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Intentionality and Behaviorism
INTENTIONALITY AND BEHAVIORISM DAGFINN F0LLESDAL Stanford University, Stanford, U.S.A., and University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
1. Behaviorism
“Behaviorism” stands for a variety of attitudes and methodological positions in psychology, from on the one side the epistemological view that in studying man, the sole evidence that our theories can be tested against is observation of his behavior, to on the other extreme, various rather restricted ontological views concerning what man is. In between there are all kinds of positions whose definitions are often so varied and vague that not even their various proponents agree on them, like logical behaviorism, philosophical behaviorism, methodological behaviorism, radical behaviorism, neo-behaviorism, etc. The practitioners are not much to be blamed for this; “-ismsy’of all kinds, including for example “positivism”, ‘cexistentialism~’, etc. are notoriously difficult to define. As Suppes has pointed out, we have no well-defined framework for such definitions, as we have for definitions within mathematics or physics or any well developed science. The “-isms” are as varied as their practitioners, and for this reason I find all discussion of “-isms” for polemical purposes fruitless-not only wasteful and uninteresting, but even definitely harmful, insofar as such criticism makes somebody reject off-hand viewpoints and research findings without even having studied them. For this reason, I shall not attempt any wholesale evaluation or condemnation of behaviorism. I will only pick out certain notions that recur in many versions of behaviorism, notably “stimulus” and “response”,
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Thus, for example, Michael MARTIN,in Interpreting Skinner (1978), argues that although Skinner expIicitly denies that he is a methodological behaviorist, in one sense he is one, and in one sense he is also a philosophical behaviorist. a SUpPES (1969), p. 294. cf.also SU~PES (1975), pp. 269-285.
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in order to see how they fare and have to be reconsidered in connection with the phenomenon that is usually regarded as the main stumblingblock of behaviorism, intentionality.
2. Intentionality By “intentionality”, I do here not mean primarily the practical notion of intending to do something, but the Brentano-Husserl notion of the directedness of the mental. Let us first make a little more precise what is meant by this. While for Brentano the directedness of the mental simply meant that for each mental phenomenon, e.g. for each case of perception, there is some object towards which it is directed, of or about which it is, Husserl had a more discerning view. He acknowIedged that many mental phenomena, e.g. hallucinations, do not have any object. Rather than attempting to account for intentionality by appeal to an object that the mental phenomenon is directed towards, Husserl focused on what the directedness consists in: what are the features of the mental thanks to which it always is as f i t has an object. Husserl called the collection of these features the noema. He regarded the noema as a generalized notion of meaning, thereby tying together intention with a t and intension with an s. I shall not go into Husserl’s particular analysis here. I will focus only on one special feature of the analysis which is of importance in what follows: According to Husserl, what we perceive in a given case of perception is under-determined by the physical stimuli that we receive. An example that illustrates this, is Jastrow’s duck-rabbit example which has become so well known through Wittgenstein. Although the lines on the paper and the pattern of irradiation on our retina remain the same, we can see a duck or a rabbit. As the plethora of this kind of examples shows, the observation is not special for Husserl, it is old and universally agreed upon. What is a little more specific to Husserl, is that he holds that all perception is under-determined like this. Also, his view is not quite well illustrated by the duck-rabbit example since in that example there is an external physical object, the lines on paper, that remains the same and is “taken” in different ways. For Husserl, there is not some basic, given object that is seen as a duck or as a rabbit. In the normal case of perception we see a rabbit or a duck directly, there is no primitive object which we see and which is then interpreted in different ways. Only in special cases, like the duck-rabbit case, are we aware of the
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ambiguity, of our freedom to perceive one thing or the other. In most cases we perceive one thing, and only if later experience forces us to give up our original belief in this thing, do we discover that there is some other thing there, perhaps a quite different one. Now, if Husserl is right about perception, as I think he is, then this has consequences for the behaviorist notion of stimulation. Behaviorists are faced with a dilemma here. Either they may describe the stimulation as an object perceived by the subject, a ring, a color, etc. Then the problem is: how does the experimenter know that this is the object perceived by the subject? Does not the experimenter here impose his own conception on the situation on the subject that he describes? Arne Naess discussed this kind of imposition in a somewhat different framework in his doctoral: dissertation in 1936, and labelled it “maze epistemology” (Labyrinrherkenntnistheorie) (NAESS,1936, esp. pp. 53 ff.). Ever since von UEXKULL’S (1921 and 1928) attempts in the early part of the century to study the environments of animals as conceived or lived in by the animals, it has been a formidable challenge for the behavioral scientist not to impose his own conceptions on the subjects studied. Any attempt to describe the stimuli as that which the subject perceives is faced with this problem, if Husserl is right.
3. Reception and perception Trying to avoid this, the sophisticated behaviorist might get the idea of dkfining the stimuli not as something that the subject perceives, but as something that goes on at his nerve endings. This is what Quine does in Word and Object (QUINE,1960, pp. 31-35). When Quine defines stimuli as evolving patterns of irritation of the nerve endings, he does not hold that the stimulus is something that the subject perceives, but that it is something that he receives. Quine’s central concern is therefore not to describe the stimuli in some neutral, physical vocabulary. Rather, Quine is aware that if he were to describe stimuli as objects perceived, he would be begging the questions concerning meaning and reference that he set out to clarify. His use of the physical vocabulary is due solely to the fact that physics, notably elementary optics, is well developed and a relatively uncontroversial part of our current world scheme; so that the descriptions of the stimuli will be precise and not subject to disagreement among those who study man. Quine does not impute this physical theory to the agents who are studied. The stimuli are simply not what they perceive.
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However, here we are at the other horn of the behaviorist dilemma. For what Quine and other behaviorists are after, are the systematic connections between the stimuli that a subject receives and his responses. The responses, however, are responses to what the subject perceives and not merely to what he receives. Whether a subject assents to or dissents from “Gavagai”, for example, depends on whether he sees a duck or a rabbit. As we have noted, the stimulus may be the same, but the objects perceived widely different-and so the responses. Quine is aware of this. In his latest book, The Roots of Reference, he introduces the distinction between what a subject receives and what he perceives. The crucial difficulty in seeking to clarify perception on the basis of what is received and overt behavior is, as we should expect, to make proper allowance for interferences from within, from what speaking mentalistically we could call the subject’s mental states and processes. Quine does not want to screen out the subject’s actual contributions to perception, but ends up with the view that “mental entities are unobjectionable if conceived as hypothetical physical mechanisms and posited with a view strictly to the systematizing of physical phenomena” (QUINE, 1974, pp. 33-34). Hence, at least in the case of one prominent behaviorist, the difficulties connected with the notion of what is perceived have led to the admission of mental entities as part of our theory of man. Whether these mental entities are also physical, or whether they are merely mental, is, it seems, a matter that cannot be decided a priori. 4. Digression : Suppes’ behavioristic definition of “sign”
Patrick Suppes has argued (SUPPES,1969, pp. 300 ff.) that the difficulties connected with accounting for intentional notions, like e.g. the sign relation, within a behavioristic framework, are not as formidable as they 1957, pp. 177 ff.) that might seem. Chisholm has claimed (CHISHOLM, the familiar Pavlovian conditioning of a hungry dog, where after the conditioning the bell has come to be a sign of food, is one of the simplest kinds of psychological phenomena to require intentional concepts for an adequate explanation. Suppes has proposed a behavioristic definition for the notion of CS (conditioned stimulus, in the example the sounding of the bell), being a sign for US (unconditioned stimulus, the presence of food). R stands for the response (salivation). The dog, as you will remember, learns that the sounding of the bell is a sign of food in a process of trials, where in the beginning the dog salivates only in the presence of the food, but not upon the presentation of the bell. There is then
