Ruth Garrett Millikan, White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice (Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford Books/MIT Press, 1993)

"The underlying theme of the essays in this volume is that all of the basic norms applying to cognition are biological norms" (p. 3). Norms? In nature? The very idea. Yet in these essays Ruth Millikan applies the idea -- powerfully, perceptively, wittily -- to problems about knowledge of meaning (including sameness and difference of meaning, and ambiguity and univocity), and more generally to problems about intentionality, representation, language, beliefs and desires, reasons and causes, folk psychology, truth as correspondence, what determines the correct rule (say plus rather than quus), and more. Repeatedly she explains the normative element in these matters -- in failures of representation, in empty hence defective thoughts and meanings, in error problems generally -- by reference to objective biological norms to which some item fails to conform. Repeatedly she is thereby able to distance her theory from accounts given by others, including the Churchlands, Cummins, Davidson, Dennett, Dretske, Fodor, Putnam, Quine, and Stich.

Obviously the notion of a biological norm is made to bear an enormous load, and many have questioned it. Millikan is hardly unaware of their challenge, or unresponsive, but this volume is not meant to address objections to the very idea of an objective norm, or to correlative ideas of proper function, purpose, design, and what an adaptation is for. Rather, "My purpose in this book is to clarify, defend, and show some of the implications of a biological solution to the normativity problem" (p. 10). Those who would object to the very idea are mostly referred to the first two chapters of her 1984 book, Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories (LTOBC). Thus the present volume "is not designed to be criticized apart from the foundations laid in LTOBC," even though it is "designed to be read independently" (p. 11).

The foundations laid in the first two chapters of LTOBC mostly involve defining "proper function" (proper in the sense of being a thing's own function, by contrast to functions imposed on or accidental to it). The aim of the definition is not analysis -- not to capture the vernacular concept or uses of the term 'function', or philosophers' uses, say by specifying necessary and sufficient conditions for application of the term (contrary to Plantinga, among others, who badly misreads her as attempting an analysis, then tries to counter-example accordingly).⁽¹⁾ Conceptual analysis, she says, mincing no words, "is a confused program, a philosophical chimera, a squaring of the circle, the misconceived child of a mistaken view of the nature of language and thought" (p. 15). Instead, her gaze is fixed firmly on a phenomenon that appears to be in the world -- proper function, what something is for or is supposed or designed to do -- and the aim of her definition, as of all theoretical definition, is to be adequate to the phenomenon. Objecting to the resulting notion that it is not what the folk mean -- or the philosophers or even the biologists -- would be as beside the point as objecting to Einstein's account of mass that it fails to accord with what the folk or the philosophers or even the physicists of the day meant by 'mass', on the ground that for him mass is not conserved in all interactions, whereas for the Newtonians it is. The definitional project is emphatically revisionary, not descriptive.

The definition in LTOBC is recursive, first defining "direct proper function," then defining a proper function of an item A as anything that is either a direct proper function of A or a function of A "derived" from the functions of some devices that produce A (though as Millikan says, this sketch of the full definition is "extremely rough and ready" (p. 14); more about direct proper function below). For an example of derived function, consider the imprinting mechanism in a newly-hatched chick. Presumably the mechanism has among its proper functions the function of producing the imprinting of Junior on its mother. Supposing that Junior's mother = Congreva, it follows that the imprinting of Junior on its mother has the function -- a derived function -- of imprinting Junior on Congreva. We may also say, for parallel reasons, that the imprinting mechanism itself has the derived function of imprinting Junior on Congreva.

Since Congreva is a unique individual, the derived function of imprinting Junior on her is unique too. Though the function is biological, it can be unique, and it can be quite new under the sun, indeed instantaneously so. There are mechanisms in the rat that have the direct function (we may suppose) of preventing the rat from eating what tastes like the stuff it had when it got sick. Supposing that the stuff it had = the children's silly putty -- a substance nowhere encountered in the evolutionary history of rats -- the rat mechanisms have the derived function of preventing the rat from eating silly putty. "In this manner, animals that learn can acquire biological purposes that are peculiar to them as individuals, tailored to their own peculiar circumstances or peculiar history" (p. 226).

Note that the imprinting mechanism was itself not selected for, or its ancestors selected for, in virtue of the effect of imprinting Junior on Congreva, nor was the neural state it produces that is the result of Junior's imprinting on Congreva. This means, among other things, that neither the mechanism nor the state -- nor a state of an organism which counts as a representation -- has its function in virtue of an adaptive history that involves Congreva. It is a serious mistake -- and widespread -- to construe Millikan's theory of representational content as implying that "state-type S of an organism O has the content that P ... if (i) S leads to certain behavior B; and (ii) O's ancestors gained a selective advantage by engaging in B when P obtained."⁽²⁾ This would imply that Junior's ancestors had to engage in certain behavior toward Congreva. The mistake is due once again to neglecting the crucial role of derived proper functions.

