Excessos e Exceções - o clip

O livro vem a tona no dia 5 de outubro nas serras gauchas. Estava na hora de fazer um videpclip sobre ele. Fizemos duas tomadas no domingo passado do que chamei "Matéria Primadonna (ou Excessos e Exceções, o clip)", a versão A e a versão B.
Agora pergunto ao público em geral qual é a melhor versão, A ou B? Vou escolher entre as duas em duas semanas de acordo com a votação nos blogs - como votas?
(A) http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=aO00hFuIkpc
(B) http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=LFTGObvkxjI
hehehe

Pronto? como 'leaves of grass'

Parece que no dia 5 de outubro vai estar pronto o Excessos e Exceções. Ainda não sei de que cor ele vai ser (quero que seja cinza) e parece que nem vou ter acesso às provas. Lanço a sorte e fico mordendo vegetais crus. Lá pelas tantas digo que os excessos nunca ficam prontos - gosto dessa idéia e me dá vontade de fazer um pequeno filme sobre ela, com as imagens que eu queria fazer para a capa do livro. Vou tentar fazer um lançamento em Porto Alegre, no sábado depois do lançamento de Canela e de ir para Buenos Aires. E depois vou lançar ele em alguns outros lugares - em Salvador no ano que vem, talvez na mesma época do colóquio de metafísica de Natal, do qual eu estou tentando me aproximar. Eu estou querendo um idílio com esse livro.

Buenos Aires: intencionalidade física e normatividade

1. I take part of the endeavour of the Investigations to be that of carrying out a thorough critique of immediacy in the various forms it appears in most of the available conceptions of language and thought. Appeals to immediacy are often appeals to what is ready-made: something that is barely present to the mind independently of what else is there. What is immediately apprehended is what is inserted amid our thoughts without being affected by any of the rest of them. So, the idea that sensations can be recognized as such – as internal episodes of a given character – without appeal to any other thought occurrence is encouraged by a license for something to be present in thought while standing in the shoulders of no other content. Likewise, the idea that a rule can be apprehended solely by looking at its examples is possible only if it makes sense to take something like attention as indifferent to any further elements within a landscape of thoughts. Immediacy is what lacks in connection – what stands alone; content that runs in its own alley independently of the surroundings. At least part of a suspicion against the postulation of immediate contents is based on arguments that make explicit the connections between each thought and its place within a structured landscape of thought. The suspicion is that much else has to be present in order for thoughts to get off the ground.

The idea that we entertain immediate contents runs indeed often together with the conception that at least some of our contents can be individuated and identified without any appeal to any other. Immediacy is related to the idea that contents can come in an atomistic form: an atom of content subsist on its own. Rejection of immediacy pushes us in a direction allowing for semantic (and other) interconnections between thought items: thoughts are not isolatable items like pieces in a mosaic but rather display a measure of inter-animation. The contrast of thoughts conceived as isolated atoms on the one hand and the several varieties (and degrees) of thought holism invokes modal features. Consider immediacy – and its accompanying measure of content atomism – is considering the possibility of contents to affect each other. A content that is immediately received (say, by one’s senses) is such that none of our other capacities could affect it. The immediate has some family resemblance to what is categorical – (barely) present and unaffected by any other simultaneous track of thought. Here is an interesting common feature between what is categorical and what is immediate: both seem to be somehow related to what is purely actual; as opposed to what harbours potentialities. The purely actual is something that doesn’t depend on its surroundings: it’s completely (or barely) there independently of what else is around. Contrast the idea of sensorial experience as pure receptivity – as given – to a conception of experience as requiring a contribution of conceptual capacities in such a way that no deliverance of the senses can take place unless such capacities are present. In the second case, it is no longer an actual, ready-made, categorical content inserted into our thought but rather a product of a conjunction of powers. The idea of a given – or of immediately received contents – is that of a receptivity is exercised through the assimilation of a categorical, ready-made content where what is received can no longer be affected by whatever else is present in thought. By contrast, receptivity could be understood in terms devoid of any categorical element: as a pure power that once put together with other (conceptual) capacities could entail a content. In that picture, the deliverances of the senses would be entangled with what else is known and believed: the senses would capture no more than a power, a potentiality – the senses are modally connected to what is present in thought. Immediate content, on the other hand, is received in an actual form; this is what makes it indifferent to whatever else is maintained.

