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ThePhilosophical Vol.46, No.

i85
Quarterly, October
i996
ISSNoo3I-8o94

A FURRY TILE ABOUT MENTAL REPRESENTATION

BY DEBORAHBROWN

The light is fading in the frozen wild woods. Ratty and Mole are desperately
seeking Mr Badger's snow-bound house. After much ado, the Rat uncovers
a door-mat, only to find that he then has to convince the stubborn Mole of
its great signficance.
'Do-you-mean-to-say,' cried the excited Rat, 'that this door-mat doesn't tell you
anything?'
'Really, Rat,' said the Mole quite pettishly, 'I think we've had enough of this folly.
Who ever heard of a door-mat tellingany one anything? They simply don't do it. They
are not that sort at all. Door-mats know their place.'

'Well, if you believe that,'replied the emphatic Rat, getting quite red in
the face as if he had been on the grog too long, 'you might as well give up
the idea that words are capable of tellingus anythingeither.Ourtalk is, after all,
_~ _ ~_^ simply on a continuum with lower
/
(,I^artificial
r.(!. ' information-carrying devices
I
2w_i
.'7'~ ~ ~^ like this door-mat.'
..^B ....
. _^ 'Why, it's just a furry tile!' said the
indignant Mole. 'And everyone.knows
l/- . . they're
. not true. Besides, if this door-
^ mat - ah, pray, excuse me - if Mr
:1 2.c_ .
M _ Door-mat is going to tell us some-
_ .,t ...._ thing, shouldn't we let him speak for
J;9B^^.^^^ " ~ [ himself? Stop dancing a jig on his
'-''--,cface,
"o:'~-.~ Mr Rat! Mr Door-mat: find the
~co~ -c%0c% square root of my hat.... See, Mr Rat,
Dr \ he gives no answer to the most basic
'The writing's on the floor, Mole!' warned the Rat of questions.'

'The indented section is from Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows (London:
Puffin, I908/I983), p. 58, and the rest isn't.

? The Editorsof ThePhilosophical g996.Publishedby BlackwellPublishers,o18 Cowley Road, Oxford ox4 JF,UK, and 238
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A FURRY TILE ABOUT MENTAL REPRESENTATION 449

'Oh, you small, mud-burrowing, tiny-eared, puny-eyed, luminescent-


pelted animal,' exclaimed the Rat, somewhat definitionally. 'Of course a
door-mat isn't going to speakthe Queen's English. It doesn't have language,
but it does carry the same information as if it had said: look, you twits,
there's a door buried somewhere under all that snow! Language is just a
more highly developed way of giving and receiving information about the
world. So enough of your scepticism, Mole! Get digging and scraping and
we may just find Mr Badger's warm little house and survive this dreadful
winter's night.'
So Mr Rat and, somewhat re-
luctantly, Mr Mole dug and scraped
and scraped and dug and finally there
appeared a green door bearing the
name MR BADGER (although, as the
Rat explained to the increasingly -> ~
confused Mole, the door was not Mr
Badger; the nameplate simply in- C
formed them that the house belonged -. .
to a Mr Badger, the door being sim-
ply called 'a door' or possibly 'the
front door', all that being largely
irrelevant however). Mr Rat then in-
structed Mr Mole to swing the door-f
knocker which he said would tell Mr J
Badger that someone was outside his
house and wished to see him, to The Common Badger Strong-jaud,fier,ceydefensive,
which Mr Mole snorted sceptically nocturnal burrowing,
hibematingplantigradeofthe
eaoelfamily
that it would be easier for him to eat
one of those pigs from the Market Square (everyone knows that you can't
get a square pig into a round mole) than for a door-knocker to tell anyone
anything. So Mr Rat clanged the brass door-knocker himself, and to Mr
Mole's surprise and gratitude Mr Badger soon stood before them in his
Gucci pyjamas, dressing-gown and slippers and welcomed them in with
open, well manicured paws. Only after the weary duo had scoffed several
helpings of Badger's famous linguiniagli oliowith turnip did the philosophical
questions that had bothered the Mole and almost resulted in their freezing
to death figure again in the conversation.
'ByJove (hup),' burped the contented Mole. 'Delicious! And my humblest
apologies, Mr Rat, for wondering how you ever did manage to graduate
from Mazes o10. But, now, do tell me more about this theory of yours that
has our semantic capacities on a par with that of a humble door-mat.'
T'he Editorsof 771ePlTilosopic
al Qarler)lr,1996(
450 DEBORAH BROWN

