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THE ACT OF THINKING

DEREK MELSER
The Act of Thinking
The Act of Thinking

Derek Melser

A Bradford Book
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any elec-
tronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information
storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

Set in Stone sans and Stone serif by The MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United
States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Melser, Derek.
The act of thinking / Derek Melser.
p. cm.
“A Bradford book.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-13446-2 (alk. paper)
1. Thought and thinking. 2. Act (Philosophy). I. Title.
B105.T56M45 2004
128'.3—dc22 2004044979

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
to Helen
Contents

Foreword xi
Acknowledgements xv

Introduction: Is Thinking a Natural Process, or Is It an Action? 1

Cognitive Science 2
The Possibility of an Actional Account of Thinking 4
Natural Processes vs. Personal Actions 4
Initial Indications That Thinking Is an Action 6
The Argument of This Book 12

1 Action-Based Theories of Thinking (1) 17

Behaviorism 17
Behavior-Abbreviation Theories 21
Ryle’s Adverbial Theory 28

2 Action-Based Theories of Thinking (2) 35

Ryle’s Refraining Theory 35
Vygotsky: Internalisation of Speech-Mediated Social Activity 42
Hampshire’s “Inhibited Display” Theory of Emotion 47
Other “Internalized Social Activity” Theories 51

3 Concerted Activity 55
Defining Concerting 57
Infants’ Innate Abilities 58
First Concertings 61
Educative Concerting 64
Vocalizing and Speech in Educative Concerting 68
The Matrix 72
viii Contents

4 The Tokening of Concerted Activity 75

Tokening Done to Initiate Concerted Activity 76
Speech Replaces Other Types of Tokening 78
Covert Tokening 81
The Mechanics of Covert Tokening 82
The Uses of Covert Tokening 85
How Covert Tokening Is Taught 87
The Notion of “Expressing” Thoughts and Feelings 93

5 Derivation of Solo Action from Concerting 95

The Developmental and Logical Roots of Solo Action 95
Early Solitary Action 98
Empathy 100
Hortation 102
Cooperation 104
Autonomous Solitary Action 106
What Is Learned before What 107

6 Concerted Perceiving and the Tokening of It 109

Perceiving Is a Kind of Doing 109
Learning New Perceptual Behavior 112
Things in the World 118
Referring 122
Absent-Referent Referring 125
Solo Perceiving, Solo Imagining, and Consciousness 131

7 Thinking 137
Paradigmatic Self-Educative Thinking 137
Second-Order Tokening 140
Other Varieties of Thinking 144
Ways in Which Thinking Is Public 148
Is Thinking Observable? 149

8 Where Our Notion of the Mind Comes From (1) 157

Theory Theory 158
The Colloquial Vocabulary for Talking about Thinking 164
Using Metaphor to Refer to Features of Things 166
Dead Metaphors 171
Galvanic Stirrings 173
Contents ix

9 Where Our Notion of the Mind Comes From (2) 179

The Conventional Wisdom about Metaphors and Mind 179
The Metaphorical-Origin Theory 181
Exclusive Use 182
Precedents in Metaphors 184
No Concept 187
Nominalization 188

10 Literal Paraphrases of the Mind Metaphors 199

Internality, Privacy, and Introspectability 200
Agency 205
Intentionality 208
Non-Physicality 211
Other Metaphors in the Colloquial Thinking Vocabulary 212
Why We Depend on Metaphors for Talking about Thinking 215
Mistaking Empathizing for Imagined Perceiving 217

11 Our Knowledge of Actions 221

The Empathy Argument 222
Action Metaphors in Science 228
The Rhetoric of Action Physicalism 233
Cultural Determinants of Actions 238
Verbs and Actions and Things 242
Is Knowledge of Actions Epistemologically Primary? 247

