Maverick Philosopher

Mark Sainsbury on Intentional Relations

Following A. N. Prior, Sainsbury sets up the problem of intentionality as follows:

We are faced with a paradox: some intentional states are relational and some are not. But all intentional states are the same kind of thing, and things of the same kind are either all relational or all non-relational.  (Intentional Relations, 327)

Cast in the mold of an aporetic triad:

1) Some intentional states are relational and some are not.

2) All intentional states are the same kind of thing.

3) Things of the same kind are either all relational or all non-relational.

These propositions are individually plausible but jointly inconsistent. Sainsbury solves the problem by rejecting (1).  He maintains that all intentional states are relational.  Whether I am thinking about Obama, who exists, or about Pegasus, who does not exist, a relation is involved.  In both cases, the relation connects the subject or his mental state to a representation. The representation, in turn, either represents something that exists 'in the world' or it does not.  In the first case, there is me, my intentional or object-directed mental state, the concept OBAMA, and the man himself in the external world.  In the second case, there is me, my intentional or object-directed mental state, the concept PEGASUS, and that's it: there is nothing in reality that the Pegasus representation represents.  

Sainsbury is not saying that when I think about Obama, I am thinking about a representation. Plainly, I am thinking about a man, and a man is not a representation in a mind.  While Sainsbury advocates a representationalist theory of mind (RTM), he essays to steer clear of ". . . a disastrous turn that a representationalist view may take: instead of saying that the intentional states are about what their representations are about, the fatal temptation for British Empiricist thinkers (and others) is to regard the intentional states as about the representations (“ideas”) themselves." (330)  On Sainsbury's RTM,

For representationalists, all intentional states, including perceptual states, are relational, but the representations are not the “objects” of the states in the sense of what the states are about. Rather, the representations are what bring represented objects “before the mind”. Analogously, we see by using our eyes, but we do not see our eyes. Using our eyes does not make our vision indirect. (330)

This implies that representations are not representatives or stand-ins or epistemic deputies or cognitive intermediaries interposed between mind and world. They are not like pictures. A picture of Obama is an object of vision just as Obama himself is.  But Sainsburian representations "neither react appropriately with light nor emit odiferous molecules." (330)  Pictures of Obama and Obama in the flesh do both. Representations are in the mind but not before the mind. They are "exercised" in intentional states without being the objects of such states:

Intentional states are not normally about the representations they exercise. The representation is not the state’s “object”, as that is often used. Rather, the state’s object is whatever, if anything, the representation refers to, or is about. The notion of “aboutness” needed to make this true is itself intensional: a representation may be about Pegasus, and a thought about Pegasus involves a representation about him. (338)

Sainsbury's solution to the problem codified in the above inconsistent triad involves two steps. The first is to reject (1) and hold that all intentional states are relational.  They are genuine relations, not merely relation-like. The second step is to import relationality into the mind: every intentional state is a relational state that connects two intramental existing items, one being the intentional state itself, the other being the representation, whether it be a truth-evaluable representation, which S. calls a thought, or a non-truth-evaluable representation, which S. calls a concept.  

It is easy to see that one could take the first step without taking the second. One could hold that all intentional states are relations but that these relations tie intentional states to mind-transcendent items, whether existent, like Obama, or nonexistent, like Pegasus. But this is the way of Meinong or quasi-Meinong, not the way of Sainsbury. He argues in the paper in question against Meinong for reasons I will not go into here.

In sum, intentional states are relations, but they are neither relations to mental objects nor are they relations to extramental objects.  They are relations to representations which are neither.  A mental object is (or can be) both in the mind and before the mind.  And extramental object is (or can be) before the mind but not in the mind. A Sainsburian representation is in the mind but not before the mind (except in cases of reflection as when I reflect on the concept OBAMA as opposed to thinking about him directly).

The article ends as follows:

Metaphysical relationality is the fundamental feature of intentional states, the nature they all share. In the original puzzle, it was claimed that Raoul’s thinking about Pegasus is not relational, since there is no such thing as Pegasus, whereas his thinking about Obama is relational, since there is such a thing as Obama. But in both cases the claims are made true by Raoul being in a two-place relational state, involving a Pegasus-representation in one case and an Obama representation in the other. The metaphysical underpinning of thinking about Pegasus is just as relational as his thinking about Obama. For the Pegasus case, that is not because there really is such a nonexistent object as Pegasus, but because the truth-making state is a relational one, holding between Raoul and, in the typical case, the concept PEGASUS. For the Obama case, the state is relational in the relevant way not because there is such an object as Obama, but because the truth-making state is a relational one, holding between Raoul and, in the typical case, the concept OBAMA.

CRITIQUE

Does this solve our problem? I don't see that it does.  First of all, we are left with the problem of the intentionality of representations. What makes an Obama representation about Obama?  Sainsbury's solution to the Prior puzzle is to reject the first limb of the aporetic triad by maintaining that ALL intentional states are relational.  But since these relations are all intramental we are left with the problem of external reference.  We are left with no account of the of-ness or aboutness of representations.  We need an account not only of noetic intentionality but of noematic intentionality as well, to press some Husserlian jargon into service.

Second, it is not clear from this article what exactly representations are. We are told that "representations are what bring represented objects 'before the mind'." How exactly?  Talk of the "exercise" of representations suggests that they are dispositions.  Is the concept OBAMA in Raoul his being disposed to identify exactly one thing as Obama?  But how could an occurrent episode of thinking-of be accounted for dispositionally? Besides, the concept OBAMA would have to be a haecceity-concept and I have more than once pointed out the difficulties with such a posit.

 

Kant's Letter to Marcus Herz, 21 February 1772

The brief missive to Herz sheds considerable light on Kant's Critical project.  Herewith, some notes for my edification if not yours.

1) How is metaphysica specialis possible as science, als Wissenschaft? Having been awakened by David Hume from his "dogmatic slumber," Kant was puzzling over this.  It occurred to him that the key to the riddle lay in raising and answering the question:

On what ground rests the relation of that in us which we call representation to the object?

Representations 'in us,' i.e., 'in' our minds, are of or about objects 'outside of' our minds. What makes the representation of an object about the very object of which it is the representation? For example, what makes my visual awareness of a particular tree an awareness of that very tree?

There are three cases to consider.

2) If the representation in the subject is caused by the object, Kant thinks that an easy answer is forthcoming: the representation is of or about the object in virtue of its being caused by the object.  The tree, or the light reflected by the tree, affects my eyes, thereby causing in me a representation of that very tree.  We set aside for the time being the question whether this easy answer is a good answer.

