Rule-following, Intentionality and Non-reductive Physicalism

Rule-following, Intentionalityand Non-reductive Physicalism

Antti HeikinheimoUniversity of Jyväskylä, FinlandEmail: [email protected]

Abstract

This paper argues against reductionism about intentional mental properties. Reduc-tionism is identified with the thesis that mental properties are nothing but physicalproperties. Three interpretations of this thesis are given: reduction as i) local superveni-ence, or as ii) deducibility, or as iii) identity. It is then argued that reductionism regard-ing intentional mental properties is not true in any of these senses. The argument isbased on the rule-following considerations, and the fact that mental content, and thusintentional properties, depend on a distinction between correctness and incorrectnesswhich, it is argued, does not allow physical reduction in any of the mentioned senses.The resulting non-reductionist position is compatible with a more modest physicalism,understood as global supervenience of mental properties on physical properties.

Keywords: mind-body problem, non-reductionism, intentionality, rule-following

1. Introduction

The mind-body problem is the problem of how our minds are related toour bodies. Since the demise of substance dualism, the most relevant posi-tions have been reductive and non-reductive physicalism. In this paper Iadvance an argument for the non-reductive side, in the context of inten-tional mental states. The argument is not new, in that it or parts of it havebeen around for quite some time. But it has never really got the attention Ithink it deserves. The argument I am talking about is based on certain as-pects of the problem of rule-following, while it has been much more popu-lar to argue against reductionism from the premises of multiple realizabilityand content externalism. At the end of this paper I try to point out that mypreferred line of argument can provide important additions to the morepopular ones. Physicalism, as I understand it, seems to be almost universallyagreed, at least in the context of the mind-body problem, so I will not try todefend it against substance dualism or any other alternatives. Since my posi-

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tion is non-reductionist, in distinction to reductionist, most of my argu-ment will be negative, aiming to show that reductionism is false. I will firstdiscuss, with some length, what I take to be the central thesis of reduction-ism. I will give three interpretations to the central thesis. Then I will try toshow that the thesis is false in any of the interpretations.

According to a somewhat popular view, reductionism is true in thecase of intentional mental properties, such as beliefs and desires; but notin the case of phenomenal mental properties, such as pains, itches, andvisual sensations (see, for example, Kim 1998, 2005; Chalmers 1996). Myargument will only concern intentional mental properties, as I agree withthe received view that phenomenal mental properties are not physicallyreducible. I speak here of intentional and phenomenal mental propertiesinstead of intentional and phenomenal mental states, because it seems thatat least some intentional states, such as occurrent thoughts, also have phe-nomenal properties – it is “like something” to entertain a thought; andsome phenomenal states, such as sense perceptions, also have intentionalproperties – they are perceptions of something external to the mind. Sowhatever other properties any mental state might have, if it also has inten-tional properties, my argument is supposed to affect the status of theseand only these properties.

2. Reductionism

Reductionism is the claim that something is nothing but (or nothing “overand above”) something else (see, for example, Hohwy & Kallestrup 2008,1). Thus, a reductionist towards intentional mental properties will say thatsuch properties are nothing but physical properties of the brain or of thebody, or perhaps physical properties of some other physical system; thepossibilities are various. The unifying feature of all forms of reductionismis the claim that something M is really nothing but something P, whereM and P don’t appear to be the same thing, at least not at first sight. Orso it used to be. Today there are a growing number of philosophers whocall themselves reductionists, but are not, or at least not obviously, com-mitted to a nothing-but thesis. The strategy of these philosophers is tolook at what is actually done in what they call reductionist science, andthen try to abstract from the observed scientific practices some principlesdeserving the name “reduction” (see, for example, Bickle 2008; Craver2007). This project is interesting as a way of studying the practice ofscience and the concepts used therein. But it doesn’t seem to have anydirect implications to the traditional question of mind-body reductionism.For the latter is an ontological question, in the heart of which is the noth-ing-but thesis. Whether or not something else is called “reduction” bypractising scientists, or by philosophers of science, has no direct bearing

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on the question of whether or not the mental is something other than (orsomething over and above) the physical. So I will not discuss here anyviews that go by the name of reductionism but are not committed to thenothing-but thesis.

It is notoriously unclear what exactly is meant by saying that the men-tal is reducible to the physical, even in the traditional, nothing-but sense –in other words, it is not clear how the “nothing but” should be under-stood. It should be clear, however, that reductionism is not simply a super-venience thesis. Or at least, not just any supervenience thesis amounts toreductionism. I take supervenience to be a relation between two groups ofproperties,1 M and P, such that M supervenes on P iff for every possiblecomplete set of P-facts Pi (that is, the set of all facts about the occurringof P-properties), there corresponds a complete set of M-facts Mj, such thatif Pi is the case, then Mj is the case. In other words, M supervenes on P ifffixing P-facts fixes M-facts; there can be no variation in M-facts withoutsome variation in P-facts. The “if … then” here is not to be understoodcausally. Instead, it is common to use phrases like “M-properties are consti-tuted or realized by P-properties”.2 Now non-reductive physicalism, as tra-ditionally understood, is precisely the combination of the thesis that themental supervenes on the physical and the thesis that reductionism is nottrue. And of course non-reductive physicalism should not be construed asa view that is incoherent in such an obvious way; hence reductionismmust involve something stronger than the simple supervenience thesis. Inthis paper I will defend a view that might be characterized as a version ofnon-reductive physicalism, since it is a combination of a superveniencethesis and the thesis that reductionism is not true. As may be noticed, the

1 Reductionism, supervenience, etc. can be construed as doctrines concerning events,states, or what have you, instead of properties. I will try to stay as neutral as I can inrespect to these different readings, in the hope that what I say goes for all of themwith only more or less obvious and unimportant alterations. For the reasons ex-plained in the introduction, I will mainly speak of properties being the target ofreduction, but those favoring a different reading of reductionism can, I hope, justreplace “property” with their favorite ontological category.

2 The uses of terms like “supervenience”, “realization”, “constitution”, etc. in the dis-cussions on the mind-body problem are varied. For example, Sydney Shoemaker(2007, 2) seems to think that saying that Ms are realized by Ps commits one to thethesis that Ms are nothing but Ps. Also, in his vocabulary, supervenience is compati-ble with a causal determination of Ms by Ps, so that we get from supervenience torealization by adding the requirement that the determination relation be non-causal.None of this is in line with how I just explained the terms. I will not here try tojustify my use of these expressions as conforming to their generally accepted uses –because I do not think there are such unified and generally accepted uses. Instead, letme just stipulate that, in the context of this paper, these terms will be used on theway explained above.

