Page 264 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Reference
basis for bootstrapping our way to the rest of our conceptual equipment may not be available.
6. Linguistic Representation andMental Representation
This problem suggests that the Kripkean story may not be the right story of primitive content, but rather plays a role in the explanation of more cognitively sophisticated linguistic and mental representation, representations whose content presupposes a con- ceptual backdrop. Causal semantics then is faced with the problem that the cognitive capacities it relies on in explaining reference seem to presuppose the rep- resentational capacities that we most want explained. Trading in the problems of linguistic representation on the problem of mental representation might be progress. For one thing, there is that latter problem anyway. For another, it might be that the psycho- logical problem is more tractable than the linguistic one, even though the trade-in constrains the solution. If we psychologize semantics, we can hardly explain mental representation by appeal to linguistic rep- resentation, as some have hoped.
How then might we hope to explain the mental capacities on which causal semantics depend? There seem to be only three options in the literature: reliable correlation, or indication; biological function; and functional role. All have problems.
6.1 Indication
The essential intuition behind indication theories is that representation is reliable correlation; a concept is a tiger concept just when its tokening covaries with the presence of tigers in the vicinity. Concept tokens are counterfactually dependent on their object; Max would not produce 'tiger' tokens unless confronted with tiger instances. Indication seems best suited to explain perception; it is obviously hard to extend indi- cator theories to mental representation in general, and from concepts for ostensively definable kinds to other concepts. Yet it seems that the causal semantics of names and natural kind terms require an account of the 'aboutness' of intentions and beliefs, not just per- ceptions. But the most severe problem for indication is misrepresentation. Leopards, practical jokes, noises in the undergrowth can all cause Max nervously to token 'tiger,' yet that concept is not the concept of tigers and anything else that goes grunt in the night. No-one tokens the tiger-concept only when tigers are present. Moreover, indication does not seem to deliver an account of the representational properties of even basic concepts, for indication is a relation not between a representation and an object or kind of object, but a relation between a representation and a state of affairs, the state of affairs of there being a tiger here now. For a defense of indication theories, see Dretske (1981, 1988) and Stampe (1986).
6.2 Teleology
One popular response to the problems of historical causal theories and of indication is to appeal to the biological function of a representation-forming mech- anism. A mechanism has its biological function in virtue of its evolutionary history, so this appeal is uncontroversially naturalistic. Further, it seems to have the potential to solve the problem of mis- representation. Robins feed their chicks when they gape and screech. But robins are vulnerable to cuckoos. In feeding a young cuckoo, the robin rep- resents it, indeed misrepresents it, as her chick. For the biological function of the representation is to direct the robins in feeding their chicks, not to direct them in feeding their chicks or cuckoos, nor to feed retinal images or chick surfaces. That mechanism evolved because it led to robin ancestors feeding robin chicks, and despite the fact that it sometimes led them to feed cuckoos.
The proposal to add ideological elements to the causal story seems very attractive. For an appeal to the biological function of a representation is thoroughly naturalistic, yet does give more discriminatory machinery. We can specify the circumstances in which a mental state represents rather than misrepresents: it represents when the token is caused by circumstances of the same kind as those selectively responsible for the existence of the type. Beavers have the cognitive capacity to have tokens that represent the immediate presence of a wolf, because wolf-here-now cir- cumstances were critical to the evolution of that capacity. So a beaver represents when she tokens that thought when confronted with a wolf, misrepresents when she tokens it in other circumstances. The appeal to teleology allows to specify the circumstances in which representation is veridical in a nonintentional, nonarbitrary way.
Teleological theory looks to be a very plausible account of the semantics of innate structures, and it may well be that there will be an important Ideological element in our total theory of mental representation. But the attempt to extend the ideological story to the human prepositional attitudes, and hence to the cognitive capacities that causal theories of names and general terms presuppose, faces great difficulties. Human beliefs do not have evolutionary histories. Very few human beliefs have been available to the ancestral population long enough to be the subjects of an evolutionary history. Moreover, the rep- resentational structures that are the standard exam- ples of Ideological semantics are fixed, isolated, innate. Beavers' representations of danger, ducklings' mother-thoughts, and frogs' musings on flies seem likely to be unstructured; they don't have component representations. Human intentions and beliefs, rep- resentations that are implicit in causal theories of reference, are complex. For creatures whose rep- resentational systems are languages of thought, the
242