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Abraham Howland
Presentation – Peter Geach, Mental Acts, ch. 1-11

Terminology and General Project

“Reports of mental acts” or “psychological reports”: reports of human thoughts, feelings,

emotions, beliefs, etc., the content of which is generally expressible in terms of a psychological
verb followed by a noun-clause. Geach is interested in analyzing the logical role of these object-
expressions (i.e. the logical role of reports of mental acts).

Geach insists that psychological reports (or reports of mental acts) are not reducible to
physical reports. Some would interpret Wittgenstein (in PI) as eradicating any distinction
between psychological and physical reports. However, Geach argues that W. did not mean to
deny the fact that each person has his/her own private mental life; rather, W. meant to point out
that psychological reports have sense only insofar as they form part of a broader, public
language-game (namely, the language game of describing our private mental lives). Like W.,
Geach insists that one doesn’t give sense to psychological verbs or their objects (e.g. one doesn’t
give sense to the word “pain”) by attending to something private.

Abstractionism (theory of concept-acquisition): one learns/acquires a concept by

attending to some feature(s) given in direct experience, while ignoring others. For many
abstractionists, then, psychological expressions are given their sense through attending to one’s
own psychological experiences. Geach thinks this is incorrect, and most of the chapters we will
discuss are devoted to refuting abstractionism as a theory of concept-acquisition.

Another closely related theory (which I’ll label for convenience the “analogical
development theory”) holds that psychological concepts are mere analogical developments of
concepts acquired through abstraction on sense-experience. Geach will also argue against the
analogical development theory in what follows.

Ryle’s Attempted Reduction of Psychological Reports to Physical Reports

Ryle regards physical reports as categorical reports about overt behavior, and
psychological reports as hypothetical statements about overt behavior. If Ryle is correct, then we
need not countenance such things as mental acts. Geach regards this way of thinking as perverse.
When the behavior of two people differs, Geach says, we should look for some actual difference
between them, not some mere hypothetical difference.

Problem: How would Ryle explain the relatively common occurrence where two people
who share identical overt behavior are thought to occupy different psychological states? Ryle
would have to explain this in terms of hypothetical circumstances that never in fact arise, which
involves Ryle in all of the murkiness of counterfactuals encountered last week (in our discussion
of Goodman).

Acts of Judgment

“Act of judgment”: a type of mental act, episodic in nature, which involves the exercise
of a number of concepts. Whenever someone puts his/her beliefs into words, Geach will say that
there has occurred an act of judgment. Ryle, e.g., would argue that dispositional terms (e.g.
“believe”) can be explained purely in terms of overt behavior; but Geach argues that there’s no
behavior characteristic of belief – with one exception: namely, putting belief into words. Reports
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of acts of judgment are typically given via indirect statement (oratio obliqua).

Concepts

“Concept”: a subjective mental capacity exercised in an act (or acts) of judgment. Some
argue that I form judgments first; then, reflecting on such judgments, I form concepts. (Ex.
Concept of man = judgments formed about man.) Geach responds by pointing out that: (1) Any
reportable act of judgment may be put into words. (2) Uttering a sentence expressing a judgment
requires ability to use various expressions appearing in the sentence. (3) Words and phrases
(expressions) have established usages; sentences as a whole do not. (4) We learn language by
learning to make up sentences out of words/phrases/expressions. (5) Our ability to express a
judgment therefore requires capacities for using words and phrases.

Geach therefore defines concepts as capacities exercised in judgment. (Chess Analogy:

Concepts are to acts of judgment as skills are to chess-moves.) A persons’ mastery of a
word/phrase in a language (L) will be a sufficient (but not a necessary) condition for imputing a
corresponding concept to that person. Because concepts are defined as capacities exercised in
judgment, Geach allows that two people may indeed have the same concepts insofar as they have
the same capacities. We will impute the same concept to two people when they share a mastery of
the same expression in a language (L), or of a word that is used in the same way (viz. red and
rouge).

Abstractionism

Abstractionism holds that concept acquisition occurs through one’s attending to some
features/properties given in direct experience, whilst ignoring others.

Geach’s Thesis: No concept at all is acquired/learned through abstraction. Methodology:

to ask of any given concept (or class of concepts) whether one learns it in the way the
abstractionist claims. Often Geach is simply asking whether the abstractionist is even capable of
accounting for everything that we consider essential to possessing the concept in question.

Different abstractionist accounts of how concepts are acquired depending upon whether
the concepts in question are (1) concepts of sensible things or (2) psychological concepts
(concepts such as judging, desiring, etc.). Re the former, all abstractionists hold that concepts of
sensible things are formed by attending to features given to us in sense-experience (while
ignoring other features/properties). Re the latter, abstractionists fall into two camps.

Some abstractionists adopt an analogical development theory, which holds that we first
form concepts of sensible things (picking out certain features given to us in sense experience),
and then we form psychological analogues of these concepts. Geach’s argument against
analogical development runs as follows: (1) If word C picks out a characteristic/feature c given in
sense-experience (on an abstractionist model), and we to come use word C in a transferred,
psychological sense, we must have some reason or justification for this metaphorical/analogical
use of the word C. (2) We use C in the analogical/metaphorical sense only because there exists
some recognizable psychological characteristic γ which justifies this metaphoric/analogical use.
(3) But if we are capable of recognizing some psychological characteristic γ (which would justify
extending the use of word C to psychological territory), then we are capable of forming a proper
concept of γ, and using word Γ in a non-metaphorical sense.

