Are Concepts Mental Representations or Abstracta?

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LXVIII, No. 1, January 2004

Are Concepts Mental Representations or Abstracta?

JONATHAN SUTTON

Southern Methodist University

1 argue that thoughts and concepts are mental representations rather than abstracta. 1 propose that the most important difference between the two views is that the mentalist believes that there are concept and thought tokens as well as types; this reveals that the dispute is not rerminologicul but ontologicul. I proceed to offer an argument for mentalism. The key step is to establish that concepts and thoughts have lexical as well as semantic properties. I then show that this entails that concepts and thoughts are susceptible to the typdtoken distinction. I finish by considering some objections to the argument.

1. Introduction I will be arguing that the contents of beliefs and other propositional attitudes-thoughts or propositions-and their constituents--concepts-are psychological entities or mental representations rather than abstracta. I will offer a proposal on what the most important difference between the two views is. I am not interested in resolving a terminological dispute-a dispute over what should be called ‘a concept’ or ‘a thought’. My proposal reveals that the dispute between the abstracta theorist and the mentalist is at root an ontological dispute. I will proceed to offer my main argument for a mentalist view. I will close by considering a number of objections.

I will start with a few words on why my argument is necessary when there are other arguments with apparently similar conclusions. Firstly, my argument proceeds entirely from a priori premises; it is therefore of considerable interest to those already persuaded by more “empirical” arguments for mentalist views such as Fodor’s claim that the language of thought hypothesis provides the best explanation of the systematicity of the attitudes (Fodor, 1987, 1975). Moreover, there are presumably possible worlds-distinct, we hope, from our own-in which the best explanation is not the correct one. Since my argument is not an inference to the best explanation, its conclusion holds in all possible worlds.

My argument will perhaps be of even greater interest to the many who have not been persuaded by such arguments, since it proceeds from quite different premises. On Fodor’s view, my ability to think that Mary loves John

ARE CONCEPTS MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS OR ABSTRACTA? 89

given that I can think that John loves Mary is explained by the fact that in thinking that John loves Mary, I am related to a structured mental representation whose constituents denote John, Mary, and the relation of loving which can be rearranged to yield a distinct mental representation with the content that Mary loves John. I can bear the same relation to the second structured representation that I bear to the first. Some feel that we have been given little more than metaphors with which to understand the relation that we have to mental representations (talk of “belief boxes,” and so on). Consequently, it is felt by some, Fodor has provided nothing more satisfying in the way of explanation, despite his claims to the contrary, than the view that the proposition that John loves Mary is structured and its parts can be rearranged to yield the proposition that Mary loves John-and we can bear the same relation (whatever it may be) to the second proposition as to the first. On neither story do we understand how our relations to mental representations on the one hand and propositions on the other inherit the relevant properties of the relata. I do not endorse this objection-this paper is neutral on how seriously it should be taken by a proponent of Fodor-style arguments. That it exists is enough to motivate a search for alternative arguments for mentalist views.

2. The Difference Between Psychological Entities and Abstracta

2.1 The Importance of Tokens

There is widespread agreement that belief and the other attitudes are relations between a thinker and an entity with semantic properties (hereafter: semantic entity; as we will see, semantic entities in our sense can have non-semantic properties, too). That entity might be a Millian proposition (Soames, 1988). It might be a guise or mode ofpresentation of such (Frege, 1892). Even if there are such guises, their characteristics might not affect the truth-condi- tions of attitude ascriptions (Salmon, 1986). On the other hand, they might-for a given attitude ascription to be true, its subject might have to bear a relation to a specific guise or mode of presentation of a proposition (Frege, 1892), or perhaps just any guise or mode of presentation of a specified type (Schiffer, 1979; Crimmins and Perry, 1989). Each of these views agrees that there is some entity with semantic properties to which a believer is related-the points of disagreement being the nature of the entities (Millian propositions or finer-grained modes of presentation thereof?), and the relation between belief and belief ascription. Let us call those entities, along with Frege, thoughts. There is further agreement among views that otherwise differ radically that thoughts are semantically complex entities-they have components that themselves have semantic properties. Let us call those components concepts. There is also considerable consensus that the thought that gold is

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yellow and the thought that gold is a metal have a component in common-the concept GOLD.’

Frege denied that thoughts and concepts are entities found in thinkers’ minds. One of his reasons was that thoughts and concepts are shared between distinct thinkers-you and I can both believe that the polar ice caps will melt, and that involves us thinking the same thought. There are two token beliefs, one yours and one mine, but a single belief content to which we are both related.

A mentalist can easily accommodate Frege’s demand that there be a single thought that we both think by invoking the typeltoken distinction. We are both related to a single semantic entity-the thought type whose content is that the polar ice caps will melt. It is also the case that each of us is related to his own “private” semantic entity-a particular token of that thought type. For the mentalist, there are two token belief contents as well as two token beliefs-but a single belief content type?

Frege’s demand highlights a critical difference between the mentalist and the supporter of ab~tracta.~ Psychological entities as such come in two varieties, types and tokens. If thoughts are psychological, there are thought tokens and thought types. Types, of course, are often considered abstract entities themselves. A proponent of abstracta is perhaps better called a proponent of mere abstracta-concepts and thoughts do not have concrete tokens or instance^.^ The abstracta theorist might accept that, as a matter offact, many or even all propositional attitudes are accompanied by mental representations-but only the mentalist thinks it is essential to the attitudes that they

