Mind & Language Vol. 1 No.

I Spring 1986

0 Basil

ISSN 0268-1064 Blackwell

f-orum Philosophy and Psychology

At a conference, a philosopher is reading a paper on some aspect of semantics. In the discussion period after his paper, someone - a psychologist - claims to have done experiments which show that the philosophers main thesis is mistaken. It would not be at a 1 surprising if the 1 participants reacted to this with impatience or, at the very least, embarrassed amusement. Philosophical papers simply are not to be dealt with by citing empirical findings: either the philosopher has overstepped his proper ,territory by making speculations about empirical matters or the psychologist has misunderstood the nature of the philosophers thesis. Behind this reaction lies the following conception of philosophy and psychology. The philosopher is concerned to uncover the essential nature of some phenomena, abstracting from the empirical details which the psychologist is precisely aiming to discover. Hence, the two disciplines ask quite different kinds of question and employ quite different methodologies. Where they do have something to say to one another it concerns only demarcation. Genuine interdisciplinary cooperation can at most consist in dividing questions between the two. This conception can be seen at work in a number of areas. The philosopher of mind aims at necessary and a priori truths about, for example, belief, intention and sensation. He has no real interest in merely contingent features of human psychology - his claims are intended to apply equally to some terrestrials and all extra-terrestrials. The philosopher of language wants to know what any possible language must be like. He wants to deliver conceptual truths about meaning and communication rather than empirical truths about language acquisition, reading disorders, or verb endings in different languages. Likewise, the philosopher of perception asks what is needed to say of any creature that it sees some object. He remains aloof from

Mind 6 Language

questions about rods and cones, grey level arrays, visual cliffs, and such phenomena as so-called blindsight. The view whose tone is set by the description of the events at the fictional conference is widely held. That is why those events are so easy to imagine. Nonetheless, whilst widely held, this view is by no means universal. The contrary view - the view that empirical commitments are integral to certain philosophical stances - has its adherents too. Certain views in the philosophy of mind would have the consequence that developments in psychology and physiology could force the concept of belief out of the explanatory role for which it has been philosophically cast. The notion of literal meaning has been of central importance to philosophers of language. But, on some views, its significance would be undermined if empirical work were to show that speakers comprehension processes could be accounted for without appeal to any such notion. Similar examples could be provided in other areas. Thus far discussion has been from the perspective of philosophy. Corresponding positions could be adopted by psychologists; some holding that philosophy can at best stimulate the imagination, others incorporating elements of philosophy in their psychological theorising. The rival conceptions just sketched lie beneath the surface of much current research; it is usually more a matter of attitude than argument. What is needed is open discussion, explicit argument, and detailed examination of examples in connection with this most fundamental of issues.

M . K. Davies S . D . Guttenplan