Identity Thesis Research Articles

Some Pragmatist Themes in Hegel's Idealism: Negotiation and Administration in Hegel's Account of the Structure and Content of Conceptual Norms

This paper could equally well have been titled ‘Some Idealist Themes in Hegel’s Pragmatism’. Both idealism and pragmatism are capacious concepts, encompassing many distinguishable theses. I will focus on one pragmatist thesis and one idealist thesis (though we will come within sight of some others). The pragmatist thesis (what I will call ‘the semantic pragmatist thesis’) is that the use of concepts determines their content, that is, that concepts can have no content apart from that conferred on them by their use. The idealist thesis is that the structure and unity of the concept is the same as the structure and unity of the self. The semantic pragmatist thesis is a commonplace of our Wittgensteinean philosophical world. The idealist thesis is, to say the least, not. I don’t believe there is any serious contemporary semantic thinker who is pursuing the thought that concepts might best be understood by modelling them on selves. Indeed, from the point of view of contemporary semantics it is hard to know even what one could mean by such a thought: what relatively unproblematic features of selves are supposed to illuminate what relatively problematic features of concepts? Why should we think that understanding something about, say, personal identity would help us understand issues concerning the identity and individuation of concepts? From a contemporary point of view, the idealist semantic thesis is bound to appear initially as something between unpromising and crazy. My interpretive claim here will be that the idealist thesis is Hegel’s way of making the pragmatist thesis workable, in the context of several other commitments and insights. My philosophical claim here will be that we actually have a lot to learn from this strategy about contemporary semantic issues that we by no means see our way to the bottom of otherwise. In the space of this essay, I cannot properly justify the first claim textually, nor the second argumentatively. I will confine myself of necessity to sketching the outlines and motivations for the complex, sophisticated, and interesting view on the topic I find Hegel putting forward.

Quantum Indeterminacy and Wittgenstein's private language argument

The demand for ‘criteria of correctness’ to identify recurring particulars in Wittgenstein's private language argument favors an idealist interpretation of quantum phenomena.The indeterminacy principle in quantum physics and the logic of the private language argument share a common concern with the limitations by which microphysical or sensation particulars can be reidentified. Wittgenstein's criteria for reidentifying particular recurrent private sensations are so general as to apply with equal force to quantum particulars, and to support the idealist thesis that quantum phenomena are themselves essentially mental or dependent on mental occurrences.

ERPs and Domain Specificity: Beating a Straw Horse

We discuss the import, validity and implications of the identity thesis: the idea that the P600 component of the scalp recorded event-related brain potential is identical with the P3b, a domain-general component elicited by improbable task-relevant events. We point to data reported in Coulson, King and Kutas (1998), as well as more recently published findings, which suggest that the P600 component is sensitive to domain-general factors of probability, salience and task relevance. Exploring the epistemological complexities of the issue, we suggest what the identity thesis does and does not imply about the existence of a modular parser.

Reasons for forming an intention: a reply to Pink

In a recent article and book (Pink 1991, 1996), Thomas Pink considers the question: What psychological attitudes rationalize or justify the formation of intentions or decisions [Pink identifies the two] to act (or not to act)?, where an attitude can justify a decision and the action decided upon, even if it does not actually motivate-is not the actual reason whyan agent makes that decision. As Pink recognizes, the conventional answer to this question is: same attitudes which explain the performance of the actions decides upon. In other words, convention asserts an Identity thesis: an agent's justification at any time t for then deciding to do action A (or deciding not to do A) later is identical with his justification at t for doing A (or not doing A) later.' The Identity thesis is plausible because decisions are about actions we will perform. We decide how we will act, and a decision to act issues in an intention to act. Moreover, what recommends an action to us are reasons to perform it. Thus, in deliberation about which actions to perform, we are considering them in light of the reasons which justify them. When we decide and, thereby, intend to perform A, we explain that decision and intention to do A by a reason for doing A itself. If this were not the case, a reason for deciding to do A which is not a reason to do A would leave an agent intending to do A with no reason to do A. But no rational agent intends to perform an action which he has no reason to perform. Hence, the truth of the Identity thesis. Pink asserts that an implication of the Identity thesis is that a decision, unlike decided upon and intended actions, is not means-end justifiable. Stated differently, our justifications for deciding to do A are not purposes for deciding to do A per se, where deciding to do A itself is required as a means to an end about which we deliberate. Rather, our justifications for deciding to do A are justifications for performing the decided upon action A, which alone is viewed as a means to an end.

