Dretske and the causality of reasons

How can it be that a thing has a meaning and that the fact that it has this meaning can explain certain effects or is at least relevant for the explanation of these effects? This question is the central theme in Fred Dretske’s book Explaining Behavior. Here, I don’t want to discuss this interesting philosophical work, but only one of its theses, namely that talking about reasons makes only sense, if reasons are causally relevant for the actions they are reasons for. Is it true?

When asking the leading question of his book, Dretske had two things in mind. First, the meaning concerned as such must be relevant for the explanation of the effects. “A soprano’s upper-register supplications may shatter glass, but their meaning is irrelevant to their having this effect” (1988:79). Even if the sounds had no meaning, the effect would be the same. However, there are cases where the meaning of a thing is explanatorily relevant, and it is these cases that Dretske’s theory of the causal role of meaning refers to (1988:77-80). Second, explanatory relevance is for Dretske causal relevance. As he puts it in his “Reasons and Causes”: “Any theory of meaning that doesn’t make a thing’s having meaning into a causally relevant property of the thing (and hence the fact that it has meaning into an explanatorily important fact about the thing) is a theory of meaning that can be rejected at the outset.” (1989:5).

When Dretske talks about the causal relevance of reasons, apparently he implied: 1) If reasons are not causally relevant for behaviour, they are also not relevant in a different way. For if reasons are not causally relevant, although they are otherwise relevant, we might suppose that Dretske would at least attach some value to having them in that case, and he would not reject a theory that ignores or rejects their causal relevance at the outset. 2) If we talk about the reasons why we do something, this “why” has a causal meaning.

For Dretske, reasons are “those content-possessing mental states (belief, desire, fear, regret) we invoke to explain one another’s behavior” (1988:79). Particularly, the agent’s reasons are the cognitive factors and conative conditions that steer his behaviour. The function of the cognitive factors C or “beliefs” is “.… to indicate the presence of those conditions that, if the right motivational state is present, will lead, other things being equal, to M” (1988:105) with M being what is done by the agent. However, having a belief is not sufficient for M taking place. There must also be a conative condition or “desire”, i.e. a certain motivational state (D). Basically, the cognitive factors and the conative conditions determine together the agent’s behaviour, and so they are the reasons for this behaviour (1988:105-107).

Take now this case: A friend of mine calls me asking whether I can come to help him. So, I take my coat, walk to the shed, and take my bike. Seeing that I want to go, my wife asks me to post a letter.

What I do now can be described as 1) posting my wife’s letter; 2) going to my friend. Take 1). If we apply Dretske’s theory, the cognitive factor is my belief that my wife wants me to post a letter. I want to do her a favour, and so I have a desire (conative condition) for really doing it. This analysis seems to explain my action “posting the letter” (M). However, we must also consider my “second” action: going to my friend. It can be explained in the same way as the “first” one, but that is not what matters here. I want to examine the relation between both actions. If I had not gone to my friend, my wife would not have asked her question, and I would not have posted the letter, but she would have done it herself. So I post the letter because I go to my friend. My going to my friend is therefore a relevant explanatory factor of my action “posting my wife’s letter”. Accordingly, it is a reason as described by Dretske, namely a “belief”. But is it also a causal relevant explanatory, namely a cognitive, factor for my action “posting the letter”? Dretske correctly says that cognitive factors can be causally effective only if there is an accompanying conative condition, or “the right motivational state” (see above). As just said, the conative condition (desire) in my example is that I want to do my wife a favour. However, the consideration that I am to go to my friend does neither refer to a circumstance that can fulfil my wanting to do my wife a favour, nor is it a cognitive factor that is or can be fulfilled by this conative condition. As Dretske puts it, it is not an “internal indication of the appropriate stimulus conditions” (1988:113n). In order to fulfil this conative condition, we need another cognitive factor that does indicate the appropriate circumstances, in this case that my wife asks me to post the letter. I go to my friend because he called me and because I want to do him a favour. It is not my going to my friend but my wife’s request that is the causally effective reason for my action of posting the letter; at least in the sense of “reason” given by Dretske. However, in the presence of another cognitive factor, my going to my friend becomes a relevant reason for doing my wife a favour and this is what happens in my example. So, in this case there is a (cognitive) factor that is a relevant reason for an action but not a causally relevant reason in Dretske’s sense.

The upshot is that reasons can be relevant for explaining of what I do without being causally relevant for it. Nevertheless, reasons give an answer to the question why I act that way.

