A History of Emerging Modes?

Philosophy

Journal of Social Ontology 2016; 2(1): 87–103 Book Symposium Open Access Michael Schmitz A History of Emerging Modes? DOI 10.1515/jso-2015-0054 Abstract: In this paper I first introduce Tomasello's notion of thought and his account of its emergence and development through differentiation, arguing that it calls into question the theory bias of the philosophical tradition on thought as well as its frequent atomism. I then raise some worries that he may be overextending the concept of thought, arguing that we should recognize an area of intentionality intermediate between action and perception on the one hand and thought on the other. After that I argue that the co-operative nature of humans is reflected in the very structure of their intentionality and thought: in co-operative modes such as the mode of joint attention and action and the we-mode, they experience and represent others as co-subjects of joint relations to situations in the world rather than as mere objects. In conclusion, I briefly comment on what Tomasello refers to as one of two big open questions in the theory of collective intentionality, namely that of the irreducibility of jointness. Keywords: Mode; Cooperation; Joint attention; Thought; Propositional attitudes. 1 Introduction Michael Tomasello is a philosopher's dream psychologist. He liberally sprinkles his books with Wittgenstein quotes. He constructively and sympathetically engages with many contemporary philosophers. In his new book A Natural History of Thinking he integrates the theoretical fruits of these engagements into an account of the evolution of primate intentionality and thought that is richer and bolder than anything a philosopher would even dare to present. As somebody who has, in addition to his philosophical competence, an overwhelming command of the fields of primatology and of developmental psychology and linguistics, and has made many original contributions to them, he is perhaps uniquely positioned to do so. How could a philosopher try to respond to this Michael Schmitz, Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Vienna 1010, Austria, e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com ©2016, Michael Schmitz, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. Unangemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 23.03.16 16:23 88 Michael Schmitz work in the spirit and mode of cooperation that Tomasello's book so incisively analyzes, so richly documents, and so generously embodies? As the title of the book already indicates, Tomasello makes a point of focusing on the nature of human thought, and this emphasis is also part of what distinguishes the approach of this book from that of some of his earlier work as, e.g. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (2009). Another major difference is that he now sees the defining characteristic of human thought exclusively in its social, cooperative nature. So in this commentary I will focus on Tomasello's understanding of the nature of thought and on how it relates to traditional ways of understanding thought in philosophy. In the broadly Cartesian tradition that Tomasello responds to, there is a deep-seated tendency to identify consciousness with thought. Thought in turn has recently usually been thought of as a "propositional attitude." This tradition has a profound intellectualist bias in that it tends to disregard non-propositional, non-conceptual forms of thought and consciousness. It is also theory-biased (Schmitz 2013a,b) in the sense of privileging theoretical, mind-to-world direction of fit attitudes or speech acts – postures – like beliefs and assertions, over practical, world-to-mind direction of fit postures like intentions and orders. This dominance of the theoretical in turn is manifest in at least two ways. First in the idea that all propositional attitudes, whether practical or theoretical, are attitudes towards (or contain) something that, as a truth value bearer, belongs to the theoretical domain – as truth is representational success from a theoretical rather than from a practical point of view. Second, propositional attitudes are commonly approached by analyzing their reports – such as he believed this, she intends that, and so on – and that means as objects of a theoretical perspective that takes them to be something that is the case. The subject of the attitude and its kind or mode are merely reported from a theoretical perspective and are not thought to contribute to its content, which is taken to be identical to that of the relevant proposition. Finally, the received notion of a propositional attitude also shows an individualist bias in that it is usually taken for granted that the relevant subjects are individuals. A Natural History of Human Thinking relates to all of these (and some further) aspects of the philosophical tradition on thought in interesting ways. In the following I will first introduce Tomasello's notion of thought and his account of its emergence and development through differentiation, arguing that it calls into question the theory bias of the tradition as well as its frequent atomism. On the basis of this discussion, I then raise some worries that he may be overextending the concept of thought, arguing that we should recognize an area of intentionality intermediate between action and perception on the one hand and thought on the other. I continue this argument by suggesting that the cooperative nature Unangemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 23.03.16 16:23 A History of Emerging Modes? 89 of humans is reflected in the very structure of their intentionality and thought: in cooperative modes such as the mode of joint attention and action and the we-mode, they experience and represent others as co-subjects of joint relations to situations in the world rather than as mere objects. To capture this I suggest to abandon the traditional understanding of propositional attitudes. In conclusion, I will then briefly comment, in the light of the preceding discussion, on what Tomasello refers to as one of two big open questions in the theory of collective intentionality, namely that of the irreducibility of jointness. 2 The Nature, Emergence and Development of Thought Inspired by Ronald Langacker's (1987) conception of linguistic schemas, Tomasello views thought essentially as a schematization of and abstraction from experience. He focuses on three key components of thought: representation, selfmonitoring, and inference. "Representation" for Tomasello essentially involves an "ability to cognitively represent experiences to oneself 'offline'" (p. 3). The notion of "self-monitoring" is especially meant to highlight the evaluation of behavioral outcomes that thoughts lead to (p. 3). The emphasis on inference indicates that Tomasello's notion of thought is more process-oriented than the stateoriented mainstream philosophical tradition. An even more important difference is that Tomasello allows for the possibility of thought that is situational in that it is directed at whole situations rather than just things, properties, or relations, but yet not propositional because it represents these situations in an iconic, imagistic, rather than a propositional representational format. In doing this, Tomasello takes an important step beyond the intellectualism of the tradition. Tomasello's approach also provides a convincing alternative to the frequent atomism of the tradition. Cognitive evolution does not proceed from simples to ever more complex wholes – regardless of whether these simples are the stimulus-response linkages of the behaviorist or the simple ideas of the mentalist – "...but rather from inflexible adaptive specializations of varying complexities to flexible, individually self-regulated intentional actions" (p. 26). Articulated thought arises through processes of differentiation from (relatively) undifferentiated wholes. Individuals learn to "extract their components and use them in productive combinations" (p. 28). An example for this differentiation process is provided by the development of force indicators. Tomasello hypothesizes that "early humans' first acts of cooperative communication were pointing gestures in joint collaborative Unangemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 23.03.16 16:23 90 Michael Schmitz activities" (p. 50) underlain by communicative motives not yet differentiated between requestive, practical and informative, theoretical forces. An early human pointing out a predator, a prey, or, as in Tomasello's example, a stick that could be helpful in a joint activity of gathering honey, is neither only drawing attention to something that is the case, nor solely requesting or directing a future course of action. In the immediate context of this situation and the joint activity that imbues it with meaning, these functions will not necessarily be differentiated yet, neither in the communicative act nor in the underlying mental state. This idea is a useful antidote against what above I called the "theory bias" in many accounts of thought and intentionality. One rarely stated motivation for this bias might be expressed as follows: "Where could the material for thought come from, if not from what is the case? So theoretical thought about what is the case must be more fundamental than thought guiding and directing action." But as the examples show, there are ways of drawing attention to elements of reality which at the same time direct action, and which are phylogenetically and ontogenetically prior to clearly differentiated theoretical and practical positions towards situations. The emphasis on differentiation should of course not be taken to mean that integration of elements is not also an essential part of cognitive evolution. Properly understood, differentiation and integration are often complementary, as Tomasello shows when describing the integration of pointing and pantomiming gestures into multiunit expressions. When a gesture pantomiming snake motion and a gesture of pointing to a cave are combined into a single communicative act warning of snakes in the cave, this is integration. But relative to an earlier developmental stage, where broadly the same communicative effect was achieved just by pantomiming, it is also an articulation, a parsing of that act into differentiated elements (p. 67). Corresponding remarks apply to stages of the development of spoken language, such as when pointing gestures are integrated with spoken language, and one-word utterances are differentiated into articulated clauses. From these and many other observations and theoretical remarks in Tomasello's book I think we can extract a number of parameters to describe the direction of the evolution of intentionality: from perception, action and interaction in the immediate perceptual context over pointing and pantomiming gestures to spoken and finally written language – and to the corresponding forms of thought. This evolution leads to forms of intentionality that: are ever more independent from an immediate shared perceptual context, ever more removed from the flow of joint sensory-motor activity; are ever more general, abstract and what Tomasello refers to as 'perspectival', that is as involving a specific conceptual construal of an entity (e.g. as an animal as opposed to a human, a man, etc.); go from perceptual and actional over deictic and iconic to symbolic forms of representation; Unangemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 23.03.16 16:23 A History of Emerging Modes? 