11/15/98

Published in the Electronic Journal for Analytic Philosophy, January 1999

http://www.phil.indiana.edu/ejap/ejap.html
Copyright @ Adrian Cussins

Subjectivity, Objectivity and

Frames of Reference in
Evans’s Theory of Thought

Adrian Cussins

I shall say that experience and judgement are different
modes of cognition. I mean only that they are different ways in
which people have or exercise knowledge of the world. There
are diverse aspects to this difference; for example, the kind of
epistemic commitment involved in experiencing the world
differs from the kind of epistemic commitment involved in
forming judgements about the world. But that will not be my
topic here. There are also differences in kinds of content: the
characteristic content of experience differs from the
characteristic content of judgement, which is truth-evaluable
thought content. I will not here try to defend a version of
Evans’s claim that the content of experience is nonconceptual
as contrasted with the conceptual content of judgeable thought.
Philosophers have often thought that the content of experience
is subjective, at least in part, whereas the content of judgement
is, or ought to be, objective. Evans, for example, emphasizes
the egocentricity of how perceptual experience presents the
world, and contrasts the objectivity of his fundamental level of
thought. And related to this, it has often been held that
judgements which are based directly on experience—for
example, observational judgements—carry an essentially
subjective element, whereas judgements based on
(fundamental) thoughts may be wholly objective. It is this
(supposed) third difference betweeen experience and
judgement that I want to pursue here, in connection with the
distinction between the non-fundamental and the fundamental
levels of thought, as applied to thoughts about material, spatial
objects.

As we will see, a central category, for Evans, of non-
fundamental concepts of spatial objects are those which are
based on experience, especially perceptual experience. For
example, demonstrative concepts of material objects in the
immediate environment of the thinker, which the thinker is
now perceiving, and where the demonstration of the object
relies on its being perceived. The way these concepts are of
their objects is fixed by the way their grounding perceptual
experiences are of their objects. Now if the intentionality of
these concepts is fixed by the intentionality of the perceptual
experiences on which they depend, and the perceptual
experiences are subjective, then it is at least going to be a
concern that thoughts based on these concepts will, in part, be
subjective. Hence the felt need for an independently grounded
level of thought which is not, in part, subjective. On one
reading, Evans’s fundamental level is a level of concepts of
objects that are wholly objective; where being “wholly”
objective means being not at all subjective. It may be that
insofar as human minds realize a fundamental level of thought,
concepts that are “wholly” objective are rarely, if ever,
grasped; nevertheless, this sort of objectivity is the ideal that
governs the fundamental level of human thought. We need the
fundamental level of thought to secure thought’s objectivity, as
an ideal, and as best as is possible given human limitations.

So, on this reading—a popular reading of Evans—the
distinction in cognition between the subjective and the
objective maps on to the distinction between the non-
fundamental and the fundamental levels of thought: the
subjective is non-fundamental and the fundamental is
objective. But, surely, what is not fundamental is not
necessary, so we can explore the idea of cognition which exists
entirely at the fundamental level. We can conceive of, and
explore in thought, what on this view would be an idealization
of human thought: a creature whose cognition was exclusively
“wholly” objective because all of the creature’s thought
operated at the fundamental level of thought. I will call such a
creature a “Fregean Angel”. Now this is what is at stake here:
Is human thought such that its idealisation would be the
thought of a Fregean Angel? …

I won’t have very much to say about these last two
questions here, but I want to do some preparatory work by
exploring, in the context of Evans’s account, what goes wrong
with the idea of the Fregean Angels. In seeing what goes
wrong with Angelic thought we can better see the nature of the
error in a theory of thought in which there is a “fundamental”
level at which objectivity is secured, which is autonomous of
subjective cognitive phenomena, and which is therefore
cognitively detachable from them. Maybe then we will be
better placed to offer one or two ideas about how to put this
right; about an alternative understanding of objectivity’s role in
cognition. If, on the other hand, we find no incoherence in
Angelic thought then we may be unable to resist a conception
of human thought in which the subjective and the objective
elements are assigned to functionally, and philosophically,
distinct parts of the cognitive system.

***

One way to understand what goes wrong with a
metaphysical picture of the world is to fill the picture out more,
find oneself getting into difficulties in filling out the picture,
and then to give a principled explanation for these difficulties.
Suppose we were to attempt this for a picture of objectivity
secured exclusively at the fundamental level, from which all
subjectivity has been detached. What could such thought and
its world be like?

Think first about the basis for a distinction between
qualitative identity and numerical identity under such
conditions. Normally, if there are two objects which are
qualitatively identical to each other, we can understand that
they are not numerically identical (that they are two rather than
one) because we can imagine them given in different
egocentric presentations to the thinker, or with different
significances for action; for example, one on their left and one
on their right. But this idea is not available in our picture of a
“wholly” objective world, because all subjectivity is
eliminated from such a world, and the idea of being ‘to the
left’ or ‘to the right’ depends on a subject’s egocentric
perspective on the world. Likewise significance-for-action
depends on different embodied, subjective ways of being in the
world. We need some other way of making sense of these
qualitatively identical objects being in different places. Again,
normally, we have no difficulty with the idea of unperceived
distinct places, but that is because we are already conceptually
equipped to operate with the distinction between qualitative
and numerical identity: we make sense of unperceived
different places because we can make sense of their being
distinct particular objects located at those places. But we
cannot appeal to that here because we are trying to make
metaphysical sense of this distinction that is presupposed in
our ordinary understanding of different places. What is
entirely legitimate in ordinary practice leads in this
metaphysical task to vicious circularity: numerical distinctness
of objects is explained by appeal to distinct places which in
turn is made sense of in terms of the idea of numerically
distinct objects. Both Strawson and Evans emphasize the
explanatory inter-dependence of objects and places, so in
conceiving our metaphysical picture we cannot rest numerical
distinctness of objects on distinctness of places, nor
distinctness of places on distinctness of objects. At the
metaphysical level of explanation these distinctions must be
provided for symmetrically. But how?

It helps to start with a very simple world—a world of
shapes—and ask about the conditions under which one can
make sense of the idea of two distinct objects which are
identically shaped. Strawson (1959) is concerned with the
possibility of this distinction given that “we cannot at any
moment observe the whole of the spatial framework we use,
that there is no part of it that we can observe continuously, and
that we ourselves do not occupy a fixed position within it”. In
contrasting a situation in which the subject could monitor
continuously the spatial relations amongst objects he imagines
the ‘world’ depicted in the figure below. I want to focus on a
component of this ‘world’, its bound or frame of reference,
which provides an absolute spatial framework for the shape-
world:
Even though there is no subjectivity in this ‘world’, we can
make sense of the distinction between qualitative and
numerical identity for the ‘world’ by means of its frame. The
questions “which triangle?” and “which circle?” make sense
only because triangularity and circularity can be differentially
discriminated in terms of distinct relations to the boundary
frame of reference. In what follows there are two aspects to
the frame of reference of this ‘world’ which will be of
importance: that the objects in the shape-world are always co-
presented with their frame of reference, and that the frame of
reference is not itself dependent on the identity and
distinctness of the objects that are located with respect to it.

If a world is presented at all to a Fregean Angel, it must
be presented in such a way that the entire extent of the world is
laid out before it, as the shape ‘world’ is laid out for us in the
Strawson figure above. Subjects or thinkers cannot act in this
world; or, if they can, their thought about the world in no way
depends on their action in the world. The entire extent of the
world is laid out before the thinker, quite independently of
activity or experience, or embodiment: the world as a purely
formal object.

