The Trouble with Homunculus Theories

Author(s): Joseph Margolis

Source: Philosophy of Science, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Jun., 1980), pp. 244-259
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science Association
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 THE TROUBLE WITH HOMUNCULUS THEORIES*

JOSEPH MARGOLIS
Temple University

The so-calledpost-WittgensteinianOxfordphilosophersare often criticized

not only for failingto providefor the causal explanationof humanbehavior
and psychologicalstates, but also for failingto recognizethat psychological
explanationsrequire appeal to sub-personalor molecularprocesses. Three
strategies accommodatingthis criticism appear in so-called homunculus
theories and include: (1) that the sub-systems be assigned intentional or
informationalcontentpurelyheuristically;(2) that the intentionalor informa-
tional content of molar states be analyzed without remainderin terms of
molecular processing; (3) that the entire or salient range of mental or
informationalmolarstates be accessible at the molecularlevel, or vice versa.
Option (2) proves to be the most radical and is favored by Dennett. (1)
relevantlyrequiresa reductionof the intentional.(3) is illustratedin various
ways by the views of Freud, Chomsky, Fodor. (2) is shown to depend on
(1) or to be idle; and (3) embracesat least in part an appeal to molar-level
explanation.The argumentdeveloped attemptsto show the sense in which
discourse about molar and molecular-levelphenomenain the psychological
context is fundamentallydifferent from macroscopicand microtheoretical-
level discourse about physical phenomena.The conclusion drawn is that
neither a molar nor a sub-personallevel theory is suitably explanatoryin
the psychological sense: a psychological theory is committed rather to a
set of sub-personalcomponentsof such systems, that serve to explainmolar
phenomena.

Common sense favors explaining behavior in terms of intentional

states ascribed to the same molar agent to which behavior itself is
ascribed. Thus, one blushes because one is embarrassed at having
overheard a confidence; one flips a light switch because one wants,
and intends by one's act, to turn on the light; an experimental rat
explores a maze in order to gain the reward of a food pellet. Suspicions
have been raised about the threatening vacuity of such explanations.
The putative blush is (more adequately characterized) a blush-at-being-
embarrassed-at-having-overheard-a-confidence; so, it is argued, it can
hardly be explained-certainly not causally explained-by reference
to the fact that one was thus embarrassed. What is apparently offered
in explanation proves to be no more than a fuller, intentionally qualified
redescription of a given event or action. Explanandum and explanans
simply fail to be suitably independent.

*Received May 1979;revised November 1979.

Philosophy of Science, 47 (1980) pp. 244-259.

Copyright ? 1980 by the Philosophy of Science Association.

244

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 THE TROUBLE WITH HOMUNCULUS THEORIES 245

The so-called post-Wittgensteinian Oxford philosophers' typically

claimed that these redescriptions constituted the primary-if not the
exclusive-instances of valid explanations of full-fledged human
behavior (and, by extension, of the behavior of higher animals
appropriately described in purposive and cognitive terms). Typically,
also, they denied that such explanations were, or could be, causal,
and they resisted the charge of vacuity or circularity. In fact, in
their boldest efforts, they argued that such intentional or purposive
explanations: (i) appealed to the putative "powers" or "natural
tendencies" of the molar systems involved; (ii) subsumed the behavior
to be explained under empirical, lawlike regularities of a irreducibly
purposive sort; and (iii) provided relevant accounts at what must
be conceded to be "the basic level of explanation" appropriate to
such phenomena.2
The charge of circularity itself dwindles as one finds, somewhat
against the intent of these accounts, that it is indeed possible to
offer causal explanations of the behavior in question-even though,
at least initially, the relevant causes cannot but be intentionally
qualified. Thus, believing that one has overheard a confidence may
cause one to blush; and wishing to turn on the light and believing
that flipping the switch will accomplish this may cause one to flip
the switch.3 The onset of the relevant mental states is, on the thesis,
a phenomenon separate from any action to be explained even if the
identifying descriptions for the one are borrowed from descriptions
of the other. Also, the irreducibility and logical distinction of so-called
teleological and purposive explanation has been duly challenged and
remains an incompletely resolved issue to this day.4
But though common sense favors explanatory endeavors of these
sorts, the example of the physical sciences attracts us to attempt
to postulate processes at some sub-molar level in terms of which
whatever is appropriately identified at the molar level may be duly
explained there. To be sure, only an extreme physicalist would expect
that we could move directly to the micro-theoretical level of physics
and there gain an adequate explanation of intentional phenomena.
But, failing that, it may be argued, whatever the pertinence of
intentional distinctions, our explanations in the behavioral and human

'The accounts in question appear principally in the series edited by R. F. Holland.

