such supernatural entities as Cartesian minds. We can satisfy this requirement by giving the following three naturalistic non-reductive accounts of human beings and their intentional states. First, we can show how each individual person, born with certain innate abilities and dispositions, gradually is socialized into participating in and being subject to the norms of their community as they develop the cognitive skills required for such participation. Each person’s normatively constituted intentional states, then, would depend in part upon the pre-existing

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normative practices into which their caregivers socialize them. An account of human development and socialization like this explains the child’s intentional states by appeal to the caregivers’ pre-existing normative practice. Second, we can give a non-reductive naturalistic explanation of how those caregivers and their cognitive abilities came to be, and especially of how human infants came to be born with the natural dispositions and abilities that enable them to be so easily socialized. This account would appeal to the gradual evolutionary transition from a world without humans and the linguistic and cognitive abilities that support their current normative practices to a world in which these are commonplace. Compare the apparent circularity of explaining the existence of a particular human being, by appeal to the prior existence of that person’s parents, and their parents, and so on back through their ancestry. This is not a viciously circular explanation of the existence of that human being by appeal to the existence of other human beings. If we trace the ancestors back further and further in time, we see organisms that are progressively less and less human-like, eventually going back to primate ancestors, to the first mammals, and to the first multi-cellular organisms, and so on. The non-vicious recursion here is certainly lengthy, but not an infinite regress. Here we have a series of gradually evolving creatures, which progressively became more and more human with each generation. Third, we can show how our current explicit, norm-consulting, language-dependent normative practices (including the practice of giving reasons for actions) and the cognitive skills that support them, evolved out of long distant ancestors’ tacit, non-language-dependent norm-constrained but not norm-consulting patterns of behavior that depended upon their more limited cognitive skills and cultures. We could furthermore give an account of how this earlier norm-constrained form of life evolved out of the interactions of ancestors that were not even norm-constrained, but simply creatures which had a little behavioral plasticity and which could learn from their experiences, and so on and so on. Haugeland (1990, p. 417 ff.), for example, sketches just such an account of how groups of animals whose members had some ability to learn from experience, evolved into groups with tacit norms, which eventually evolved into groups with more explicit forms of normativity, including linguistic norms, ethical norms, and the norms of the practice of giving reasons. Many theorists are still debating the details of these accounts; especially the latter move from tacit to explicit normativity. The point, though, is that the details are all there is to work out. The problems here are unlikely to be such that they undermine these accounts altogether. It seems relatively uncontroversial to hold that we can give a developmental account of how each human was socialized to become a participant in their community’s practices, and an evolutionary account of how humans and their cognitive abilities and normative practices came to be. The thesis that these accounts would be naturalistic seems similarly uncontroversial.3 Nothing supernatural would be invoked, and the account is not viciously circular. While it does not give a naturalistic justification (reduction) of any particular norms, as RCCS usually expects and attempts, it would naturalistically account for the existence of norm-governed social practices in general (whatever their norms happen to be), including the normative social practice of giving contentful intentional states as reasons for actions.4 All of this should put to rest concerns about vicious circularity and concerns that a cognitive science that begins with the normativity thesis is not naturalistic. It also reveals a strong advantage for

3 That is, as long as we, quite reasonably, put theologically-based intelligent design objections to the side. See, for example, Pennock (2001) for good reasons to do so. 4 A fourth, related, way to avoid this charge of circularity is Brandom’s (1994, pp. 18–30) argument (based in Wittgenstein’s account of rule-following; especially x240–42) that our practice of giving intentional states as reasons for actions is largely an explicitly norm-consulting practice (doing what one should do because we explicitly know that this is what we should do), but one that rests on more tacit norm-governed (but not norm-consulting) practices of simply taking or treating certain performances as correct or appropriate. Explicitly norm-consulting practices depend upon a background of tacit agreement in judgments about whether particular performances accord with the norms. Participants enact this agreement by simply treating particular judgments and performances as acceptable. I take Brandom to be importantly right about this, but do not have space to elaborate here. This helps further discharge the circularity objection by grounding explicit ascription of intentional states in tacit norm-governed but not norm-consulting judgments, in three ways. (1) A background of tacit norm-governed behavior and norm-conditioned agreement in judgments supports our current explicit norm-consulting practices. (2) Children’s innate sensitivity to tacit norms helps scaffold the development of explicit norm following. (3) Groups with tacit norm-governed patterns of behavior are a precondition of the later evolution of our more explicit linguistic norm-consulting practices.