In sum: if the fundamental level of thought is the level at
which objectivity is secured, and if the fundamental level can
be detached from any non-fundamental level, then we ought to
be able to make sense of an idealised cognitive creature that
operates exclusively at the fundamental level of thought and
therefore whose thought is ‘wholly’ objective in that all
subjectivity has been excised from the thought of the creature.
If thought of any world at all entails the applicability of the
distinction between qualitative and numerical identity (for if it
were not applicable there could be no objects) then the world
presented in the thought of such an idealised cognitive creature
would have to be laid out before it so that the bounds of the
whole world were presented to it along with each object. The
very possibility of objects in such a world depends on their
being co-presented with the frame of the whole world. And
the frame of reference itself is not dependent on the objects in
the world, or on action on the world: rather, it is a
transcendental condition on the possibility of objects at all.

This is not how it is with us! But it doesn’t follow that
our cognitive theology is not like this. The question is this:
Does the explanation of why things are not like this with us
appeal to our imperfections; that, for example, some of our
singular thought is dependent on perceptual experience, and
our experience is egocentric and partial? For, if so, the
idealisation of human cognition—which abstracts from human
imperfections—would still be the cognition of the Fregean
Angel. And therefore the functionality of human cognition
would entail the coherence of the idea of a Fregean Angel,
which would stand as its model, just as soviet sculpture in the
former USSR modelled workers as their perfection: heroic,
unceasing and strong. Or as Evans’s Generality Constraint
(see below) models the less-than-perfect compositionality of
humanly-grasped-concepts? On one view, what’s going on
with Evans’s fundamental level of thought is to secure a core
part of human cognition which—unlike subjective experience
—would, if perfected, sustain a metaphysics of the kind
illustrated in the Strawson figure. A question will be, what
might drive Evans to that, and is it possible to satisfy the
motivation without the Angelic theology? We will know that
an alternative conception of thought is needed because, as we
will see, Angelic cognition loses distinctions that play an
essential role in the human conception of objectivity, even as
an ideal for human thought.

Here is one reason one might think that that is what is
going on with Evans’s fundamental level. Notice that the
frame of the world in an Angelic metaphysics need not be
geometric-spatial. It might instead be arithmetical: a
constitutive sequence, expressible for example with the integer
numerals, with respect to which the identity of numbers is
given. Identity and distinctness of numbers, like the identity
and distinctness of triangle shapes, makes sense only in
relation to such a canonical sequence. Evans brings out
something just like this when he introduces the notion of the
fundamental level via his discussion of abstract objects, and
especially numbers. Since it is the discussion of abstract,
formal objects that leads up to the fundamental level in Evans,
we ought perhaps to pay special attention to it.

Suppose in playing a game one asked, “What number is
the square of a prime, the sum of two primes, and less than
twenty?” It would be a true answer, but a bizarre one, to say
“the number of planets”. It would be bizarre because the
connection between the concept is the number of planets and
the concept is the square of a prime, the sum of two primes,
and less than twenty must be mediated conceptually (one can’t
“see straight off” that “the number of planets” is the answer).
One could only recognize “the number of planets” as a way of
giving a true answer to this question if one was in a position to
judge true the mediating thought, the number of planets is
nine. That is, the way of thinking of a number which is the
number of planets only connects to other ways of thinking of
numbers via a canonical way of thinking of numbers in terms
of their location in a canonical sequence, for example the
sequence of integers. Hence, the role of the concept nine in
the mediating thought. To give or understand “the number of
planets” as answer to the question is a two-step process: (1) the
number of planets is nine, and (2) nine is the square of a prime,
the sum of two primes, and less than twenty. Since a thinker
has to go via the mode of presentation of the number as nine,
one wonders why the answer is not expressed using the same
mode of presentation; hence the appearance of bizarreness.

In order to understand what it is for numerical properties
to apply to a number, one must be able to think of the number
in terms of its location in a canonical sequence, so we could
call this way of thinking of numbers in terms of their location
in a canonical sequence, the “fundamental” way. Other ways
of thinking of numbers—for example, as “the number of
planets”—are non-fundamental, because it is only possible to
understand how concepts of numerical properties can be
predicated of them if the thinker knows what it would be to
identify a number so thought of with a number thought of in a
fundamental way. (This restriction doesn’t, of course, itself
apply iteratively to fundamental ways of thinking of numbers).

One could go on from here to the following idea: if the
thinker were attempting to think about a number in a non-
fundamental way, then we should say that the thinker wouldn’t
know what they were thinking about if they didn’t know which
number they were thinking about, and they wouldn’t know
which number they were thinking about if they weren’t in a
position to understand the truth conditions of a range of
arithmetical predications of the number. But since arithmetical
predications to numbers make sense only via a fundamental
way of thinking of numbers, a thinker wouldn’t know what
they were thinking about if they didn’t know what it would be
for a thought of the form <this number is δ> to be true where δ
is a fundamental way of thinking of the number. Satisfaction
of “Russell’s Principle” requires a fundamental level of ways
of thinking of numbers, and it requires the explanatory
dependence of non-fundamental ways of thinking upon
fundamental ways of thinking. Hence the necessity of the two
stage procedure noted above, which is emphasized wherever
Evans talks about the fundamental level of thought.

Notice the equivalent role played by the canonical integer
sequence in thought about numbers and the absolute spatial
frame of reference in thought about shape-objects in the
Strawson-world. Both are absolute frameworks in that the
identity and distinctness of their objects is explained in terms
of the frame of reference, but the frame of reference itself is
not explained in terms of the objects. Both frames extend to
the limits of their world (there cannot be more objects than can
be discriminated with respect to their frame). And in both
cases objects must be co-presented in thought with their frame
of reference: even if one thinks of the objects in a non-
fundamental way, one’s understanding of which object is in
question (its satisfaction of Russell’s Principle) rests on
understanding of an identity claim in which the object thought
of non-fundamentally (the number of planets, the shape I am
thinking of) is identified with an object thought of in terms of
its location relative to the absolute frame of reference (the
number nine, the triangle at the top left of the frame). That is,
the frame must itself be represented in thought, in the same
kind of way as non-fundamental concepts are explicitly
cognitively represented: understanding which object is in
question rests on understanding the identity proposition, and in
the identity proposition the framework concept δ stands
symmetrically across from the non-fundamental concept.
Russell’s Principle is satisfied only because the frame of
reference is rendered explicit at the fundamental level of
thought. The frame itself figures as a conceptual constituent in
thoughts which must be understood if even non-fundamental
thought about particulars is to be possible.

Impressed by this account of thought about numbers,
Evans—on this reading—develops an analogous account for
thought about material, spatial objects. The analog of the
canonical sequence which is constitutive of numerical identity
and difference is an objective frame of reference for spatial
objects. It is not possible that the frame of reference for
human thought extends to the limits of its world, but the frame
plays the equivalent role for human thought that the absolute
frame plays in the number and shape examples: it acts to
secure objectivity, in the sense of securing uniqueness and
distinctness for objects without relying on experiential or other
non-fundamental ways of thinking. In the material, spatial-
world the frame provides for the possibility of thought which
is from no point of view, which—by contrast with egocentric
thought—is necessary for objectivity. Moreover, Evans claims
that satisfaction of Russell’s Principle for thought about
material, spatial objects rests on being able to bring into
‘alignment’ one’s egocentric presentations with a conception of
the spatial world which is from no point of view. And, as we
will see, Evans claims that satisfaction of the Generality
Constraint for thought about material, spatial objects requires a
fundamental level of thought at which a thinker can make
sense of a full range of predications.

