A Causal Account Of Singular Thought
Abstract: In a recent article, Robin Jeshion provides a series of compelling counterexamples to
the acquaintance account of singular thought. She then goes on to propose a new account based
on significance. In response, Sarah Sawyer has proposed a revised version of the acquaintance
account that allows for ‘trace based’ acquaintance. In this article, I show that Jeshion’s criticisms
of acquaintance theories stand, but that her theory fails, as does Sawyer’s. I suggest that the
relevant data can only be captured by a new account based on causal source of information.
1.
Introduction
Philosophers of language typically hold that an agent can think about an object in two distinct
ways. Consider the following examples:
[Tea Cup] There is a dirty tea cup sitting next to the computer which I am currently
working on. I think ‘that cup is dirty’.
[Snails] I know very little about snails. I have no idea which snail in the world is the
tallest. It so happens that the tallest snail in the world is in Colombia, but I do not know
this. I have never been to Colombia, or seen the tallest snail, and nor has anyone I
know. In a debate in the pub about the speed at which snails could move, I think ‘even
the tallest snail in the world moves slowly’.
My thought in [Tea Cup] is about the cup next to my computer, and it is about that particular
cup. In contrast my thought in [Snails] is about whichever snail it is that happens to be the tallest;
I neither know nor care which snail that happens to be. There is an intuitive difference between
these two sorts of cases, which philosophers mark with the terminology ‘singular thought’
(thoughts of the type in [Tea Cup]) and ‘descriptive thought’ (thoughts of the type in [Snails]).
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The issue which will concern us is that of providing a unified account of the conditions that
underpin singular thought.
The traditional position is that in order to think a singular thought about an object the
agent must be acquainted with that object. According to such accounts I can think about the tea
cup in front of me singularly because I am acquainted with the tea cup. I am not acquainted
with the tallest snail in the world and so cannot think singular thoughts about it.
Contemporary acquaintance based accounts typically allow that an agent can be
‘acquainted’ with an object via a communication chain [Bach, 1987, Salmon 1988, Kaplan 1989
A, Soames 2003]. I will argue that this is a mistake. In addition Robin Jeshion [2010] provides a
series of examples of thoughts that intuitively seem singular and yet where the agent is not
acquainted with the object even if we allow that an agent can be acquainted with an object via a
communication chain. In reply Sarah Sawyer [2012] has argued that such examples can be
accommodated by a revised version of acquaintance theory, which allows for ‘trace based’
acquaintance – according to this account an agent can think singular thoughts about an object if
they perceive evidential traces left by the object.
I will argue that whilst Sawyer is correct in noting that the agent in Jeshion’s examples
can think singular thoughts about the object because they perceive evidential traces left by the
object, we should not respond to this insight by accepting that there can be ‘trace based’
acquaintance. Instead I argue that an agent can think a singular thought about an object if and
only if the object is our dominant source of the information stored in a mental file about that
object. The agent’s extraction of information from evidential traces can lead to the object being
the dominant source of information the agent has stored in a mental file, and so can lead to
singular thought, and this explains the Jeshion examples.
2.
Acquaintance Based Accounts
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I can see the tea cup in front of me, and I can think singular thoughts about it. Acquaintance
theorists posit that the reason that I can think singular thoughts about the cup is that my
perception of it means that I am acquainted with it, and my acquaintance allows me to think
singularly about the object.
Consensus has it that the following are also instances of singular thought:
[Ugly Cup] I drank tea from another cup last night, which I then threw away. I can no
longer see it – it is in the bin. I think ‘that cup is ugly’
[Amy] My friend Laura starts a relationship with a girl I have never met called Amy. We
have conversations about her. I think ‘Amy sounds nice’.
In order to explain the intuition that thoughts such as those in [Ugly Cup] and [Amy] are
singular, acquaintance theorists typically allow that an agent can be ‘acquainted’ with an object
not simply via perception of the object but also via remembering a perception of it or via
entering into a communication chain about the object with someone who has perceived it. I
perceived the tea cup from last night, I remember doing so, and so I am acquainted with the
cup. I can therefore, according to acquaintance accounts, think singularly about last night’s cup
- as I do in [Ugly Cup]. Laura perceived Amy. Laura is acquainted with Amy, and can therefore
think singularly about her. Laura talked to me about Amy, expressing her singular thoughts
about her. In talking about Amy to me she engaged me in a communication chain, which
according to this view somehow links her perception of Amy to me. According to acquaintance
accounts I am therefore acquainted with Amy via the communication chain and so can think
singular thoughts about her.
Jeshion characterizes acquaintance theories as committed to two principles, which she
calls the ‘Standard-Standard on Acquaintance’ and the ‘Acquaintance Thesis’. I shall follow her
usage in this paper.
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‘[Standard-Standard on Acquaintance] One can be acquainted with an object O only by
perception, memory and communication chains. To have a singular thought about O,
someone in one’s linguistic community must have perceived O’ [Jeshion 2010, p. 109]
‘[Acquaintance Thesis] To have a singular thought about an object O, one’s thought
must be based upon one’s acquaintance with O’ [Ibid.]
2.1.
Arguments Against Acquaintance Based Accounts
The acquaintance theorist holds that in all cases of singular thought the agent is acquainted with
the object. There is widespread agreement that the thoughts in [Ugly Cup] and [Amy] are
singular, and so the acquaintance theorist must hold that the agents in those cases are
acquainted with the relevant objects. The agent in [Ugly Cup] is not currently perceiving the
relevant object and the agent in [Amy] has never perceived the relevant object, and so the
acquaintance theorist must hold that an agent does not need to be currently perceiving an
object in order to be acquainted with it.