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a series of training trials in which the food and the stimulus bell are presented simultaneously and the dog salivates. Finally, after these training trials, the dog responds by salivating upon presentation of the bell alone. Suppes’ definition consists of the following four conditions: (1) P(R,IUS,)=l ; (2) P(R,I(CS, & 1 U S , ) ) w O ; (3) For 1n, P(RJ(CS,,. & l U S n , ) ) w1
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Chisholm has formulated a number of difficulties that he thinks bars a behavioristic definition of “sign”. Suppes’ definition overcomes all of these. However, it is easy to give examples that satisfy Suppes’ four conditions, but where we would not say that CS is a sign of US. Consider, for example, the case where we have two kinds of food for the dog, both in the form of small pellets. One kind of pellet has a smell and a color, say red, that attracts the dog. From the very beginning, the dog salivates when presented with these pellets. The other pellets have no attractive smell nor color, let us say they are green, and the dog has never shown any interest in them, even when hungry. Using an intentionalist vocabulary, we might say that the dog has never discovered that these pellets are food. During a series of training trials the dog is now given a mixture of the two kinds of pellets. The dog is unable to separate the red pellets from the green ones and comes to eat them both. He thereby discovers that the green pellets, in spite of their unattractive appearance, taste very well, perhaps even better than the red ones, and after the training trials, he starts salivating upon presentation of the green pellets alone. According to Suppes’ definition, the green pellets have now become a sign for the red ones. However, this clearly conflicts with what we normally mean by the notion of a sign. Hence Suppes’ definition is inadequate. The definition can easily be patched up, but again, new counterexamples may probably be found for the patched-up definition. However, this brief discussion of Suppes was a digression. Let us return to our discussion of the more general problems that intentionality raise for behaviorism. 5. Attention and response
A second main place where intentionality comes in in connection with stimulus and response, is when we consider that the subject’s registration of the stimulus and the responding are both actions. That they are actions
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is brought out clearly by the following kinds of difficulties that are often discussed in psychological reports : In connection with the subject’s registration of the stimulus, there is the problem of whether the subject attends to the stimulus or simply is staring at it without seeing-as William lames put it in 1890: “staring at it in a vacuous, trance-like way’’ If the subject does not attend to what is in front of him, there is of course no limit to what he might be thinking of and what caprice might prompt his response. And even if he does attend, what does he attend to? The person in front of him, his eyes, their color, their shape, or some object associated in some way or other, e.g. by memory, with one of these objects? It is typical of the intentionalist view of action that an action is underdetermined by the external physical features of what goes on, e.g. the movement of the body and the direction of the eyes. Then, next we have the problem that the response, too, is an action. Three questions immediately arise in connection with the response. First, what brings it forth? The stimulus, whatever the subject takes that to be. the subject’s desire to impress the experimenter or to mislead him, or sheer caprice? And secondly, there is the experimenter’s problem when he tries to describe the response. Even in as simple a case as the assent to or dissent from a sentence, Quine has acknowledged, in his reply to Hintikka in the volume Words and Objections (DAVIDSON and HINTIKKA, 1969, p. 312), that the decision whether to treat a piece of native behavior as assent or as something else, even perhaps as dissent, is a question on a par with the general problems of meaning and translation. Thirdly, if the experiment involves verbal instructions, there is the problem whether the subject has understood the instructions, i.e. in which way he has interpreted them. Given, then, that intentionality seems to creep into even the simplest and most basic notion of behaviorism, it seems to me that one should take this into account when one wants to study man on the basis of his behavior.
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6. Empirical evidence
The original aim of behaviorism was to base the study of man on what we can observe. That is, the study of man should be based on empirical evidence, evidence that reaches us through our senses. This aim is what
* JAMES (1890), I, p.
222. Here quoted from NATSOULAS (1977), p. 80.
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almost everybody would find appealing about behaviorism. There are many of us who would sympathize with Watson and others in their reaction against the excesses of mentalism and introspectionism in the beginning of our century. However, when we base our study of man on the evidence that reaches us through our senses, we must heed carefully what this evidence is. As we have noted, what we experience through our senses is not sensory data, far less stimulation of sensory surfaces, We experience physical objects, but not only that. Once we accede to Husserl that the impingements on our sensory surfaces under-determine what we experience, it seems quite arbitrary to say that the only objects of sensory experience are physical objects. We experience shapes and colors, and when it comes to man, we experience not just bodies and bodily movements. We may do that, but that happens only rarely. In most of our normal life with others, we experience persons and their actions, not bodies and their movements. This is not just a playful extension of the notion of experience. My point is that our basic experience of others, that which gives us evidence against which our psychological theories have to be tested, is experience of persons, not bodies, and of actions, not movements. Similar points have been made before, by phenomenologists, Wittgenstein and others. Now, however, comes a most important point of difference between my view and that of many of the phenomenologists and Wittgensteinians. Although the evidence against which we have to test our theories is this kind of meaning-imbued experience, this does not mean that this experience is a rock-bottom foundation for science. There is no rock-bottom. Even though the impingements on my sensory surfaces may remain the same, what I experience may come to differ, as my beliefs and theories concerning the world change. What I now take to be veridical, I may tomorrow come to regard as misperception. When it comes to psychology and the study of man, the situation is similar, but with even greater leeway for vacillations. I experience the other as a person, with beliefs and desires that are reflected in his actions. But I may be wrong in what I take his actions to be; even though his actions are what I perceive, there are many different possibilities for what his actions are, all of them compatible with the irritations of my sensory surfaces, and correspondingly for his beliefs and desires. Hence again, not only are my theories tentative, but so is also the evidence upon which they are based.
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7. Behaviorism as an attempt to minimize the effects of the intentional Given all this, I think that we may look upon many of the methodological precepts and techniques developed by behaviorists in a different way. Rather than considering various experimental set-ups and the like as means of eliminating the intentional, which, I have argued, is impossible, I regard them as ways of reducing the under-determinateness that invariably comes in due to the intentionality, in stimuli, in response, etc. The spectrum of different objects that we can possibly take a person to perceive, varies clearly with the various patterns of irradiation on the eye, etc. We noticed for example that the duck-rabbit picture was particularly ambiguous. Similarly, the spectrum of different actions that we can take a person to perform varies with the kind and complexity of the bodily movement that is taking place. As our psychological theories improve, we may learn more and more about this and come to design better and better experiments. Already, in our present design of experiments, we are being helped by the intuitions and theories we presently have concerning man, his experiences and actions. This, by the way, is a reason why behaviorists easily come to delude themselves if they try to describe stimulus and response in a purely physical way. In the case of verbal responses, for example, one might try to give purely phonetic descriptions of what the subject utters instead of trying to interpret it in view of our whole tentative theory of the subject and his activity. Consider then in how many ways one can formulate basically equivalent responses in a language. Assent, for example, can be expressed by “yes”, “right”, “I agree”, “you have learned your lesson well”, “you amaze me”, and so on, almost ad infiniturn. The interconnection between all of these responses, which may make us want to treat them on a par if assent is all that we are interested in, would escape US completely if we just were to regard them as so many different phonetic sequences. Instead, of course, we regard the responses as meaningful expressions and group them in equivalence classes in view of our tentative theory of what the subject means and does. 8. What kind of theories are needed for the study of man
Now, finally, we come to the problem of how we go about finding out what people mean and do. Here, as elsewhere, we must start out from a tentative theory, which we should gradually try to improve and may also come to reject as our research goes on.