Appendix: A Sample of Mind Metaphors 251

Notes and Citations 259

Bibliography 273
Index 283
Foreword

Aims

The main aim of this book is to present a new theory about the nature of
thinking. I mean thinking in a broad sense that includes most of the var-
ious “mental phenomena.” The theory equates thinking with the covert
“token performance” or “tokening” of actions of one kind or another.
The covert tokening of actions is identified as itself a species of action. As
well as being intended as a contribution to the philosophy of mind, the
book aims to contribute to a larger project that I mention only in this
foreword and at the end of the book. The larger project is to establish
actions as a legitimate philosophical given. The claim here is that the
concept of “something one does” is self-sufficient and sui generis. Our
knowledge of actions need not be, nor can it be, justified or explained by
knowledge of any other kind. Actions are philosophical hard currency in
themselves.
The conventional assumption is that the concept of an action includes
and presupposes concepts of mental phenomena—beliefs, desires, deci-
sions, intentions, volitions, etc.—and that these latter are concepts of a
fundamentally non-actional kind. If the theory in this book is right, the
conventional assumption is mistaken and mental concepts are really
actional concepts. If this is so, then, in specifying the thinking that leads
to and/or accompanies actions, one is not specifying the action plus some
other kind of phenomenon, rather, one is specifying a more complex
kind of action, or specifying an action plus some ancillary actions. In this
case, the claim that actions are a basic philosophical “given” would no
longer be vulnerable to the fact that actions often, or always, involve
thinking.
xii Foreword

In order to perform any action, the agent must (among other things)
perceive things in the world that are relevant to that action—that is, the
action’s patient, venue, instrument, product, goal state, etc. It is assumed
that perception is an impersonal natural process—something that hap-
pens to a person, more than an action the person performs. Thus, the
agent’s perceivings of relevant things would introduce another necessary
but non-actional element into actions, also jeopardizing actions’ onto-
logical independence. However, if it can be shown that perceiving is not
a natural (say, physiological) process but a form of personal action, then
the “actions as given” thesis would be defensible here too. My attempt in
chapter 6 to show that perceiving is an action may be too brief to con-
vince. Even so, I thought it worth indicating how this might be argued.
Actions do have an essential perceptual component, but in my view this
perceptual component is itself actional and not an impersonal process.
Thus, the actional status of actions is not compromised by their percep-
tual component.
It is widely assumed that actions must, like everything else in the world,
be in-principle specifiable in objective, scientific terms. It is assumed that
scientific descriptions of actions would primarily concern macro- and
micro-physiological events but would also encompass complex causal inter-
action between external objects and these physiological events. The physi-
ological events believed to underpin actions are thought to include
perceptual and mental (brain) events as well as muscular ones. In opposing
this assumption, proponents of the “actions as given” view could agree
that, if actions are real things in the world, they must be scientifically
describable. However, while continuing to assert the reality of actions, they
could claim that actions are not “things in the world” in the required sense.
And they could claim that actions are not explicable in physiological terms.
I argue both of these claims, albeit briefly, in chapter 11.
The question of the possibility of scientific analysis of people’s actions is
as large and controversy-fraught as the questions about the nature and rela-
tion to action of thinking (or “mental phenomena”) and perception. To
establish that actions are sui generis would require addressing all three ques-
tions at length. In this book, I devote a chapter each to the questions relat-
ing to perception and scientific explanation of actions. My main aim is to
tackle the question about thinking and its relationship with action.
Foreword xiii

Excuses and Apologies

At some points in this book I make large claims, sometimes in relation to

issues around which there is ongoing controversy in the philosophical lit-
erature. This is due partly to my mooting what is, for better or worse, a large
theory—a theory of thinking that has applications not only in the philoso-
phy of mind but also in several other philosophical areas. I have chosen to
paint with a broad brush rather than concentrate on details. I am aware that
many philosophers would disagree with much or all of the theory of think-
ing I advance. However, it would be impossible in one book to properly
integrate my theory into the vast contemporary literature, or even to argue
the theory closely enough to persuade a skeptical lay reader. Yet if I had
hedged all my claims with enough caveats to make them acceptable, you
would be reading a boring and much longer book. Undue deference to skep-
ticism is anyway premature, since I am introducing a theory and not
defending one.
I also wanted to keep the book fairly short. The present book is an abbre-
viation, by about a third, of a doctoral dissertation that is itself a consider-
able reduction of the germane material I accumulated during my doctoral
research. The result of my desire for comprehensiveness and brevity is a
style that might sometimes seem peremptory. I have tried to avoid giving
this impression; if I have not succeeded, I apologize. Anyway, if what this
book adumbrates is the large new area for philosophical research and dis-
cussion I believe it is, then it might not be too long before detailed maps of
the area are made by others and the preliminary sketchwork this book offers
can be set aside.
Acknowledgements