Although the degree of structure that thoughts possess is a matter of dispute-is the thought that it is not the case that (the stock market will crash or the polar ice caps will melt) identical to the thought that it is not the case that the stock market will crash and it is not the case that the polar ice caps will melt? Frege’s denial that thoughts and other senses are in the mind is found in “On Sense and Reference.” “The meaning and sense of a sign are to be distinguished from the associated idea ... [a sense] may be the common property of many people, and so is not a part or mode of the individual mind ... in the case of an idea, one must, strictly speaking, add whom it belongs to and at what time ... If two persons picture the same thing, each still has his own idea ... an exact comparison [of ideas] is not possible, because we cannot have both ideas together in the same consciousness.” (Frege, 1892, pp. 159-160). Although we should note that by ‘idea’, Frege seems to mean ‘mental image’, these considerations do not suffice to establish that senses are to be distinguished from idea types, since Frege’s claims hold only of idea tokens. I leave to the Frege scholar the task of deciding whether Frege’s various attacks on “psychologism,” including the passage quoted in foomote 2, amount to an opposition to what I am calling ‘mentalism’. I will talk throughout as if one who accepts that there are tokens of thoughts will also take there to be tokens of concepts. However, an anonymous referee suggests that some con- nectionists a) believe that there are thoughts and concepts and yet b) believe that thoughts have tokens and concepts do not. It would take too long to consider this position here; however, it might very well be consistent with a not too drastic reformulation of the details of my argument.


involve relations to token mental representations. Just as the abstracta theorist does not believe in tokenable thoughts, the mentalist does not believe in mere abstracta-for the mentalist, the only abstract thoughts are mental representation types, essentially tokenable entities. The mentalist regards mental representation types as capable of explaining all that mere abstracta can explain (and more, once we take into account their tokenabi1ity)-there is no work for mere abstracta to do. For the mentalist, then, an attitude involves a relation to two entities, one abstract and one concrete, and a thinker is related to the abstractum in virtue of his relation to the concrete en tit^.^ (The nature of the relation between concrete entity and abstractum is perhaps of less importance for capturing the dispute between mentalist and abstracta theorist-I will continue to talk of its being the typdtoken relation, but nothing of importance would be lost if we took the concrete entity to express, rather than token, the abstractum.) One might oppose mentalism on grounds of parsimony, or on the basis of conceivability arguments (an abstracta theorist might claim that we can imagine a being who thinks although there is nothing representation-like “in its head”), or, perhaps, because one believes it to be false on empirical grounds.

2.2 Varieties of Anti-Mentalism

We can distinguish three distinctive claims that an abstracta theorist might make. The most succinct, and most vague, is:

STRONG SLOGAN ANTI-MENTALISM ( S S A M ) : Thoughts and concepts do not have tokens-they are just not that kind of thing.

A more explicitly ontological claim is:

STRONG ANTI-MENTALISM (SAM): For all thoughts t, possibly there is a thinker who explicitly believes t and there is no token o f t in his mind.

(If I believe that New York is about three and a half thousand miles from London, then it is arguable that, ceteris paribus, I believe implicitly that New York is less than a million miles from London. The mentalist would be a straw man if he were required to say that a token of the latter thought were present in my mind. Hence the restriction to explicit beliefs in SAM.

~

Establishing mentalism is not as simple as noting that concepts have an obvious causal role in thought, and therefore must have some separate physical realization in each thinker’s mind. It is only obvious that our relations to concepts have such a causal role, and so, arguably, my relation to a particular concept must consist in some token physical state distinct from your relation to that same concept. The simple observation does not establish that the concepts themselves have distinct token realizations in my mind and your mind.

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Roughly characterized, an explicit belief is a token belief state the entertain- ment of the content of which played a causal role in its formation. This is not, of course, a theory of explicit belief, but an indication of what I mean by the term. It is entirely possible that a good theory of explicit belief will depend upon mentalism (Crimmins, 1992, for example). I take it that a content can be entertained unconsciously, and so there can be unconscious explicit beliefs.)

We now have a quantified claim with which the mentalist must disagree; this makes it clear that there is an ontological dispute between the mentalist and the strong anti-mentalist? Perhaps there are anti-mentalists who wish only to say that it is not of the essence of thinking that it involve tokening thoughts, and take this to mean:

WEAK ANTI-MENTALISM (WAM): There is some thought t such that possibly there is a thinker who (explicitly) believes t and there is no token o f t in his mind.

S S A M entails SAM which entails WAM. I propose that any abstracta theorist worthy of the name must endorse one of the three claims-for thoughts to be mere abstracta, at least some thoughts need not be tokened for a thinker to think them. The explicitly modal character of SAM and WAM allows the abstracta theorist to grant that mental representations may, as a matter of fact, accompany actual thinking. That is presumably, however, an empirical claim, and so does not touch the question of the essence of thought.

So much for the anti-mentalist’s commitments-which theories of belief and the other attitudes are anti-mentalist? Some theorists explicitly claim that thoughts andor concepts are abstracta and that they are not mental representations (type or token) (for example, Thau (2002) and Dummett (1981)); such authors are explicit proponents of mere abstracta. Other theorists are implicitly committed to anti-mentalism. Prima facie, any theory which char- acterizes what it is to have an attitude towards a thought in terms that do not mention mental representations is anti-mentalist. A behaviorist, who takes holding a belief that John is wealthy to consist in having certain behavioral dispositions fits the description. Certain kinds of functionalist, whose func- tional roles incorporate only relations to other mental states and not their contents also meet this standard. One final example is a theory of the attitudes inspired by Davidson’s work that takes having a belief that John is wealthy to consist in the believer’s being interpretable in a certain way. It appears that all these theories entail that it is possible for a thinker to be

Of course, SSAM can be cast as a similar kind of quantified claim: necessarily, for all thoughts t and thinkers S, if S believes t then there is no token of f in his mind. I assume that it does not matter whether the universal quantification over thoughts occurs within the scope of a modal operator, since the same thoughts exist at all worlds.


related to an abstract thought without being related to any mental representation that tokens it. Insofar as these theories aspire to give a general foundational account of propositional attitudes, this is possible for all attitudes towards all thoughts, and so the theories are committed to SAM.