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this normative account, in that the desideratum of a naturalistic cognitive science does not require that we continue to attempt, unsuccessfully, to naturalistically reduce semantic content of representations to physical properties. A cognitive science that begins from our normative practice of ascribing intentional states to one another does not need such a reduction to be a legitimately naturalistic cognitive science. The next sections further clarify the thesis by addressing three additional objections. 5. The source of normativity The second objection is relatively important and also somewhat common. Hattiangadi (2006, p. 234) raises the question: why conform? She argues that if intentionality were constituted by social norms, then this normativity would apply only as far as I want to act as others in my normative community expect me to act. The obligation, for instance, to use my words appropriately only applies if I have a desire to communicate. If I want to lie or to tell a joke, then the obligation to abide by the norms of the community’s linguistic practices ‘goes away’. I ought to use my words inappropriately in such a case. Boghossian (2005, p. 207) raises the same objection, that an ‘interesting’ thesis of the normativity of meaning would not ‘rely on any auxiliary desires that a person may or may not have’. One response is that the obligation to communicate honestly is only one minor aspect of the overall background of obligations and commitments that one is expected to abide by. And achieving any social objectives one might have will depend crucially on this overarching background of norms. Lying, for instance, depends on your understanding of how others should interpret your utterance and manipulating that understanding by doing things that entitle them to ascribe to you beliefs or intentions that you do not ascribe to yourself. For this reason, a successful lie or joke depends crucially on the speaker and interpreters having a shared appreciation of the many norms of the practice of giving reasons for actions. Furthermore, when lying or telling a joke, you only flout a minor subset of these many norms. If you flouted them all, you would not successfully lie or tell a joke. Rather you would simply be incomprehensible.5 But even if Hattiangadi and Boghossian do not mean to imply that any such systematic defiance of all social norms is possible, there are further reasons to reject this objection. One is that there is good evidence that human infants are innately motivated to participate in and be subject to the norms of their caregivers’ practices. For instance, Gallagher (2001, 2007) appeals to Trevarthen’s (1979) notions of primary and secondary intersubjectivity as they scaffold childrens’ learning. Primary intersubjectivity denotes innate abilities and inclinations to notice human agents as important. For instance, newborn infants innately distinguish human faces as important (Meltzoff & Moore, 1977, 1983), and early on can see human purposeful actions as importantly different from the movements of machines (Meltzoff, 1995). Secondary intersubjectivity refers to the development of the ability and inclination to interact intersubjectively with adults. Such intersubjectivity, in shared attention on an object or shared goals of an activity, is vital to the child’s social development. The eventual development of the highly intersubjective ability to ascribe intentional states to others, and the ability to self-ascribe them, is thus in part innately motivated. Thus children certainly do not simply decide to conform; children are naturally inclined to be socialized into participating in their community’s practices. In fact, an innate motivation to develop these intersubjective abilities and to be socialized into the practices of one’s community is partly criterial of being a person (understood as a social status earned by those with the requisite cognitive and social abilities). Gallagher (2007, p. 200) presents Dennett’s (1978) six criteria of being a person, convincingly arguing that each of these conditions for personhood, and thus for moral personhood or practical wisdom, depends on children being internally motivated to be socialized into shared (intersubjective) normative practices. As Gallagher (2007) explains, The notion that the self is endogenously intersubjective means that it is not just constrained or conditioned from the outside by its social environment, but is social from the inside out. And

5 See Cash (2004) for a similar defense against Davidson’s (1986) claim that no conventions are necessary in language use, because any particular convention can be flouted.