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reading of the supervenience thesis I am offering is a global one, in distinc-tion to various forms of more local supervenience. Since local superveni-ence entails but is not entailed by global supervenience, it might bethought that a suitably local supervenience thesis is the extra requirementneeded to get from physicalism to reductive physicalism. I will come backto this later.

It is also quite generally agreed that so-called bridge-laws, i.e. empiricallaws that connect mental kinds to physical kinds through biconditionals3of the form “M occurs iff P occurs”, where ‘M’ and ‘P’ are names of,respectively, mental and physical kinds, are not what the reductionistneeds. And this is for two reasons. First, the project of finding suchbridge-laws seems hopeless. It seems utterly implausible that any physicalkinds should correspond to mental kinds in a way that allows the respec-tive predicates to be interchangeable. This is because a) as of today, we arevery far from having anything like a list of physical properties that corre-spond to the mental property of, say, believing that there’s a horse in thevicinity; and b) even if we had one, it seems very unlikely that the physicalproperties in the list would constitute a physical kind, at least under anyconception of natural kinds that doesn’t allow for identifying physicalkinds in a wildly disjunctive manner, solely in terms of the purported factthat all and only the physical properties belonging to the “kind” corre-spond to the same mental kind.

Indeed, the whole idea of having mental kinds co-vary with physicalkinds, instead of just any collections of physical properties, was to showthat, in a sense stronger than simple supervenience, the mental is nothingbut the physical. I will explain. Remember that the mental is supervenienton the physical just in case that for every complete set of physical facts Pi,there is a complete set of mental facts Mj, such that if Pi then Mj, but notnecessarily vice versa. From supervenience alone it follows that for any Mjthere is a set of Ps, P*j, such that if Mj, then some P in the set P*j. This issimply the set of all Ps that are connected to the same M; P*j =def. {Pk | ifPk then Mj}. So we get:

a) if Pk belongs to P*j, then if Pk thenMj (by the definition of P*j); andb) if Mj then some P in P*j (because if any M is the case, then some

P must also be the case, and by definition all P’s that correspondto Mj are included in P*j).

3 The term “bridge-law” comes from Ernest Nagel’s writings on theoretical reductionsin the sciences; see Nagel (1961). As Kim (1998, 90–91) notes, although Nagel ori-ginally didn’t insist on bridge-laws being biconditional in form, it has for variousreasons become common in the context of mind-body reductionism to assume theyare biconditional.




Of course, for all we know, P*j may be indeterminably large and may notbe unified in any way characterizable in P-terms. And now we see that ifthe concept of natural kind is loosened to the point of allowing just anyset of physical properties to form a physical kind, solely because they allhappen to correspond to the same mental property, then bridge-law reduc-tionism becomes just the doctrine that there is a biconditional connectionbetween Mj and P*j, for all j, which is just what supervenience of M-prop-erties on P-properties means. Thus the result of construing bridge-law re-ductionism based on a relaxed concept of a natural kind in the mannerdescribed above would be to collapse the distinction between reductiveand non-reductive physicalism altogether.

Another problem with bridge-law reduction, discussed by JaegwonKim, is that it does not facilitate reductive explanation. It is generally con-sidered to be a virtue of reductionist theories that they give reductive ex-planations. Furthermore, as I will soon explain, the desire for reductiveexplanation is one of the key motivations behind reductionism in general.Kim’s complaint against bridge-law reduction is that, by adding bridge-laws to the reducing theory (i.e. the theory about the reducing group ofproperties, or the “base” properties), it effectively expands the reductionbase in such a way as to include the properties that were to be reduced.For of course both the reducing and the to-be-reduced properties are in-volved in bridge-laws, since they are laws that connect these two kinds ofproperties. But reductive explanation requires that the laws and phenom-ena of the reduced domain be accounted for solely in terms of the redu-cing domain. So, clearly, bridge-law reductionism cannot generate reduc-tive explanations (Kim 2005, 98–101).4

What, then, is the claim made by reductionism but not by non-reduc-tive physicalism? There seem to be three options from which the reduc-tionist can choose. First, as already mentioned, reductionism may be con-strued as a local, instead of a global supervenience thesis; second,reductionism may be identified with the claim that all true propositionsdescribing the facts about mental properties can be deduced from truepropositions that describe facts about physical properties; and third, theclaim that mental properties are identical with physical properties. I willconsider each in turn, before turning to considerations pertaining to themall.

First, reduction as local supervenience. This would mean that whatreductionism claims, and non-reductionism denies, is that mental proper-ties supervene on non-relational properties of the brain, or of the body, or

4 See also Kim (1998, 97): “[Bridge-law] reduction gives us no ontological simplifica-tion, and fails to give meaning to the intuitive ‘nothing over and above’ that werightly associate with the idea of reduction.”

Antti Heikinheimo40



perhaps any physical system with a suitable inner structure. If reduction-ism is construed in this way, it is reasonable to set somewhat narrowboundaries on what is understood as local supervenience, in order to getthe conversation off the ground. It would not make much sense, for exam-ple, to construe reductionism as the thesis that mental properties – at leastin humans – are supervenient on physical properties of the perceivableuniverse, although this claim is, strictly speaking, stronger than globalsupervenience. For of course no non-reductive physicalist will want todeny that thesis.5 I think it is fair to say that, if reductionism is construedas a local supervenience claim, it has to be local substantially, and not justin letter. If the supervenience claim in question is local enough, I think itgoes some way towards fleshing out the nothing-but thesis. It makes somesense to say that, if mental properties supervene on the non-relationalproperties of the brain, then in a sense they are nothing but properties ofthe brain, although this is by no means uncontroversial. John Searle, forone, seems to accept the local supervenience thesis, but denies nothing-butreductionism (Searle 1992).6

In any case, a major problem with reductionism construed simply as alocal supervenience claim and nothing more, is that it does not seem tofacilitate reductive explanation. Even if it was somehow established thatmental properties are supervenient on, say, non-relational neural proper-ties, this alone would not answer any explanatory questions. On the con-trary, lacking a more substantial account of the relation between the mindand the brain, it would be quite mysterious why the supervenience shouldhold. This problem is known as “the explanatory gap”, first named byJoseph Levine (1993).7 The problem of the explanatory gap is, of course,common to all forms of supervenience physicalism, reductive or otherwise,and indeed it needs to be addressed by any theory in the philosophy ofmind since the phenomenon of mental-to-physical correlation is real re-gardless of one’s ontological commitments. In fact, one of the key motiva-

5 By “perceivable universe” here I do not mean “perceivable by the unaided senses” oranything like that, but rather the part of the physical universe that is sufficiently closeto stand in causal relations to us.

6 It should be noted that Searle’s understanding of supervenience is somewhat unusual.For he thinks that mental phenomena are caused by their neural correlates, instead ofbeing non-causally constituted by them. This seems to explain why he is able to denythe nothing-but thesis while holding on to local supervenience. For cause must bedifferent from effect, so if mental properties (or property-instances) are caused byneural properties (or instances thereof), then, of course, the former must be some-thing other than the latter.