Multiple Realization, Computation and the Taxonomy of Psychological States

The paper criticizes standard functionalist arguments for multiple realization. It focuses on arguments in which psychological states are conceived as computational, which is precisely where the multiple realization doctrine has seemed the strongest. It is argued that a type-type identity thesis between computational states and physical states is no less plausible than a multiple realization thesis. The paper also presents, more tentatively, positive arguments for a picture of local reduction.

Qualia und Physikalismus

Qualia and Physicalism. It is assumed that the following three relations exhaust the possibilities for a physicalist account of qualia: 1. determination, 2. identity, 3. realization. The first relation is immediately rejected because it does not exclude property dualism. The second faces the problem that it is probably impossible to discriminate empirically between the identity thesis and the epiphenomenalist position. The third cannot handle qualia adequately, for qualia are not functional properties and the realization relation is only plausible as a relation between physical realizers and functional properties. Finally, if one attempts to replace multiple realization by multiple identities it is shown that the notion of multiple property identities is unintelligible. The upshot is that if these three relations exhaust the possibilities of a physicalist construal of qualia then physicalism is wrong.

Reply to Commentators

Helen Steward's first worry about my discussion of physicalism concerns the definition of physicalism itself. I say that a supervenience thesis does not by itself suffice for physicalism, since an epiphenomenalist view of the mental has the mental supervening on the physical, but clearly isn't a physicalist doctrine. So I say that physicalism also needs some further requirement of token congruence (which I later cash out as the requirement of physical identity or realization). Against this, Steward suggests that supervenience may suffice for physicalism on its own. She is interested in this, she explains, because she is herself disinclined to accept any thesis of physical identity or realization. As Steward notes, there is a danger that the difference between us might collapse into a dispute about the meaning of physicalism. However, the issue is given a focus by our shared assumption that, whatever else physicalism may be, it is not compatible with epiphenomenalism. So the substance of our dispute is this: does supervenience alone suffice to rule out epiphenomenalism, as Steward would like, or not, as I claim? I agree with Steward that epiphenomenalism needs some possibility of mental variation without physical variation. As Steward puts it, there would be no content to the epiphenomenalist insistence that mental phenomena are distinct from physical ones, if this did not imply that it is at least logically possible for mental phenomena to occur without their normal physical correlates. So we can agree that a very strong supervenience thesis (no logical possibility of mental variation without physical variation) would rule out epiphe-

Unity and diversity in psychiatry: some philosophical issues.

The aim of this paper is to provide a defence of diversity in psychiatry and, correspondingly, to show that strict 'biologism' (or any other 'total' approach to psychiatry) is inappropriate. Arguments are developed using as a basis the writings of well known philosophers such as Stephen Toulmin, Joel Feinberg and Charles Taylor. The authors examine the concepts of explanation and causation and consider the consequences for psychiatry which might follow the acceptance of mind-brain identity. There is also a discussion of the concept of a person. If the same phenomenon is subject to explanation from diverse psychiatric perspectives, it does not follow that these modes of explanation must exclude or be in competition with each other. They may in fact be necessary to each other if psychiatry is to provide a full picture of mental functioning and human conduct. The thesis of mind-brain identity does not eliminate the variety of discourses within psychiatry, and hence it does not provide a rationale for 'biologism'. There is a need for a co-operative multidimensional approach in psychiatry.

Are mental events preceded by their physical causes?

Abstract Libet's experiments, supported by a strict one‐to‐one identity thesis between brain events and mental events, have prompted the conclusion that physical events precede the mental events to which they correspond. We examine this claim and conclude that it is suspect for several reasons. First, there is a dual assumption that an intention is the kind of thing that causes an action and that can be accurately introspected. Second, there is a real problem with the method of timing the mental events concerned given that Libet himself has found the reports of subjects to be unreliable in this regard. Third, there is a suspect assumption that there are such things as timable and locatable mental and brain events accompanying and causing human behaviour. For all these reasons we reject the claim that physical events are prior to and explain mental events.