So in this domain too, thought about objects involving
non-fundamental concepts requires a two-stage procedure: to
understand the thought that <a is F> where a is a non-
fundamental concept of an object grounded in egocentric
experience, the thinker must know (1) what it would be for <a
= δ> to be true, for a fundamental way of thinking of an object,
δ, which is from no point of view because it exploits an
objective frame of reference, and (2) what it would be for <δ is
F> to be true. Thus the frame of reference must be cognitively
represented, so that it is itself presented in thought (“δ”)
whenever one thinks of a spatial object. Experience-based
thought about spatial objects is explanatorily dependent on
thought about objects at the fundamental level of thought,
which is “wholly” objective, because “from no point of view”,
because anchored by an absolute (if still partial) frame of
reference. And fundamental thought of objects is not
explanatorily dependent on experience-based thought; it can
detach itself from experience-based thought. The objective
frame of reference, on this view, is not a special way of
employing egocentric presentations, or presentations of the
world as activity, because it is constituted by a fundamental
kind of concept, the δs, which present objects from no point of
view, and therefore not experientially and not in terms of
embodied activity. In this sense, then, the fundamental level of
thought about material, spatial objects, like fundamental
thought about numbers and about the Strawsonian shape-
world, is a formal level of thought.

***

We need now to explore a little how frames of reference
work, so as to be able to distinguish between ‘pathological’
and ‘healthy’ uses of frames of reference in cognition. I’m
going to suggest that frames of reference, if they are to
successfully provide for the possibility of singular reference
must (1) not be explanatorily independent of the identity of
particular objects that are located with respect to the frame,
and (2), must not figure explicitly in thought, by being directly
cognitively represented at a special level of thought. For, if
they are so represented and they do so figure, they will prevent
the possibility of successful singular reference. Thus we
should abandon the model of the fundamental level of thought
about material, spatial objects that we arrived at via the
Angelic metaphysics of the Strawson shape-world, and
Evans’s discussion of thought about numbers; the model in
which the frame must be independent of and co-presented with
the objects. We will need some other way to secure the
‘objectivity constraints’ of Russell’s Principle and the
Generality Constraint. The payoff, I hope, is to gain a richer
sense of the contrast between a formalist conception of thought
and of metaphysics, and a non-formalist conception in which
experience provides for the possibility of objectivity. This
opens up a quite different conception of experience than that
which is subjective-in-the-sense-of-anti-objective.

Let’s begin this discussion by distinguishing thought
which is relative to a frame of reference from thought which is
dependent on a frame of reference. First a couple of examples
of frame-dependence.

-------------------

A subject might make a reference to a chess piece which
is relative to the frame of reference established by the chess
board. I am thinking here of a game of chess not as a
spatiotemporally located episode, but as a formal type whose
existence is independent of any particular spatio-temporal
context, constituted solely as a sequence of moves which
might be materially manifested in a number of different places
and times. For example, the subject might say “black’s bishop
moves to Queen-Bishop-4” referring to a move in a game
between Kasparov and Deep Blue. The reference to the chess
piece is relative to the frame of reference which is established
by the chess board; not by any particular chess board situated
in the space through which the thinking subject moves, but
relative to a general or abstract frame which does not belong to
the unified spatio-temporal framework in which actions and
material objects are situated. Such a reference is not only
relative to a frame of reference but is frame-dependent because
the chess-piece in question cannot be identified independently
of the frame of reference established by the generic chess
board. The idea of that particular makes no sense at all
independently of the frame of reference of the chess-board. In
such cases the ability to think about the chess piece is
dependent—both explanatorily and ontologically—on the
ability to think about the frame of reference of the chess board,
but the ability to think about this frame of reference is not
dependent on the ability to think about that chess piece. This
sort of asymmetric dependence is characteristic of frame-
dependent reference.

Consider my ability to think about Piggy which is relative
to the reference-frame established by William Golding’s book
The Lord of the Flies. I can talk quite happily about Piggy,
even counterfactually about what Piggy would do in various
imagined circumstances, but only so long as I stay within the
reference-frame established by the story. If, walking down the
street, someone asks me, “Is that Piggy?”, the question makes
no sense unless it is reinterpreted to mean something like
"Doesn't that person look just like what you imagine Piggy to
look like?", or perhaps, "Isn't that the person who was a model
for Golding's depiction of Piggy?", or something of the kind. I
can identify the person walking down the street without
necessarily having to identify anything else, but an actual
identification of Piggy would require the identification of the
objects and places that constitute the story-frame with respect
to which references to Piggy are made. But the story-frame
exists only in Golding’s world, not in Piggy’s. The cognitive
resources for epistemic access to Piggy are exhausted by the
frame of reference provided by the story. Therefore, Piggy-
references cannot escape the story-frame of The Lord of the
Flies; references to Piggy make sense only internally to the
frame. References to Piggy are not only frame-relative. They
are also frame-dependent. Again we have the characteristic
asymmetry of frame-dependence: Piggy-references are situated
and made possible by the story-frame, but William Golding’s
story-frame cannot itself be situated within a space in which
Piggy acts.

One might say about thoughts of Piggy and the chess
piece that they are descriptive thoughts; that they identify their
objects purely descriptively. But it is important to see that not
all descriptive identification is frame-dependent. What is
important to the argument is not so much the distinction
between descriptive and singular content as it is the distinction
between frame dependent identifications and frame relative
identifications of objects. Thoughts based on certain kinds of
definite description or universal quantification are frame-
relative. If I think about the tallest Cornell Professor, qua
tallest Cornell Professor, (and I have no other way available to
me of thinking of this person) then I think about some
particular person only relative to a reference-frame which
establishes a set or a totality: the population of Cornell
Professors, with respect to which the expression "the tallest
Professor" may fix a unique object. In cases like this, a frame
of reference is established not by a fictional story, but in order
to interpret the semantics of a definite description, or of a
quantifier ("all Professors", "most Professors"). My
understanding of which particular Cornell Professors there are
rests, in part, on my grasp of the totality of Cornell Professors,
but it is also true that my understanding of the totality which is
the population of Professors can (at least in principle) rest on
my understanding of what it is to be each of the members of
this totality. Hence my reference to the tallest Professor is not
frame-dependent: the characteristic asymmetry of frame-
dependence does not obtain in these cases. In this example we
use a frame-relative semantics to interpret the definite
description, relying on our background understanding of
particular individuals (particular Professors) to ensure that the
meaning of the description is not frame-dependent.

In certain other cases escape from a frame-dependent
semantics may not be so smooth. Consider thinking about a
person as the tallest spy. If I am given a totality—the
population of spies—then I am in a position to think about a
particular as the tallest spy. But how might I be given the
totality? I do not have some prior general understanding of
spyhood which determines its own application to particular
objects independently of knowledge of those particulars. My
understanding of the predication of spyhood to Jones draws
equally on my inter-dependent understandings of spyhood and
of the special character, history and circumstances of Jones.
My understanding of spyhood is dependent on my
understanding of what it is for Jones to be a spy, and what it is
for Smith to be a spy, and so on for a small number of
particular spies of whom I have knowledge. I may have an
understanding of these very particular cases of spy-hood but
not in a way which generalizes to allow me an understanding
of what it is for an arbitrary particular to be a spy. So I cannot
generate an intelligible idea of the totality of spies either
through a general concept of the universal spyhood which
independently determines its own application to particular
objects, or through an inductive understanding—for the cases
of Smith and Jones and so forth—of what it is to be a
particular spy. The semantics, however, still requires the
totality of spies. Since the totality cannot be given in terms of
what is available to be understood in the predicate ‘spy’ or in
particular instances of spyhood, it must be supposed to exist
independently of what can be given. If the thought of the
tallest spy is not to be an illusion, the world—but not the world
as experienced, or acted on or otherwise made intelligible—
must somehow provide a ‘frame’ which bounds the spies from
the non-spies. Such a ‘noumenal’ frame would delimit the
totality of spies, it would outrun my (and anyone else’s)
understanding of the predicate ‘spy’, and it would be
independent of the particular known cases of spyhood that fall
within it. Thus the attempted thought about an object as the
tallest spy would be frame-dependent; it would exhibit the
characteristic asymmetric dependence of individual object on
totality or frame. A putative thought about a particular by
means of the descriptive content the tallest spy would, in that
case, fail in a way which is analogous to the failure of a
thought about the actual Piggy: the frame required for the
intelligibility of the totality of spies is a fictional projection
onto the world. Or, it might be preferable to put the point a
little differently (picking up, for example, on a disanalogy due
to the intentional fictionality of Piggy) like this: there could be
nothing in our understanding which would provide for the
intelligibility of a distinction between the frame of reference
being fictional and its being actual; hence the idea of its
presupposing a ‘noumenal’ world. But either way, both
‘Piggy’ and ‘the tallest spy’ are frame-dependent, and either
way the frame-dependence disables an understanding of these
terms as referring robustly to an objective reality. That this is
so does not entail a complete breakdown in meaning; that’s
part of what makes these cases interesting.