3) We also have an easy answer to the above question if representations are active with respect to their objects, as opposed to passive as in the case of my seeing a tree. Suppose  the object itself were created by the representation, as in the case of divine representations. In cases like this, Kant tells us, "the conformity of these representations to the object could be understood." (82)

4) Now for the third case, the hard case. What are we to say about the pure concepts of the understanding, the categories? These conceptual representations, being pure, are not caused by sensation. But neither are they creative with respect to their objects. What then gives them objective reference? 

As pure concepts, the categories have their seat in our understanding. They are thus subjective conditions of thinking, not categorial determinations of things.  What gives these subjective conditions of thinking and judging -- to think is to judge -- objective validity?  That is the problem which Kant sets forth in his letter to Herz.  But he does not in that letter propose a solution.

5) He gives his solution in 1781 in the Critique of Pure Reason. Can I sketch it in a few sentences?

I touch a stone. I receive a sensation of hardness and warmth. No judgment is involved.  Judgment enters if I say, "Whenever the sun shines on the stone, it becomes warm." But this is a mere Wahrnehmungsurteil, a subjective judgment of perception. It lacks objective validity. It records one perception following another in a subjective unity of consciousness, as opposed to a consciousness in general.  The judgment does not record causation, assuming that causation involves necessitation, as Kant does assume. All we have at the level of perception are Hume's spatiotemporal contiguity of perceived events and their regular succession: the sun's shining on the stone followed by the stone's becoming warm.  Kant is of course convinced that there has to be more to causation than regular succession.

But if I say, "The sun warms the stone," then I make an Erfahrungsurteil, a judgment of experience which is objectively valid.  I am not merely recording a succession of perceptions, but an instance of causation in which the cause necessitates the effect.  The necessary connection is not out there among the things; it enters via the understanding's imposition of the category of cause on the sequence of perceptions.  The objective or transcendental unity of apperception, as the vehicle of the categories does the job. Just don't ask me how exactly. Here is where things get murky. This is what I wrote my dissertation on.

6) I am now in a position to answer in a rough way the question  of how the pure concepts of the understanding have objective validity. They have objective validity because the objects of experience are products of the categorial formation of the sensory manifold within a "consciousness in general," a transcendental, not psychological, unity of apperception.  It follows that the world of experience is an intersubjectively valid but merely phenomenal world and not a world of things in themselves.  The "highest principle of all synthetic judgments" is that "the conditions of the possibility of experience in general are at the same time the conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience themselves, and thus possess objective validity in a synthetical judgment a priori."

Since "the understanding is the lawgiver of nature,"  Human skepticism bites the dust, but so also does Leibnizian-Wolffian rationalism. This is because the Copernican revolution, at the same time that it validates  synthetic a priori  judgments in mathematics and physics for phenomena, restricts them to phenomena and disallows them for noumena such as God, the soul, and the world as a whole, the objects of the three disciplines of metaphysica specialis.

Unfortunately, Kant's system raises as many questions as it answers. But that is the fate of every philosophy in my humble opinion.  The dialectical nature of reason, which gives rise to dialectical illusion with respect to noumena, unfortunately infects everything we do in philosophy even when we draw in our horns and stick to phenomena.

Secure Epistemic Foundations, Language, and Reality

This from Grigory Aleksin:

I have been doing some reading and thinking, and there are a few things that I cannot quite get my head around. I was wondering whether you could help me, or point me in the direction of some work on the issue. My somewhat naive task has been to try and find the most foundational and basic pieces of knowledge that are required by any worldview. 

It seems to me there are at least two things that are in some sense foundational:

(1) Something exists

(2) There are correct and incorrect inferences

(1) seems to follow from what is meant by a 'thing' and what is meant by 'exists'. However this is only the case, if there are correct and incorrect inferences. Therefore, (2) is in some sense prior to (1). Hopefully that makes sense.

BV: It does indeed make sense. But I would approach the quest for secure foundations more radically.  How do I know (with objective certainty) that something exists? I know this because I know that I exist.   'Something exists' follows immediately from 'I exist.'  To say that one proposition follows from another is to say that the inference from the other to the one is correct.  The correctness of the inference preserves not only the truth of the premise but also its objective certainty.  I agree that your (2) is in some sense prior to (1); it is a presupposition of the inferential move from 

(0) I exist

to

(1) Something exists.

My problem arises when I consider that both (1) and (2) are not actually part of reality: both are sentences or linguistic expressions.

BV: Here you have to be careful. Surely a sentence token is a part of reality, even if you restrict reality to the spatio-temporal. The truth that something exists is not the same as its linguistic expression via the visible string, 'Something exists.' That same truth (true proposition, true thought) can also be expressed by a tokening of the German sentence 'Etwas existiert' and in numerous other ways. This suffices to show that the proposition expressed is not the same as the material vehicle of its expression. And already in Plato there is the insight that, while one can see or hear a sentence token, the eyes and the ears are not the organs whereby one grasps the thought expressed by marks on paper or sounds in the air.

So we need to make some distinctions: sentence type, sentence token, proposition/thought (what Frege calls der Gedanke). And this is just for starters.

And should we restrict reality to the spatio-temporal-causal? Are not ideal/abstract objects also real?  The sign '7' is not the same as the number 7. A numeral is not a number. I can see the numeral, but not the number. I can see seven cats, but not the (mathematical) set having precisely those cats as members. I can see the inscription '7 is prime' but not the proposition expressed on an occasion of use by a person who produces a token of that linguistic type.  The ideal/abstract objects just mentioned arguably belong to reality just as much as cats and rocks. 

Thus I have come to consider the role of language. The issue is that language is just a way of mapping reality, and as such is disconnected from it. This raises the question of what 'truth' is, since on one hand we know that there are objective truths, yet truths are only expressed [only by] using language. My question is, then: how can the analysis of language be used to answer philosophical questions? I know that linguistic analysis plays a central role in analytic philosophy, but I cannot help by having [but have] doubts or suspicions that something is wrong. As you see, I cannot fully express what it is that causes me such a headache, but it stems from a suspicion with respect to the use and limits of language, and thus philosophical inquiry. 

