The elaboration on the alleged idea of a meta-thinking led us to Witters, and
the alleged claim that Witters might find a problem with it.
McEvoy asks (in connection with a related question):
"What is the proof of this? First, even if so, the point above is that "no
thought is ascribed" - not that "no thought exists" - without link to manifest
behaviour. But how direct or indirect/remote need be 'the link'? Is W denying
that I can ascribe a changed thought to someone (and correctly) when someone
else enters the room in which we are sitting and there is not a flicker of
changed manifest behaviour? Indeed, could the fact there is not a flicker of
response from JLS not be the basis for my ascribing thought to JLS e.g. that
JLS is going to ignore the person who entered, given the way that person has
abused him in on-line posts for the past several years?"
Well, I guess Witters would say that 'absence of behaviour' counts as
'behaviour' (when 'behaviour' is expected) on occasion.
McEvoy goes on:
"In my view/understanding, later W is denying no such thing: and would accept
we can ascribe thoughts, in certain situations, where there is no change in
manifest behaviour. What W would deny is that we could in all situations
ascribe thoughts without reference to manifest behaviour."
Yes, this is a good point. Pity he criticised philosophers who 'craved for
generalities,' I think it's the phrase he used.
McEvoy:
"W would want to suggest that it is ascription learnt in the context of
manifest behaviour that provides the framework for our being able, in certain
other situations, to ascribe changes of thought to a person despite the absence
of any change in their manifest behaviour."
In fact, I was quoting Grice quoting Witters in "Method in philosophical
psychology". I don't think we need to formulate this in terms of 'change' at
all, for the most basic situations. But I see McEvoy's point.
McEvoy:
"But even so, W does not assert that the behaviourally-'based' framework
provides a determinative set of criteria for correctly ascribing "thoughts"
where a person's manifest behaviour is unchanged: what it provides is a
backdrop against we learn both correct and incorrect ascription i.e. a backdrop
against which we may check our ascriptions. In the above example, as a child it
may come as a revelation to me that JLS' flickerless response to Palma entering
the room is because JLS is going to ignore him - I may, as a child, have
thought at first JLS simply didn't notice Palma's entry (though it was quite
dramatic to me) until something becomes 'manifest' behaviourally e,g, Palma
challenges JLS, probably in Italian, as to why JLS is sitting there
unresponsively, and JLS then provides my child-self with a revelation by either
(a) continuing to sit flickerless (b) rushing out the room (c) doing Sraffa's
chin gesture (d) yelling out a couplet from a favourite Opera. Whatever the
learning process, manifest behaviour will play a vital role at some point
(indeed many points) but it never plays a straightforward role where sense can
be read off 'manifest behaviour' as a 'given'."
Perhaps a better formulation is that it is behaviour that MANIFESTS a given
psychological attitude. I think Grice's point in the above-mentioned "Method"
is: "No psychological theoretical term without the behaviour it is supposed to
explain". So we may need to provide some linguistic botanising of what
'manifesting' stands for. Occam gives two examples:
Tears manifest inner pain.
Laughter manifests inner joy.
The funny thing is that Occam uses literally, "significat naturaliter". I.e.
For Occam, tears are a natural sign of pain, as laughter is a natural sign of
joy. Mitchell Green has expanded on this in his "Grice's Frown" -- taking the
example of Grice's cutting someone on the street and Grice displaying a frown
as to whether each counts as case of natural or non-natural expressiveness. Or
stuff.
McEvoy:
"In other words, the sense we ascribe to manifest behaviour is not given by
that behaviour simpliciter but by an act of interpretation. This is W's view
for the whole field of language - from the outer reaches of mathematics to how
we learn that names name. When we learn how 'names name' we are grasping
something shown to us by behaviour but it is not the case that the behaviour
simpliciter could not be showing anything else or that the physical behaviour
contains within itself the (non-physical) sense we ascribe to it. In this
fundamental sense, the sense of language is never 'based' on behaviour (in a
way that sense might be 'reduced' to behaviour) so much as 'shown' via
behaviour. Hence later W is not a behaviourist at all in the sense of Skinner
et al. W is a kind of 'behaviouralist' in that he would seek to show the role
of 'manifest behaviour' in showing sense: but, and we have touched on this
until it has been ground into dust, for W that sense can only be shown - that
'showing' is linked to manfest behaviour but cannot be further 'grounded' in
behaviour in the way a Skinnerian behaviourist might claim. In fact, W is very
anti-behaviourist in this Skinnerian sense."
Again, this may relate to the meta-thought stuff. For Grice, by appealing to
Witters here, is sort of suggesting: 'expressing' is interpreted in terms of
'judging and willing'. But 'judging and willing' cannot be explained in terms
of, say, a meta-language of thought. We rather postulate judging and willing as
theoretical terms. Now, the _role_ of a theoretical term (in this case a
psychological attitude) is to _explain behaviour_ -- or rather, the passage or
link (as per a black-box scenario) between a creature's perceptual input and
behavioural output (Grice's example is of a 'squarrel' -- his term of
'squirrel' -- hobbling nuts -- he is hungry; he needs the intake).
This leads Grice to view judging and willing as theoretical terms within a
folksy psychological theory. And it is in elaborating this 'banal' remarks onto
'bizarre' ones that he comes up with things like, "If A believes that p, A
believes that he believes that p, and so on ad infinitum" -- which is, as I was
suggesting, Grice's correlate of this meta-thinking that the original question
was referring to ("Is there a meta-language of thought?"). Or not, of course.
Thanks for McEvoy's clarification on the nuances of Witters's reliance on
'behaviour' -- and Witters's position as contrasted with that of Skinner and
company!
Cheers,
Speranza
