11.4.2—
Intentional Categories and Causal Relevance

Establishing compatibility between causal explanation and Verstehen (as two separate projects), however, is the easy part of the job. The hard part lies in making a case that intentional psychology is susceptible to being made into a "science" in the prevalent usage of the word in America, where it suggests a causal and nomological character. One important problem lies in the fact that intentional psychology individuates its objects semantically. But if it is to be a science, one would wish for the individuation of terms to take place in a fashion that captures causal regularities: if a belief that a cat is in the yard is used to explain different behaviors than a belief that a unicorn is in the yard, and we are talking about a kind of causal explanation, we should expect the difference in the causal powers of the two beliefs to be intimately connected to their difference in content. But it is hard to see how this might be the case, and it has generally seemed that there are only three basic possibilities: (1) there is some interpreter that is sensitive to semantic properties and is also the locus of the causal powers, (2) semantic properties are themselves causally efficacious, or (3) semantic properties are linked to some other kinds of properties that are causally efficacious. The problem with (1) is that it leads to a homuncular regress. The problem with (2) is that semantic properties just do not seem like things that have causal powers. The computer paradigm takes option (3) with respect to semiotic-semantic properties, which are unproblematically linked to nonsemantic properties through interpretive conventions, but it is not clear how mental-semantic or MR-semantic properties might similarly be coordinated with some other properties that are causally efficacious, or what those properties might be.

The issue here is one of trying to see how something might be the case —that is, how it might be that causal regularities of cognition could run parallel to semantic properties of cognitive states. And the issue of "seeing how X might be the case" shapes up very differently depending on what kind of evidence we have that X actually is the case. For example, many people in Newton's day (and perhaps many of us today) found the picture he presents of gravitation to be problematic because it involves action at a distance. The familiar paradigm of causal interaction had long been one of contact interaction, and it seemed—indeed, it still seems—hard to see how bodies could exert influence somewhere they are not. This difficulty in seeing how it could be so might have been seen as a compelling argument against causation that does not involve contact

interactions, except for the fact that there was overwhelming evidence that such causal influence did take place. (Indeed, of the fundamental "forces" posited by contemporary physics, none of them aside from mechanical force involves contact interaction.)

I think that the same kind of benefit could, in principle, accrue to psychology: if there were to emerge an intentional psychology framed as a set of laws governing reasoning, and it had a sufficient degree of predictive accuracy, this would provide strong evidence that intentional states do have the kind of causal role assigned to them by such a theory. And it would provide such evidence regardless of whether we can see a mechanism that could account for such causation . The particular form of intentional causation could be fundamental, after all, like the particulars of gravitation or electromagnetism or of why particles behave in the precise way they behave when they collide. Or intentional causation could be opaque to us without being fundamental—it could be that we can have evidence that there are causal regularities at the level of intentional explanation, and it might also be the case that these are emergent out of some more basic kinds of regularities without our being able to know just what the relationship between levels is. (Even if computational formalisms are appropriate for psychology, it seems all too likely that we shall never know the details of interlevel relationships in detail.) In such an eventuality, its status would be not unlike that of Newtonian description of gravitational attraction, which supplied a nomological description (and hence conferred mathematical maturity) without explaining this behavior by positing an underlying mechanism (and hence did not supply additional connective maturity).

The first part of the answer to the second objection to intentional psychology, then, is this: computational psychology provides one of the first chances we have really had for making any realistic attempt at building nomological theories of cognition that treat intentional states as causally relevant in reasoning and behavior.^[2] The programme is relatively young, and any possible model of the mind rich enough to test for predictive accuracy with respect to cognition would necessarily be orders of magnitude more complex than most of the fundamental laws in other sciences.^[3] (Though many researchers seem to think that some of the initial results seem promising.) The obvious moral to draw is that we ought to let cognitive psychology mature as best it may, and see whether it does provide compelling evidence that semantic properties of intentional states seem to be at least correlated with causal regularities.