BV: We do distinguish between WORDS and WORLD, between language and reality. But this facile distinction, reflected upon, sires a number of puzzles.  My cat Max is black. So I write, 'Max is black.'  The proper name 'Max' maps onto Max. These are obviously distinct:  'Max' is monosyllabic, but no animal is monosyllabic.  So far, so good. But what about the predicate 'black'?  Does it have a referent in reality in the way that 'Max' has a referent in reality?  It is not obvious that it does.  And if it does, what is the nature of this referent?  If it doesn't, what work does the predicate do? And then there is the little word 'is,' the copula in the sentence.  Does it have a referent? Does it map onto something in reality the way 'Max' does? And what might that be?  The transcendental unity of apperception?  Being?  If you say 'nothing,' then what work does the copula do?

One can see from this how questionable is the claim "that language is just a way of mapping reality . . . ."  We don't want to say that for each discrete term there is a one-to-one mapping to an extralinguistic item.  That would be a mad-dog realism.  (What do 'and' and 'or' and 'not' refer to?) Nominalism is also problematic if you hold that only names refer extralinguistically.  And you have really gone off the deep end if you hold that all reference is intralinguistic.

Here is another ancient puzzle.  A sentence is not a list. 'Max is black' is not a mere list of its terms. There is such a list, but it cannot 'attract a truth-value.' That is a philosopher's way of saying that a list cannot be either true or false. But a sentence in the indicative mood is either true or false. Therefore, a sentence in the indicative mood is not a list.  Such a sentence has a peculiar unity that makes it apt to be either true or false. But how are we to understand that unity without igniting Bradley's regress?

And then there is the question of the truth-bearer or truth-vehicle. You write above as if sentences qua linguistic expressions are truth-bearers.  But that can't be right. How could physical marks on paper be either true or false? 

My question is, then: how can the analysis of language be used to answer philosophical questions?

It is not clear what you are asking. You say that there are objective truths. That's right. Your problem seems to be that you do not see how this comports with the fact that truths are expressed only by using language.  The source of your puzzlement may be your false assumption that sentence qua linguistic expressions are the primary vehicles of the truth-values.

Combox open.

Intentionality for Third-World Entities?

Commenter John and I are having a very productive discussion about intentionality.  I thank him for helping me clarify my thoughts about this fascinating topic.  I begin with some points on which (I think) John and I agree.

a) There is a 'third world' or third realm and it is the realm of abstracta.   (I promise: no jokes about Frege's Third Reich. But I can't promise not to speak of Original Sinn and Original Sinn-ers.) Fregean senses, whether propositional or sub-propositional, are abstracta, but not all abstracta are reference-mediating senses. John and I are operating with a provisional tripartite or tri-categorial ontology comprising the mental, the physical, and the abstract.

b) There are instances of intrinsic intentionality. Neither of us is an eliminativist about intentionality in the manner, say, of Alexander Rosenberg. (See Could Intentionality be an Illusion?)

c) There is no intentionality without intrinsic or original intentionality: it cannot be that all intentionality is derivative or a matter of ascription, pace Daniel Dennett.  (See Original and Derived Intentionality, Circles, and Regresses.)

d) Nothing physical qua physical is intrinsically intentional, although some physical items are derivatively intentional.  (Combine this true proposition with the false proposition that all mental states are physical, and you have an unsound but valid argument for the eliminativist conclusion that there is no intrinsic intentionality.)

Agreement on the foregoing points leaves open the question whether there could be intrinsically intentional abstract items.  I tend to think that there are no intrinsically intentional abstract items.  John's position, assuming I understand it, is that some abstract items are intrinsically intentional, and that some  intrinsically intentional items are not abstract, mental states being examples of the latter.

The bare bones of the debate between John and I may be set forth as an aporetic triad:

1) Fregean senses are intrinsically intentional items. 

2) Only conscious items are intrinsically intentional.

3) Fregean senses are not conscious. 

It is easy to see that this threesome is not logically consistent: the propositions cannot all be true. John and I assume that the Law of Non-Contradiction holds across the board: we are not dialetheists.  So something has to give. Which limb of the triad should we reject?  (3) is not in dispute and presumably will be accepted by all: no abstract item is conscious, and senses are abstract.  'Abstract' was defined in earlier entries, and John and I agree on its meaning. The dispute concerns (1) and (2). I reject (1) while accepting the other two propositions; John rejects (2) while accepting the other two propositions.

I argue from the conjunction of (2) and (3) to the negation of (1), while John argues from the conjunction of (1) and (3) to the negation of (2).

My rejection of (1) entails that there are no Fregean senses (Sinne).  This is because Fregean senses, by definition, are intrinsically intentional. It follows that they are essentially intrinsically intentional. So if they can't be intrinsically intentional, then they can't exist. Why are senses essentially intrinsically intentional?  Well, as platonica, senses are necessarily existent: they exist in all metaphysically possible worlds. It follows that they exist in worlds in which there are no finite minds.* Now a sense, by definition, is a mode of presentation (Darstellungsweise) of its object.  It mediates between minds and things.  Reference, whether thinking reference or linguistic reference, is routed though sense. The (re)presentational power of a sense is essential to it, and it has this power even in worlds in which there are no words to express the sense, no things to be presented by  the sense, and no minds to refer to things via senses.  For example, consider a possible world W in which there are no languages, no minds, and no planet Venus. In W the sense that 'Phosphorus' -- 'Morning Star,' Morgenstern -- expresses in our world exists (because it exists in every world) and has its (re)presentational power there in W. Thus its intentionality is intrinsic to it and does not depend on any relations to words or to things or to minds.  It (re)presents non-linguistically and non-mentally and without the need for physical embodiment.

I think it follows that there is no distinction in reality -- although there is one notionally -- between the power of a Fregean sense to represent and its exercise of this power.  There is, in other words, no distinction in reality between the power of a sense to represent and its actually representing.  I say this because the existence of what an intrinsically intentional item is of or about has no effect whatsoever on the aboutness of the item.  Suppose I am thinking about the Washington monument, but that while I am thinking about it, it ceases to exist. That change in objective reality in no way affects the aboutness of the intentional state.  Thus the power of an intrinsically intentional item to represent does not need an external, objectively real, 'trigger' to actualize the power.  The extramental existence of the Washington monument is not  a necessary condition of the aboutness of my thinking about it.  The content and aboutness of my thinking is exactly the same whether or not the monument exists 'outside the mind.' The same goes for senses. The sense of 'Phosphorus' presents Venus whether or not Venus exists. And the content of the sense is exactly the same whether or not Venus exists.