I say that such theories are prima facie anti-mentalist since it might turn out that the facts that constitute holding a belief that John is wealthy themselves consist in relations to mental representations. In that case, despite appearances, it will not be possible for a thinker to believe that John is wealthy without bearing a relation to a mental representation. That possibility does not seem as though it will be realized for the theories of the attitudes mentioned above. In the absence of an argument that that possibility is realized in the case of a particular theory of the attitudes that does not explicitly mention mental representations, an argument for mentalism is an argument against such a theory-such a theory is prima facie inconsistent with mentalism.

(I do not mean to deny that someone might reasonably claim to be a functionalist or a Davidsonian while holding that functionalism or a Davidsonian theory are incomplete as general foundational accounts of the nature of the attitudes, requiring supplementation with principles that might turn out to have mentalist consequences. Nevertheless, I take it that many functionalists and Davidsonians have not envisaged and would resist any such supplementation, and so have incurred a commitment to anti-mentalism.)

Many theorists may take themselves to be offering not an expZication of what it is to be related to an abstract thought, but rather an elimination of that notion-a liberation from our apparent commitment to the existence of abstract thoughts. Hence, an anti-mentalist need not be an abstracta theorist, although an abstracta theorist must be an anti-mentalist. Since I will be arguing that SAM and WAM are false, my argument tells equally against anti- mentalists who view their theories in a nominalistic light and less parsimo- nious abstracta theorists. Henceforth, I will talk as though the mentalist and anti-mentalist agree on the existence of abstract thoughts and dispute whether these need be tokened (and so dispute whether abstract thoughts are always or sometimes types)-that is, as though the mentalist’s primary opponent is the abstracta theorist. Since eliminative anti-mentalists can substitute eliminative paraphrases in place of reference to abstract thoughts, the reader should remember that the eliminative anti-mentalist can make the same moves as the abstracta theorist, and that my argument tells equally against both varieties of anti-mentalist .’

’ Of course, some nominalists will be perfectly happy to talk of thought types and thought tokens provided talk of thought types ultimately receives a nominalistic reduction. Nomi- nalist mentalists can supply reductive paraphrases of talk about thought types as they read on.

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Framing the debate between mentalist and abstracta theorist as a dispute over whether thoughts and concepts come in both type and token varieties has the advantage that the mentalist position is not dependent upon physicalism for its statement. One can be a mentalist if one believes that the mind and its contents are not even spatio-temporally located, provided that one thinks that your mind and my mind are distinct, and that there are things “in” one that are not “in” the other, and that concept and thought tokens are among those things.’

There are some disadvantages, too. Firstly, one might think that it is far from obvious that the existence of concept and thought tokens entails that those tokens are psychological. It is not clear that mental representations and abstracta are the only candidates for concepts and thoughts. Secondly, one might think that it is equally definitive of the abstracta theory that thoughts and concepts are taken to be purely semantic entities-abstract meanings or senses that have all their semantic properties essentially, and no other substantive properties. The mentalist takes concepts and thoughts (at least in token form) to have properties like those of other, more concrete, representations such as sentences or pictures.

Fortunately, these issues will not matter to my argument. I will argue that concepts and thoughts have non-semantic properties of a certain kind-properties very much like the lexical properties that distinguish syno- nyms. I will argue that this fact entails that concepts and thoughts are susceptible to the typekoken distinction, and indeed are tokened in holding explicit propositional attitudes. I will then suggest that there is nowhere for tokens with these properties to be but “in the mind.” In short, I will be arguing that concepts and thoughts have all the important properties the mentalist claims for them.

3. The Argument 3.1 (At Least Some) Concepts and Thoughts Have Lexical Properties

The first stage of my argument will conclude that concepts have properties very much like the lexical properties that words have. ‘Furze’ and ‘gorse’ cb not differ semantically, but they are distinct words (and there are sentences distinct simply in virtue of containing one of the words rather than the other). They have different lexical properties. (This is enough to make them distinct words. I will not endorse a parallel claim for concepts and thoughts (qua types): I will not claim that there are or could be two concepts or thoughts that differ only in their lexical properties. My argument will work whether

’ If one is a physicalist, however, one can take ‘in the mind‘ for the purposes of this paper to mean ‘in the head‘, although that is certainly too crude a characterization for other purposes. An anti-mentalist will not locate thoughts and concepts in the head in any sense of that phrase.


we deny, assert, or remain agnostic about that claim.) I will argue that the fact that concepts and thoughts have lexical properties entails that they atc susceptible to the typdtoken distinction. I will then suggest that there is nowhere for tokens with these properties to be but “in the mind.” I will close by arguing that SSAM, SAM, and WAM are all false in the light of my discussion.

I ask you to consider a protagonist, Pyotr, who has the characteristics of both protagonists in two tales that Kripke told (Kripke, 1980,1979). He is under the impression that there are two people named ‘Feynman’ where, in fact, there is but a single Feynman (as in Kripke’s Paderewski puzzle). Sec- ondly, all he believes about “either” Feynman is that he is a famous physicist (Kripke, 1980). How might Pyotr have ended up in such a state? Perhaps he heard talk of two radically different physical theories attributed to someone named ‘Feynman’ on two different occasions, and assumed that a single man could not have come up with both theories. Not being a physicist, Pyotr rap idly forgot all the details of the physical theories that “each” Feynman was supposed to have proposed. Consequently, all he remembers is that each Feynman is a famous physicist. I further stipulate that Pyotr has forgotten all the distinguishing properties of the distinct conversational context or contexts in which he heard of the “first” and “second” Feynmans. Consequently, all he remembers of “each” name ‘Feynman’ is that it names a famous physicist.