But what of the direct proper functions needed to kick-start the recursion? Millikan's definition is expressly meant to cover non-biological cases of function as well as biological: "I do not consider biological examples of proper functions to be more central than any others. In fact, the proper functions of language forms play a very much larger role in LTOBC than the proper functions of forms studied by biologists" (p. 31). Nonetheless, her definition requires a history of selection behind the proper functions (p. 31), and in other ways shares a fundamental core of ideas with evolutionary biology. The shared core is the idea of a type A that exists because past instances of A had causal effect C (often enough) in a certain selective environment, which effect gave A (or the containing organism) an adaptive advantage in that environment over its alternatives. For example, the black color of the peppered moth in industrial areas of 19th-Century England existed because past instances of the black color had the effect (often enough) of camouflaging the moths against their main predators (the first instances being explained by mutation), which effect gave black colored moths a selective advantage over their lighter brethren in such environments.

According to Millikan, this is to say that the direct proper function of the black color is camouflage. According to Robert Brandon's rigorous account of adaptation, this is to say that the black color is an adaptation, and that it is for camouflage. In fact -- though no one seems to have remarked this -- what an adaptation is for, in Brandon's sense, and what its function is, in Millikan's sense, are the same. Brandon's account can therefore be read as a vindication, if one is needed, of Millikan's notion of direct proper function as it applies to biology; the other kinds of biological proper function then follow immediately, given her recursion and her definition of derived proper function. To take on Millikan on biological proper function you must also take on Brandon.

Furthermore, as Brandon argues in detail, even though adaptation explanations are answers to teleological what-for questions, "they are also perfectly good causal/mechanical explanations." For the "adaptation is the direct product of the process of evolution by natural selection," and we explain the process in terms of "the ecological consequences of the adaptation, or its precursors, that explain its adaptive advantage over its alternatives."⁽³⁾ There would appear to be no whiff of intentionality here, which would be question-begging when the notion of what a thing is for -- the notion of its proper function -- is used in an account of some intentional property. And Millikan certainly does use it this way, repeatedly, in connection with the aboutness of signs in a species' communication system, language included, together with much else. Note also that rejecting Millikan's notion of biological direct proper function would entail rejecting evolution by natural selection, insofar as the direct proper function of an adaptation (which is the same as what the adaptation is for) is the product of the process of evolution by natural selection. You would have to take on not only Brandon but Darwin, who stands behind them both.

Now consider Fodor's frog, which snaps up both errant bugs and tossed BBs. The effect of the bugs and the BBs on the frog is the same, triggering a mechanism that causes its tongue to shoot toward them, followed by swallowing. But despite the sameness of the frog's here-now causal relations -- it might even be an in situ law that the frog would snap at BBs iff it would snap at bugs -- the proper function of the mechanism is to get the frog to catch bugs, not BBs. For the mechanism is an adaptation, and it exists because its past instances had the effect of getting frogs to catch bugs (often enough), which effect gave them an adaptive advantage in their natural-selective environments. The mechanism is a trait selected for in virtue of its effect of catching bugs, not BBs. So by Brandon's account, what the mechanism is for is getting the frog to catch bugs; by Millikan's, equivalently, the mechanism has this as one of its proper functions, what it is supposed to do but may fail to do when the environment does not cooperate, say by supplying BBs rather than bugs (p. 125). Provided this is ultimately a causal/mechanical matter (as it is by Brandon's account, among others), no intentionality is smuggled in. Millikan applies parallel considerations to resolve Dretske's magnetosome (pp. 125-127).

We can even work rules into the frog example, using an idea implicit in Millikan's discussion of other examples (especially the rat and the hoverfly examples, pp. 218-228). Where a direct function of adaptation A is to get organism x to C, a direct function of A is to get x to conform to rule "C"; getting x to conform to rule "C" = the effect of getting x to C = the effect in virtue of which A's ancestors were selected for. For example, suppose a direct function of the adaptation that is the frog's tongue-shooting mechanism is to get the frog to catch bugs. Then a direct function of the adaptation is to get the frog to conform to the rule "Catch bugs." So the correct rule is the catch-bugs rule, not some quus-like rule or the rule "Catch bugs or BBs or ...." Likewise, a function of the chick's imprinting mechanism is to get Junior to conform to the rule "Imprint on mom," and a derived function, given that mom = Congreva, is to get Junior to conform to the rule "Imprint on Congreva," what Millikan calls a derived rule.

