Abstract
What is a propositional-attitude and why does it appear to be important to psychology? A diverse array of philosophers and psychologists—although they agree on little else—assure us that explanation in psychology can not exist without a strong commitment to such attitudes. In a nutshell, ‘propositional-attitude’ refers to a model of mental life that is presented as though the structure of thought is that of sentences. Jerry Fodor, foremost among the various advocates of this commitment, has stated the case for the centrality of propositional-attitudes, first in his seminal Language of Thought (Fodor 1975), and then again in his reprisal, LOT 2 (Fodor 2008).
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Notes
- 1.
I refer the reader to Hintzman’s excellent review of connectionist models, “Human Learning and Memory: Connections and Dissociations” Annual Review of Psychology, 41: 109–139, 1990. Leading contenders for the model of choice in representational simulation include Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) (e.g. the Churchlands) and Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) (e.g. Grossberg). I will not make a commitment to either connectionist school here; the objective of this essay is to argue on behalf of biologically realistic theories of cognition against propositional-attitude based models.
- 2.
In the second part of this essay, I will argue that imperatives are best modeled on non-propositional theories of motivational endowment proposed by researchers such as LeDoux (1996), Pfaff (1999), and Panksepp (1998).
- 3.
See St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, Part I.
- 4.
I made a similar anti-metaphysical argument against the naturalistic fallacy in my interpretation of Hume’s Law. See my essay, ‘The Anti-naturalistic Fallacy: Evolutionary Moral Psychology and the Insistence of Brute Facts, Evolutionary Psychology, 6: 32–47, 2006.
- 5.
See de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics (1916\1998) or interpretations of his theory of the sign as offered by Culler (1976) as well as evolutionary theorists such as Deacon (1997, p. 69).
- 6.
Although some readers might find Derrida to be an odd addition to this group, I refer those who are puzzled to Henry Staten’s Derrida and Wittgenstein (1986). Derrida relates the relentless search for timeless essences in Husserl, as well as in others, to the authors’ fear of death.
- 7.
I discuss the problem of essentialism in respect to the meme concept in my paper, ‘The Trouble with Memes: Deconstructing Dawkins’ Monster’, Social Science Information, pp. 691–709, 2007. Dennett (1995) endorses the meme concept without realizing that in doing so he has violated the strictures of Darwin’s ‘dangerous idea’, i.e. that species are not pre-established essences, and neither are memes. It is perhaps even more astonishing that Dawkins himself, the author of The God Delusion (2006) fails to see the elements of Platonic idealism that underlies the meme concept. (One might say that Dawkins got rid of the thinker, i.e. God, but kept the thoughts, i.e. memes.).
- 8.
For a further discussion of the modularity thesis see Chap. 3.
- 9.
Although Dennett invents the term, Gregorian, in honor of the neuroscientist, Richard Gregory, I like to think that Dennett invented the term while listening to Gregorian chants and drinking wine out of a medieval goblet.
- 10.
Dennett attempts to make this argument in his Freedom Evolves (Dennett 2003). The view of evolved freewill that Dennett advances is that known as ‘compatibilism’, the view that freewill is compatible with determinism. Dennett calls it a freewill that is worth having. Behaviorists and other determinists do not think that sort of freewill is freewill.
- 11.
Fodor gave at talk at Rutgers University in February 2000 prior to the release of his The Mind Doesn’t Work that Way (Fodor 2000), where he asserted casually but with conviction that the “brain has nothing to do with the mind”. I was there; I heard it with my own ears.
- 12.
Place referred to the thesis that phenomenal states are not identical to physiological states as the “Phenomenological Fallacy” (Place 1956, pp. 49–50). Hence, back in the 1950s, dualists raised the same objections to phyiscalism that non-reductive materialists (e.g. Kim 2007) raise today. Hence the rebuttals provided by Smart (1959) to those objections should still appeal to the physically inclined. I suggest that those readers who reject phyiscalist monism read Smart’s ancient objections.
- 13.
Research on ‘Theory of Mind’ by Gelman (e.g. Gelman et al. 1994; Gelman 2003) suggests that we are naturally inclined to think of ourselves and others in terms of psychological essentialism; however, this issue must be distinguished from the issue of metaphysical essentialism.
- 14.
If you prefer messy intensionality to science, then I recommend that you follow Derrida’s lead into literary criticism. Alternatively, you could follow Wittgenstein into ordinary language philosophy.
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Walter, A. (2012). Evolutionary Psychology and the Propositional-Attitudes: Why the Cognitive Turn is a Wrong Turn. In: Evolutionary Psychology and the Propositional-attitudes. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2969-8_1
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