Self‐awareness and the mind‐brain problem

Abstract The prima facie heterogeneity between psychical and physical phenomena seems to be a serious objection to psychoneural identity thesis, according to many authors, from Leibniz to Popper. It is argued that this objection can be superseded by a different conception of consciousness. Consciousness, while being conscious of something, is always unconscious of itself. Consciousness of being conscious is not immediate, it involves another, second‐order, conscious state. The appearance of mental states to second‐order consciousness does not reveal their true nature. Psychoneural identity can thus be considered a valid hypothesis. Related views of Kant, Freud, Shaffer, Bunge and others are considered. “Naive psychical realism” is criticised. Consciousness of mental events is considered as the result of the action of a cerebral system that observes the neural events hypothetically identical to mental events. The theory combines a materialist view with a due consideration of subjective experience.

Liberty and the political compass (or how left-wingism is anti-liberty)

With respect to the phenomenal distinction that is conventionally made between ‘personal’ and ‘economic’ liberty, I do accept that “there is no logical incoherence in claiming that constraint of one can lead to an increase in the other.” Though, as Cole understands, I doubt the conceptual coherence of the distinction (let us call this view the ‘identity thesis’). So I assert that though the personal/economic distinction is conceptually dubious, it can stand unproblematically as illustrating the phenomenal distinctions that people do make. I cannot see how “this inherent conceptual tension at two points of the compass does threaten it with collapse” as a phenomenal illustration as well, if that is what Cole means (as his “despite Lester’s protests” indicates).

Reflections on the Problem of Identifying Mind and Brain

Present-day research within the neural/cognitive sciences is carried out within a paradigm involving a thesis about some kind of identity between mind and brain. This paper concerns the possibility of making such an identification. It is first argued that empirical findings cannot by themselves establish that mental events are identical with neural events, to that end some rational or logical principle is further needed. The identity thesis is then scrutinized and it is found that the thesis itself is hard to make sense of. Despite the evident problems inherent in the identity research paradigm, a number of philosophers and scientists have, in recent years, tried to spell out in more detail theories about the relation between mind and brain involving identity claims. These theories are briefly presented, and some of their shortcomings are noted. The later part of the paper concentrates on the conscious character of all mental events, and it is argued that for logical-conceptual reasons a full explanation of this character cannot be given within a scientific theory. This seems fatal to any attempt at identifying mental events with neural events in the brain, and thus to the whole project of studying the mental realm with the means of ordinary empirical scientific methods.

The Recovery of the Soul: An Aristotelian Essay on Self-Fulfilment

In The Recovery of the Soul, Kenneth Rankin suggests that the current impasse over solutions to many philosophical problems is the result, in part, of a failure to consider how each of these problems bears on the rest. Rankin shows that a libertarian theory of free will, an A-theory of time, a corporealist theory of personal identity, and a non-relativist interpretation of the foundation of ethics all contribute to or are derived from a psychocentric form of physicalism. The proposed Modal Identity thesis identifies the mind, or that which ensouls the body, with a strictly physical power, the power to act intentionally from occasion to occasion in any one of several mutually exclusive ways. Rankin argues further that the non-arbitrary individuation of particular physical things derives from the causal powers they possess. The distinctive power that ensouls our bodies is identified as the primary causal power: all other powers derive their status as powers from it in so far as they are constitutive, or instruments, of it. Rankin demonstrates that many of our ontological preconceptions are Aristotelian in origin. The psychocentric physicalism of the central thesis is a response to Aristotle's question What is being? and in the earlier chapters of the book Aristotle's contributions to a theory of being are used as a preliminary study to suggest which parts of these preconceptions should be kept and which revised. Later chapters suggest that failure to resolve many philosophical problems results in part from the failure of Aristotle's philosophy to fulfil its promise.

