Epistemic Boundedness and The Universality of Thought

MATTHEW RELLIHAN

EPISTEMIC BOUNDEDNESS ANDTHE UNIVERSALITY OF THOUGHT

ABSTRACT. Fodor argues that our minds must have epistemic limitationsbecause there must be endogenous constraints on the class of concepts wecan acquire. However, his argument for the existence of these endogenousconstraints is falsified by the phenomenon of the deferential acquisition ofconcepts. If we allow for the acquisition of concepts through deferring toexperts and scientific instruments, then our conceptual capacity will bewithout endogenous constraints, and there will be no reason to think thatour minds are epistemically bounded.

1. INTRODUCTION

Aristotle once argued that the mind must be ‘‘before it thinks,not actually any real thing’’ and that it therefore ‘‘can have nonature of its own’’ (1941, p. 590). He reasoned that the presenceof any endogenous psychological structure would limit the classof thinkable thoughts in much the same way that tinting a pieceof glass limits the range of colors that can be seen through it.1

Since Aristotle felt he had independent justification for theuniversality of human thought, he concluded that the mindmust be without limitations and therefore without structure. Inthe interests of giving credit where credit is due, let us refer tothe claim that the presence of any psychological structurebrings with it a limitation on the class of thoughts that can beentertained as ‘‘Aristotle’s Principle’’, or ‘‘AP’’ for short.

Jerry Fodor has said that everything occurs twice in intel-lectual history, the first time as philosophy, the second time ascognitive science (1981a, p. 298).2 So I suppose we should notbe too surprised to find him defending AP some two millenniaafter it was first articulated.

Philosophical Studies (2005) 125: 219–250 � Springer 2005DOI 10.1007/s11098-004-7804-3

It then seems to me hard to see how the unboundedness view can be madeempirically plausible. The point is that any psychology must attribute someendogenous structure to the mind (really unstructured objects – bricks, say –don’t have beliefs and desires and they don’t learn things). And it is hard tosee how, in the course of making such attributions of endogenous structure,the theory could fail to imply some constraints on the class of beliefs that themind can entertain (Fodor, 1983, p. 125).

Of course, Fodor, being a physicalist, cannot seriously entertainthe idea that the mind is without endogenous structure. Sowhereas Aristotle’s consideration of AP lead him to rejectendogenous structure, Fodor’s leads him to reject unbounded-ness. As far as Fodor is concerned, the idea that our minds couldbe epistemically unbounded – free of epistemically relevantpsychological limitations – is virtually incoherent (1983, p. 121).

I am afraid I do not agree. Specifically, I am skeptical of theclaim that the presence of psychological structure brings with itconstraints on the class of thoughts that can be entertained. Ina word, I think that AP is unsound. In fact, I will be arguingthat any creature whose psychological organization is sophis-ticated enough to allow it, as Fodor says, to make the ‘‘char-acter of the correspondence between [its] thoughts and theworld a matter of policy’’ will have no endogenous conceptualconstraints whatsoever (1995, p. 35 italics omitted). I will bedefending this view by helping myself to Fodor’s information-theoretic account of concept possession, as to well as his ac-count of deferential concepts. In the end, I hope to show thatFodor’s argument for epistemic boundedness is inconsistentwith the position he takes on each of these issues. If possessinga concept is a matter of being ‘‘nomologically locked’’3 to theproperty the concept expresses, then there cannot be conceptswe are unable to posses because there cannot be properties weare unable to lock onto.

Or so I will argue. For now it is best to fill in some of thedetails by considering the argument, implicit in much of Fo-dor’s work, for the existence of endogenous constraints on ourconceptual capacity, but before doing this, it is best to see howthis claim fits into the larger argument for epistemic bound-edness.

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2. FODOR’S ARGUMENT FOR EPISTEMIC BOUNDEDNESS

Here, in a nutshell, is Fodor’s argument.4

(P1) Non-demonstrative inference is mediated by a processof projecting and confirming hypotheses.

(P2) Hypotheses have concepts as their constituents.(P3) Our conceptual capacity is endogenously constrained.(C1) Therefore, the class of hypotheses we can entertain is

endogenously constrained.(C2) Therefore, the class of non-demonstrative inferences

we can perform is endogenously constrained.(C3) Therefore, our knowledge of the world is endoge-

nously constrained.

I think it is pretty clear that it is the third premise that is doingmost of the work in this argument, so in what follows I willfocus mainly on it. Let me begin, though, by saying a few wordsabout the first and second premises and why Fodor thinks theyare justified.

Non-demonstrative inference is the psychological process ofbelief fixation whereby a subject moves from some finite dataset to a belief about the data’s most likely explanation. It is thusevidenced in everything from scientific theory construction tocommon sense reasoning – as when we infer from the shatteredwindow, the baseball on the floor and the bat in the yard to theconclusion that the neighbor’s kid broke the window. Fodorconceives of this inferential process as being mediated by theprojection and confirmation of hypotheses and thus as requir-ing (a) a source of hypotheses, (b) access to some class of data,and (c) some way of determining a ‘‘best fit’’ relation betweenthe hypotheses and the data (Fodor, 1983, p. 121).5 Moreformally, if a subject S is engaging in non-demonstrativeinference, she must have access to a set of hypotheses H1–Hn

and a set of data D that the hypotheses are intended to explain.She tests her hypotheses against experience by deducing theobservational consequences O1–On of each hypothesis H1–Hn,and by determining the degree of fit between each Oi and D.Thus, if the Big Bang hypothesis implies the existence of cosmic

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microwave background radiation, while the Steady State modeldoes not, and if, in fact, there is such radiation, then (assumingthey are in agreement on everything else) the Big Banghypothesis is closer to the data than is its rival and is thereforedeemed a better explanation. The hypothesis whose observa-tional consequences are closer to the data than any of its rivalsis the hypothesis that a subject comes to believe – ceteris pari-bus, of course.6

So the non-demonstrative inference to the belief that prequires, inter alia, access to the hypothesis that p, andthis means that a mind capable of the full range of non-demonstrative inferences would require access to the full rangeof explanatory hypotheses. That is, for us to have epistemicallyunbounded minds, it would have to be true that ‘‘whatever sortof subject domain the world turns out to be, somewhere in thespace of hypotheses that we are capable of entertaining there isthe hypothesis that specifies its structure’’ (Fodor, 1983, p. 122).An epistemically bounded mind is simply one that fails tosatisfy this condition. Suffice it to say that if we are psycho-logically limited in the range of hypotheses we can entertain, itis quite likely that we will be limited in our knowledge ofthe world as well. Since scientific inference is a species of non-demonstrative inference, and since the non-demonstrativeinference to the theory T requires, at a minimum, that one becapable of entertaining the hypotheses constituting T, anypsychological limitation on the range of hypotheses one canentertain brings with it a limitation on the range of theories onecan comprehend. The only question that remains is whether thetheories we cannot understand are both interesting and true(Fodor, 1983, p. 125).