7 Although the term was first introduced by Levine in connection with phenomenalmental properties, I see no reason not to use it also in the context of intentionalmental properties.




tions behind reductionism is exactly that it promises to solve the problemof the explanatory gap. But the standard way for reductionist theories todeal with the problem is to offer promises of reductive explanation, andthis task seems hopeless if reductionism is construed simply as the thesisof local supervenience. So local supervenience reductionism, though itmight offer a somewhat plausible interpretation of the nothing-but thesis,is quite unmotivated lacking any more substantial reductionist theory.Also, as I will argue later in this paper, there is good reason to think thatintentional mental properties are in fact not locally supervenient on non-relational properties of our brains, bodies, or other similarly constrainedphysical systems.

Second, reduction as deducibility. In this construal of reductionism,the reductionist claims that, in some sense, propositions describing mentalfacts can be deduced from propositions describing physical facts and physi-cal laws. Since it is obvious that in fact we are not in a position to carryout the deductions, the theory should be understood as stating that undersome epistemically idealized conditions, we could. This seems like a rea-sonable way to develop reductive physicalism, at least at first sight. If weknew everything there is to know about the physical make-up of the uni-verse, says the reductionist, and if we knew all the physical laws, and if ourpowers of deduction were unlimited, then we should be able to deduce alltrue propositions about mental facts. And if this is true, then it seemsjustified to say that mental properties are nothing but physical properties.For deduction does not add anything essentially new to our knowledge ofthings; so if knowledge of mental facts can be produced via deductionfrom knowledge of physical facts, then mental facts cannot really be any-thing over and above the physical facts. In the same sense we can say, forexample, that chemical properties are nothing but (micro)physical proper-ties. For if we knew all the physical laws and everything there is to knowabout the microphysical properties of a system, and if our powers of de-duction were unlimited, then surely we could deduce all informationabout the chemical properties of that system.8

I think most non-reductive physicalists would not want to deny thisin the case of chemical properties. So what makes the case of mental prop-erties different? One might even suggest that deducibility follows directlyfrom global supervenience of the mental on the physical, making it impos-sible for the non-reductive physicalist to deny this. The thought I have inmind would go like this. Supervenience means that for every complete set

8 The example of chemico-physical reduction is often mentioned in the reductionistliterature. See, for example, Kim (1998, 100), where he states that, contra early 20th

century emergentists, facts about the chemical properties of things can be predictedand explained on the basis of microphysical facts.

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of physical facts Pi there is a corresponding complete set of mental factsMj. Now if we know Pi and all the physical laws, surely we must be inprinciple able to infer Mj. For Mj is determined by Pi (plus, possibly, thenatural laws).9 If this is true, then non-reductive physicalism is in big trou-ble. For we have seen that deducibility seems like a reasonable reading ofthe nothing-but thesis. So if it follows from supervenience alone, thennon-reductive physicalism, that is supervenience without the nothing-butthesis, becomes unstable.

I will have to delay my full answer to these worries until after dealingwith the topic of rule-following. But here are the main points of my coun-ter-argument. In the case of chemistry, what are required in order to de-duce chemical facts from microphysical ones are some principles of trans-lation that give us the correct descriptions of chemical level properties onthe microphysical level. For deduction must, of course, take place in somesystem of deduction that includes all the concepts used in the premisesand in the conclusion. So, to get from physical level premises to a chemi-cal level conclusion, we need to be able to translate the concepts used inthe conclusion into a physicalistic language. These principles of translationneed to be reductive analyses of the chemical level properties in terms ofphysical level properties, in the sense that the translation of a chemicallevel concept must involve only physical level terms. Otherwise the resultwould not be a translation from chemicalistic to physicalistic language butan expansion of physicalistic language to include also chemical level con-cepts. If it can be shown that in the case of intentional mental states nosuch principles of translation exist, bridge-law style or otherwise, then de-ducibility reductionism fails, even though supervenience stays untouched.Furthermore, this needs to be shown in a way that leaves room for the inprinciple deducibility of chemistry from physics, in effect showing that in-tentional mental properties are fundamentally different from physicalproperties, and that the relation of the intentional to the physical is not

9 As the reader may have noticed, when first introducing my interpretation of mind-body supervenience, I formulated it as a relation between physical and mental proper-ties, with no mention of natural laws. The purpose was to leave it open whether thesupervenience relation is thought of as requiring metaphysical dependence, so thatM-facts are determined by P-facts alone; or only nomic dependence, so that M-factsare determined by P-facts together with empirical natural laws. I want to leave it thatway, in the hope that my argument be consistent with either interpretation of super-venience. It should be noted that the reductionist is wise to limit herself to physicallaws in carrying out the deduction. Postulating mental-physical laws would essentiallytake us back to bridge-law reductionism with all its problems. Note also that noanalogous problem arises in the case of chemistry, since chemical laws are usuallyassumed to be in principle reducible to physical laws.




similar to that between the chemical and the physical. This is what I takethe mistake argument to show.

Now one might wonder whether I am contradicting myself in denyingtranslatability but approving of supervenience. For in the discussion onbridge-law reductionism we saw that, if supervenience of mental propertieson physical properties holds, then for any complete set of mental facts Mjthere is a set of complete sets of physical facts P*j such that:

a) if Pk belongs to P*j, then if Pk then Mj; andb) if Mj then some P in P*j.

And it might seem as if the existence of such P*j guaranteed the existenceof a translation principle – namely, that the whole description of the com-plete set of mental facts Mj be translated as the disjunction of the descrip-tions of the complete sets of physical facts in the set P*j. But such a dis-junction is indeterminably large; in fact, it is potentially infinite, sincefirst, every description of a set in P*j describes the whole physical uni-verse10 in whatever level of detail is relevant to the constitution of mentalproperties; and second, from supervenience alone, it does not seem to fol-low that there is any upper bound to the number of sets Pk in P*j. And ofcourse a principle of translation needs to be finitely statable. So I concludethat there is no contradiction in admitting global supervenience and deny-ing deducibility reductionism.

Third, reduction as identity. This is perhaps the most familiar type ofreductionism, stating that mental properties just are (identical with) physi-cal properties. Needless to say, should this turn out to be true, it wouldmost certainly justify the nothing-but thesis. Identity reductionism hashad many adherents, but I will take as my example Jaegwon Kim’s influen-tial theory of functional reduction (Kim 1998; 2005). This is both becauseKim is perhaps the most prominent representative of contemporary reduc-tionism, and because his theory is set out in great clarity and detail, thusallowing us to avoid dwelling in questions of interpretation. We have al-ready seen that Kim stresses the importance of explanatory aspects of re-duction. Indeed, he sees reduction as essentially involving reductive expla-nations, whereby properties in the to-be-reduced group (or level) are firstgiven causal-functional definitions, and then the coming about of the thusspecified causal-functional patterns is explained in terms of the reducing

10 Remember that I only approve of global, but not local, supervenience. As mentionedabove, I think it is safe to limit the supervenience base of mental properties to theperceivable universe, for example, instead of the whole universe but I do not thinkthat makes any difference here.