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In studying man, we need a very comprehensive theory, which includes a theory of action, a theory of meaning and communication, a theory of reference, and a theory of knowledge. All of these are interconnected, in such a way that evidence is transmitted between the theories. The exact way in which this happens, we shall see as we go on. 9. Theory of action
Let us begin with the theory of action. Like many writers on the subject, for example Fodor in his recent book The Language of Thought (FODOR, 1975), I hold that action should be explained by the models of formal decision theory. That is, the agent conceives of himself as being in a situation where he has a set of options, or alternatives. He has beliefs concerning how his choice between the options will affect the likelihood of various consequences, and he attaches values, positive or negative, to these consequences. He then chooses the option that gives the highest expected utility. Also game theory has to be brought in. The agent conceives of himself as being surrounded by other agents who in their turn conceive of him as an agent. His recognition of this and of the influence that his action will have on their actions affects his estimation of the probabilities of the various consequences that will ensue from his action. However, when in this way I appeal to decision theory and game theory for an explanation of human action, one qualification is necessary. For the explanation of action, standard normative decision theory and game theory will not do. We are not all of us rational decision makers. What we need, is empirical decision theory and game theory, a theory of how people, as a matter of fact, make decisions. The theory we need for explanation of action will relate to normative decision theory the way a consistent psychologistic approach to reasoning would relate to logic. A psychologistic philosopher, if he is consistent, should find out how people in fact reason, what arguments they regard as valid and what kind of conclusions they tend to draw, however fallaciously, from a given set of premises. In our empirical decision theory we must take into account how people normally consider only a very small number of the alternatives for action that are open to them in a given situation, how they reflect only about some of their consequences, often have odd beliefs about the probabilities of the various consequences, and also may have values and
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preferences that deviate considerably from those we think they ought to have. We have to incorporate in our explanatory theory what we know about factors that systematically mislead people in their estimates of probabilities and about factors that influence their preferences and often make them fluctuate considerably and rapidly. We have to include information about a n agent’s training and past performance, about panic and other factors that may infiuence his rationality, and so on. The empirical studies of decision making and choice by Tversky, Suppes and others are highly relevant here. Clearly, our explanation and prediction of a person’s actions will come to depend very much on our information and theories concerning this particular person, his characteristics as a decision maker, for example whether he shuns risks or enjoys them, and his conscious and unconscious beliefs and attitudes at the moment where the action took place. To these other sources of information we shall return shortly. Let me, however, first make two observations, one concerning the status of the normative theory of rationality and one concerning the structure of explanation of action. The normative theory of rationality is normative in the following sense, which is important in our context: If an action conforms to the normative decision theory, then this explains it. If it does not, then the deviation from normative decision theory has to be explained in order that we shall understand the action. Such deviation is normally explained by bringing in causal factors of the various kinds that I have just mentioned. My second observation concerns the structure of the explanation of action: we should note that there is never just one reason, i.e. one desire or belief that enters into the explanation. However, as in other areas of explanation, when an explanation is given, we usually pick out one or just a few factors, that we give as the reason(s) for the action. Which factors we pick depends upon their relative weight and the circumstances of the explanation, for example, what factors are not already known to the person for whom the explanation is intended. Hence, there seems to me to be no incompatibility between there being a number of reasons that enter into explanation by reason and our still giving only one, or a small number of these as the reason@)for the action. In fact, the situation here seems parallel to the situation in causal exSee e.g. TVERSKY (1972), TVERSKY and KAHNEMAN (1974).
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planation. In the case of causal explanation, too, one often just mentions one, or a small number of the causes of an event, e.g. those of which the person for whom the explanation is intended is not yet cognizant. In fact, I think that the parallelism between explanation by reason and explanation by causes extends far beyond this. I will even suggest that rather than assimilating reasons to causes in the simple way that the instantiation of causal laws suggests, one should be aware that causal explanation, like explanation by reason, makes use of a whole intricate theory and not a single simple causal law. To take an example, let us consider the case where we explain why an iron ball is falling towards the center of the earth by saying that the ball is heavy and that we have a law of physics to the effect that every heavy body here on earth will fall towards the center of the earth. Clearly, this is sometimes true, sometimes false. If some other factor enters the picture, like a support that keeps the object in place, an electromagnetic field or the like, the ball will perhaps not fall, perhaps will it even move upwards. We could, of course, save our law in the face of counterexamples like this by adding clauses to it, we might say: a heavy object here on earth which is not supported and not in a magnetic field will fall towards the center of the earth. Similarly in the case of actions, we might in the case of a person who opens the window begin with the following simple “law”: “A person who wants fresh air and believes that he will get it by opening the window, will open the window”. Noting the many exceptions from this “law”, we might improve it to: “A person who wants fresh air and believes that he will get it by opening the window and who also does not believe that anybody in the room will suffer from the draft, will open the window”. However, both in the example from physics and the example from action theory, our new revised “law” has exceptions. They both have to be supplemented with ever new clauses. In action theory, we quickly see that there is little point in trying to formulate ever more complicated laws. Instead, we attribute to each agent a number of propensities towards action, a set of desires and beliefs, and we devise a decision theory which tells us how in a given situation all these propensities are fused into one resultant propensity for action. Similarly in physics we attribute to each object a number of propensities, mass, electric charge, a certain position relative to other masses and electric charges, etc., and on the basis of this we determine the resultant propensity for e.g. movement in the given situation. Another way of looking at this is that physical objects and events, like actions, can be
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described in numerous ways, for each of which they instantiate different “laws”, i.e. show different propensities. These laws, or propensities, by the way, need not be deterministic. They may be probabilistic, in action theory as well as in physics. Formally, there are hence many similarities between the situation in physics and that in action theory. However, there are also important differences. One such is that in physics we have found a way of reducing the basic propensities to very few, mass and electric charge, position in gravitational and electromagnetic fields, etc., and one hopes for further reductions. In action theory, the situation is much more complicated. We have to deal with values, like money, beauty, unspoiled nature, peace, love, etc., that we have not learned how to compare and that are perhaps incomparable. We have also noted how these factors and the manner of their interplay may vary from person to person. Another factor, which also leads to differences between physics and action theory, is the capacity that the objects we study in action theory, viz. human beings, have to consider various possibilities. Some of these possibilities better satisfy our preferences than those we would reach if we were only to follow a gradient from where we are to some local maximum. There are also further differences between action theory and physics, for example connected with our capacity for reflection, etc. There will not be time to discuss this here, but I have included some remarks on it in a paper in German that was published some months ago. (F~LLESDAL,
1979.)
10. Evidence for attributions of beliefs and values The theory of action enables us to explain a person’s actions once we know his beliefs and values. However, our problem is the opposite, we observe his actions, or rather what we take his actions to be, and we then try to form hypotheses concerning his beliefs and values. This is the problem of so-called revealed preference which has been much discussed in economics. One particular difficulty here is that an action depends on both our beliefs and values in such a way that our determination of one of these factors depends on and changes with our assumptions concerning the other.
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It has long been popular among economists to hold that the only way of determining a person’s preferences is by examining his actual choices. However, there are more sources of information. First, we may simply ask him. One reason why economists stay away from this is that one cannot always trust what a person says. He may be lying, to us and perhaps to himself. He may sincerely believe that the reasons for his choice are different from what a person with more self-insight would think. 11. Speech acts as a species of actions Many economists and philosophers would say that the ultimate basis for deciding what a person desires and believes is not what he says, but what he does. I do not think that there is just one basis, except to the extent that we consider also a person’s speech acts as a form of action. Our theory of a person must account also for his speech acts. Our hypotheses concerning his beliefs and values must explain why certain of the things he says should not be trusted. Even a person’s saying something that is false may serve to confirm our theory of him.
12. Epistemology and rationality The hypotheses we make use of in such cases are not just hypotheses concerning the person’s truthfulness and motives. Especially in cases where a person sincerely seems to believe something that we take to be false, this may fit in with our hypotheses concerning what he has perceived and not perceived, together with our epistemological theory of how a person’s beliefs are formed and changed. Likewise, in attributing attitudes and values to a person, we have to make use of a theory of attitude formation and attitude change, together with hypotheses concerning the experiences, influences and development that the person has been through. This theory of attitude formation has to contain theses concerning for example the need for consistency of preferences at a time (e.g. to what extent and why the preference relation has to be transitive), the consistency of preferences over time (what kind of preference changes should be expected in a person and what kind not; if any kind of rapid and capricious preference change were permitted, we would simply have too much leeway in our determination of a person’s preferences on the basis of his actions). We also need assumptions concerning a person’s concern for his own
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future, in order to determine the “discount rate’’ he uses when he estimates the present value of future consequences of his actions. In view of this kind of considerations concerning the formation and change of a person’s beliefs and attitudes, it should be clear that neither with regard to beliefs nor with regard to values should we simply “maximize” agreement. Rather, we should use our epistemology and all we know about a person’s past experience to find out where we should expect and not expect agreement. This is clearly Quine’s view when he emphasizes perception and agreement concerning trivialities and absurdities as a basis for translation. (QUINE,1960, pp. 59-69.) It is also Davidson’s view, as is particularly clear in his later writings. Although the maxim of maximizing agreement is important in Wittgenstein, in Gadamer and in many others, it should be relegated to a subordinate position; in a considerably weakened form the maxim is simply a consequence of the central importance of an epistemology when we study and theorize about persons as we do in psychology. There is much to be added. I shall only now at the end mention two points, one having to do with ostension, the other with the so-called introspective reports.