As I have said, it is the third premise of Fodor’s argumentthat is doing all the work, but that premise concerns conceptualconstraints, and epistemic boundedness is a thesis about alimitation on the range of hypotheses we can entertain. Whatwe require, then, is some way of linking the existence ofendogenous conceptual constraints with restrictions on therange of hypotheses we can entertain, and this is where thesecond premise comes in.

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Whatever sort of propositional attitude hypothesizing is, it isclear that it is a propositional attitude since it involves thesubject standing in a certain intentional relation to a content.Thus, whatever applies to propositional attitudes generally willapply to hypothesizing as well. According to Fodor’s well-known account, propositional attitudes are relations betweenpersons (or other minded creatures), and syntactically struc-tured internal representations (1975, 1981b, 1987). In otherwords, propositional attitudes are relations between personsand sentences in the language of thought. The reason Fodorgoes to all the trouble of defending the language of thoughthypothesis is that it allows him to explain the complexity ofpropositional objects in terms of the constituent structure oftheir underlying mental states (1987, pp. 135–136). Thus, thethought THE CAT IS ON THEMAT has the concept CAT7 asa constituent in just the same way that the sentence ‘‘the cat ison the mat’’ has the word ‘‘cat’’ as a constituent. For ourpurposes, this means that any limitation on the class of con-cepts a subject can access will entail a limitation on the range ofhypotheses she can entertain. If Smith is unable to represent theproperty of being a cat, then, given Fodor’s view of the atti-tudes, Smith will be unable to entertain any hypothesis that hasthe concept CAT as a constituent. If there are such things ascats, this could be a severe epistemic limitation.

If Fodor is right about non-demonstrative inference and thenature of the propositional attitudes, the existence of endoge-nous constraints on our conceptual capacity will indeed implythat we are epistemically bounded. I realize, of course, that theantecedent of this conditional is rather contentious. At present,not much is understood about the nature of non-demonstrativeinference, and Fodor’s account of the attitudes is notoriouslycontroversial. I am, however, willing to grant Fodor his firsttwo premises – mainly because, as I have said, it is the thirdthat is doing all the work. Even if the first two premises arefalse, the truth of the third would probably be sufficient tolicense some form of an epistemic boundedness thesis. Let usmove on, then, to a consideration of the third premise, afterwhich I will register my objections, ultimately to suggest an


alternative to Fodor’s view that our minds are conceptuallyconstrained.

3. CONCEPT LEARNING OR CONCEPT CONSTRUCTION?

Fodor treats mental representations as ‘‘mental particularsendowed with causal powers and susceptible of semantic eval-uation’’, which are, furthermore, ‘‘the primitive bearers ofintentional content’’ (1997, p. 7). If we accept this view, as wellas Fodor’s view that psychological states have constituentstructure, then all of our concepts will have to fall into one oftwo classes – the primitive or the complex. Primitive conceptsare atomic in that they lack constituent structure (RED is afavorite example) while complex concepts are molecular con-structions from other concepts. BLACK HAT, for example,has BLACK and HAT as constituents. The constituents of acomplex concept can themselves be either primitive or complex,but the process of analysis has to end somewhere. When it ends,it ends because the concepts under review have no constituentstructure, because they are primitive.

Given that complex concepts are ultimately resolvable intotheir primitive constituents, we can define a subject’s potentialconceptual endowment (PCE) at time t as the closure of itsprimitive concepts at t under whatever rules of complex conceptformation it has access to at t.8 Thus, if one has the conceptBLACK and the concept HAT (as well as the ability to formconjunctive concepts), then one has the concept BLACK HATas part of one’s PCE – even if one has never actually enter-tained the concept. A subject’s PCE is meant to capture thespace of concepts the organism has access to absent furtherexperience. If one possesses BLACK and HAT, one need notexperience black hats in order to acquire the concept BLACKHAT. One need only, as the empiricists would say, use one’sfaculty of imagination to freely combine the concepts one al-ready has (Fodor, 1981a, p. 267, footnote 3).

With this notion in mind, it is possible to formulate Fodor’sthesis that our conceptual capacity is endogenously con-strained.

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EC: A subject cannot increase his or her PCE throughlearning.9

Fodor argues for this thesis mainly by pointing out thatevery account of ‘‘concept learning’’ that has ever been given –from those of the classical empiricists right up to and includingthose of contemporary cognitive science – has implied that inorder to learn a concept one must antecedently possess the veryconcept being learned as part of one’s PCE. This, of course,means that if a concept is not already part of a subject’s PCE, itnever will be.

All of the proposals under consideration describe conceptlearning as a process in which the acquisition of a concept ismediated by the projection and confirmation of hypothesesconcerning the nature of the concept being learned (Fodor,1981a, p. 267). There is good reason for this since it wouldappear that concept learning is a species of non-demonstrativeinference, and, as we have already seen, there is reason to thinkthat non-demonstrative inferences are mediated by hypotheses.When a subject is attempting to learn some concept from itsinstances she is in the position of having to extrapolate a gen-eralization that will cover all possible cases from exposure tosome finite subset of them (Fodor, 1975, p. 37). That is, asubject must discover some way of determining for any xwhether or not x is F from the fact that a is F, b is F, c is not F,and so forth. Since the data provides inductive evidence for theidentity of the concept, it is only natural to suppose that asubject learns a concept from its instances by employing themechanisms of inductive logic.

The hypotheses that mediate the acquisition of a concept inconcept learning are thought to concern the definition of theconcept being learned, or, as Fodor says, ‘‘the property … invirtue of which things fall under the concept’’ (1997, p. 123).Furthermore, definitions are believed to provide structuraldescriptions of the concepts they define. Thus, the word‘‘bachelor’’ can be defined by means of the phrase ‘‘unmarriedman’’ because the mental representation expressed by bothterms is the same, namely, UNMARRIEDMAN (Fodor, 1997,p. 42). This view has much to recommend it since, among other


things, it allows for an explanation of the informal validity ofinferences involving linguistic representations in terms of theformal validity of inferences involving mental representations(Pitt, 1999, p. 141). If ‘‘bachelor’’ is mentally represented asUNMARRIED MAN, then the inference ‘‘if x is a bachelor, xis a man’’ has (at the level of mental representations) the sameform as the inference ‘‘if x is an unmarried man, then x is aman.’’ Kant must have been thinking along these lines when hesaid that analytic judgments are those in which the predicate isalready contained within the subject (1965, p. 48).10 The idea isthat when one thinks ‘‘bachelor’’ one thinks UNMARRIEDMAN at the level of mental representations, and one cannotthink UNMARRIED MAN without thinking MAN.

The standard view of concept acquisition which I have beensketching has a rather large problem. If hypotheses must con-cern the definition of the concept being learned, and if thedefinition of a concept is its structural description, then itwould appear that in order to learn a concept, one must be ableto construct the concept from those one already has (Fodor1981a, p. 269). This is just to say that in order to learn a con-cept one must already possess it as part of one’s PCE. By wayof illustration, consider Kant’s account of how one acquires theconcept TREE from the experience of trees.