The preparation of the Ph.D. thesis on which this book is based was assisted
by a Massey University Doctoral Scholarship. I thank the Philosophy
Department staff, the Doctoral Research Committee, and the University for
so generously demonstrating their confidence in me.
I thank above all my chief Ph.D. supervisor, Dr. Tom Bestor, for his major
contribution to my project. I could not have formulated many of the ideas
in this book without Tom’s help nor, in the case of the central idea, without
his insistence. Tom’s generosity with his time and his patience, percipience,
and companionship made my preparation of the thesis a pleasure as well as
an adventure. Tom also greatly improved my head-butting abilities.
I thank my second and third supervisors as well—Dr. Roy Perrett, for useful
suggestions as to reading and for tactical advice, and Prof. Peter Schouls for
his staunch support at both official and personal levels. I am much indebted
to Drs. Alex Frame, John Horrocks, Jenny Mackenzie, Peter Melser, and John
Patterson, and to Prof. Andy Lock, for valuable discussions on a variety of
topics, including Mount Helvellyn. I would also like to register my gratitude
to the late Dr. Harry Orsman for advice about the etymology of mind. I thank
Melanie Staines M.A. for suggesting to my son Anton that, for the sake of
simplicity, writers should use their own gender for the generic third person.
I have adopted Ms. Staines’s suggestion in this book.
I am deeply grateful to Sir Stuart Hampshire for writing to me about my
Ph.D. project and for his generous opinion of its central thesis. Finally, I
would like to thank my wife and my two sons for their patience, optimism,
and cheerful skepticism in regard to the book project. This added consider-
ably to my motivation to complete the book.
Introduction: Is Thinking a Natural Process, or Is It an Action?

By thinking we usually mean such activities as calculating, cogitating, pon-

dering, musing, reflecting, meditating, and ruminating. But we might also
mean any of a broader range of actions or activities (or dispositions, states,
processes, or whatever). I mean remembering, intending, imagining, con-
ceiving, believing, desiring, hoping, feeling emotion, empathizing, following
what someone is saying, minding, being conscious of something, and so on.
This is admittedly a mixed bag. It might seem that feeling, in particular,
should be separated out. Certainly thinking and feeling can be contrasted,
but in the context of this book it is what they have in common that is inter-
esting. Anyway, I would like to include all the above as “thinking.” The gen-
eral term most philosophers would use is mental phenomena, but, for various
reasons, I want to try to do without it. We can use thinking instead.
The notion of thinking helps us to explain people’s behavior. We appeal
to thinking to explain actions, qualities of action, abilities and dispositions
to act, and even certain kinds of bodily agitation. Consider the distinctive
posture of Rodin’s Penseur, an attentive and methodical performance, any
goal-directed activity, explaining to someone what one is doing, producing
a list of relevant facts, finding the solution to a problem of woodworking or
arithmetic, having a disposition to racist remarks or effusive greetings, and
trembling or blushing at what someone is saying. We explain these different
behaviors and aspects of behavior, and many others, by positing differ-
ent kinds of thinking going on behind the scenes. The thinking determines
the nature of the behavior, then motivates and guides its performance, from
within.
What kind of thing is thinking? Is it a “mental” process? Is it a physio-
logical process in the brain? Is it both? Or is it something different again—
an action or activity the person performs?
2 Introduction