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group (level) of properties. In Kim’s theory, reductive explanation consistsin the following three steps:

Step 1 (functionalization of the target property) Property M to bereduced is given a functional definition of the following form: HavingM =def. having some property or other P (in the reduction basedomain) such that P performs causal task C.

Step 2 (Identification of the realizers of M) Find the properties (ormechanisms) in the reduction base that perform the causal task C.

Step 3 (Developing an explanatory theory) Construct a theory thatexplains how the realizers of M perform task C. (Kim 2005, 101–102)

Thus, to take an example from Kim, the higher-level property of being agene is reduced to the molecular level by first, giving a causal-functionaldefinition, such as “being a gene =def. being a mechanism that encodes andtransmits genetic information”; and second, identifying the realizers of thiscausal role, which are DNA-molecules; and finally, explaining in terms ofmolecular biology, how DNA-molecules perform the causal task assignedto them in the functional definition of step 1 (Kim 2005, 101). It seemsclear that this kind of reductive explanation really does justify the identifi-cation of genes with DNA-molecules and, more generally, the identifica-tion of the reduced properties with the realizer properties. For, since theproperty of having F just is the property F, for any F, then if some higher-level property M is defined as (the property of) having any lover-levelproperty P which fulfills a specified causal role C, then having M just ishaving P, and M = P (See Kim 1998, 98–99).

As Kim notes, it is the functional definition in step 1 of his reductionschema that is crucial in the case of mind-body reduction. Here is howKim puts the point:

So the central question for us, in the mind-body debate, is this: Is the mentalamenable to the kind of functionalization required for reductive explanation, ordoes it in principle resist such functionalization? If the functionalist conception ofthe mental is correct – correct for all mental properties – then mind-body reduc-tion is in principle possible, if not practically feasible. (Kim 1998, 101)11

11 In the context of this paper, we are not concerned about functionalization of allmental properties, but only the intentional ones. As mentioned previously, Kim him-self thinks that such functionalization is possible in the case of intentional (or “cogni-tive”) mental properties but not in the case of phenomenal properties; whereas thepurpose of this paper is to argue that reductionism, and thus functionalization, failsin respect of intentional mental properties.




This seems right. Should the functionalization go through and the reduc-tive explanation still fail, presumably because of our inability to find anyrealizers for the specified causal-functional roles, we would be left with achoice of either accepting that there are no such properties, in which caseeliminativism would follow; or postulating some unknown – and possiblyunknowable – properties responsible for the causal roles. The latter op-tion, while not completely satisfactory for the reductionist, is even lessattractive for the non-reductionist. For the success in defining mentalproperties in terms of causal-functional roles is enough to show that theidentity of mental properties is determined solely by their causal aspects.12And while it perhaps would remain in principle open for the non-reduc-tionist to argue that the unknown realizers are non-physical, making a casefor such a claim seems like a difficult task. So, what the Kim-style identityreductionist claims, and the non-reductive physicalist denies, is that (inten-tional) mental properties can be given causal-functional definitions.

Because of its connection with explanation, Kim’s theory provides aclear motivation for reductionism, and promises a solution to the problemof the explanatory gap. Indeed, without such explanatory connection, aclaim that mental properties are identical with whatever properties or pro-cesses take place in the brain – or indeed any physical system – while themental property is instantiated seems quite unmotivated. So it seems thatthe prospect of reductive explanation, which depends crucially on the pos-sibility of causal-functional definition, is essential for identity reduction-ism. It also seems that some things very much like Kim’s functional defini-tions are needed in order to motivate reductionism as deducibility. Wesaw that deducibility reductionism requires that mentalistic concepts betranslatable into physicalistic language. And it is hard to see how thiscould come about, if mental properties turn out not to be causal-function-ally definable.13

Now in a sense, of course, definitions are easy to come by – just makeone up as the need arises! But the real question of course is, whether men-tal properties can be defined in a way that is adequate to the established

12 It was suggested by an anonymous referee that, even if intentional mental propertiescan be defined in terms of causal-functional roles, they might still have non-causalaspects. This is true, but not to the point. For these non-causal aspects would then becoincidental at best, in the sense that any property that is functionally identical to anintentional property but lacks any other aspects would, by definition, still be thatintentional property.

13 Another possible source for mental-to-physical translation principles, besides causal-functional definitions, would perhaps be bridge-laws. But, as said, the project of find-ing real bridge-laws between mental and physical kinds seems hopeless. Besides thesetwo alternatives, I do not see any plausible way a mental-to-physical translation prin-ciple could be devised.

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use of the corresponding ordinary language (and scientific psychological)concepts. Since we are not now in possession of such definitions, the re-ductionist should give reasons to expect that in principle there are no ob-stacles for devising them – save for the enormous complexity such defini-tions most probably would have to have. And the non-reductivephysicalist needs to find reasons to think that even in principle such defi-nitions are not possible, presumably because there is something in mentalproperties that just cannot be talked about in a physicalistic language. Be-fore I set out to explain why I think the non-reductive physicalist has theupper hand, there is just one more point about definitions that needs tobe made. It is sometimes said that, because of reasons such as vagueness ofordinary language concepts, or their meanings being based on family re-semblances rather than strict sufficient and necessary conditions of applic-ability, they cannot, strictly speaking, be defined. For all I know, this maywell be true, but obviously it is not to the point in the reductionism de-bate. For “bald” and “vegetable” are also vague and, perhaps, bound byfamily resemblances rather than strict rules, but nobody thinks there isanything physically irreducible in baldness or vegetables.

3. Rule-following and the Mistake Argument

The topic of rule-following rose to the center of discussions on wordmeaning and mental content after the publication of Saul A. Kripke’sWittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Kripke 1982). Although theconnection between the rule-following considerations and reductionismwas certainly noticed by many, rule-following never really became a centraltopic in the mind-body debate. This is a pity, I think, since I find in therule-following literature a strong argument against physicalistic reductionof intentional mental properties.

Kripke presents the problem of rule-following as a question aboutword meaning. His question is, approximately, “what makes it the casethat, in saying ‘plus’ and using the ‘+’ symbol, I mean addition and notsome other function?” His answer is, roughly, that there is nothing, nofact, short of the whole practices of attributing meanings and doing addi-tion in the community of language-users that makes the difference be-tween my meaning the one thing or the other. And similarly for any otherconcepts I might be using; whether by “horse” I mean horses or somethingelse, is likewise determined, not by any fact about me, but by the wholepractice of using the word in my linguistic community.

