Sense and Acquaintance

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One aim of this unit: understand this quote ...

‘the normativity of the mental requires the world-involving character of the mind.’

\citep[p.~292]{campbell:1987}

Campbell, 1987 p. 292

Start with it’s formal properties ...

‘Acquaintance ... essentially consists in a relation between the mind and something other than the mind’

\citep[chapter 4]{Russell:1912ln}

Russell, 1912 Chapter 4

But which relation is acquaintance? ...

What else can we say about acquaintance?

‘we have acquaintance with anything of which we are directly aware, without the intermediary of any process of inference or any knowledge of truths’

\citep[chapter 5]{Russell:1912ln}

Russell, 1912 chapter 5

What does this mean? Nothing, by itself. But Russell goes on to explain what he means:

Contrast: infer existence of a phone in your washing machine from the bumps vs opening it and finding the phone.

Modes of acquaintance (?):
perception?
memory?
self-awareness?
attention?

How might sense and acquaintance be linked?

I’m not sure we can connect them ... natural to think acquaintance is a relation you either do or do not stand in to an object.

Are senses ways of being acquainted?

You are acquainted with the elephant in one way when you see it through this window, and in another way when you see it through that window.

Frege talked about modes of presentation. We don’t know what those are either.

The problem is that we don’t know what is ways of being acquainted are. So here’s a rough idea we could develop into a proposal, maybe.

But in advance of it being developed, we are in no position to evaulate it.

One way of developing it is proposed by John Campbell ...

recall campbell’s picture ...

‘There is a common-sense picture of the relation between knowledge of reference and pattern of use.

... you use the word the way you do because you know what it stands for’

Campbell, 2002 p. 4

‘by thinking of knowledge of reference as explained by conscious attention to the object, we can see how to reinstate the common-sense picture’

\citep[p.~4]{Campbell:2002ge}.

Campbell, 2002 p. 4

What does this mean? ‘knowledge of reference as explained by conscious attention to the object’?

There are acts of attention (e.g. tracking an elephant walking ahead).

Re-identification is needed only when there are two acts of attention.

For example, you are tracking Elmar but then look away, distracted by a bird. You look back and reassure yourself that this elephant is the one that was there before.

Two thoughts about this elephant can depend on one act of attention.

When this happens, trading on identity is legitimate.

Sense is that, sameness of which makes trading on identity legitimate.

When two thoughts about this elephant depend on one act of attention, they involve a single sense.

same act of attention -> same sense

When two utterances of a word (or phrase) are controlled by a single act of attention, they have the same sense.

Note the parallel with Russell

‘the notion of conscious attention to an object has an explanatory role to play: it has to explain how it is that we have knowledge of the reference of a demonstrative.

‘This means that conscious attention to an object must be thought of as more primitive than thought about the object.

‘It is a state more primitive than thought about an object, to which we can appeal in explaining how it is that we can think about the thing’

Campbell, 2002 p. 45

‘the notion of conscious attention to an object has an explanatory role to play: it has to explain how it is that we have knowledge of the reference of a demonstrative. This means that conscious attention to an object must be thought of as more primitive than thought about the object. It is a state more primitive than thought about an object, to which we can appeal in explaining how it is that we can think about the thing’ \citep[p.~45]{Campbell:2002ge}.

I’m offering an inaccurate, incorrect portrayal of Campbell’s view. Here is a MORE CAREFUL STATEMENT which we will ignore.

‘We might argue that the mode of presentation of a perceptually demonstrated object has to be characterized
... in terms of the property that the subject uses to select that object perceptually.
Sameness of mode of presentation is the same thing as sameness of the property on the basis of which the object is selected;
difference of mode of presentation is the same thing as difference of the property on the basis of which the object is selected.’

\citep[p.~341]{campbell:2011_visual}.

Campbell, 2011 p. 341

The problem is to explain this idea: it require a deep-dive into psychological theories of attention. (Of course, if you really want to understand sense, this is inescapable.)

To evaluate this idea, we run it by the things that senses are supposed to explain ...

same act of attention -> same sense

When two utterances of a word (or phrase) are controlled by a single act of attention, they have the same sense.

What is sense supposed to do?

1. Sense explains the difference in informativeness between the utterance of ‘Charly is Charly’ and ‘Charly is Samantha’.

2. Sense determines reference.

3. A statement showing the sense of a name specifies what you need to know about the utterance of a name in order to understand it.

same act of attention -> same sense

When two utterances of a word (or phrase) are controlled by a single act of attention, they have the same sense.

The sense of an utterance of a word (or phrase)
is what you know when you
have knowledge of reference.

If we connect sense with knowledge of reference in this way, then we have to ask whether descriptions can fulfil these functions ...

ftbe:

Communicators can know, sometimes,
whether they are understanding.
How?

Utterers make rational, voluntary use of some regularites
while merely conforming to others.
How is this possible?

∴ there is a mental state of the utterer in virtue of which her utterance refers to ‘Earth’.

Call this mental state ‘knowledge of reference’.

What is going wrong here?

same act of attention -> same sense

within a person ✓

between people (an utter and her audience) ✗

Contrast descriptions: understanding you means associating the same description with the word.

This is what explains my dissatisfaction ...

Conscious attention isn’t enough for understanding because ‘it can happen that I am consciously attending to the building to which you are referring, even though I do not realize that it is the building to which you are referring. Conscious attention to the building is not in itself an understanding of your remark: I have to make a link between that conscious attention and the demonstrative you use [see chapters 1-2 and 6-7]’

Campbell, 2002 p. 5

\citep[p.~5]{Campbell:2002ge}.

There is supposed to be a solution but I don’t understand it.

same act of attention -> same sense

When two utterances of a word (or phrase) are controlled by a single act of attention, they have the same sense.

**** TODO Summary

NEXT : ensuring matching acts of attention (why might you point, or move next to someone when using a perceptual demonstrative?)

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