Cognitive Science

According to the currently dominant theory as to the nature of thinking,

thinking is the brain’s computer-like processing of “mental representa-
tions.” The brain acquires information about reality via the sense organs
and encodes it into neural form as mental representations. The brain stores
each representation and computes from it—and from other current and pre-
viously stored representations—a program of neuron firings that will pro-
duce a behavioral response appropriate to the current situation. This
representational and computational understanding of the mind/brain is the
basis of “cognitive science,” the approach to psychology and philosophy of
mind that took over from behaviorism in the mid 1970s.1
Cognitive scientists believe their theory is a more sophisticated and
scientific version of the “folk” theory that ordinary people believe in.
According to folk theory, thinking is a “mental” process carried out in and/or
by “the mind.” And the mind is assumed to be some kind of non-physical
agent inside people’s heads. Cognitive science agrees that thinking goes on
inside the head. For the cognitive scientist, however, thinking is information
processing done by or in the brain. Mind is redefined as a brain function.
The question to what extent the concepts of folk theory can be retained
in scientific explanations of behavior is still a cause of philosophical debate.
Nearly all cognitive scientists accept that the entities postulated by folk
theory—mental phenomena such as beliefs, desires, intentions, and fears,
and minds themselves—have some reality. They agree that folk theory of
mind has not only practical utility but also some theoretical justification.
Furthermore, cognitive scientists assume that the entities postulated by folk
theory are real enough to be studied scientifically. This is implicit in the
scientific-sounding terms cognitive scientists employ when referring to
these entities: mental phenomena (or processes, events, entities, states, repre-
sentations), cognitive processes, conscious processes, conscious states, intentional
states, propositional attitudes, and so on.
Bald identification of the various mental phenomena with brain
processes is the exception in current theory. However, mental phenomena
are universally believed to be in some way intimately related to brain
processes and brain areas. Various theories—with names like “identity
theory,” “functionalism,” “anomalous monism,” and “connectionism”—
opt for one intimate relationship or another.
Introduction 3

As well as developing formal theories about the relations between mental

phenomena and brain processes, cognitivist philosophers often make do
with metaphors. Brain researchers often use the same expressions.
Consciousness and other mental phenomena are said to be “dependent
on,” “supervenient on,” “underpinned by,” “caused by,” “correlated with,”
or “the product of” neurophysiological processes. Or the latter are held to
“support,” “be the mechanism for,” “be responsible for,” “give rise to,”
“determine,” or “underlie” mental phenomena. Such language clearly
implies that, even if mental phenomena are not strictly identical with brain
processes, brain processes are still where the action is as far as mental phe-
nomena are concerned. The following is a typical statement of the task of
cognitive science:
We believe that at the moment the best approach to the problem of explaining con-
sciousness is to concentrate on finding what is known as the neural correlates of
consciousness—the processes in the brain that are most directly responsible for con-
sciousness. By locating the neurons in the cerebral cortex that correlate best with
consciousness, and figuring out how they link to neurons elsewhere in the brain, we
may come across key insights into . . . the hard problem: a full accounting of the
manner in which subjective experience arises from these cerebral processes.2

Here, despite the modest hopes of progress, it is unquestioned that brain

processes constitute the underlying reality and that the task of explaining
mental phenomena is just the task of finding the relevant brain processes
and seeing how they work.
The important thing for the purposes of this book is that both the layper-
son and the cognitive scientist, by assuming that thinking is a process that
goes on inside people’s heads, are excluding in advance the possibility I
want to consider: that thinking may be a kind of action, something the per-
son actively does. In both popular and scientific views, thinking is seen as
an impersonal internal process rather than an action the person performs
for himself. In the folk view, thinking is a mental process; in the scientific
view, it is a neurophysiological one. But the same “impersonality” applies.
In neither view is the person doing the thinking. Rather, as with natural
processes such as gestation, blood circulation, and digestion, a dedicated
organ or mechanism carries out (or hosts, or is responsible for) the process.
The main difference between the popular and scientific theories is the
nature of the organ or mechanism that is nominated for the job. In the one
case it is the non-physical “mind”; in the other it is the physical brain.
4 Introduction