Kripke argued that associating the information ‘is a famous physicist’ with the name ‘Feynman’ was enough to understand the name and hence to have thoughts about Feynman. His Paderewski example seems to show that one can understand the name ‘Paderewski’ and hence have thoughts about him even if one erroneously thinks that he is two: after all, one can understand ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ and have thoughts about that planet even if one believes that the names do not co-refer. And just as one’s Hesperus-thoughts and one’s Phosphorus-thoughts are two distinct classes of thoughts despite the fact that Hesperus is Phosphorus, so too are the Paderewski thoughts of Kripke’s Peter separable into “Paderewski,” thoughts and “Paderewski,” thoughts. Similarly, Pyotr is capable of entertaining both “Feynman,” thoughts and “Feynman,” thoughts. Consequently, I suggest that Pyotr can think about Feynman, and is further capable of holding three distinct identity beliefs, two of which are trivial and one of which is substantive. The trivial beliefs are that Feynman, is Feynman, and that Feynman, is Feynman,. The substantive belief is that Feynman, is Feynman,, a belief which Pyotr does not initially hold but might come to when he discovers his confusion andor ignorance.

Since Pyotr associates no properties with the one Feynman that he does not associate with the other and vice-versa, how is it even possible for Pyotr

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to think of Feynman, rather than Feynman, and vice-versa? Primarily, I appeal to the reader’s intuitions that Pyotr can do such a thing (several anti- mentalists have assured me that they do have such intuitions!)-it will be the burden of the rest of the paper to argue that it is mentalism that explains those intuitions. However, a little more can be said in the way of explanation that does not beg any questions. Since at one time Pyotr did associate different characteristics with each Feynman, he at that time formed two distinct cognitive abilities, one of which was exercised in thinking of Feynman,, the other in thinking of Feynman,. When Pyotr forgets what is supposed to dls- tinguish one Feynman from the other, he does not, in losing the two bodies of information, thereby lose the abilities to which they gave rise-or, at least, the burden of proof is on those who claim otherwise.

It is instructive to consider Pyotr’s situation with respect to the public language name ‘Feynman’. If there really were two physicists named ‘Feynman’, then it seems plausible that Pyotr could continue to refer in speech to one rather than the other even after forgetting the circumstances under which he learned each name and the distinguishing characteristics of their bearers. On the standard, although not unquestioned? view of names, this is to say that he could continue to use one name ‘Feynman’ rather than its distinct homophone as he chose. Even if there is but a single Feynman, since Pyotr thinks that there are two, in his idiolect there are (on the standard view) two names ‘Feynman’ that, once again, he can continue to use selectively after forgetting their origins. It now seems a small and plausible step to suppose that with each of Pyotr’s names there is associated a distinct cognitive ability exercised in the use of the name that enables Pyotr to entertain distinct Feynman, and Feynman, thoughts. Ultimately, of course, I want to explain the distinctness of these abilities in terms of the manipulation of syntactically distinct types of mental representation involved in the exercise of each. But I have not imported any obviously mentalist assumptions into my explanation of Pyotr’s cognitive powers thus far.

I must beg the reader’s indulgence for a necessary ambiguity in my termi- nology. I will talk below of such things as the FEYNMAN, concept and the thought FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN,. It is natural to ask what I mean to refer to by these terms. Am I talking of tokens, types, or mere abstracta? Is FEYNMAN, identical to or distinct from FEYNMAN2?’’ Unfortunately, the ambiguity is essential: to give answers to these questions would be to pre- judge the very issues at stake. All the argument assumes is that there is some difference between thinking that Feynman, is Feynman, and thinking that

The locus classicus for dissent is Burge (1973). I follow the convention of using all caps to denote concepts and thoughts, tokens or types. I will not distinguish use and mention in this nomenclature, since which is required should be clear from context.

lo


Feynman, is Feynman,. I will conclude that Pyotr’s concept(s) of Feynman cannot be mere abstracta, and it will become clear that ‘FEYNMAN,’ and ‘FEYNMAN,’ can be seen as referring either to distinct, lexically individuated concept types or to types of mental representation with distinct lexical properties whose tokens are nevertheless tokens of the same concept; parallel interpretations mentioning thoughts are possible for terms such as ‘FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN,’. Before we reach that conclusion, the terms should be seen as ambiguous between at least those three possibilities. When I talk of particular concepts or thoughts or of concepts and thoughts in general, I am referring to abstracts-ither mere abstracta or types. When I mean to talk of concept and thought tokens, I will make that explicit.

How does the substantive belief differ from its trivial counterparts? I submit that the thought involved in the substantive belief must differ in some sense from the thought involved in the trivial beliefs. How does the substantive thought differ from its trivial counterparts, and how does the FEYNMAN, thought constituent differ from the FEYNMAN, thought constituent? By hypothesis, they do not differ semantically: the corresponding constituents of the trivial and substantive thoughts co-refer; they also have the same “conceptual role” for Pyotr-each is associated with the same information, that the subject is a famous physicist. Where else could a semantic difference derive from? But the concepts do differ, and in the same kind of way that the word ‘furze’ and the word ‘gorse’ differ; the thoughts and the Feynman concepts have different lexical properties.” It seems as though there is something like a conceptual lexicon, and FEYNMAN, and FEYNMAN, are distinct elements of it. Concepts and thoughts have lexical properties.

So be it. How does the fact that concepts and thoughts have lexical properties favor the mentalist view? There are two routes to this conclusion.

3.2 Route One: Semantically Individuated Concepts and Thoughts

The first relies on a claim that I will call the semantic individuation principle: if a concept (or thought) x and a concept (or thought) y are distinct, then x and y differ semantically. (Note that a mentalist can endorse this principle if (and only if) it is read as applying to concept and thought types and not to concept and thought tokens. The mentalist allows the same thought to be tokened more than once-indeed, this is presumably a common occurrence.)