References

Dretske, Fred, Explaining Behavior. Cambridge, Mass. etc.: MIT; 1988

Dretske, Fred, “Reasons and Causes”, in Philosophy Perspectives, vol.3 (1989), pp. 1-15

What matters

At the end of the last volume of his three-volume On What Matters, Derek Parfit says that he had written so little about what matters. It is not true. Maybe the trilogy says hardly what matters but it says a lot about what matters. Parfit added that he hoped to say more about what matters in a fourth volume (p. 436), but, alas, it will not happen, for he died yet before the third volume had been published.

An author has often another view on his work than his readers and I think that this is here also the case. In order to show that the trilogy discusses really what matters – and not only about what matters –, I cannot give an extensive analysis, but here are some examples (I quote from Volume Three):

“When we ask”, so Parfit, “whether some act’s effect would make [an] act right or wrong, many of us [believe] that we can ignore very small benefits or harms.” For instance: “[W]e ought to save one person from a year of pain rather than saving each of many people from only one minute of similar pain”, so many believe. Parfit doesn’t agree: “Suppose that another million people would, without our help, have two years of pain. When applied to this case, [the thesis] is clearly false. If we million people saved each of these other people from one minute of pain, we together would save these people from two years of pain” (p. 422)

Although it is true, nevertheless we could prefer to spread the pain among one million people, since we find one year of pain for one person terrible, and one minute of pain for each of one million people tolerable. Parfit admits that this case is quite unlikely to occur, but that as such the argumentation is not unreal:

“We can often act in ways that would be better for us, or for a few other people, but would also be worse for many other people. The bad effects on each of these other people may be slight, so that we assume that they don’t matter, but when very many of us do what has such slight effects on very many people, the harm we do may be much greater than the benefit we give ourselves. For a clear though trivial example, if we drive ourselves to work rather than taking a bus, we may shorten our time spent traveling by thirty minutes, but by increasing congestion we may lengthen a thousand other people’s journeys by one minute, so that these people together lose a thousand minutes a day. Similar claims apply when there is overfishing or overgrazing. If many fishermen use larger nets, each may cause himself to catch a few more fish, but each may also cause others to catch many fewer fish.” (p. 423). So individually few win much but altogether many lose through this selfish behaviour. In other words, also an action with individually unnoticeable effects for others may be wrong, despite what many people think. “[Such an] act is wrong ... because this act imposes on others a significant amount of pain, even though the amount imposed on each of these other people would be very small.” (pp.431-2)

Indeed, each of us enjoys the gadgets and conveniences of modern life and if I buy a barbecue or drive to the supermarket, because I am too lazy to take my bike, the contribution of this single purchase or this idle act to the air pollution is imperceptible. But I am not alone on this world. “When each of us contributes to global warming, none of our acts will be significantly worse for anyone, but we together make things go much worse for many people. ... [I]t would be clearly better if many fewer people acted in these ways. Many fewer people would then be killed or harmed” (p. 432)

Who says that On What Matters does not says what matters?

Reference

Parfit, Derek, On What Matters. Volume Three. Oxford, etc.: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Isaac Beeckman: From wonder to no wonder

The house on the corner is Beeckman’s birthplace in Middelburg.

When I recently wanted to visit Middelburg, an old and beautiful town in the southwest of the Netherlands, I wondered whether there might be a well-known philosopher who came from there. So I searched on the Internet and, indeed, I found one: Isaac Beeckman, who was born there in 1588. I hear you say: “Isaac who?” You needn’t to be ashamed if you have never heard of him, for Beeckman did not publish his ideas and outside a little circle of philosophical experts hardly anybody knows his name. Nevertheless he had an important impact on philosophy because of his relations with many outstanding philosophers of his time. He had such a big influence on the development of science and philosophy that Gassendi called him even the greatest philosopher he ever met. If you have heard of Beeckman, it is probably because of his friendship with Descartes. Some call him even his teacher. Anyway, he stimulated Descartes’s enthusiasm for science and designed mathematical puzzles for him.

Beeckman’s contributions would have remained rather unknown, if in 1905 his journal hadn’t been found again by Cornelis de Waard. Since this journal – which Beeckman kept from 1604 till 1634 – is very detailed, we know much about his discoveries, ideas and relations. So we know that Beeckman first met Descartes in Breda, a town in the south of the Netherlands, where Beeckman then lived and Descartes was garrisoned as a soldier. It is said that both men met when they were looking at a mathematical problem on a poster on the marketplace and Descartes asked Beeckman to translate it for him from Dutch into Latin. They got talking and the next day Descartes brought Beeckman the solution. They stayed friends till Beeckman died in 1637 (in Dordrecht), although their friendship was difficult and sometimes broken off (especially in 1630).