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only by being intersubjective from the inside out, in a primary way, is it possible for it to be significantly social from the outside in, and subject to the constraints and conditions of social life. (p. 201, italics in original) The conditions on being a person depend upon natural dispositions to primary and secondary intersubjectivity that are hard-wired into us from birth (we are social from the inside out). And these naturally developing dispositions to relate to persons intersubjectively, enable us to be socialized into our community’s practices (social from the outside in). Thus, children are naturally motivated to engage in such intersubjective practices, and the socialization that this motivation makes possible is partly constitutive of their becoming persons. Furthermore, children often feel strong allegiance to the normative practices into which they are socialized. This is especially so if socialization is done through positive interactions with mutual respect and responsiveness (Kochanska, Forman, Aksan, & Dunbar, 2005). Piaget (1932) believes that children are motivated to conform by such positive teaching. This leads to children also valuing the normative practices that help constitute these positive relationships, and thus children actively participate in the maintenance of such practices (Wright, 1982, 1983). Kitchener (1998) argues that Piaget’s (1977/1995) central thesis is that cooperation and mutual allegiance (as opposed to simple conformity) are crucial for the formation and maintenance of our normative social systems and for children’s moral development. In addition to this natural inclination to be socialized by our caregivers, and to feel allegiance to our community’s norms, an even deeper problem with the above objection is that source of normativity is not purely internal, in one’s desire and motivation to conform (however strong), as Hattiangadi and Boghossian assume. The community into which we are socialized imposes the normativity. Socialization involves censoriousness, in which caregivers actively teach and encourage children to follow the norms but also apply sanctions when children do not behave in appropriate ways. ‘Sanctioning’ here just means doing something that makes it less likely that the inappropriate behavior will be repeated. Thus while children naturally subject themselves to socialization, conformity with the community’s norms is demanded of all members. A consequence of all this is that this process of socialization brings it about that each of us endorses the vast majority of the norms we are expected to follow; especially those of the practice of giving and asking for reasons, which are foundations for practically all social interaction and relationships. Thus, in most instances in which we flout a norm, we can recognize that others’ disapproval is warranted, and even that sanctions are appropriate. The desire to flout a norm does not remove the social obligation to abide by it. We can also recognize the authority of other community members to enforce the norms, especially in those who are responsible for socializing us appropriately. So when I act inconsistently with the commitments others are entitled to expect me to uphold, I can still recognize that others have the authority to judge that I ought to behave or judge differently, to encourage me to act differently, and to impose sanctions when I fail to behave as I ought to. In such cases, while I may not like being sanctioned, I can still often recognize that such sanctions are appropriate. Because the norms are shared, I also have the authority to recognize when sanctions are inappropriate, and to appeal their imposition. But I will do so from within the normative practices we share, by offering further reasons (excuses) or by pointing out other countervailing norms or mitigating circumstances that may not have been considered by those intending to apply sanctions. Appeals that the norm I am expected to follow is not itself an appropriate norm are much more rare (though such cases open up the possibility for progress in our normative practices). All this shows what is mistaken about Hattiangadi’s and Boghossian’s objections. The obligations and entitlements that follow from the normative practice of giving and asking for reasons (and thus the contents of intentional states ascribed and the meanings of speakers’ utterances) do not simply depend on an optional desire to abide by the community’s norms, as Hattiangadi and Boghossian claim. This objection begs the question, by assuming incorrectly that there is no external force to such social norms. But the obligation to abide by the norms is both internally motivated and externally imposed. Being shared by all socialized members of a community, the norms impose obligations on all such persons; even those who choose to flout them. And one can want to flout a norm while at the same time recognize that the norm still has force and that sanctions for flouting it would be appropriate.

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6. What about infants and animals? A third objection is that this over-intellectualizes having intentional states. On this account, a subject having intentional states depends on that subject’s ability to participate in and be subject to the normative linguistic practice of ascribing intentional states as reasons for actions. But this is too sophisticated. What about animals and prelinguistic infants? Surely they can have intentional states, even though they are unable to use language and are unable to explicitly ascribe intentional states to themselves and others. They are incapable of undertaking any of the commitments that I have argued follow from knowing that others are entitled to ascribe a particular intentional state to them. There is a crucial difference between having an intentional state, and having the concept of an intentional state. It is this concept that children acquire as they develop mindreading skills. The ability to self-ascribe a belief, and to understand it as a belief, and to undertake all the commitments entailed by recognizing that this belief is felicitously ascribed to one, is uniquely the domain of socialized, language using persons. And this ability to ascribe intentional states to oneself is part and parcel of the ability to ascribe contentful intentional states qua intentional states, to others. Given this distinction, animals and infants can be seen as intentional patients but not intentional agents. Regan (1980) describes moral patients as entities that deserve moral consideration by moral agents, but which cannot accord such consideration to others. Likewise, animals and human infants can have intentional states in the sense that fully socialized adults can sensibly ascribe them, based on the similarity of their movements to the kinds of actions which if performed by a person, would entitle us to ascribe such intentional states as reasons. But they do not have intentional states in the self-aware way we do; we self-ascribe beliefs, desires and intentions and can understand them as beliefs, desires, and intentions. The ability to do so is developed through socialization into shared normative linguistic practices and through developing mindreading abilities. Animals and infants cannot participate in such practices, and cannot self-ascribe intentional states, and thus are not capable of understanding and undertaking the commitments that would follow from self-ascribing such a normative status. It would be senseless to sanction a cat for failing to live up to its commitments, when it acted like it wanted to go out the door but then refused to exit by the door when you opened it for her. This would be as senseless as holding a lion morally blameworthy for killing a gazelle. But it still can be sensible and useful to explain and predict a cat’s actions by ascribing to the cat the kinds of intentional states we would ascribe to a person who acted that way. On this account, infants and animals only have intentional states by the light of our practices, which constitute (and so give us reason to generously treat) their movements as actions for which intentional states can – somewhat appropriately – be ascribed to them as reasons. But they do not have such intentional states independently of our practices. Nothing could. 7. Causation, and the content of neurological representations The last objection to this account I will address is one the response to which has important consequences for our understanding of neurological investigations and representational explanations of cognitive abilities. It also relates to the biological similarities between humans and animals that make our ascriptions of intentional states to them somewhat useful as predictors of their actions. The objection (Boghossian, 2003) is that the normativity thesis appears to make the content of my intentional states depend on the normative judgments of observers. But what others think about a neurological state or process surely cannot have any effect on its causal powers. This normativity thesis thus appears to make any causal facts about content ‘disappear in a puff of non-factualist smoke’ as Boghossian (2003, pp. 32–33) puts it. But there are facts about the causal powers of neurological representations and their contents. Fred Dretske (1989) argues that the content of a neurological representation must make a difference to the actions it causes. The fact that the internal causes of an action include representations with one content rather than another, explains why they caused that action rather than another. If the cause of my action were a desire for beer rather than a desire for coffee, then it would have caused me to go see a bartender rather than a barista. Different contents (ceteris paribus) cause different actions. So this normativity thesis, which makes content merely a matter of the normative judgments of others, must be wrong.