I take it that an intuitive understanding of ‘acquaintance with O’ requires the agent to have
cognitive access to a perception of O. And I also take it that proponents of the [StandardStandard] will argue that I have cognitive access to a perception in [Ugly Cup] because I
remember a perception of the cup, and in [Amy] because I entered into a communication chain
at the head of which was someone who had perceived Amy. I agree that my memory of a
perception of O grants me cognitive access to a perception of O. But how can it be that an
agent comes to have cognitive access to a perception of an object they themselves have not
perceived, in virtue of entering into a communication chain with someone who has? One
agent’s perception cannot be passed on to another agent via a communication chain1. Laura is
1
Jeshion [2010 and 2002] also notes this as part of her argument that mentally tokening a name
explains cases such as [Amy], noting that “the perceiver does not and cannot ‘pass along’ her
perception of [the object] to others down-chain” [2010, p. 11]
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acquainted with Amy via her perception of Amy, but how can this acquaintance be passed along
a communication chain to me? I do not inherit Laura’s perception merely in virtue of discussing
Amy with her. I cannot recall her perception and I don’t know its content; I don’t have any kind
of cognitive access to it at all. Entering into a communication chain about O with someone who
perceived O is not sufficient for acquaintance with O (under the intuitive understanding of
‘acquaintance’), and so the [Standard-Standard] must be false.
The proponent of the [Standard-Standard] may reply that the above argument depends on
the intuitive understanding of ‘acquaintance’ in the [Standard-Standard] as necessarily involving
cognitive access to a perception of O. She may argue there is a broader conception of
‘acquaintance’ at work in the [Standard-Standard], one which gives up the requirement that the
agent have cognitive access to a perception of O and allows that the agent can be acquainted
with O via a communication chain with someone who has perceived O. Yet I respond that such
a move would reduce the acquaintance thesis into an uninformative disjunctive list of situations
in which we find singular thought. Under the proposed view, ‘acquaintance’ would be the
relation which holds between an object and an agent if and only if the agent has perceived the
object, remembers perceiving the object, or has engaged in a communication chain about that
object with an agent who has perceived it. These three situations would no longer have the
notion of cognitive access to perceptual content to link them together. Yet what else does link
them? The only reason they are all included as ways in which an agent can be ‘acquainted’ with
an object is to account for our intuition that cases such as [Tea Cup], [Ugly Cup] and [Amy] all
constitute singular thought. But we want a unifying explanation of what condition underpins
singular thoughts, not a mere disjunctive list of situations in which singular thought takes place.
Unified accounts of singular thought such as Jeshion’s account and the causal account I
will introduce in section 5 tell us what condition underpins all cases of singular thought. Jeshion
argues that this condition should be defined by significance of the object. I will argue that it
should be defined by source of information. I will argue that Jeshion and Sawyer’s accounts
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both face counterexamples that my account does not. But I also note that traditional
acquaintance accounts that allow that an agent can be acquainted with an object without having
cognitive access to a perception of it, and Sawyer’s modified acquaintance account, have lost
sight of the ultimate aim of the project. They do not provide unified accounts of singular
thought. They don’t identify the reason that the agent can think singularly in the examples: they
merely provide a list of conditions under which singular thought takes place.
To re-cap: we should not accept the [Standard-Standard]. Either we hold that acquaintance
necessarily involves cognitive access to a perception of the object, in line with our intuitive
understanding; in this case the [Standard-Standard] is simply false, as communication chains do
not and cannot provide an agent with access to the relevant perceptual content. Or we can drop
the cognitive access condition and merely hold that ‘acquaintance’ may involve perception,
memory and communication chains, but nothing particularly links them (other than they all
occur in cases of singular thought). In this case the acquaintance account simply collapses into
an uninformative list of situations in which singular thought occurs, with no underpinning
condition to link them together. Neither option is appealing.
2.2 Counterexamples
The [Standard-Standard] faces further difficulties. Jeshion has provided a series of
counterexamples to the acquaintance theorists, thoughts that we are supposed to find intuitively
singular and yet which explicitly fail the [Standard-Standard]. Jeshion recognises that perhaps
not everyone will agree that they are all cases of singular thought. But she notes that she only
needs the reader to agree with her that at least one of her examples involves genuinely singular
thought. Given that she provides a plethora of examples, some of which seem very plausible
indeed, it seems hard to resist her conclusion that there can be singular thought which fails the
[Standard-Standard]. Here is my gloss on a selection of the examples [adapted from Jeshion
2010, p.117].
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[Adoption] Stan was abandoned on the church steps as a baby and later adopted by
loving parents. Neither he nor anyone he knows has any idea who his birth mother is. It
becomes very emotionally important for him to meet his birth mother. He wonders
what she is like, and writes letters to her late at night (though he doesn’t know where to
send them). He thinks ‘I’d do anything to meet her’.
[Bearprint] I go camping in an area famous for bears. I see mud on the banks of the
river which reveals a grown male bear’s footprint, and see a fresh pile of bear scat. I
think ‘we should get off his turf’.
[Unabomber] “The Unabomber” was used as a name for the person who was
responsible for a series of mail bombings in the US. I see many packages in the post
room and become afraid that this person sent one of them. I think ‘maybe the
Unabomber sent one of these packages’.
[Neptune] Le Verrier postulates a planet to explain various movements of Uranus. He
calls the planet ‘Neptune’. He thinks ‘Neptune is a planet’.
[Vulcan] On the back of previous success, Le Verrier postulates another planet to
explain the movements of Mercury. He calls it ‘Vulcan’. He thinks ‘Vulcan is a planet’.
Unfortunately for him Vulcan doesn’t exist.
I find the first 4 of Jeshion’s examples above highly convincing2. It seems to me most
readers will accept at least some of them as examples of singular thought. Under the [StandardStandard] the agents in the above examples do not count as ‘acquainted’ with the objects of
their thoughts. For they have not perceived the objects, they don’t remember perceiving them
2
I discuss the fifth example in section 5.2.
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and they are not at the tail end of a communication chain with someone who has perceived
them. Given that these examples involve singular thought, the acquaintance thesis fails.