The semantic individuation principle immediately yields the conclusion that FEYNMAN, and FEYNMAN, are not distinct concepts, and that the trivial and substantive thoughts are not distinct thoughts, since they do not differ semantically. But is it not a straightforward contradiction to assert that

Below, I will say a little more about what it is for two psychological entities to have the same lexical properties.

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the concept FEYNMAN, and the concept FEYNMAN, differ in their lexical properties and yet are the same concept?

The only way to avoid that contradiction is to accept that there are instances or tokens of the concept FEYNMAN. FEYNMAN certainly does not have different lexical properties from itself. But tokens of that concept can differ in their lexical properties. FEYNMAN, is an element of a mental lexicon whose tokens are tokens of FEYNMAN. FEYNMAN, is also an element of that lexicon whose tokens are tokens of FEYNMAN, but its tokens have different lexical properties from tokens of FEYNMAN,.

The same can be said for the substantive and trivial identity thoughts-they are the same thought, and it is properly speaking their tokens that can be meaningfully classified as trivial or substantive. The substantive token of FEYNMAN IS FEYNMAN contains two tokens of FEYNMAN that differ in their lexical properties. That is why it is a substantive thought token; if two concept tokens differ in their lexical properties, then one who produces those tokens need not “realize” that they are in fact tokens of the same concept (just as someone might not realize that ‘furze’ and ‘gorse’ have the same meaning, although he knows enough about gorse to grasp the meaning of each term). The trivial thought token contains two tokens of FEYNMAN with the same lexical properties, and its thinker “realizes” that they are instances of the same concept.

Talk of the thinker “realizing” or “not realizing” that the tokens are tokens of the same concept suggests that that thinker thinks about the concepts; this is perhaps an unfortunate way of talking. Rather, we should say that the thinker takes or does not take the token concepts to be tokens of the same concept type in thinking with the concepts and not about them. On pain of an infinite regress, we must allow that a thinker can assume such conceptual identities without explicitly thinking them. Perhaps there remains the question of why the trivial identity thought token is trivial: why does the thinker take concept tokens that have the same lexical properties to be tokens of the same concept type? I am inclined to think that this question does not have a substantive answer. The lexical properties of concept tokens are not to be understood as a matter of token concepts having a certain shape or sound! Rather, that a thinker has a busic disposition (that is, a disposition that is realized without any reasoning on the thinker’s part) to take two token concepts as tokens of the same concept type likely constitutes those two tokens having the same lexical properties. Of course, for a thinker to have such a basic disposition, a pair of tokens that differ lexically must have distinct properties from a pair of tokens that do not differ lexically, but those properties causally explain lexical identity and difference without being themselves lexical properties. The suggestion is that lexical properties should be identified with equivalence classes of token concepts defined by the relation ‘x is


basically disposed to be treated as a token of the same concept as y’ rather than with the particular properties that explain why that relation holds b e tween two concept tokens.’* If two tokens had those particular properties without the equivalence relation holding between them, they would not be lexically identical, I suggest-it is the equivalence relation that defines lexical identity and not those particular properties. (If we hold to the semantic individuation principle, we must allow that two token concepts can be instances of the same concept without a thinker possessing such a basic disposition-the tokens involved in thinking FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMANz are an e~ample.)’~

3.3 Route Two: Lexically Individuated Concepts and Thoughts

The second strategy for arguing that concepts and thoughts come in tokens and types does not rely on the semantic individuation principle. Rather, the concept FEYNMAN, is indeed assumed to be a distinct concept from the concept FEYNMAN,. Concepts themselves, and not just their tokens, can have lexical identities, just as words do: lexical properties that are essential to them, and which do not necessarily correlate with any semantic properties. The question we now ask is: what is it for any entity to have lexical properties? I submit that an abstract entity can only possess lexical properties in virtue of its concrete instances, or tokens, having those properties. This certainly seems to be the case if lexical properties are realized by shape or sound properties. If lexical properties are understood as arising from the dispositions that users of items with those properties have (as suggested above), it seems once again that it is dispositions that users have with respect to concrete tokens that count-whether users have a basic disposition to take two tokens as tokens of the same type. Either way, abstract concepts have concrete

l2 The basic disposition itself stands in need of further explication. I take it that whether a thinker treats two token concepts as tokens of the same concept is determined by, in some sense, the tokens having the same inferential role. What does ‘FEYNMAN,’ refer to if we individuate concepts semantically? I have talked above as though it refers to an element (type) of a conceptual lexicon whose tokens are tokens of the same concept (FEYNMAN) as tokens of FEYNMAN,. This is a little too simplistic, for if this is the case, then ‘FEYNMAN,’ does not refer to a concept, and hence is not part of any content that thinkers think-there is no thought FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN,. Rather, if we respect the semantic individuation principle, I will have uttered no falsehoods in my discussion of Pyotr only if ‘FEYNMAN,’ has been used ambiguously. Sometimes it has referred to the mental representation type described above. When used to specify the content of an attitude, however, it has simply referred to the concept FEYNMAN. The thought FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN, is just the thought FEYNMAN IS FEYNMAN. Terminologically, it is much simpler to give up the semantic individuation principle and allow for lexically individuated concepts and thoughts, as we are about to see.

l 3

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tokens-that is, concepts are abstracta only insofar as they are types. They are not mere abstracta.I4

3.4 The Refutation of Weak Anti-Mentalism

Concepts and thoughts come in type and token varieties, then. Need these types and tokens be psychological? I stipulate that a type is to count as psychological if all (or most?) of its tokens are “in the mind.” The second route by which we conclude from the lexical properties of concepts that they are susceptible to the typekoken distinction yields as a corollary that token concepts are concrete entities. I mean by this that token concepts have dura- tion, (the potential, usually realized, for) a limited temporal existence, and that they have something like a spatial location. (“Something like” because I want to allow a Cartesian, who claims that the mind is not an extended entity, to play along with us here. Of course, the Cartesian owes us an account of what it is for something to be “in the mind” when this is not understood spatially-but that is not my problem.)