This discussion suggests a hypothesis: that where non-
abstract objects are in question, successful and intelligible
reference to a particular requires that, if the reference is frame-
relative, it not be frame-dependent. Moreover, the distinction
between reference to actual material particulars on the one
hand, and reference to fictional objects, or virtual objects, or
representational objects (the woman in the painting) or merely
ideological objects (‘most spies’, ‘most liberals’, ‘most
terrorists’, ‘most freedom fighters’), or objects which are
defined by the rules of a closed formal system, on the other, is
to be understood in terms of the distinction between reference
which is merely frame-relative and reference which is frame-
dependent. The hypothesis is that it is constitutive of any
intelligible notion of being actual—and of not being fictional,
virtual, representational, ideological or formal—that reference
to the object not be frame-dependent.

If this hypothesis is correct then the account, considered
above, of the fundamental level of thought about material,
spatial particulars—which was suggested by the model of
thought about numbers and motivated by a certain conception
of objectivity—cannot be right. In order to establish a level of
thought uncontaminated by egocentricity or subjectivity,
appeal was made to an absolute spatial framework with respect
to which spatial objects stood in a relation of asymmetric
dependence. But, as we have seen, this kind of asymmetry is
characteristic of frame-dependence. Therefore, on that reading
of Evans, his fundamental level of thought would be frame-
dependent, and so unable to sustain distinctions between
reference to actual objects and reference to fictional or merely
representative objects. But the applicability of such a
distinction is a necessary component in objectivity. Hence,
that conception of thought would fail to satisfy its governing
motivation.

It does not help to respond that Evans does not suppose
that his fundamental level can, in humans, eliminate
subjectivity altogether. For the model of the fundamental level
would still be in intact. On that conception of thought,
subjectivity is only an imperfection, and so would entail the
coherence of the Angelic metaphysics. And if the argument
just given is correct, the Angelic metaphysics cannot sustain
the distinction between the fictional and the actual. If
reference to any material thing in the world were relative to the
Angelic frame of reference which limns the extent of the
world, then there would be no content to the distinction
between the world’s being actual and the world’s being
fictional. (The problem with being an angel is that there would
be no gap between dreams and reality).

***

I will come later to the second objection to an objectivist
theory of thought, but I want now to consider (a few ideas
about) how an alternative conception of thought might work; a
conception which does not abandon objectivity but
reconceives it, not in oppositional contrast to subjectivity, but
rather in contrast to being a mere information-processor.
Thought, even at its most sophisticated and most fundamental,
essentially entwines elements of subjectivity with elements of
objectivity. Put more strongly the conclusion would be that the
objectivity of thought entails the subjectivity of thought.

We can begin this part of the discussion with what Evans
would classify as non-fundamental concepts of material,
spatial objects. They are non-fundamental at least because
they essentially rely on experience, and embodied activity, and
therefore necessarily incorporate subjective elements. With
our eye towards a more positive account, we are to consider
whether these kinds of concepts could satisfy Evans’s guiding
motivation to secure the objectivity of thought. And therefore
whether objectivity can be secured without introducing a
special level of thought—the fundamental level—which is
independent of experience and subjectivity.

Suppose I think of a house as number 12, 32nd Street,
downtown then my identification of the house is relative to the
street grid and numbering system for downtown. My ability to
think of the house is not, however, wholly dependent on the
frame of reference provided by the street grid, because I can
gain information from the house, or information which is
house-directed, which is not relative to the street grid, and I am
able to coordinate my judgements and my actions with respect
to these different sources of information. For example, I have
available to me not only descriptions which are given relative
to a street grid, but also a map of downtown which locates the
house relative to other objects based on distances and
directions (and not the street grid) which are given relative to
the map-based frame of reference. I may also have directions
for driving to the house given to me verbally by a trusted and
reliable friend which consist of a sequence of instructions to
turn left or to turn right or to go straight ahead. When I get
near to the house I can ask passers-by if they know where
number 12, 32nd street is. I may have information through
memory about the appearance of the house. What is important
for my understanding of which house is in question is that,
whether or not I decide to visit the house or to form
judgements about the house, I have an epistemic capacity to
coordinate information so as to guide my actions and
judgements in a way which is appropriate or sensitive to that
particular house. It may be that there is some misinformation
in what is available to me, and that my capacity to coordinate
amongst the information sources compensates for these errors,
keeping my identification of the house robustly on target. An
important part of the robustness of my identification of the
house may consist in my ability to recover from guidance
errors due to misinformation amongst my sources. This kind
of coordination and recalibration of multiple frames of
reference—even though each individual frame may be
subjective—is what eliminates the threat of frame-dependence
from my knowledge of which house is in question. I exploit
many frames in conceptualising the house, but my cognitive
resources for epistemic access to the house are not exhausted
by these frames of reference.

References to particulars are often not frame-dependent
because they have this kind of structure: they are based on the
coordinations of many different frames of reference, which are
illustrated in the house example. I do not mean that they are
dependent on some number of frames of reference greater than
one; that would result in frame-dependence just as much as the
chess example. What I mean is this: a subject’s understanding
of which particular is in question does not consist primarily in
knowing the position of the object relative to one or more
frames of reference, but rather in the subject’s knowledge of
how to coordinate different frames of reference so as to be able
to judge appropriately or to act appropriately with respect to
the particular object. What I want to suggest is that if there is a
fundamental level of cognition, it is not a special level of
thought, or a uniquely privileged frame of reference, but rather
a capacity to coordinate amongst frames of reference, and,
when necessary, to generate and establish new frames of
reference. We can, in fact, read in this way what Evans has to
say about cognitive maps which ground his fundamental level.
At the level of thought and reference there would be frames of
reference, all of which would include indexical, demonstrative
and first-personal components. Objectivity, however, would
not be secured at this level, but at a nonconceptual level of
capacities and map-like representational devices whose
function is to provide for holistic coordinations amongst
diverse frames of reference.

Coordination of frames of reference often involves
sufficient redundancy to allow for the management of error (as
well as the management of subjectivity). Because the subject’s
understanding of which object is in question consists in the
subject’s knowledge of how to coordinate amongst multiple
frames of reference, the subject’s frame-internal knowledge is
not autonomous. In such examples, a subject’s ability to think
about the object in question may depend on the subject’s
ability to think about a frame or frames, but it is also the case
that the subject’s ability to think about the frames rests on the
ability to think about particulars which are structured by the
frame. It is because of this that errors in a frame of reference
may not be damaging to either action or judgement, that the
management of error can be robust, and that we can make
sense of a whole frame of reference being in error. The
subject’s ability to think about the house depends initially on
his ability to think about the street grid, but, as the
coordinations develop, his understanding of the frame of the
street grid is also based on his capacity to think of the house,
and other places, as given within a map of the area, or as
reachable by a sequence of turns, or as having certain
characteristic appearances from privileged vantage points.
Successful frame-relative thought of a particular does not
exhibit the asymmetric dependence of the chess, Piggy and
“the tallest spy” examples, and this affects directly the kind of
normativity (error, correctness, guidance, etc.) that governs
adequate singular reference.