There is an important difference, however, between an intrinsically intentional mental state and a Fregean sense.   The occurrent mental state or 'act' -- in the terminology of Twardowksi, Husserl, et al. -- is the state of a mind. It is the act of a subject, the cogitatio of an ego, where the last three occurrences of 'of' all express the genitivus subjectivus.  This is essentially, not accidentally, the case.  There has to be an ego behind the cogitatio for the cogitatio to be a cogitatio of a cogitatum.  But there needn't be an ego 'behind' the sense for the sense to be a sense of or about a thing. If a Fregean sense mediates a reference between a mind and a thing, it is not essential to the mediation that there be a mind 'behind' the sense.

Here then is an argument against Fregean senses:

4) Every instance of intrinsic intentionality has both a subject and an object.
5) Some instances of reference-mediation by a sense do not have both a subject and an object.
Therefore
6) Some instances of reference-mediation by a sense are not instances of intrinsic intentionality.

When I reject the proposition that Fregean senses are intrinsically intentional items, I thereby reject the very existence of Fregean senses. I am not maintaining that Fregean senses exist but are derivatively intentional items.  I do hold, however, that there are derivatively intentional items, maps for example.  Maps get their meaning and aboutness from us original Sinn-ers. A map is not about a chunk of terrain just in virtue of the map's physical and geometrical properties. Consider the contour lines on a topographical map. The closer together, the steeper the terrain. But that closer together should mean steeper is a meaning assigned by the community of map-makers and map-users. This meaning is not intrinsic to the map qua physical object. Closer together might have meant anything, e.g., that the likelihood of falling into an abandoned mine shaft is greater.

So some things derive their referential and semantic properties from other things.  That is also true of language. Words and phrases don't mean anything in and of themselves. Mind is king: no minds, no meaning. I subscribe to the primacy of the intentional over the linguistic. 

John and I agree that Fregean senses, whether propositional or sub-propositional, are explanatory posits.  They are not 'datanic' as I like to say. Thus it is a pre-analytic or pre-theoretical datum that the sentences 'The sky is blue' and Der Himmel ist blau 'say the same thing' or can by used to say the same thing. But that this same thing is a Fregean proposition goes beyond the given and enters the explanatory realm.  One forsakes phenomenology for dialectics. Now what am I claiming exactly? That there is no need for these posits, that to posit senses is to 'multiply entities beyond necessity in violation of Occam's Razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem?  Or am I saying something stronger, namely, that there cannot be any such items as Fregean senses? I believe my view is the latter, and not merely the former.  If senses cannot exist, then they cannot be reasonably posited either.  

John's view, I take it, is that both Fregean senses and some conscious items are intrinsically intentional or object-directed. He is not maintaining that only third-world entities (abstracta) are intrinsically intentional. By contrast, I maintain that only second-world entities (mental items, both minds and some of their occurrent states) are intrinsically intentional.

I assume that John intends 'intrinsically intentional' to be taken univocally and not analogically.  Thus he is not saying that Fregean senses are of or about first-world items in a manner that is analogous to the way second-world items are of or about first-world items.    

Fregean senses are intrinsically intentional, necessarily existent, abstract entities.  By its very nature a sense presents or represents something apart from itself, something that may or may not exist. It is a natural, not conventional, sign.  

Do I have a compelling argument against Fregean senses?  Above I mentioned the following argument:

2) Only conscious items are intrinsically intentional.

3) Fregean senses are not conscious. Therefore:

1) It is not the case that Fregean senses are intrinsically intentional.

But this argument appears to beg the question at (2).  Why can't there be intrinsically intentional items that are not conscious?  If there can be intentionality below the level of conscious mind in the form of dispositionality -- see Intentionality, Potentiality, and Dispositionality -- why con't there be intentionality above the level of conscious mind in platonica?

Nevertheless, there seems to me something incoherent about Fregean senses. They actually represent even in worlds in which there is nothing to represent and no one to whom to represent.  Consider again the sense of 'Phosphorus.'  It exists in every world including worlds in which Venus does not exist and no mind exists. In those worlds, the sense in question actually represents but does not represent anything to anyone.  It is therefore a non-representing representation, and thus an impossibility.

_____________________

*A finite mind is the kind of mind that needs such intermediary items as Fregean senses or Husserlian noemata to mediate its reference (both thinking reference and linguistic reference) to things that it cannot get completely before its mind in all their parts, properties, and relations. An archetypal intellect such as the divine mind can get at the whole of the thing 'in one blow.'  As an infinite mind it has an infinite grasp of the infinitely-propertied thing.  An infinite mind has no need of senses. The existence of senses therefore reflects the finitude of our minds.  That the reflections of this finitude should be installed in Plato's heavenly place (topos ouranos) seems strange.  It looks to be an illict hypostatization. But this thought needs a further post for its adequate deployment.

First Philosophy or Scientism?

I was going to add to this old draft from 15 December 2009, but it looks like I won't be getting around to it. So here it is.

...............................

Robert Cummins (Meaning and Mental Representation, MIT Press, 1989, p. 12) regards it as a mistake "for philosophers to address the question of mental representation in abstraction from any particular scientific theory or theoretical framework." Thus we ought not naively ask, What is mental representation? as if there is something called mental representation that is common to folk psychology and such theories as orthodox computationalism and neuroscience. "Mental representation is a theoretical assumption, not a commonplace of ordinary discourse."

(show)

The right way to proceed, according to Cummins, is to "pick a theoretical framework and ask what explanatory role mental representation plays in that framework and what the representation relation must be if that explanatory role is to be well grounded." In other words, one takes a theory such as orthodox computationalism and then one asks: what must the nature of mental representation be if this theory is to be both true and explanatory?

So the question of mental representation is not a question of 'first philosophy,' i.e., a question to be settled independently of, and prior to, empirical research, but a question in the philosophy of science exactly analogous to the following question in the philosophy of physics: what is the nature of space given that General Relativity is true and explanatory? The properties of physical space are for physics to determine. Philosophy's role is correspondingly modest, that of a handmaiden. To coin a phrase: philosophia ancilla scientiae, philosophy is the handmaiden of science, similarly as it was the handmaiden of theology in the Medieval period. Philosophy becomes the philosophy of science. And according to Quine, who is quoted by Cummins on the fontispiece of his book, "Philosophy of science is philosophy enough."