3.
Jeshion and Mental Files
Recently some philosophers have begun to use the term ‘mental file’ to describe how we might
store and organise information about objects [Grice 1969, Strawson 1974, Perry 1980, 2000,
2001, Bach 1987, Crimmins 1992, Recanati 1993, Lawlor 2001]. The idea is that we have mental
files or representations which are about objects and contain information about those objects. For
example, I have a friend called Christopher Clarke. I have a mental file about the object
Christopher Clarke, in which I store the information that he is my friend, that he likes ‘Green
and Blacks’ chocolate and that he has an office in a large red brick building. Note that
‘information’ in this sense need not be true, that is to say our mental files can contain
information which is false. For example my mental file about Christopher may contain the
information ‘hates capers’ whereas in fact Christopher loves capers.
Jeshion offers the following account of the conditions under which one can think a
singular thought about an object:
[Jeshion Thesis] "Thinking about an individual from a mental file is constitutive of singular
thinking about that individual”. [Jeshion, 2010, p. 132]
[Significance] "A mental file is initiated on an individual only if that individual is significant
to the agent with respect to her plans, projects, affective states, motivations.” [Jeshion,
2010, p. 136]
According to Jeshion, what makes cases such as [Adoption] different from cases such as
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[Snails] is the extent that the birth mother was significant to Stan, whereas the tallest snail is not
significant to me. An object’s significance to an agent is determined by the extent to which it
plays a role in her plans and projects, and the extent to which her affective and motivational
states are directed towards it. Jeshion emphasizes that on this view the significance of an object
for an agent is not under that agent’s direct control but is rather determined by the independent
structure of the agent’s values and desires. On this view whenever an object is important to me
I initiate a mental file about it. I can do this even if neither I nor anyone in my linguistic
community has perceived the object as long as I have a descriptive fix on that object. I can even
initiate a mental file which purports to be ‘about’ an object in cases where the object in question
doesn’t exist, as long as I associate the mental file with a description which would serve to pick a
unique object out. Once I have initiated a mental file on an object I can think singularly about
that object. In all of Jeshion’s examples the object was significant to the thinker with respect to
her plans, projects, affective states, and motivations. And so if [Significance] is true, in all cases
a mental file was initiated. According to Jeshion that explains why her examples are cases of
singular thought.
3.1 Problems with Jeshion’s Account
I will argue against Jeshion’s account on two grounds: firstly that it is unclear how she could
define the term ‘significance’ in her account; and secondly that her account faces its own series
of counterexamples. However, I do hold that the notion of significance has a role to play in
singular thought – just not the role Jeshion takes it to have, as we shall see in section 5.
Jeshion holds that we can think singularly about an object when we initiate a mental file on
that object, and that we initiate a mental file on an object when the object is significant to us.
But significance comes in different types and strengths, whereas the initiation of a mental file
and thinking a singular thought do not. My friend Christopher is significant to me; he affects
my plans and projects (I follow his advice about philosophy and life in general, I make plans to
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see him), my affective states (I’m happy when he is happy, sad when he isn’t), and motivations
(I spent a long time making him a birthday present motivated by my desire to make him smile).
Laura’s new girlfriend Amy is also significant to me: she affects my plans (I may go for coffee
with her), my affective states (I will be sad if she breaks my friend’s heart), and my motivations
(I stayed up late talking to Laura, in part motivated by my desire for Amy to stay her girlfriend).
I care less about Amy than I do about Christopher. The problem is that [Significance] does not
tell us how much I need to care in order for a mental file to be initiated on an individual.
Note that there is some degree and respect in which every object which I think about is
significant to me. After all, I have taken the time to think a thought about it. The tallest snail is
not very significant to me, but there is a small degree to which it affects my ‘plans, projects,
affective states, motivations’. I am a vegetarian, so I plan never to eat it, and feel motivated to
avoid meals which might contain it. I would be sad if I ate it by accident.
Perhaps Jeshion will respond that there is a level of significance which the agent must
attach to the object in order to think singularly about it. She could then respond that this level is
not met for [Snail] but is met by [Tea Cup]. The first thing to note is that I do not care very
much at all about the tea cup in front of me. It is not clear to me that the low level of
significance attached to the tallest snail is greater than the level of significance attached to the
tea cup. The second thing to note is that this response looks very difficult to implement in a
non-ad hoc manner. For what is the level of significance that is required for a singular thought?
We cannot say that it is whatever level of significance is found in all cases of singular thought,
for that is hardly an informative thesis.
In the course of criticizing Jeshion’s position, Sawyer notes that “in the end, of course,
[her] position must be open to classification of the examples by empirical means” [2012, p.
274]. I take the idea here to be that we can interpret the ‘mental files’ talk in quite a robust way,
and, given such an interpretation, cognitive science may eventually be able to tell us exactly
when a mental file is initiated (perhaps by exposing subjects to a kind of brain scan, or some
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special test). Such a position would no longer face the charge of being ad hoc; for cognitive
science would give us an independent reason to think that the significance needed to be at a
particular level. Jeshion’s claim would be informative if she took this route, for she would be
claiming that an agent can think a singular thought when an object has a certain degree of
significance (determined by science) to the agent. But if the level of significance needed to open
a mental file is an empirical matter, then that leaves Jeshion’s classification of examples such as
[Bearprint] as singular thought hostage to fortune. That is to say, perhaps cognitive science will
prove that none of Jeshion’s examples have the degree of significance required to initiate a
mental file (and therefore think a singular thought). Jeshion appeals to her counterexamples in
order to undermine the acquaintance thesis and support her own account, and so she cannot
appeal to science to settle the question as to what degree of significance is required, on pain of
potentially undermining her main argument against acquaintance.4
As we have seen, Jeshion provides a series of counterexamples to the acquaintance theory in
which there is singular thought without acquaintance (as defined by the [Standard-Standard]). I
hope to turn the tables. Below I sketch a series of counterexamples to Jeshion’s account: first, a
thought which I take to be intuitively singular and yet where under [Significance] the agent fails
to initiate a mental file; and second a thought that I think is intuitively not singular and yet
where under [Significance] the agent does initiate a mental file.