These include prominently Peters (1958), Melden (1961), Winch (1958), MacIntyre (1958),
and Kenny (1963). Cf. also Taylor (1964).
2The subtlest and most sustained effort of this sort appears in Taylor, (1964), pp.
17-25.
3See Davidson (1963) and Margolis (1978a), ch. 13.
4Contra Taylor, (1964) see Woodfield (1976) and Noble (1966-67).

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246 JOSEPH MARGOLIS

studies remain peculiarly superficial and thin if we fail to specify

causal processes within the molar system-processes active at a more
fundamental level than whatever may be introspectively and repor-
torially identified at the molar level. Molar biological processes, for
instance, invite explanatory reference at the level of molecular biology.
Surely, it seems, something comparable must be conceded in cognitive
psychology. What, for instance, are the informational sub-routines
neurophysiologically processed in the brain that facilitate what we
call perception, some creature's seeing some object and seeing that
that object is before it?
There is, then, a spectrum of views about the pertinence and power
of explanations of human and animal behavior fairly characterized
in purposive, cognitive, or intentional terms. At one extreme, explana-
tion is confined to the molar level itself; there, it becomes either
intentional redescription or affirms an irreducible set of purposive
laws based on the natural purposive powers of the systems in question.
At the other extreme, the intentional idiom is taken to be replaceable
in principle by an idiom adequate to the explanation of the most
fundamental physical phenomena.5 Between these extremes lie a
variety of clarificatory claims that attempt in different ways both
to reconcile causal and purposive factors and molar and sub-molar
factors. With respect to the latter, some extremely strategic distinctions
may be uncovered.
The key issue concerns the relationship between molar and (so-called)
molecular (sub-personal, sub-molar, infra-psychological) levels-not
in general, but, more specifically, with respect to systems in which
molar characterizations are treated realistically in intentional terms.
By this is meant, quite simply, that animals and humans may be
ascribed actual mental states such as believing, intending, desiring,
remembering, inferring, and the like. (The distinction between the
molar and the molecular should, as we shall see, be construed solely
in functional terms.) Certainly, it is possible to attempt to replace
the intentional idiom-more or less in accord with Franz Brentano's
original distinctions about "directedness" or "aboutness," though
with due adjustments6-by some non-intentional idiom. In a way,
this has been the strategy of the behavioristically oriented, chiefly
B. F. Skinner (1955 and 1957) and W. V. Quine (1960). But there
is good reason to believe that such paraphrastic programs are inade-
quate or questionbegging,7 and a good many of those who are strongly

5See Feigl (1967), Sellers (1963), and Feyerabend (1963).

6Brentano (1973) in Kraus and McAlister, eds.). Cf. also Cornman (1962) and Margolis,
1977.
7
See Chomsky (1959), Margolis (1977).

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 THE TROUBLE WITH HOMUNCULUS THEORIES 247

attracted to physicalistic reduction are entirely willing to admit the

(benign) irreducibility of the intentional as such.8 The latter eschew
both paraphrastic and ontological reduction of the intentional, constru-
ing it rather in narrowly logical, semantic, or methodological terms.
Concede, then, at least for the sake of the argument, that the
intentional is: (a) rightly ascribed at the molar level, in terms of the
mental states of persons and certain animals; (b) ascribed realistically
at that level; and (c) ascribed irreducibly at that level. These three
constraints are challengeable in various ways, as already suggested.
For example, one might hold that intentional ascriptions-ascriptions
of molar mental states-are actually heuristic rather than realistic;
in effect, that we speak of molar persons and sentient animals because
it is technically too difficult to provide a suitable (realistic) paraphrase
in terms of the processes that really obtain at some sub-personal
or analogously "molecular level." Certainly, such heuristic models are
invoked in speaking, say, of chess-playing machines, simply because
the strategy of competing with such machines is best focused in those
terms; a knowledge of their hardware and software does not normally
facilitate inferences about how to beat them in a game. Daniel Dennett
recommends the heuristic model, though he mistakenly thinks that
"a particular thing is an intentional system only in relation to the
"
strategies of someone who is trying to explain and predict its behavior.
But human beings at least are reflexive specimens of psychological
scrutiny. So it is difficult to convince (certainly, without argument)
that the intentional states of humans are not real ones. Dennett is
particularly anxious to make clear that, on the heuristic view, one
is not saying "that intentional systems really have beliefs and desires,
but (only) that one can explain and predict their behavior by ascribing
beliefs and desires to them (including, by extension, chess-playing
computers)" (Dennett 1978, pp. 3-4, 7). He is led to believe in the
viability of so speaking because of a more fundamental mistake, viz.
that "intentionality is primarily a feature of linguistic entities-idioms,
contexts" (1978, p. 3). But Brentano's notion, for all its internal
difficulties, is primarily concerned with the psychological rather than
the linguistic. At the very least, it might (unconvincingly) be confined
to linguistically informed or linguistically qualified mental states; but
any attempt to attribute mental states to prelinguistic infants or to
animals shows the utter inadequacy of such a maneuver.9 One can
at least see, however, that if (b) is rejected, then even if (c) is
conceded-along the lines, say, that Dennett proposes (which conforms