The Possibility of an Actional Account of Thinking

In chapters 1 and 2, I review several theories of thinking I call “action-

based.” While all of the theorists I talk about in those chapters see thinking
as having intimate logical and practical ties to action, none of them regards
thinking as itself an action. Their accounts are “action-based” but not
“actional” theories of thinking. For none of them is thinking something the
person does. In Gilbert Ryle’s logical behaviorist, adverbial, and refraining the-
ories, thinking is a behaviorally vacuous “grammatical construct” or some
such. For methodological behaviorists, it is a theoretical construct: a hypo-
thetical intervening variable between stimulus and response. Physiological
abbreviationists believe thinking is an internal physiological process involv-
ing not just brain events but subtle physiological events throughout the
body. For the various internalized social activity theorists, thinking is also an
internal and hence impersonal process—it is social action that is so abbre-
viated as to be “internalized” in a person. But the emphasis in internaliza-
tion theories is on the action’s becoming non-physical rather than on its
becoming subtle and physiological. In these theories, thinking remains,
effectively, a mental process in the folk sense.
It seems that every theory of thinking—from the folk theory of mind
(which has been around since before Plato) through the various behavior-
ist, abbreviationist, and social internalization theories of the early and mid
twentieth century and the contemporary orthodoxies of cognitive sci-
ence—either discards or ignores the possibility that thinking is something
people do. What I suggest in this book is that, despite the weight of popu-
lar and expert opinion, the possibility of thinking’s being an action of the
person is a very real one. And by “action” I mean an ordinary, albeit unique,
learned and voluntary action.
There are several initial grounds for believing that thinking must be an
action. I will list some of these very shortly. However, first it is worth get-
ting clear about the difference between impersonal (natural) processes and
people’s actions.

Natural Processes vs. Personal Actions

In everyday speech, the word process is often used to mean things other than
natural processes. In one usage it means much the same as procedure and
Introduction 5

refers to an action or course of action with clear stages, often with more than
one person contributing. Thus we might talk about a legal process or a man-
ufacturing process, or being in the process of shaving, or something’s being
in the process of construction. For the purposes of my argument, these pro-
cedure-type processes can all go into the “action” bag.
In a closely related usage, we speak of a “process” when the contribu-
tion made by people’s actions is about equal to, and intertwined with, one
or more natural processes. This is true especially of technical processes.
Industrial processes, such as steelmaking or electric power generation,
involve natural processes that are everywhere controlled by people’s
actions. And there are mechanical and electronic processes that, once ini-
tiated, can proceed with little human intervention, but which neverthe-
less require people to design, make, and employ the mechanism (or other
device or system) the functioning of which constitutes the process in
question. The mechanism operates in conformity with natural laws of
cause and effect, but putting it into operation is something people do. The
respective actional and natural-process contributions to technical
processes are often difficult to disentangle. Consider sorting out the
actions from the natural processes in, say, drying one’s hair with a hair
dryer.
For present purposes, we can safely ignore these technical processes.
Despite popular conceptions of the brain as a computer, and despite talk of
neurophysiological “mechanisms” in the brain, no one believes that think-
ing is literally a technical process involving people using technology to
manage natural processes. The question whether thinking is an action or a
process is not complicated in the way the same question about hair-drying
might be. If thinking is a process, then it is a purely impersonal and natu-
ral kind of process that goes on in the brain unaided by technical interven-
tions from us. In the case of thinking there is no problem of disentangling
natural processes from the functioning of mechanisms and from the actions
we perform in operating those mechanisms. Thinking is either all action or
all process. The question is: How does thinking take place? Do people do it,
or is it a natural process occurring in the brain?
Despite the variety in the everyday uses of process, I will restrict my use of
the word to natural processes, such as biological, physiological, and chem-
ical processes. It is natural processes that I want to distinguish actions, espe-
cially thinking, from. I will assume that the distinction between natural
6 Introduction

processes and learned and voluntary doings of people is obvious. If it is not

now, it should be by the end of the next section.
I also assume for now that the two categories are mutually exclusive—
that a natural process cannot be an action, and vice versa. There is in fact a
widely held philosophical assumption, which I call “action physicalism,”
according to which the distinction between an action and a natural process
is only superficially valid. It is valid “at the everyday level” perhaps, but not
“at a deeper scientific level.” Action physicalists argue that people’s actions
are physical events and can therefore, in principle, be analyzed down to and
explained in terms of physiological and other natural causal processes. If
action physicalism is true, showing thinking to be an action is pointless.
Thinking still could (or would) be a natural process, such as a brain process.
I tackle action physicalism in the final chapter. Until then, I assume that the
everyday distinction between natural processes and actions is valid, and
valid all the way down.

Initial Indications That Thinking Is an Action

Thinking Is Usually Self-Aware

Actions are characteristically, even by definition, self-aware. That is, when
performing an action we are generally aware of and can describe what it is
we are doing. One indication that our concept of thinking is a basically
actional concept is that this automatic self-awareness feature also applies to
thinking. We generally know, and can say, both that we are thinking and
what we are thinking. This cannot be said of the natural processes going on
in our bodies. Such inner goings-on as digestion, circulation and oxidation
of the blood, insulin secretion by the pancreas, and conception are not usu-
ally—and certainly not characteristically or by definition—subject to aware-
ness by the host person. Some internal processes are sometimes accessible
to awareness; however, few are characteristically so, and none necessarily.
In the normal course of events, we are never aware of the neurophysiolog-
ical goings-on in our own brains—and yet we usually are aware of our
thinking.

