Unless at least counterfactuals are supported I can't imagine that a reasons-explanation explains anything at all. In this context I want the word "reason" to mean the thought of the premise that provides epistemic support for the conclusion.
So I thought we should work through the counterfactual issue first and argue that if all you mean by a cause is something that makes a counterfactual difference, reasons, or rather reason-thoughts, play a causal role. Then we can look and see if there is something more required in the concept of a cause.
Counterfactuals have the advantage of supporting complexity in causation. Singular cause statements can be easily dismissed by showing that the proposed single cause is insufficient in iteself to support the effect. "Event c caused event e" is easily refuted if events f,g,h... also influenced event e. By proving the affect of f,g,h..., event c's role is diminished if not refuted. "If c had not occurred, e would not have occurred" also allows for "if f,g,h... had not occured, e would not have occured." If we are still discussing the issue of what makes one a rational holder of a belief, the counterfacutal approach will be inclusive of other influences and even random causes that contribute to attaining a belief, maintaining the belief, and defending the belief.
“I can't imagine that a reasons-explanation explains anything at all.”
Really? So we see a person writing her name on a piece of paper. We can give a physical and neurophysiological account of that action. But we aren’t really going to understand what is going on unless we know the reasons the person is signing her name. Is she signing a check in order to pay a friend, a contract in order to buy a house, a will because she believes that she is not going to live much longer, or the end of a letter that she has written to her boyfriend explaining why she doesn’t think they should keep seeing each other? How can we reach a satisfactory understanding of her activity without knowing her reasons for doing what she is doing?
We can’t understand human behavior without knowing the reasons or purposes for that behavior. Of course, we also need to know many other things as well. We need to understand the context in which the person is acting. E.g., the culture and time in which the person is living and the kind of activity they are engaged in. We have to know what a letter or a contract or a check or a will is in the above example.
If I run into Bob at the bank and ask him why he is there and he tells me he is drawing out money in order to place a bet on Sure Money in the Preakness because he believes that horse is gong to win then he has given me a full explanation of what I was requesting. I now know all that I need to know in order to understand his behavior. And I know what his reasons are.
I’m really puzzled as to why you think trying to shoehorn all of this into some kind of causal account is needed. Are you a strict reductionist who believes that the only “real" explanation is that given at the most basic level of existence?
"In this context I want the word "reason" to mean the thought of the premise that provides epistemic support for the conclusion."
A premise is not a thought. It is something we can think about. Is that what you mean?
After all a thought is not an entity that can causally interact with other things.
A person needs to undersand what the premise means in order to use it to reason to a conclusion.
I am still having trouble understanding how causation would be helpful in explaining this?
Maybe you could provide some examples to help me understand your point here? How does counterfactual analysis demonstrate that a reason causes a belief to be formed?
Just wanted to note that my earlier quote of what you wrote was unintentionally clipped off in a way that changes its meaning. Obviously, the full quote should have been:
Unless at least counterfactuals are supported I can't imagine that a reasons-explanation explains anything at all.
Well, the argument from reason could actually get on quite nicely without causation. The argument could just say that if there are rational agents(of the type capable of doing science) then certain counterfactuals must hold. But if naturalism is true, the counterfactuals required to have a rational agent cannot possibly obtain, therefore, naturalism should be rejected.
Now of course people like David Lewis analyze causation in counterfactual terms, so for him, you have causal relations if the counterfactuals hold.
Keith Parsons: My own (internalist) view is that if I can adduce reasons sufficient for the conclusion Q, then my belief that Q is rational. The causal history of the mental states of being aware of Q and the justifying grounds strike me was quite irrelevant. Whether those mental states are caused by other mental states, or caused by other physical states, or just pop into existence uncaused, the grounds still justify the claim.
Do you agree with this statement? Because this statement could be true and none of the relevant counterfactuals hold. Does it make sense to say that I believe OJ guilty of murder because of the evidence against him if I hate him so much that I would consider him guilty even if there were no evidence against him. (I realize overdetermination complicates the matter some here.)
“Keith Parsons: My own (internalist) view is that if I can adduce reasons sufficient for the conclusion Q, then my belief that Q is rational. The causal history of the mental states of being aware of Q and the justifying grounds strike me was quite irrelevant. Whether those mental states are caused by other mental states, or caused by other physical states, or just pop into existence uncaused, the grounds still justify the claim.
Do you agree with this statement?”