8See however, Chisholm (1967), Castaneda (1967) (comp.), also Korner (1966) and
Sellers, (1963), especially pp. 38-40.
91 have explored this more systematically in Margolis (forthcoming).

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248 JOSEPH MARGOLIS

pretty closely to Sellars' original suggestion regarding intentionality

in psychological and personal contexts)-(a) will prove benign for
the purposes of various reductive enterprises.
The principal difficulty with rejecting (b) is-so to say-the reflexive
import of doing so. Because, in order to make the argument compelling,
we need to show not only how, in theorizing about psychologically
qualified creatures, we could avoid attributing actual mental states
to them, but also to show we could do so with respect to our own
reporting abilities-notably, just those invoked in theorizing about
ourselves and other creatures.?1 In other words, we appear to be
constrained to admit real mental states (if we are constrained at all)
by a need to ascribe such states to ourselves-not in the sense of
speculating about whether such states should or should not be so
ascribed on the basis, say, of observed behavior, but in the sense
that speculating thus entails such states. At least provisionally, then,
(b) is a particularly stubborn constraint. To grasp the point is to
appreciate the force of the principal strategies available regarding
the relationship between the molar and sub-molar levels of discourse
about mental states.
In one way or another, the strategies in question attempt to analyze
the intelligent, conscious, or cognitive functions assigned at the molar
level in terms of determinate sub-routines assignable to sub-personal
or sub-molar systems. Such strategies have come to be known (both
in a derogatory and in a relatively neutral spirit) as homunculus theories.
From this point of view, for example, Freud's theory of the dynamic
interaction of id, ego, and superego constitutes a form of homunculus
theory. The peculiarity of Freud's thesis is that these sub-systems
are in a sense agents, to which "interests" (even if blind), often
a cognitive stance (even if unconscious), may be rightly ascribed;
also, Freud's sub-system appears to be endowed with capacities for
processing information superior to those of the molar system of which
it is putatively a part. " Freud's own idiom tends to oscillate somewhat
between the realistic and the heuristic.'2
But the question of whether any homunculus theory can successfully
be purely heuristic depends on whether the realistic functions assigned
at the molar level can be replaced, without essential remainder, at
the sub-molar level. Freud's effort had to do, ultimately, with a
more radically reductive undertaking in which a psychological idiom
was to be completely replaced by a neurophysiological one. The
distinction of current homunculus theory is that it seeks to replace

'Cf. Cornman (1968a and b).

"Cf. Freud (1961); Dennett (1978), pp. 112-113.
'2See Margolis (1978b).

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 THE TROUBLE WITH HOMUNCULUS THEORIES 249

the intentional distinctions at the molar level by suitable intentional

distinctions-however attenuated-at the molecular or sub-molar
level. In that sense, Freud's account is only partially concerned with
homunculus theory; for Freud hurried on beyond it to pursue his
deeper reductive venture. Chomsky's (1972) theory of linguistic
competence may also be regarded as a form of homunculus theory,
in the sense that linguistic competence is cognitively characterized
as operating initially at a level in language acquisition not consciously
accessible to molar persons, and serves to explain the linguistic
performance of molar persons themselves. It begins to be clear,
therefore, that one of the most important questions regarding the
programs of apparent homunculus theories is precisely whether the
putatively replacing homunculi are or are not cognitively qualified,
realistically or heuristically.
Dennett has provided one of the most convenient characterizations
of homunculus talk. He introduces it in connection with an analysis
of artificial intelligence (Al), but he intends it to apply to all intelligent
systems. He admits that talk about "internal representations," that
is, what homunculi putatively work with in order to accomplish what
is ascribed at the molar level in terms of a person's (or animal's)
mental states and mental processes, "is bound to have a large element
of metaphor in it": but he does not quite say what is metaphorical
(Dennett 1978, p. 123). Nevertheless, the following is quite helpful
in getting our bearings:

One starts, in AI, with a specification of a whole person or cognitive

organism-what I call, more neutrally, an intentional system
. . .-or some artificial segment of that person's abilities (e.g.,
chess-playing, answering questions about baseball) and then breaks
that largest intentional system into an organization of subsystems,
each of which could itself be viewed as an intentional system
(with its own specialized beliefs and desires) and hence as formally
a homunculus. In fact, homunculus talk is ubiquitous in AI, and
almost always illuminating. AI homunculi talk to each other, wrest
control from each other, volunteer, sub-contract, supervise, and
even kill. There seems no better way of describing what is going
on. Homunculi are bogeymen only if they duplicate entire the
talents they are rung in to explain . . . If one can get a team
or committee of relatively ignorant, narrow-minded, blind ho-
munculi to produce the intelligent behavior of the whole, this
is progress. A flow chart is typically the organizational chart of
a committee of homunculi (investigators, librarians, accountants,
executives); each box specifies a homunculus by prescribing a
function without saying how it is to be accomplished (one says,

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250 JOSEPH MARGOLIS

in effect: put a little man in there to do the job). If we then

look closer at the individual boxes we see that the function of
each is accomplished by subdividing it via another flow chart
into still smaller, more stupid homunculi. Eventually this nesting
of boxes within boxes lands you with homunculi so stupid (all
they have to do is remember whether to say yes or no when
asked) that they can be, as one says, "replaced by a machine."
One discharges fancy homunculi from one's scheme by organizing
armies of such idiots to do the work. (Dennett 1978, pp. 123-124)
The critical fact about Dennett's story is simply that, however
attenuated, the stupid homunculi are ascribed intentionally qualified
abilities. They process information. It hardly matters that, as their
operations become more stupid (or routinized), they may be replaced
by machines; for the informational content of what they do-and
of what the machine does that replaces them-is such only on the
interpretation of some molar person to whom the relevant intelligence
and understanding may be directly ascribed. The point of the exercise
is that the compartmentalized processing by our committee of ho-
munculi must accomplish, in effect, what appears to be accomplished
at the molar level.
In general, there are, it may be claimed, only three strategies available
in attempting to account for molar states and behavior in terms of
molecular sub-systems: (1) the sub-systems may be assigned intentional
or informational content purely heuristically; (2) the intentional or
informational content of molar states may be analyzed without re-
mainder, in terms of the real processing of information among the
systematically linked components at the molecular level; (3) the entire
range of, or at least the salient, mental or informational states and
capacities that appear at, the molar level may be accessible to molecular
components, or vice versa. Option (2) is the most radical. (1) poses
a question about how to reduce the intentional to the non-intentional;
for if molar mental states are, provisionally, real, then merely heuristic
intentional assignments at the molecular level are (if relevant to the
analysis of molar states) unjustified in the absence of an explicitly
reductive program. The essential clue is simply that if, say, persons
are real entities, then their distinctive mental states must be actual
as well; contra Sellars, for instance, one cannot admit the nonreduc-
ibility of the intentional without admitting the nonreducibility of the
intentionally qualified abilities and states of persons.13 The point is
that, no matter how attenuated Dennett's replacement program may
become, there remains a sense in which, in discharging "fancy
'3Sellars (1963); also Margolis (1978a) ch. 1.

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 THE TROUBLE WITH HOMUNCULUS THEORIES 251