91 are ever more differentiated and articulated, in particular show a greater degree of differentiation of representational role as e.g. in the increase of different grammatical categories (see Schmitz 2012). Moreover, as Tomasello shows, these stages are connected to characteristic social units with typical sizes ranging from the dyads of second-personal joint attention and action over small band and tribes to nation states. And they are also connected to corresponding forms of normativity, by which these groups create, maintain and extend their joint practices, skills, customs, traditions, sensibilities, norms, rules, laws, institutions, and so on. These in turn range from emotional responses in the immediate context over informal to legal sanctions. A final parameter I want to mention here is the differentiation of roles within a society. The representational richness of the English language could only have been produced by a society (or societies) with a multitude of institutionalized roles from lorry driver to lexicographer. Humans are very role-oriented, and as Tomasello points out, they may even be uniquely equipped to understand role concepts (p. 42). 3 The Boundaries of Thought Whereas Descartes notoriously denied any thought to animals, Tomasello ascribes thought rather generously – not only to primates, but even to squirrels (p. 14) – based on his more liberal conception that allows for pre-propositional, imagistic forms of thought. And I think he is right against the language-centric tradition in philosophy and psychology that, e.g. simulating available courses of action and weighing them against one another is naturally described as thinking. That thought requires a propositional representational format is just a dogma. However, at certain points I also felt that Tomasello may be overgenerous in ascribing thought processes. Let me here focus on one of Tomasello's examples for thought processes in great apes, based on Buttelmann et al.'s (2007) test of six human-raised chimpanzees in the so-called "rational imitation paradigm" (Gergely et al. 2002): Individuals saw a human perform an unusual action on an apparatus to produce an interesting result. The idea was that in one condition the physical constraints of the situation forced the human to use an unusual action; for example, he had to turn on a light with his head because his hands were occupied holding a blanket, or he had to activate a music box with his foot because his hands were occupied with a stack of books. When given their turn with the apparatus and no constraints in effect, the chimpanzees discounted the unusual action and used their hands as they normally would. However, when they saw the human use the unusual action when there was no physical constraint dictating this – he just turned Unangemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 23.03.16 16:23 92 Michael Schmitz on the light with his head for no discernable reason – they quite often copied the unusual behavior themselves (p. 23). Tomasello goes on to suggest that the "most natural interpretation" of the response pattern is that the apes employed an imagistic, pre-propositional "proto-modus tollens": "(1) he is not using his hands; (2) if he had a free choice, he would be using his hands; (3) therefore he must not have a free choice" (p. 23). But does it really take inference and thought to understand what is going on and to explain why the apes react in the way they do? I want to suggest we can make sense of their response pattern while remaining at a sensory-motor level. The chimpanzees perceive and understand what the human is doing. The kind of understanding I have in mind here is enactive. It may just be manifest in imitation, in completing the relevant action, or – if we are dealing with more cooperatively inclined beings such as humans – in helping others to perform it. It does not imply that they ascribe intentions or other mental states to the human. But it does mean that they are able to understand what is essential to the action and what is an adaption to unusual circumstances. Their imitation behavior manifests this understanding. They perceive the fact that the human is carrying a blanket as a constraint on his actional capacities and show that they understand that this is why he uses his head by not copying this aspect of his action in a context where they are not subject to the same constraint. It is inessential to the action of turning on the light. In contrast, when the unusual manner of performance cannot be attributed to unusual circumstances, it is experienced as surprising, as deviating from the schema for this action. I would suppose that the apes experience this behavior as intriguing. It piques their curiosity, and so in this case they imitate the manner of action because it seems to be essential to the action performed and because they want to understand what its point is. It is tempting to gloss what is going through the chimpanzees' minds e.g. as follows: "I wonder why this human is behaving in this weird way. What is the point, what is he doing? Perhaps it is especially rewarding, fun, or otherwise interesting, so I want to try it, too!" and then to continue as follows: "This is – of course – not exactly what is going through the ape's (or the small child's or even the adult's) mind. But it is the explicit form of what is being thought implicitly." This kind of appeal, popular as it is, strikes me as no more than convenient handwaving: we are in effect saying that what is actually going through the subject's mind is in some ways like the propositional form of thought and in some ways not, but we are not really saying anything substantive beyond that. I want to suggest in a Wittgensteinian vein that, even though we might get more detailed, we may have pretty much already given the outline of what is going on: in the first set of Unangemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 23.03.16 16:23 A History of Emerging Modes? 93 cases they experience and understand the unusual behavior as a response to the unusual circumstances and therefore do not copy it, but in the second set of cases they cannot: they are puzzled and intrigued by it and therefore go on to imitate it. In similar cases this is all that has gone through my mind and I believe that of other humans. This may just be bedrock – at least on the level of intentionalist explanation. Of course, additional things might be going on. For example, the chimpanzees may very well be actively scanning the human and the broader situation, trying to figure out what is going on. But searching for clues in this way is not yet thinking; it is not sufficiently decontexualized and entirely manifest in action and perception. Of course they might also be simulating – as Tomasello explicitly suggests for other examples. For example, they might be simulating what it is like to turn on the light with their heads to understand the point of this action before actually performing it. But I do not see why this would necessarily be the case. Consistent with the spirit of Tomasello's general outlook and the broad pattern of development described above, we would expect a sequence where puzzlement over the action would first immediately lead to overt imitation, and only later overt imitation would be preceded by its internalized counterpart: simulation in imagistic thought. This example and others, some of which I will soon discuss, raise the general worry that Tomasello may be somewhat overextending the concept of thought. Or, to put it differently, he may be underestimating what can be explained by refined actional and perceptual skills and the sense subjects, including animal subjects, may have of what is important and what to do in a given situation. For the most part, he appears to be operating with a restricted set of alternatives: that an action should be explained in strict behaviorist or associationist terms, or else by thought.1 But if we allow ourselves to ascribe to some animals the capacity to abstract and schematize things in thought, I think we can also explore the idea that they pick out, extract, or schematize certain features in experience – for example, what is essential to an action and what not – and manifest this understanding in action. The difference would be that these capacities might be entirely realized in the attentional structure of sensory-motor-flow, in refined actional and perceptual sensibilities, in searching and orienting behavior; but also in certain broadly emotional aspects of experience such as feelings of surprise, familiarity, curiosity, amusement, joy, fear; in senses, hunches or instincts that an action is the right one (or not), confidence or its absence in performing it, and so on. With 1 There is only a passing reference to 'intuitive heuristics' and Kahnemann at the beginning (p. 3) which is not taken up again later. Unangemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 23.03.16 16:23 94 Michael Schmitz a nod to Piaget, though without taking on board all elements of his theory, we might speak of "sensory-motor-emotional schemata" here (Schmitz 2012). It seems to me that much is going on here below the levels of stepping out of the sensory-motor flow, of reflecting, of internalizing action and perception in imagination and then in propositional forms of thought. The point is not where exactly the boundary between thought and sensory-motor-emotional experience should be drawn, nor even that a sharp boundary should be drawn at all. The boundary is not likely to be sharp, and rather than trying to sharpen it, it may be more useful to think about this just in terms of a continuum of the parameters discussed above (and possibly others). The point is that even if we go along – as we should – with Tomasello's more liberal conception of thought, there is still a large territory to be explored between thought and what can be captured in strict behaviorist, associationist or similarly restrictive terms, and that explanations for some of the phenomena discussed by Tomasello may come from there rather than from thought. 4 The Cooperative Nature of Human Thought and Intentionality I now want to extend this point to human cooperative intentionality. A striking illustration of the cooperative mindset of humans in comparison to even our nearest living relatives, the great apes, comes from the so-called "object choice paradigm": whereas human children as young as 12 months old immediately understand that a human experimenter who points to one of two containers that may have food in them wants to help them by indicating the one with the food, apes cannot interpret this gesture and indeed seem rather dumbfounded by it – it does not even occur to them that the human might want to help them. Why do humans respond so differently? According to Tomasello the "mutual assumption of cooperativeness in such situations is so natural for humans that they have developed a special set of signals – ostensive signals such as eye contact and addressing the other vocally – by means of which the communicator highlights for the recipient that he has some relevant information for her" (p. 52). Tomasello is certainly right that this is because humans have a much more cooperative mind-set than apes. But what does it mean that they make a "mutual assumption of cooperativeness"? Surely Tomasello does not mean that the infants actually think something like "This is a human. Humans are generally cooperative, so this human is probably trying to help me by pointing to the bucket. So that could be where the food is." And again, I believe we should not Unangemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 23.03.16 16:23 A History of Emerging Modes? 