Pirotologica

Grice played with 'ichthyologica' ('necessity' -- do we need it?). His favourite is pirotologica, echoing Anaximander, and other pre-Socratics:

His essay on 'method in philosophical psychology' has the first stage entitled,

"TYPE-PROGRESSION IN PIROTOLOGY:

CONTENT-INTERNALIZATION."

Grice writes:

“My purpose in this section is to give a little thought to the
question 'What are the general principles exemplified, in creature-construction,
in progressing from one type of pirot to a higher type? What KINDS
of steps are being made?" the kinds of step with which I shall deal here
are those which culminate in a licence to include, within the
specification of the content of the psychological state of certain pirots,

a range of expressions which would be inappropriate with respect
to LOWER [emphasis mine. JLS] pirots; such expressions
include connectives, quantifiers, temporal modifiers, mood
indicators, modal operators, and (importantly) names of
psychological states like "judge" and "will"; expressions the
availability of which leads to the structural enrichment of
specifications of content."

The connection with 'evolution' theory is made obvious by Chapman in her
book on _Grice_ (now on paperback). I notice that Chapman uses 'evolution'
and 'evolutionarily' I think twice and she quotes from a paper by Grice where
he writes: "read [Dawinks] The Selfish Gene".

Grice writes:

"In general, these steps"

-- rungs up the ladder, as he puts it -- elsewhere, cited by Chapman -- as
they advance from the 'brutes' (word he used Chapman quotes) to 'the peak'
that man is ("Method") --

"will be ones
by which items or ideas which have, initially, a legitimate
place outside the scope of psychological instantiables (or,
if you will, the expressions for which occur LEGITIMATELY
outside the scope of psychological verbs) come to have a
legitimate place within the scope of such instantiables: steps
by which (one might say) such items or ideas come to be
INTERNALIZED. I am disposed to regard as prototypical the
sort of natural disposition which Hume attributes to us, and
which is very important to him; name, the tendency of the
mind 'to spread itself upon objects' to project into the world
items which, properly (or primitively) considered, are really
features of our states of mind. I shall set out in stages the
application of aspects of the genitorial programme.”

-- in googlebooks.


The stages have been 'advanced' by M. Bratman and others in a sort of
sequential order -- with a very fine-tooth combing that Grice would have loved.
(And this only for what I have elsewhere called pirot-3: with pirot-1 and
pirot-2 being vegetals and animals respectively)

----- The following HIERARCHIES adapted from Bratman and Smith.

Bratman et al consider a sequence.

We start with a

ZERO ORDER

Stage 0.

We start with pirots equipped to satisfy
unnested judging and willing

(i.e. whose contents do _not_ involve judging or willing).

* * * * * * * * * * *

1ST ORDER

* * * * * * * * * * *

Stage 1.

It would be advantageous to pirots
if they could have judging and willing,
which relate to their own judging or willing.

Such pirots could be equipped
to control or regulate
their own judgings and willings.

They will presumably be already
constituted so as to conform
to the law that

CAETERIS PARIBUS

if they will that p
and
judge that ~p,
if they can, they make it the case that p
[in their 'minds'].

To give them some control over
their judgings and willings,
we need only extend the application
of this law to
their judging and willing.

We equip them so that

caeteris paribus

IF they will that they do not will that p
and
judge that they do will that p,
(if they can) they make it the case that
they do NOT will that p

(and we somehow ensure that sometimes they CAN do this).

Grice writes:

"It may be that the installation of this kind of control would go hand in
had with the installation of the capacity for evaluation; but I need not
concern myself with this now."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
2nd ORDER

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Creature 2's intentional efforts depend on the motivational strength of its
considered desires at the time of action.

So far we have been seeing the process by which conflicting considered
desires motivate action as a broadly CAUSAL process, a process that reveals
MOTIVATIONAL strength.

But a creature -- call it CREATURE 3 --
might itself try to weigh considerations provided by
such

conflicting desires in

DELIBERATION about the pros and cons of various alternatives.

In the simplest case, such weighing treats each of the things desired
as a prima facie justifying end.

In the face of conflict it weighs such desired ends,
where the weights correspond to the motivational strength
of the associated, considered desire.