I see a fir, a willow, and a linden. In firstly comparing these objects, I noticethat they are different from one another in respect of trunk, branches, leavesand the like; further, however, I reflect only on what they have in common,the trunk, the branches, the leaves themselves, and abstract from their size,shape, and so forth; thus I gain the concept of a tree (1974, p. 100).

One gains the concept TREE when is able to formulate thehypothesis ‘‘x is a tree if and only if x has a trunk, branches andleaves’’ – or, as Kant says, when one is able to ‘‘reflect’’ on theseproperties as being common to all trees. Of course, in order toformulate this hypothesis in the first place, one must have ac-cess to the complex concept A THING WITH A TRUNK,BRANCHES, AND LEAVES. But since this concept is in-tended as a definition of ‘‘tree’’, and since definitions expressthe constituent structure of the concepts they define, one clearly

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has not augmented one’s PCE by learning TREE in this way. IfTREE is actually a complex concept, having TRUNK,BRANCHES, and LEAVES as constituents, and if one has tohave these concepts in order to acquire the concept TREE inthe first place, it is not clear that anything is even being learned.The process looks less like concept learning than conceptconstruction (Antony, 2001, p. 206)

The situation is even worse when we consider primitiveconcepts. Since primitive concepts are those that lack con-stituent structure, and since definitions are supposed to pro-vide structural descriptions of the concepts they define, itwould appear that primitive concepts are not definable. Ofcourse, if they are not definable, then, according to the clas-sical account, they are not learnable either (Fodor, 1997,p. 124). This reinforces the observations made above. Asubject’s PCE is constituted by the closure of his primitiveconcepts under whatever combinatorial rules he has access to.If primitive concepts cannot be acquired, this means that asubject’s PCE cannot be increased, and if this is true, then itwill be impossible for us to venture beyond our innatelydetermined conceptual endowment.11 It is but a small stepfrom this observation to Fodor’s ‘‘mad-dog’’ nativism since ifprimitive concepts cannot be learned, and if the rejection ofthe analytic-synthetic distinction entails, inter alia, that mostof our lexical concepts are without analyses and thereforeprimitive, it follows that most of our lexical concepts wouldhave to be innate.12 That is, not only concepts like RED, butalso concepts like COMPUTER, PROTON, and FUSIONwould have to be possessed innately. Needless to say, this is arather surprising consequence.

Many people have taken issue with Fodor’s ‘‘mad-dog’’nativism and have attempted to circumvent it by recon-structing the empiricist’s account of concept acquisition.However, it is important to see that EC is actually a weakerthesis than radical nativism. The former could be true even ifit should turn out that the analytic/synthetic thesis is sal-vageable, even if it should turn out that many of our conceptsare, in fact, definable.


Imagine a relatively rudimentary mind M whose primitiveconceptual endowment at t consists of only RED, BLUE,SQUARE, and CIRCLE, and whose only means of con-structing complex concepts from these primitives at t is byconjoining them. Assuming that the rule for conjoining primi-tives into complex concepts is recursive, the PCE of thisorganism would be infinite, though exceedingly redundant. Itwould include, not only the primitives themselves, but alsoRED SQUARE, BLUE CIRCLE, RED-BLUE, SQUARECIRCLE and much else besides. What it would not include,however, is any concept that is not constructable from its rel-atively meager conceptual base. Clearly, there are many suchconcepts – PROTON, MACROCOSM, and COMPUTER arebut a few examples. Moreover, if EC is true – if it is, indeed,impossible for a subject to augment its PCE through ‘‘conceptlearning’’ – these concepts will never be part of M’s PCE. Thatwould be a rather significant epistemic limitation.

What’s true of rudimentary minds is true of more sophisti-cated ones as well. In general, a mind incapable of enlarging itsPCE would have its conceptual space limited to whateverconcepts can be constructed from its innate conceptualendowment, and, as Fodor says, ‘‘we have no guarantee thatthe concepts required to build true science are situated in thatspace’’ (1981a, p. 314). In fact, I think Fodor could go evenfurther to claim that it is virtually guaranteed that the conceptsrequired to build true science are not situated in that space.Consider the concepts of any sufficiently advanced science –concepts like ELECTRON, GENE, and PROTEIN. A subjectcould only have innate possession of these concepts in one oftwo ways. If concepts of this sort are complex, a subject couldhave innate access to them by having innate access to theirconstituents. If, however, these concepts are primitive, this willnot be possible, and it will have to be the concepts themselvesthat are possessed innately. This second possibility, thoughdefended at one time by Fodor himself, is almost universallyrecognized as being absurd. In general, the only way we have ofexplaining the existence of complex, seemingly designed bio-logical structures is by way of appeal to natural selection, but,

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as Sterelny (1989, p. 122) points out, there is no way that theconcepts of advanced science and technology could have beenselected for many millennia before they could have conferredany selective advantage upon their possessors. Having access tothe concept COMPUTER would not do you any good if yourprimary concern is surviving in the African savannah. But withthe appeal to natural selection taken away, the only explanationthat remains is luck, and luck is notoriously unlikely.

What is far more likely is the suggestion of Block (1986) andSterelny (1989). If the concepts of advanced science and tech-nology are innately encoded in our minds, then it is probablynot accurate to say that we got lucky. It is probably moreaccurate to say that the course of our scientific and techno-logical development was directed along lines pre-established byour psychological biases – that we discovered genes and in-vented computers because we happened to possess concepts likeGENE and COMPUTER as part of our innate conceptualendowment. Of course, this means that we would just as surelyhave been steered away from whatever course required con-cepts we do not possess innately. So, for every case in which weget lucky by having a QUARK just when we need something torepresent quarks, there is, no doubt, another case in which weget unlucky by lacking an X just where we need something torepresent xs. This, of course, is just another way of saying thatwe are conceptually constrained and therefore epistemicallybounded.

Having innate access to concepts like GENE and ELECTRON is rather absurd, but it is less absurd to suppose that it isnot the concepts themselves but their constituents that are in-nate. Thus, we could imagine that ELECTRON, for example,has some rather complex constituent structure along the lines ofNEGATIVELY CHARGED SUBATOMIC PARTICLE, andthat we possess ELECTRON innately in virtue of possessing itsconstituents innately. There are, however, a couple of problemswith this suggestion. First, definitions are scarce, and since weare supposing that a concept’s definition doubles as its struc-tural description, this means that probably very few conceptshave a constituent structure. Indeed, the definition of


ELECTRON that we have just proposed is almost certainlyincomplete, and any new definition is likely to be done in byfurther counterexamples. If the history of defining terms inphilosophy is any indication, we would probably never discoverthe necessary and sufficient conditions for being an electron,just as we have never discovered the necessary and sufficientconditions for being good, for being a person, or for knowingthat p. In general, it does not appear that very many wordshave definitions (and, therefore, that very many concepts have aconstituent structure), since very few attempts at defininganything – whether in philosophy, linguistics, or anywhere else– have been successful.13 But this makes it more likely that theconcepts of advanced science are primitives, and this takes usright back to the problem of explaining their biological genesis.