I submit that there are no candidates for the role of concrete entities with lexical properties other than words, phrases, sentences, and pictures on the one hand, and mental representations on the other. Where else could we ftnd such representations but in the material world or in the mind (which, Carte- sianism notwithstanding, may amount to the same thing)? Clearly, concepts and thoughts are not to be identified with entities of the former class; they must, then, be mental representations.”

Our conclusion is that Pyotr’s thought FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN, is capable of being tokened, as are his thoughts FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN, and FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN,. Thoughts and concepts are hence the kinds of entity that have tokens. SSAM denies this, and is hence false. Now, the

There is an exit strategy for the abstracta proponent here-a way for the anti-mentalist to avoid the mentalist conclusion towards which I am aiming. Abstract thoughts have lexical properties essentially, and have them in virtue of being expressible by public language sentences. Since there is no actual language which contains distinct words corresponding to FEYNMAN, and FEYNMAN,, one will have to say that expressibility in a merely possible language is enough to ground the lexical properties of abstract thoughts. Of course, we end up with something very close to language-bound thoughts here, and one might protest that content is language-independent-but perhaps that is simply to travel the first route and insist that if concepts and thoughts differ, then they differ semantically. I am grateful to Doug Ehring for bringing this possibility to my attention. I am assuming that these classes of entities are distinct. If one does take thoughts to be (natural language) sentences, one has to accommodate the fact that many thoughts are the contents of attitudes that no actual utterance has expressed. One might respond by claiming that some sentences are tokened only in the minds of speakers of the language that contains them, and are never, as a matter of fact, uttered. One would then presumably say that all thought tokens are sentence tokens of this psychological variety. I regard this view as a variety of mentalism rather than a possibility that 1 am ignoring or arguing against. I am ignoring the possibility that thought tokens are sentence tokens uttered in possible worlds other than those in which the thinking of the thoughts takes place.


semantic individuation principle entails that Pyotr actually tokens FEYNMAN IS FEYNMAN if he believes it, since if he believes it, he believes it in a substantive or trivial manner, and, under the semantic individuation principle, those manners can be distinguished only if he tokens the thought-the trivial and substantive thoughts must be of the same thought type since they are not semantically distinct. This does not entail that any- one who believes that thought must token it (in particular, consider a thinker who is not confused as to how many Feynmans there are), and so we do not yet have a case for the falsity of SAM. If we abandon the semantic individuation principle, then we can conclude that Pyotr’s thought is tokenable, since otherwise it could not possess lexical properties; but this does not entail that even Pyotr actually tokens it. So SAM still stands either way. We need to extend the argument to refute SAM and WAM, and so refute anti-mentalism.

If a thought or concept is tokenable, then there is some possible situation in which it is tokened. For Pyotr’s thoughts FEYNMAN, is FEiYNMANj (where i j = 1,2 ). what are those situations? Surely among them is Pyotr’s own situation-it is hard to see that there are any other candidates if Pyotr’s situation is not one.

Pyotr, then, in thinking FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMANj, tokens that thought (whether or not the semantic individuation principle holds). Let us suppose that Pyotr acquired FEYNMAN, before FEYNMAN2.l6 Before he acquires FEYNMAN,, he thinks FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN,. In so thinking, does he token FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN,? I submit that he does. Acquiring FEYNMAN, does not alter the properties of Pyotr’s existing acts of thinking. Since after acquiring FEYNMAN,, Pyotr tokens FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN, in thinking it, he tokened FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN, in thinking it before acquiring FEYNMAN,. And the same must be said for any other thought involving FEYNMAN,. The thought FEYNMAN, IS A PHYSICIST must be tokenable, and hence tokened by the considerations of the last paragraph, after Pyotr acquires FEYNMAN, in order to distinguish Pyotr’s thinking that thought as opposed to FEYNMAN, IS A PHYSICIST. But then Pyotr must have tokened FEYNMAN, IS A PHYSICIST before acquiring FEYNMAN,, since that acquisition does not alter the properties of Pyotr’s existing acts of thinking.

But all thinkers are in Pyotr’s situation before he acquires FEYNMAN, with respect to all concepts. Any thinker could come to think that a second individual “fit” all his attitudes involving any concept corresponding to a singular term,” and any thinker could come to think that a second property

l6 Whether ‘FEYNMAN,’ refers to a lexically individuated concept or a mental representation type that is not itself a (semantically individuated) concept, we can distinguish the acquisition of FEYNMAN, from the acquisition of FEYNMAN,. Except for those beliefs that entail a unique individual fits them-those the thinker could replace with beliefs having no such entailment if he came to be in Pyotr’s situation.

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(or relation) fit all his attitudes involving any concept corresponding to a predicate. (In particular, my mentalist conclusion appears to hold of both animals and disembodied Cartesian minds, if such things are possible.) Con- sequently, in thinking any thought, all thinkers token it just as Pyotr tokens FEYNMAN, IS A PHYSICIST before he comes to believe in the second Feynman. That is,

NOT-WAM: There are no thoughts t such that possibly there is a thinker who (explicitly) believes t and there is no token of t in his mind.

WAM, and hence S A M , are false, and mentalism is established.