Intending for Reasons

T. L. M. Pink, in his (1991) Purposive Intending, raises an important question about intentions, instructively criticizes a familiar response, and advances an interesting answer of his own. Pink's question is this (p. 343): What psychological attitudes rationalize and explain intentions to act? The burden of this note is to show that his answer is problematic. Pink forcefully attacks a thesis that he attributes to most recent theorists of practical reasoning and intention, including Anscombe, Davidson and Bratman (p. 344)-namely, the Identity thesis: [all] intentions to do are explained and rationalized by the same psychological attitudes which, given the belief that the intended time of action is now, would explain and rationalize doing A (p. 343). On Pink's alternative view,

Is God an Abstract Object?

Before Duns Scotus, most philosophers agreed that God is identical with His necessary intrinsic attributes-omnipotence, omniscience, etc. This Identity Thesis was a component of widely held doctrines of divine simplicity, which stated that God exemplifies no metaphysical distinctions, including that between subject and attribute. The Identity Thesis seems to render God an attribute, an abstract object. This paper shows that the Identity Thesis follows from a basic theistic belief and does not render God abstract. It also discusses how one might move from the Identity Thesis to the full doctrine of divine simplicity and shows that the Identity Thesis generates a new ontological argument. Medieval theologians commonly speculated at length on the relation between God and His essential attributes before proceeding to less abstruse matters.' The dominant view prior to 1300 was that God's relation to His necessary intrinsic attributes is identity-that God is identical with omnipotence, identical with omniscience and so on. This surprising claim was a component of doctrines of divine simplicity held by Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Aquinas and hosts of lesser lights. For the claim that God is simple, in these writers, is shorthand for the claim that He exemplifies no metaphysical distinctions whatsoever, including that between subject and essential attribute. Though abstruse, the claim that God is simple is at the heart of these thinkers' concepts of God. To cite but one instance, it is because everything he says about God will be affected by the claim that God is simple that Aquinas in his Summae takes up God's simplicity as soon as he finishes arguing His existence.2 The medievals found divine simplicity important because they explained the concept of God by explicating the concept of a perfect NOUS 24 (1990) 581-598 ? 1990 by Nouis Publications

In Defense of Davidson's Identity Thesis Regarding Action Individuation

In Defense of Davidson's Identity Thesis Regarding Action Individuation

Negotiating as an ethics action (praxis) strategy

Ethical reasoning as an action (praxis) as opposed to a knowing (epistemology) strategy is not always effective in guilding ethical, stopping or turning around unethical organizational behavior. In contrast, nonviolent forcing strategies can be very effective, but also destructive. If reasoning is an idealistic thesis and forcing is its pragmatic, material antithesis, then do we need a synthesis action (praxis) strategy such as problem solving negotiating? There are also limitations with negotiating.

Aristotle's Philosophy of Action.

Dr Charles examines some main themes in Aristotle's philosophy of action. He is interested both in the exegesis of Aristotle and in the relation between his views and those of certain fashionable present-day philosophers. He argues that the set of positions which he attributes to Aristotle constitutes an alternative which deserves serious consideration. First he discusses Aristotle's views on the identity conditions for processes, and then his account of the explanation of processes, and in particular of actions; here the explanatory roles of desire, belief and reasoning become important. Discussion of this drives one' to examine Aristotle's treatment of akrasia. Here C. argues that he allows for an akrates who, with clear-eyed, but off-beat knowledge of the right conclusion, acts against it. He rejects the view that Aristotle effectively capitulates to Socrates: the akrates' knowledge need only be off-colour in the sense that it is not fully integrated into his life. This allows him to fit the treatment of akrasia into an account of education and the development of practical reason. The account, however, seems to produce a tension between explaining action teleologically and explaining it causally by reference to beliefs and desires. The argument that on Aristotle's view these styles of explanation are compatible enables C. to develop what he considers to be the peculiarly Aristotelian form of materialism, avoiding any version of identity thesis regarding mental and physical processes. This makes him interestingly different from most modern materialists. C. is not just interested in using Aristotle as a counter in modern disputes; he also enters the scholarly lists and one has, to one's profit, to work through Aristotle to disagree. The book contains a good deal of interesting scholarly argument. It is, however, very densely written, usually at a highly abstract level. Charles is very parsimonious with examples which might help one see how to cash the views he considers. Worse, he is given to a love of convolution and semi-formalisation which leads to obscurity. Some examples: (i) On p. 34 we get the following semi-formalisation: (3X7) (7r is an event & (3 !t) ((t is in 400 B.C.) & (0 is and successfully (7j)))). No interpretation of INT is given. Angled brackets usually indicate ordered n-tuples, but then there should be commas between the items: the only commas come within rounded brackets. What is the significance of brackets round the final 77? (ii) p. 113 'The sufficiency thesis If the conclusion of practical reasoning is the agent's best judgment, and that conclusion is always sufficient for action, if the agent acts intentionally, a man who reaches his best judgment must act on it, if he acts intentionally.' To save this from unintended tautology we need to excise 'and that... agent acts intentionally'. After that a little tidying could produce a clear, crisp and correct sentence. The semi-formalisation that follows should not be an existentially quantified formula. The semi-formalisation on the next page also deserves attention. (iii) On pp. 199-200 the confusion deepens. One is left uncertain whether the subject of 'necessitates' is a proposition, or an event or state of affairs asserted in some proposition to obtain. If the former, necessitates' presumably means 'entails'. In that case the gloss in footnote 4 ('P necessitates Q' ('P is necessary for Q')) should have 'sufficient' for 'necessary'. The use of 'explanation' in the main text suggests that C. 69