95 be content with just saying something to the effect that the infants are thinking this implicitly. Perhaps Tomasello has in mind something similar to John Searle's (e.g. 1992, 1995) notion of a background assumption, roughly something we take for granted without thinking about it, at least not normally. Searle thinks of the background as being non-intentional in the sense of being non-representational, but this means that this talk about assumptions must ultimately be metaphorical: how could something be an assumption without being a possible content of thought and how could something with a specific content fail to be intentional (Schmitz 2012)? So I think it is hard to make sense of the notion of a background assumption in general and in particular of Tomasello's notion of an assumption of cooperativeness at the level of understanding that we are concerned with here – of course there are levels where people do make such assumptions. To count as making an assumption we need at least to be able to think the content of that assumption in thought, and it is implausible that young infants are capable of this. I therefore want to propose to replace that notion at this level through that of a mode of cooperativeness – the mode of joint attention and action – and of having a sense of others as potential cooperation partners. The suggestion is that the cooperative mindset of infants is primarily manifest in the perceptual, actional and emotional dispositions and sensibilities they have with regard to other creatures – people and animals. They tend to experience others and have a sense of them as potential cooperation partners, and when they do cooperate with them they function in a cooperative mode. Again, this is of course not meant to suggest that the concept of a cooperation partner is applied in their experience. It is rather that they are attuned to people in such a way that in general they tend to trust them to help them and are ready to help them in turn – of course there will always be exceptions in individual cases, unfamiliar contexts, various individual and social pathologies, and so on. To put this in Gibsonian jargon, they will experience them in emotionally charged ways that afford cooperative interactions of various kinds. Even a 1-year-old infant already has experienced countless sensory-motor-emotional interactions of being fed, taken care of, of playing games, exchanging eye-contact, etc. These experiences dispose the infant to expect others to be cooperative and to understand their behavior and respond to it accordingly. It is tempting to suppose that if one expects something one must believe that it will take place. But here by "expectation" I only mean that one is habituated to certain patterns, that one experiences them as familiar, and is therefore disposed to respond to them in certain ways and to be surprised when there are deviations from them. It is not necessary to have beliefs/thoughts about something and concepts of it to be surprised by it. For example, people are habituated to others Unangemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 23.03.16 16:23 96 Michael Schmitz keeping a certain distance to them in normal conversation. Now there are differences between cultures with regard to that distance. This may lead to a member of one culture – say an Italian – moving closer so that the member of another culture – say an Englishman – feels a bit uncomfortable and thus negatively surprised and starts to move away, which causes the Italian to feel uncomfortable so that he moves closer again, and so on.2 Such an episode may cause one or both of them to think about this and perhaps even to introduce a concept for it like the concept of personal space. But this will not necessarily happen. The two may just experience a slight and undifferentiated discomfort and never think about it and its causes, perhaps because they are too focused on the content of their conversation. So I think we cannot infer conceptual competence just from some kind of dishabituation as is often assumed in the context of the violation of expectation paradigm. Surprise at something is not an index of the presence of corresponding concepts, thoughts and beliefs, but just a possible cause of them. There are countless things that we experience as familiar and that we are habituated and attuned to, but that we only start to think about when there are deviations from these patterns and when we already have sufficient thinking skills – which infants often do not have – and sometimes not even then. The general suggestion then is that the human infants in the object choice paradigm and many other similar contexts interpret the pointing gesture correctly because they are habituated and attuned to cooperative behavior – which is reflected in their whole sensibility, their actional, perceptual, and emotional experience – and not because they literally make an assumption about cooperation. 5 A Mode Account of Human Cooperative Intentionality Given the convincing case Tomasello makes that humans are profoundly different from other animals in this regard, we may expect this difference to be reflected in the very structure of their intentionality. In this section I want to make a friendly suggestion on how this might be the case. To do this, I need to go back to the received notion of propositional attitudes briefly described above. Recall that on that notion, the representational content of a state is identical to that of the proposition that is its object/content. That is, the subject of, for example, a perceptual or actional state, a belief or an intention, only represents what (s)he perceives, 2 I owe this example to a lecture by John Searle, who observed such a situation at a conference. Unangemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 23.03.16 16:23 A History of Emerging Modes? 97 does, beliefs or intends. In the spirit of philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and psychologists like Jean Piaget I think this picture should be replaced with one where subject consciousness and object consciousness are seen as interdependent and as the two poles of any intentional state. (This is also broadly in the spirit of Tomasello's emphasis on self-representation as one of the three key components of thought.) I think we are never only aware of a state of affairs, but also always – though typically in a backgrounded sort of way – of our position with regard to this state of affairs and thus of ourselves. For example, in perception I experience the world as acting causally on me and in action I experience myself as acting causally on the world; in intending something I must have at least a sense of that practical position, a sense that, for example, it is up to me to bring about the intended action. This does not mean that I need to have a concept of the relevant position, such that I would be able to think about it. My sense of my position may simply be manifest in the strength of my desire or of my confidence to reach the goal, or in the epistemic feeling of confidence (or lack thereof) that something is the case. This revised understanding of intentional attitudes now also enables us to account for the special way in which our cooperation partners are represented and figure in our experience. The proposal is that they are represented as co-subjects of joint positions vis-à-vis the world rather than as objects of such positions, as what is believed, intended, perceived or done. For example, in an episode of joint attention, my co-attender is not what I attend to, but who I attend with. Jointly intending something is not a matter of me intending it and believing that you intend it and believe that I intend it and believe that you believe that I intend it, and so, but of both of us having we-attitudes of the form "We intend to...". Note that it is only the revised understanding of intentional states that makes it possible to accept this simple picture at face value, because on the traditional understanding the subject is singular and only ascribed from an external perspective, as part of a report, so that it is only represented by the reporter, but not by the subject of the attitude itself. The suggestion then is that the special cooperative nature of the human mind is manifest in the structure of intentional states in that humans can and often do represent others as co-subjects of joint positions or relations to state of affairs rather than as mere objects of individual positions, as part of these states of affairs, whereas non-human animals are much less capable of this or – as according to Tomasello – not even at all. But what does it mean to represent somebody as a co-subject? To give a short answer to this question, let me borrow a metaphor and a basic concept from Ronald Langacker (1987). The metaphor is that to construe somebody subjectively is to construe her as part of one's perceptual apparatus, as part of what gives one access to the world as opposed to what Unangemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 23.03.16 16:23 98 Michael Schmitz one accesses, somewhat in the way one experiences one's glasses. Normally one does not attend to one's glasses as objects in their own right but as something that improves one's access to the objects one attends to. We can add that analogously a tennis player is not normally attending to her racket, but experiences it as an extension of her actional apparatus, as something that improves her actional reach in the world. I hasten to clarify that these metaphors fall short in one important respect: while these tools just serve my theoretical and practical needs and goals and are in that sense mere objects, my co-subjects share at least some of them. I experience them as being as like me (Meltzoff 2007), as exhibiting what Tomasello often refers to as "self-other equivalence" (e.g. p. 29, 41). The theoretical and practical capacities and positions we share are part of the ground in Langacker's technical sense – roughly, the elements of the speech situation relative to which everything talked about is situated – which thus becomes a common ground. In experiencing somebody as a co-subject, I do not experience him as something that is the case, for that would be to experience him from a theoretical position, as an object of observation. I experience him as a potential or actual partner for theoretical, epistemic as well as for practical cooperation; as a source of information about the world and at the same time as somebody who will help and guide me; as somebody who draws my (our!) attention to new, exciting, interesting things and who I in turn want to show interesting things to; but also as somebody whom I can trust in a dangerous situation (e.g. social referencing). Note that while these various aspects are conceptually distinguished in the description, they are still undifferentiated, inchoate, at the gestaltlike, not yet conceptually articulated, experiential level. In particular, the practical and theoretical aspects of the cosubject experience are undifferentiated similar to how, as we saw, practical and theoretical aspects are undifferentiated in early pointing gestures. These points are closely related to the intimate connection between practical and theoretical aspects of jointness emphasized by Tomasello: "Joint actions, joint goals, and joint attention are thus of a piece, and so they must have coevolved..." (p. 44). His argument is that humans must coordinate their attention in order to act jointly. Against certain tendencies in philosophy to think of joint attention as a purely perceptual phenomenon, this argument can also be made in the opposite direction: joint attention can only be joint if the co-subjects are at least disposed to joint action, for nothing else could distinguish it from mere mutual perception (Schmitz 2015). To experience somebody as a co-attender is to experience him as at least a potential co-subject of both theoretical and practical positions towards the world. This picture of the experience of co-subjectivity in the mode of joint attention and action can be supported and concretized by many results from developmental Unangemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 23.03.16 16:23 A History of Emerging Modes? 