The absence of viable definitions is almost beside the point.As Antony points out, finding the constituents of concepts likeELECTRON is only half of the battle; we need also to ensurethat the primitive constituents of such concepts are ‘‘moreplausibly innate than the concepts constructed in terms ofthem’’ (2001, p. 208). However, concepts like NEGATIVELYCHARGED and ATOM do not seem to fit the bill. Conceptslike HAVING A MASS OF 9.109534 · 10)28 GRAMS, orHAVING A CHARGE OF 1.602 · 10)19 COULOMBS do noteven seem to be moving us in the right direction. They are, ifanything, less likely to be innate than the concept they aresupposed to be defining. In general, unless we can analyze all ofthe concepts of advanced science and technology into primitiveconcepts the possession of which could have conferred someselective advantage onto our prehistoric ancestors, we are stuckin the same boat as before. That is, we will have to accept thatthe presence of concepts like ELECTRON, GENE and the likein our innate conceptual endowment is just a fortuitous acci-dent, and what with fortuitous accidents being at the mercy offortune, it is more likely than not that we will be missing manyof the concepts we need.

So the stakes are high. Unless we can determine some way inwhich we can augment our PCEs as a result of experience, wewill have to accept that our conceptual capacity is biologically

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constrained and therefore incomplete. In what follows, I willshow that even if we accept the standard view and agree thatdefinitions express the structural description of the conceptsthey define, it will still be possible to show that one can aug-ment one’s PCE as a result of experience. Ultimately, I willshow that this can be done without limit.

4. DEFERENTIAL CONCEPTS: HOW TO GET SOMETHING FOR

NOTHING

It is clear that what is causing all of the problems for the tra-ditional account of concept acquisition is its reliance on defi-nitions.14 It is this reliance, together with the standard view thatdefinitions express the structural description of the conceptsthey define, that licenses EC. What is needed, then, is an ac-count of concept acquisition that does not require the media-tion of hypotheses concerning the definition of the conceptbeing acquired. That is just what I hope to provide in thissection.

Concept learning is the process that takes a subject from astate in which she does not possess some concept to a state inwhich she does. This means that before giving an account ofconcept learning, we require an account of concept possession –the end state of the process. I will follow Fodor in adopting hisinformation-theoretic account of concept possession in terms ofwhich possessing a concept is a matter of being in a certainnomic relation with the property the concept expresses (1998,121).15 Information-based semantic theories share a commit-ment to the idea that the basic relation between a symbol andthe property it expresses is that of carrying information, andthat carrying information is a matter of causal covariance be-tween ‘‘symbols … and things symbolized’’ (Fodor, 1990b, p.176). Imagine a madman whose malady is that he is forced toshout out the name of any object he happens to see (he yells‘‘dog’’ when he sees a dog, ‘‘tree’’ when he sees a tree, and soon). Now imagine that instead of being caused to tokenexpressions in English when encountering objects, he is causedto token expressions in ‘‘mentalese.’’ Instead of screaming


‘‘dog’’ when he sees a dog, he tokens some mental representa-tion DOG, perhaps even unconsciously. Since his mentalsymbol carries the information that a dog is near in just thesame way that smoke carries the information that a fire is near,it possesses at least the rudiments of representation. This is thefounding insight of informational semantics.

The phenomena of mislabeling and association in thoughtindicate that the informational relation cannot be all there is tomeaning. Sometimes – on a dark night, say – ourDOG-thoughts are caused not by dogs, but by unusually largecats. Sometimes our DOG-thoughts are caused not by dogs orcats, but (because of some associative connection between thetwo) by thoughts of cats. Even though DOG is caused by dog,cat and CAT-thought, even though it carries the information‘‘dog or cat or thought of cat’’, it still must represent theproperty of being a dog, rather than the property of being a cat,or a CAT-thought. This is where subtleties arise in the infor-mational account. Fodor’s own suggestion is to introduce thenotion of asymmetric dependence. To be precise, in order forsome mental symbol M to represent the property P it must be alaw that P causes M, and if there is any other law or lawsrelating a property R to M (where R„P), then the law linking Rto M must be asymmetrically dependent upon the law linking Pto M (Fodor, 1990a, 1997). So, my DOG symbol represents theproperty of being a dog because unusually large cats wouldn’tmake me token DOG but for the fact that dogs make me tokenDOG, and the converse does not hold. Likewise, the thoughtCAT sometimes makes me think DOG only because there is anindependent connection between the property of being a dogand my DOG-thoughts. Because these asymmetric dependen-cies hold, there is still a sense in which each DOG-thought iscausally dependent upon the property of being a dog, and weare thus able to preserve the idea that symbols represent theitems they are causally dependent upon.16

Since possessing a concept is a matter of being in a certainnomic relation to the property the concept expresses, and sinceit is totally implausible that the laws in question are basic, somemechanism will be needed to sustain the relation between a

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mental symbol and its denotation (Margolis, 1998, p. 352).Moreover, since the relationship between a concept and theexperiences that occasion it is, as a rule, non-arbitrary (we tendto acquire the concept F-NESS from the experience of xs thatare F), the sustaining mechanism will generally have to be, asFodor would say, ‘‘rational-causal’’ rather than ‘‘brute-causal’’(Fodor, 1997, p. 127). That is, concept acquisition will have tobe psychologically-mediated, but which psychological stateswill do the trick?

The information-theoretic account demands that a conceptbe nomologically locked to the objects that fall within itsextension. If a subject has a mental state that covaries withrobins and orioles, but not with penguins and ostriches, thesubject does not have a mental state that covaries with theproperty of being a bird, and thus does not possess the conceptBIRD. This means that, pace Cowie (1999, p. 132), entertaininghypotheses concerning a concept’s prototype probably will notbe sufficient for acquisition since such hypotheses probably willnot be sufficient for the establishment of the appropriatenomological relation. Hypotheses concerning the inferentialrole of a concept do not seem to be in much better shape. Twoconcepts can have similar (or even identical) inferential roleswhile nevertheless representing different properties. Worse still,even if there were a way to individuate concepts through theirinferential roles, it would probably require links to so manyother concepts that we would run the risk of claiming that asubject needs to possess every concept before possessing any.This does not help us in our battle against epistemic bound-edness, and it certainly does not constitute much of an alter-native to Fodor’s ‘‘mad-dog’’ nativism.

We know that hypotheses concerning the definition of theconcept being acquired are suitable sustaining mechanismsbecause the definition of a concept determines its extension (atleast relative to a context). This means that a subject can lock tothe property a concept expresses merely by virtue of knowingthe concept’s definition. If my mental symbol BACHELOR isnomically related to the property of being both a man andunmarried, it is, ipso facto, nomically related to the property of


being a bachelor (Cowie, 1999, p. 132). Of course, definitionsare of no use to us because we are looking for a case in whichacquiring a concept will allow us to increase our PCE, and wealready know that the classical view does not allow for this.What we need, then, is some class of sustaining mechanismsthat, like definitions, will determine the extension of the conceptbeing learned, but that, unlike definitions, will not require theprior possession of the concept’s constituents. In this vein, it isuseful to consider Fodor’s account of deferential concepts.