homunculi," our "more stupid homunculi" never actually perform

in a way that approaches purely non-intentional functioning. Dennett's
description suggests that they approach the non-intentional asymptoti-
cally; but, in the absence of a successful reduction (which is not
what the model sketches), the notion makes no sense. For that reason,
the replacement of persons by fancy homunculi, and fancy homunculi
by stupid ones, is entirely beside the point. The only purpose the
description can serve is to suggest the fair sense in which intentional
molar states and processes may be successfully analyzed into compo-
nent intentional states and processes at the molecular level: we can
make the components as numerous and as simple as we please, but
(admitting the irreducibility of the intentional and the reality of
intentional states) we are logically constrained to treat the relevant
molecular processing as intentionally or informationally qualified.
Again, if the putative information processed at the molecular level
requires capacities in some sense superior to those assigned at the
molar level, then it would be impossible to deny the relevant molecular
components conscious or cognitive status. For then, the ascriptions
at the molecular level would not be intended solely to account for
molar functioning; molar functioning would have to be construed as
a relative impoverishment of molecular functioning. This appears,
for instance, to be fairly characteristic of Freud's (1962) method of
interpreting dreams: the material that passes the censor provides at
the conscious and preconscious level only the barest clues about the
rich mentation that obtains at the molecular level. Dennett wrongly
thinks that this makes Freud's system "miraculous" (Dennett 1978,
p. 112). For Dennett, the only reason to invoke molecular homunculi
is to lead in the direction of the machine simulation of molar processing;
whereas, for Freud, molar behavior is subject, on the empirical
evidence, to influence by molecular intelligence and interest. Hence,
for Freud, conscious functioning is simply a small part of the total
functioning of molar agents, which obtains at what we have been
calling the molecular level. Alternatively put, the functions of id,
ego, and superego are the functions of molar persons; but a molar
person functions largely unconsciously. It is that person, located at
what we have been calling the molecular level, whose own molecular
components need to be analyzed in accord with (2). To the extent
that he holds to his own metapsychology-not to the extent to which
he was tempted to replace it in accord with the model advanced
in the Scientific Project-Freud cannot treat the mental states of his
homunculi heuristically: the real mental states of his molar persons
are no more than a small manifestation, at the level of reflexive
consciousness, of the real mental states of his largely subterranean

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252 JOSEPH MARGOLIS

persons. We see, therefore, the import of Dennett's vagueness about

what is metaphorical at the molecular level.
In a curious sense, Chomsky's innatism is a fair analogue of the
Freudian model, for the rich transformational operations said to obtain
cognitively at the molecular level are essentially erased at the molar
or surface level of actual speech: the surface structure of sentences
simply does not preserve the deep syntactic (or, syntactic/semantic)
structure in virtue of which uttered sentences are said to be intelligible.
But the molar agent, cognitively though unconsciously, is in possession
of deep transformational rules linking what obtains consciously and
unconsciously. For Chomsky as for Freud, the innate capacities of
humans are cognitively richer than what they would naturally report
as their own molar capacities.
Clearly, there is the possibility that both in Freud's and Chomsky's
accounts, the molar capacities of persons are internalized at the
molecular level-at which other such capacities are additionally
ascribed; that is, roughly, their theories may be versions of strategy
(3). In that case, the analysis intended by (2) simply must begin at
a new point (if it is to obtain at all), namely, the point at which
cognitively competent, largely unconscious molar persons are identified
as functioning at what would otherwise (but now no longer can be)
construed as the molecular level. Hence, if there were a use in
attempting a machine simulation of molar intelligence, it would have
to begin with this adjusted recognition of where the molar person
actually is to be found. On Chomsky's (1957) view, it is quite beside
the point that an abstract Turing machine may be said to simulate
linguistic competence; the problem, precisely, is to construct a particu-
lar Turing machine of finite physical capacities and assignable program
that could simulate actual human abilities.
Very possibly, the most explicit theory manifesting strategy (3)
appears in Jerry Fodor's (1975) The Language of Thought. Fodor's
account is guided by the following considerations:

. . . certain kinds of very central patterns of psychological

explanation presuppose the availability, to the behaving organism,
of some sort of representational system. I have emphasized, for
purposes of exposition, the significance of the organism's repre-
sentation of its own behavior in the explanation of its considered
actions. But, once made, the point is seen to be ubiquitous . . .
To use this sort of model is . . . to presuppose that the agent
has access to a representational system of very considerable
richness. For, according to the model, deciding is a computational
process; the act the agent performs is the consequence of

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 THE TROUBLE WITH HOMUNCULUS THEORIES 253

computations defined over representations of possible actions.

