Cause in Philosophical Psychology

--- by JLS
----- for the GC

J, who likes, on occasion, sign as "Diogenes J", was and is wondering about the futility of 'cause' in intentional action. Since 'cause' is a multifarious (but never polysemous) item, perhaps we could concentrate on "... causes ..." when it comes to

ψ

---

ψ is the symbol Grice uses for ...

'psychology'.

(He disliked 'mind' as in 'philosophy of mind'. He thought Greek 'psyche' included the 'soul').

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ψ

--

There is, for starters, the point made by Doctorow on 'constructing steps of reasoning' -- and how this relates to yes-no questions which we often ask ourselves. Contingency planning, pis aller solutions, interrogative subordinating questions, and so on.

Surely the philosopher can go 'beyond' psychological reality. Grice is VERY OFTEN criticised: "His views are so psychologically implausible that they hurt". But they don't!

So, let's consider the psychological reality of reasoning. Does 'cause' enter the picture?

Grice suggests it does.

To reason is, after all, a thought-transit. The rational agent (for, with Skyrms, the Griceain needs the homo rationalis idea of subjective probability) proceeds from his entertaining

ψp -- the entertaining of the premise

to

ψc -- the entertaining of the conclusion.


---- On top of that, a Griceian is a 'functionalist': no psychological state without the behaviour than manifests it. For each ψ -- or consider the specific

ψp

--

there are TWO nodes: the input and the output. The input is ALWAYS sensory or perceptual input. "There's smoke!" -- surely the rational agent has SEEN smoke. For Grice 'see' IS CAUSAL (or 'factive' as he prefers, amusing himself with the talk of the Kiparskys). You cannot see that there is smoke unless there is. Hallucinations can be veridical but they involve 'disimplicature' as when we say 'he hears voices').

--- The output node is always behaviour. Usually an utterance does the trick: "There's smoke in them yonder hills!" is a piece of behaviour (the phones the rational agent provoked through his throat, mouth, tongue, and teeth) that indicates his belief in the premise, "There's smoke".


--- We now proceed to the conclusion, -- 'there's fire' -- or rather to the entertaining of the conclusion

ψc

-- Again the perceptual input is possibly the rational agent hearing himself saying, "There's smoke!". This 'causes' his entertaining 'there's fire'. And, again, the behavioural output will be prefaced by this trick of the interaction that only signals 'reasoning' by way of 'conventional implcature': "Therefore, there's smoke".

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Apparently, there can be smoke WITHOUT fire --, which only goes to show that even the most rational of agents can commit the occasional mistake. So?