We can see both similarities and differences between
these ideas about objectivity’s resting on coordinations
amongst multiple frames, none of which are privileged, and an
alternative reading of Evans that moves away from the account
of the fundamental / non-fundamental distinction as the
distinction between subjective and objective levels of thought.
The alternative reading understands the fundamental / non-
fundamental distinction as the contrast between thought which
is relative to an egocentric frame of reference and thought
which is relative to a holistic frame of reference. On this new
view of Evans, a non-fundamental concept identifies its object
relative to an egocentric frame of reference. A fundamental
concept identifies its object relative to a frame of reference
which is both non-local and holistic: it is non-local in that the
body of the subject does not have a privileged role for
identifications relative to the frame, and it is holistic in that the
identification of each place is supported by the potential
identification of any or all of the other places. So, when Evans
requires for non-fundamental thought not only knowledge of
location in egocentric space but also knowledge of what it
would be for something identified egocentrically to be
identical to something given at the fundamental level of
thought, he is requiring that the subject be able to coordinate
the two frames of reference: there must be cognitive resources
for identifying a position in the egocentric frame of reference
with a unique position in the non-local, holistic—and, in that
sense, objective—frame of reference.

What Evans has to say about cognitive maps fits much
better with this alternative interpretation than with the
objectivist interpretation. It is true that Evans says (on page
152) that fundamental thought which is grounded in a
cognitive map “is truly objective - it is from no point of view”,
but Evans also explicitly denies that ‘from no point of view’
means from a God’s-eye point of view, or even from a third-
person point of view. It may well be that Evans’s notion of
objectivity here—unlike the notion which is contrasted with
subjectivity—is quite compatible with identifications of
objects and places which depend on the subject’s current
spatio-temporal location, and which are therefore indexical, or
first-personal, or demonstrative. But if the cognitive map
sustains indexical identifications, what becomes of the
distinction between the fundamental and the non-fundamental
levels of thought? What matters for Evans about the
fundamental level is not non-indexicality or anti-subjectivity
or avoiding the contingencies of a subject’s idiosyncratic
location, but rather securing objectivity via the holistic
coordinations amongst objects and places. Consider, for
example, how cognitive maps are introduced on page 151:

The places which we think about are differentiated by their spatial

relations to the objects which constitute our frame of reference ...
Hence a fundamental identification of a place would identify it by
simultaneous reference to its relations to each of the objects
constituting the frame of reference. A place would be thought
about in this way if was identified on a map which represented,
simultaneously, the spatial relations of the objects constituting the
frame of reference. This identification has a holistic character: a
place is not identified by reference to just one or two objects, and
so the identification can be effective even if a few objects move or
are destroyed. Our identifications of places has this holistic
character whenever we rely in our thinking about places upon
what has come to be called a “cognitive map”: a representation in
which the spatial relations of several distinct things are
simultaneously represented.

Notice that there is no reference in this passage to non-

indexicality or non-egocentricity. It is holism which is
emphasized. It is true that several paragraphs later, Evans does
say that ‘each place is represented in the same way as every
other; we are not forced in expressing such thinking, to
introduce any “here” or “there”’. The alternative interpretation
notes that each side of the semi-colon expresses the same
claim, and that therefore we should interpret ‘not being forced
to introduce [indexicals or demonstratives]’ as being
equivalent to ‘representing each place [and object] in the same
way as every other’. What I think Evans wants is (1) to think
of a cognitive map as constituted by its uses, rather than by
intrinsic properties; (2) that the uses of a map will often
involve indexical and demonstrative modes of presentation,
but that (3) this is still compatible with the cognitive map’s
securing the objectivity of the fundamental level. The ‘heres’,
‘theres’, ‘thises’ and ‘thats’ disperse across the map in different
uses of it; the map itself does not fix, at a time, some place as
‘here’ or some object as ‘that one’; the “you are here” pointer
is not part of the cognitive map, but has a varying location in
the map depending on the changing alignment of the
egocentric frame of reference with the cognitive map. The
map does not force us to use ‘here’ of a particular place or
‘that’ of a particular object, for that would be a map which
allowed thought from only one particular point of view. That
is how an egocentric frame works, but not a frame which is
‘from no point of view’.

This kind of interpretation is most strongly supported in a
passage in chapter 7 (pp. 211-212):

Why should we suppose that everything that is true can be

represented [in non-indexical] terms? ... Just as our thoughts about
ourselves require the intelligibility of the link with the world
thought of “objectively”, so our “objective” thought about the
world also requires the intelligibility of this link. For no one can
be credited with an “objective” model of the world if he does not
grasp that he is modelling the world he is in - that he has a
location somewhere in the model, as do the things that he can see.
Nothing can be a cognitive map unless it can be used as a map -
unless the world as perceived, and the world as mapped, can be
identified. For this reason, I think that the gulf between the
“subjective” and “objective” modes of thought which Nagel tries
to set up is spurious. Each is indispensably bound up with the
other.

This passage denies directly the thesis of detachability required

for the idea of a creature whose cognition was “wholly”
objective. The passage is ignored or set aside in objectivist
interpretations of the fundamental level because it runs counter
to so much else in the book (given that the book was
unfinished at Evans’s death, it is not surprising that there are
some tensions between, for example, chapter 6 and chapter 7).
Thus in section 3 of the appendix to chapter 7—though in the
context of offering an alternative formulation of the
fundamental level—we find, “one must conceive the states of
affairs one represents in one’s “egocentric” thoughts—
thoughts expressible with “this”, “here” or “I”—as states of
affairs which could be described impersonally”, which
suggests, given the <a = δ> form of Evans’s account, that the
constituent concepts of the cognitive map are impersonal, non-
indexical, and non-demonstrative, or would be so treated by
the version of the theory being considered in the appendix.

It is at this point in the appendix—where alternative
accounts of a subject’s satisfaction of Russell’s Principle are in
play—that the threat of frame-dependence arises for Evans’s
fundamental level. The matter is left unresolved, finishing
with the plaintive “It still seems there is something right about
§6.3 ...” What I think Evans came to see was this: Holism of
the cognitive map is sufficient for it to represent each object
and place in the map in the same way as the other objects and
places that figure in the map. Holism is thus sufficient for not
being forced to introduce a ‘here’ etc. for some particular
place. But, nevertheless, holism is not sufficient for objectivity
because—given that the extent of the map’s representation is
very partial, unlike the ‘formal’ cases we considered—the
identification of the frame objects and places would still be
egocentric. (There may be no determinate fact as to which
objects and places are the frame objects and places; in which
case the egocentricity will distribute holistically across all the
objects and places. It would thus remain true that ‘each object
and place is represented in the same way as every other’ but
that they are all somewhat “contaminated by egocentricity”).
One must conceive the states of affairs one represents in one’s
‘egocentric’ thoughts—thoughts expressible with ‘this’, ‘here’, or
‘I’—as states of affairs which could be described impersonally,
from no particular standpoint.
But there is a problem about what exactly this requirement comes
to—what exactly it is to know what it is for an arbitrary element
of the objective order to be this, or here, or me. ... But it is not
clear what we should make of the requirement if we do not
suppose that the subject can formulate, and in favourable
circumstances decide the truth of, propositions of these kinds [<a
= δ> and <δ is F>]. And it seems that we are not entitled to that
supposition. Section 6.3, for instance, gives the impression that
the objective or impersonal mode of thought about space can be
understood as a mode of spatial thinking organized around a
framework of known objects and places—the ‘frame of
reference’. But such a mode of thinking will not be capable of
achieving a higher degree of impersonality that that achieved by
the subject’s thought about the objects and places which constitute
the frame; and (especially if we think here about Twin Earth
cases), it seems plausible that a subject’s right to be counted as
thinking about these familiar objects and places turns partly on his
conception of the role they have played in his past life—being
visited by him, seen by him, etc. ... In that case, the seemingly
objective mode of thinking about space is, after all, contaminated
by egocentricity. [pages 264 - 265]