The dispute concerning immediate, given content within the mind can be viewed as a special case of a greater dispute concerning categorical and dispositional properties – and, in general, the actual and the potential. Thought – as much as it occurs within normative, rule-governed states – deals in modalities. An ontology of thought is an ontology of dispositions: an ontology of states that are powers. Clearly, powers of a special sort – their normative character alone make them special. However, thoughts belong among the powers – among the states that can scarcely understood without an appeal to possibilia. Adopting a non-atomistic conception of thought – where each item cannot be taken as distinct and individuated and identified with no reference to the others – is enough to sense the demand for a measure of modal inter-animation. Thoughts are empowered by other thoughts and, in their turn, make other thoughts active. In this work, I would like to explore this modal feature of the ontology of thoughts.

2. Thought moves within a space; a logical space against what contents can be recognized, identified, individuated. That logical space is a background against which each content can play its roles. That space can be considered in modal terms and we can appeal to an ontology of thought contents that take them to be non-actual states. An element of such an ontology for thought can be found in the idea that thoughts are (among other things) powers. George Molnar (2003), in his attempt to characterize powers without appeal to elements akin to the tradition of considering disposition in terms of its manifestations, draws a parallel between Brentano’s characterization of intentionality and the capacity of powers in general to be directed towards something – what he calls Physical Intentionality. Physical intentionality – that he takes as the mark of powers – can be understood in terms of the four-fold characterization below:

i. It is directed to something beyond itself; in the case of thought, is directedness towards something beyond itself takes place in the usual sense of being about something beyond itself. The underlying elements of thought, that cannot be said to be about anything for they are not normative states, can still be said to be directed towards something else.

ii. It could be directed towards something nonexistent. Thought could be about something that doesn’t exist. As something could be soluble in a non-available solvent, we can have conceptual capacities directed towards what never happens to be presented to our thoughts.

iii. It is disposed towards exemplars and prototypes rather than specific or singular items. The case of conceptual capacities for experience illustrates this feature. But also our bodily dispositions can be said to be to some extent indifferent to some specifics while responsive to some general dimensions of surrounding objects.

iv. It is sensitive to the way the intended item is presented. This is a feature not only of what responds to modes of presentation but also of nonnormative states that respond to shape, colour, doses or whatever can vary with the way the intended item is presented.

So, for instance, a bee seeks a flower no matter its shape or colour – as we conceive of a man independently of his height. A bee seeks a specific presentation of a flower, a flower pill could contain all that it needs but it would still not go for it. Assuming a bee has no thought contents, it follows a physical intentionality out of its inclinations. No matter how convinced we are by attempts to understand intentionality in terms of proper functions, we can draw the conclusion that inclinations are themselves intentional. They cannot be understood themselves as categorical – they are dispositional in character and, if the mark of a power is physical intentionality, intentionality can be taken to be present already within inclinations – concept acquisition introduces normativity in a picture that is already intentional.

Consider the pupil of the famous example of Wittgenstein’s Investigations (PU, I, §185) can be said to have a particular intentional inclination at each stage of the process of learning how to follow the rule “+2”. The pupil’s behaviour can be seen as a product of a systematic error due to having seen the examples given as cases of something like “+4 when the sequence is greater than 1000”. This can be described as an intentional inclination of the pupil. The pupil responds to the inclination in the duration of the acquisition of the rule – and possibly forever. Wittgenstein acknowledges that there could be fully articulated (mistaken) intentional items by saying that there is no way to distinguish a systematic from a non-systematic error in a pupil. Inclinations don’t have to be seen as outside the scope of the intentional as a categorical raw material for conceptuality, they could be taken as being as intentional as the rule that in the expected end of the process the pupil will supposedly entertain. The important difference – between inclination-based and rule-governed action – is then not a question of intentionality, as both rules and inclinations satisfy the Brentano-Molnar conditions for physical intentionality. The difference is one of normativity: what is inculcated in the process of learning to follow a rule. That learning takes place in a background of modal inclinations. (Physical) intentionality can therefore be seen as being there from the beginning.