A case where we don’t have a mental file (under [Significance]) about an object but do have a singular thought.
Above I gave [Amy] as an example of singular thought. Presumably Jeshion will claim that
Amy is significant enough to me that I initiate a mental file about her, thus allowing me to think
singular thoughts about her. Now consider the following:
4
Perhaps Jeshion could claim that our intuitions that her counterexamples are cases of singular
thought provide some weak evidence that a mental file is initiated, and that cognitive science will
eventually support such a conclusion. But it would remain an open question why our intuitions
should track cognitive truths like this; the possibility remains that we could be simply mistaken
about all of Jeshion’s examples. And she cannot afford to allow this possibility.
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[Samy] My friend Laura meets a girl, called Samy, at a party I don’t attend. I have never
met Samy. After the party have one very brief conversation about Samy. I do not care
about this girl and I am not interested in the conversation. I fleetingly think ‘Samy
doesn’t interest me’ and then immediately forget about her.
Under [Significance], interpreted with any reasonable bar on the level of significance required, I
do not care enough about the girl at the party to initiate a mental file about her. She does not
affect my plans, projects or affective states. I explicitly do not care about her, I have no plans
that involve her, and she has no bearing on my affective states. And yet intuitively [Samy] is
singular. After all, my thought in [Samy] arises in the same sort of circumstances as [Amy]; a
conversation with Laura about a girl who I have not met, and [Amy] is paradigm example of
singular thought. In the [Samy] example I explicitly do not care about the girl at the party, I am
not interested in the conversation and the girl does not affect my projects plans or motivations.
And so I take [Samy] to be a counterexample to Jeshion’s view5.
Perhaps Jeshion would insist in response that all agents automatically initiate a mental file
when they first hear or read a name, regardless of how much significance they attach to the
referent of the name. And so in [Samy] I initiate a mental file because I hear the name ‘Samy’,
and that explains why I can think singularly about Samy. But Jeshion cannot simply insist on this.
After all, this violates [Significance], since many of the names I hear or read refer to things which
are of no significance to me at all. Moreover such a move generates the wrong results in various
cases. Consider the following example (which I have adapted slightly from an example of Evans
5
Note that classifying the thought in [Samy] as singular would not pose a problem for the
Acquaintance Theorist as I participated in a communication chain with someone (Laura) who
has perceived the girl at the party. I will explain how my own account deals with such examples
in section 5. That other accounts can easily explain the thought in [Samy] as singular is more
evidence that the thought is genuinely singular, and that [Samy] is a counterexample to Jeshion’s
view.
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[1982 p. 31]):
[Julius] In a conversation in the pub about the inventor of the zip, who is not important
to me, I say ‘Julius is my name for whoever invented the zip’. The next day I say ‘I
wonder if Julius was an Englishman’ to my friend in the common room. Anthony steps
into the common room and hears only the latter half of my utterance. He thinks to
himself ‘Julius was an Englishman’.
I have used the name ‘Julius’ to refer to Julius. But the thought I express is clearly
descriptive, and Jeshion even uses Evans’s original example in her discussion of non-singular
thoughts6. And Anthony certainly cannot think a singular thought about Julius simply by
overhearing my use of the name. Jeshion cannot claim that I can think singularly about an
object whenever I overhear a name in conversation. I therefore conclude that the thought in
[Samy] is singular, and a counterexample to Jeshion’s view.
A case where we don’t have a mental file (under Significance) about an object but do have a singular thought.
Consider a classic case of descriptive thought.
[Newman] Kaplan names the first person born in the 22nd century ‘Newman’. He thinks
‘Newman is likely to be Chinese’.
In the literature, cases such as [Newman] are taken to be paradigmatic of descriptive thought,
and any account of singular thought must respect such intuitions. I take Jeshion’s position to be
that in this case ‘Newman’ was not sufficiently important to Kaplan for him to initiate a mental
file and so he could not think singularly about Newman.
6
She says “I share the potent intuition that examples in [the set which contains the Julius
example] are not instances of singular thought” [2012, p. 116].
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But consider the following:
[PhD Student] Mary writes a thesis on Newman, using socio economic trends to give
the probabilities that Newman will be Chinese, to give the likely profession of Newman,
his likely wealth and number of children. Mary spends several years of her life thinking
about Newman, and her future fame and fortune depend upon the truth of the
statements in her thesis. Mary thinks ‘Newman is likely to have four children’.
Newman matters a great deal to Mary. He affects her plans, projects, affective states, and
motivations. Mary makes her plans and projects dependent upon the features Newman
possesses; her affective states depend on him (she will be happy if he has the features she
predicts and unhappy if he doesn’t); as do her motivations (for example, she is motivated to stay
late at the office to perform statistical analysis in order to make accurate predictions about him).
Under [Significance] Mary initiates a mental file about Newman, and can think singularly about
him. Perhaps Jeshion would like to claim that the amount Newman matters to Mary does not
meet the bar for ‘significance’ given in [Significance]. But such a move faces serious objections.
Firstly, Newman is very significant to Mary, and far more significant than the tea cup in [Tea
Cup] is to me. Secondly, Jeshion herself describes a structurally analogous case [Oldman] in
which she holds there is singular thought in a case where someone learns a great deal about the
first person born in the 19th century [Jeshion, 2002, p. 72]. If [Oldman] is a case of singular
thought because the man concerned is very important to the agent, then so is [PhD Student].
The thoughts in [Newman] and [PhD Student] should be categorized in the same way; if
one of them is descriptive, both should be. As [Newman] is a paradigmatic case of descriptive
thought we should accept [PhD Student] as a descriptive thought too. But if [PhD Student]
does involve a descriptive thought then Jeshion’s theory fails, as it predicts that [PhD Student]
is a case of singular thought.