99 psychology, particularly from the study of autistic children, whose capacity for joint attention and action is well-known to be diminished. To mention just a few examples, when asked where a sticker should go, more than half of the children with autism never indicated the place by pointing to their own bodies rather than at the other's body, whereas all neuro-typical children did (Hobson and Meyer 2005). This is a very vivid illustration of the difference between a co-subjective and an objectifying style of reference. To point to a place on one's own body to pick out the corresponding place on that of the other, is to treat her as somebody like oneself rather than as an object. Autistic children also engage much less in the kind of affirmative nodding people often show when listening to others (Hobson et al. 2009). A straightforward interpretation of this is that they experience common ground less and/or have less interest in emphasizing it and in maintaining the emotional connection that it brings with it. Similarly, autistic children also have difficulties "in sustaining engagement with the questioner and appreciating how their communication established common ground between self and other in relation to which a third party was "he" according to a joint perspective" (Hobson and Hobson 2011, p. 118). That being in the joint attention mode is not only manifest in how co-attenders are experienced, but also in how the world is experienced – namely relative to their interests and to the common ground – is illustrated by another finding: non-autistic children were much more likely to show a concerned 'checking' look at a tester, with whom they were in a joint attention situation, when the tester's drawing was torn, than autistic children (Hobson et al. 2009). So in the mode of joint attention and action, the co-attender is experienced as (1) like me in important respects and as (2) a co-subject of a joint intentional relation to a state of affairs. This relation of sharing a common ground is (3) affectively charged in such a way that (4) the co-subjects are at least disposed to joint action and (5) to experience the world with regard to the theoretical and practical needs, concerns and interests of the co-attender. That experiencing an intentional relation as co-subjects is essentially different from just experiencing it as an object of a single subject can be supported by a study which showed that 14-months-old infants understood an ambiguous request by an adult on the basis of a shared joint attention episode, but not by merely observing his otherwise identical interactions with the relevant objects. After the adult and the infant had shared two objects and the infant had explored one object alone, the infant was able to correctly interpret an ambiguous request for "that one", made with an excited expression by the adult, as referring to the new object. But 14-month-old infants were not able to do the same in conditions where infants merely observed the adult examine the objects by himself, or the adult engaging in joint attention with another person (Moll et al. 2007). Unangemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 23.03.16 16:23 100 Michael Schmitz In the book, Tomasello discusses several experiments where the common ground is constituted more through joint action than through joint attention. These can analogously be explained through co-subjectivity. As an example, consider a study by Liebal et al. (2009), who ... had a one-year-old infant and an adult clean up together by picking up toys and putting them in a basket. At one point the adult stopped and pointed to a target toy, which the infant then cleaned up into the basket. However, when the infant and adult were cleaning up in exactly this same way, and a second adult who had not shared this context entered the room and pointed toward the target toy in exactly the same way, infants did not put the toy away into the basket; they mostly just handed it to him, presumably because the second adult had not shared the cleaning up game with them as common ground (p. 55). So on the present proposal this talk of the common ground can be further explained by saying that the first adult was experienced as a co-subject of the joint action of cleaning up, but the second was not, so that his point was not interpreted in terms of the joint action frame or schema. Co-attenders and cooperators are bound into the representation of the intentional relation to the shared object or goal in a special way – as co-subjects – that is reflected in the very structure of the relevant intentional states. This general approach is also useful for understanding collective intentionality that is clearly on the level of thought such as joint intention and belief. Since Schelling (1960) and Lewis (1969) it has often been held that coordination requires recursive mindreading of the form: I believe that p and I believe that you believe that I believe that p, and so on, ad infinitum. This is at least partly an artifact of allegiance to the traditional model of propositional attitudes according to which, as we noted above, the subject of the attitude is an individual and neither the subject nor its position are represented. This is what generates the infinite regress because each position an individual takes will be outside of what is represented, so that we need another attitude to represent this, which will again not be represented, and so on, ad infinitum. In this way, we can never capture the meeting of minds, the joint epistemic possession of a state of affairs in joint belief or the joint practical attitude towards an action in joint intention. By contrast, on the revised understanding we can just straightforwardly think of each of the co-subjects as representing their joint position by thinking "we believe that..." or "we intend to...". As Tomasello puts it: "...human individuals are attuned to the common ground they share with others, and this does not always involve recursive mindreading" (p. 38). The basic idea can further be extended to account for the importance of roles in human cooperation, which Tomasello emphasizes in many places in the book. In "role mode" (Schmitz 2013a) individuals and groups take positions from the point of view of the institutional roles they occupy: Unangemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 23.03.16 16:23 A History of Emerging Modes? 101 "As chancellor, I believe/intend/have the power...", "As members of the committee, we believe, intend, demand...". Different subjects occupy a multitude of roles in the joint pursuit – with their co-subjects in the organization – of certain shared theoretical and practical purposes: another example of the "dual level structure" of a shared objective and differing roles and perspectives with regard to this objective that Tomasello highlights at various points (e.g. p. 43–48). 6 Emerging Modes of Cooperation and their Reducibility As a final point, let me address one of the two big open questions Tomasello takes up towards the end of his book: namely the question of the irreducibility of jointness, collectivity or "we-ness." Can collectivity be captured in terms "of the individuals involved, and what is going on in their individual heads" (p. 152)? According to many theorists, in particular those who defend 'relational' accounts, for example, of joint attention (Campbell 2002), this cannot be done. Tomasello rightly insists that we may still "...ask the evolutionary or developmental question of what does the individual bring to the interaction that enables her to engage in joint attention in a way that other apes and younger children cannot" (p. 152). I think we must go even further and ask what it is about these individuals synchronically – not only diachronically – that joins them together in relations of co-attending, co-intending, co-believing, and so on. (And I think Tomasello in fact does give an answer to this question, namely in terms of the characteristic modes of thought humans employ in cooperation and communication.) There is nothing reductionist about maintaining that these relations obtain in virtue of cooperation-specific intentionality in the minds (and heads) of the individuals involved – whether in the form of the mode account I have suggested or in a different way. Nor is there any reason to deny, implicitly or explicitly, that such intentionality can – like all intentionality – sometimes misrepresent as in illusions of attending jointly or in we-intending goals that the putative co-subjects have already abandoned. The truly reductionist attitude of course is the one – most ably defended by Michael Bratman (2014) – according to which at least small-scale cooperative activity can be explained with reference to essentially the same kind of intentional capacities as individual action. I believe that this approach is strongly undermined by Tomasello's argument in A Natural History, because he makes a very convincing case that the capacities of great apes for individual action and causal understanding are very similar to those of human infants at a certain stage Unangemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 23.03.16 16:23 102 Michael Schmitz of early development, while their capacities for cooperation are much weaker and perhaps even non-existent. My main critical point has been that Tomasello may underestimate the extent to which these differences in behavior can be explained through differences in sensory-motor-emotional sensibilities rather than through differences in thought. I think we may have to move even further away from the strict traditional dichotomy between thought in the sense of propositional attitudes on the one hand and what can be explained in strict behaviorist or associationist terms than Tomasello already does by embracing imagistic forms of thought. Understanding an action, having a sense of somebody as a cooperation partner, or being in a mode of joint attention and action all do not neatly fit into these categories. And yet these forms of intentionality may help to explain both why the "we" is irreducible and why there is nothing mysterious about collective subjects: because they just are individuals as mutually connected through their intentionality. At the lowest level these connections are made through experiencing others as co-subjects of relations of joint attention and action and through the emotional bond that brings with it. Against the background of these connections we may then begin saying "we" in that special, affectively charged way, in which it has an irreducibly cooperative meaning. In the we-mode people take the connection to their co-subjects to the next level by committing themselves to joint beliefs, plans, values, and so on. Another milestone in the history of human thought may be the ability to relate to other people and to the world from the vantage point of roles defined in institutional contexts relative to the roles of one's co-subjects in the pursuit of certain shared purposes. The history of human thinking so richly and boldly conceived by Tomasello may also be a history of emerging modes of cooperation. Acknowledgments: I am indebted to Henrike Moll for helpful discussions and comments on a draft of this paper. Bibliography Bratman, M. E. (2014): Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Buttelmann, D., M. Carpenter, J. Call, and M. Tomasello (2007): "Enculturated Chimpanzees Imitate Rationally". In: Developmental Science 10. No. 4, p. 31–38. Campbell, J. (2002): Reference and Consciousness. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gergely, G., H. Bekkering, and I. Király (2002): "Developmental Psychology: Rational Imitation in Preverbal Infants". In: Nature 415. No. 6873, p. 755–755. Hobson, J., R. Harris, R. García-Pérez, and R. P. Hobson (2009): "Anticipatory Concern: A Study in Autism". In: Developmental Science 12. No. 2, p. 249–263. Unangemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 23.03.16 16:23 A History of Emerging Modes? 103 Hobson, R. P. and J. Hobson (2011): "Joint Attention or Joint Engagement? Insights from Autism". In: A. Seemann (Ed.): Joint Attention: New Developments in Psychology, Philosophy of Mind, and Social Neuroscience. Cambridge: MIT Press, p. 115–136. Hobson, R. P. and J. A. Meyer (2005): "Foundations for Self and Other: A Study in Autism". In: Developmental Science 8. No. 6, p. 481–491. Langacker, R. W. (1987): Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Theoretical Prerequisites (Vol. I). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lewis, D. (1969): Convention: A Philosophical Study. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Liebal, K., T. Behne, M. Carpenter, and M. Tomasello (2009): "Infants use Shared Experience to Interpret Pointing Gestures". In: Developmental Science 12. No. 2, p. 264–271. Meltzoff, A. N. (2007): "'Like me': a Foundation for Social Cognition". In: Developmental Science 10. No. 1, p. 126–134. Moll, H., M. Carpenter, and M. Tomasello (2007): "Fourteen-Month-Olds Know What Others Experience Only in Joint Engagement". In: Developmental Science 10. No. 6, p. 826–835. Schelling, T. C. (1960): The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Schmitz, M. (2012): "The Background as Intentional, Conscious, and Nonconceptual". In: Z. Radman (Ed.): Knowing without Thinking: Mind, Action, Cognition and the Phenomenon of the Background. Basingstoke: Palgrave, p. 57–82. Schmitz, M. (2013a): "Limits of Intention and the Representational Mind". In: G. Seebass, M. Schmitz, and P. M. Gollwitzer (Eds.): Acting Intentionally: Individuals, Groups, Institutions. Berlin, New York: DeGruyter, p. 57–84. Schmitz, M. (2013b): "Practical Knowledge". In: Miguel Hoeltje, Thomas Spitzley und Wolfgang Spohn (Eds.): "Was sollen wir glauben? Was dürfen wir tun?" Sektionsbeiträge der GAP.8. DuEPublico, p. 392–403. Retrieved from http://duepublico.uni-duisburg-essen.de/servlets/DerivateServlet/Derivate-33085/GAP8_Proceedings.pdf. Schmitz, M. (2015): "Joint Attention and Understanding Others". In: Synthesis Philosophica 58, p. 235–251. Searle, J. R. (1992): The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge: MIT Press. Searle, J. R. (1995): The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press. Tomasello, M. (2009): The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Cambrige: Harvard University Press. Unangemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 23.03.16 16:


Easy Ontology, Regress, and Holism

Philosophy

Vol.:(0123456789) Erkenntnis https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-021-00432-7 1 ORIGINAL RESEARCH Easy Ontology, Regress, and Holism J. T. M. Miller1 Received: 4 November 2020 / Accepted: 1 June 2021 © The Author(s) 2021 Abstract In this paper, I distinguish between two possible versions of Amie Thomasson's easy ontology project that differ in virtue of positing atomic or holistic application conditions, and evaluate the strengths of a holistic version over a non-holistic version. In particular, I argue that neither of the recently identified regress or circularity problems are troublesome for the supporter of easy ontology if they adopt a holistic account of application conditions. This is not intended to be a defence of easy ontology from all possible objections, but rather to compare holistic and non-holistic versions of the view. This discussion is also significant in that it serves to highlight two distinct forms of easy ontology, which, I argue, need to be distinguished when assessing the merits of the easy approach in future work. 1 Easy Ontology, Regress and Circularity Easy ontology is a deflationary approach to existence. Central to the theory is the claim that: (E): Ks exist iff the application conditions actually associated with 'K' are fulfilled (Thomasson, 2015: 86). (E), along with other elements, leads to a deflationary view of existence as 'we needn't first settle existence questions of the form ''Do Ks exist?'' in order to settle questions about whether the application conditions for ''K'' are fulfilled' (Thomasson, 2015: 97), where application conditions are rules of use for 'K'. Application conditions are meaning-constituting, such that 'a competent speaker has only to make use of her mastery of the rules of use of the term-combined with her access to any relevant empirical information-to determine whether the application conditions are met, and thus to evaluate whether the corresponding entities exist' (Thomasson, 2015: 113). * J. T. M. Miller email@example.com 1 Durham University, Durham, UK J. T. M. Miller 1 3 For example, rather than requiring 'deep' ontological debate, we can conclude that tables exist in virtue of grasping the rules of use of the term, and empirically seeing that those application conditions are fulfilled. This means that answering existence questions requires nothing 'epistemically metaphysical' (Thomasson, 2015: 113). All we need is either conceptual or empirical work to find out whether the application conditions a term are fulfilled. There are a number of further caveats and complications concerning application conditions, but the focus of the discussion in this paper is the restriction that: "(4) Application conditions must not take the following form: 'K' applies iff Ks exist" (Thomasson, 2015: 96) This restriction is important as it establishes that we cannot appeal to the existence of Ks in order to establish that the application conditions for 'K' are fulfilled, and thus that 'we need not settle existence questions before we can settle questions about whether we may introduce new concepts or terms and indeed about whether those concepts or terms refer' (Thomasson, 2015: 97). Brenner (2018) argues that the conjunction of (E) and (4) leads to both an infinite regress and circularity. To see why, take 'non-trivial application conditions' to be those application conditions that require more of the world than mere conceptual truths to be fulfilled. That is, the fulfilment of the application conditions makes some demand on the world. For example, if the application conditions for 'table' include that there are particles-arranged-tablewise, then those application conditions are only fulfilled if there are particles arranged tablewise. This is in contrast to terms that have 'trivial' application conditions where conceptual analysis is sufficient to conclude that those application conditions are fulfilled. For example, 'there are dogs or there are not dogs' is a conceptual truth, from which we can infer the property of being a dog is or is not instantiated', and from this we can infer 'the property of being a dog exists' and 'there is a property' (Thomasson, 2015: 150–151).1 Now say that some term 'K' has non-trivial application conditions, where the application conditions for 'K' appeal to the existence of something else falling under a different sortal, 'X'. This means that for the application conditions for term 'K' to be fulfilled, Xs must exist. Brenner then asks us to consider the application conditions for the sortal 'X'. The application conditions for 'X' might also be non-trivial, requiring that Ys exist. What about the application conditions for the sortal 'Y'? Again, the application conditions for 'Y' may be non-trivial requiring that Zs exist, and so on and so on. This is a problem as it means that, for some term 'K' with non-trivial application conditions, there could be an infinite regress of application conditions, and hence that we can never conclude that Ks exist (Brenner, 2018: 607–608).2 1 There has been some discussion about whether such inferences are as trivial as Thomasson suggests, such as in Evnine (2016). Given my interest is in assessing the strengths of a holistic version of easy ontology, I will leave this issue aside here. If such inferences are not trivial as suggested then this would count against both the holistic and non-holistic versions of easy ontology that I distinguish in this paper. 2 Note that in this problematic case, there is a chain such that the non-trivial application conditions of 'X' requires the existence of Ys, where the application conditions for 'Y' are also non-trivial, requiring 1 3 Easy Ontology, Regress, and Holism Similar considerations give rise to a circularity problem. Considering again the application conditions for the sortal 'X', it might be the case that 'X''s application conditions require that Ys exist, and 'Y''s application conditions require Zs exist, and that application conditions for 'Z' require that Xs exist (Brenner, 2018: 608). In such cases, the application conditions for the term 'X''s will directly contradict the restriction imposed in (4) as the application conditions for 'X' will include the existence of Xs through this chain of non-trivial requirements for the fulfilment of the application conditions.3 Brenner argues that both of these are serious problems for the easy ontologist. The infinite regress means we cannot explain how people could come to learn application conditions for terms with non-trivial application conditions given the infinite regress of application conditions (2018: 608), whilst the circularity of application conditions violates a central constraint within the easy ontology that for a sortal term K we need not discover whether Ks exist in order to determine whether the application conditions for 'K' are satisfied (2018: 609). 