Kripke specially considers one sort of facts that might be thought tomake the difference, namely, facts about my dispositions to use the word“plus” and the “+” symbol. Now these dispositions are exactly the kind ofcausal-functional roles that appear in Kim-style reductive explanations. In




Kim’s schema, a purported causal-functional definition of a property suchas means addition by “plus” would look like this:

Meaning addition by “plus” =def. having some physical property P suchthat P performs causal task C.

In order for the definition to have any hope of conforming to the estab-lished meaning of the concept of meaning addition, C has to specify someways in which the subject in question uses the word “plus”, how she re-sponds to communications involving the word, and other related beha-viors, so P will be whatever physical property is responsible for the sub-ject’s engaging in these behaviors. In other words, C must specifydispositions to behavior – verbal and otherwise. In claiming this, I am notcommitting myself to any particular theory of (the concept of) meaning,such as that “the meaning of a word is its use”. In particular, I am notcommitted to a behaviorist theory of meaning – indeed, it is an essentialclaim of the non-reductionist position I am defending that what someonemeans is not exhausted by her actual or counterfactual behaviors. The re-ductionist, on the other hand, is limited to causal-functional roles in thepurported definition of the property of meaning something. And while itis legitimate to refer to causal roles pertaining to internal processes of thebrain, for example, these processes must be described in physical, non-in-tentional terms, in order to achieve reductive explanation. It is not opento the reductionist, for example, to describe the brain as representing orinferring anything, etc. without cashing these metaphors out in purely phy-sicalistic terms in the end. And it seems that ultimately, for any internalphysical process to count as constitutive of meaning something by an ex-pression, there has to be some possible circumstance where the processinfluences external behavior in relation to the expression in question.Otherwise the connection with that particular expression seems quite arbi-trary.

Furthermore, functionally defining intentional mental properties re-quires functionally defining meaning something instead of something else.For surely we need to be able to differentiate the contents of intentionalstates in order to differentiate the states themselves. And if a definitiondoes not enable us to tell the difference between, say, believing that thereis a cow in front of me and believing that there is a horse in front of me,then it is clearly not adequate to the meaning of the concept of belief. Solet us take a look at Kripke’s argument against dispositional analyses ofmeaning.

Kripke’s main argument against dispositionalism is the mistake argu-ment, which I will now lay out. In order to make it the case that I meananything by a word, the meaning-determining fact needs to make the dif-ference between correct and incorrect uses of the word. But dispositions

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cannot do this. If what I mean by a word was determined by the way Iam disposed to use it, then whatever I say would be correct (Kripke 1982,24). I could not mistake a cow for a horse, for if I was disposed to call acow “horse”, then that particular cow would, for that very reason, be in-cluded among the things I mean by “horse”. So there would be no distinc-tion between using a word correctly, in accordance with its meaning, andusing it incorrectly.14 From this it follows that there could be no suchthing as meaning anything by a word. It should also be noted that, in theargument against dispositionalism, there is nothing that is peculiar to wordmeaning, in distinction to mental content. The same considerations applyalso to cases where I don’t refer to the animal in front of me overtly inspeech, but only in my judgments and beliefs. If the content of my beliefwas determined by my disposition to form beliefs under various circum-stances, then I could not err in my beliefs; if I was disposed to form abelief with the content “horse” when presented with a cow, then that con-tent would, according to dispositionalism, refer to that cow, and my beliefwould be correct. So the crux of the mistake argument is this: In order fora concept to mean something, there must be correct and incorrect ways toapply it. Any definition of meaning must maintain this distinction be-tween correctness and incorrectness. Similarly, any definition of inten-tional properties must maintain the distinction between fit and misfitwith actual states of affairs (in case of belief this amounts to the distinc-tion between true and false beliefs, in case of desires, satisfied and notsatisfied desires, and so on). Since this cannot be accomplished with defi-nitions in terms of dispositions, i.e. causal-functional roles, such definitionsare not the correct ones for intentional mental properties.

There is a popular reading of the mistake argument, according towhich the argument depends on an assumption of semantic normativity, i.e. the claim that meaning something by an expression or concept necessa-rily grounds normative requirements for the concept user – sometimes theargument is even called the “normativity argument”. But this is not thecase with the version of the argument I am relying on. The only assump-tion of this version of the argument is that there must be a distinctionbetween correct and incorrect applications of a concept, in order for it tohave any meaning. And the need for such a distinction must be recognizedin any theory of meaning, regardless of whether the theory also assumesthat concept users have some obligation to only use concepts correctly.The argument is thus completely neutral in relation to the question of

14 See also Kusch (2006, 97): “The core of the mistake problem is the claim that dispo-sitionalism is unable to distinguish between two clearly distinct scenarios: the scenar-io where I follow one rule correctly, and the scenario where I follow another ruleincorrectly.”




semantic normativity. It depends only on an uncontroversial aspect ofmeaning and intentionality as such.15

There is a counter-argument that might be made against the mistakeargument.16 Imagine a physical device that has the disposition to performas a competent user of the word “horse”. According to the counter-argu-ment, to claim that this system cannot have intentional mental states suchas “meaning horse” begs the question against a Kim-style reductionist. Iagree that to claim that would certainly be question-begging. But this isnot what the mistake argument aims to show. Rather the claim is that thedisposition to perform as a competent user of a word cannot be describedin purely physicalistic terms – at least not without assuming the wholelinguistic community and linguistic practice to already be in place. Andthis, of course, already assumes meanings and mental contents. The pointis exactly that whatever behavioural or causal-functional properties the de-vice has, they alone do not suffice to make a distinction between caseswhere the device applies the word correctly, that is when it functionsproperly, and cases where it applies the word incorrectly, or malfunctions.After all, any physical device has dispositions to malfunction under somecircumstances, but dispositionalism requires that the performance of thedevice under those circumstances also is considered meaning-constituting.In particular, the reductionist cannot appeal to the intentions of whoeverconstructed the device, in order to count only the proper functions of thedevice as meaning-constituting, on pain of vicious regress.

Finally, it is sometimes suggested that the aspects of intentional mentalstates that resist reduction are closely connected to their phenomenal char-acter; and that it is only these phenomenal aspects of intentional statesthat resist reduction, not intentionality in itself.17 But I have already ar-gued that the mistake argument only depends on an uncontroversial fea-ture of the very intentionality of all intentional properties.