No representations, no computations. No computations, no model.
I might as well have said that the model presupposes a language.
For, a little prodding will show that the representational system
assumed by items 8-12 must share a number of the characteristic
features of real languages . . . what I am proposing to do is
resurrect the traditional notion that there is a "language of thought"
and that characterizing that language is a good part of what a
theory of the mind needs to do. (Fodor 1975, pp. 31-32)14
Clearly, on Fodor's view, the molar agent functions unconsciously
at the (apparently) molecular level at which computational operations
are said to occur. There is, in a conceptual sense, nothing wrong
with such an explanatory undertaking-though Fodor's actual program
leads him to an extremely doubtful form of Platonism.15 It would
be entirely possible to attempt a genuinely molecular analysis of Fodor's
theory, in accord with strategy (2), once we were clear about the
range of the unconscious capacities of Fodor's molar agents. The
telltale insistence in Fodor's sketch is that elements of the same
language must be shared at what appear to be the molar and molecular
levels. It is impossible to concede this without holding either that
the molar agent is replaced by a cognitively endowed homunculus
at the molecular level who can do what the other can relevantly
do, or that the molar agent himself possesses the functional capacities
that now appear at the molecular level, or that the molar agent and
the molecular homunculus are intercommunicating members of a
society of molar agents jointly responsible for the (apparent) molar
behavior of a given system. Within the terms of any of these
alternatives, the psychological explanations possible cannot, and do
not, eliminate reference to the mental states and processes of molar
agents. In that sense, Fodor's model is not nearly as extreme as
Dennett's. For Dennett is fully committed to strategy (2), and Fodor
is content with a model thought to yield adequate explanations without
actually invoking strategy (2) at all. This is why Dennett's complaint
that Freud's (a fortiori, Chomsky's and Fodor's) system is "miracu-
lous" is off the mark: what is inexplicable on the basis of strategy
(2) is entirely intelligible (whether defensible or not) on strategy (3);

'4Items 8-12 mentioned include: that "the agent finds himself in a certain situation
(S)"; that "the agent believes that a certain set of behavioral options (B,, B2, ...
B,) are available to him in S"; that "the probable consequence of performing each
of B , through B are predicted [the agent computes a set of appropriate hypotheticals] ";
and that "a preference ordering is assigned to the consequences" (Fodor 1975, p.
28).
5See Margolis (1978a), ch. 8.

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254 JOSEPH MARGOLIS

one has merely to maintain that molar agents are cognitively competent
at an unconscious level. Whatever their success, therefore, we can,
by attending to Freud's, Chomsky's, and Fodor's endeavors, see how
easily one may agree with Dennett's criticism of the post-Wittgenstein-
ial form of psychological explanation without at all concluding that
every pertinent effort to explain molar behavior in terms of molecular
components must be a version of strategy (2).
Fodor actually criticizes an earlier view of Dennett's in which,
it appeared, molecular informational processing (storing and retrieving
information and the like) was construed on the basis of a cognitive
model (internal events interpreted as commands to effector systems,
for instance); if so, Fodor argues, Dennett must face a regress or
else drop the homuncular anthropomorphizing of molecular proc-
esses.16 For his part, Dennett (1978) holds that the only way to "save
Fodor's enterprise from incoherence" is to add "constraints to the
notion of an internal representation system that emphasize rather
than eliminate the distinction between personal level attributions of
beliefs and desires and sub-personal level attributions of content to
intersystemic transactions. If [he says] there is any future for internal
systems of representation it will not be for languages of thought that
'represents our beliefs to us', except in the most strained sense."
Fodor's argument requires some range of common elements of language
at the molar and (apparently) molecular levels. In effect, this means,
as has been argued, that the molar agent (unconsciously) has access
to information processed and stored in its own sub-systemic compo-
nents. It does not preclude other informational features of its repre-
sentational and computational apparatus from being inaccessible at
the molar level. The details of Fodor's account may well be quite
mistaken; but Fodor never loses sight of the fact that the molar agent
(unless reduced or eliminated) must have access to its own sub-sys-
tem-otherwise, psychological explanation would have no point at
all. Hence, Dennett's program makes no sense unless he can show
how the conscious and cognitive capacities of molar agents can be
analyzed, without remainder, into the systematically linked capacities
of molecular homunculi.
Here, the complexity of undertakings in accord with strategy (2)
begins to dawn. The point of the proviso, "without remainder," is
to be flexible but clear about what is minimally required. Generally
speaking, the intended analysis must either paraphrase or replace
ascriptions made at the molar level.'7 What it must not do is admit
'6Fodor (1975), p. 73-75. Cf. Dennett (1969), p. 87, cited in Fodor (1975).
'7The sense of these alternatives accords pretty closely with that favored, say,
in Quine (1960) and in Sellars (1963).