Thinking Is Often Publicly Observable

Actions nearly always involve overt movements, so normally one can see
people performing actions. On the other hand, internal bodily processes—
Introduction 7

including brain processes—generally don’t involve overt movements. One

reason people might have for believing that thinking is an internal process
rather than an action is that one often, and perhaps characteristically, can-
not see it going on. This alleged characteristic unobservability of thinking
could easily be equated to the characteristic unobservability of internal
processes. From there, one could easily infer that thinking is an internal
process too.
However, there are actions that one can perform without making observ-
able movements. “Staying absolutely still” is one such action. Deliberately
refraining from doing X may also involve “doing nothing.” In these cases,
the person is making no overt movement yet is performing an identifiable
action. What is more, although it involves no movement, the action—stay-
ing motionless, say—is not unobservable at all; it can easily be observed.
Thinkers often deliberately stay still. They may freeze in a particular pos-
ture—grip their hair, say, or put on a particular intent expression, or hold
up their index finger, or do a full Le Penseur. Such conspicuous, even osten-
tatious, immobility is plausibly an “overt behavior.” It can also be a delib-
erate display of one’s thinking, with an implied Do not disturb. At any rate,
here is a perfectly good sense in which we very often, even usually, can see
people thinking in just the way we can see them walking or knitting. And
this too counts against thinking’s being an intracranial process.
In fact, a considerable range of overt behaviors and mini-behaviors are
associated with and reliably indicative of thinking. Apart from immobility,
these include frowning, giggling, fist-clenching, and sotto voce muttering.
Admittedly, there is an important distinction—which I will revisit later—
between behaviors that are part of (or constitutive of) an action or activity
and behaviors that are mere contingent by-products of an action or activ-
ity. There are certain movements with knitting needles that are constitutive
of knitting, but the squinting and frowning that may also be associated
with knitting are not parts of knitting; they are only by-products. In cases
of a third kind, an action may occur in connection with knitting that is nei-
ther a part of it nor a by-product of it but rather is ancillary to it—as when
you purl exaggeratedly so I can see it better.
On the “internal process” view, any overt behavior associated with think-
ing can only be either a by-product of it or ancillary to it. Nothing observ-
able could count as constituting, or as part of, the actual thinking. It is true
that many of the behaviors and micro-behaviors that go with thinking are
8 Introduction

merely involuntary by-products of it. Into this bag we should put blushing
or blanching, sweating, trembling, becoming sexually aroused, having one’s
voice crack, and being “paralyzed.” However, involuntary bodily agitations
are not the only kind of behavior associated with thinking. There are other
kinds of overt movement—such as muttering words, adopting specific facial
expressions, making eye movements as if inspecting things, tensing specific
muscles, feinting gestures (e.g., drawing in the air), and arguably the above-
mentioned immobility. These movements are deliberate actions, and they
do seem to help constitute the thinking performance.
Thus, although thinking often occurs in the absence of readily observable
movement, it is still true that overt behaviors of certain kinds may some-
times be integral to and constitutive of thinking. Thinking out loud is one
kind of thinking, just as reading out loud is one kind of reading.

Is Thinking Voluntary, or Is It “Automatic”?

Actions are performed by people, whereas natural processes just happen.
This means that actions, but not natural processes, are characteristically
subject to the imperative. Other things being equal, one can get people to
do things or stop doing things just by asking or telling them to. As King
Canute found out, however, natural processes are not similarly subject to
the imperative. The very idea is odd.
The fact that actions are normally performable on request is logically tied
to the fact that they are normally voluntary. That is, a person P being asked to
do X has, in principle, a choice. P may do X or refrain from doing X. It is
the idea of natural processes’ being voluntary—e.g., of the wind’s choosing
to dry someone’s hair—that is odd, fanciful, or incomprehensible.
In any event, thinking is both subject to the imperative and voluntary.
One can sensibly ask someone to think of or about something, or to remem-
ber, imagine, heed, hope, or fear—and to at least try to believe, desire, or
love. Although there is always a chance that one’s request will fail, asking
someone to do thinking of some kind is seldom if ever logically odd. It
would always be logically odd if thinking were a natural process.
Actions normally require at least some effort. Another possible reason for
believing that thinking must be a natural process and not an action is that
it often seems to proceed without our trying. In familiar situations and
when responding to everyday speech, our imagining, remembering, antici-
pating, or inferring is mostly so habitual as to be quite effortless. The think-
Introduction 9