13. Ostension First: ostension. In view of our explanation of a person’s actions we come to regard some situations where he is pointing as cases of ostension, that is, as attempts to indicate a reference. In such cases, the pointing gives us valuable information concerning what the person intends to refer to. Clearly, pointing does not uniquely determine a reference. Any physical object whose surface includes the first opaque surface in the direction of pointing is a candidate, so is any object related to one of these by the so-called deferred ostension (QUINE,1969, pp. 39-41). However, we should definitely take the person as referring to one of these objects and not to something else, Ostension hence eliminates certain misinterpretations, and it should override our epistemological considerations concerning a person’s beliefs. The epistemological considerations do after all For a more thorough discussion of these and other factors, see ELSTER(1979). DAVIDSON (1967. esp. p. 313; 1970, esp. p. 186: 1973, esp. p. 324and note 14). Davidson makes his position with respect to agreement particularly clear in DAVDSON (1973, esp. p. 19; and 1975, esp. pp. 20-22).
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not single out just one interpretation as the only possible one. As in the case of scientific theories we should normally prefer the simplest of the alternatives. However, when this choice of interpretation comes into conflict with the evidence provided by ostension, we should give up the interpretation and side for one of the interpretations that are compatible with what we derive from ostension. The conflict may thereby in some cases even come to tell us that some of our epistemological assumptions are wrong. 14. Introspective reports
As for my final little point, concerning introspective reports, it will have been clear already from what I have been saying that I think that we should admit such reports. I have mentioned that we may ask a person about his preferences and his beliefs, and also how he feels, etc., and we then use his answers as data against which we test our theory. These data are of course not incorrigible, just as little as other data. The main point, which makes them relevant and useful, is that they do relate to our theories. They fit in and confirm the theory, or they do not fit in, and disconfirm it. Note that I do not claim that all data are equally good, some are more corrigible than others. We have noted that observation of a person’s choices often make us doubt his verbal reports on his preferences. Likewise a person’s reports on his beliefs or on what something looks like to him may seem dubious in view of what he actually does do. However, as we have noted, observation of a person’s actions is not a rock-bottom, either, one and the same bodily movement is compatible with the agent’s performing any one of a number of actions. Listening to what he says and, of course, studying all the rest of his behavior may make us change our view on what action he performs. Behaviorists have often been reluctant to admit introspective reports. In the case of some ontological behavioristis this may be due to a dogma that there is nothing there to inspect and report on. This dogma I have never seen supported by good arguments. Other, more epistemologically motivated behaviorists bar introspective reports for one of three reasons: the phenomena reported on cannot be intersubjectively observed, they involve intentional notions, or they are unreliable. As for the phenomena reported on not being intersubjectively observable, this is admittedly so. However, as Alston has observed in a carefully argued article on private data (ALSTON, 1972), what matters in science
is not really intersubjective observability, but the possibility of independent testimony. And as I have argued all along in this lecture, there is a lot of such independent testimony available, the introspective reports and the observations of action have to fit in with one another, etc. As for the second point, their intentionality, introspective reports do admittedly often concern intentional phenomena. However, as I have argued, intentionality seems to be inavoidable, even for the most ardent behaviorists, and once one has to depend on intentional notions, then it is methodologically wise to admit all the evidence that is relevant to these notions, also that yielded by introspective reports. The third point, finally, concerning the unreliubility of introspective reports, is important. Many introspective reports are highly unreliable, but others are not, and similarly differ also reports concerning external behavior. It is important for methodology that we have theories concerning the reliability of various kinds of data. Such a theory is, in the case of psychology, just a corollary of the general theory of man that psychologists seek to arrive at. 15. Conclusion
Behaviorists often proclaim that they are getting on well without intentionality or even that there is no such thing as intentionality. However, I have argued that intentionality permeates the objects and processes studied in psychology as well as the observations and procedures used in such studies, including those used by behaviorists. Further, I have argued that there is an interplay between the different fields of study: action, perception, etc., such that our explanatory hypotheses in one of these fields must fit in with those in the other fields. We have, for example, observed how the beliefs and values that we attribute to a person in order to explain his actions, must fit in with those we ascribe to him in order to interpret what he says. Evidence that bears on one of these fields thereby comes to bear also on the others. A theory of intentionality is in part a theory of the evidential interplay between these different fields. For behaviorism, with its emphasis on evidence, this interplay should be a major concern. From an intentionalist point of view, behaviorism may be looked upon as an endeavour to arrive at methods and experimental set-ups that give as reliable data as possibIe, especially by minimizing the ambiguities due to intentionality. By openly bringing in a theory of intentionality as a guide in this endeavour, we will get a better behaviorism.
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References ALSTON,W. P., 1972, Can psychology do without private data, Behaviorism, vol. 1, pp. 71-102 CHISHOLM, R., 1957, Perceiving: A philosophical study (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N. Y.) DAVIDSON, D., 1967. Truth and meaning, Synthese, vol. 17, pp. 304-323 DAVIDSON, D., 1970,Semantics for natural languages, in: Linguaggi nella societa e nelle technica, pp. 177-188 (Milan) DAVIDSON, D., 1973a,Radical interpretation. Dialectica, vol. 27, pp. 313-328 DAVIDSON, D., 1973b, On the very idea of a conceptual scheme (Presidential Address, American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division Meeting, Atlanta 1973), in: Proceedings at the American Philosophical Association 1974, pp. 5-20 DAVIDSON, D., 1975, Thought and talk, in: Mind and Language, ed. Samuel Guttenplan, pp. 7-23 (Clarendon Press, Oxford) DAVIDSON, D., and J. HINTIKKA(eds.), 1969, Wordr and objections; Essays on rhe work of W. V. Quine (Reidel, Dordrecht) ELSTER,J., 1979, Ulysses and the Sirens: Studies in rationality and irrationality (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) FODOR, J. A., 1975, The language of thought (Harvester Press, Hassocks, Sussex) FGLLESDAL, D., 1979, Handlungen, ihre Griinde und Ursachen, in: Handlungstheonen interdisziplinar. ed. Hans Lenk, vol. 2, pp. 431-444 (Fink, Munich) JAMBS, W., 1890, The principles of psychology (Holt, New York ) MARTIN,M., 1978, Interpreting Skinner, Behaviorism, vol. 6, pp. 129-138 NATSOULAS, T., 1977, On perceptual aboutness, Behaviorism, vol. 5, pp. 75-97 NABSS,A., 1936,Erkenntnis und wissenschajiliches Verhalten,Skrifter utgitt av Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo 11. HisbFilos. Klasse, 1936, No. 1 (Dybwad. Oslo) QUINE,W. V., 1960, Word andobject (The Technology Press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.) QUINE,W. V., 1969, Ontological relativity and other essays (Columbia University Press, New York) QUINB,W. V., 1974, The roots of reference (Open Court; La Salle, Ill.) SUPPES,P., 1969,Behaviorism, in: Studies in the methodology and foundations of science: Selected papers from 1951 to 1969, pp. 294-311 (Reidel, Dordrecht) SUPPBS,P., 1975, From behaviorism to neo-behaviorism, Theory and Decision, vol. 6, pp. 269-285 TVERSKY, A., 1972, Elimination by aspects: A theory of choice, Psychological Review, V O ~ . 79, pp. 281-300 TVERSKY, A., and D. KAHNEMAN,1974, Judgement under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases, Science, vol. 183, pp. 1124-1131 VON UEXK~LL, J., 1921, Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere [Springer, Berlin) VON UEXK~LL, J., 1928, Theoretische Eiologie (Springer, Berlin)
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1. Behaviorism
“Behaviorism” stands for a variety of attitudes and methodological positions in psychology, from on the one side the epistemological view that in studying man, the sole evidence that our theories can be tested against is observation of his behavior, to on the other extreme, various rather restricted ontological views concerning what man is. In between there are all kinds of positions whose definitions are often so varied and vague that not even their various proponents agree on them, like logical behaviorism, philosophical behaviorism, methodological behaviorism, radical behaviorism, neo-behaviorism, etc. The practitioners are not much to be blamed for this; “-ismsy’of all kinds, including for example “positivism”, ‘cexistentialism~’, etc. are notoriously difficult to define. As Suppes has pointed out, we have no well-defined framework for such definitions, as we have for definitions within mathematics or physics or any well developed science. The “-isms” are as varied as their practitioners, and for this reason I find all discussion of “-isms” for polemical purposes fruitless-not only wasteful and uninteresting, but even definitely harmful, insofar as such criticism makes somebody reject off-hand viewpoints and research findings without even having studied them. For this reason, I shall not attempt any wholesale evaluation or condemnation of behaviorism. I will only pick out certain notions that recur in many versions of behaviorism, notably “stimulus” and “response”,
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Thus, for example, Michael MARTIN,in Interpreting Skinner (1978), argues that although Skinner expIicitly denies that he is a methodological behaviorist, in one sense he is one, and in one sense he is also a philosophical behaviorist. a SUpPES (1969), p. 294. cf.also SU~PES (1975), pp. 269-285.