There are, of course, other candidate solutions to the rule-followingproblem, besides the Kripkean community view – which many take to bediscredited – and the simple dispositional view. But what is important for

15 For further discussion on the mistake argument and its relation to semantic norma-tivity, see Wikforss (2001, especially 220), Kusch (2006, chapter 2, especially 62–64),and Hattiangadi (2007, chapters 5 and 7), who all argue that the argument is inde-pendent of assumptions of semantic normativity. The phrase “mistake argument” isadapted from Kusch, (2006, 97). Kripke himself is not very clear on the issue ofwhether or not he thinks the argument depends on an assumption of semantic nor-mativity. But my purpose is not to offer an exegesis or evaluation of Kripke, butrather to make use of an argument that can be found in his book.

16 This counterargument was suggested by an anonymous referee.17 This line of thought was also pointed out to me by an anonymous referee. Chalmers

(1996) makes a similar suggestion.

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us, is that the reductionist is limited to the kind of solution that offerscausal-functional analyses of meaning – remember that causal-functionalanalyses are required in order for reduction as identity or reduction asdeducibility to succeed.18 Besides simple dispositionalism, there are twomain lines of theory in the rule-following literature that rely on functionalproperties of the concept users. These are the community-wide disposi-tional theory put forward most notably by Philip Pettit, and the optimal-dispositions theory, suggested first by Paul Horwich (1984, 168). Next Iwill argue that the first kind of theory does not produce causal-functionalanalyses of the required type, and that the second is vulnerable to a coun-ter-argument showing that it fails to solve the mistake problem. Whateverother kind of theory one might favor on its own merits is of no help forthe reductionist if it fails to give the right kind of causal-functional ana-lyses of meaning. And what option there is, besides the kinds of theoriesalready mentioned? It seems that the alternatives must more or less cometo some sort of primitivism, where meaning-facts are taken to be unanaly-sable, or else some form of Platonism, where meanings are taken to beindependently existing senses; and both of these are obviously unsuitablefor reductionist purposes.

So now, as an example of a community-wide dispositional theory, Iwill take a look at Philip Pettit’s influential “ethocentric” account of rule-following. The problem of rule-following, as Pettit presents it, is to:

Explain how something can meet the objective condition of being normative overan indefinite range of instances and the subjective condition of being such that afinite subject like one of us can identify it independently of any particular applica-tion and can read its requirements – say, its requirements for the use of a sign –directly but fallibly. (Pettit 2002, 3)19

These requirements fit quite well what we ordinarily take to be the char-acteristic features of concepts and mental content. First, they must rangeover an indefinitely large area of instances; for example, the concept ‘horse’must enable a judgment on whether or not a given thing is a horse or anon-horse, in an indefinite range of cases. Second, the meaning of a con-cept should not be determined by any particular application of it, for if itwas, then the meaning of the concept could not be a constraint on thatparticular application. Third, we should be able to apply a concept di-

18 Again, another possibility would be bridge-law-like biconditionals between mentalcontents and physical kinds. And again I take this possibility to be too obviouslyincredible to be taken seriously. Nor have I seen anyone seriously proposing such asolution for the rule-following problem.

19 It should be noted that Pettit’s use of the word “normative” does not necessarilycommit him to any claims about semantic normativity. As with Kripke’s mistakeargument, also here it is enough that the rule determines the difference between cor-rect and incorrect applications.




rectly, without explicit inference. Since the premises of an inference al-ready contain concepts, it must be possible to apply some concepts di-rectly; otherwise we would be facing an infinite regress. And finally, theapplication of concepts must be fallible. As already said, there must be adistinction between correct and incorrect applications of a concept; henceit must always be possible to make a mistake in applying a concept.

Pettit’s solution of the problem consists of three steps.20 First, he dis-tinguishes instantiation from exemplification. Although any finite set ofexamples of applications will instantiate an indefinite number of differentways to go on – that is, any number of ways to extrapolate from the givenexamples will always be available – the examples may, for a given subject,exemplify a more or less determinate way of going on in applying the rulein further cases. Second, he notes that this exemplification may comeabout by the subject acquiring a disposition to apply the rule in a certainway, allowing the subject to see the set of examples as a proper subset ofthe larger class of applications they are disposed to make. For example,when examples of red things are shown to a child in the course of itslearning the meaning of ‘red’, it naturally becomes disposed to use theword in the standard way, although in principle the set of examples wouldbe compatible with any number of deviant ways to go on. The third stepin Pettit’s account of rule following is to see how one can sometimes gowrong in the application of a rule and, in retrospect, recognize that onehas done so, even when one has already formed the disposition to go onin a certain way. This is accomplished by introducing favorable and unfa-vorable conditions for applying a rule. The acquired disposition will resultin correct applications only in favorable conditions. Furthermore, in thesituation where one needs to apply a rule, one cannot tell with certaintywhether the conditions are favorable. So the application of rules remainsfallible, as required. According to Pettit, the conditions of some particularapplication are deemed unfavorable when a discrepancy is found betweenthat application and others made in different situations. It is assumed that,like the forming of extrapolative dispositions in response to examples, alsothe disposition to find some applications of rules discrepant and try tocorrect them is formed naturally and “blindly”, often without the need forexplicit reasoning. When some application of a rule is found discrepant –either by the subject herself or by the community of her peers – a negotia-tion is carried out in order to point to some unfavorable circumstanceresponsible for the mistake. This could be, for example, darkness in thecase of applying “red”. It is also allowed for that sometimes the cause of

20 In my exposition of Pettit’s account, I follow his overview to part I of his (2002).Due to limitations of space, my exposition is very sketchy. I refer the reader to Pettit(2002) for more details.

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the mistake is not found, but an application is still deemed mistaken inlight of a perceived discrepancy with other applications of the rule.

The three-step account of rule-following does solve the problem ofshowing how a rule can meet both the objective and the subjective condi-tion. This is accomplished, however, only with essential use of non-reduc-tionist elements. As Pettit puts it, his account does not:

provide a certain sort of reductive analysis of rule-following. It identifies extrapola-tive and revisionary dispositions such that for a subject who exercises them there isno inherent obstacle to the possibility of identifying a pattern to which the subjectcan then aspire to conform. But it does not identify that pattern itself: not, at least,in the effective way in which it is identified for the subject. It offers what I herecall a genealogy of rule-following, not strictly an analysis. (Pettit 2002, 8)

As Pettit points out, there is no hope that his account would produce areductive analysis of rule-following as a general phenomenon, allowing forthe definition of ‘rule’ and related concepts in terms of, for example, phy-sicalistic ones. Nor will it produce reductive analyses specific to given rules,such that specific concepts or mental contents, for example, could be de-fined physicalistically. This is because the theory uses as essential elementsthe dispositions of rule-followers to see things as saliently similar, or asdiscrepant with other things, or as representing a larger class of cases, etc.;and the concepts of seeing as and representing are of course non-physica-listic concepts belonging to the same family of concepts as those of rule,meaning, content, and intentionality. Perhaps this can also help make thecase of the “competent ‘horse’-user device”, discussed earlier, a little clearer.Since, in Pettit’s theory, favorable conditions, and thus the correct applica-tions of a rule, are determined by these dispositions of members of thelinguistic community to see something as discrepant or in harmony withanother application of the rule, there is no way to describe the device’sdisposition to perform as a competent ‘horse’-user without assuming theseintentional properties.