The outcome of such DELIBERATION will match the
outcome of the CAUSAL motivational processes
envisioned in our description of Creature 2.

But since the weights it invokes in such deliberation
correspond to the motivational strength of the
relevant considered desires

(though perhaps not to the motivational strength of the relevant considered
desires),

the resultant activities will match those of a corresponding Creature 2
(*all* of whose desires, we are assuming, are considered).

To be more realistic we might limit ourselves
to saying that Creature 2 has the capacity to make
the transition from unconsidered to considered desires
but does not always do this.

But it will keep the discussion more manageable
to simplify and to suppose that *all* its
desires are considered.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

3RD ORDER


* * * * * * * * *

Stage 3.

We shall not want these pirots to depend, in each will
act in ways that reveal the motivational strength of considered desires at
the time of action,
but for creature 3 it will also be true that in some (though not all)
cases it acts on the basis of how it weights the ends favoured
by its conflicting, considered desires.

It is time to note that Creature 3's considered desires will
concern matters that cannot be achieved simply
by action at a single time.

It may, for example,
want to nurture a vegetable garden [Argentine ants],
or build a house.

Such matters will require organized and coordinated action
that extends over time.

What it does now ill depend not only on what it now desires
but also on what it now expects it will do later given what it does now.

It needs a way of settling now what it will do later given what it does now.

The point is even clearer when we remind ourselves, what we have so far
ignored, that Creature 3 is not alone.

It is, we may assume, one of some number of such creatures;
and in many cases it needs to
COORDINATE what it does with what others
do so as to achieve ends desired by all participants, itself included.

* * * * * * * *

4TH ORDER


* * * * * * * * *

These costs are magnified for a creature whose various plans
are interwoven so that a change in one element can
have significant ripple effects that will need to be considered.

So let us suppose that the general strategies Creature 4
has for responding to new information about its circumstances
are sensitive to these kinds of costs.

Promoting in the long run the satisfaction of its considered desires and
preferences.

Creature 4 is a somewhat sophisticated planning agent but it has a problem.

It can expect that its desires and preferences may well change over time
and undermine its efforts at organizing and coordinating its activities over
time. Perhaps in many cases this is due to the kind of temporal discounting emphasized by (among others) George Ainslie.

So for example Creature 4 may have a plan to exercise every day
but may tend to prefer a sequence of not exercising
on the present day but exercising all days in the future,
to a uniform sequence the present day included.

At the end of the day it returns to its earlier considered preference in
favor of exercising on each and every day.

Though Creature 4, unlike Creature 3, has the capacity to settle on prior
plans or plaices concerning exercise, this capacity does not yet help in
such a case.

A creature whose plans were stable in ways in part shaped by such a
no-regret principle would be more likely than Creature 4 to resist temporary
temptations.

* * * * * * * * *

5TH ORDER


* * * * * * * * * *

So let us build such a principle into the stability of
the plans of creature 5 whose plans and policies
are not derived solely from facts about its limits of time,
attention, and the like.

It is also grounded in the central concerns of a planning
agent with its own future, concerns that lend special significance to
anticipated future REGRET.


So let us add to Creature 5 the capacity and disposition to arrive at such
hierarchies of higher-order desires concerning its "will".

* * * * * * * * * *
6TH ORDER

* * * * * * * * * * *
This gives us a new creature, CREATURE 6

There is a problem with Creature 6, one that has been much discussed. It is
not clear why a higher-order desire--even a higher-order desire that a
certain desire be one's "will" -- is not simply one more desire in the pool of
desires [Berkeley God's will problem]

Why does it have the authority to constitute or ensure the agent's (that
is, the creature's)
endorsement or rejection of a FIRST-ORDER desire?

Applied to creature 6 this is the question of whether, by virtue solely of
its hierarchies of desires,
it really does succeed in taking its own stand of endorsement or rejection
of various FIRST-ORDER desires.

Since it was the ability to take its own stand that we are trying to
provide in the move to creature 6, we need some response to this challenge.

The basic point is that Creature 6 is not merely a time-slice agent.

It is, rather, and understands itself to be,
a temporally persisting planning agent,
one who begins, and continues, and completes temporally extended projects.