It ought to be the same, Cummins thinks, with psychology. Whether or not there are mental representations becomes the question whether or not the best theories in cognitive science and psychology posit mental representations, and the nature of the representation relation is to be read off from whichever theory is taken to be true and most explanatory.

But there is a problem with this view. If we want to know about physical space and the nature of matter, we turn to the physicist. And if we want to know about the brain, we turn to the neuroscientist. But if we want to know about the relation of mind and brain, we cannot base ourselves solely on empirical science.

Here is one consideration. The extant empirical theories imply the existence of mental representations. But surely their existence is not obvious. Looking at a photograph of a mountain, I become aware of the mountain and some of its features via the picture. Here it makes sense to say of the picture that it is a representation of the mountain. But when I look directly at a mountain, there is no phenomenological evidence of any epistemic intermediary or representation: I see the mountain itself. I don't see sense-data or representations or any kind of epistemic deputy.

Perhaps I will be told that I am nonetheless aware of an internal image but not aware of being aware of it. Compare the case of walking into a room and seeing a depiction of Hillary Clinton so realistic and convincing that I take it to be Hillary herself. In such a case I am aware of an image, but not aware of being aware of an image. Why couldn't it be the same with outer perception? One crucial difference is that I can come to be aware of the Hillary-image as an image. But I cannot come to be aware of any supposed internal image that mediates my outer perception. This is particularly obvious if the internal image is a brain state. I cannot, while gazing at the mountain, 'focus inwardly' and become aware of the brain state that is supposedly mediating my perception of the mountain. Given this fact, I suggest that it is unintelligible to say that there is an internal image that mediates outer perception. The word 'image is' being misused. An image that I cannot become aware of as an image is in no intelligible sense an image of something.

No doubt the brain and its states are part of the causal basis of perception. And there is no doubt that an organism's brain is in (some) of the states it is in because of what is happening in its environment, e.g., bright light is being reflected from a snow field into the organism's eyes. But to say that some of the brain states represent the environment makes no sense assuming that 'represent' has the sense it has when we attend to the phenomenology of representative consciousness. To speak of material representations literally in the head is to read back into a third person conception of the world notions that make sense only from a first-person point of view.

You may agree with what I just said or not. But the discussion we will have about these matters surely does not belong to any empirical science. It belongs to first philosophy. The question of whether there are mental representations at all, for example, cannot arise within disciplines that presupposes their existence. And the relation between a first- and third-person view of the world cannot be treated within an exclusively third-person point of view. Finally, there is the point that the claim that science alone can clarify these questions is itself unscientific and so an instance of (negative) first philosophy.

Thinking Meat?

Argument A.  Meat can't think.  My brain is meat.  Therefore, what thinks in me when I think is not my brain.

A in Reverse: What thinks in me when I think is my brain.  My brain is meat. Therefore, meat can think.

The proponent of A needn't deny that we are meatheads.  Of course we are.  We are literally meat (and bone) all the way through. His point is that the res cogitans cannot be a hunk of meat. 

Both arguments are valid, but only one is sound.  The decision comes down to the initial premises of the two arguments. Is there a rational way of deciding between these premises? 

A materialist might argue as follows.  Although we cannot at present understand how a hunk of meat could feel and think, what is actual is possible regardless of our ability or inability to explain how it is possible.  The powers of certain configurations of matter could remain hidden for a long time from our best science, or even remain hidden forever.  What else would be doing the thinking and feeling in us if not our brains?  What else could the mind be but the functioning brain?  The fact that we cannot understand how the brain could be a semantic engine is not a conclusive reason for thinking that it is not a semantic engine.

It is worth noting that the reverent gushing of the neuro-scientistic types over the incredible complexity of the brain does absolutely nothing to reduce the unintelligibility of the notion that it is brains or parts of brains that are the subjects of intentional and qualitative mental states.  For it is unintelligible how ramping up complexity can trigger a metabasis eis allo genos.  Are you telling me that meat that means is just meat that is more complex than ordinary meat?  You might as well say that the leap from unmeaning meat to meaning meat is a miracle.  Some speak of 'emergence.'  But that word merely papers over the difficulty, labelling the problem without solving it.  You may as well say, as in the cartoon, "And then a miracle occurs."  But then it's Game Over for the materialist.

Our materialist would do better to insist that unintelligibility to us does not entail impossibility.  Our inability to explain how X is possible does not entail that X is not possible.

My response would be that while unintelligibility does not entail impossibility, it is excellent evidence of it.  If you tell me that a certain configuration of neurons is intrinsically object-directed, directed to an object that may or may not exist without prejudice to the object-directedness, then you are saying something unintelligible.  It is as if you said that.5 volts intrinsically represents 1 and .7 volts intrinsically represents 0.  That's nonsense.  Or it as if you said that a pile of rocks intrinsically indicates the direction of the trial.  (See The Philosophizing Hiker: The Derivative Intentionality of Trail Markers.)

No rock pile has intrinsic meaning or intrinsic representational power.   And the same goes for any material item or configuration of material items no matter how complex. No such system has intrinsic meaning; any meaning it has is derived. The meaning is derived either from an intelligent being who ascribes meaning to the material system, or from an intelligent being whose purposes are embodied in the material system, or both.

Thus I am rejecting the view that meaning could inhere in material systems apart from relations to minds that are intrinsically intentional, minds who are original Sinn-ers, if you will, original mean-ers. We are all of us Sinn-ers, every man Jack of us, original Sinn-ers,  but our Sinn-ing is not mortal or venial but vital.  Intrinsic, underived intentionality is our very lifeblood as spiritual beings.

So if the materialist says that the brain means, intends, represents, thinks, etc., then I say that makes no sense given what we understand the brain to be.  The brain is a material system and the physical, chemical, electrical, and biological properties it and its parts have  cannot be meaningfully predicated of mental states.  One cannot speak intelligibly  of a voltage drop across a mental state any more than can one speak intelligibly of the intentionality of synapses or of their point of view or of what it is like to be one.

Of course, the materialist can pin his hope on a future science that understands the brain in different terms, terms that could be sensibly attached to mental phenomena.  But this is nothing more than an empty gesturing towards a 'possibility' that cannot be described except in the vaguest terms.  It is nothing but faith, hope, and hand-waving.

There is also the dogmatism of the materialist who insists that the subject of thinking must be the functioning brain.  How does he know that?  He doesn't.  He believes it strongly is all. 

So I give the palm to Argument A: Meat can't think.  My brain is meat.  Therefore, what thinks in me when I think is not my brain.