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in order to see how they fare and have to be reconsidered in connection with the phenomenon that is usually regarded as the main stumblingblock of behaviorism, intentionality.
2. Intentionality By “intentionality”, I do here not mean primarily the practical notion of intending to do something, but the Brentano-Husserl notion of the directedness of the mental. Let us first make a little more precise what is meant by this. While for Brentano the directedness of the mental simply meant that for each mental phenomenon, e.g. for each case of perception, there is some object towards which it is directed, of or about which it is, Husserl had a more discerning view. He acknowIedged that many mental phenomena, e.g. hallucinations, do not have any object. Rather than attempting to account for intentionality by appeal to an object that the mental phenomenon is directed towards, Husserl focused on what the directedness consists in: what are the features of the mental thanks to which it always is as f i t has an object. Husserl called the collection of these features the noema. He regarded the noema as a generalized notion of meaning, thereby tying together intention with a t and intension with an s. I shall not go into Husserl’s particular analysis here. I will focus only on one special feature of the analysis which is of importance in what follows: According to Husserl, what we perceive in a given case of perception is under-determined by the physical stimuli that we receive. An example that illustrates this, is Jastrow’s duck-rabbit example which has become so well known through Wittgenstein. Although the lines on the paper and the pattern of irradiation on our retina remain the same, we can see a duck or a rabbit. As the plethora of this kind of examples shows, the observation is not special for Husserl, it is old and universally agreed upon. What is a little more specific to Husserl, is that he holds that all perception is under-determined like this. Also, his view is not quite well illustrated by the duck-rabbit example since in that example there is an external physical object, the lines on paper, that remains the same and is “taken” in different ways. For Husserl, there is not some basic, given object that is seen as a duck or as a rabbit. In the normal case of perception we see a rabbit or a duck directly, there is no primitive object which we see and which is then interpreted in different ways. Only in special cases, like the duck-rabbit case, are we aware of the
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ambiguity, of our freedom to perceive one thing or the other. In most cases we perceive one thing, and only if later experience forces us to give up our original belief in this thing, do we discover that there is some other thing there, perhaps a quite different one. Now, if Husserl is right about perception, as I think he is, then this has consequences for the behaviorist notion of stimulation. Behaviorists are faced with a dilemma here. Either they may describe the stimulation as an object perceived by the subject, a ring, a color, etc. Then the problem is: how does the experimenter know that this is the object perceived by the subject? Does not the experimenter here impose his own conception on the situation on the subject that he describes? Arne Naess discussed this kind of imposition in a somewhat different framework in his doctoral: dissertation in 1936, and labelled it “maze epistemology” (Labyrinrherkenntnistheorie) (NAESS,1936, esp. pp. 53 ff.). Ever since von UEXKULL’S (1921 and 1928) attempts in the early part of the century to study the environments of animals as conceived or lived in by the animals, it has been a formidable challenge for the behavioral scientist not to impose his own conceptions on the subjects studied. Any attempt to describe the stimuli as that which the subject perceives is faced with this problem, if Husserl is right.
3. Reception and perception Trying to avoid this, the sophisticated behaviorist might get the idea of dkfining the stimuli not as something that the subject perceives, but as something that goes on at his nerve endings. This is what Quine does in Word and Object (QUINE,1960, pp. 31-35). When Quine defines stimuli as evolving patterns of irritation of the nerve endings, he does not hold that the stimulus is something that the subject perceives, but that it is something that he receives. Quine’s central concern is therefore not to describe the stimuli in some neutral, physical vocabulary. Rather, Quine is aware that if he were to describe stimuli as objects perceived, he would be begging the questions concerning meaning and reference that he set out to clarify. His use of the physical vocabulary is due solely to the fact that physics, notably elementary optics, is well developed and a relatively uncontroversial part of our current world scheme; so that the descriptions of the stimuli will be precise and not subject to disagreement among those who study man. Quine does not impute this physical theory to the agents who are studied. The stimuli are simply not what they perceive.
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However, here we are at the other horn of the behaviorist dilemma. For what Quine and other behaviorists are after, are the systematic connections between the stimuli that a subject receives and his responses. The responses, however, are responses to what the subject perceives and not merely to what he receives. Whether a subject assents to or dissents from “Gavagai”, for example, depends on whether he sees a duck or a rabbit. As we have noted, the stimulus may be the same, but the objects perceived widely different-and so the responses. Quine is aware of this. In his latest book, The Roots of Reference, he introduces the distinction between what a subject receives and what he perceives. The crucial difficulty in seeking to clarify perception on the basis of what is received and overt behavior is, as we should expect, to make proper allowance for interferences from within, from what speaking mentalistically we could call the subject’s mental states and processes. Quine does not want to screen out the subject’s actual contributions to perception, but ends up with the view that “mental entities are unobjectionable if conceived as hypothetical physical mechanisms and posited with a view strictly to the systematizing of physical phenomena” (QUINE, 1974, pp. 33-34). Hence, at least in the case of one prominent behaviorist, the difficulties connected with the notion of what is perceived have led to the admission of mental entities as part of our theory of man. Whether these mental entities are also physical, or whether they are merely mental, is, it seems, a matter that cannot be decided a priori. 4. Digression : Suppes’ behavioristic definition of “sign”
Patrick Suppes has argued (SUPPES,1969, pp. 300 ff.) that the difficulties connected with accounting for intentional notions, like e.g. the sign relation, within a behavioristic framework, are not as formidable as they 1957, pp. 177 ff.) that might seem. Chisholm has claimed (CHISHOLM, the familiar Pavlovian conditioning of a hungry dog, where after the conditioning the bell has come to be a sign of food, is one of the simplest kinds of psychological phenomena to require intentional concepts for an adequate explanation. Suppes has proposed a behavioristic definition for the notion of CS (conditioned stimulus, in the example the sounding of the bell), being a sign for US (unconditioned stimulus, the presence of food). R stands for the response (salivation). The dog, as you will remember, learns that the sounding of the bell is a sign of food in a process of trials, where in the beginning the dog salivates only in the presence of the food, but not upon the presentation of the bell. There is then
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a series of training trials in which the food and the stimulus bell are presented simultaneously and the dog salivates. Finally, after these training trials, the dog responds by salivating upon presentation of the bell alone. Suppes’ definition consists of the following four conditions: (1) P(R,IUS,)=l ; (2) P(R,I(CS, & 1 U S , ) ) w O ; (3) For 1