It should be noted, though, that Pettit himself does not intend theethocentric theory of rule-following as an argument against reductionism,and rightly so. Simply showing that the problem of rule-following can besolved by recourse to non-physical properties does not, of course, provethat a physicalistic solution could not also be available. As said before, mypurpose was to show that theories of rule following more widely acceptedthan Kripke’s community theory still fail to give the reductionist what sheneeds.

The reductionist, then, is left with the optimal-dispositions theory. Aswe saw, the problem with simple dispositionalism is that it cannot makesense of the distinction between correct and incorrect applications of arule. In Pettit’s views, however, we saw a glimpse of how one might try tocorrect this while still staying in the dispositionalist camp. The idea wouldbe to define favorable and unfavorable conditions, like Pettit does, only in




a more reductionist way, leaving out any references to seeing as or repre-senting or anything like that. So the theory would need to specify a set offavorable conditions in wholly physicalistic terms. The meanings of a sub-ject’s concepts would then be defined as the ones according to which sheapplies the concepts in those circumstances; and similarly for the contentsof her intentional states. This is the optimal-dispositions theory. But, asPaul Boghossian points out, there is a problem that seems insurmountablefor this kind of a theory (Boghossian 2008, 40–41). Whenever I form abelief, the belief I end up with is typically determined by the situation thatis presented to me together with any background beliefs I have. And thereis in principle no limit to the degree of the dependence of belief formationon background beliefs. There’s an indefinite number of different back-ground beliefs that could conspire to produce a mistaken belief, for exam-ple. So the definition of favorable circumstances would have to rule out allof the indefinitely large class of unfavorable background beliefs. And thiswould have to be accomplished in wholly physicalistic terms. But this al-ready requires that we have a physicalistic definition of a belief with cer-tain content, which was exactly what the theory was supposed to provide.Boghossian takes this to show that, “if there is to be any sort of reductivestory about meaning at all, it cannot take the form of a dispositional theo-ry.” (Boghossian 2008, 41) But if my interpretation of reductionism iscorrect, it seems that something very much like a reductive dispositionaltheory of meaning is required in order for reductionism about intentionalmental properties to be true. So if both Boghossian and I are right, thenreductionism concerning those properties cannot be true.

Now, I would like to add that, although Boghossian himself seemssomewhat reluctant to formulate any substantial theory of rule-followingand meaning to take the place of the discredited reductive dispositionalone, his argument against reductive dispositionalism does not in itself inany way commit one to such quietism.21 I see no reason why, for example,Pettit’s ethocentric theory could not be true in spite of Boghossian’s anti-reductionist argument.

Here, then, is a summary of my argument against reductionism aboutintentional mental properties.

Reductionism claims that intentional mental properties 1) are locallysupervenient on physical properties of the brain or body, or 2) all truepropositions about them can be deduced from true propositions aboutphysical properties, or 3) they are identical with physical properties.

21 Boghossian (2008, 48) does say that “judgments about meaning are factual, irreduci-ble, and judgment-independent”, but this hardly supports a substantial theory ofmeaning or meaning-attributions.

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If the correct account of rule-following is a communitarian one, thatis, if the correct applications of rules are not determined solely by thebehavioral and/or other physical properties of the rule-following subject,then 1) is false, because mental content requires rule-following.

If the correct account of rule-following is not a reductive dispositionalone, then 2) and 3) are false, because both 2) and 3) depend on causal-functional, which is to say, dispositional, definitions of mental content,and mental content requires rule-following.

The correct account of rule-following cannot be a reductive disposi-tional one, because such accounts fail to make sense of the difference be-tween correct and mistaken applications of a rule. Instead, the correct the-ory of rule-following must be a communitarian one, such as Pettit’sethocentric account.

Therefore, 1), 2) and 3) are false, and intentional mental propertiesare not reducible to physical properties in any of the aforementionedsenses.

4. Discussion

I have now given my argument against reductionism about intentionalmental properties, based on the mistake argument. There are some aspectsof it that I would like to point out. First, my argument is physicalisticallykosher, in that it does not refute global supervenience of the mental onthe physical. Nor does it threaten the reducibility of, say, chemical proper-ties to microphysical properties. This is because it makes essential use of afeature that is peculiar to intentionality, namely that intentional contentshave conditions of correct and incorrect application.

Second, my argument has some advantages over the more popular linesof argument that take as their starting points externalism about content,and multiple realizability – or, at least, it can be seen as providing impor-tant additional strength to these arguments. The argument from contentexternalism is usually taken to show that, since mental content does notdepend solely on the intrinsic properties of a subject but is partly deter-mined by the world she lives in, intentional mental properties cannot bereducible to her intrinsic properties. But the reductionist can try to coun-ter this by making a distinction between “wide” and “narrow” content, thelatter of which is determined solely by the subject’s intrinsic properties,and by claiming that it is narrow content that is relevant to the individua-tion of intentional mental properties. The mistake argument, on the otherhand, aims to show that there can be no such physically identifiable prop-erties deserving the name of content, since reductive theories of meaningdo not allow for the distinction between correct and incorrect applicationsof a concept.




Multiple realizability certainly is enough to counter type physicalism,that is, the claim that for every mental property type there is a correspond-ing physical property type. But it seems to have less bite against positionssuch as Kim’s, since his theory does not require type-type-correspondenceon the physical base level, but only on the functional level. So it might beargued that, although mental properties are multiply realizable in, say, thelevel of neurons, they are uniformly realized in the causal-functional level.For example, different neuronal pathways might be activated in differentpersons, or even in one person at different times, when they form thebelief that there is a horse nearby. But if the causal pattern leading up toand down from that event is similar enough in every case, the reductionistcould argue that they are all instances of the same causal-functional type,the realizers of which are to be identified with the mental type. This cau-sal-functional similarity could, presumably, come about as a product of therobustness of biological systems, i.e. the tendency of organisms to havemultiple routes to secure the execution of important functions. Now, themistake argument aims to show that no such uniform characterizations ofintentional mental properties can be given in the causal-functional leveleither.