I do not absolutely foreclose on the abstract possibility that there be thinking meat.  For I grant that unintelligibility to us is not invincible proof of impossibility.  But when I compare that vaguely described abstract possibility with the present certainty that matter as we know it cannot think due to the very unintelligibility of the idea, then the present certainty wins over the abstract possibility and over the faith and hope of the materialist. 

Cf. They're Made Out of Meat 

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Memory, Memory Traces, and Causation

Passing a lady in the supermarket I catch a whiff of patchouli.  Her scent puts me in mind of hippy-trippy Pamela from the summer of '69.  An olfactory stimulus in the present causes a memory, also in the present, of an event long past, a tête-à-tête with a certain girl.  How ordinary, but how strange! Suddenly I am 'brought back' to the fantastic and far-off summer of '69.  Ah yes!  What is memory and how does it work?  How is it even possible? 

Let's start with the 'datanic' as I like to say:

1. There are (veridical) memories through which we gain epistemic access to the actual past, to events that really happened.  The above example is a case of episodic personal memory.  I remember an event in my personal past.  To be precise, I remember my having experienced an event in my personal past.  My having been born by Caesarean section is also an episode from my personal past, and I remember that that was my mode of exiting my mother's body; but I don't remember experiencing that transition.  So not every autobiographical memory is a personal episodic memory.  The latter is the only sort of memory I will be discussing in this post.  The sentence in boldface is the nonnegotiable starting point of our investigation. 

We now add a couple of more theoretical and less datanic propositions, ones which are not obvious, but are  plausible and accepted by many theorists:

2. Memory is a causal notion.  A mental image of a past event needn't be a memory of a past event.  So what makes a mental image of a past event a memory image?  Its causal history.  My present memory has a causal history that begins with the event in 1969 as I experienced it.

3. There is no action at a temporal distance.  There is no direct causation over a temporal gap.  There are no remote causes; every cause is a proximate cause.  A necessary ingredient of causation is spatiotemporal contiguity.  So while memory is a causal notion, my present memory of the '69 event is not directly caused by that event.  For how could an event that no longer exists directly cause, over a decades-long temporal gap, a memory event in the present?  That would seem to be something 'spooky,' a kind of magic. 

Each of these propositions lays strong claim to our acceptance.  But how can they all be true?  (1) and (2) taken together appear to entail the negation of (3).  How then can we accommodate them all?

Memory trace theories provide a means of accommodation.  Suppose there are memory traces or engrams engraved in some medium.  For materialists this medium will have to be the brain.  One way to think of a memory trace is as a brain modification that was caused at the time of the original experience, and that persists since that time.  So the encounter with Pam in '69 induced a change in my brain, left a trace there, a trace which has persisted since then.  When I passed the patchouli lady in the supermarket, the olfactory stimulus 'activated' the dormant memory trace.   This activation of the memory trace either is or causes the memory experience whose intentional object is the past event.  With the help of memory traces we get causation wthout action at a temporal distance. 

(Far out, man!)

The theory or theory-schema just outlined seems to allow us to uphold each of the above propositions. In particular, it seems to allow us to explain how a present memory of a past event can be caused by the past event without the past event having to jump the decades-long temporal gap between event remembered and memory.  The memory trace laid down in '69 by the original experience exists in the present and is activated in the present by the sensory stimulus.  Thus the temporal contiguity requirement is satisfied.  And if the medium in which the memory traces are stored is the brain or central nervous system, then the spatial contiguity requirement is also satisfied.

Question:  Could memory traces play merely causal roles?

Given (2) and (3), it seems that memory traces must be introduced as causal mediators between past and present.  But could they be just that?  Or must they also play a representational role?  Intuitively, it seems that nothing could be a memory trace unless it somehow represented the event of which it is a trace. If E isthe original experience, and T is E's trace, then it it seems we must say that T is of E in a two-fold sense corresponding to the difference between the subjective and objective genitive.  First, T is of E in that T is E's trace, the one that E caused. Second, T is of E in that T represents E. 

It seems obvious that a trace must represent.  In my example,the sensory stimulus (the whiff of patchouli) is not of or about the '69 event.  It merely activates the trace, rendering the dispositional occurrent.  But the memory is about the '69 event.  So the aboutness must reside in the trace.  The trace must represent the event that caused it  -- and no other past event.  The memory represents because the trace represents.  If the trace didn't represent anything, how could the memory -- which is merely the activation of the trace or an immediate causal consequence of the activation of the trace -- represent anything?  How a persisting brain modification -- however it is conceived, whether it is static or dynamic, whether localized or nonlocalized -- can represent anything is an important and vexing question but one I will discuss in a later post.

Right now I want to nail down the claim that memory traces cannot play a merely causal role, but must also bear the burden of representation.

Suppose a number of strangers visit me briefly.  I want to remember them,  but my power of memory is very weak and I know I will not remember them without the aid of some mnemonic device.  So I have my visitors leave calling cards.  They do so, except that they are all the same, and all blank (white).  These blank cards are their traces, one per visitor.   The visitors leave, but the cards remain behind as traces of their visit.  I store the cards in a drawer.  I 'activate' a card by pulling it out of storage and looking at it.  I am then reminded (at most) that I had a visitor, but not put in mind of any particular visitor such as Tom.  So even if the card in my hand was produced by Tom, that card is useless for the purpose of remembering Tom.  Likewise for every other card.  Each was produced by someone in particular and only by that person; but none of them 'bring back' any particular person. 

Bear in my mind that I don't directly remember any of my visitors.  My only memory access to them is via their traces, their calling cards.  For the visitors are long gone just like the '69 experience.  So the problem is not merely that I don't know which card is from which person; the problem is that I cannot even distinguish the persons.  

Had each visitor left a differently  colored card, that would not have helped.  Nor are matters helped if each visitor leaves a different sort of trace; a bottle cap, a spark plug, a lock of hair, a guitar pick.  Even if  Tom is a guitar player and leaves a guitar pick, that is unhelpful too  since I have no access to Tom except via his trace. 

So it doesn't matter whether my ten visitors leave ten tokens of the same type, or ten tokens each of a different type.  Either way I won't be able to remember them via the traces they leave behind.  Clearly, what I need from each visitor is an item that uniquely represents him or her -- as opposed to an item that is merely caused to be in my house by the visitor.  Suppose Tom left a unique guitar pick, the only one of its kind in existence.  That wouldn't help either since no inspection of that unique pick could reveal that it was of Tom rather than of Eric or Eric's cat.  Ditto if Tom has signed his card or his pick 'Tom Riff.'  That might be a phony name, or the name of him and his guitar -- doesn't B. B . King call his guitar 'Lucille'?