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 THE TROUBLE WITH HOMUNCULUS THEORIES 255

both molar and molecular agents in such a way that the molar can
be identified with the molecular, or that they can, between them,
enter into cognitively qualified relations. The pivotal difficulty of
Dennett's program is that, in exploring the instructive possibilities
of a computer simulation of intelligence, Dennett fails to grasp the
full force of the fact that, as things now stand, the pertinence of
the simulation is itself assigned by a human interpreter. Thus, in
AI contexts, it is quite fair (and benign enough) to deny consciousness
and cognitive capacity to machines and to treat the ascription of
informational content to the physical workings of machines heuristical-
ly. That, after all, is precisely the point of admitting simulation. But
Dennett offers no argument to show that, at the homuncular level,
ifmolar human agents are to be analyzed without remainder, ascriptions
of real psychological states, conscious and cognitively qualified, can
be avoided. This is what we cannot be sure of in Dennett's introduction
of idiot homunculi. If they are merely stupid, his reductive program
fails, because their behavior will be explained by means of the same
psychological model (normally reserved for molar agents) that he
wishes to eliminate (otherwise: the regress that Fodor anticipates must
obtain); and if they are less than stupid, utterly lacking in intentionally
qualified states, then his reductive program will fail again, because
neither he nor we know of any way to reduce the intentional to
the non-intentional.
On Dennett's view, Fodor's system is "neo-cognitivist," since (for
Fodor) "any representation or system of representations requires at
least one user of the system who is external to the system." Thus,
since such a system requires "undischarged homunculi" (users of
the system in the sense given), "any psychology with undischarged
homunculi is doomed to circularity or infinite regress" (Dennett 1978,
p. 101). If so, then it appears that Dennett's own account must be
construed as non-cognitivist. But since the required reduction is
lacking, the apparent option is entirely idle. We are somehow to
suppose that not only can "fancy homunculi" be replaced by more
stupid ones, but also that, in the process of replacing them, we can
invoke the purely heuristic ascriptions of AI contexts. Here is the
missing premiss. Dennett's contention is not merely that computers
can simulate human intelligence; it is that the model of human
intelligence is itself, in principle, a dispensable (however convenient)
simulation model in terms of which to understand the real functioning
of the human organism. Dennett cites, favorably, a witticism of Michael
Arbib's-that "what the frog's eye tells the frog's brain is not what
the frog's eye tells the frog" (Dennett 1978, p. 101). He finds that
Fodor dismisses the distinction because the relationship between the

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256 JOSEPH MARGOLIS

frog's eye and the frog's brain cannot be explained (Fodor believes)
except in terms of the frog's molar cognition. Perhaps so. But, though
he insists on the distinction, Dennett somehow supposes that, in
exploring the first relationship (or relationships of the first kind),
we should find that if we collected a sufficient set of them, we should
in effect have exhausted all that could possibly have been meant
by the second.
The essential lesson, then, is clear: promising models of psycholo-
gical explanation can invoke molecular processes only if those proc-
esses are admitted, in posited theories, to be the sub-systems of (real)
molar systems; that is, their functions are the sub-functions of the
systems of which they are the sub-systems. This means that there
cannot be an analysis, without remainder, of molar systems in terms
of molecular homunculi; there cannot, unless molar systems themselves
can be reductively analyzed in non-intentional terms. The would-be
replacement or paraphrase, in terms of strategy (2), preserves inten-
tional or informational ascriptions. Because it does, it must fail, since
its own assigned ascriptions presuppose what is ascribed at the level
of real molar activity. Hence, the molecular analysis that Dennett
favors must, to be successful, be combined with the replacement
of intentional realism-the ascription of real mental states to molar
systems.
The point is of the greatest importance. If molar psychological
systems were like macroscopic physical objects, then molecular
explanations would resemble (in the relevant respect) micro-theoretical
explanations of physical phenomena. The trouble is that molar systems
must, provisionally at least, be ascribed intentional states and capaci-
ties. Hence, the intentional idiom, introduced at the molar level, must
be preserved at all molecular (sub-molar) levels of explanation in
order merely to be relevant. Since the molecular level preserves
intentional ascriptions, sub-personal and sub-molar components cannot
but be described in a way that remains conceptually dependent on
whatever intentional ascriptions are made at the molar level itself.
(This is true even if one introduces machines that are heuristically
described in intentional terms.) Dennett does not see that, given the
reflexive conditions under which we attribute mental states to our-
selves, we cannot regard our own intentional nature as merely
heuristically dependent on certain favored descriptions; we are bound
to treat such ascriptions realistically, unless an effective reductive
program can be defended. Hence, Dennett remarks, quite charac-
teristically: "Intentional objects are not any kind of objects at all.
This characteristic is the dependence of Intentional objects on particu-
lar descriptions ... to change the description is to change the object.