Fodor presents the case of the lay botanist who wishes toacquire the concept ELM (1995, pp. 34–38). On the informa-tional account, what he has to do is get his ELM thoughts tocovary with the property of being an elm. He could venture intothe woods and proceed inductively, but he need not bother.Since there already are properties in the world that covary withthe property of being an elm, all he needs to do is adopt a policyof thinking ELM whenever one of these properties signals thepresence of an elm. One such signal is the ELM thought of abotanist, but since these are not perceptible, he will have tosettle for a botanist’s ‘‘elm’’ utterance. So we have the followingcausal sequence. The property of being an elm causes the expertto token ELM, the expert’s tokening of ELM causes him to say‘‘elm’’, and the expert’s ‘‘elm’’ utterance causes our lay botanistto think ELM. Thus, adopting a policy of thinking ELMwhenever a botanist says ‘‘elm’’ will bring one into a nomicrelation with the property of being an elm. By deferring to anexpert, one can borrow the reference of an expert’s thought.17

Reference borrowing seems suspiciously easy, but severalfeatures of the informational account make its inclusionunavoidable. If, as Fodor says, ‘‘relations of nomic covariancebetween symbols and their denotations’’ are all that matter indetermining the content of a mental symbol, it would not makeany difference how the causal relation between a symbol and itsdenotation is mediated (1990a, 56 parentheses omitted). If it is alaw that the property of being a star causes a subject to enterthe state STAR, and if all other causes of STAR are asym-metrically dependent upon this relation, then the subject’sSTAR state represents the property of being a star – full stop.

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Whenever, wherever and however this relation obtains, repre-sentation is established. Thus, it does not matter whether thesubject’s relation to the property of being a star is mediated bythe theory that stars are holes in the heavenly firmament, or bythe theory that stars are giant balls of gas. It does not evenmatter whether the theory sustaining the covariation is some-one else’s. In informational semantics, mediation does notmatter.

Since routes of causal access to a property are semanticallyirrelevant, informational semantics is non-cognitivist aboutconcept possession (Fodor, 1997, p. 124).18 Unlike the classicalview in terms of which possessing a concept means knowing theconcept’s definition, the information-theoretic account makesno epistemic demands upon the subject whatsoever. There isnothing – no definition, no prototypical structure, no func-tional role – that a subject has to know in order to possess aconcept. A subject may become nomologically locked to aproperty in virtue of entertaining a true theory, a false theory,or no theory at all. This is significant because definitions havetraditionally been the favorite epistemic criteria for conceptpossession. If we give up on epistemic criteria, we will have oneless reason for keeping definitions around.

What is perhaps most significant is that the causal andinformation-bearing relations are transitive.19 Consider Dre-tske’s nice illustration of this point.

The acoustic waves emanating from a radio speaker carry informationabout what is happening in the broadcast booth because they carry accurateinformation about what is happening in the audio circuit of the receiver;these events, in turn, carry information about the modulation of the elec-tromagnetic signal arriving at the antenna; and the latter carries informationabout the manner in which the microphone diaphragm (in the broadcastingstudio) is vibrating. The mircophone’s behavior, in turn, carries informationabout what the announcer is saying (1981, 58).

The ‘‘acoustic waves emanating from a radio speaker’’ carryinformation ‘‘about what the announcer is saying’’ in the studiobecause the intervening apparatus realizes a suitable sustainingmechanism for modulating variations in the former with vari-ations in the latter. Likewise, the lay botanist’s ELM-thoughts


carry the information that an elm is near because his policy ofhaving his thoughts covary with those of an expert realizes asuitable sustaining mechanism for modulating his thoughtswith instantiations of the property. If the expert’s ‘‘elm’’utterance carries the information that an elm is near, thenanything that is causally dependent upon an expert’s ‘‘elm’’utterance will as well.

Of course, ELM-thoughts that are actually caused by an ex-pert’s ‘‘elm’’ utterance will constitute a vanishing minority of thetotal. In fact, for most of us none of our ELM-thoughts will becaused in this way. This, however, is irrelevant. On Fodor’s ac-count, all that matters is that all of the laws linking ELM-thoughts with non-elm causes are asymmetrically dependentupon the law linking such thoughts with the property of being anelm. As long as all of one’s actual ELM-thoughts are asymmet-rically dependent upon the fact that one would think ELM if onewere ever to hear a botanist say ‘‘here’s an elm’’, one’s thoughtwill have the proper content. Representational relations, likenomic relations generally, depend upon which counterfactualshold true in a given case (Fodor, 1995, p. 37). It’s a law that salt iswater-soluble whether or not any sample of salt is ever actuallydissolved in water. Likewise, someone who adopts the policy ofthinking ELM whenever an expert does represents the propertyof being an elm whether or not any of his ELM-thoughts areactually caused by the ‘‘elm’’ utterances of a botanist.

Here is the payoff. If, as Fodor suggests, deferential inten-tions are suitable sustaining mechanisms for laws relating amental state to the property it represents, adopting a policy toabide by a certain deferential intention will be sufficient forconcept acquisition. However, deferential intentions, unlikehypotheses concerning the definition of a concept, do not re-quire the prior possession of the constituents of the conceptbeing learned, and thus falsify EC. Consider the deferentialintention involved in ELM acquisition.

DI: I will think ELM whenever a botanist says ‘‘elm’’.

It is true that some rather sophisticated cognitive capacities arerequired in order to formulate and abide by such an intention,

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but it is equally clear that the capacity to entertain the con-stituents of the concept being acquired is not among them. Thefact that the mental symbol ELM occurs in the formulation ofsuch an intention is, admittedly, a little misleading. It makes itseem as though one does, in fact, need to have prior access tothe very concept being learned in order to form such anintention, but this is merely an artifact of our presentation. Anymental symbol – ELM, BEECH, or even DOG – that isbrought into the appropriate nomic relation with the propertyof being an elm through the sustaining mechanism provided bya deferential intention will, ipso facto, represent elms. It is thedeferential intention that gives the symbol meaning, so itspresence in the intention is not as a concept, but merely as anarbitrarily chosen mental symbol. As long as one has access to apre-existing stock of such symbols, and as long as one has thecapacity to adopt policies with regard to one’s own thoughts,deferential acquisition will provide us with a case that falsifiesEC. If, however, you are uncomfortable with the idea that wehave a stock on uninterpreted mental symbols lying around justwaiting to be used in the formulation of deferential intentions,read DI as the intention to think CAUSE OF ‘‘ELM’’UTTERANCE whenever a botanist says ‘‘elm’’. This serves thesame purpose as deferential intentions involving ELM, butunlike the latter it makes it perfectly clear that prior possessionof the constituents of ELM is not required.