If the problem is just left like this, it is devastating for Evans’s

account, whose point all along had been to show how to satisfy
a strong reading of Russell’s Principle compatibly with realist
truth conditions; to show that “the requirement of
discriminating knowledge [for thought] is to be justified
outside a verificationist framework” (page 106). It is because
of the problem of the appendix, rather than any other difficulty
in the book, that it’s being an unfinished posthumous work has
prevented the project from being completed.

To escape the problem entails abandoning the form of
Evans’s theory in that it entails abandoning both the
fundamental level of thought at which objectivity is secured,
and the two-stage procedure for understanding (<a = δ> and <δ
is F>) which was introduced, and made most sense, in
connection with thought about abstract objects. But the
motivations that were important to Evans are still intact, if we
shift the objectivity-securing work of holistic coordinations to
a nonconceptual level—not itself a level of thought and
concepts—at which frames of reference are established,
aligned and re-aligned with each other. We can, then, allow
that every frame of reference will include ‘subjective’
elements, without compromising the objectivity of cognition.

***

It is possible for a subject’s ability to think about the
frame (or frames) of reference to rest on a subject’s ability to
think about particulars within the frame(s)—as well as
conversely—only because the subject’s grasp of which
particular object is in question is not exhausted by his grasp of
the object relative to the frame(s) of reference. This
independent understanding of the particular object is not
possible for thought about chess pieces, but is possible for
thought about the house downtown. What provides for this
difference of understanding? What allows for knowledge of a
particular not to be exhausted by frame-relative knowledge?
In discussing the example I suggested that frame-relative
understanding, if it is not to be frame-dependent, must rest on
a level of cognition which coordinates amongst different
frames of reference. And I want to suggest that these
coordinations are possible only because both object and
subject are situated in an active information environment
which allows the subject to orient with respect to the object.
(Contrast this with the relation between subject and object in—
and out of—the Strawsonian shape-world). I cognize the
house conceptually by means of the frame of reference
provided by the street grid: number 12, 32nd street, etc. but my
cognitive resources for epistemic access to the house are not
exhausted by this and other frames of reference because I also
have available to me trails of information that lead through the
information environment to the house, and can flexibly guide
activity which is oriented towards the house. These trails of
information provide me with ways of cognizing the house
which are not relative to the street grid or other frames. I am
suggesting, in effect, that for singular thought to succeed—for
the identification of the object not to be frame-dependent—it
must rest upon ways of understanding in which the world is
given to subjects as trails of information through an
environment of activity.

The active information environment—if it is to sustain
successful singular reference to the object—must situate both
the subject (in that it is a space in which the subject can act)
and it must situate the object (in that it is a space with respect
to which the object has its identity). This can break down in
various ways; I will consider a couple of examples in a
moment. But we should recognize immediately that the notion
of an active information environment is as subjective as it is
objective; it is certainly not a notion of an absolute spatial
framework. In order to get a better idea of both subject and
object being jointly situated in an active information
environment it will help to contrast Evans’s notion of an
information link, with the information trails, which I discuss
(briefly) here.

An information link exists only when a subject is
experiencing an object, typically in perception. An
information link can allow a subject, without inference, to
form observational judgements about the object. A subject
may judge that that object on the table in front of the subject is
spherical on the basis of a visual information link, where the
information link sustains the observation judgement without
requiring any inferential structure. S does not have to form
two judgements: that the φ object is spherical, and that that is
the φ object, on the basis of which S can infer that that object
is spherical. Rather, the information link puts S in a position to
straightaway judge that that object is spherical. Moreover, an
information link maintains epistemic contact between subject
and object over time, so that the subject has an unmediated
disposition to change his observational judgements over time
as the properties of the object change. Evans’s information
links are individualistic: different information links for
different subjects. They are largely subject-centred: the work
of maintaining the link goes on mostly within the information-
processing systems of each subject. And they are sub-
personal: although the deliverances of a link are personal, the
link itself is not part of a subject’s cognition, either in
experience or in thought. For this reason we cannot talk of the
content of the link itself, only of its deliverances.

For Evans, the content of the deliverances of an
information link has two components: it is standardly
conceptual for the predicative component, which “can be
specified neutrally, by an open sentence in one or more
variables” (p.124). The non-predicative component is
egocentric: it presents the object as standing in a bodily
relation to the subject, which may be specified within the
theory of content by means of a set of bodily axes, with the
subject’s body at the origin of the space.

Peacocke (1983) motivated his claim that Evans’s
requirements for non-fundamental singular thought were too
stringent by considering a subject in a fairground who sees an
apple through a complex array of mirrors, some of which may
be moving in ways unknown to the subject. In this case the
subject enjoys an information link with the apple which puts
the subject in a position to form, without engaging in any
inference, correct observational judgements about, for
example, the color and the shape of the apple. Moreover, the
apple appears in the subject’s perceptual experience as having
an apparent position in egocentric space, though in fact the
apple is not at this apparent position in egocentric space. The
subject does not know where in egocentric space the apple is,
or how far it is from him; a lack of knowledge which is
manifested in his inability to reliably point in the direction of
the apple, or to be able to walk reliably towards the apple. On
Evans’s account there can be no adequate singular
demonstrative thought about the apple in this case because the
subject neither knows where the object is in objective space,
nor does he know where it is in egocentric space. That the
subject nevertheless enjoys an information link with the apple
secures at best only descriptive thoughts about the apple, such
as the thought *the apple which is causally producing these
images is juicy* where the subject refers singularly to a
component of the information link (“these images”) but only
descriptively to the apple. Peacocke’s line by contrast is that
the information link is sufficient for a singular demonstrative
concept so long as “some conceivable additional evidence,
experiences, and devices ... would allow the subject to locate
the presented object”. Now, this can’t be right as it stands. As
McDowell comments, “the bare existence of any information-
link at all will make it conceivable that additional evidence,
and so forth, would enable the subject to locate the presented
object; Peacocke’s supposed extra requirement adds
nothing...”.