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 THE TROUBLE WITH HOMUNCULUS THEORIES 257

What sort of thing is a different thing under different descriptions?

Not any object. Can we not do without the objects altogether and
talk just of descriptions?" (1978, pp. 28-29). He somehow neglects
to notice that, in speculating about the description of other systems,
we are bound, reflexively, to characterize ourselves. In short, we
ourselves are the paradigms of intentional systems; and, as such,
we are unjustified, in the absence of a successful reduction of
intentionality, to deny that our own psychological states are real
enough.
Hence, given (i) the provisional reality of intentional states at the
molar level, (ii) their paradigmatic introduction at the molar level,
(iii) the absence of any successful reduction of the intentional to
the non-intentional, (iv) the explanatory purpose of molecular (sub-
molar) psychology, it is impossible to introduce any set of molecular
components as capable of analyzing without remainder the molar
systems of which they are the putative parts. The explanatory power
of molecular processes presupposes that they remain, within the
explanatory theory in which they are first introduced, sub-processes
of the very molar processes they are to account for. The essential
reason is that the intentional or informational content of such pro-
cesses-however attentuated and subdivided among an army of idiot
homunculi-must be assigned on the basis of its putative contribution
to the operation of the intentional states and processes first ascribed
on the molar level. There is no independent perceptual access to
the intentional content, say, of neurophysiological processes. Dennett
himself concedes (or rather insists) that intentional "content cannot
be described." (1978, p. 83).18 But more than this, Dennett maintains
the sensible (and conceptually unavoidable) view that "the information
or content an event within the system has [it has] for the system
as a (biological) whole . .. The content (in this sense) of a particular
vehicle of information, a particular information-bearing event or
state, is and must be a function of its function in the system . . .
The content of a psychological state or event is a function of its
function, and its function is-in the end, must be-a function of
the structure of the state or event and the systems of which it is
a part" (1978, pp. 163, 189).
This seems to insure that molecular processes can be introduced
only as the molecular-components-of-particular-molar-processes. But
because he has confused psychological intentionality with intensionally
variable (and theoretically favored) descriptions of actual systems,
Dennett claims to have constructed "an 'I' . . . out of sub-personal

'8Also cf. Dennett (1978), p. 112.

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258 JOSEPH MARGOLIS

parts of the sort encountered in cognitivistic theories" (1978, p. 190).

He thinks the intentional content of the sub-personal components
depends primarily on our independent choice of linguistic descriptions
in first characterizing a molar system; whereas the truth is that our
choice of the putative sub-personal components made in order to
explain a molar system presupposes the realistic intentional ascriptions
we make at least of ourselves. We cannot construct the "I" out
of sub-personal parts, because the intentional content assigned to
the latter is assigned only on the strength of the intentional states
and capacities first ascribed to the "I." Even our capacity to favor
alternative descriptions presupposes the reality of our intentional
mental states.
The confusion of the issue of psychological realism and of the
intensionality of linguistic description offers the only possible explana-
tion of Dennett's remarkably sanguine claim that "the personal story
(that is, the 'story' of a person's mental states) has a relatively
vulnerable and impermanent place in our conceptual scheme, and
could in principle be rendered 'obsolete' if some day we ceased to
treat anything (any mobile body or system or device) as an Intentional
system-by reasoning with it, communicating with it, etc." (1978,
p. 190). Dennett has obviously quite forgotten to eliminate the "we"
that do the "treating."
All in all, then, although only strategy (2) advances a genuinely
radical claim, it is, on close inspection, the least persuasive of the
three alternatives advanced. Heuristic ascriptions to molecular
components (1)-possibly on the basis of AI simulations-remain
just that; and to admit molar access to molecular processes, or the
reverse, (3), precludes (2) to that extent. The upshot is that psycholog-
ical explanation is sui generis-in the absence of a viable reductionism;
for it requires a functional system in which: (a) intentional ascriptions
at both the molar and molecular levels are required; and (b) ascriptions
at the molecular level are conceptually dependent upon, and designed
to service and explain, the intentional phenomena first ascribed at
the molar level. It must, therefore, be misleading to hold that "the
personal level 'theory' of persons is not a psychological theory"
(Dennett 1978, p. 154n). The sub-personal level theory of persons
is not a psychological theory either. A psychological theory is commit-
ted rather to a set of sub-personal components of molar persons
that, as the components of such systems, serve to explain molar
phenomena.

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