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This objection fails to appreciate the distinction between phenomena that are instituted by a normative practice and those that are constituted by a normative practice (Haugeland, 1998, p. 338). A promise, for example, is instituted by the practice of giving and accepting promises. A promise is not a physical entity. It has no causal powers in itself. There are no physical causal facts about promises that apply independently of the practice of promising and could reveal that the practice is being performed incorrectly. All facts about promises are instituted by the practice of giving and accepting promises. A murder weapon, in contrast, is not merely normatively instituted, but normatively constituted, because there are physical facts about the causal powers of the entities so constituted. A particular knife, let’s imagine, was held in a person’s hand and stabbed into another’s chest, cutting his heart muscle, which killed them. A forensic scientist’s proof that the knife is the murder weapon would be a scientific account of the causal role it played in that particular event. However, no event is ‘intrinsically’ a murder. A death is constituted as a murder (as opposed to self-defense, say) by satisfying criteria set out by a community’s normative ethical and legal system.6 It would be a category mistake, then, to claim that the knife was intrinsically a murder weapon. But the knife is not causally inert either. The knife does cause the person’s death, but its status as a murder weapon is constituted by this normative framework that constitutes the death as a murder. The objection assumes that on the normativity thesis, intentional phenomena are merely normatively instituted, like promises, rather than being normatively constituted, like murder weapons. There is good reason to see them as normatively constituted phenomena, however.7 Intentional states have some physical basis in addition to the status recognized by the normative practice. Intentional states are ascribed to physical persons as reasons for actions the person performs. This normative constitution applies also to actions and to representations. On the normativity thesis, no movement is naturally or intrinsically an action. But certain physical movements can be normatively constituted as an action by being the kind of movement for which we are entitled to ask for and ascribe intentional states as reasons (contrast a batter’s action of swinging a bat at a pitch, with the batter falling down when beaned by a fastball; we do not ask for reasons in the latter case). It would also be a category mistake to claim that brain mechanisms can intrinsically or naturally be representations, which objectively have particular contents. Any investigation that identified a neurological state as a candidate for being constituted as a contentful representation would depend upon the same normatively specified situational and behavioral criteria that our normative practices depend upon to constitute certain movements as actions and to rule appropriate the ascription of particular intentional states to persons as reasons for those actions. Neuroscientists would need to appeal to such normatively specified criteria to identify cases of the intentional state to study causally. It is only after normatively identifying cases in which situational and behavioral factors entitle one to appropriately ascribe the intentional state to a whole person, that we then might be able to investigate whether there is a neurological state or process always and only present with that constellation of situational and behavioral factors. And any content ascribed to the neurological state or process would depend upon the intentional state appropriately ascribed to the whole person in those situations. To be constituted as a representation with a particular semantic content, then, a person’s neurological state or process must play this normatively specified causal role in all situations in which the intentional state is appropriately ascribed to that person. The neurological state also needs to have particular normatively specified physical properties. Just as a murder weapon must be capable of being used to kill a person, so a representation must be capable of storing information and making that information available to other brain processes, for instance. Thus, for example, if neuroscientists eventually understand the precise process in the anterior paracingulate cortex that causes a person to say that Sally believes that the chocolate is in the basket (rather