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I take it that cases such as [Samy] and [PhD Student] can be multiplied indefinitely to
provide further counterexamples to Jeshion. I take Jeshion’s account to fail due to the problem
of defining ‘significance’ and the counterexamples I introduce above. I will, however, revisit the
notion of significance in Section 5.
4.
Sawyer
Sawyer accepts Jeshion’s examples as instances of singular thought, but she does not reject the
acquaintance thesis outright. She merely rejects the [Standard-Standard]. Instead Sawyer offers a
modified acquaintance account, which she argues can account for Jeshion’s examples.
Sawyer holds that all singular thoughts have a particular cognitive role, which (in line
with Jeshion’s account) is that of being thought through a mental file. She introduces the notion
of ‘thoughts of singular form’, of which ‘successful singular thoughts’ such as [Tea Cup] are a
subset. She holds that all thoughts which have singular form (and so therefore play the relevant
cognitive role i.e. are thought through a mental file) must have “one or more places for objects”
[p. 276]. And so “a thought of singular form is thus about an object (if it is) in virtue of
containing it” [Ibid.]. According to such a view, then, the thought in [Tea Cup] is thought
through a mental file and so the proposition entertained contains a place for an object, and so
the thought is singular. In contrast the thought in [Snails] is not thought through a mental file,
the proposition entertained does not have a place for an object, and so the thought is not
singular.
Note that according to this view the place for an object in a thought of singular form
need not be filled. Successful singular thoughts, such as [Tea Cup], contain a place for an object
which is filled with an object. But successful singular thoughts are merely a subset of thoughts of
singular form, all of which share the same cognitive role – that of thinking through a mental file
– and whose propositional content has a place for an object. So the thought in [Vulcan] is a
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thought of singular form according to Sawyer, and its propositional content has a place for an
object. But that place is not filled (as there is no planet Vulcan) and so it is not a successful
singular thought.
According to Sawyer, in order for a thought to contain an object, the agent must be
acquainted with that object. Sawyer holds that an agent can be acquainted with an object via all
the ways described by the [Standard-Standard]. But they are not the only ways. She holds that an
agent can also be acquainted with an object through ‘mediated causal contact through perceived
effects such as footprints and wobbles in orbits’ [p. 277]. She calls such acquaintance ‘trace
based’. When I look at the pawprints and bear scat that the bear left in [Bear Print] I am in
causal contact with the bear, mediated via the evidential traces it left. And this mediated causal
contact, according to Sawyer, is enough in this case to make me acquainted with the bear.
She provides two conditions upon trace based acquaintance. Firstly, ‘an evidential trace
is necessarily an evidential trace of some object, and hence trace-based acquaintance necessarily
implies the existence of an object responsible for the evidential trace’ [Ibid.]. For example, Le
Verrier thought he was in causal contact with the traces of a planet that he dubbed ‘Vulcan’, and
that’s why he formed thoughts of singular form. But as there is no Vulcan Le Verrier does not
have trace-based acquaintance (or any kind of acquaintance) with Vulcan. And so his thought is
not a successful singular thought. The second condition is that the agent must perceive the
evidential traces. Sawyer holds that ‘this condition preserves the core idea that all acquaintance
is based in perception’ [p. 277]. More on this condition below.
According to Sawyer, I think a thought of singular form when I think a thought through
a mental file, and such thoughts involve propositions with a place for an object. The obvious
question then is, under what conditions do I initiate a mental file? Sawyer tells us very little. She
says that ‘where there is prima facie evidence of an object, there can be thoughts of singular
form. Prima facie evidence of an object can come through perception, memory, communication
and prima facie evidential traces’ [Ibid.]. I take her account to be that wherever we take there to
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be evidence of the existence of an object, we initiate a mental file. In cases where there is such
an object, the mental file is about that object. When I perceive a cup, that perception provides
what I take to be evidence that there is a cup and so I initiate a mental file about the cup. When
I perceive what I take to be evidential traces left by the planet Vulcan, I initiate a mental file
‘about’ Vulcan. Once I have initiated such mental files I can think thoughts of singular form. In
some cases the object I take to exist will actually exist. In such cases I will form a successful
singular thought about that object. At other times I will be unlucky; the object I take to exist
will actually not exist. In such cases I will think a thought of singular form, but not a successful
one.
4.1 Problems With Sawyer’s Account
I find Sawyer’s suggestion that in cases such as [Bearprint] and [Adoption] the agent can think a
singular thought due to their causal contact to the relevant object, mediated by evidential traces
left by the object, to be highly plausible. But I reject the idea that such a relation between agent
and object should be properly understood as constituting a type of acquaintance.
I reject Sawyer’s account for two reasons. The first is that despite her agreement that
perception is at the heart of the idea of ‘acquaintance’ she holds that an agent can be acquainted
with an object in situations where they have no cognitive access to a perception of an object.
The second is that her account of the situations under which an agent initiates a mental file and
can therefore have thoughts of singular form faces a series of counterexamples. I will set out
each objection in turn.
For Sawyer, an agent can be acquainted with an object via perception, memory,
communication chains and evidential traces. I noted in section 2 that it is unclear how a
communication chain could provide acquaintance with an object. I would like to raise a similar
charge against acquaintance via evidential traces. How can an agent come to be acquainted with
an object via the object’s evidential traces?
Notice that both an agent entering into a
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communication chain about an object and an agent perceiving an evidential trace of an object
are types of casual connection between the agent and the object. I stated in section 2.1 that an
intuitive understanding of ‘acquaintance’ involves the agent having cognitive access to a
perception of the object. But the agents in [Amy] and [Adoption] have never perceived the
objects, and casual chains cannot carry a perception of an object8 (notice that they can bear
information, a thought I will return to in the next section). And so if we are to respect the
intuitive understanding of ‘acquaintance’9 then we must reject the notion that an agent can be
acquainted with an object via causal chains, such as communication chains and perception of
evidential traces, and therefore we must reject Sawyer’s thesis.