2 An Immediate Response One possible response to these arguments can be found already in Thomasson's work. In his argument, Brenner assumes that the application conditions must be stated in other terms of the language. This is required for both the circularity and the infinite regress identified, as both are only possible if it is the case that the application conditions for 'X' are stated in terms of 'Y', which are then stated in terms of 'Z', etc. However, Thomasson is clear that application conditions for terms need not be statable at all (2015: 92). Rather, Thomasson thinks that for at least some terms: 'speakers may learn to master the rules of use for those terms by other means, for example, ostensively as we learn that a term is to be applied in situations like this (and not in situations like that), or via judgments of similarity to ostended paradigms' (2015: 92). Indeed, Thomasson also suggests that some concepts might be innate, only requiring us to match the concept with the terms of a language (2015: 93). More generally, Thomasson goes on to say that application conditions are more like rules of use, 3 These are not the only objections that have been raised against (4). Korman (2019) has argued that there can be terms-specifically the term 'object'-that does have application conditions of the structure ruled out by (4). I leave these related objections to one side here and focus solely on the regress and circularity objections raised by Brenner. the existence of Zs, and so on. There are other cases where some terms in the chain might have trivial application conditions. For example, 'P' has non-trivial application conditions requiring the existence of Qs, but 'Q' has trivial application conditions. Such cases do not seem to lead to problems involving regress or circularity, so following Brenner I limit the discussion here to cases where every term in the sequence or chain has non-trivial application conditions. Footnote 2 (continued) J. T. M. Miller 1 3 not something that even competent speakers should be required to be able to recite (2015: 93). Brenner acknowledges that if Thomasson is right on these points then there is no threat of either regress or circularity. However, he thinks the response inadequate for two reasons. First, Brenner thinks it is 'implausible that an infinite sequence of application conditions could be (or would be, for finite beings like us) innate, or learnable via ostension' (2018: 608). We might then respond that the entire sequence need not be innate or learned via ostension, but even if only some terms were innate or learned via ostension, as Brenner notes, how could we ever know that a chain of non-trivial application conditions, even one that does end in an ostensively defined term, is met? (2018: 608–609). To know whether it is met would require us to grasp all of the chain of application conditions. Positing innate terms or ones learned by ostension then might solve the learnability problem for creatures capable of grasping infinite sequences, but it is not solvable for creatures like us, and hence cannot serve as the basis for making ontology easy for us. Second, Brenner argues that this response misses the main target of his argument. The argument is not about the terms we have at our disposal in order to state application conditions. Rather it is about a regress/circularity of the satisfaction of application conditions (2018: 208fn). For example, there could be an infinite regress of application conditions in that for the application conditions of one term to be satisfied relies on the satisfaction of the application conditions another term, which in turn relies on the satisfaction of the application conditions of another, etc. All of this is possible without us having, within our language, the terms to adequately describe that regress. Both of these responses strike me as, if not knock-down arguments, persuasive. Others will likely disagree, and think that the introduction of innate or ostensively defined terms allows for us to avoid the regress Brenner identifies, and hence solves the learnability problem. It is not my aim to decisively argue one way or another on this matter in this paper. Rather, my aim is to suggest a completely new route of response. Thus, for the purposes of this paper, I will agree with Brenner that both the regress and circularity are major issues for the easy ontologist, but I will argue both problems can be avoided if the easy ontologist accepts a holistic account of application conditions. 3 Atomism and Holism There are many different forms of semantic holism (see Jackman, 2014 for discussion of some of these). Here, I will follow a definition of holism provided by Dresner in his survey article: Meaning Holism: the 'thesis that the relations of a certain kind (or kinds) that obtain among the expressions of a given natural language (all of these expressions, or many of them) are constitutive for linguistic expressions to mean what they do' (Dresner, 2012: 611). 1 3 Easy Ontology, Regress, and Holism Putting this another way, the idea is that terms mean what they mean in virtue of the relations that they stand in to other terms in a language. The meaning of any term in a language is constituted by the relations that obtain between that term and some other terms in that language. This means that the meanings of all terms in a language are interdependent; the meaning of all terms can thus be said to be 'externally constituted' (Dresner, 2012: 612) through the global relations that any given term bears to other expressions within a language. As Dresner notes, this definition is more general than some in that it does not specify what kinds of relations hold between the expressions that constitute meaning (cf. Antony, 1993; Devitt, 1996), weaker than Quine's (1951) suggestion that only language as a whole can be said to be meaningful, but stronger than Fodor and Lepore's (1992) holism which holds that if one thing has a property then many things must have it (cf. also Pagin, 2006). This is in contrast to semantic atomism, the view that there is at least some term in the language has a meaning that is independent of the meaning of every other term in the language. Or, more broadly, that (at least some) linguistic expressions have their meaning independently of each other. Note that this conception of atomism is taken to be neutral about how linguistic expressions acquire their meaning, just so long as it is possible that no connection to the meaning of a further linguistic expression is required. Before we can consider holism and atomism in the context of easy ontology, one small change is needed first. Thomasson's account of easy ontology does not normally talk about the meaning of terms, but instead their 'application conditions', where application conditions 'are certain basic rules of use that are among those that are meaning-constituting for the term' (2015: 89, my emphasis). Adjusting to this, we can distinguish between two views about the nature of application conditions: an atomistic conception of application conditions wherein at least some term in the language has application conditions that are independent of every other term's application conditions; and a holistic view wherein the application conditions of all terms within a language are interdependent. Depending on which we view we accept, we arrive a subtlety different versions of easy ontology: an atomistic conception where there are terms within the language that has application conditions that are independent of every other term's applications, and a holistic account where the application conditions of terms are interdependent. Which version of easy ontology does Thomasson endorse? On the side of holism, Thomasson places a restriction on introducing new sortal terms such that the 'term(s) must be introduced via a conditional that gives sufficient conditions for its(/their) application, stated using the extant terms of L and/or other minimally introduced terms', and Thomasson is explicit that we 'may simultaneously introduce interrelated terms, as with the various terms of baseball and other games, or for corporations, stock, and shareholders, or other social and institutional entities' (2015: 263). This suggests that at least some terms have application conditions that are interrelated and can only be understood in connection with the application conditions of other terms. In contrast, on the side of atomism, Thomasson says that 'it is plausible that any language must include some 'semantically basic terms'. These are terms that cannot J. T. M. Miller 1 3 be 'learned just by way of learning definitions stated in other terms', meaning that 'at least for some terms, the application conditions (considered as semantic rules of use) needn't be capable of being (informatively) stated to be learned and to be in force' (2015: 92). These basic terms may even be innate (2015: 90) or arise from basic cognitive functions, in line with some forms of atomism. However, it would be too quick to read these passages as necessarily ruling out holism. The existence of innate semantically basic terms are not incompatible with holism so long as a semantically basic term only has their meaning through the relations that obtain between it and other semantically basic terms. Holism is compatible with there being more semantically basic terms, only ruling out the possibility of there being only one semantically basic term. That said, readers may still think that there is too much evidence against a holistic reading of Thomasson. For example, Thomasson also endorses a hierarchical view of sortals, such that the more general sortals depend on the application conditions of more specific sortals (2007: 41). This dependence is one-way-from the general to the specific-making it hard to see how this aspect could be made consistent with holism. It would therefore seem that Thomasson can be read as endorsing a local or partial form of holism where some terms get their application conditions holistically, whilst the application conditions of others are atomistic. Indeed, it seems that Thomasson's response to Brenner that relies on an appeal to ostensively defined or innate terms is not compatible with a global holism, and thus we should conclude that Thomasson's own version of easy ontology is at most partially holist. However, as we will see below, it is a global holism that we need to respond to the arguments of Brenner. If Thomasson does ultimately endorse a partially holist view, then this paper should be best thought of as proposing an alternative version of easy ontology rather than a direct defence of Thomasson's specific version. It should also be noted that Brenner in his objections also does not specify explicitly what he takes the commitments of easy ontology to be with respect to this holism/atomism distinction. In what remains, I will assume a version of easy ontology that endorses holism about application conditions, and show that within this version of easy ontology, the identified regress and circularity are not vicious. 