pillar and having a visual experienceas of a pillarwere not jointly suYcient
conditions for seeingthatpillar. For suppose there were a mirror, or some
other device which reXected light, interposed between you and theWrst
pillar, in such a way that the image of a second (similar but distinct) pillar
was reXected into your eyes. Now, which pillar do you see? The answer,
surely, is: the one which is causally involved in your having the visual
experience – which in this case isnotthe one located in the direction of your
gaze.
A similar, but more complicated, causal requirement applies to memory
- more precisely to one sort of memory, namely personal recollection.
Indeed, memory is worth special attention as an illustration of the relations
between scientiWc and folk psychologies. Consider:
(a) She remembered the date of Shakespeare’s death.
(b) She remembered how to pronounce it in Croatian.
(c) She remembered that long hot afternoon on the beach at Ynyslas.
As far as folk psychology is concerned these are all instances of remem-
bering. But psychologists will want to distinguish between (a) factual
memory (often called by psychologists ‘semantic memory’), (b) procedural
memory (abilities or skills), and (c) personal recollection (generally called
by psychologists ‘episodic memory’). Folk psychology is not inconsistent
with these distinctions. It is just not very interested in them. As far as
(c)-type memories, or recollections, are concerned the Grice-style argu-
ment goes like this: suppose she had spenttwolong hot afternoons on
Ynyslas beach, and thought she was remembering one of them (Wve
summers back, say), but her present memory experience was actually
dependent upon the details of the other (six summers ago). Which day on
the beach is she remembering? The answer would seem to be the day on
which she had the experiences on which her present experiences are
causally dependent. So if we do have any genuine memories of incidents,
those memories are states which are causally related to the incidents of
which they are memories.
(4)Conceptualisation: Fourthly – and most important of all, perhaps –
intentional states haveconceptualised content. When you think, you think
that something is the case. When you hope, you hope that something will
happen. Folk psychology regularly introduces content by means of an
embedded sentence, or ‘that-clause’ (although there are other construc-
tions). Two notable features of content, according to folk psychology, are
(i) that a thinker can think in the same way of diVerent things, and (ii) that
a thinker can think about the same thing in diVerent ways. Philosophers
The case for realism about folk psychology 37