Perhaps anticipating such a move, Sawyer claims that her second condition on evidential
traces, that they are necessarily perceived, “preserves the core idea that all acquaintance is based
in perception” [p. 277]. Whilst I agree that all acquaintance is based in perception, I would add
that acquaintance with O is based on a perception of O. That is to say the intuitive idea of
acquaintance is based in perception of the object itself. Sawyer’s requirement that the evidential
traces be perceived misses the point; it is not merely perception which is at the heart of the idea of
acquaintance but perception of the object to which you are acquainted. Perception of the object’s
evidential traces is a totally different matter.
The second reason I reject Sawyer’s thesis is as follows. According to Sawyer I initiate a
mental file whenever I take there to be “prima facie evidence of an object”, be that through
perception, memory, communication chains or evidential traces. But I will now show that there
are cases in which evidential traces are taken by an agent to be prima facie evidence for the
existence of an object and yet the agent cannot think singularly about the object.
8
Of course, perception might be a link in a casual chain, but that is not the same thing
Perhaps you think that we should expand our notion of acquaintance beyond the intuitive
understanding. If so I direct you to my response to such a move in section 2.1: that it would
reduce the acquaintance thesis to an uninformative disjunctive list of situations in which singular
thought occurs. The aim should be to find a unifying condition which underpins all cases of
singular thought.
9
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Consider yet another example:
[Snow] Walking across some fields in January I come across some marks in the snow. I
know something must have made them, but they are not obviously footprints of an
animal or human, nor are they recognisable to me as the tracks of a sledge or bike. I
rightly conclude that something or someone made the marks in the snow; that the snow
did not simply happen to fall in such an arrangement. But I remain totally clueless as to
what kind of thing made the marks in the snow, if it was a human or animal or
inanimate object. Actually, a crazy man was playing with a pogo stick on the fields. I
think ‘whatever or whoever made those marks must have made them last night’.
I hope the reader shares my intuition that the thought in [Snow] is descriptive and I cannot
think singular thoughts about the man with the pogo stick. Sawyer’s account gets this wrong.
For I have taken the causal traces left by pogo stick man (the marks left in the snow) as
evidence that something made them. And so according to Sawyer’s account I initiate a mental file
upon the man with a pogo stick, and my thought in [Snow] is singular. This is hard to accept.
These sorts of cases can be multiplied. Recall the [Julius] example. I have interacted
with causal traces left by the inventor of zips: the zips themselves. And I have taken those
causal traces to be evidence that someone invented the zips I use on my clothing every day.
And so according to Sawyer I have initiated a mental file on Julius and so my thought in
[Julius] should be singular. Yet the thought in [Julius] is cited in the literature as, and surely
is, a paradigm example of a descriptive thought.
I take the moral of these examples to be that taking the casual traces of an object to be
evidence of the object’s existence is not enough to allow an agent to think a singular thought
about that object. What seems important is that the agent extracts information about the object
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which left the causal traces, not merely that the agent comes to believe that the object exists. In
[Bear Print] the agent extracted the information that the relevant object is a bear, and that it has
as its turf the area that they were stood in. In contrast in [Snow] the agent was unable to extract
any information about the thing which made the marks in the snow; I was unable to tell if it was
alive or inanimate, animal/human or neither and so on. Similarly in the [Julius] example I am
unable to extract any information about the inventor of the zips from the mere existence of
zips.
I conclude that Sawyer’s account of acquaintance fails. Acquaintance requires cognitive
access to a perception of the relevant object. We saw in section 2.1 that communication chains
cannot carry perceptions; neither can evidential traces. Furthermore her account of the
conditions under which perception of casual traces allows for singular thought over-generates; it
predicts we will have singular thought in cases where we do not, such as [Julius] and [Snow].
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5. An Alternative Proposal
I hold that the traditional acquaintance account, Sawyer’s revised account and Jeshion’s account
all fail for the reasons detailed above. I will now sketch an alternative. Whilst the notion of
significance was central to Jeshion’s account, and acquaintance central to Sawyer’s, central to
my account is the notion of source of information.
Recall [Snow] and [Bear Print]. I take it that the thought in [Bear Print] is singular,
whilst the thought in [Snow] is descriptive. Consider the difference between [Snow] and [Bear
Print]. In [Snow] I take the evidential traces left in the snow to be evidence of an object (the
object which left the traces). But nonetheless I cannot think singularly about pogo stick man,
contrary to what Sawyer’s account predicts. I hold that this is because I do not acquire any
information about pogo stick man upon perceiving his causal traces. In contrast in [Bear Print] I
not only take the evidence left by the bear (i.e. his scat) to be evidence of an object but I take it
to be evidence of a bear-object, and one whose turf covers the nearby area. I now have
information, such as ‘bear’ and ‘turf nearby’ to place in my mental file about the object which
produced the scat. That information has been carried from the bear to me via a causal chain; the
bear is the source of that information.
I note that in the classic cases covered by traditional acquaintance accounts the object is
the source of information in the agents’ mental files about the object and that causal
connections between the object and the agent, such as perception, memory and communication
chains, carried that information. For example, in [Tea Cup] my perception carried information
about the cup (how dirty it was, what colour it was) from the cup to me. A similar story can be
told about the cup in [Ugly Cup]. Finally in [Amy] I am at the tail end of a causal chain which
carries information about Amy from Amy to me via a conversation about her with Laura.
Evans offered an account of the speaker reference of a name-use based upon causal
source of information. He held that the speaker referent of a name-use is that item which is the
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dominant causal source of the information that the speaker associates with the name [1973, p.