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Chisholm has formulated a number of difficulties that he thinks bars a behavioristic definition of “sign”. Suppes’ definition overcomes all of these. However, it is easy to give examples that satisfy Suppes’ four conditions, but where we would not say that CS is a sign of US. Consider, for example, the case where we have two kinds of food for the dog, both in the form of small pellets. One kind of pellet has a smell and a color, say red, that attracts the dog. From the very beginning, the dog salivates when presented with these pellets. The other pellets have no attractive smell nor color, let us say they are green, and the dog has never shown any interest in them, even when hungry. Using an intentionalist vocabulary, we might say that the dog has never discovered that these pellets are food. During a series of training trials the dog is now given a mixture of the two kinds of pellets. The dog is unable to separate the red pellets from the green ones and comes to eat them both. He thereby discovers that the green pellets, in spite of their unattractive appearance, taste very well, perhaps even better than the red ones, and after the training trials, he starts salivating upon presentation of the green pellets alone. According to Suppes’ definition, the green pellets have now become a sign for the red ones. However, this clearly conflicts with what we normally mean by the notion of a sign. Hence Suppes’ definition is inadequate. The definition can easily be patched up, but again, new counterexamples may probably be found for the patched-up definition. However, this brief discussion of Suppes was a digression. Let us return to our discussion of the more general problems that intentionality raise for behaviorism. 5. Attention and response
A second main place where intentionality comes in in connection with stimulus and response, is when we consider that the subject’s registration of the stimulus and the responding are both actions. That they are actions
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is brought out clearly by the following kinds of difficulties that are often discussed in psychological reports : In connection with the subject’s registration of the stimulus, there is the problem of whether the subject attends to the stimulus or simply is staring at it without seeing-as William lames put it in 1890: “staring at it in a vacuous, trance-like way’’ If the subject does not attend to what is in front of him, there is of course no limit to what he might be thinking of and what caprice might prompt his response. And even if he does attend, what does he attend to? The person in front of him, his eyes, their color, their shape, or some object associated in some way or other, e.g. by memory, with one of these objects? It is typical of the intentionalist view of action that an action is underdetermined by the external physical features of what goes on, e.g. the movement of the body and the direction of the eyes. Then, next we have the problem that the response, too, is an action. Three questions immediately arise in connection with the response. First, what brings it forth? The stimulus, whatever the subject takes that to be. the subject’s desire to impress the experimenter or to mislead him, or sheer caprice? And secondly, there is the experimenter’s problem when he tries to describe the response. Even in as simple a case as the assent to or dissent from a sentence, Quine has acknowledged, in his reply to Hintikka in the volume Words and Objections (DAVIDSON and HINTIKKA, 1969, p. 312), that the decision whether to treat a piece of native behavior as assent or as something else, even perhaps as dissent, is a question on a par with the general problems of meaning and translation. Thirdly, if the experiment involves verbal instructions, there is the problem whether the subject has understood the instructions, i.e. in which way he has interpreted them. Given, then, that intentionality seems to creep into even the simplest and most basic notion of behaviorism, it seems to me that one should take this into account when one wants to study man on the basis of his behavior.
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6. Empirical evidence
The original aim of behaviorism was to base the study of man on what we can observe. That is, the study of man should be based on empirical evidence, evidence that reaches us through our senses. This aim is what
* JAMES (1890), I, p.
222. Here quoted from NATSOULAS (1977), p. 80.
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almost everybody would find appealing about behaviorism. There are many of us who would sympathize with Watson and others in their reaction against the excesses of mentalism and introspectionism in the beginning of our century. However, when we base our study of man on the evidence that reaches us through our senses, we must heed carefully what this evidence is. As we have noted, what we experience through our senses is not sensory data, far less stimulation of sensory surfaces, We experience physical objects, but not only that. Once we accede to Husserl that the impingements on our sensory surfaces under-determine what we experience, it seems quite arbitrary to say that the only objects of sensory experience are physical objects. We experience shapes and colors, and when it comes to man, we experience not just bodies and bodily movements. We may do that, but that happens only rarely. In most of our normal life with others, we experience persons and their actions, not bodies and their movements. This is not just a playful extension of the notion of experience. My point is that our basic experience of others, that which gives us evidence against which our psychological theories have to be tested, is experience of persons, not bodies, and of actions, not movements. Similar points have been made before, by phenomenologists, Wittgenstein and others. Now, however, comes a most important point of difference between my view and that of many of the phenomenologists and Wittgensteinians. Although the evidence against which we have to test our theories is this kind of meaning-imbued experience, this does not mean that this experience is a rock-bottom foundation for science. There is no rock-bottom. Even though the impingements on my sensory surfaces may remain the same, what I experience may come to differ, as my beliefs and theories concerning the world change. What I now take to be veridical, I may tomorrow come to regard as misperception. When it comes to psychology and the study of man, the situation is similar, but with even greater leeway for vacillations. I experience the other as a person, with beliefs and desires that are reflected in his actions. But I may be wrong in what I take his actions to be; even though his actions are what I perceive, there are many different possibilities for what his actions are, all of them compatible with the irritations of my sensory surfaces, and correspondingly for his beliefs and desires. Hence again, not only are my theories tentative, but so is also the evidence upon which they are based.
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7. Behaviorism as an attempt to minimize the effects of the intentional Given all this, I think that we may look upon many of the methodological precepts and techniques developed by behaviorists in a different way. Rather than considering various experimental set-ups and the like as means of eliminating the intentional, which, I have argued, is impossible, I regard them as ways of reducing the under-determinateness that invariably comes in due to the intentionality, in stimuli, in response, etc. The spectrum of different objects that we can possibly take a person to perceive, varies clearly with the various patterns of irradiation on the eye, etc. We noticed for example that the duck-rabbit picture was particularly ambiguous. Similarly, the spectrum of different actions that we can take a person to perform varies with the kind and complexity of the bodily movement that is taking place. As our psychological theories improve, we may learn more and more about this and come to design better and better experiments. Already, in our present design of experiments, we are being helped by the intuitions and theories we presently have concerning man, his experiences and actions. This, by the way, is a reason why behaviorists easily come to delude themselves if they try to describe stimulus and response in a purely physical way. In the case of verbal responses, for example, one might try to give purely phonetic descriptions of what the subject utters instead of trying to interpret it in view of our whole tentative theory of the subject and his activity. Consider then in how many ways one can formulate basically equivalent responses in a language. Assent, for example, can be expressed by “yes”, “right”, “I agree”, “you have learned your lesson well”, “you amaze me”, and so on, almost ad infiniturn. The interconnection between all of these responses, which may make us want to treat them on a par if assent is all that we are interested in, would escape US completely if we just were to regard them as so many different phonetic sequences. Instead, of course, we regard the responses as meaningful expressions and group them in equivalence classes in view of our tentative theory of what the subject means and does. 8. What kind of theories are needed for the study of man
Now, finally, we come to the problem of how we go about finding out what people mean and do. Here, as elsewhere, we must start out from a tentative theory, which we should gradually try to improve and may also come to reject as our research goes on.
