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Must Differences in Cognitive Value be Transparent?

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Abstract

Frege’s ‘differential dubitability’ test is a test for differences in cognitive value: if one can rationally believe that p while simultaneously doubting that q, then the contents p and q amount to different ‘cognitive values’. If subject S is rational, does her simultaneous adoption of different attitudes towards p and q require that the difference between p and q (as cognitive values) be transparent to her? It is natural to think so. But I argue that, if attitude anti-individualism is true, then rational differential dubitability does not presuppose that differences in cognitive value are transparent. The significance of this argument lies in what it tells us, both about the notion of cognitive value and its relation to the differential dubitability test, but also about the prospects for a Burge-type position which aims to combine attitude anti-individualism with a (qualified) reliance on the differential dubitability test.

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Notes

  1. In my formulation of both the Frege Test, and the principle of Transparency regarding content-differences (below), I follow Brown (2004).

  2. There are other positions that combine reliance on the Frege Test with a commitment to a broadly externalist approach to the mind. One thinks here of the work of Evans and McDowell on singular thought: see Evans (1982) and McDowell (1977, 1984). However, I will be restricting my attention to Burge’s version of externalism (anti-individualism).

  3. Although Burge himself is someone who has relied on the Frege Test in the context of developing an anti-individualist position, it must be noted that Burge’s reliance on that test is doubly qualified. He writes, “Frege’s test for differential dubitability, when accompanied with requirements that doubt be supportable by publicly recognized methods, is a defeasible but profoundly valuable tool in individuating cognitive values” (Burge 1986, p. 717).

  4. See also Kimbrough (1998), Brown (2003, 2004), and Wikforss (2006) for a discussion of the difficulty that must be faced by the anti-individualist who hopes to endorse (FT).

  5. See for example Burge (1988a, b, 1996a, b), Boghossian (1989, 1992, 1994), Owens (1986), Falvey and Owens (1994), Brown (2000, 2004), and Goldberg (1999, 2000, 2003a, b).

  6. Semantic matters here are complicated by the change of time, as WATERY LIQUID I INTERACTED WITH BEFORE THE WORLD-SWITCH would not be a concept Schmidt would use prior to her hypothesis that she was world-switched. I leave it to the reader to determine how an individualistic semantics might account for the shift in Schmidt’s ‘water’-thoughts as she changes her views about her environment in the interval from t 1 to t 2.

  7. One might object that, given her epistemic situation at t 3, Schmidt cannot be merely recalling the ‘water’-concepts she employed earlier. I will address this objection below.

  8. See Burge (1982a) and Putnam (1996).

  9. See Burge (1996a), Gibbons (1996), and Goldberg (2005).

  10. It is to be borne in mind that these demonstratives fix the reference of the thoughts, but do not render the thought-contents indexical. See again Burge (1982a) and Putnam (1996).

  11. I thank an anonymous referee for indicating the need to address this point.

  12. The text in brackets is not part of the content of the thought, but rather fixes the reference, and so the propositional contribution, of these uses of ‘she’.

  13. I thank an anonymous referee for raising this issue.

  14. Here I assume, concessively, that it is via a higher-order thought that Schmidt manifests her differential doubts regarding T1 and T2.

  15. Here we are free to imagine that the subject has no interest in such strange science-fiction cases, or in the philosophical doctrines that such cases are used to illustrate.

  16. See Gibbons (1996), who makes a point very similar to this one.

  17. How does this analysis square with the case of a thinker who begins to entertain doubts about the synonymy of what in fact are two synonymous expressions? Burge (1978) and Owens (1986) argue that such doubts can be rational; and they use this datum to argue that sentences that differ only in replacing synonym for synonym can have different cognitive values, and so be associated with different contents, for a given subject. (I myself have endorsed such arguments elsewhere: see Goldberg (2002).) One might worry that my analysis of the McSorley case commits me to thinking that, in the final analysis, such differential doubts in cases involving distinct synonyms are not rational after all. I hope that this worry is unfounded. One relevant contrast might be this. What undermines the ultimate rationality of McSorley’s differential doubt is that, in effect, she is doubting the synonymy of two tokens of one and the same type of expression. For kinds of expressions that are not indexical or demonstrative, such a doubt is not rational (though I admit that it can seem rational, as it does to McSorley). This contrasts with doubts regarding the synonymy of two distinct expressions (expression-types): such doubts can be rational even when misguided. No doubt this matter requires much more discussion. Here I hope only to be making the view in question seem plausible enough to think that pursuing such a discussion is worthwhile.