Beeckman studied theology, literature and mathematics in Leiden, and later also medicine in Middelburg and then in Caen in France, where he graduated in 1618. Since he couldn’t get a vicarage because of a theological conflict with the church, he first became a candle maker and begun to repair water pipes. Returned from Caen he became a teacher at the Latin School in Utrecht. However, more important is that he was a very curious man (and maybe this was one of the reasons that he found no time to publish his ideas) and he did much research and study in all kinds of fields. So he was active with experiments and the theory of physics, music, medicine and philosophy, but he tried also to find a proof that God existed. In Leiden Simon Stevin and Rudolph Snel (Snellius) were among his teachers and later he corresponded with, for example, the mathematician Marin Mersenne, the astronomers Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, the philosophers Pierre Gassendi and Francis Bacon and the physicians William Harvey and William Gilbert.

In this blog I cannot do more than drawing attention to this philosopher who was so important for the development of philosophy. Therefore, I have to limit myself to mentioning only some of his most important contributions and ideas:

- Beeckman’s idea that matter is composed of atoms.

- His mechanistic world view.

- Beeckman gave a new and correct description of inertia, namely that every moving object follows a straight line, unless other forces work on it. However, he accepted the false idea that also a circular movement is a basic movement (not seeing that it is caused by a centripetal force).

- His analysis how a pump works. Beeckman rejected the prevailing view that water avoids a vacuum but explains the working with the help of the idea of air pressure.

- His explanation of the relation between the sound of a string and the length of the string.

- Beeckman made the first weather station in the world, yet before Torricelli invented the barometer.

It’s no wonder that such ideas brought Beeckman into conflict with the Calvinistic church in the Netherlands, which had completely opposite ideas on how the world was constituted and had to be explained. In his diary on 19 November 1626 he succinctly wrote down what the heart of the problem was:

“In philosophy you have always to go from wonder to no wonder. I mean, you must examine so long till what appears strange to you no longer appears strange to you. However, in theology you have to go from no wonder to wonder.

Sources:

It’s difficult to find information on Beeckman on the Internet, so I gathered it by taking here and there some relevant facts from Dutch websites on Beeckman, from the Wikipedia on Beeckman (Dutch and English versions), from several books in my library (mainly on Descartes) and from Beeckman’s journal (on http://www.dbnl.org/titels/titel.php?id=beec002jour00)

A marshmallow test for ravens

You’ll certainly have heard of it, for the research is nearly fifty years old: The marshmallow test, done by Walter Mischel and his colleagues of Stanford University. You can find it on the Internet and here I’ll simply quote one of the descriptions there, in this case one by Stewart Brand: “A researcher whom the child knew and trusted, after playing some fun games together, suggested playing a ‘waiting game.’ The researcher explained that the child could have either one or two of the highly attractive treats the child had chosen and was facing (marshmallows, cookies, pretzels) – depending on how long the child waited for them after the researcher left the room. The game was: at any time the child could ring a bell, and the researcher would come back immediately and the child could have one treat. To practice, the researcher left the room, the child rang the bell and the researcher came right back, saying, ‘You see, you brought me back. Now if you wait for me to come back by myself without ringing the bell or starting to eat a treat you can have both of them!!’ The wait might be as long as 15 or 20 minutes. [The kids varied widely in how long they could stand it before ringing the bell, and about one third waited till the researcher came back by himself.]” (http://longnow.org/seminars/02016/may/02/marshmallow-test-mastering-self-control/)

After the experiment Mischel followed the children for many years and it became clear that it said much about what kinds of persons the children would become later in life. However, that’s not what I want to talk about. Here it’s relevant that we can delay gratification in order to be better off in future. A part of us can do it already at a young age and most people can do it better when they grow older.

I think that you consider this ability to think ahead and to control yourself typically human. Look around: Isn’t it so that animals always immediately take what they can get? Okay, maybe there are some apes and monkeys who can refuse to take now what they like, expecting that later they’ll get something what they like more. And maybe there are other mammals that can do it as well. But birds?