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In studying man, we need a very comprehensive theory, which includes a theory of action, a theory of meaning and communication, a theory of reference, and a theory of knowledge. All of these are interconnected, in such a way that evidence is transmitted between the theories. The exact way in which this happens, we shall see as we go on. 9. Theory of action
Let us begin with the theory of action. Like many writers on the subject, for example Fodor in his recent book The Language of Thought (FODOR, 1975), I hold that action should be explained by the models of formal decision theory. That is, the agent conceives of himself as being in a situation where he has a set of options, or alternatives. He has beliefs concerning how his choice between the options will affect the likelihood of various consequences, and he attaches values, positive or negative, to these consequences. He then chooses the option that gives the highest expected utility. Also game theory has to be brought in. The agent conceives of himself as being surrounded by other agents who in their turn conceive of him as an agent. His recognition of this and of the influence that his action will have on their actions affects his estimation of the probabilities of the various consequences that will ensue from his action. However, when in this way I appeal to decision theory and game theory for an explanation of human action, one qualification is necessary. For the explanation of action, standard normative decision theory and game theory will not do. We are not all of us rational decision makers. What we need, is empirical decision theory and game theory, a theory of how people, as a matter of fact, make decisions. The theory we need for explanation of action will relate to normative decision theory the way a consistent psychologistic approach to reasoning would relate to logic. A psychologistic philosopher, if he is consistent, should find out how people in fact reason, what arguments they regard as valid and what kind of conclusions they tend to draw, however fallaciously, from a given set of premises. In our empirical decision theory we must take into account how people normally consider only a very small number of the alternatives for action that are open to them in a given situation, how they reflect only about some of their consequences, often have odd beliefs about the probabilities of the various consequences, and also may have values and
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preferences that deviate considerably from those we think they ought to have. We have to incorporate in our explanatory theory what we know about factors that systematically mislead people in their estimates of probabilities and about factors that influence their preferences and often make them fluctuate considerably and rapidly. We have to include information about a n agent’s training and past performance, about panic and other factors that may infiuence his rationality, and so on. The empirical studies of decision making and choice by Tversky, Suppes and others are highly relevant here. Clearly, our explanation and prediction of a person’s actions will come to depend very much on our information and theories concerning this particular person, his characteristics as a decision maker, for example whether he shuns risks or enjoys them, and his conscious and unconscious beliefs and attitudes at the moment where the action took place. To these other sources of information we shall return shortly. Let me, however, first make two observations, one concerning the status of the normative theory of rationality and one concerning the structure of explanation of action. The normative theory of rationality is normative in the following sense, which is important in our context: If an action conforms to the normative decision theory, then this explains it. If it does not, then the deviation from normative decision theory has to be explained in order that we shall understand the action. Such deviation is normally explained by bringing in causal factors of the various kinds that I have just mentioned. My second observation concerns the structure of the explanation of action: we should note that there is never just one reason, i.e. one desire or belief that enters into the explanation. However, as in other areas of explanation, when an explanation is given, we usually pick out one or just a few factors, that we give as the reason(s) for the action. Which factors we pick depends upon their relative weight and the circumstances of the explanation, for example, what factors are not already known to the person for whom the explanation is intended. Hence, there seems to me to be no incompatibility between there being a number of reasons that enter into explanation by reason and our still giving only one, or a small number of these as the reason@)for the action. In fact, the situation here seems parallel to the situation in causal exSee e.g. TVERSKY (1972), TVERSKY and KAHNEMAN (1974).
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planation. In the case of causal explanation, too, one often just mentions one, or a small number of the causes of an event, e.g. those of which the person for whom the explanation is intended is not yet cognizant. In fact, I think that the parallelism between explanation by reason and explanation by causes extends far beyond this. I will even suggest that rather than assimilating reasons to causes in the simple way that the instantiation of causal laws suggests, one should be aware that causal explanation, like explanation by reason, makes use of a whole intricate theory and not a single simple causal law. To take an example, let us consider the case where we explain why an iron ball is falling towards the center of the earth by saying that the ball is heavy and that we have a law of physics to the effect that every heavy body here on earth will fall towards the center of the earth. Clearly, this is sometimes true, sometimes false. If some other factor enters the picture, like a support that keeps the object in place, an electromagnetic field or the like, the ball will perhaps not fall, perhaps will it even move upwards. We could, of course, save our law in the face of counterexamples like this by adding clauses to it, we might say: a heavy object here on earth which is not supported and not in a magnetic field will fall towards the center of the earth. Similarly in the case of actions, we might in the case of a person who opens the window begin with the following simple “law”: “A person who wants fresh air and believes that he will get it by opening the window, will open the window”. Noting the many exceptions from this “law”, we might improve it to: “A person who wants fresh air and believes that he will get it by opening the window and who also does not believe that anybody in the room will suffer from the draft, will open the window”. However, both in the example from physics and the example from action theory, our new revised “law” has exceptions. They both have to be supplemented with ever new clauses. In action theory, we quickly see that there is little point in trying to formulate ever more complicated laws. Instead, we attribute to each agent a number of propensities towards action, a set of desires and beliefs, and we devise a decision theory which tells us how in a given situation all these propensities are fused into one resultant propensity for action. Similarly in physics we attribute to each object a number of propensities, mass, electric charge, a certain position relative to other masses and electric charges, etc., and on the basis of this we determine the resultant propensity for e.g. movement in the given situation. Another way of looking at this is that physical objects and events, like actions, can be
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described in numerous ways, for each of which they instantiate different “laws”, i.e. show different propensities. These laws, or propensities, by the way, need not be deterministic. They may be probabilistic, in action theory as well as in physics. Formally, there are hence many similarities between the situation in physics and that in action theory. However, there are also important differences. One such is that in physics we have found a way of reducing the basic propensities to very few, mass and electric charge, position in gravitational and electromagnetic fields, etc., and one hopes for further reductions. In action theory, the situation is much more complicated. We have to deal with values, like money, beauty, unspoiled nature, peace, love, etc., that we have not learned how to compare and that are perhaps incomparable. We have also noted how these factors and the manner of their interplay may vary from person to person. Another factor, which also leads to differences between physics and action theory, is the capacity that the objects we study in action theory, viz. human beings, have to consider various possibilities. Some of these possibilities better satisfy our preferences than those we would reach if we were only to follow a gradient from where we are to some local maximum. There are also further differences between action theory and physics, for example connected with our capacity for reflection, etc. There will not be time to discuss this here, but I have included some remarks on it in a paper in German that was published some months ago. (F~LLESDAL,
1979.)
10. Evidence for attributions of beliefs and values The theory of action enables us to explain a person’s actions once we know his beliefs and values. However, our problem is the opposite, we observe his actions, or rather what we take his actions to be, and we then try to form hypotheses concerning his beliefs and values. This is the problem of so-called revealed preference which has been much discussed in economics. One particular difficulty here is that an action depends on both our beliefs and values in such a way that our determination of one of these factors depends on and changes with our assumptions concerning the other.
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It has long been popular among economists to hold that the only way of determining a person’s preferences is by examining his actual choices. However, there are more sources of information. First, we may simply ask him. One reason why economists stay away from this is that one cannot always trust what a person says. He may be lying, to us and perhaps to himself. He may sincerely believe that the reasons for his choice are different from what a person with more self-insight would think. 11. Speech acts as a species of actions Many economists and philosophers would say that the ultimate basis for deciding what a person desires and believes is not what he says, but what he does. I do not think that there is just one basis, except to the extent that we consider also a person’s speech acts as a form of action. Our theory of a person must account also for his speech acts. Our hypotheses concerning his beliefs and values must explain why certain of the things he says should not be trusted. Even a person’s saying something that is false may serve to confirm our theory of him.
12. Epistemology and rationality The hypotheses we make use of in such cases are not just hypotheses concerning the person’s truthfulness and motives. Especially in cases where a person sincerely seems to believe something that we take to be false, this may fit in with our hypotheses concerning what he has perceived and not perceived, together with our epistemological theory of how a person’s beliefs are formed and changed. Likewise, in attributing attitudes and values to a person, we have to make use of a theory of attitude formation and attitude change, together with hypotheses concerning the experiences, influences and development that the person has been through. This theory of attitude formation has to contain theses concerning for example the need for consistency of preferences at a time (e.g. to what extent and why the preference relation has to be transitive), the consistency of preferences over time (what kind of preference changes should be expected in a person and what kind not; if any kind of rapid and capricious preference change were permitted, we would simply have too much leeway in our determination of a person’s preferences on the basis of his actions). We also need assumptions concerning a person’s concern for his own
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future, in order to determine the “discount rate’’ he uses when he estimates the present value of future consequences of his actions. In view of this kind of considerations concerning the formation and change of a person’s beliefs and attitudes, it should be clear that neither with regard to beliefs nor with regard to values should we simply “maximize” agreement. Rather, we should use our epistemology and all we know about a person’s past experience to find out where we should expect and not expect agreement. This is clearly Quine’s view when he emphasizes perception and agreement concerning trivialities and absurdities as a basis for translation. (QUINE,1960, pp. 59-69.) It is also Davidson’s view, as is particularly clear in his later writings. Although the maxim of maximizing agreement is important in Wittgenstein, in Gadamer and in many others, it should be relegated to a subordinate position; in a considerably weakened form the maxim is simply a consequence of the central importance of an epistemology when we study and theorize about persons as we do in psychology. There is much to be added. I shall only now at the end mention two points, one having to do with ostension, the other with the so-called introspective reports.