199] In this spirit I propose the following account of singular thought;
[Causal Thesis] A thought T is a singular thought about O iff T is thought through a
mental file F and O is the dominant casual source of information in F
Such a proposal can nicely capture many of Jeshion’s counterexamples. Recall [Adoption].
Consider the information that Stan has in his mental file about his mother. Suppose that Stan’s
ethnic origin is Chinese, his hair is black and his eyes are brown. Stan will have the following
information in his mental file about his mother: ‘probably ethnically Chinese’; ‘probably has
black hair’; and ‘probably has brown eyes’. Where does this information come from? Stan is a
causal trace of his biological mother and carries information about her. Stan extracts
information from that casual trace by, for example, noticing his hair is black and concluding
that it is likely that his mother’s hair is black. He stores this information, which has his mother
as its source, in his mental file about her. Stan’s mother is the dominant source of information
in Stan’s mental file about her. Since Stan’s mother is the dominant source of information in his
mental file, Stan can think singularly about her. We can straightforwardly tell a similar story for
all Jeshion’s examples I presented in section 3, bar [Vulcan] – which I will return to below.
5.1. ‘Dominance’
One obvious question is what is it to be the dominant source of information for a mental file? It
is possible to have more than one source of information for a mental file. Consider the
following case:
[Russell Cambridge] Sorana, who is at Cambridge at the same time as Russell, meets him
and initiates a mental file about him. The mental file has several pieces of information in
it. For example it contains the information that 1) he is writing a book called ‘Principia
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Mathematica’; and 2) he has a moustache. The information that 1) comes from
interactions with his evidential traces – Sorana has seen papers lying around his office.
The information that 2) comes from perception: she has seen his facial hair. There are
many more similar pieces of information in her mental file, which all have Russell as
their source. In addition the file also contains the information that 3) he owns a red
boater hat. However the source of the information that 3) is a man who looks like
Russell; Sorana saw that man at a distance wearing the red hat.
Russell is not the only source of information for Sorana’s mental file. But he is the dominant
source. Why is that so?
Evans had little to say about how to flesh out ‘dominance’12. But I suggest that
‘dominance’ is governed by the following principle:
[Dominance] The dominant source of information that a speaker stores in a mental file
is the source of that information, which is, or has aspects which are, most significant13
to the speaker.
Recall I said earlier that the notion of significance does have an important role to play in a
theory of singular thought, albeit not the role that Jeshion says it does. It is not the significance
that the agent attaches to the object that determines whether or not an agent can think a
singular thought. Rather it is the significance that the agent places on different pieces or aspects
of the information in their mental file which determines the dominant source of the
12
He merely says that “detail in a particular area can be outweighed by spread. Also the believer’s
reasons for being interested in the item at all will weigh” [1973, p. 201]
13
In section 3.1 I argued that Jeshion’s account faces problems defining ‘significance’. Why is it
that I am happy to use the term in my own account? The difference is that my account holds
that the dominant source of information is the source of information that is (or has aspects that
are) most significant. In Jeshion’s account an agent can think singularly about an object if the
object is significant to them. As I argued above, it remains unclear what level of significance is
required. I do not need to appeal to a particular level of significance in my own account, only the
set of information/aspect of information which is the most significant.
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information in that file, and only if an object O is the dominant source of information in a
mental file can the agent think a singular thought about O through the file.
Different pieces or aspects of information will be significant to the agent depending
upon their plans, projects and interests. In [Russell Cambridge] the most important aspect of
the information to Sorana is likely to be the amount of information, given that she might draw
on any of it when formulating her plans and projects involving Russell. So the object that is the
source of the most of the information is the dominant source of information for Sorana’s
mental file about Russell. That is why Russell’s lookalike is not the dominant source of that
information. However, consider:
[Russell History Class] An imposter takes over the role of Russell in 1965 until their
death in 1970. In a mental file I have some information concerning ‘Russell’s’ life in
1967 and some biographical information such as his supposed date of birth, place of
birth, details of marriages and so on. The amount and detail of the biographical
information outweighs that of the 1967 information. The information concerning 1967
is very important to me because War Crimes In Vietnam, my favourite book, was written
by Russell in this year, and I am writing an essay about it for my History class. I place
little significance on the biographical information about Russell.
I contend that if the 1967 information is sufficiently important to me then Russell’s imposter is
the dominant source of information for my mental file. In contrast if I am an amateur historian
and not very interested in War Crimes, the dominant source of information for my mental file
would be the original Russell, for he was the source of the information with the greatest spread,
the information covering the larger period of history, or longer time span. And it is this
information that is important to me.
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I take it that my account gets the intuitively right results in these cases. In [Russell
Cambridge] and the amateur historian case my singular thoughts are intuitively about Russell.
But in [Russell History Class] my thoughts are about the imposter. For suppose I think to
myself ‘he wrote War Crimes In Vietnam with such conviction’ and then learn that it was not the
real Russell who wrote that book. I will not think ‘Oh, he didn’t write War Crimes at all’ but will
rather think ‘Oh, he wasn’t Russell but an imposter’ and hence my initial thought was about the
imposter, not Russell.
In section 3 I noted that ‘information’ contained in a mental file can be false; my mental
file about Christopher can contain the information that he hates capers, and even if he loves
capers. Note that it is possible for an object to be the source of false information about itself.
That is to say O can be the source of the information ‘O is F’ even if O is not F. The source of
the information ‘hates capers’ in my mental file about Christopher can come from Christopher
himself: for example if he lies to me and tells me that he detests capers, or if I see him wince
whilst eating capers and misinterpret this behaviour (when actually he had a mouth ulcer).14
I suggest, then, that dominance is determined by what is significant to the agent;
different aspects of information may be important to different speakers depending upon their
goals interests and values. I allow that since a speaker’s goals, interests and values can change
over time and from context to context, so can the dominant source of information in a mental
14
This allows me to deal with various potentially problematic cases. For example, suppose that I
see someone and then receive huge amounts of information about him, none of which is true. If
they themselves are the source of the false information (for example perhaps they are a
pathological liar) then by my account I can think singular thoughts about the person I initially
perceived. If however the person I saw initially is not the source of the false information
(perhaps because of a misidentification), then my singular thoughts will not be about them.