Can Kabadayi and Mathias Osvath of Lund University decided to test the ability of flexible planning in birds and took five captive ravens. They had to do tasks they do not do in the wild. Let me quote how The Guardian describes it:

“The birds were shown a box that had a tube sticking out of the top, plus three stones. They learned that they could use a stone as a tool. If they dropped it down the tube, the box would release a doggie treat. They also learned that other familiar objects, such as a small wooden wheel or a ball, would not work. In one experiment, the ravens were shown the box without any stones available. Then the box was taken away. An hour later, in another location, they were presented with a tray containing a stone plus three objects the birds knew would be useless. They were allowed to choose one thing from the tray. Fifteen minutes later, the box would show up again. In 14 cases of encountering the tray and later seeing the box reappear, the birds usually chose the stone and proceeded to use it correctly. The same thing happened in another experiment, when the box did not show up again until the next day, a delay of 17 hours. Further work showed the ravens would pass up an immediate reward if they could get a better one by waiting.” (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/13/raven-think-about-future-planning-science-experiment) To be exactly, in 80-90 % of the cases the ravens selected the correct tool! The result is the more impressive since “Monkeys have not been able to solve tasks like this,” so Osvath (on the same website) Moreover, the ravens were also better than toddlers in such experiments.

As it happens, experiments like these are always difficult to interpret and alternative interpretations are always possible. It’s likely that the test shows that ravens (and possibly other birds as well) have a planning capacity that is more than stashing food away for later (like squirrels do, for example). However, as Alex Taylor, an animal cognition expert of the University of Auckland, says to National Geographic: “The ravens may not be thinking about the future at all, they may instead just be choosing the object that has been associated the most with food.” What’s true must yet have to be found out. Nevertheless, the result is remarkable. Until now scientists thought that flexible planning for unexpected future events was limited to humans and great apes. In the test, the ravens – so birds – were as good in such pre-planning tasks for novel behaviour. If so, this pre-planning ability must have been evolved more than once.

It even seems that ravens are more patient than humans, since they go somewhat less for immediate rewards than humans! Indeed, it might have happened that ravens would not have shown the same behaviour, if they had been given marshmallows. Simply, because they don’t like them so much as children do, they might postpone picking at them. Be it as it may, we think that nothing is as unique as how humans think, but apparently we are not as unique as we think. There are white ravens in nature but they are not human.

Sources:

- see text

- https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/ravens-problem-solving-smart-birds/

A farewell to hope

Double-faced Caspar de Robles as Janus on the dike near Harlingen, Fryslân, Netherlands

On 31 December at 12.00 p.m. at midnight the old year ends and at the same time it is 0.00 a.m. of the 1st of January and a new year begins. At least this is so in the Western countries and most of the rest of the world. This has not always been so. In the Roman Republic, till Gaius Julius Caesar seized power, the Roman calendar was quite complicated and begun at the vernal equinox, so in March. That is why December – now the twelfth month – actually means “tenth month”. The old Roman calendar was not only complicated but it fell also out of sync with the sun. Therefore in 48 B.C. Caesar decided to reform it and moreover he made the first of January the first day of the year. The year remained to begin at this date until in 567 A.D. the Council of Tours decided to replace it by a date with more religious significance, although 1 January could be observed as the day that Jesus had been circumcised. The new first day became 25 March, the Feast of Annunciation. However, also the Julian calendar fell out of sync with the sun after many centuries, and when in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII reformed the calendar again, he re-established also 1 January as the first day of the year.

Julius Caesar did not only introduce a new calendar, he gave also a new name to the first month of the year: January. He did this in honour of Janus, the Roman god of change and, what is especially relevant in this case, the god of beginnings. Janus has two faces: one face looks back to the past and one face looks forward to the future. Which god could better symbolize the new year and give his name to the first month of the year?

Although Janus stand for a new beginning, the Romans have well seen that each beginning is double by giving Janus two faces. For where there is a beginning there is also an end. Even in the case of the Big Bang, one can wonder what was there before it took place. And when a new year begins, we take leave of the old year. We can look back to what happened at every arbitrary moment, but we do it especially at the end of the year. We think back full of nostalgia to the good moments, and we are glad that a new year starts when we think of the bad moments, hoping that the new year will be better. Therefore we can say that Janus, seen as the turn of the year, stands for farewell and for hope. But the hope of the first of January is the farewell of the last day of the year twelve months later. Although this sounds rather cynical, I don’t mean it that way, for we need hope! And when we are at the end of the year, we hope to be able to say farewell to a good year. It’s true that Nietzsche said that “hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.” (in Human, All-Too-Human) But he said also something else, namely that “strong hope is a much greater stimulant to life than any single realized joy could be.” (in The Antichrist) Without hope we cannot make a good year of the year to come. Without hope we cannot overcome the setbacks, which certainly will happen – hoping that they will not be as worse as torments, physically or psychologically –. And when then this year has ended after 365 days, we can say “so farewell hope”, hoping that the year was a good one, and that we don’t need to say with John Milton “farewell fear, farewell remorse: all good to me is lost.”