4. Some Objections Considered 4.1 Objection I

One objection to the argument can be dealt with very easily. One might disagree with the Kripkean premise that very limited information associated with a name such as “a famous physicist,” insufficient to discriminate the beam from other entities in any reasonable sense, is nevertheless sufficient for a thinker to think about the bearer. But it is inessential to our story that Pyotr thinks of “the two Feynmans” only that they are famous physicists. I incor- porated this plot element simply to increase the plausibility of the story-we can see how someone might have forgotten all other supposedly discriminat- ing information. It is quite possible, although unlikely, that Pyotr has as detailed a body of information on Feynman as the objector thinks is necessary for genuine de re thought, but still thinks that there are two people called ‘Feynman’ who fit the information. Our argument will go through unmodified.

4.2 Objection 2

A more serious worry is that Pyotr cannot think about Feynman at all, since he believes there to be two individuals that he cannot in any sense discriminate. He hence cannot think the three distinct identity thoughts that my argument claims he can think, and there is no basis for ascribing lexical properties to concepts-there is no reason to think that there is a thought of a specified kind unless we can make a plausible case that it is thinkable.

It is not entirely clear how an appropriate discrimination principle should be formulated. Is it that Pyotr believes that there are individuals he cannot discriminate that is important? There is clearly no actual act of discrimination that he cannot perform which the less confused who think that there is only one Feynman can perform-it is not possible, after all, to discriminate a thing from itself. It does not seem promising to suggest that Pyotr has a


problem because there is a world epistemically possible for Pyotr (a world in which he has indistinguishable bodies of information that do causally derive from two individuals called ‘Feynman’) in which there is an act of discrimination he cannot perform. Surely a great many of our concepts fail that test, and yet they are the basis for de re thought since they discriminate finely enough among actual entities. It is epistemically possible in the appropriate sense that “Samuel Clemens” and “Mark Twain” name distinct individuals and I and others have simply conflated bodies of information with distinct causal sources. Nevertheless, we can all think about Twain given that the epistemic possibility is not realized.

The puzzle for the objector, then, is to account for the fact that Pyotr has a counterpart, Pedro, who associates exactly the same information with the name ‘Feynman’ that Pyotr does, and yet is perfectly capable of thinking about Feynman. The only difference between Pedro and Pyotr is that Pedro lacks some beliefs that Pyotr has: he does not think that there is a second individual that satisfies all the information. The extra beliefs that Pyotr has do not render him less discriminatory than Pedro: Pyotr thinks he lacks a discriminatory ability, but there is in fact no such ability, for Feynman cannot be discriminated from himself. Since Pedro and Pyotr do not differ in their discriminatory abilities (and they do not differ in the items that they are acquainted with), they should be capable of the same de re thoughts, contrary to what the objector must say.

It might be suggested that what distinguishes Pedro from Pyotr is that Pyotr’s additional beliefs are, in one crucial respect, erroneous: he thinks that there are two Feynmans, and there are not. But this is another detail of Pyotr’s story that is inessential to the argument. We can simply suppose that Pyotr is agnostic about the existence of two Feynmans; he can still wonder whether Feynman, is Feynman,, and take for granted that Feynman, is Feynman, and that Feynman, is Feynman,. Pedro is simply rusher than Pyotr in assuming the existence of a single Feynman. Surely the class of Pyotr’s de re thoughts cannot be restricted by such caution on his part?

I do not see that the objection is on very solid ground, then. However, Pyotr’s story can be changed so that we can make a very similar argument that is not susceptible to the objection however it is formulated. We simply have to suppose that Pyotr associates slightly different bodies of information with “each of the Feynmans.” Perhaps he thinks one of them might be still alive, and he simply has not considered whether or not “the other” is dead or alive. Perhaps he thinks one of them drives a Toyota to the lab, and the other drives a Toyota or a Hyundai.

Claim: we cannot say that Pyotr has two concepts of Feynman. Consider two counterparts of Pyotr’s, Pete, and Pete2. Pete, thinks that there is one Feynman, and he believes of this Feynman all and only what Pyotr believes

104 JONATHAN SUTTON

of one of Pyotr’s Feynmans. Pete, thinks that there is only one Feynman, and he believes of him all and only what Pyotr believes of the other of Pyotr’s Feynmans. Pete, and Pete, can think about Feynman-we can suppose the information each has is rich enough for that. If we say that Pyotr has two FEYNMAN concepts (or concept types), then we must say that Pete, and Pete, have distinct concepts that both refer to Feynman. But then we are slicing concepts too thinly for them to do the work that they need to do. Small differences in peripheral beliefs should not suffice for thinkers to possess different concepts, lest we conclude that thinkers rarely share concepts and thoughts; we will find it extremely difficult to make content-based gener- alizations that range over more than a single thinker at a single time. (Con- sider how we might construct an account of Pete, and Pete, communicating about Feynman; surely they can communicate, and yet ‘Feynman is a physicist’ expresses a different thought for Pete, on the current proposal than it does for Pet%.)”

So, Pyotr does not have two FEYNMAN concepts. Yet there are once again three identity beliefs that he can hold, two trivial, and one substantive, that are somehow distinguished by their content. Since Pyotr no longer believes (or thinks it possible) that there are individuals called ‘Feynman’ that he cannot discriminate, our objector can no longer deny that Pyotr is any less capable of thinking about Feynman than Pete, and Pete,. But these thoughts must contain the same concepts in the same structural arrangement-that is, they must be the same thought. And that thought is either trivial or substantive, not both.

The solution, of course, is to invoke concept and thought tokens. The requirement that we not individuate concepts and thoughts in too fine-grained a manner leads us to explain Pyotr’s altered situation in just the way that we explained Pyotr’s original situation under the influence of the semantic individuation principle. There is a single thought FEYNMAN IS FEYNMAN which Pyotr can believe in a trivial or substantive manner. Those manners are distinguished by whether the token of FEYNMAN IS FEYNMAN that Pyotr thinks contains two tokens of FEYNMAN with the same or different lexical properties.”