Deferential intentions need not be adopted only with regardto living, breathing experts. If we can treat ‘‘experts as instru-ments’’, then surely we can treat instruments as instruments(Fodor, 1995, p. 36 italics omitted). Many scientific instrumentsfunction by creating an environment in which a law will beinstantiated linking a property we cannot detect to a propertywe can.20 It is too difficult (or too unpleasant) to directly per-ceive the acidity of a solution, so we defer to litmus paper andreplace the task of determining whether or not the solution isacidic with the task of determining whether or not the litmuspaper turns red (Fodor, 1995, p. 35). Since the redness of thelitmus paper is a signal that the solution in which it is sub-merged is acidic, tokening ACID whenever the paper turns red


will cause us to token ACID whenever a solution is acidic.Again, as long as the asymmetrical dependencies hold, this willmean that our ACID thoughts will represent the property ofbeing an acid, and, again, possession of the constituents ofACID is not required.

Like the case of deferring to experts, the case of deferring toscientific instruments is not at all unusual. In general, a scien-tific instrument is designed to instantiate a law linking aproperty we cannot detect to a property we can. It is becausethere are such laws as those relating the height of mercury in athermometer to the ambient temperature, the image on the lensof a telescope to the visible features of a distant object, theaudible signal of a Geiger counter to the presence of radiation,and the path of liquid droplets in a cloud chamber to thepresence of some or other ionizing particle that we are able toacquire concepts expressing unobservable properties at all. Ineach case, representation of an unobservable is made possibleby the fact that the scientific instrument allows us to replace thetask of locking to an unobservable property with the task oflocking to some observable signal of that property.

In general, deferential acquisition is the process of formu-lating an intention to token a specific mental symbol wheneversome observable signal is instantiated. If there is some propertyS (the tokening of a botanist’s ‘‘elm’’ utterance, the redness oflitmus paper, the height of mercury in a thermometer, etc.) thatfunctions as a signal of some other property P (elmhood,acidity, temperature, etc.), then in order to represent theproperty P one need only adopt a policy to have one’s thoughtscovary with S. Since a signal of P is, by definition, any propertythat causally covaries with P, it will certainly be coextensivewith P. This means that the task of determining the extension ofP can be replaced with the indirect task of determining theextension of S, P’s signal. Deferential acquisition will thus re-quire the prior possession of all concepts required to determinethe extension of S, as well as the ability to represent and adoptpolicies with regard to one’s own thoughts. Acquiring ACIDdeferentially, for example, will require prior possession ofconcepts like RED, and LITMUS PAPER. What it would not

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require, however, is the prior possession of the constituents ofthe concepts being acquired. After all, definitions were thoughtto be necessary only because concept acquisition requires someway of determining the extension of the concept being acquired,and in deferential acquisition that job is done by the nomicconnection existing between a property and its signal. So, byco-opting or borrowing the reference of some signal of P onecan acquire a concept representing P without formulatinghypotheses that contain the constituents of the concept beingacquired. This, of course, means that the deferential acquisitionof a concept will result in the augmentation of a subject’s PCE,and if this is true, EC is not.

Notice that deferential acquisition evenprovides an account ofhowonemight acquire a primitive concept. Consider the case of aman with red-green colorblindness (or, if you prefer, total col-orblindness) who depends on his wife to tell him such things aswhen to stop at traffic lights, when his tie clashes with his pants,and so on. Let us just suppose that he has no L- orM-cones at allso there would not even be a possibility of him having uncon-scious RED or GREEN thoughts. Clearly, on the information-theoretic account he cannot possess RED or GREEN since hecannot possibly have an internal state covarying with either theproperty of being red or the property of being green. When wesupplement the informational account with Fodor’s account ofdeferential acquisition, however, we see that it is quite simple forthis man to acquire RED, which is, by hypothesis, a primitiveconcept. All he has to do is adopt a policy of bringing his thoughtinto line with his wife’s ‘‘red’’ utterances. Since this signal is likelyto be nomologically locked to the property of being red, his ownthought will be as well. It is true that learning RED in this waywill result in having the concept without its associated qualia, butthis, of course,makes nodifference on the informational account.Routes of causal access, remember, are semantically irrelevant.Of course, since a subject’s PCE is defined as the closure of hisprimitive concepts under the rules of complex concept formationhe has available, learning a primitive concept from experiencedirectly results in the augmentation of a subject’s PCE. Again,this spells trouble for EC.


If access to the constituents of a concept is not required inorder to acquire a concept deferentially, then EC is invalid, andthis means that it is possible to augment one’s PCE after all.This, in turn, means that our conceptual capacity is not con-strained by our innate conceptual endowment, and to the extentthat Fodor’s argument for epistemic boundedness depends onupon this claim, it too is invalidated. But we were after largergame. We were intending to demonstrate not only that a sub-ject’s PCE can be augmented as a result of experience, but thatit can augmented without limit. Consider, then, what our ac-count of deferential acquisition has shown. If there is anyproperty F that we are unable to represent directly (and,therefore, any concept C (expressing F) that we are unable topossess directly), we can acquire the ability to represent F (andthe concept C) as long as (a) there is a law linking the instan-tiation of F to the instantiation of some other property G, (b)we can detect G, and (c) we can adopt a policy to bring ourthoughts into correspondence with G. Thus, assuming that weare the sorts of creatures for which (c) holds, the only way inwhich there could be a concept that is beyond our grasp is ifthere were some property for which (a) and (b) did not hold.That is, there would have to be some property that has nohumanly detectable signal – not even when mediated by the bestpossible scientific instruments, not even in the distant future. Ifthere were such a property, we would be unable to represent itbecause we would be unable to lock onto it with our unaidedperceptual factulties, and because there would be no instrumentlinking the undetectable property to some detectable signal.Thus, we would be unable to acquire it either classically ordeferentially. Notice, however, that this limitation has nothingto do with our endogenous psychological constitution, but ra-ther with the absence of the appropriate instrument instanti-ating the appropriate law. That is, what is defective is not usbut the world. It is the world that is missing the appropriatelaw, the appropriate instrument. This is obvious, because ifthere were such a law, if there were such an instrument, wewould be able to acquire the concept and our limitation woulddisappear. This, I submit, is the mark of an exogenous rather

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than an endogenous limitation, and Fodor’s argument was onlythat our conceptual capacity is endogenously constrained.

Note what we have shown. Any mind that (a) is capable ofadopting policies with regard to its own thoughts, (b) has somepre-existing stock of mental symbols on hand to adopt policieswith regard to, and (c) has the capacity to fashion instrumentsthat will bring a detectable signal into nomic relation with anundetectable property, will be without endogenous psycholog-ical constraints. I suppose it is an empirical issue whether or notour minds fit this description. Indeed, Fodor once argued thatwe are not able to adopt policies with regard to our thoughts,only with regard to our words (Fodor, 1991, p. 285–286).21

Perhaps this is true. Perhaps it is also true that we do not haveaccess to some preexisting stock of mental symbols that we arecapable of calling upon in deferential acquisition. These are allempirical issues, but the claim behind Fodor’s argument forepistemic boundedness, you will remember, was not empirical.Fodor defended AP on conceptual grounds. He argued that theexistence of psychological structure is inconsistent with theuniversality of thought, and therefore that the idea of an epi-stemically unbounded mind is ‘‘virtually incoherent’’ (1983,121). But we have just shown that any mind that satisfiesconditions (a)–(c) will be without endogenous constraints andtherefore (probably) epistemically unbounded. Moreover, (a),(b), and (c) express structural features that a mind must have inorder to be without endogenous constraints on its conceptualcapacity. That is, it is not despite, but because of its psycho-logical organization that such a mind is unbounded. In otherwords, AP is false.