This brings us to the third point I want to make, the relation of myargument to functionalism. Functionalism is the thesis that mental proper-ties are functional second-order properties of physical systems. Believingthat there is a horse in front of me, for example, is my property of beingin certain functional state. While functionalism is often taken to be aform of non-reductive physicalism, it bears a striking resemblance to Kim’sreductive theory.22 In order to resolve the issue, we need to distinguishtwo forms of functionalism, one reductive, one non-reductive. The reduc-tive form of functionalism is, in essence, Kim’s theory. What makes itdifferent from the non-reductive kind is that according to the former butnot the latter, mental properties can be defined solely in terms of causal-functional properties of the subject. Although the non-reductive brand offunctionalism sees mental properties as functional roles, it is not com-mitted to a purely causal, reductionist reading of such roles. According tonon-reductive functionalism, the functional characterizations of mentalproperties may include references to other mental, or intentional, or repre-sentational properties, and irreducibly so. Pettit’s theory of rule-followingis an example of this kind of functionalism; to follow the rule for “red” isto be disposed to apply the word “red” to things that strike one as salientlysimilar in a certain way, and to be disposed to revise one’s applications ofthe word in the face of perceived discrepancies.

22 As noticed by Kim (see Kim 1998, 101).

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The fourth point concerns so-called mental causation. I cannot herego into the topic deeply, but I have to say something about it, since oneof the main arguments for reductionism is the claim that, if mental prop-erties are realized in physical properties yet not reducible to them, the for-mer seem to lose all their causal powers in favor of the realizer propertiesthat do all the causal work.23 About this, two things can be said. First, itcan be argued that the exclusion argument depends on an unnecessarilystrong notion of causation, and that if we adopt a more relaxed notion ofcausation – that furthermore may be more in tune with our everyday useof concepts such as cause and effect – the problem can be addressed.24Second, in the non-reductive functionalist picture of intentional mentalproperties, these properties are not isolated from the causal goings-on ofthe physical world. Global supervenience guarantees that they are in asense determined by physical properties – just not in a sense that allowsfor reduction in any of the interpretations of that term explained above.What this means is that, assuming epistemically idealized conditions, inprinciple we could, perhaps, reduce the causal aspects of intentionality tophysical properties, allowing us, again in principle, to talk about these as-pects in a thoroughly physicalistic language. We might even be able tocausally explain and predict all of the bodily movements of human beings,using only physicalistic concepts in theorizing about them. Or at least myargument does nothing to show that we couldn’t. What I take my argu-ment to show, instead, is that there are other aspects to intentionality be-sides the causal ones. If we only cared for cause and consequence, wemight not need the concepts of intentionality (again assuming epistemi-cally idealized conditions). But we do care for other things as well. Wecare about what someone thinks, for example, and whether she is right inthinking so. And these questions, I have argued, cannot be posed in aphysicalistic language, not even in principle. To ask what someone thinksis not just to ask what causal mechanisms are there to direct her bodilybehaviour, and what the current state of those mechanisms is. It is to askwhat she means, and this has consequences on whether or not what shedoes is in accordance with what she meant – a distinction not available inany physicalistic vocabulary.

Finally, until now I have mostly talked about what the relation be-tween the mental and the physical is not. I suppose I should try to saysomething about what the relation is, but I’m afraid I don’t have much tosay. I hope that admitting global supervenience is enough to distinguish

23 This is the “causal exclusion argument”; See Kim 1998, 2005.24 See Jackson, Pettit & Smith (2004), chapters 3, 5 and 6 for Jackson & Pettit’s re-

sponse in terms of their notion of “program explanation”; and Menzies (2008) forhis response in terms of a notion of “contrastive causation”.




my position from the spooky dualist ones. But, as said, the mistake argu-ment shows that intentional mental properties are importantly differentfrom physical properties; that when we talk about beliefs and desires weare not just talking about things happening in our brains, and that bytalking about brains we could not possibly accomplish what we accomplishby talking about beliefs. And I tend to see this as a virtue of the mistakeargument; that it perhaps sheds some light on why we sometimes findsomething deeply disturbing in reductionism. Namely, that it threatens toreduce us from persons with contentfull thoughts and beliefs into lumpsof matter with only dispositions to move and be moved. This, I think, is afurther advantage the mistake argument has over the arguments from con-tent externalism and multiple realizability. I cannot escape the feeling thatthe two latter arguments only point to some rather technical difficulty inthe way of reductionist theories, succeeding, as it were, by accident toprove reductionism wrong – if they indeed succeed in that without thehelp of the mistake argument. In comparison, the mistake argument high-lights a substantial feature of intentional properties not possessed by, andnot constructible out of, purely physical properties.25

References

Bickle, J. 2008. “Real Reduction in Real Neuroscience”. In Hohwy & Kallestrup,34–51.

Boghossian, P. 2008. “The Rule-Following Considerations”. Mind 1989, 98. Rep-rinted in his Content and Justification. Philosophical Papers, Clarendon, Oxford.

Chalmers, D. 1996. The Conscious Mind: in Search of a Fundamental Theory. OxfordUniversity Press, New York.

Craver, C. F. 2007. Explaining the Brain. Clarendon, Oxford.Hattiangadi, A. 2007. Oughts and Thoughts. Rule-Following and the Normativity of

Content. Clarendon, Oxford.Hohwy, J., Kallestrup, J. (eds). 2008. Being Reduced. New Essays on Reduction, Expla-

nation, and Causation. Oxford University Press, Oxford.Horwich, P. 1984. “Critical Notice on Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language

by Saul A. Kripke”. Philosophy of Science LI 1, 163–71.Kim, J. 1998. Mind in a Physical World. MIT Press, Cambridge.Kim, J. 2005. Physicalism, or Something near Enough. Princeton University Press,

Princeton.Kripke S. A. 1982. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Harward University

Press, Cambridge.Kusch, M. 2006. A Sceptical Guide to Meaning and Rules. Acumen, Chesham.

25 I would like to thank Jussi Kotkavirta and Petri Ylikoski, and two anonymous refer-ees for SATS, for valuable comments that helped make this paper better.

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Levine, J. 1993. “On Leaving out What It’s Like”. In Consciousness. Eds M. Davies,G. Humhreys. Blackwell, Oxford.

Menzies, P. 2008. “The Exclusion Problem, the Determination Relation, and Con-trastive Causation”. In Hohwy & Kallestrup, 196–217.

Nagel, E. 1961. The Structure of Science. Hartcourt, Brace, New York.Pettit, P. 2002. Rules, Reasons, and Norms. Clarendon, Oxford.Pettit, P., Jackson, F., Smith, M. 2004. Mind, Morality, and Explanation. Selected

Collaborations. Clarendon, Oxford.Searle, J. R. 1992. The Rediscovery of the Mind. MIT Press, Cambridge.Shoemaker, S. 2007. Physical Realization. Oxford University Press, Oxford.Wikforss, Å. 2001. “Semantic Normativity”. Philosophical Studies 102, 203–226.




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Rule-following, Intentionality and Non-reductive Physicalism