6 This claim assumes a social constructivist account of moral facts. On a Wittgensteinian view, there is little reason to be a Platonist or a strong metaphysical realist about many things, certainly not the five Ms: Minds, Meaning, Mathematics, Morality, and Modality. I cannot argue for this point here, but since I am presenting an account of minds and meaning in such terms, it has the virtue of consistency to assume morality to be similarly constituted. 7 This might be a significant departure from the particular version of the normativity thesis that Brandom offers, since Brandom (1994, p. 55) often talks about how intentionality is instituted within normative practices.

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than her believing that it is in the box), then this might give us a good reason for treating that particular neurological process as a representation that represents Sally’s belief. It would not objectively have that content, though. Rather, such activity in a person’s APC would count as a representation with that content by virtue of the situations that cause it and the actions and utterances it causes being normatively constituted as entitling us to ascribe to that person the belief that Sally believes the chocolate is in the basket, and in virtue of it having the kinds of informational carrying powers described above. This is why no purely physical investigation can reveal a particular neurological state or process to be a representation with a particular content. This is a normatively constituted status that certain neurological mechanisms can qualify as having, by virtue of their causal relations to events that are normatively constituted as actions for which intentional states with that content are appropriately ascribed as reasons. The objection fails, then. Intentional states are not simply normatively instituted, as they would be on a view that makes having an intentional state merely a matter of others’ normative judgments. Such judgments alone cannot give a neurological mechanism any powers to cause actions it would not otherwise have. But there are facts about the causal powers of such neurological states and processes. And only as we come to understand these causal powers and the role they play in causing the kinds of actions that license the ascription of an intentional state with content to the agent can we normatively constitute these neurological states or processes as representations with that content. So we here turn Dretske’s (1989) account on its head. It is not that, as Dretske argues, something counts as an action rather than a bodily movement by virtue of having desires and beliefs as its cause. Rather, something counts as an action by being the kind of event for which beliefs and desires are appropriately ascribed as reasons. And it is not, as Dretske holds, that different representational contents would (ceteris paribus) cause different actions. Rather, different actions would (ceteris paribus) license ascriptions of different contents to its neurological causes. 8. Conclusion: cognitive psychology is not a ‘hard’ science Many psychologists and neuroscientists take themselves (as do many philosophers of mind) to be explaining the mechanistic workings of the mind. They employ the scientific method to explain how contentful intentional states are implemented and processed in the brain, and investigate their causal powers. However, in spite of the overly hopeful assumptions of reduction-minded philosophers, the Wittgensteinian view I have outlined here shows that cognitive psychology and neuroscience are carried out from within a normative practice. They may not be the kind of traditional ‘hard’ science assumed by naturalistic philosophers who hold that contentful intentional states must be reduced to objective physical properties if there are to be genuine facts about them, their contents, and their causal powers. These might be better cast as what Wilson (2004) refers to as ‘fragile’ sciences. On the account I have presented here, cognitive psychology and neuroscience turn out to be a lot more like forensic science than they are like these so-called ‘hard’ sciences such as chemistry and physics. Forensic science investigates the causes and effects of events. But the events of interest in such investigations are constituted by a normative practice – one that individuates certain events as murders, for instance. Similarly, cognitive psychology and neuroscience investigate the causes and effects of events. But the events of interest in such investigations are constituted by a normative practice – one that individuates certain phenomena as actions and that licenses ascription of particular intentional states as reasons for such actions. This analogy with forensic science is not intended to diminish the importance of cognitive psychology or neuroscience. Of course, very useful scientific investigation and explanation can be done from within such a normative framework, as forensic scientists could attest. My point is to reinterpret the results of such so-called ‘sciences of the mind’, to show that they do not reveal the true nature of intentional states and the meaningful contents of neurological representations. Their results certainly could not make our talk about beliefs and desires redundant, as some eliminative materialists have argued (e.g. Churchland, 1986), since such investigations depend upon this practice of talking about our intentional states to begin with. Rather, they reveal a rich causal account of our cognitive abilities and the neurological states and processes that support them, some of which can be normatively constituted as representations with particular contents. Thus while they are not intrinsically or objectively contentful representations,

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