13. Ostension First: ostension. In view of our explanation of a person’s actions we come to regard some situations where he is pointing as cases of ostension, that is, as attempts to indicate a reference. In such cases, the pointing gives us valuable information concerning what the person intends to refer to. Clearly, pointing does not uniquely determine a reference. Any physical object whose surface includes the first opaque surface in the direction of pointing is a candidate, so is any object related to one of these by the so-called deferred ostension (QUINE,1969, pp. 39-41). However, we should definitely take the person as referring to one of these objects and not to something else, Ostension hence eliminates certain misinterpretations, and it should override our epistemological considerations concerning a person’s beliefs. The epistemological considerations do after all For a more thorough discussion of these and other factors, see ELSTER(1979). DAVIDSON (1967. esp. p. 313; 1970, esp. p. 186: 1973, esp. p. 324and note 14). Davidson makes his position with respect to agreement particularly clear in DAVDSON (1973, esp. p. 19; and 1975, esp. pp. 20-22).
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not single out just one interpretation as the only possible one. As in the case of scientific theories we should normally prefer the simplest of the alternatives. However, when this choice of interpretation comes into conflict with the evidence provided by ostension, we should give up the interpretation and side for one of the interpretations that are compatible with what we derive from ostension. The conflict may thereby in some cases even come to tell us that some of our epistemological assumptions are wrong. 14. Introspective reports
As for my final little point, concerning introspective reports, it will have been clear already from what I have been saying that I think that we should admit such reports. I have mentioned that we may ask a person about his preferences and his beliefs, and also how he feels, etc., and we then use his answers as data against which we test our theory. These data are of course not incorrigible, just as little as other data. The main point, which makes them relevant and useful, is that they do relate to our theories. They fit in and confirm the theory, or they do not fit in, and disconfirm it. Note that I do not claim that all data are equally good, some are more corrigible than others. We have noted that observation of a person’s choices often make us doubt his verbal reports on his preferences. Likewise a person’s reports on his beliefs or on what something looks like to him may seem dubious in view of what he actually does do. However, as we have noted, observation of a person’s actions is not a rock-bottom, either, one and the same bodily movement is compatible with the agent’s performing any one of a number of actions. Listening to what he says and, of course, studying all the rest of his behavior may make us change our view on what action he performs. Behaviorists have often been reluctant to admit introspective reports. In the case of some ontological behavioristis this may be due to a dogma that there is nothing there to inspect and report on. This dogma I have never seen supported by good arguments. Other, more epistemologically motivated behaviorists bar introspective reports for one of three reasons: the phenomena reported on cannot be intersubjectively observed, they involve intentional notions, or they are unreliable. As for the phenomena reported on not being intersubjectively observable, this is admittedly so. However, as Alston has observed in a carefully argued article on private data (ALSTON, 1972), what matters in science
is not really intersubjective observability, but the possibility of independent testimony. And as I have argued all along in this lecture, there is a lot of such independent testimony available, the introspective reports and the observations of action have to fit in with one another, etc. As for the second point, their intentionality, introspective reports do admittedly often concern intentional phenomena. However, as I have argued, intentionality seems to be inavoidable, even for the most ardent behaviorists, and once one has to depend on intentional notions, then it is methodologically wise to admit all the evidence that is relevant to these notions, also that yielded by introspective reports. The third point, finally, concerning the unreliubility of introspective reports, is important. Many introspective reports are highly unreliable, but others are not, and similarly differ also reports concerning external behavior. It is important for methodology that we have theories concerning the reliability of various kinds of data. Such a theory is, in the case of psychology, just a corollary of the general theory of man that psychologists seek to arrive at. 15. Conclusion
Behaviorists often proclaim that they are getting on well without intentionality or even that there is no such thing as intentionality. However, I have argued that intentionality permeates the objects and processes studied in psychology as well as the observations and procedures used in such studies, including those used by behaviorists. Further, I have argued that there is an interplay between the different fields of study: action, perception, etc., such that our explanatory hypotheses in one of these fields must fit in with those in the other fields. We have, for example, observed how the beliefs and values that we attribute to a person in order to explain his actions, must fit in with those we ascribe to him in order to interpret what he says. Evidence that bears on one of these fields thereby comes to bear also on the others. A theory of intentionality is in part a theory of the evidential interplay between these different fields. For behaviorism, with its emphasis on evidence, this interplay should be a major concern. From an intentionalist point of view, behaviorism may be looked upon as an endeavour to arrive at methods and experimental set-ups that give as reliable data as possibIe, especially by minimizing the ambiguities due to intentionality. By openly bringing in a theory of intentionality as a guide in this endeavour, we will get a better behaviorism.
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References ALSTON,W. P., 1972, Can psychology do without private data, Behaviorism, vol. 1, pp. 71-102 CHISHOLM, R., 1957, Perceiving: A philosophical study (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N. Y.) DAVIDSON, D., 1967. Truth and meaning, Synthese, vol. 17, pp. 304-323 DAVIDSON, D., 1970,Semantics for natural languages, in: Linguaggi nella societa e nelle technica, pp. 177-188 (Milan) DAVIDSON, D., 1973a,Radical interpretation. Dialectica, vol. 27, pp. 313-328 DAVIDSON, D., 1973b, On the very idea of a conceptual scheme (Presidential Address, American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division Meeting, Atlanta 1973), in: Proceedings at the American Philosophical Association 1974, pp. 5-20 DAVIDSON, D., 1975, Thought and talk, in: Mind and Language, ed. Samuel Guttenplan, pp. 7-23 (Clarendon Press, Oxford) DAVIDSON, D., and J. HINTIKKA(eds.), 1969, Wordr and objections; Essays on rhe work of W. V. Quine (Reidel, Dordrecht) ELSTER,J., 1979, Ulysses and the Sirens: Studies in rationality and irrationality (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) FODOR, J. A., 1975, The language of thought (Harvester Press, Hassocks, Sussex) FGLLESDAL, D., 1979, Handlungen, ihre Griinde und Ursachen, in: Handlungstheonen interdisziplinar. ed. Hans Lenk, vol. 2, pp. 431-444 (Fink, Munich) JAMBS, W., 1890, The principles of psychology (Holt, New York ) MARTIN,M., 1978, Interpreting Skinner, Behaviorism, vol. 6, pp. 129-138 NATSOULAS, T., 1977, On perceptual aboutness, Behaviorism, vol. 5, pp. 75-97 NABSS,A., 1936,Erkenntnis und wissenschajiliches Verhalten,Skrifter utgitt av Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo 11. HisbFilos. Klasse, 1936, No. 1 (Dybwad. Oslo) QUINE,W. V., 1960, Word andobject (The Technology Press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.) QUINE,W. V., 1969, Ontological relativity and other essays (Columbia University Press, New York) QUINB,W. V., 1974, The roots of reference (Open Court; La Salle, Ill.) SUPPES,P., 1969,Behaviorism, in: Studies in the methodology and foundations of science: Selected papers from 1951 to 1969, pp. 294-311 (Reidel, Dordrecht) SUPPBS,P., 1975, From behaviorism to neo-behaviorism, Theory and Decision, vol. 6, pp. 269-285 TVERSKY, A., 1972, Elimination by aspects: A theory of choice, Psychological Review, V O ~ . 79, pp. 281-300 TVERSKY, A., and D. KAHNEMAN,1974, Judgement under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases, Science, vol. 183, pp. 1124-1131 VON UEXK~LL, J., 1921, Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere [Springer, Berlin) VON UEXK~LL, J., 1928, Theoretische Eiologie (Springer, Berlin)
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