Professional Documents
Culture Documents
[p152]
blocked. [20] I think this observation has led some people to think that the
special way of gaining knowledge which we have in virtue of occupying a
place is irrelevant to our here-thoughts about it, and that in those
thoughts we identify the place by description, roughly as the place I
occupy.
This seems to me to be wrong. Where there is no possibility of action and
perception, here-thoughts cannot get a grip. Consider the philosophers
fantasy of a brain in a vat: a person thinking organ kept alive and capable
of sustaining thoughts, yet with no avenue of perception or mode of action.
We can perhaps imagine being the person whose thoughts are sustained in
this way [21]; but in the perpetual darkness and silence of our existence,
we could surely have no use for here. If we knew what had become of us,
we could certainly think of a place as the place where the brain which
sustains our thoughts is located -- but this is a mode of identification of a
place quite unlike that expressed by here.
The suggestion is wrong, anyway, in giving a primacy to I over here. It is
not the case that we first have a clear conception of which material object
in the world we are (or what it would be to establish that), and then go on
to form a conception of what it is for us to be located at a particular place.
It is true that [p = here] is the same thought as [I am at p]; but this does
not mean that I identify here as where I am. This would raise the question
How do I identify myself, and make sense of my being located
[p153]
(at its point of origin), with its co-ordinates given by the concepts up and
down, left and right, and in front and behind. We may call this
egocentric space, and we may call thinking about spatial positions in this
framework centring on the subjects body thinking egocentrically about
space. A subjects here-thoughts belong to this system: here will denote
a more or less extensive area which centres on the subject.
Egocentric spatial terms are the terms in which the content of our spatial
experiences would be formulated, and those in which our immediate
behavioural plans would be expressed. This duality is no coincidence: an
egocentric space can exist only for an animal in which a complex network
of connections exists between perceptual input and behavioural output. A
perceptual input -- even if, in some loose sense, it encapsulates spatial
information (because it belongs to a range of inputs which vary
systematically with some spatial facts) -- cannot have a spatial significance
for an organism except in so far as it has a place in such a complex
network of input-output connections.
Let us begin by considering the spatial element in the non-conceptual
content of perceptual information. What is involved in a subjects hearing a
sound as coming from such-and-such a position in space? (I assume that
the apparent direction of the sound is part of the content of the
informational state: part of the way things seem to the subject, to use our
most general term for the deliverances of the informational system.)
I have already claimed that it is not sufficient for an organism to perceive
the direction of a sound that it should be capable of discriminating -- that
[p154]
different values of the proximal stimulus which code the direction of sound,
for instance by pressing a button, but in which the difference in stimulus is
not connected to any difference in spatial behaviour. When we hear a
sound as coming from a certain direction, we do not have to think or
calculate which way to turn our heads (say) in order to look for the source
of the sound. If we did have to do so, then it ought to be possible for two
people to hear a sound as coming from the same direction (as having the
same position in the auditory field), and yet to be disposed to do quite
different things in reacting to the sound, because of differences in their
calculations. Since this does not appear to make sense, we must say that
having spatially significant perceptual information consists at least partly in
being disposed to do various things. [23]
This point also comes out very clearly if we reflect upon how we might
specify the spatial information which we imagine the perception to embody.
The subject hears the sound as coming from such-and-such a position, but
how is the position to be specified? Presumably in egocentric terms (he
hears the sound as up, or down, to the right or to the left, in front or
behind). These terms specify the position of the sound in relation to the
observers own body; and they derive their meaning in part from their
complicated connections with the subjects actions.
Some people, including, apparently, Freud, are able to understand the word
right only via the rule linking it to the hand they write with. (I suppose a
similar defect might force someone to rely on the connection between
down and the earths surface -- though such a person ought not to travel
into space.) But when the terms are understood in this way, they are not
suitable for specifying the content of the information embodied in
directional perception. No one hears a sound as coming from the side of the
hand he writes with, in the sense that in order to locate the sound he has
to say to himself I write with this hand (waggling his right hand) so the
sound is coming from over there (pointing with his right hand). Rather,
having heard the sound directionally, a person can immediately say to
[23] The connection of position in the auditory field wish dispositions to behaviour is
well brought out by George Pitcher, A Theory of Perception (Princeton University Press,
Princeton, 1971), at p. 89. (Of course the dispositions to behaviour are complex: the
behaviour will be conditional also on other beliefs and desires.)
[p155]
himself Its coming from over there (pointing with what is in fact his right
hand), and may then reflect as an afterthought and thats the hand I write
with. As Charles Taylor writes:
Our perceptual field has an orientational structure, a foreground and a
background, an up and down ... This orientational structure marks our field
as essentially that of an embodied agent. It is not just that the fields
perspective centres on where I am bodily -- this by itself doesnt show that
I am essentially agent. But take the up-down directionality of the field.