No because a belief is not a mental state. Nor is it a state of the brain. Nauralists often make the mistake of thinking that it is the brain that reasons. A brain doesn’t reason, a person does. Of course a person could not reason without a well-functioning brain, but it is a conceptual error ascribe to the brain (or the mind, for that matter) a psychological predicate that it only makes sense to ascribe to a human being.
I think we probably agree that many of the current crop of people who identify themselves as naturalists are in error when they try and reduce everything to the physical level and identify the mind with the brain. But our reasons for sharing that view are quite different. My reasons also lead me to believe that your are as mistaken in your views on the mind as those naturalists.
“ Because this statement could be true and none of the relevant counterfactuals hold. Does it make sense to say that I believe OJ guilty of murder because of the evidence against him if I hate him so much that I would consider him guilty even if there were no evidence against him. (I realize overdetermination complicates the matter some here.)”
Maybe. Your actual reasons could be called into question because of this hatred. But if you think that there is evidence against him and you are able to present that evidence and I agree that it would warrant a guilty verdict in his case, then I wouldn’t believe you to be an irrational person who is incapable of reasoning. There are other cases we could consider where the true motives or reasons for a person’s behavior might be called into question. For example, someone could do a favor for a wealthy elderly relative. He might say he did that favor for the reason that he really feels deep affection for that relative. Someone else might question that by claiming that the real reason he did the favor was that it may have increased his chances of receiving a large sum of money when the relative dies. In a case like that we may be able to look at the history of the person to see if there is a pattern of behavior that is more consistent with his given reason for doing the favor than for a greedy desire to inherit a lot of money. Or we may never be certain of the person's true reasons here.
You seem to be troubled by this indeterminacy in not always being able to be absolutely sure what a person's real reasons are. I’m not really sure why this should be a problem. I don’t feel any threat to my philosophical views because of this indeterminacy. What am I missing?
I'm not concerned about being able to know for sure what the motive is, I am concerned about there being a fact of the matter to an obvious question--what was the primary motive for behavior X. (Davidson again.)
Actually I once wrote a paper in graduate school in which I claim that reasons for actions were causes, but using a counterfactually analysis, I argued that they need not be deterministic causes.
9 comments:
I don't understand why you think it threatens teleological-reason giving explanations for human behavior.
What do you think a 'reason' is? What is your understanding of the concept?
Unless at least counterfactuals are supported I can't imagine that a reasons-explanation explains anything at all. In this context I want the word "reason" to mean the thought of the premise that provides epistemic support for the conclusion.
So I thought we should work through the counterfactual issue first and argue that if all you mean by a cause is something that makes a counterfactual difference, reasons, or rather reason-thoughts, play a causal role. Then we can look and see if there is something more required in the concept of a cause.
Counterfactuals have the advantage of supporting complexity in causation. Singular cause statements can be easily dismissed by showing that the proposed single cause is insufficient in iteself to support the effect. "Event c caused event e" is easily refuted if events f,g,h... also influenced event e. By proving the affect of f,g,h..., event c's role is diminished if not refuted. "If c had not occurred, e would not have occurred" also allows for "if f,g,h... had not occured, e would not have occured." If we are still discussing the issue of what makes one a rational holder of a belief, the counterfacutal approach will be inclusive of other influences and even random causes that contribute to attaining a belief, maintaining the belief, and defending the belief.
“I can't imagine that a reasons-explanation explains anything at all.”
Really?
So we see a person writing her name on a piece of paper. We can give a physical and neurophysiological account of that action. But we aren’t really going to understand what is going on unless we know the reasons the person is signing her name. Is she signing a check in order to pay a friend, a contract in order to buy a house, a will because she believes that she is not going to live much longer, or the end of a letter that she has written to her boyfriend explaining why she doesn’t think they should keep seeing each other? How can we reach a satisfactory understanding of her activity without knowing her reasons for doing what she is doing?
We can’t understand human behavior without knowing the reasons or purposes for that behavior. Of course, we also need to know many other things as well. We need to understand the context in which the person is acting. E.g., the culture and time in which the person is living and the kind of activity they are engaged in. We have to know what a letter or a contract or a check or a will is in the above example.
If I run into Bob at the bank and ask him why he is there and he tells me he is drawing out money in order to place a bet on Sure Money in the Preakness because he believes that horse is gong to win then he has given me a full explanation of what I was requesting. I now know all that I need to know in order to understand his behavior. And I know what his reasons are.