4 Holism and Regress Brenner argues that the regress leads to issues about learnability, arguing that we could not come to grasp the 'meaning or rules of use associated with a term if that would require that we grasp the infinite sequence of application conditions associate with that term' (2018: 608). That is, Brenner is arguing that due to the regress identified, grasping the application conditions of terms cannot be done gradually, but only by grasping the infinite sequence of application conditions, something that is absurd. Our question here is whether this objection still holds if we accept a holistic account of application conditions. Brenner's argument is very similar to objections that have been raised in the semantic holism literature, such as by Dummett (1973, 1991: 221), and is often connected to problems accommodating communication within a holistic account 1 3 Easy Ontology, Regress, and Holism (Fodor, 1987; Fodor & Lepore, 1992). The basic idea is that if we adopt meaning holism then language learning cannot happen in a gradual way, and would instead require an absurd 'single spasm of seamless cognition' (Fodor & Lepore, 1992: 9). However, drawing on the semantic holism literature, there are clear options to respond to this problem. First, Jonsson (2014) has argued that semantic holism is not detrimental to language learning, but in fact enhances it. Or, alternatively, Bilgrami (1986) and Dresner (2002) have argued that, within holism, language learning can be taken to be gradual such that a person can have partial knowledge of the meaning of a term and then gradually increase it. The idea is that a speaker need not know all aspects of the meaning of a term, but only some of the restrictions on admissible interpretations of the lexical item, with learning being the process of increasing our knowledge of what restrictions apply for a term. Analogously, we could hold that easy ontology does not require us to grasp the entire web of holistic application conditions, but only a part of that whole. This would mean that we may, perhaps in part through the process of engaging in easy ontology, subsequently increase our knowledge of the entire system. This would allow for the learning of application conditions without committing to complete knowledge of the entire holistic set of application conditions. It is important to stress that these approaches commit us to no special 'metaphysical' form of knowledge of the sort that easy ontology is designed to avoid. The responses to the learnability problem as applied to semantic holism are intended to be accounts of how ordinary speakers come to learn natural language. Similarly, I propose the analogous account of learning application conditions to be the process through which we come to be competent speakers of a language. This is in line with Thomasson's claim that to know the application conditions of a term requires nothing more than a competent speaker to make use of her mastery of the rules of use of the term. Note also that it can still be the case that in a holistic version one can add new expressions and thereby extend it to a larger holistic system, and that this process could continue infinitely. However, this is not a problem for the holist as they only require that the part of the holistic system that we are learning is finite. A holist, mirroring defenders of semantic holism, can provide arguments as to how those application conditions are therefore learnable, and a holist version of easy ontology does not face the regress problem identified. Perhaps it could be responded here that even if some forms of holism do not require that the speaker grasps an infinite chain of application conditions, they still adopt a view where application conditions would be unlearnable as they require us to grasp the application conditions of all the terms within a language, and all that I have done is define semantic competence so as to not require grasp of the entire holistic 'web'.4 Whether this is an issue for easy ontology depends on whether the view is committed to some particular notion of semantic competence that is stronger than the notion employed by the holist. But there seems to be no such requirement built into easy ontology. For Brenner's regress argument to work, it would have to 4 Thanks to Delia Belleri for raising this issue. J. T. M. Miller 1 3 be shown that within easy ontology, 'competence' cannot be understood in holistic terms. Pending a further argument to that conclusion, the regress is not vicious if we accept holism about application conditions. This, though, leads to a broader objection.5 Within easy ontology, to arrive at the intended deflationary conclusions, we need to be able to infer existential claims from application conditions. This might lead to an objection to the holistic version of easy ontology: given the holistic nature of application conditions, how could we know whether we have grasped the relevant application conditions well enough? Our grasp on holistic application conditions are going to be partial in that no person will be able to fully grasp the full 'web' of application conditions within a holistic account. All of the easy ontologist's existential inferences can thus be resisted on the grounds that the grasp of the application conditions was not sufficiently full. However, I do not think this is a problem for a holistic version of easy ontology. The reason for this is that Thomasson does not hold that easy ontology will remove all debate about existential claims. Rather, the aim of easy ontology is to deflate debates about the existence of some given entity. The debate is not 'epistemically metaphysical', but is instead a conceptual or empirical matter. What this objection highlights is that on the conceptual side, there will still be debates about the precise nature of the application conditions for a given term, and that those debates may be ongoing and difficult to solve. They would not be difficult in the sense invoked by the heavyweight metaphysical realist, but difficult in that they would require complex conceptual work to try to specify as far as possible the application conditions for a given term. This means that it may remain unclear when it is the case that we have a sufficient grasp on application conditions to be able to infer existential claims. The debate over whether we do have a sufficient grasp though will not be a metaphysical debate-it will be a debate about the application conditions of our terms and that is a form of debate that easy ontology is not meant to rule out. As a last note on this objection, it is also not clear that this problem is unique to a holistic account of easy ontology. An atomist or partially holist version of easy ontology will also be susceptible to worries about whether we have properly and sufficiently grasped the application conditions of the relevant term to be able to confident in our inferences to existential claims. It is always open for a sceptical objector to argue that someone has not properly grasped the application conditions of a term that is being used within an easy ontology inference and to try to resist the inference on those grounds. We might think that we have sufficient grasp on the application conditions only to find some new use of the term that would suggest that we in fact do not. Indeed, this is, in part, why the idea of 'mastery of the rules of use of the term' is included in the description of application conditions by Thomasson. We can, as a broad guide, be confident that we have sufficiently grasped the application conditions of the term when we have mastered the semantic rules of use for that term. A speaker need not be able to state those rules, but their success in using the term is a 5 Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pushing me to respond to this issue. 1 3 Easy Ontology, Regress, and Holism (defeasible) guide to them having suitably grasped the application conditions. It is defeasible as Thomasson also allows that we might argue about the application conditions, or defer to experts. The holist about application conditions can accept this same heuristic with no additional sceptical problems than those that could already be posed against the atomist. This is not to deny the general point that a non-holistic version of easy ontology can maintain that at least in principle, a speaker could come to have a full grasp of the relevant application conditions, while this is not possible on the holistic account. This may be a negative for the holist view for some readers as there could always remain the doubt that we have enough of a partial grasp of the relevant application conditions to warrant deflationary conclusions. But, if the holist is right about the nature of language, then we can note that existential inferences are already successfully made in natural language communication on the basis of very partial meanings. This observation can be combined with the normal account of easy ontology not requiring that a speaker has full grasp of application conditions to infer the relevant existential claims, suggesting that the deflationary aims of easy ontology are still possible on the holistic account. This may suggest that proposed deflations would have to be handled on a case-by-case basis, examining each to see if sufficient grasp has been achieved to warrant deflation. But, this is consistent with the supporter of a holistic version of easy ontology accepting that grasp of application conditions may remain partial and that this partial knowledge can be enough to warrant deflating metaphysical debates concerning existence. 5 Holism and Circularity Turning to the circularity objection, accepting holism about application conditions can also help here. The sort of cases that Brenner is worried about are those where the application conditions are of the form: 'Ks exist iff Ls exist, and Ls exist iff Ks exist'. In response, it is important to remember that the easy ontologist is not against introducing new terms. If we adopt holism, while it is the case that application conditions might be circular, it is not clear that they are viciously circular. Within a holistic system, it is simply part of the nature of application conditions that, ultimately, there will be circularity of application conditions as no term's application conditions are independent of all other term's application conditions. New terms are allowed, but there are conditions and restrictions that ensure that a sortal term is 'minimally introduced' (Thomasson, 2015: 263–264). These restrictions include that any new term can be given application conditions using extant terms of the language that the term is being introduced into (Thomasson, 2015: 263). This means that any new term is connected to terms that already exist, and are understood, within a language. This interdependence of new and already existing terms is clearly in line with the proposed holism about application conditions. Indeed, we can argue that this circularity is actually a positive feature of the view. Katz, inter alia, has argued that when considering theoretical terms, the J. T. M. Miller 1 3 'degree of relatedness exhibited among the concepts in the family is thus a measure, not of circularity, but of the systematizing power of the explanation' (Katz, 1988: 240–241). Analogously, it might not be a weakness if application conditions are circular. Rather, the circularity actually shows the strength of that particular language as it is one that shows a large degree of systematicity. The general point is that, granting holism about application conditions, it is again unclear why any circularity is vicious. The holist about application conditions, just like semantic holists, can reject the need for there to be any atomic application conditions, and can accept circularity without issue-even perhaps taking it to be a positive feature of the view. 6 Two Versions of Easy Ontology This discussion suggests that there are in fact two subtlety distinct versions of easy ontology that we could endorse. The first, as assumed here, takes application conditions to be holistically determined such that the application conditions of all terms of our language are interdependent. The second, an atomistic version, allows that for at least some terms, the application conditions of those terms are independent of the application conditions of other terms in the language. I have argued that if we accept a holism about application conditions, then both the regress and circularity Brenner identifies are non-vicious. This is at least one, potentially defeasible, reason in favour of embracing a holistic version of easy ontology. Brenner's arguments implicitly rest on an assumption that the application conditions within easy ontology are taken to be atomistic. Without this assumption, the easy ontologist can render both the regress and circularity non-vicious. There are also further benefits to embracing a holistic version of easy ontology. A holistic conception of easy ontology further illuminates Thomasson's response to so-called 'bad company' arguments. Such arguments are meant to show that the methodology of easy ontology leads to contradictory ontological commitments. For example, following Thomasson's adaptation of Eklund (Thomasson, 2015: 260; see also Eklund, 2006: 112), we can introduce the concepts of xheart and xliver such that: If there is a heart and there are no xlivers, then there is an xheart. If there is a liver and there are no xhearts, then there is an xliver. If we accept these conditionals (and therefore assuming the existence of hearts and livers), then xhearts exist only if xlivers do not, and xlivers exist only if xhearts do not. Each of these conditionals taken in isolation seem to commit us to the existence of certain entities (xhearts and xlivers). However, this leads to a claimed contradiction in the ontological commitments of easy ontology, as the conditionals together rule out the existence of both xhearts and xlivers. Thomasson acknowledges that the easy ontologist needs a way to solve such bad company examples, by showing that some existence-entailing conditionals are illegitimate. 