What is it based on? Up and down are not simply related to my body -- up
is not just where my head is and down where my feet are. For I can be
lying down, or bending over, or upside down; and in all these cases up in
my field is not the direction of my head. Nor are up and down defined by
certain paradigm objects in the field, such as the earth or sky: the earth
can slope for instance ... Rather, up and down are related to how one would
move and act in the field. [24]
We can say, then, that auditory input -- or rather that complex property of
auditory input which encodes the direction of sound -- acquires a (nonconceptual) spatial content for an organism by being linked with
behavioural output in, presumably, an advantageous way. In the case of
adult human beings at least, the connection is very complex, for the
appropriate behaviour in response to a sound at such-and-such a position
is, when described in muscular terms, indefinitely various. This is not
merely because the behaviour may involve the movement of different parts
of the body: one can run, walk, crawl, or -- as in the case of rats in a
famous experiment -- swim to a target position. Even if we focus on a
particular kind of behaviour, such as reaching out with the hand for a rattle
heard in the dark, there is a similar kind of complexity, since an indefinite
range of reaching responses (identified in muscular terms) will be
appropriate, depending on the starting position of the limb and the route it
follows (which need not, and often cannot, be the most direct).
[24] 'The Validity of Transcendental Arguments, Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society lxxix (1978-9), 151-165, at p. 154. (Notice that spatial positions are not
identified, in the egocentric mode of thought we are considering, by
descriptions like the position three feet in front of my nose. For something that
[p156]
It may well be that the input-output connections can be finitely stated only
if the output is described in explicitly spatial terms (e.g. extending the
arm, walking forward two feet, etc.). If this is so, it would rule out the
reduction of the egocentric spatial vocabulary to a muscular vocabulary.
[25] But such a re-duction is certainly not needed for the point being urged
here, which is that the spatial information embodied in auditory perception
is specifiable only in a vocabulary whose terms derive their meaning partly
from being linked with bodily actions. Even given an irreducibility, it would
remain the case that possession of such information is directly manifestable
in behaviour issuing from no calculation; it is just that there would be
indefinitely many ways in which the manifestation can occur. [26]
My use of the term egocentric is close to its literal meaning, but I do not
intend to link my views with any others which have been expressed with
the use of the term. Notice that when I speak of information specifying a
position in egocentric space, I am talking not of information about a special
kind of space, but of a special kind of information about space -information whose content is specifiable in an egocentric spatial vocabulary.
It is perfectly consistent with the sense I have assigned to this vocabulary
that its terms should refer to points in a public three-dimensional space.
(Indeed I shall be claiming that that is what they refer to, if they refer to
anything at all.)
So far I have been considering the non-conceptual content of perceptual
informational states. Such states are not ipso facto perceptual experiences
-- that is, states of a conscious subject. However addicted we may be to
thinking of the links between auditory input and behavioural output in
information-process-ing terms -- in terms of computing the solution to
simultaneous equations [27] -- it seems abundantly clear that evolution
could
[25] For the idea of such a reduction, see Henri Poincar, The Value of Science (Dover,
New York, 1958), p. 47.
[26] Egocentric spatial terms and spatial descriptions of bodily movement would, on
this view, form a structure familiar to philosophers under the title holistic. For a study
of concepts interrelated in this way, see Christopher Peacocke, Holistic Explanation
(Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979).
[27] For the mechanism of auditory localization, see, e.g., P. H. Lindsay and D. A.
Norman, Human Information Processing (Academic Press, New York, 1972), pp. 17888. For an expression of addiction, see Jerry A. Fodor, The Language of Thought
(Harvester, Hassocks, 1976), pp. 42-53. One of the disadvantages of the addiction is
that it tends to blur the distinction I am trying to explain.
[p157]
[p158]
scious subject does depends critically upon his thoughts, and so there must
be links between the thinking and concept-applying system, on the one
hand, and behaviour, on the other. After all, it is only those links which
enable us to ascribe content (conceptual content now) to the thoughts.
Further, the intelligibility of the system I have described depends on there
being a harmony between the thoughts and the behaviour to which a given
sensory state gives rise. (This will seem adventitious only to those who
forget that the concepts exercised in the thoughts are learned by an
organism in which the links between sensory input and behaviour have
already been established.)
I do not mean to suggest that only those information-bearing aspects of
the sensory input for which the subject has concepts can figure in a report
of his experience. It is not necessary, for example, that the subject possess
the egocentric concept to the right if he is to be able to have the
experience of a sound as being to the right. I am not requiring that the
content of conscious experience itself be conceptual content. All I am
requiring for conscious experience is that the subject exercise some
concepts -- have some thoughts and that the content of those thoughts
should depend systematically upon the informational properties of the
input. [29]
We have not yet built in, or required, in this sketch of the spatial
significance of auditory perception, that the subject should be able to hear
sounds from different positions simultaneously. But even in the absence of
this requirement, we have, in the kind of informational state we have
described, a simultaneous' spatial representation; [30] for the subject
hears a sound as coming from one among indefinitely many, simultaneously
existing positions which define egocentric space. Moreover, it is easy to
understand what is involved in the subjects having a simultaneous spatial
representation in the stronger sense that he simultaneously hears two
sounds coming from different positions: this requires him to be in a
complex informational state the content of which entails the egocentric
location of two distinct sounds.