But nor is it correct to return to the strict position which
requires actual knowledge of position in egocentric space.
Given Evans’s notion of an information link it looks as if
Evans’s strict position and Peacocke’s liberal position are the
only options: either the information link produces an
egocentric deliverance which locates the object for the subject,
or else it does not. In the latter case, since the link itself is
sub-personal for Evans, it would only be by “investigating the
details of the perceptual link” that the information link could
sustain knowledge of which object was in question. But that
would be descriptive, not singular, knowledge: “If the subject’s
thought can make contact with the apple in Peacocke’s
fairground case, as it perhaps can if the subject knows in
general outline about the peculiar nature of the perceptual link
between him and the apple, the ‘know which’ requirement is
satisfied only in a completely different way: here it is the idea
of the information-link between subject and object, rather than
the information-link itself ... that carries the subject’s thought
to the right object”. But McDowell here misses the possibility
that the information link can be available cognitively to the
subject as nonconceptual content, and therefore not via the
idea (a concept) of the link. The idea is that the information
link itself (not just its deliverances, but the whole trail) is
experientially available to a subject as part of the environment
of activity, as salient forms of guidance within the
environment of activity. Because the trail itself is
experientially available, the subject has unmediated, but still
rational dispositions to go this way rather than that, or to judge
that there is the house. Such actions and judgements are not
the products of two-stage cognitive procedures mediated by a
concept φ: First I judge that I should go the φ way, and then I
judge that that is the φ way; so I go that way. Rather I am in a
position to see straightoff which way to go, because I see the
forms of guidance, a part of the trails, laid out before me. I do
not need to see the whole trail, only enough to start me on and
then, at each moment, to keep me on the trail; the information
environment does the rest.

If, as theorists, we use this notion of information trails
through the environment, rather than the notion of an
information link, we can secure genuine epistemic constraints
on singular thought without the excessive requirement of
actual knowledge of egocentric location. What matters about
the fairground mirror example is whether or not the subject’s
information environment—as it can be made available,
perhaps only in parts, in the experience of the subject—is
structured sufficiently for the subject to orient in the space of
the object. Do the forms of activity guidance allow the
subject, knowingly and reliably, to move towards the object,
correcting for missteps if they occur? Do the forms of activity
guidance allow the subject, knowingly and reliably, to retrace
her steps so as to bring the object into view again? Do they
allow for the knowing and reliable reproduction of object-
directed activity? Given features like the fairground’s rotating
mirrors it is unlikely that the answers to these questions are
positive in this example; but the point is that the theorist of
content needs to ask these kinds of questions: it is not just the
private, egocentric deliverances to occurrent experience that
matters but rather how an intersubjective information
environment is structured by information trails, parts of which
may be available at a time in subjects’ experience. If such an
information environment is well structured and allows a
subject to orient their activity in an object-directed way, then
the information environment provides a nonconceptual
foundation for singular thought.

Similar points can be made about less gerrymandered
examples. It seems correct and important that I can think a
singular demonstrative thought about Hunter Rawlings even
though I have never met the man, would not recognise him if
he were in the room today, do not know if he is and where he
is in my egocentric space, nor do I know where he is in space
given objectively. And I say this even though I agree with
Evans about Russell’s Principle and about the falsity of the
causal theory of singular thought, according to which it is
sufficient for singular thought that my mental representations
be at the end of an appropriate causal chain whose initial links
were caused by the object which is the referent. The reason
why I can think singular demonstrative thoughts about Hunter
Rawlings even though I fail to satisfy Evans’s requirements for
singular thought about him is that I am plugged into a rich
information environment structured by a multitude of
information trails that can guide action in a Hunter Rawlings
appropriate way. The example is similar to the earlier example
of my singular thought about the house downtown. In this
case I can satisfy Russell’s Principle with respect to Hunter
Rawlings, even though I don’t know his location, because his
identity is currently socially embedded within the University
and I am plugged into a rich set of socially mediated
information trails that guide my action in a way which is
appropriate to an object with that kind of socially determined
identity. The subject, in this example, is located in an active
information environment in that the subject is able to find their
way through the environment; the object is located in the same
information environment, and its location in the environment
is, in part, constitutive of the identity of the object. (It is not,
of course, necessary that the subject actually does locate the
object).

***

We are now in a position to return to the argument against
a detachable fundamental level of “wholly” objective thought.
There is a second argument against the ‘objectivist’ conception
of the fundamental level, which rests not on the characteristic
asymmetry of frame-dependence, but on the necessity in
frame-dependent reference for the frame itself to be co-
presented along with the object of thought. We can introduce
this argument via a discussion of an inadequate active
information environment; not, this time, Peacocke’s fairground
case, but Evans’s television example.

When Evans argues that information links are not
sufficient for singular concepts he does so in terms of an
example of a soccer player seen on a TV screen, and he argues
that because of the circuitousness of the information channel
the subject is not in a position to think non-descriptive
thoughts about the soccer player. I think that it is fair to say
that many readers have not been convinced by Evans’s
example, and that perhaps even more have failed to understand
it properly. A proper discussion of that example would involve
a discussion of the generality constraint, and I want to avoid
that here. So what I will do is to alter Evans’s example in a
way that avoids some of the difficulties. One source of
difficulty is that people often imagine that the viewing subject
may recognize the soccer player, and that this recognitional
ability would ground their singular thoughts about the player.
And, secondly, even if the viewing subject does not recognize
the player, surely the subject is plugged into an information
environment in which there are information sources who
would recognize the player, and through which the television
transmission can be tracked allowing the subject to discover
the identity of the player by for example finding in the
newspaper which match was being shown on that channel at
that time. We can avoid these difficulties by supposing that the
TV images are images of coke cans, not soccer players, and
that there are no information trails, for whatever reason, which
lead from the TV display back to the source of the
transmission. You can imagine, if you like, bizarre Peacockian
fairground-style shenanigans which render the information
links untrackable.

Suppose that an image of coke cans appears on a
television screen, (and we do not know, nor have we any way
to track where the information is coming from). One of us
then points (as we might say, "to a coke can") and says
something (as we might say, "about the coke can"). If I have
identified some particular object then I have done so only
relative to the frame of reference established by the television
screen: my identification is frame-relative. My capacity to
think about a particular coke can, which is sustained by the
information provided through the TV, must exploit the frame of
the TV: for example, the can which is presented at the top left
of the screen. It's not that I must entertain such a descriptive
thought which locates the can relative to the screen, but just
that what I do entertain can only have a semantics, an
interpretation which fixes a particular coke can, relative to the
informational frame of the TV. The semantic interpretation
includes the informational frame whether or not I am
conscious of, or explicitly think of, the frame. For without
such a frame to anchor my reference, I may attempt a singular
demonstrative thought about the can — *That can is made of
aluminium*—, but the semantic link to the can is sustained
only descriptively: *The one and only can that I am now
seeing through this information channel which is at the top left
hand corner is made of aluminium*. Likewise for thoughts
like *The shiniest can is made of aluminium*, and *All the
cans are made of aluminium*. As in the discussion of *The
tallest Cornell Professor*, the content of these thoughts is fixed
relative to a given totality, of cans or of Professors. But in the
case of the cans, the totality is fixed not by an independent
identification of individuals within the totality but by the frame
of the information channel.

Notice how this case is different from my thought about
the house downtown. In that case I have frame-independent
knowledge of which house it is because I can exploit a
complex environment of information trails that lead downtown
and enable me to locate the street grid frame of reference
relative to other sources of information. And someone might
say that in the coke can case I can similarly exploit my
knowledge of the location of the frame of reference; that is, of
the location of the TV. But this won't work, and seeing why it
won't work shows up some similarities to the Piggy case.
There are available to me information trails which lead
downtown, and in virtue of which I know where downtown is.
But these information trails are not part of the semantics of my
thoughts about the house: they do not enter into the
determination of the truth value of these thoughts. Without the
information trails there would be nothing which would
constitute my semantic understanding of sentences about the
house, but there is no sense in which my thoughts are about
the trails. The trails make for the possibility of my singular
thought, but they do so at a nonconceptual level of cognition:
the trails themselves are not co-presented with the object in the
subject’s thought, but only—and occasionally—in experience.
Not so for the coke can thoughts: for them, the information
channel is part of the semantics. It is because of this—as well
as, and related to, the characteristic asymmetry—that the TV-
link can sustain only frame-dependent thoughts.