If I can remember that it was Tom who left the guitar pick, then of course I don't need the guitar pick to remember Tom by.  I simply remember Tom directly without the need for a trace.  On the other hand, if I do need a trace in order to remember long gone Tom, then that trace must have representational power: it cannot be merely something that plays a causal role. 

Traces theories have to avoid both circularity and vicious infinite regress.

Circularity.  To explain the phenomenon of memory, the trace theory posits the existence of memory traces.  But if the explanation in terms of traces ends up presupposing memory, then the theory is circular and worthless.  If what makes the guitar pick a trace of Tom is that I remember that Tom left it, then the explanation is circular.  Now consider the trace T in my brain which, when activated by stimulus S causes a memory M of past experience E.  M represents E because T represents E.  What makes T represent E? What makes the memory trace caused by the encounter with Pam in '69 represent Pam or my talking with her?  The answer cannot be that I remember the memory trace being caused by the encounter with Pam.  For that would be blatantly circular.  Besides, memory traces in the brain are not accessible to introspection.

Infinite Regress.  Our question is: what makes T represent E and nothing else?  To avoid circularity one might say this:  There is a trace T* which records the fact of E's production of T, and T represents E in virtue of T*.  But this leads to a  vicious infinite regress.   Suppose Sally leaves a photo of herself.  How do I know that the photo is of Sally and not of her sister Ally?  If you say that I directly remember Sally and thereby know that the photo is unambiguously of her, then you move in a circle.  You may as well just say that we remember directly and not via traces.  So, to hold onto the trace theory, one might say the following:  There is a photo of Sally and her photograph, side by side.  Inspection of  this photo reveals that that the first photo is of Sally.  But this leads to regress:  what makes the second photo a photo of the first?

Conclusion:  To avoid both circularity and infinite regress, memory traces must possess intrinsic representational power.  Their role cannot be merely causal.

A later post will then address the question whether memory traces could have intrinsic representational power.  If you are a regular reader of this blog you will be able to guess my answer.

REFERENCE:  John Heil, "Traces of Things Past," Philosophy of Science, vol. 45, no. 1 (March 1978), pp. 60-72.  My calling card example above is a reworking of Heil's tennis ball example.

 

The Philosophizing Hiker: The Derivative Intentionality of Trail Markers

You are out hiking and the trail becomes faint and hard to follow. You peer into the distance and see what appear to be three stacked rocks. Looking a bit farther, you see another such stack. Now you are confident which way the trail goes. Your confidence increases as further cairns come into view. On what does this confidence rest?

Your confidence is based on your taking the rock piles as other than merely natural formations. You take them as providing information about the trail's direction, which is to say that you to take them as trail markers, as meaning something, as about something distinct from themselves, as exhibiting intentionality, to use a philosopher's term of art.

Of course, the rock piles might have come into existence via purely natural causes: a rainstorm might have dislodged some rocks with gravity plus other purely material factors accounting for their placement. Highly unlikely, but nomologically possible. But please note that if you believe that the cairns originated in that way, then you could not take them as embodying information about the direction of the trail. It would be irrational in excelsis to hold both that (i) these rock piles came about randomly; and that (ii) these rock piles inform us of the trail's direction.

So if you take the rock piles as trail markers, then you take them as other than merely natural formations caused to exist by natural causes. You take the stacking and the placement as expressive of the purposes of a trail-blazer or trail-maintainer, an intelligent being who had it in mind to convey information to himself and others concerning the direction of the trail. This shows that any intentionality embodied in the cairns is derivative rather than intrinsic. The rock piles in and of themselves do not inform us of the trail's direction. They provide us this information only if we take them as embodying the purposes of an intelligent being. Of course, my taking of rock piles as embodying the purposes of an intelligent being does not entail that they do in fact embody the purposes of an intelligent being. But in most cases my ascription of a purpose corresponds to a purpose: I ascribe a purpose and the rock piles do in fact embody a purpose.

Thus there are two streams of intrinsic intentionality converging on the same object, one emanating from me, the other from the trail-maintainer.  The latter's embodying of his purpose in the cairn construction is a case of intrinsic intentionality.  And when I take the rock piles as embodying the trail-maintainer's purpose thereby ascribing to the rock piles a purpose, that too is a case of intrinsic intentionality.

The ascribing of a purpose and the embodying of a purpose are usually 'in sync.' There are rock piles that have no meaning and rock piles that have meaning. But no rock pile has intrinsic meaning. And the same goes for any material item or configuration of material items no matter how complex. No such system has intrinsic meaning; any meaning it has is derived. The meaning is derived either from an intelligent being who ascribes meaning to the material system, or from an intelligent being whose purposes are embodied in the material system, or both.

Thus I am rejecting the view that meaning could inhere in material systems apart from relations to minds that are intrinsically intentional, minds who are original Sinn-ers, if you will, original mean-ers. We are all of us Sinn-ers, every man Jack of us, original Sinn-ers,  but our Sinn-ing is not mortal but vital.  Intentionality is our very lifeblood as spiritual beings.

I am rejecting the view that any sort of isomorphism, no matter how abstract, could make the rock piles mean or represent the trail's direction. No doubt there is an isomorphism: the trail goes where the cairns go. No one cairn resembles the trail to any appreciable extent; but the cairns taken collectively do resemble the trail. Unfortunately, the trail also resembles the cairns. But the trail does not represent the cairns.

Representation is most of the time asymmetrical; but resemblance is always symmetrical. I conclude that resemblance cannot constitute representation. Note also that the cairns might resemble things other than the trail. Thus the cairns taken collectively might resemble the path of a subterranean gopher tunnel directly below the trail and following it exactly. But obviously, the cairns do not mark this gopher tunnel. Note also that isomorphism is not sensitive to the difference between rocks whose stacking is artificial, i.e., an artifact of a purposive agent, and rocks whose stacking came about via random purely natural processes. But it is only if the stacking is artificial that the stacks would mean anything. And if the stacking is artificial/artifactual, then there is a purposive agent possessing intrinsic intentionality.

Mind is king.  Naturalists need to wise up.