  18. I thank an anonymous referee for pressing this point.

  19. I am not sure much hangs on whether we regard the doubt as impossible or as (possible but) irrational. In any case I will not weigh in on this, as the success of my argument does not hang on it.

  20. Such an option would appear to be that favored by Brown (2003, 2004 Chapter 6).

  21. Compare the argument to follow with that of Burge (1978) and Owens (1986).

  22. Burge himself stressed this point in connection with sentences that differ in replacing synonym for synonym; see especially Burge (1978, 1986). I thank an anonymous referee for indicating this way of putting the point.

  23. Objection: isn’t this precisely what McSorley does in the case above? And if it is, shouldn’t that case be treated, as we are treating the present case, as one in which the thought-contents are different after all—my argument to the contrary in Sect. 3.1 notwithstanding? Reply: although Jones and McSorley do both exhibit an initial tendency to differential doubt, there are considerations in the case of McSorley, but not in the case of Jones, that establish that such doubts cannot in the end be rational. This difference warrants a different construal of the two cases.

  24. I thank an anonymous referee for raising this objection.

  25. Brown (2003, p. 442) presents a very different sort of case, in which what in fact is a single thought-constituent occurring in two thoughts is treated by the thinking subject as two distinct thought-constituents. (I have my reservations about Brown’s description of her case, but it would take me too far afield to develop these here.)

  26. Burge has made this point himself: see his (1979, p. 74).

  27. I thank an anonymous referee for indicating the need to address this point.

  28. I simplify here: as Burge himself has noted in various places (but see especially his 1986), words in the public language are supposed to have objective application conditions, and expert explications (and so, presumably, prevailing linguistic standards) can be incorrect. However, I will ignore the complications that arise owing to objectivity and expert fallibility; I discuss these in Goldberg (2007a, forthcoming).

  29. On the relevance of non-triviality in the subject’s articulation of the relevant standards, see Goldberg (2002, 2006).

  30. For an extended defense of this claim, see Goldberg (2005, 2007b, c).

  31. I thank an anonymous referee for putting the objection this way.

  32. People tempted by this worry will prefer the individualistic ways of incorporating the phenomenon of semantic deference (for which see e.g. Chomsky (1986), p. 18) over their anti-individualistic rivals.

  33. This characterization borrows from Fricker (1987, 2006).

  34. I ignore the complications that have to be introduced in order to handle the phenomenon of context-sensitivity.

  35. See Goldberg (2004) for a defense of this claim, in connection with the programme of Radical Interpretation.

  36. Compare Heck (1995), where a very different orientation is used to arrive at a similar conclusion.

  37. This line of reasoning raises many subsidiary issues about the nature of epistemic transmission in communication cases; I do not have time to deal with these here. For an extended treatment, see Goldberg (2007a).

  38. In addition, one might worry about the implications of this view for a subject’s first-personal knowledge of her own thought-contents. This is well-worn territory, and I have nothing further to add to the various accounts of first-person authority proposed by anti-individualists. (But see Wikforss (forthcoming) for an argument to the effect that the worry here is not really over first-person authority, so much as it concerns the anti-individualist’s commitment to the doctrine of incomplete grasp; and for a defense of that commitment, see Goldberg (2007a, forthcoming).)

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank audiences at UCLA (the Epistemology Group) and the “Language, Mind, and Context” Workshop in Punta del Este, Uruguay (August 2006), where I have given versions of this paper; the individuals Dorit Bar-On, Jessica Brown, Tyler Burge, Ben Caplan, Mikkel Gerken, Brie Gertler, Tim Kenyon, Nicolaj Pedersen, Keith Simmons, Liza Skidelski, Rob Stainton, and Chris Viger, for helpful discussions and/or comments on earlier drafts; and two anonymous referees for this journal, for their comments on an earlier draft.

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    Sanford Goldberg

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Goldberg, S. Must Differences in Cognitive Value be Transparent?. Erkenn 69, 165–187 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-007-9096-4

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