3. Thoughts have a dimension of physical intentionality. Thought contents are dispositional ingredients to produce other thought contents. An understanding of content in terms of its inferential powers – an inferentialist take – makes visible how there is no need to postulate categorical elements within a landscape of thoughts: inference tickets don’t need to be considered as taking us to a categorical state. If contents are understood in terms of their power of infer, their inferentiability, we can understand thoughts in dispositionalist terms: they are powers that engender further powers. It is as if thoughts are more like bus routes than like bus stops. Representations would make thought contents directed to a categorical state while thinking of thought in terms of its inferentiabilities contrasts with the image where it is first seen in terms of what it is about. Inferentialism can be seen as a form of pan-dispositionalism about the mind – there is no content that cannot be seen as an inference ticket. That is, contents are about leading somewhere else that could be another content, another ticket somewhere else. As far as thoughts are concerned, to use a metaphor abused by a debate concerning the ubiquitous character of dispositional properties, thoughts are always packing and never travelling.

The insistence on inferentiability as power doesn’t entail that a thought content has to be taken as a bundle of inferentiabilities (of powers) but what it is about cannot be brought to view without the bundle. Thoughts are in dispositional relation one to the other and the elements in common with physical intentionality can be brought to view in the following 1-2 to 3 inference:

1. Snow is white

2. There is snow in this landscape

3. There is something white in this landscape

Here, i. we understand 1 in terms of its power, among others, to infer 3 on the presence of 2. ii. In the absence of 2, 1 would still be directed towards 3 – along with other powers it has – while not being part of the inference (unmanifested powers are therefore somehow actual). iii. Surely, 2 is not more than a prototype as it can be presented in many forms – for example, by testimony, by perception, by inference – and what matters is that it can be conveyed in terms of 2. Finally, iv. one has to recognize the snow in order to conclude, from 1, something like 3; which is not possible if snow is presented in a very different format as for example, filling pink pills. In that case, the power of 1 would also remain unmanifested.

Full-fledged thoughts are interpretable and interpretation makes them recognizable as thought. We acquire new powers when we acquire the all-entwined capacities to use and recognize concepts – conceptual inculcation affects our affordances, our capacities to be active. Concepts make us respond to the world in ways that contrasts with our inclinations and provide an environment rendered fixed by assuming that some powers are not present. So, the concept of red is acquired together with the assumption that often the light conditions are going to remain the same – and no further power will intrude this artificially limited set-up. Concepts introduce lab-like limitations in our environment and this is part of our activity of focusing on parts of the integrated whole that compose the world: the contribution of our sovereignty is to fix some modal connections in the world by rendering some further powers sterile. The introduction of fixity – of ceteris paribus scenarios – is arguably not an exclusivity of conceptual activity (and of our sovereignty over our world-view). Many physical and biological powers depend on a fixed environment: the frog (physically) intends a fly and is not geared to an environment full of fly replicas; salt will not dissolve under extreme temperatures, the bee goes for a flower-looking object and not towards a flower pill that might contain what it needs, etc. Features iii. and iv. of the Brentano-Molnar characterization of physical intentionality suggest that other powers have the capacity to produce a ceteris paribus scenario around them: iii. the capacity to be directed towards exemplars and prototypes of an item and assume its specifics have irrelevant powers and iv. the capacity to be directed to something in a specific presentation assuming that other powers could not affect the presentation of the directed item. Responsiveness to concepts, and the normativity associated to it, are special powers: norms carry commitments and obligations that are associated with the idea of correctness. Inclinations (for example, inclinations to infer one or another possible conclusion) themselves don’t respond to what is correct – it is however the (dispositional) ingredient for correctness.