Representation and Causation, with Some Help from Putnam

1. Materialism would be very attractive if only it could be made to work. Unfortunately, there are a number of phenomena for which it has no satisfactory explanation. One such is the phenomenon of
representation, whether mental or linguistic. Some mental states are of or about worldly individuals and states of affairs. This fact comes under the rubric 'Intentionality.'  How is this intentional directedness possible given materialist constraints? Following Chisholm and Searle, I subscribe to the primacy of the intentional over the linguistic. But let's approach the problem of representation from the side of linguistic reference. How is it that words and sentences mean things? How does language hook onto reality? In virtue of what does my tokening (in overt speech, in writing, or in any other way) of the English word-type 'cat' refer to cats? What makes 'cat' refer to cats rather than to pictures of cats or statues of cats or the meowing of cats?  This, in linguistic dress, is the question, What makes my thought of a cat, a thought of a cat?  And how is all this possible in the materialist's world?

2. The materialist has more than one option, but a very tempting one is to reduce reference to causation. The idea is roughly that the referent of a word is what causes its tokening. Thus 'cat'-tokenings refer to cats because cats cause these tokenings. Suppose I walk into your house and see a cat. I say: "I see you have cat." My use of 'cat'  on this occasion -- my tokening of the word-type -- refers to cats because the critter in front of me causes my 'cat'-tokening.  That's the idea.

3. Unfortunately, this is only a crude gesture in the direction of a theory. For it is obvious, as Hilary Putnam points out (Renewing Philosophy, Harveard UP, 1992,p. 37), that pictures of cats cause 'cat'-tokenings, but   pictures of cats are not cats. Cats are typically furry and cover their feces. Pictures, however, are rarely furry and never cover their (nonexistent) feces. Yet I might say, seeing a picture of a cat over your fireplace, "I see you like cats." In that sentence, 'cat' is used to refer to cats even though what caused my 'cat'-tokening was not a cat but a non-cat, namely, a picture of a cat.

Indeed, practically anything can cause a 'cat'-tokening: cat feces, cat hair, cat caterwauling. Suppose I see Ann Coulter engaged in a 'cat-fight' with Susan Estrich on one of the shout shows. I say, "They are fighting like cats." Nota Bene: my use of 'cat' in this sentence is literal, but it is not caused by a cat! (My example, not Putnam's).

4. Our problem is this: what determines the reference of a word like 'cat'? What makes this bit of language represent something extralinguistic? 'Cat' is a linguistic item; a cat is not. (French   'philosophers' take note.) In virtue of what does the former target the latter? If both a cat and a pile of cat scat can cause a 'cat'-tokening, then the causal theory of reference is worthless unless it can exclude these extraneous (excremental?) cases.

The problem is that 'cat' refers to something quite specific, cats, whereas 'cat'-tokenings can be caused by practically anything. To solve this problem, a notion of causation must be invoked that is also quite selective. It turns out, however, that this selective notion of  causation presupposes intentionality, and so cannot be used in a noncircular account of intentionality. Let me explain.

4. Context-Sensitive versus Context-Independent Concepts of Causation. We often in ordinary English speak of 'the cause' of some event, a myocardial infarction say, even though there are many contributing  factors: bad diet, lack of exercise, hypertension, cigarette smoking, high stress job, an episode of snow-shoveling. Which of these will be adjudged 'the cause' is context- and interest-relative. A physician who gets a kick-back from a pharmaceutical concern will point to hypertension, perhaps, so that he can prescribe a massive dose of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor, while the man's wife might say that it was the snow shoveling that did him in.

To take a more extreme example, suppose a man dies in a fire while in bed. The salient cause might be determined to be smoking in bed. No one will say that the flammability of the bedsheets and other room
furnishings is the cause of the man's incineration. Nevertheless, had the room and its furnishings not been flammable, the fire would not have occurred! The flammability is not merely a logical, but also a   causal, condition of the fire. It is part of the total cause, but no one will consider it salient. The word is from the Latin salire to leap, whence our word 'sally' as when one sallies forth to do battle at a
chess tournament, say.   A salient cause, then, is one that jumps out at you,  grabbing you by your epistemic shorthairs as it were, as opposed to being a mere background condition.

Putnam cites the example of the pressure cooker that exploded (p. 48).  No one will say that it was a lack of holes in the pressure cooker's vessel that caused the explosion. A stuck safety valve caused the   explosion. Nevertheless, had the vessel been perforated, the contraption would not have exploded!

What these examples show is that there is an ordinary-language use of 'cause' which is context-sensitive and interest-relative and (if I may) point-of-view-ish. A wholly objective view of nature, a Nagelian view from nowhere, would not be able to discriminate the salient from the nonsalient in matters causal. In terms of fundamental physics, the whole state of the world at time t determines its state at subsequent  times. At this level, a short-circuit and the current's being on are equally causal in respect of the effect of a fire. Our saying that the short-circuit caused the fire, not the current's being on, simply advertises the fact that for us the latter is the normal and desired state of things, the state we have an interest in maintaining, and that the former is the opposite.

The ordinary notion of cause, then, resting as it does on our interests and desires, presupposes intentional notions. I cannot be interested in or desire something unless I am conscious of it. And I   cannot adjudge one state of affairs as normal and the other as  abnormal unless I have interests and desires.

5. Recall what the problem was. The materialist needs to explain reference in physicalist terms. He thinks to do so by invoking physical causation. The idea is that the referents of a word W cause W-tokenings. The reference of a word is determined by the causal influence of the word's referents. So it must be cats, and not  pictures of cats, or the past behavior or English speakers that causes  'cat'-tokenings. But surely the past behavior of English speakers is part of the total cause of present 'cat'-tokenings. (See Putnam, pp. 48-49.) 'Cat' does not refer to this behavior, however. To exclude the   behavior as non-salient requires use of the ordinary interest-relative notion of causation. But this notion, we have seen, presupposes intentionality.

6. The upshot is that the above causal account of representation --  which is close to a theory proposed by Jerry Fodor -- is viciously circular: it presupposes the very notion that it is supposed to be   reductively accounting for, namely, intentionality.

A Coherent Representing of the Incoherent

It is broadly logically impossible that there be a hand that both draws itself and is drawn by itself.  So what the Escher print represents is B-L impossible, and in this sense 'incoherent'  and 'unintelligible.'  But the Escher drawing itself is coherent and intelligible as a representation.  And so we can say that we understand the drawing while also saying that we do not understand that which is depicted in the drawing.

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