1 3 Easy Ontology, Regress, and Holism Amongst other restrictions, Thomasson suggests as a response to Eklund's case that we say that new terms in the language must be 'minimally introduced' such that: The term(s) must be introduced via a conditional that gives sufficient conditions for its (/their) application, stated using the extant terms of L and/or other minimally introduced terms (2015: 263).6 Under an atomistic conception of application conditions, it is not clear that this restriction is independently motivated, rather than being ad hoc stipulations to avoid puzzles cases raised against the theory. That is, given that under atomism the application conditions of a term can be independent of the application conditions of any other term, what justifies this restriction on the introduction of new terms? Even if this only applies as a restriction on 'minimally introduced terms', why this additional restriction? We might also worry that, contra the above discussion, terms cannot be introduced by ostension if we accept this restriction. Above the response to Brenner provided by Thomasson relied on application conditions not needing to be statable, but here the restriction on only 'minimally introduced' terms being added to the language seems to require statability. By taking application conditions to be holistic, we can avoid such an issue in a different way. Holism about application conditions, I suggest, legitimises this restriction imposed on the introduction of new terms. It is not ad hoc as the restriction arises from the holistic nature of the application conditions for terms. Under the holistic account, the application conditions for any given term 'x' will make reference to some other term 'y', as no term's application condition can be isolated from the application conditions of other terms. A new term must be stated using the extant terms of L directly due to the holistic nature of application conditions. Note, that under this account, ostension can still be accepted as a method for speakers to grasp application conditions. Holism does not rule out that we can more easily grasp application conditions via ostension. Ostension can help speakers place a new term within the holistic 'web' of terms and their application conditions. I have indicated some initial reasons to be interested in a holistic version of easy ontology, but is this holistic version of easy ontology even viable? That is, can we endorse easy ontology whilst being a holist? Naturally, a full account cannot be provided in a single paper. However, there are some indications that a holistic version of easy ontology is perfectly possible. The central aspect to consider is Thomasson's discussion of application conditions. If some aspect of that account is inconsistent with holism, then there could be no way to endorse holism about application conditions and easy ontology. If holism is consistent with these features, then we at least have a prima facie case that holism is consistent with easy ontology more broadly. Easy ontology requires that we can infer existential claims from an understanding of application conditions. Thomasson lists four features of application conditions. The first three seem immediately non-problematic to a holist treatment; the fourth 6 There are two other restrictions on 'minimally introduced' terms (Thomasson 2015: 263–264), but they are not relevant to the topic of discussion here. J. T. M. Miller 1 3 requires a little more discussion (c.f Thomasson, 2015: 91; my numbering matching the original). Within a holistic account, application conditions: 1. can still be semantic rules of use which speakers master, and there is no need for them to be necessary and sufficient conditions or statable; 2. can specify the conditions under which the term would be correctly applied (entitling us to truly say 'there is a K'). 3. need not be descriptive, and may involve deference to experts and to the world. None of these cause problems for a holistic account, and all can be maintained without change from Thomasson's treatment. More troublesome, at least initially, is the idea, cited above as (4), that "Application conditions must not take the following form: ''K' applies iff Ks exist' (Thomasson, 2015: 96). This is an important principle for Thomasson as it ensures that we do not need to settle existence questions before we can introduce new terms. We might be concerned that this needs to be rejected on a holistic view as, in the response to the circularity problem, the holist has embraced the idea that some sequences of application conditions are of the form: 'K' applies iff Ls exist, and 'L' applies iff Ks exist. I think that the holist can maintain this principle, and the reason we can is that the holist can accept this rule, just so long as it is also the case that when a new term is introduced, it is introduced in a way that coheres with the existing holistic semantics of the language. To see why this is the case, we need to remind ourselves that Thomasson introduces this rule to help govern the introduction of new terms, and that taking application conditions to be holistic does not disallow the introduction of new terms. What is required within the holist version of easy ontology is the introduction of terms that have holistically defined application conditions. However, it is clear that this is not the case for 'K' if the application conditions for 'K' are that it applies iff Ks exist. Such an application condition is defined independently of any other term in the language, and thus it is ill-formed within the holist account. This ensures that we can maintain (4). This is similar in some ways to the response Thomasson gives to the bad company arguments: restrictions are 'justified given the goal of (merely) extending the language to include new sortal terms that will be usable' (2015: 266). Disallowing the introduction of a term 'K' where the application conditions of 'K' are that it applies iff Ks exist is justified because of the holistic account of application conditions we have already assumed. 'K' cannot be accepted into the language as terms need to have application conditions that are part of the holistic application conditions of all terms within the language. Any term not so introduced is, assuming holism, ill-formed, and hence will be unusable. There remains the possibility that application conditions could take the form ''K' applies iff Ls exist, and 'L' applies iff Ks exist'. This is possible in a holistic account, but here we can simply respond, as we did above, that accepting this possibility as part of our holism can be seen as a virtue, and hence the circularity is non-vicious. 1 3 Easy Ontology, Regress, and Holism Above I suggested that Thomasson's response in this same vein to the bad company arguments might be thought to be ad hoc. Could my response be thought to be ad hoc too? Perhaps, but I think that it is justified given the prior assumption of accepting holism about application conditions. Granting that assumption, then any attempt to introduce a term that does not cohere with other terms as part of that holism can be legitimately be rejected as having ill-formed application conditions. We could of course reject that assumption, but the entire purpose of this paper was to introduce the possibility of a version of easy ontology that posited holistic application conditions, making any prior rejection of holism guilty of begging the question against the view under discussion. Thus, accepting holism about application conditions does not seem to be inconsistent with the general rules about application conditions that Thomasson requires. Whether there would be required changes within the rest of the easy ontology framework to combine it with holism is beyond the scope of a single paper. But, that the holist can formulate application conditions within the rules that Thomasson lays out suggests (at least prima facie) that this change would not have further ramifications in the rest of the theory.7 7 Conclusion I have explored the benefits of accepting a holistic version of easy ontology, and argued that for those that wish to endorse easy ontology, it is a viable way to avoid the regress and circularity objections. I have also argued that adopting a holism about application conditions is prima facie consistent with the other stipulations Thomasson makes about the nature of application conditions. Pending further arguments that adopting a holism about application conditions causes problems for some other part of the easy ontology approach, it is not at all clear that there are any reasons that easy ontology cannot be combined with a holistic account of application conditions, and there are benefits from doing so. Future discussions of easy ontology will need to be explicit about whether they are assuming a holistic or atomistic account, and what the possible consequences from this might be. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is 7 One suggestion made to me has been that holism is inconsistent with the hierarchical view of sortals that Thomasson endorses, and was discussed earlier in this paper. If correct, this would be a problem as this view of sortals plays an important role in Thomasson's wider view. However, holism does not rule out hierarchically ordered sortals. Sortals may still be nested within holism, so long as those hierarchically ordered sortals have application conditions that involve other sortals within that ordering. J. T. M. Miller 1 3 not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http:// creat iveco mmons. org/ licen ses/ by/4. 0/. References Antony, L. (1993). Conceptual connection and the observation/theory distinction. In J. Fodor & E. Lepore (Eds.), Holism: A Consumer Update (pp. 135–162). Rodopi. Bilgrami, A. (1986). Meaning, holism and use. In E. Lepore (Ed.), Truth and interpretation. Basil Blackwell. Brenner, A. (2018). Easy ontology, application conditions and infinite regress. Analysis, 78(4), 605–614. Devitt, M. 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