The house, identified relative to the grid of streets, is in
the same space as downtown. Hence our knowledge of the
location of downtown can ground our knowledge of the
location of the house. But the coke can is not in the same
space as the TV: the epistemic resources which are sufficient
for the subject to act and judge appropriately in the
environment of the TV are not sufficient for the subject to act
and judge appropriately in the environment of the coke cans.
(There is no single active information environment which
situates both subject and object, and is such that the object’s
location in it is, in part, constitutive of the identity of the
object). Therefore our knowledge of the location of the TV
cannot ground our knowledge of the location of the can of
cola: the location of the TV provides only a virtual space for
the cola cans. Indeed, the information channel available to us
does not tell us anything about the spatial relation (either
direction or distance) of the coke can to the observer, or to any
object whose location is already known to the observer. It only
provides information about the location of the coke can
relative to other coke cans in the virtual space defined by the
frame of the TV. The information trails which provide
epistemic access to the frame of reference do not provide any
epistemic access to the coke cans, whereas the trails which
provide access to downtown do provide epistemic access to the
house. In both the coke can utterances and the Piggy-
references the object is identified relative to a frame which
bears the wrong kind of epistemic relation to the subject and
the object. Piggy's frame of reference can itself only be
identified in literary space, as an abstract production of
William Golding's, etc. Knowledge of that space is of help
only in identifying entities, such as a literary work of art, with
an abstract ontology, rather than the material ontology of
Piggy-the-schoolboy. That’s why knowledge of the book
“Lord of the Flies” fails to provide us with any conception of
what it would be to identify Piggy in the street. Knowledge of
the literary space may help in identifying Piggy-the-literary-
archetype, but then knowledge of the frame of reference
provided by the TV helps in identifying the coke can-qua-
visual-image. Only if we change the ontology can reference to
the frame, or knowledge of the location of the frame, provide a
way to avoid the frame-dependence of reference to Piggy or to
the cola can: from Piggy-the-boy to Piggy-the-abstract-
archetype, or from the solid-material-coke-can to the coke-can-
as-set-of-pixels. In such cases thoughts about the objects
(Piggy, the coke can) require the semantic presence of the
frame of reference; the frame itself enters into the semantics;
or, in other words, the frame itself shows up as a constituent in
the cognitive level of thought. Avoiding frame-dependence
requires that the frame of reference not work at this level, but
at a nonconceptual level which subserves thought. Which is
another reason why the Strawson shape-world and thoughts
about numbers are very bad models for what is best in singular
thought about material objects, of even the most fundamental
kind.

*****


References

Cussins, Adrian (1990) "The Connectionist Construction of

Concepts". In Oxford Readings in Philosophy: The Philosophy
of Artificial Intelligence, Margaret Boden (ed.). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

----- (1992) "Content, Embodiment and Objectivity". Mind 101,

October: 651-688.

----- (forthcoming) "Nonconceptual Content, Frames of

Reference, Trails of Information and Singular Thought".
Evans, Gareth (1982) The Varieties of Reference. J. McDowell
(ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McDowell, John (1990) "Peacocke and Evans on

Demonstrative Content". Mind 99 (394) April.

Strawson, Peter (1959) Individuals: An essay in descriptive

metaphysics. London: Methuen.

Notes
1 One attempt is in (Cussins 1990) . A more recent version is in

"Nonconceptual Content, Frames of Reference, Trails of

Information and Singular Thought" (forthcoming).
2 In the following discussion of the two levels of thought, I will be
assuming in most cases that it is the distinction as it applies to
spatial objects that is in question. Because, for me, the point of
all this has to do with the relations between experience and
judgement, we should consider the fundamental level as it
applies to thought about objects which can be experienced.
Perhaps we can have experiences of objects which are not
spatial, but these will not be central examples of experience.
3Recognition-based concepts are also non-fundamental for
Evans, and are also based on experience.
4 I maintain the scare quotes around "wholly" to distance myself
from the conception of objectivity which is required for the idea
of that which is "wholly objective".
5That the non-fundamental is non-essential to thought is borne
out in the discussion of abstract objects below. Part of why I
want to resist this view is that I take experience to be essential
to thought, and not merely necessary for imperfect, embodied
creatures such as humans.
6We need some directionality to the frame, to distinguish the
sides from each other. There are interesting questions about
what distinctions could be grounded in symmetries and
asymmetries of shapes across the "world".
7 Consider the discussion in Evans (1982: 106-7): "An Idea of
an object is part of a conception of a world of such objects,
distinguished from one another in certain fundamental ways...
For example, we may say that shades of colour are
distinguished from one another by their phenomenal properties,
that shapes are distinguished from one another by their
geometrical properties, that sets are differentiated from one
another by their possessing different members, that numbers
are differentiated from one another by their position in an infinite
ordering, and that chess positions are distinguished from one
another by the positions of chess pieces upon the board". The
examples are all abstract: color shades, geometric shapes,
sets, numbers, chess positions. And when Evans introduces the
idea of the fundamental ground of difference he does so in
terms of the example of the number three, and the shape
square: "the fundamental ground of difference of the number
three is being the third number in the series of numbers; the
fundamental ground of difference of the shape square is having
four equal sides joined at right angles...". And when Evans
comments that "evidently, we do very often employ such
fundamental Ideas of objects", he notes in a footnote that "this
is especially clear with abstract objects". The issue in this paper
has to do with the consequences of using such a model for our
theories of thought about material, spatial, concrete objects.
8 Evans's theory of content is governed by his use of Russell's
principle, the principle that in order to be able to think about an
object one must know which object it is. The principle
establishes a direct connection between thought and
knowledge, so that to ask about the conditions for singular
thought about material particulars is to ask about the kinds of
knowledge that are required to sustain thoughts of these kinds.
Evans's line is that the "know which" requirement is satisfied by
knowing where the object is, either objectively in space given
from no point of view (in which case the subject has a
fundamental concept of the object), or else egocentrically by
means of the egocentric deliverances of an information link (in
which case the subject may have a non-fundamental concept of
the object). See the discussion in chapter 4 of Evans (1982).
9 Strawson calls this "story-relative identification" (1959: 18)
10 So, there are two crucial differences between Evans's
account and the account that I prefer. First, that, for Evans,
there is a category of singular thoughts -- fundamental thoughts
-- which do not require the cognitive work of coordination
amongst multiple frames of reference. Whereas, in my favored
account, singular thought always requires such cognitive work.
And, secondly, that, for Evans, the objectivity of singular thought
is to be secured by the use of a special -- holistic -- frame of
reference. This holistic frame of reference provides for Evans
the fundamental level of thought, and thus it is still the case on
this interpretation that the fundamental level is required for
securing objectivity. Whereas, in my favored account, objectivity
is secured only by coordinations amongst multiple frames of
reference. There is no privileged, "objective" frame: all frames
of reference are, in some way or other, situated with respect to
the active life of environments. My argument is that Evans's
commitment to a frame which is privileged as the objective
frame of reference leads disastrously to the frame-dependence
of his "fundamental" level of thought.
11The distinction between frame-relativity and frame-
dependence is not in Evans, but this seems a natural way to
describe the problem that arises in the appendix. The issue of
"contamination by egocentricity" also arises at footnote 19 on
page 152, which directs the reader to the appendix.
12I discuss these ideas further in Cussins (1992), and in
"Nonconceptual Content, Frames of Reference, Trails of
Information and Singular Thought".
13One role for the concept of trails in the theory of thought is
discussed in Cussins (1992). See also "Norms, Networks and
Trails".
14This idea is to be found in Evans (1982) especially chapters
5, 6 and 7.
15 ... and Evans and Peacocke.

By coincidence both the President of Cornell, and the tallest

16

Cornell Professor.