'Not only did I pass Mazes IOI, Mr Mole, but I received distinctions in
both Bar Pressing 245 and Toxin Avoidance 320, and came top of my year
in Plague Spreading 400!2 But enough! To the issues!'
'Hear, here!' exclaimed Mr Badger, calling his pet Praying Mantis,
Lingua, to his side.
'Let us begin then,' began again
the Rat, 'by recalling the notion of Lingua Mantis
natural meaningand seeing how it (?ot ^tbS?0,m
fares as a model for understanding . -
our own meaningful thoughts and
utterances. Now you remember Ji;
what Mr Grice taught us, don't
you?' .
'What - that every nice girl loves : '
a sailor?' suggested the Mole a little
too eagerly.
'No-no-no, Mr Mole. One of the otherthings he taught us,' replied the
Rat. 'Remember that there is a notion of natural meaning which applies to
things causally connected to one another?3 It is the sense of meansin sent-
ences like Smokemeansfire and Thosespotsmeanmeasles.Well, all I was saying
outside is that the door-mat meansn,or carries the information, that there is a
door nearby. Now I tend to think that the basic function of language is to
carry information, and it succeeds by exploiting causal connections to the
world in just the way I've described.'
'Oooh! Oooh!' interjected the Mole, 'Can you please slow down? First,
where or how does smoke mean fire in nature?Surely smoke is only an in-
dicator of fire for us. But then it's hardly a natural semantic relationship if its
status as an indicator depends on our interests. Second, Mr Grice said that
"means," was a success-word. Smoke doesn't mean, fire if fire doesn't cause
it. But thought and language have meaning whether they are successful or
not. A belief or sentence has the same content whether it is true or false.'
'Quite right. Very good. Hip, hip,' sputtered the Rat. 'I was far too hasty
in my presentation before. I'm a rodent, though, what do you expect? But
you are quite right - what we are in search of is an interest-free notion of
natural meaning. And the place to start is surely with the causal relations
between signs and the properties they signify. In this way we can begin to
2
Although by nature a water vole, Ratty had realized at a tender age that the only way he
was going to get a university education under a Tory government was by masquerading as a
white laboratory rat.
3 H.P.
Review,66 (1957), pp. 377-88; repr. in P.F. Strawson
Grice, 'Meaning', Philosophical
Logic(Oxford UP, I967).
(ed.), Philosophical

? The Editorsof ThePhilosophical


Quarterly,
1996
A FURRY TILE ABOUT MENTAL REPRESENTATION 451

naturalize semantics and show how our thought is as much a part of the
natural world as the batting of a beaver tail or a home run!'
'How frightfully North American to verbizean adjective like "natural",'
announced the Badger. 'Come now, what could it be to naturalize
semantics?'
'Why, it's to do many things,' saida verysmallvoice, 'all connected, by the bye,
by the by-relation!'
'Who said that?' squeaked the Rat, his head whipping round like Linda
Blair's in TheExorcist.
'Why, it's Lingua Mantis!' said the astonished Mr Badger, lifting the
Praying Mantis on to his knee.
'A talking stick-insect!'exclaimed the Rat.
'You should see me at six-hand poker,' said the formidable little Mantis.
'Now I suggest that the answer to your question, Badger, is that naturalizing
semantics is just describing in non-intentional and non-semantic terms the
content-fixing conditions for mental representations. I focus on mental
representations, for unlike conventional representations, which derive their
meaning from the intentions of their users, mental representations, being the
source of such intentions, must have their content originally.I also focus on
natural-kind for by virtue of being related to natural objects and being
concepts,
primitives of the non-logical vocabulary, they are the most obvious place for
a naturalisticsemantics to begin.4
'Now I take it that thinking is a process of performing computational
operations on mental symbols -
symbols in a language of thought. I
have defended this hypothesis else- ia.e ait en! i1
where - you may know of it as the
LinguaMentisHypothesis.They got my
name wrong; c'est la vie. I propose
that meaning is primarily a causal
relation. The naturalism of my theory ^
rests on the simple observation that [
concepts depend for their content on
law-governed regularities in the rela-
tionship between tokenings of a mental symbol and instantiations of the pro-
perty which occasion them. Concept tokenings are reliable indicators of
their referents.'

4Jerry A. Fodor, Psychosemantics(MIT Press, I987), A Theoryof Content(MIT Press, I990),


and The Elm and the Expert(MIT Press, I994). See also the 'Replies' in Barry Loewer and
Georges Rey (eds), Meaningin Mind:Fodorandhis Critics(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, I99I).
5J. Fodor, TheLanguageof Thought(Harvard UP, I975).