Objections

Here are a few objections to my argument, in order ofincreasing severity.

Objection 1. One might object that my argument does notactually constitute a rebuttal of Fodor’s because though wehave shown that it is possible to have a mental state with anycontent whatsoever, this does not constitute a demonstration of


the claim that it is possible to possess any concept whatsoever.Concepts, as Fodor points out (1990a, p. 114), are individuatedby their modes of presentation – that is, syntactically. Thus, onthe information-theoretic account, H2O and WATER have thesame content, but this does not entail that they are the sameconcept. The former is obviously complex (its constituents in-clude HYDROGEN and OXYGEN), but the latter might notbe. So, acquiring the ability to represent H2O by deferring to achemist’s ‘‘H2O’’ utterance will allow one to acquire a conceptwith the same content, but not necessarily the same concept.What is more, since concepts are individuated by their con-stituent structure, one cannot have the concept H2O unless onepossesses its constituents – HYDROGEN and OXYGEN. Butif concepts are individuated by their constituent structure, thenone must have the constituents of a concept in order to possessthe concept, and if this is true, then it looks like we cannotaugment our PCE after all.

Reply. It is true that concepts have to be individuated bytheir constituent structure since we need a way of explainingwhy synonymous concepts (like H2O and WATER) have dif-ferent computational roles, and since computational role su-pervenes on syntax. However, this only shows that whatmatters in arguments concerning epistemic unboundedness isrepresentational capacity rather than conceptual capacitystrictly construed. Let us admit that acquiring the ability torepresent H2O by deferring to the chemist does not actuallyresult in one having the concept H2O, but rather some otherconcept with the same content – WATER, say. From an epi-stemic point of view, this does not seem to make any difference.As long as each property can be represented, and as long as therelations between properties can be represented as well, the neteffect will be the same. It does not matter to the chemist whe-ther it is true by definition that water contains hydrogen, ormerely as a result of physical necessity. Either way it is true, andnecessarily so.

Objection 2. We want it to be the case the when we establish anomic connection between our thoughts and a signal of someproperty it is the property that we are representing rather than

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the signal. However, when we adopt a policy to think QUARKwhenever Murray Gell-Mann says ‘‘quark’’ (or whenever ourquark detector flashes red, or whatever) our thought covarieswith the verbal utterance as well as with the property. How,then, can we be sure that our QUARK thoughts represent theproperty of being a quark rather than the property of being aquark utterance (or a flashing red signal, or whatever)?

Reply. Fortunately, Fodor has already responded to a sim-ilar objection directed against his semantics, and I think muchof what he says in his response can be applied to our own case.Consider the following objection to the informational theory ofcontent. According to this theory the thought COW representscows because it is a law that cows cause COW tokens. How-ever, it is also a law that retinal projections of cows cause COWtokens, so why does not COW represent retinal projections ofcows instead of real live cows? Fodor’s reply is that given since‘‘cows are mapped one-many onto their proximal projections,the mechanisms of perception. . . must map the proximal pro-jections many-one onto tokenings of COW’’ (1990a, 109). Ahead on view, a bird’s eye view, a view from below, from adistance, from any number of different angles and in anynumber of different lighting conditions all eventuate in thetokening of COW. When we include all of those tokenings thatare mediated by theory, such as when a ‘‘mere ripple in cow-infested waters’’ causes us to token COW, it is clear that theonly way of specifying all of the different proximal projectionscows can have upon our retinas will be by means of an opendisjunction (Fodor, 1990a, p. 109). In other words, there isnothing that all of the retinal projections of cows have incommon other than the fact that they are caused by cows.Assuming, with Fodor, that open disjunctions are not the sortof things that can figure into nomic relations, the only lawcontrolling COW tokenings will be the one that relates thesetokenings to actual cows. Thus, only actual cows will determinethe content of COW.

Fodor’s solution to the problem of retinal projections forcesus to add the following stipulation. We can acquire a conceptdeferentially only if our deferential intention is locked to a


number of different signals of the property the concept ex-presses. Thus, if we were to think QUARK when and onlywhen we detected a Gell-Mann-‘‘quark’’-utterenace, the con-tent of our thought would be, at the very least, indeterminate. Itmight represent the property of being a quark or it mightrepresent the property of being a ‘‘quark’’ utterance. If, how-ever, our QUARK thoughts were controlled not merely by‘‘quark’’ utterances, but also by a number of different signals,then, as in the COW case, the only thing that would be com-mon to all of the signals controlling our QUARK thoughtswould be that they are all caused by quarks. After all, quarkdetectors can come in any number of different varieties (quarkscould have been called ‘‘schmarks’’), and that means that ourconnection to the property could be mediated by any number ofdistinct and heterogenous signals. If this were true, then theonly law in the offing would be the one connecting the propertyof being a quark to the property of being a QUARK thought,and everything would be as it should be. That this is true inactual cases of deferential acquisition should be pretty clear. Ifyour radio telescope beeps when and only when your opticaltelescope signals the image of a galaxy, there is pretty goodevidence that the image and the beep have the same cause. So itis the robustness of deferential intentions that allow ourthoughts to go beyond a signal in order to represent itsunderlying cause.

Objection 3.22 Let us assume that Fodor’s theory gives us anaccount of representation. It does not follow that his account istherefore a theory of concepts and concept possession. Afterall, representation is cheap – thermometers and thermostatsrepresent the temperature, but we would not say, on that basis,that they therefore have the concept TEMPERATURE, or20 �C, or whatever. Concepts are not simply representationalstates, they are representational states that occur as constitu-ents of propositional attitudes. Propositional attitudes, in turn,are computational relations to syntactically structured internalrepresentations. So unless a representational state enters intothe appropriate computational relations with other represen-tations – those defined by a satisfactory decision theory,

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and a satisfactory theory of inference – they do not count asconcepts (Fodor, 1990a, p. 130). A computationally isolatedrepresentational state is no more a concept than is the height ofmercury in a thermometer. As Fodor says, it might turn outthat ‘‘the intentional is a big superset of the psychological’’and if this is the case, the mere demonstration that we arecapable of representing any property falls short of what isneeded in order to establish epistemic unboundedness (1990a,130). Epistemic unboundedness is a thesis about the beliefs wecan and cannot have, so unless the representational states ac-quired by means of deferring to experts and scientific instru-ments can be shown to figure into the computational statesdefinitive of belief, they will be irrelevant to arguments con-cerning unboundedness.