There is also a second response to this objection—one that draws more

directly upon what is made explicit in BCTM. BCTM makes a fairly bald-faced assertion to the effect that intentional states are realized through naturalistic properties in a systematic way, such that (a ) intentional modality is realized through functional relations and (b ) mental-semantic properties are realized through some naturalistic properties (labeled "MR-semantic properties" until their true identity is discovered) possessed by cognitive counters. And it is important not to be fooled by the "semantic" in 'MR-semantic'. Remember that all 'MR-semantic properties' means is "those properties of cognitive counters, whatever they turn out to be, through which content is realized." In particular, the "semantic" in 'MR-semantic' is not so robust that our intuitions that "semantic properties" cannot be causally efficacious should transfer to MR-semantic properties. MR-semantic properties, if they are anything at all, are just naturalistic properties whose real identity we have not discovered, and so they seem perfectly respectable as possible explainers of causal regularities (though whether they capture the right regularities to make our intentional explanations into causal laws remains to be seen). If the research programme associated with BCTM can be carried out, then there will be a causal, nomological science to be carried out, at least at the level of the realizing system . That is, the system of cognitive counters will have lawlike causal regularities, and the MR-semantic properties through which mental-semantic properties are realized will be at least correlated with the causal properties of the cognitive counters of which they are the properties.

The difficulty here is this: the level of description for the realizing system is not a level of psychological description per se. What can the causal, nomological character of the realizing system show us about the realized system, the system of intentional states and processes? Does the causal, nomological character of the realizing system automatically accrue to the system it realizes? Or does it, perhaps, suggest that the realized system also has such a character? There are, I think, two parts to the answer. First, even if we could not construe the system of intentional states and processes as a causal and nomological system, it would matter a great deal if we could show that this system is realized through a system that did have these virtues. For example, if there were overwhelming Rylean objections to interpreting intentional states as being even the sorts of things that can enter causal relations, the psychologist can at least take heart at the news that there is some other system of states and properties—those through which intentional states and processes are realized—that can enter into such relations, and moreover, that whenever one picks

out intentional states and processes, one picks out the states and processes through which they are realized as well. (If you go to the racetrack, you can bet on the horse or bet on the jockey on the horse; they win or lose together!)

But I think one can make a case that at least some of the properties of the realizing system can also accrue to the realized system as well. Take our example of the Victoria Crown. The property of being the Victoria Crown is realized through a particular bit of matter. Let us say it weighs fifty pounds. Now there is nothing about the property of being the Victoria Crown that entails weighing fifty pounds. But the object that is the Victoria Crown does weigh fifty pounds, and does so because the matter of which it is composed has that mass. This property of the realizing matter accrues to the realized object as well. Similarly, suppose Jones's generosity is realized through his giving $100 to the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief on Pentecost. The act takes place at a particular time and has a particular beneficiary. Now we should not say that Jones's generosity is an event taking place at a particular time, but we might say that it was exercised at a particular time. And we should surely say that the Presiding Bishop's Fund was the "beneficiary of Jones's generosity" and not just the recipient of $100. So it seems that, at least in some limited ways, the realized system can take on some of the properties of the realizing system. (It does not follow, of course, that the properties of the realizing system accrue to the realized property —the property of generosity does not take on new implications because of how it is realized.)

A detailed examination of the various possible relations between realizing and realized systems would probably require some very careful metaphysical investigation. It seems quite reasonable, however, to suppose the following: if (1) a mental state X of type M is realized through a natural state of type N , and (2) it is a law that N 's cause O 's under condition C , and (3) C obtains, then (4) an O will come about, and (5) X may be said to be a cause of O . (And this holds even if we do not say "X is an N " but only "X is realized through an N -token.") Here the causal powers of the instantiating type N accrue to the realized individual X , but not to the realized property M .

Now none of this precludes the possibility of saying that intentional states have causal powers in their own right, and not just by virtue of how they are realized. The point is merely that, if computational psychology as described by BCTM can be carried out at all, there will be some naturalistic system through which intentional states and processes are realized, and this system can be causal and nomological in ways that

are not at all problematic. If there are problems about intentional and semantic properties being of the right sort to ground causal regularities, perhaps this gap can be filled by way of appeal to the realizing system.

To summarize, there really are some prima facie difficulties with the attempt to construe intentional explanation as lawlike causal explanation, and hence to make intentional psychology into a "science" in the sense of the word that implies such causal lawlike explanation. The issue of the nomological character of intentional explanation, however, is best settled by letting the project of intentional psychology, supplemented by resources of the computer paradigm, flourish as best it may and seeing whether the project will pan out in the end. And if it does produce what look like nomological regularities, this in itself provides substantial warrant for suspecting that these regularities are causal in nature as well, whether or not we can find or even imagine an underlying mechanism that could account for the causality . In any case, if BCTM can be carried out, there will also be a system describable in wholly naturalistic terms through which the system of intentional states and processes is realized. And this system (a ) can unproblematically be viewed as causal in nature, (b ) is in one-to-one (or even many-to-one) correspondence with the system of intentional states and processes, and (c ) may even confer its causal properties upon the things it realizes.