[29] On perception and conscious experience, see also 7.4. [30] For the distinction
between simultaneous and serial spatial concepts, see my Things Without the Mind, in
Zak van Straaten, ed., Philosophical Subjects: Essays Presented to P. F. Strawson
(Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980), pp. 76-116, at p. 109.
[p159]
[p160]
Now suppose we have a conscious subject with a conception of egocentric
space. We have been considering thoughts with egocentric spatial content,
directly linked to the subjects perceptual input; but, given the conceptual
equipment whose underpinnings we have been discussing, it seems a clear
possibility that a subject might entertain a thought about a position or
region in egocentric space whether or not he is currently perceiving it.
Consider, for instance, a subject who has placed a bottle of whisky by his
bed, and who thinks, in the dark, Theres a bottle of whisky there. We are
prepared to suppose that there is a determinate thought here -- that the
subject has a definite place in mind -- because we know that subjects do
have the capacity to select one position in egocentric space, and to
maintain a stable dispositional connection with it. If the subject does have
an Idea of a place (does know which place his thought concerns), this will
be manifestable only in manifestations of that stable dispositional
connection: thus, in his treating certain perceptions from that place as
[p161]
the truth-value and consequences of the thought, and did not realize its
implications for action (consider, for instance, a thought like Theres a fire
here).
We now have to enquire what makes such Ideas of places in egocentric
space adequate Ideas of positions in public space. Such an Idea, p, is
adequate provided the subject can be credited with a knowledge of what it
would be for [= p] to be true -- where is a stand-in for an arbitrary
fundamental, and hence holistic, identification of a place. And it seems that
we can presume upon such knowledge. For any subject who is able to think
objectively about space -- any subject who can be credited with a
cognitive map of any region -- must know what is involved in making
precisely such an identification -- in imposing his knowledge of the
objective spatial relations of things upon an egocentric space. Someone
who has a cognitive map of Oxford, for example, must be able to
contemplate the imposition of the map in the course of his travels (perhaps
in a very dense fog). If I am here, midway between Balliol and the
Bodleian, then that must be Trinity, and so the High must be down there.
In such a situation, one may have to choose between several ways of
(say) the Albert Hall stands to the Albert Memorial. That is, he must have
the idea of himself as one object among others; and he must think of the
relations between himself and objects he can see and act upon as relations
of exactly the same kind as those he can see between pairs of objects he
observes. This means that he must be able to impose the objective way of
thinking upon egocentric space. [36]
[34] See, further, 7.3.
[35] Has the ability only. Notice that I am not saying that for a subject to be thinking
of a particular place as here, he must be exercising mastery of a cognitive map. (This
would rule out an evident possibility of amnesia.) The point is just that the capacity so
think of a place as here requires the ability to apply cognitive maps.
[36] A parallel to the point made here is provided by kinaesshesic perception of a limb,
and in fact by the subjects body image in general. We might speak of the body image
as representing a space -- the body space. But certainly we have no right to speak of a
space here unless the subject can impose upon the data of bodily perception his
capacity to think objectively about space, so that we have reason to say that he knows
that the state of affairs that he feels, when he feels that his leg is bent, is a state of
affairs of the very same kind (in she relevant respect) as the state of affairs he
observes when he observes a bent stick.
[p163]
In view of this, it seems to me that, provided that the subject does
maintain a stable dispositional connection with a place, there is just one
proposition of the form [= p] (where p is an egocentric spatial Idea) that
is true, and the subject knows what it is for it to be true. The qualification is
important: if the subject, unbeknownst to himself, is moving in relation to
his frame of reference, then there is no one place which he is disposed to
regard as germane to the truth of his p-thoughts, or to direct his actions
towards on the basis of those thoughts; and so no thought that he might
entertain using Ideas from his egocentric repertoire has an object. In this
case, the subjects general knowledge of what it is for propositions of the
form [= p] to be true would not determine just one proposition of that
form as true. (We shall return to this kind of situation shortly.)
For the subject to have a single place in mind, it is not necessary that he
remain immobile. We have the ability to keep track of a place as we move
around; a stable dispositional connection can be maintained, despite
changes in circumstances. (The parallel here is with a thought about an
object which is moving around, or relative to which one is oneself moving.)
We are now in a position to see why an information-link with a place does
not constitute by itself an adequate basis for a knowledge of which place is
in question, and this will bring us most of the way to an answer to our
question concerning ordinary demonstratives.
There is a possible position about here-thoughts which parallels the
position we considered in 6.2 about demonstrative thoughts. This position