Consider a different kind of case: Lucinda has a mental file Z which contains various pieces of
information, most of which have Zach as their source. By far the most significant piece of
information is that Zach is a member of the Nazi Party, but unknown to Lucinda this is not true.
If Zach is the source of this information then Lucinda can think singularly about Zach. If
however Lucinda stored this information in her mental file Z on the basis of a perception of
Zach’s doppleganger at a rally then Zach is not the source of the information. If the information
is significant enough to Lucinda, then Z is about Zach’s doppleganger. When Lucinda thinks
through Z she thinks singular thoughts about the doppleganger.
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file. But in all cases the dominant source of information in an agent’s mental file in a given
context is determined by what is significant to the agent in that context.
5.2. [Vulcan]
My thesis can capture our intuitions for the first four of Jeshion’s examples in section 2, the
examples I give in response to Jeshion, and the examples I give in response to Sawyer. But can
it deal with the [Vulcan] case? It looks difficult to say that Vulcan is the dominant source of
information in a mental file about Vulcan given that there is no planet Vulcan.
Firstly, some defensive remarks. Astute readers may have noticed that when I introduced
Jeshion’s examples I noted that I found four of them highly convincing, but I introduced five. I
do not share Jeshion’s intuition that the thought in [Vulcan] is singular; to me it seems
descriptive. [Vulcan] and [Neptune] look very similar, and the thought in [Neptune] is singular.
So how can I hold that [Vulcan] is descriptive? To accept that the thought in [Vulcan] as a
singular thought would be to accept that there can be ‘empty singular thoughts’ – that is, singular
thoughts where there is no object that the thought is about. It is far from obvious that it is
possible to have such thoughts. If my account doesn’t classify [Vulcan] as a singular thought this
could be seen as an advantage of the account by those in certain philosophical camps who hold
that the content of singular thoughts depends upon the existence of the object that they are
about15, and so there is no genuine empty singular thought. Certainly I do not think a failure to
classify cases such as [Vulcan] as singular thoughts would be fatal for my account. If an account
can successfully capture the intuitions in the other examples then the contentious nature of
empty singular thoughts seems to rule out [Vulcan] as evidence for or against such an account.
15
Those that hold that singular thoughts involve propositions that contain the object, or objectdependent sense, which they are about, include McDowell [1984], Evans [1982], and Taylor
[2010].
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Having said that, there are ways in which my account might be expanded to capture the
intuition that [Vulcan] is singular. Perhaps the thought in [Vulcan] is not a singular thought but
a thought which is ‘singular thought-like’, and our intuitions are misled by this. The idea here is
that singular thought-like thoughts count within the scope of a pretense as singular thoughts.
Irrealist accounts of fictional objects often maintain that thoughts and utterances which purport
to be about Hamlet are not really about anything. Such utterances nevertheless count as being
about Hamlet within the scope of the pretense that the play Hamlet describes reality, and that there is
such a person as Hamlet [for details see Crimmins 1998, Everett 2005 and Kroon
2005]16. Likewise, perhaps [Vulcan] does not really describe an example of singular thought, but
we mistakenly suppose that it does because within the scope of the pretense that there is such a
thing as Vulcan the thought described in [Vulcan] counts as singular17. We might hold that in
such cases the thought involves an ‘empty mental file’; a mental file about nothing, but such an
account need not be committed to this.
I don’t want to commit myself to this response, but offer it merely as a sketch of a way
of explaining the intuition (which I don’t share) that the thought in [Vulcan] is singular. I
maintain that, given the state of the debate on empty singular thoughts, if the reader finds such
a suggestion unappealing, then failure to classify [Vulcan] as singular cannot be held against my
account.
16
[Sainsbury 1999] suggests a similar account using the notion of presupposition rather than
pretence.
17
Note that, as pretence theorists have emphasized, this sort of pretense that we engage in when
we talk and think as if there is a planet Vulcan need not be explicit; those who engage in it may
not consciously recognize themselves as engaged in a pretense (rather it might simply be what
Crimmins [1998] calls a ‘shallow pretense’). Of course those, such as Le Verrier, who mistakenly
believed there was such a thing as Vulcan would not have engaged in this sort of pretense. In so
far as Le Verrier had the concept of singular thought he would have mistakenly believed his
Vulcan-thoughts to be singular because he mistakenly took them to be non-descriptive thoughts
about something that existed. We, in contrast, might mistakenly take his thoughts to be
genuinely singular because they count as singular within the pretence there is a such a thing as
Vulcan, and we fail to distinguish genuine singularity from singularity within the scope of the
pretence.
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6. Conclusion
I have shown that both Jeshion’s and Sawyer’s accounts of singular thought fail. Jeshion
provided a series of compelling counterexamples to traditional acquaintance accounts. But
Jeshion’s own account fails to give us a proper definition of ‘significance’ and faces its own
series of counterexamples. Sawyer attempts to capture Jeshion’s examples with a modified
acquaintance based account. But Sawyer also faces her own series of counterexamples. I also
note that Sawyer and traditional acquaintance accounts that hold that an agent can become
acquainted with O via a communication chain with someone who has perceived O have lost
sight of the ultimate goal of the singular thought project. Such accounts are mere lists of the
conditions in which we find singular thought, providing no unifying condition which underpins
the elements in their disjunctive lists. I propose a unified account in which a thought T is a
singular thought about O iff T is thought through a mental file F and O is the dominant casual
source of information in F. Such an account is the only one which can capture the intuitions in
all the cases (or at least, all but [Vulcan]) covered in this paper.
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