Is meaning part of the natural world?

The discussion so far has suggested that there is a prima facie distinction between understanding and explanation (although we have not discussed what explanation itself might be in any detail) connected to the normativity or rationality of understanding. Understanding trades in reasons and - whether or not reasons are also causes of action - they are normative: they aim at correctness, at what it is good or right, in context, to believe.

But that suggests that psychiatry is essentially bifurcated. It deals with normative reasons, via understanding, and non-normative happenings, via explanation by scientific laws. These are two quite distinct approaches calling for quite different skills. Perhaps we might appeal to a picture of distinct methodological levels as Jaspers suggests. But if so, what keeps the levels in step? And how do reasons - with their strange normative properties - fit into largely non-normative nature?

We will consider - breathelessly! - three strategies:

Reductionist naturalism which assumes that nature is exhausted by what basic science (physics?) says and thus all other genuine phenomena must reduce to that.

Non-reductionist naturalism, which says that there is more to the world than even basic science describes, despite its technological success.

A middle ground, described below.

In their book Mind, Meaning, and Mental Disorder, the psychologist and philosopher Derek Bolton and the psychiatrist Jonathan Hill attempt to balance the normativity of meaning and understanding with a broader scientific worldview. In broad metaphysical terms, Bolton and Hill suggest that the categories of mind and matter as they have been understood since Descartes’ time cannot be reconciled without crediting matter with some of the properties previously ascribed only to mind. Likewise, instead of distinguishing between rational reasons and causes – or the space of reasons and the realm of law – they distinguish between intentional and non-intentional causes.

This places the hard physical sciences on one side of the divide and the equally hard biological and behavioural sciences on the other. Everyday psychological explanations – folk psychology – are classified alongside and continuously with sciences that invoke the notion of information alongside that of causality. What was useful and appropriate about the distinction between reasons and causes can be captured by the new distinction without incurring its difficulties. Reason explanation is a form of intentional-causal explanation as exemplified in many respectable sciences.

In order for this strategy to work, some account is needed of how intentional causality is appropriate for describing mind and meaning. Bolton and Hill summarise the flow of their argument as follows.

The first step... is that explanation of action in terms of meaningful states has predictive power; the second is... that such explanation is causal; the third is the assumption... that the brain causally regulates action, all of which can be made compatible on the methodological assumption that the meaning (information) that regulates action is encoded in the brain. [Bolton and Hill 2003: 86]

The idea is as follows. The explanatory power of everyday intentional or ‘folk psychological’ explanation derives from the causal power of reasons. But the historical division between reasons and causes voiced, for example, by Karl Jaspers puts this claim under threat. If, instead, one distinguishes between intentional and non-intentional causation, folk psychological explanation ceases to be exceptional and in need of special philosophical explanation and becomes instead a particular example of a more general phenomenon. This, however, requires some explanation in turn. How is it possible that reasons are a species of intentional causality?

This session will explore these three options.

Essential reading

Bolton, D. (1997) ‘Encoding of Meaning: Deconstructing the Meaning/Causality Distinction’ Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 4.4 255-267 (this offers a snapshot of the approach taken in Bolton's coauthored book)

Thornton, T. (2011) ‘Recent developments for naturalising the mind’ Current Opinion in Psychiatry 24:502-506 (this has a very short summary of representationalist approaches to meaning and a recent criticism)

The slides for the session are here.

A key question about explanation is here.

For the course the philosophy of the social aetiology of mental illness

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For the course meaning, understanding and explanation.

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Further reading

Bolton, D. and Hill, J. (1996; second edition 2003) Mind Meaning and Mental Disorder, Oxford: Oxford University Press

McDowell, J. (1994) Mind and World, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press

Ramsey, W.M. (2007) Representation Reconsidered, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thornton, T. (1998) Wittgenstein on language and thought, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Thornton, T. (2009) ‘On the interface problem in philosophy and psychiatry’ in Bortolotti, L. and Broome, M. Psychiatry as Cognitive Neuroscience, Oxford: Oxford University Press: 121-136