Other abstractionists explain how psychological concepts are acquired in terms of an

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inner sense. On this view, I attend to certain aspects of my inner experience, while disregarding
others, and thereby form concepts of desire, judgment, etc. (Addressed in next section.)

Logical Concepts

Are logical concepts acquired through abstraction? Typical abstractionist response:

logical concepts are a special case. Clearly, logical concepts cannot be acquired through
abstraction on sense-experience. Geach argues that one cannot convey the meaning of the words
‘or’ or ‘not’ through ostensive definition (one cannot point out examples in the world of these
logical terms). (*W. writes in PI that an ostensive definition explains the use of a word only if
the role the word is to play in a language game is already clear. In regard to logical concepts,
the role is precisely what is at stake (precisely what one must learn).)

Russell/Price attempt to derive even logical concepts from appeal to inner sense. E.g.
‘Or’ gets meaning from experiences of hesitation; ‘not’ from experiences of frustration or
inhibition. Geach’s difficulty with this is that ‘or’, e.g., seems to connote different inner
experiences to different people – yet my concept of ‘or’ seems clearly to be equivalent to your
concept (on his def. of concept). Geach wants to argue instead that logical concepts are distinct
mental abilities not arrived at through abstraction.

Arithmetical Concepts

Argument: One cannot simply attend to number whilst ignoring kind. Rather, an
assessment of number requires already some sort of conceptual grouping/arrangement of the
things to be numbered. This carries two implications: (1) number concepts must be acquired after
other concepts have been acquired, and (2) numbers are not arrived at by abstracting from a
things’ features, but are rather placed in correspondence with the world as already
conceptualized.

Re arithmetical operations (e.g. addition, subtraction): Geach says they cannot be

coherently explained as performed on collections of abstract units. E.g. “No manipulations of
three pennies will teach a child what the exponent “3” means.” (* Would stacks of n pennies
arranged in n rows and n columns count as an ostensive definition of what the exponent 3
means?)

Geach’s central claim in this section is that children need to master a way of talking about
numbers which has nothing to do with concrete or abstract units. Re counting: a series of
numerals has to be learned before it can be applied. Geach is claiming that abstract numbers are
in fact learned first, and then the ability to form a correspondence b/t these numbers and things of
certain kinds is gradually formed.

Relational Concepts

Relational concepts (e.g. big and small, left and right). Problem for abstractionists: a
relation never can be observed apart from its converse relation (e.g. x is bigger than y entails y is
smaller than x). Geach argues that all abstractionism can account for is the ability to recognize
the recurrent characteristic of right-left (or big-small) ordering, not the ability to tell which thing
is to the left (or which big) and which to the right (which small). Yet it is only when we can say
which is which that we may be said to possess the concepts left and right (or big and small) – this
is something that abstractionism cannot account for.
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Color Concepts

Argument: (1) Possession of the concept red, e.g., would render one capable of
performing acts of judgment expressible in sentences containing the word “red.” (2) The
ceremony of ostensive definition described by the abstractionist in which concept red is acquired
(e.g. learning to utter the word “red” as another points to red objects) is not the ordinary use of
the word “red.” (3) Hence, we can refuse to say “red” has been learned in that way.

Retort: Price says there is a double process of abstraction, whereby the common feature
in uncommon utterances (e.g. the word “cat”) is correlated with the common feature(s) in
otherwise unlike experiences (e.g. an actual cat).

Abstractionist’s Challenge to Geach: Explain why men born blind can’t have color
concepts. (Abstractionists say it’s because they have no color-sensations to abstract from.)
Geach’s Answer: It is not the experience of color-sensations that allows me to generate color
concepts. Rather, I apply my color-concepts to visual experience. (The diff. b/t me and a blind
man is that I have a visual-experience to which I may apply my color concepts.)

Chromatic color argument: (Def. Chromatic color = any color that is not black grey or
white.) (1) Chromatic color is no less a concept given in direct experience than the concept red.
(2) But given a red object, I do not have two sensations: one of redness, one of chromatic color.
Red is not a chromatic color plus differentia: hence one cannot attend to chromatic color and
ignore the differentia. (3) Therefore, I cannot form this concept (chromatic color) the way
abstractionism holds. Point: there are not two distinct features in the red glass before me: redness
and chromatic color.

Conclusion

Abstractionism seems to suppose that I am given in experience n features and I form a

concept by attending to one feature and ignoring n-1 features. But it is by one and the same
feature that an object is made red and chromatically colored. Applying a concept is a matter of
fitting a concept to my experience, Geach says – not picking out features from n features given to
me. Having a concept doesn’t mean being able to recognize some feature found in direct
experience. Rather, the mind makes concepts.

Problem: Does the conceptual way of thinking distort reality (if, e.g., there can more than
one concept for every feature of an object)? Aquinas: “When our understanding understands
things that are simple, it may understand them in its own complex fashion without understanding
them to be complex.”

Questions and “The Geach Challenge”

Q: Is there no such thing as reflectively picking out patterns in experience? Is Geach’s

point simply that all such patterns are only observed in terms of concepts we already possess?

Geach’s (Implicit) Challenge: Create a predicate, define its use, and teach someone else
that predicate through ostensive definition only. Can you say of this newly acquired concept that
it was learned in the way abstractionists claim?