Reply. Though I suppose it is technically an empirical issue,I see no reason why a mental state that is brought intocovariance with some property through deferential acquisitioncould not also occur as a constituent of propositional attitudeslike belief. After all, the way one acquires a deferential conceptis by adopting an intention to think some thought whenever agiven signal is detected, and intentions are surely propositionalattitudes. Perhaps it is best to consider a case that is as close toreal life as possible, so let us return to the example of the color-blind man who defers to his wife’s color judgments. It is clear,at least, that his color concepts can play the appropriate com-putational role in his mental economy. If his wife tells him thatthe traffic light is red, he will likely stop his car, but in order forthis to happen his deferentially acquired RED concept has gotto enter into the appropriate computational relations with therest of his beliefs and desires. It is only because he believes thatrunning reds is against the law, and desires not to break the lawthat he decides to bring his car to a stop in front of the light.Indeed, we have been speaking of concept acquisition, but thecontent of the man’s deferentially acquired RED thought isreally closer to that of a belief. If he thinks RED whenever hiswife says ‘‘red’’ and if his wife says ‘‘red’’ whenever the rednessis locally instantiated, then his RED thought actually carriesthe information that redness is locally instantiated. So it would


appear that what is acquired in ‘‘concept acquisition’’ really hasthe content of a belief – it has the force of an assertion – andthis makes it easier to suppose that it would enter into thecomputational relations characteristic of belief.

Objection 4. If we accept that concepts can be acquireddeferentially in the ways that have been described, there aresome rather absurd consequences. One may, for example, ac-quire the concept ELM without knowing anything about whatelms are. As long as one adopts the policy of having one’s ELMthoughts depend upon the ELM thoughts of an expert, oneneed not know anything specific about the properties of elms.One need not know that elms are a type of tree, a type of livingthing, or even a type of physical thing. But what would such aconcept be? What would one’s concept represent the elm asbeing if it does not represent it as being a tree, a living thing, oreven a physical object?

Reply.23 I am afraid this consequence really does followfrom my argument, but this is only because it follows from anyinformation-based semantic theory. As was said earlier, infor-mation based semantic theories are non-cognitivist – they makeno epistemic demands upon a subject whatsoever. This means,inter alia, that there is nothing a subject has to believe, noinferences he has to accept, in order to possess the conceptELM – or any other concept, for that matter (Fodor, 1995, p.37). As we have said, all that is required is that the appropriatenomic relation obtain between a concept and the property itexpresses. As long as this relation obtains, the subject possessesthe concept. If an informational semanticist is asked what ex-actly one’s deferentially acquired concept of, say, an elm is,24 hecan only give the Wittgensteinian reply. Of that which wecannot speak, we must remain silent.

NOTES

1 The image of the colored glass is from the discussion of Aquinas inGeach (1961). See also Fodor (1983, 125 footnote 42).

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2 Of course, Fodor is echoing Marx’s emendation of Hegel. Marx saidthat everything in history occurs twice, the first time as tragedy, the secondtime as farce.3 This phrase, due to Loewer and Rey (1991), is shorthand for the com-plex causal relationship existing between a mental state and the property itrepresents. I will be filling in some of the details later.4 I have cobbled this argument together from various places. See Fodor(1975, Chapter 2; 1981a, pp. 314–315; 1983, pp. 120–126). For what appearsto be a more extreme argument for boundedness, see (Fodor 1997, Chapter6) in which Fodor argues that many of what we take to be mind-indepen-dent properties like being a doorknob are in fact mind-dependent.5 See also (Fodor, 1975, p. 37) and (Fodor, 1981a, pp. 268–269) forroughly equivalent treatments of non-demonstrative and inductive infer-ence.6 This account of non-demonstrative inference is basically an abridgedversion of Rey’s (1997, pp. 214–216). See also Thagard (1988).7 I will follow Fodor by using expressions in caps to refer to concepts andsentences in the language of thought. I will use italics to refer to propertiesand expressions in inverted commas to refer to expressions in natural lan-guage. Thus CAT refers to the concept, cat to the property, and ‘‘cat’’ to theword. Sometimes, for ease of presentation, I will use expressions in naturallanguage to indicate expressions in ‘‘mentalese’’ when the context makesclear what is intended.8 See Fodor (1981a, p. 277) and (1981a, p. 314) where he employs aconcept similar to the notion of an organism’s PCE—namely, the idea of a‘‘space of concepts available-in-principle.’’9 See Fodor (1975, Chapter 2); (1981a, p. 277, 314; 1983, p. 125).

10 See also Quine (1980, pp. 20–21) in which Kant’s description of ana-lyticity is somewhat unfairly described as ‘‘metaphorical.’’11 Strictly speaking, a subject may be able to increase his PCE if he is ableto acquire new means of constructing complex concepts from primitives.Fodor (1980) provides arguments similar to those concerning concepts forwhy this is not possible. In order to learn a new rule of formation one needsto entertain hypotheses with the same expressive power as the rule one islearning. This, of course, means that one must have access to the rule priorto learning it.12 See Block’s (1986) account of what he call’s ‘‘Fodor’s Paradox.’’‘‘Fodor’s Paradox’’ is the argument that most of our lexical concepts mustbe innate and differs from the argument for the endogenous conceptuallimitations only in that it adds the premise that there is no analytic/syntheticdistinction.13 For a few polemics against definitions, see Fodor, et al. (1980) as well asFodor (1981a, 1997).


14 Indeed, most people who object to Fodor’s nativistic conclusions do soby rejecting the thesis that the acquisition of concepts is mediated byhypotheses concerning the definition of the concept being learned. See,for example, Block (1986), Sterelny (1989), Margolis (1998), and Cowie(1999).15 See Fodor (1987, 1990a, 1997) for an elaboration of this view. Fodordefends the information-theoretic view only for concepts that expressproperties, and is comfortable with the idea that the logical terms derivetheir meaning from the causal role they occupy in the minds of their pos-sessors (1990a, 111). There is also some indication that he would endorse acausal-chain theory of proper names (Cain, 2002 p.116). Since concepts thatexpress properties are the most relevant to Fodor’s argument for epistemicboundedness, I will be focusing on these.16 To be sure, there are problems that remain even after the notion ofaymmetric dependence is introduced. See, for example Adams and Aizawa(1994), as well as Fodor’s replies to objections in Fodor (1990a, 1991).17 The term ‘‘reference-borrowing’’ is due to Devitt (1981).18 See also Fodor (1995, pp. 37–38).19 The transitivity of the information-carrying relation, no doubt, derivesfrom the transitivity of causal relations, and perhaps even from what Fodorrefers to as the ‘‘fairly-transitive’’ reliably causally covaries with relation(Fodor, 1987, p. 119). If Fodor is right about the transitivity of the ‘‘islawfully connected to’’ relation, then the transitivity of the information-carrying relation follows directly from the former, and there is no need toindependently stipulate Dretske’s so-called ‘‘Xerox principle’’ (Dretske,1981, pp. 57–58).20 See Fodor’s information-theoretic treatment of concepts expressingunobservable properties in Fodor (1987).21 Fodor argues this in reply to Loar (1991).22 This objection is inspired by Fodor (1990a, p. 130).23 See Fodor (1995, pp. 37–38) where this reply is made to a similar sort ofobjection.24 See Fodor (1995, p. 37) where this sort of question is considered andrejected.

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Epistemic Boundedness and The Universality of Thought

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