C The Editorsof ThePhilosophical


Quarterl',
1996
460 DEBORAH BROWN

'It would be merely accidental that only belladonna samples were the
critical causes of the proliferation of this concept,' said the Mantis.
'No, the point is,' responded the Mole, 'that this would not alter the fact
that P is a functional-kind concept. This story is identical to the standard
teleological story Rat wants to tell about natural-kind terms. For the prolif-
eration of the concept P, whilst it could historically have depended on
substances which happen to belong to a natural kind, would not thereby
depend on the fact that they formed a natural kind. And their doing so
would not in any way transform P into a natural-kindconcept.'
'What else couldbe added to the story of Toad's internal representation to
make him a representer of natural kinds?' challenged the Rat. 'On your tell-
ing, any concept which depends for its meaning on selectional forces would
have a functional meaning. Do you really think that we are somehow special
in nature in having natural-kindconcepts?'
'That's something I'm prepared to swallow,' announced the Mole. 'I
don't think toads have natural-kind concepts, which in part explains why
they make such lousy scientists.'
'Oh yes, too boring!' agreed the Toad.
'That's just Moleopocentrism!' accused the Rat. 'Are we not all from the
same Primordial Puddle?'
'No doubt,' said the Mole, 'but it doesn't do to neglect the differences
between us and other representational systems in the rush to emphasize the
similarities. We have minds. Language. Science. Smog. We do more than
react to proximal stimuli. We seek to discover the natures of things beyond
what is given to our senses. We plan: we represent the world in ways it
might be but isn't. We engage in abstract thought. Is not biology as much
interested in these traits as those we share with other critters?'
Suddenly the door could be heard opening and a fierce flurry of
snowflakes scattered in the passageway.
'Right!' exclaimed the intruder in a gruff tone of voice, 'Enough is
enough!' And after shaking itself vigorously, nothing other than the Door-mat
itself trundled into the living room, plonked itself before Mr Badger's fire-
place, and thrust its worn patch out in front of the two-bar heater!
'I say! Is this the dream sequence?' queried the Toad.
'This is preposterous!' exclaimed the Rat. 'It's not in my contract to work
with a door-mat!'
'Now, now, Gentlecreatures,' said the Badger, 'let us not fall prey to our
prejudices. What brings you here, Mr Door-mat?'
'Well, Guv'nor,' replied the Door-mat, 'I could put up wiv the freezing
cold, Mr Mole 'ere's insults, Mr Rat jumping on my poor ol' worn patch,
drunken weasels doing never-you-mind-what underneath me, but when I
? The Editorsof ThePhilosophical
Quarterlr,
1996
A FURRY TILE ABOUT MENTAL REPRESENTATION 46I

over'ears the Mole getting on the case of functional meanings I says to


m'self: Son, I says, you've seen more pathetic soles than your own in your
time and they're about to deny you a
meaningful life. It's time to stand up
for yerself! Can't take things lying; :'

down for ever, even if you are a door-


mat.'
'Outrageous!' shrieked the Rat, ;Ki
turning to his fellows. 'This thing is an
inanimate object. You can't seriously .
be interpreting what it says as mean-
ingful. Why, it doesn't even have a .
brain!'
'Well now, Mr Rat,' replied the
Door-mat, 'from what I've 'eard .
going on in 'ere tonight, I'm surprised
to 'ear that you think having a brain makes a whole lot of a semantic
difference. So far I've 'eard that meaning is all a matter of external causal
relations, counterfactual whoosiemawhatsits, Muwer Nature dis-and-dat,
and now Mr Mole reckons there is something privileged aboutyour way of
representing. Now as you almost guessed, Mr Rat, when you were trying to
convince Mr Mole 'ere of my rudimentary semantic properties, it 'appens
that on the matter of these matters, I'm the mat of a Matter for whom such
matters matter!'
'Whatever do you mean?' asked the Mole, dumbfounded.
'I mean that the Head Matter in the factory where I was produced was
very fond of his artefacts,' began the Door-mat, 'and before we left the fac-
tory he orways 'eld a tea party for us (commonly known as the IHeadMatter's
TeaParty)at which he assignedevery one of us representational functions. I'll
bet you can't tell by looking, but at this moment there is an interpretation of
my particles under which I'm theorizing about quantum mechanics. Of
course, under another interpretation I'm tracking the movements of Imelda
Marcos on 'oliday in Barbados. It's a rich life being a door-mat, let me tell
you.'
'Those functions aren't principled!' snorted the Rat. 'They do no work in
explaining the behaviour of this door-mat.'
"Ere! I'm very proud of my functions,' responded the Door-mat, 'and
like you yourself said, Mr Rat, some representational functions can be
assigned. Well, 'ere I am, assigned, sealed and delivered!'
'That's as may be, Mr Door-mat,' said the Mole, 'but what I've been
urging my fellows to accept is that the story of meaning cannot be reduced
? The Editorsof ThePhilosophical
Quarterl),
I996

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