On a broadly Lockean view, its persistence over time consists in
relevant psychological continuities
(for example, the persistence of attitudes of belief and intention)
and connections
(for example, memory of a past event, or the later intentional execution
of an intention formed earlier).

Certain attitudes have as a primary role
the constitution and support of such Lockean continuities and connections.

In particular, policies that favor or reject various desires have
it as their role to constitute and support various continuities
both of ordinary desires and of the politicos themselves.

For this reason such policies are not merely additional
wiggles in the psychic stew.

Instead, these policies have a claim to help determine
where the agent -- that is, the temporally persisting agent --
stands with respect to its desires. Or so it seems to me reasonable to
say.

* * * * * *
7TH ORDER

* * * * * *


So the psychology of Creature 7 continues to have the hierarchical
structure of pro-attitudes introduced with creature 6. The difference is that the
higher-order pro-attitudes of Creature 6 were simply characterized as
desires in a broad, generic sense, and no appeal was made to the distinctive
species of pro-attitude constituted by plan-like attitudes.

That is the sense in which, following Grice, the psychology of Creature 7
is an

"extension of"

the psychology of Creature 6.

Let us then give CREATURE 7 such higher-order pollicies with the capacity
to take a stand with respect to its desires by arriving at relevant
higher-order policies concerning the functioning of those desires over time.
Creature 7 exhibits a merger of hierarchical and planning structures.. Appealing
to planning theory and ground in connection to the temporally extended
structure of agency--to be one's "will" in Frankfurt's technical sense.
Creature 7 has higher-order policies that favor or challenge motivational roles of
its considered desires. When Creature 7 engages in deliberative weighing
of conflicting, desired ends it seems that the assigned weights should
reflect the policies that determine where it stands with respect to relevant
desires. But the policies we have so far appealed to--policies concerning what
desires are to be one's will (in Frankfurt's technical sense of
"will")--do not quite address this concern. The problem is that one can in certain
cases have policies concerning which desires are to motivate and yet these
not be policies that accord what those desires are for a corresponding
justifying role in deliberation.

* * * * * * *

8TH ORDER

* * * * * * *

A solution is to give our creature--call it CREATURE 8--the capacity to
arrive at policies that express its commitment to be motivated by a desire by
way of its treatment of that desire as providing, in deliberation, a
justifying end for action. Creature 8 has policies for treating (or not treating)
certain desires as providing justifying ends--as, in this way,
reason-providing--in motivationally effective deliberation. Let us call such policies
self-governing policies--I will suppose that these policies are mutually
compatible and do not challenge each other.

In this way Creature 8 involves, as Grice would want, an

"extension"

of structures already present in Creature 7. The grounds on which Creature
8 arrives at (and on occasion revises) such self-governing policies will be
many and varied. We can see these policies as crystallizing complex
pressures and concerns, some of which are grounded in other policies or desires.
These self-governing policies may be tentative and will normally NOT be
immune to change. If we ask what creature 8 values in this case, the answer
seems to be: what it values is constituted in part by its higher-order self-
governing policies. In particular, it values exercise over nonexercise even
right now, and even given that it has a considered (though temporary)
preference to the contrary.

Unlike creatures 3-5, what Creature 8 now values is not simply a matter of
its present, considered desires and preferences.

NOW THIS MODEL OF CREATURE 8
SEEMS IN RELEVANT RESPECTS TO BE A (PARTIAL) MODEL OF US.

So we arrive at the conjecture that one important kind of valuing of which
we are capable involves, in the cited ways, both our first-order desires
and our higher order self-governing policies. In an important sub-class of
cases our valuing involves reflexive polices that are both first-order
policies of action and higher-order policies to treat the first-order policy as
reason providing in motivationally effective deliberation. This may seem
odd. Valuing seems normally to be a first-order attitude.

One values honesty, say.

The proposal is that an important kind of valuing involves higher-order
policies. Does this mean that, strictly speaking, what one values (in this
sense) is itself a desire--not honesty, say, but a desire for honesty? No it
does not. What I value in the present case is honesty; but, on the theory,
my valuing honesty in art consists in certain higher-order self-governing
policies. An agent's reflective valuing involves a kind of higher-order
willing. (Etc).