Neither frog nor chick is aware of the rule, much less able to express it, nor is the rule to be found by peering into their nervous systems or their dispositions or propensities to behave this way or that. Yet they have a competence to conform to such unexpressed rules, despite mistakes with BBs or faux moms (say experimental ethologists). And there is a fact of the matter as to which rule they are to conform to -- "Catch bugs" or "Imprint on Congreva" rather than disjunctive or quus-like alternatives. Millikan then expands this entering wedge, suitably sharpened, to construct a solution of the Kripke-Wittgenstein paradox, by arguing that "whatever you mean to do when you encounter 'plus,' that content has been determined by your experience coupled with evolutionary design.... This meaning has been determined by the application of Homo sapiens rules of some kind to experience," not unlike the way the rule "Imprint on Congreva" has been determined by application of the chick rule "Imprint on mom" to Junior's experience when mom = Congreva. But of course the Homo sapiens rules, by contrast, "are extremely abstract, general purpose ... rules, in accordance with which human concept formation takes place" (p. 230). Even so, there is a fact of the matter as to which rule we are to conform to when confronted with 'plus'.

In line with these and many other applications of the notion of biological norms, Millikan argues further that "psychological classification is biological classification" (p. 173) -- including folk-psychological classification (p. 54n4) -- in that "categories such as belief, desire, memory, percept, and purposive behavior are biological-function categories" (pp. 172-173). But, as seen, far more specific categories can count as biological, thanks to derived function -- categories like purposeful-imprinting-on-Congreva. This enables Millikan to make the "more contentious ... claim ... that such categories or types as belief-that-it-is-raining, desire-to-visit-Paris, percept-of-a-cat, and purposeful-shooting-of-a-rabbit are carved out with reference to biological functions (though in the case of beliefs, not directly according to function ...)" (p. 173). So psychology is a branch of biology, and -- though unremarked -- philosophy of psychology is presumably a branch of philosophy of biology.

One way to resist such conclusions -- or the whole program -- is to look again, and far more critically, at the basic notion of direct proper function. Thus Putnam argues in effect that something this notion presupposes -- namely, the concept of an adaptation or of what an item is selected for -- turns out to require counterfactuals up to their necks in intentional concepts; indeed, these suspect counterfactuals are what power any explanation by natural selection, so that the whole idea of unique or determinate rules and aboutness "is an illusion, an artifact of the way we describe the situation."⁽⁴⁾ The intentionality that was to be accounted for is smuggled in after all. Now Millikan does reply to "the attack on adaptationism" coming from some philosophers and certain biologists (pp. 39-50), and she could appeal to Brandon's work (among others') for further support. But she has not (yet) replied to Putnam's kind of objection (either here or, so far as I know, elsewhere). On the other hand, I believe one can show, contrary to Putnam, that the suspect counterfactuals are not at all required.⁽⁵⁾ Still, more work is needed both to weigh whether this really can be shown, and to see how far the argument accords with Millikan's characteristic theses.

So too do we need substantial work on how the assumed biological normativity is supposed to be related to -- perhaps somehow emerge out of -- the purely descriptive matter of the effects in virtue of which some adaptation was selected for. How do we get genuine normativity -- even biological normativity -- from the purely factual natural-selective affairs that define direct proper function (without which the recursive definition of other types of proper function cannot get off the ground)? Presumably the biological shoulds or oughts cannot be derived from any is. Nor can they be reduced to any is, many philosophers believe, in view of the various open-question arguments against such reduction. Nor should we overlook Mackie-style arguments from queerness against any would-be objective values. So far as I know, Millikan has not discussed these classical problems about the needed normativity. When she writes of "solving the normativity problem" (p. 10), she has in mind applying the already assumed biological normativity to explain the intentional and other phenomena that can involve error or other defect. And while again I think there is a solid reply one could make to the classical and other challenges to the needed objective normativity,⁽⁶⁾ more work is needed to clarify the issues let alone to settle them.

Meanwhile, there is much to savor and much to learn from Millikan's imaginative and provocative application of the basic ideas to problems of intentionality, representation, language, beliefs and desires, reasons and causes, folk psychology, truth as correspondence, what determines the correct rule, and more. Hers is a program that has the welcome tectonic potential to remake the philosophical landscape.

1. In his Warrant and Proper Function (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 201-204. He also confuses proper function with direct proper functions, which are the topic of LTOBC Ch. 1; he seems scarcely to have read Ch. 2 about derived functions. [Plantinga has recently complained with some justice that he does NOT misread Millikan as attempting an analysis, to which I reply that while this is the literal truth, his account nonetheless has the effect of a misreading at a deeper, methodological level. Here is what I take to be the crucial part of our correspondence on the matter. See also From Is to Ought: Another Way, §V(ii).]

2. Steven Wagner, "Teleosemantics and the Troubles of Naturalism," Philosophical Studies, 82 (1996), p. 83. His cautionary footnote 6, about novel contents, misses the point of derived function.

3. Brandon (1990), 139, 165, 185-89.

4. Renewing Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 26, 31. Searle is likewise skeptical about any objective notion of function, for reasons having to do with normativity, in The Construction of Social Reality (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 238.

5. See "Teleofunction, Natural Selection, and Counterfactuals."

6. See "Post-Quinean Philosophical Investigations," in Quine and Wittgenstein, ed. R. Arrington and H-J. Glock (Routledge, December, 1996), 252-279, espec. pp. 264-267; and "From Is to Ought: Another Way ."