4.Brandom (2001) points at a Kantian argument revived by Sellars to the extent that modal and normative vocabulary are present in every use of a descriptive, categorical vocabulary. The idea revolves around the Kantian notion of Notwendigkeit, that encompasses both obligations of the moral kind and natural laws that determine a course of events. Vocabularies bring with themselves a toolkit of implicit (modal and necessary) commitments that have a grip on users. Brandom takes Notwendigkeit to signpost a shift towards the viewing concepts as having a grip on us by bringing unavoidable commitments to users of categorical predicates. Normative terms enable us to think about the underlying normative structure in concept application. They are to be understood in an inferentialist framework: they are inference tickets to conclusions concerning the web of obligations where we found ourselves when we make moves within the logical space of concepts. Brandom’s claim amount to take normative predicates not representations of any kind of normative states but rather as elements to infer about where commitments – about where concepts take us independently of what we are prepared to undertake. Surely, if we talk about powers and feel ready to embrace something close to a pan-dispositionalist account of mental states, those states are not themselves more than paths towards some thought contents. In other words, the distinction between inferentialism and representationalism concerning mental states understood as powers blur. The normative structure of conceptual application, however, endow mental states with powers of a special kind – powers that draw routes in a structured board of commitments that come together with a collection of entitlements.

Normative vocabulary make explicit the Notwendigkeiten that those predicates carry. I claim that those predicates carry a commitment to specific ceteris paribus assumptions: that some powers are not going to intervene. To some extent at least, learning to use concept involves learning a set of those assumptions: something remains red when there is no light but is no longer red when black paint is thrown on it. Concept use is an activity bounded by norms – norms commit us to a pattern of fixed features that remain untouched by surrounding powers. Concepts carry in themselves a normative structure of commitments to what and where powers are to act. Goodman’s insistence on the amount of projection taking place in concept application aims at revealing how a commitment to some fixity is central to the grip concepts have on us. Predicates like ‘green’ make us postulate that things are going to be observed in a relevantly similar way in the future: the choice of the predicate is the adoption of a particular device to postulate what is to remain unaffected in future observations. Different projections concerning any future observation commit one to different assumptions of the ceteris paribus kind. This movement of postulating inanimate elements unaffected by surrounding powers seems to be at the kernel of the activity of formulating and applying categories. Categories are commitments to fixity. The raw material for categorization, however, is composed of modal states (powers) that make possible for thought contents to be dispositions to act – dispositions that make those contents animate. The fixity of our categories regulate those modal states within thought. An ontology of thought is an ontology of norms standing on the shoulders of a landscape of powers.

Surely, we can only think about what is not fixed beyond the activity of categorization – of postulating that some dispositions are going to remain dormant – in the same way we talk about inclinations using our vocabulary of rule-governed concepts. Powers beyond categorization make themselves apparent because they leave marks that we can think about through concepts. That those marks are available is what enable us to compare the commitments of ‘green’ to those of ‘grue’ and to talk about systematic error as a special episode in learning to follow a rule (an episode that is often elusive and hard to spot). Like inclinations, those marks reveal the modal structure that underlies the normative structure of our vocabularies. It is not that we can step outside the logical space of reasons to envisage powers within thought but rather that we have resources within that space to make explicit what is underlying the structure of commitments that thought impose on us.

Thought requires conceptual capacities therefore the it trades in norms and intelligibility; contents cannot be understood but placed in appropriate semantic scenarios. Normativity – and the determination of content – cannot be reduced to purely modal features; as it is witnessed by the persistent failures of the dispositional accounts of rule-following. Dispositional properties of the mind cannot determine on their own the content of a thought – specifying content requires sensitivity to norms; the ability to somehow see the intended course of action given a finite number of examples shown. Powers cannot be the whole story about thought; normativity – to what thought is to respond – places specific (ontological) demands on the constituents of thought. However, it is reasonable to advance the hypothesis that an ontology of powers spreads from properties of the world to the capacities of thought and the underlying dispositions leave an accent in the way we think.

References:

Brandom, R. (2001) “Modality, normativity, and intentionality”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LXIII, 3, pp. 587-609.

Molnar, G. (2003) Powers: a Study in Metaphysics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wittgenstein, L. (PU) Philosophische Untersuchungen – Philosophical Investigations, Anscombe, G. E. M. (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell, 1953