Happiness and virtue in Socrates' moral theory

In Section IV above we start with texts whose prima facie import speaks so strongly for the Identity Thesis that any interpretation which stops short of it looks like a shabby, timorous, thesis-saving move. What else could Socrates mean when he declares with such conviction that ‘no evil’ can come to a good man (T19), that his prosecutors ‘could not harm’ him (T16(a)), that if a man has not been made more unjust he has not been harmed (T20), that ‘all of happiness is in culture and justice’ (T16(a)), that living well is ‘the same’ as living justly (T15)? But then doubts begin to creep in. Recalling that inflation of the quantifier is normal and innocuous in common speech (“that job means everything to him, he'll do anything to get it, will stick at nothing”) we ask if there is really no chance at all that ‘no evil’ in T19, ‘not harmed’ in T20 might be meant in the same way? The shift from ‘no harm’ at T16(a) to ‘no great harm’ at T16(b), once noticed, strengthens the doubt. It gets further impetus in T21(b) when to explain how ‘all of happiness is in culture and justice’ he depicts a relation (that recurs more elaborately in T22) which, though still enormously strong, is not quite as strong as would be required by identity. The doubt seeps into T15 when we note that current usage did allow just that relation as a respectable use of ‘the same’.

Bertrand Russell's Crisis of Faith

Philosophers, Russell once wrote, view the world in one of two ways: either as a jelly or as a pile of shot. Russell himself, in the closing years of the nineteenth century, abandoned the jelly in favour of the shot. This was the most radical of all the intellectual changes Russell went through in his career. Since it led directly to the writing of his greatest philosophical works, and, in general, to much of what is distinctive and best in Russell's matUre philosophy, the change has usually been presented as an intellectual liberation: an escape from nineteenth-century philosophical muddle to twentieth-century analytical rigour; from the Victorian parlour to the Bauhaus. There was, indeed, much of this in it; but also there was a more distressing aspect. The Victorian parlour offered a comfortable cosiness not available in the bleak, hard light of the Bauhaus interior. The change, I think, also had its impact on Russell's personal life, on his moral thinking, and, in particular, on the way he regarded human relationships. I shall do what I can in this paper to bring out these interconnections. But, first, I want to describe the Victorian parlour in a little more detail, [or, while the Bauhaus is sufficiently well known for my present purposes, the parlour was not so dark and cobwebby as it has sometimes appeared in retrospect. The British neo-Hegelian movement, in which Russell did his first philosophical work, embraced a fairly wide range of positions with only a few clear theses in common. Of these, I want to draw attention to two: the idealist thesis, that (ultimately) spirit alone is real; and the unity thesis, that (ultimately) either all relations are internal 'or else there are no relations at all. The disjunction in the unity thesis admits the distinction between the