We can conclude once again that the meat of the mentalist view is correct: thoughts and concepts are susceptible to the typehoken distinction. Since the variant argument does not take a detour through ascribing lexical properties to concepts, I do not have a way to extend the variant argument to arrive at the

’* l9

For an extended defense of the publicity of concepts and thoughts, see Fodor (1998). I do not claim that this solution is without its troubles. It is committed to allowing that tokens of the same concept can differ in their semantic properties (they have different conceptual roles), a considerably more puzzling proposition than the claim that tokens of the same concept can differ in their lexical properties. But here is not the place to explore the palatability of this claim.


conclusion that concept and thought tokens are psychological. In this respect, our original argument is the stronger one.”

4.3 Objection 3 (Steve Hiltz)

I stated that there is no semantic difference between FEYNMAN, and FEYNMAN,, since they co-refer and have the same conceptual role. It might be suggested that FEYNMAN, has a distinct conceptual role from FEYNMAN, since part of the conceptual role of FEYNMAN, is a disposition to infer FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN,. That is not a part of the conceptual role of FEYNMAN,; rather, a corresponding part of the conceptual role of FEYNMAN, is a disposition to infer FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN,. Con- sequently, we can regard FEYNMAN, and FEYNMAN, as distinct abstracta, individuated purely semantically by (distinct) conceptual roles.

In order to distinguish the conceptual roles of FEYNMAN, and FEYNMAN, in this way, however, the thought FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN, needs to be distinguished from the thought FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN,. That can only be done if the component FEYNMAN, can be distinguished from the component FEYNMAN,. The objection can only make the case that there is a semantic distinction between FEYNMAN, and FEYNMAN, by presupposing that there already is such a distinction; it begs the question.

4.4 Objection 4 (Mark Heller)

My description of Pyotr’s situation is designed to appeal to as wide a phi- losophical readership as possible, but it does rely on summoning some dis- tinctly Fregean intuitions. Some, such as Scott Soames, do not trust those intuitions (Soames, 1988). Why should we not say that, since there is but a single Feynman, Pyotr believes FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN, simply in virtue of believing FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN,? More accurately, we should not distinguish FEYNMAN, and FEYNMAN,, and speak simply of Pyotr believing and disbelieving FEYNMAN IS FEYNMAN. He thinks that he disbelieves an identity thought distinct from any that he believes, but he is mistaken. This is the Millian or Russellian view of the contents of the attitudes.

2o I am not terribly distressed about this, since I do not endorse one of the premises of the variant argument! I think that there are indefinitely fine-grained concept types, and that the shareability of concepts and thoughts is not thereby endangered since there are also coarse-grained thoughts and concepts with which one can frame intentional generaliza- tions that range over many thinkers-token intentional states have mulfiple contents, some coarse-grained and some fine-grained, and so many of Pete,’s beliefs about Feynman and Pete,’s beliefs about Feynman share some contents and not others. Explaining that is a project for another time, and I rest content to offer the variant argument to those who find it persuasive.

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I suggest that my description of Pyotr’s situation does not in fact ignore this way of interpreting what is going on. I use the terms ‘FEYNMAN,’ and ‘FEYNMAN2’ simply to label the fact that there is some difference between the objects of two acts of thinking identity thoughts undertaken by Pyotr. Pyotr certainly takes there to be such a difference; he thinks that in one case he thinks a trivial identity thought, and in the other he thinks a substantive identity thought.’l There must be something about the objects of the two acts of thinking that enables Pyotr to distinguish them, and, since that is so, the apparently trivial identity thought can be labeled ‘FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN,’ and the apparently substantive thought can be labeled ‘FEYNMAN, IS FEYNMAN,’. My argument proceeds unmodified to its conclusion that FEYNMANl and FEYNMAN, are tokenable concepts, and each act of thinking involves a token thought.”

5. Conclusion I have attempted to clarify and settle an ontological dispute over the nature of concepts and thoughts-whether concepts and thoughts are mental representations. The questions about concepts and thoughts that have received the most attention are semantic rather than ontological. Should they be individuated primarily by their extensions, or in terms of something more internalistic such as conceptual or inferential role? How fine-grained should our individuation of concepts and thoughts be? How is the extension of a concept determined? Is there such a thing as conceptual truth?

Mentalism is compatible with radically different answers to these questions. However, it is plausible that the semantic questions will be more easily resolved once we get clear on the nature of the entities for which these questions arise. I hope, therefore, to have provided some foundation for future work on concepts and thought^.'^

Note that even by Millian lights, the concepts THE OBJECT OF THE TRIVlAL ACT OF THINKING and THE OBJECT OF THE SUBSTANTIVE ACT OF THINKING are distinct, provided that these concepts are the complex concepts that they seem to be. SUBSTANTIVE and TRIVIAL are distinct concepts, and hence so are these complex concepts. Consequently, the Millian cannot deny that Pyotr thinks THE OBJECT OF THE TRIVIAL ACT OF THINKING IS NOT IDENTICAL TO THE OBJECT OF THE SUBSTANTIVE ACT OF THINKING on Millian grounds, and we can suppose him phi- losophically sophisticated enough to think that thought. My conclusion is not repugnant to the Millian, provided that he is willing to be a mentalist. The Millian can say that there is only one unstructured name concept referring to Feyn- man, although different tokens of that concept can have distinct lexical properties, which properties explain how F‘yotr’s situation is possible. Although the intuitions that F‘yotr evokes have a Fregean flavor, they do not force us to individuate concepts and thoughts in a fine-grained Fregean manner. Many thanks to Mark McCullagh, Eric Barnes, Doug Ehring, Steve Sverdlik, David Hausman, Mark Heller, Steve Hiltz, Matthew Henken, Richard Samuels, Eric Margolis, and Kent Bach for discussions on the central arguments of this paper.


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Are Concepts Mental Representations or Abstracta?

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