I’m really puzzled as to why you think trying to shoehorn all of this into some kind of causal account is needed. Are you a strict reductionist who believes that the only “real" explanation is that given at the most basic level of existence?
"In this context I want the word "reason" to mean the thought of the premise that provides epistemic support for the conclusion."
A premise is not a thought. It is something we can think about. Is that what you mean?
After all a thought is not an entity that can causally interact with other things.
A person needs to undersand what the premise means in order to use it to reason to a conclusion.
I am still having trouble understanding how causation would be helpful in explaining this?
Maybe you could provide some examples to help me understand your point here?
How does counterfactual analysis demonstrate that a reason causes a belief to be formed?
Just wanted to note that my earlier quote of what you wrote was unintentionally clipped off in a way that changes its meaning. Obviously, the full quote should have been:
Unless at least counterfactuals are supported I can't imagine that a reasons-explanation explains anything at all.
Well, the argument from reason could actually get on quite nicely without causation. The argument could just say that if there are rational agents(of the type capable of doing science) then certain counterfactuals must hold. But if naturalism is true, the counterfactuals required to have a rational agent cannot possibly obtain, therefore, naturalism should be rejected.
Now of course people like David Lewis analyze causation in counterfactual terms, so for him, you have causal relations if the counterfactuals hold.
Keith Parsons: My own (internalist) view is that if I can adduce reasons sufficient for the conclusion Q, then my belief that Q is rational. The causal history of the mental states of being aware of Q and the justifying grounds strike me was quite irrelevant. Whether those mental states are caused by other mental states, or caused by other physical states, or just pop into existence uncaused, the grounds still justify the claim.
Do you agree with this statement? Because this statement could be true and none of the relevant counterfactuals hold. Does it make sense to say that I believe OJ guilty of murder because of the evidence against him if I hate him so much that I would consider him guilty even if there were no evidence against him. (I realize overdetermination complicates the matter some here.)
“Keith Parsons: My own (internalist) view is that if I can adduce reasons sufficient for the conclusion Q, then my belief that Q is rational. The causal history of the mental states of being aware of Q and the justifying grounds strike me was quite irrelevant. Whether those mental states are caused by other mental states, or caused by other physical states, or just pop into existence uncaused, the grounds still justify the claim.
Do you agree with this statement?”
No because a belief is not a mental state. Nor is it a state of the brain.
Nauralists often make the mistake of thinking that it is the brain that reasons. A brain doesn’t reason, a person does.
Of course a person could not reason without a well-functioning brain, but it is a conceptual error ascribe to the brain (or the mind, for that matter) a psychological predicate that it only makes sense to ascribe to a human being.
I think we probably agree that many of the current crop of people who identify themselves as naturalists are in error when they try and reduce everything to the physical level and identify the mind with the brain. But our reasons for sharing that view are quite different. My reasons also lead me to believe that your are as mistaken in your views on the mind as those naturalists.
“ Because this statement could be true and none of the relevant counterfactuals hold. Does it make sense to say that I believe OJ guilty of murder because of the evidence against him if I hate him so much that I would consider him guilty even if there were no evidence against him. (I realize overdetermination complicates the matter some here.)”
Maybe. Your actual reasons could be called into question because of this hatred. But if you think that there is evidence against him and you are able to present that evidence and I agree that it would warrant a guilty verdict in his case, then I wouldn’t believe you to be an irrational person who is incapable of reasoning.
There are other cases we could consider where the true motives or reasons for a person’s behavior might be called into question. For example, someone could do a favor for a wealthy elderly relative. He might say he did that favor for the reason that he really feels deep affection for that relative. Someone else might question that by claiming that the real reason he did the favor was that it may have increased his chances of receiving a large sum of money when the relative dies.
In a case like that we may be able to look at the history of the person to see if there is a pattern of behavior that is more consistent with his given reason for doing the favor than for a greedy desire to inherit a lot of money. Or we may never be certain of the person's true reasons here.
You seem to be troubled by this indeterminacy in not always being able to be absolutely sure what a person's real reasons are. I’m not really sure why this should be a problem. I don’t feel any threat to my philosophical views because of this indeterminacy.
What am I missing?
I'm not concerned about being able to know for sure what the motive is, I am concerned about there being a fact of the matter to an obvious question--what was the primary motive for behavior X. (Davidson again.)
Actually I once wrote a paper in graduate school in which I claim that reasons for actions were causes, but using a counterfactually analysis, I argued that they need not be deterministic causes.
Post a Comment