ing seems to get done automatically, without our consciously doing it. We
can even “tune out” and still follow what is happening or what is being
said. However, the automatically is only metaphorical. Like all metaphors,
apt or otherwise, it is false when taken literally. What is actually being
talked about is the kind of facility that any very habitual action would
acquire. It is not that one is not doing the thinking, let alone that a mech-
anism inside one’s head is doing it; it is just that we are so good at doing
this particular bit or kind of thinking, so practiced, that we can do it with-
out attending to our doing of it, and perhaps even while doing and attend-
ing to something else. And, of course, not all thinking is effortless. One may
have to pound one’s forehead to remember the name of Claire’s husband,
or to multiply 3 by 14.
Thinking can happen out of the blue sometimes too, as if spontaneously.
Realizations can suddenly dawn, pennies drop. Here also, thinking seems to
be something that happens, rather than something one does. In these cases,
however, the realization generally comes as a result of past thinking that
was both effortful and aware. Discoveries are the culmination of work.
Unless one has in the past been actively and persistently interested in some
possibility, then finding that that possibility is an actuality will not be a
“realization.” Similarly, when a poet “hears” lines and has only to write
them down, this is in fact the outcome of untold previous aware, or half-
aware, apparently fruitless strivings.
In other cases, thinking can persist despite the best efforts of the thinker.
One may be gripped by anxiety, suspicion, envy, jealousy, or a memory that
one would fain be rid of. It keeps coming back. Some people hear voices in
their heads, voices they cannot shut out. Faith, hope, or love may be simi-
larly compulsive, as if the person is in thrall. Surely compulsive thinking, at
least, cannot be an action of the person. However, I suggest that the situa-
tion is much the same with compulsive thinking as with compulsive doings
of other kinds—addictions, for example. We might say figuratively that a
person is “struggling in the grip of” something, or is a “helpless victim,” but
we would never go so far as to say that taking an extra drink is not some-
thing an alcoholic himself does. Although the person may find it in practice
difficult or impossible to refrain from taking the drink, it is still something
he is doing and not an impersonal process.
It is always possible in principle, if not in practice, that the victim of an
addiction or an obsession might refrain from doing or thinking whatever it
10 Introduction

is. Although it might be surprising, it would never be incomprehensible, or

logically odd, for an alcoholic to refrain once in a while, or for a schizo-
phrenic to once in a while ignore and thus quell the voices. Yet if drinking
or thinking were natural processes, it would be logically odd to speak of the
person’s “refraining” or “desisting,” even once. In at least this sense, even
the most terrifying compulsions, delusions, and obsessions are voluntary
actions.

We Evaluate Thinking Morally

Another near-universal feature of people’s actions, related to their volun-
tariness, is their moral relevance. We hold people responsible for their
actions, and we evaluate those actions morally. In any society, everyone’s
actions are at all times subject in principle to moral evaluation. One’s own
welfare depends to a considerable extent on what others do, on what is
acceptable and customary, and the question whether a given action is
acceptable or not is everyone’s business and always relevant. Furthermore,
praise and condemnation are useful instruments in improving the behav-
ior of others.
Natural processes lack the moral dimension entirely. Natural processes
may be good or bad news for people, but they are never morally right or
wrong. We may take practical steps to prevent or enhance natural processes,
but these steps never include praise or blame. Yet we do evaluate people’s
thinking in the moral way. Although much of what most people think is
morally neutral (as is much of what they overtly do), some thoughts are
worthy, virtuous, kind, or thoughtful and others are unkind, disgusting,
despicable, or otherwise bad. They are unthinkable, for moral reasons. It is
not just that one may sin in thought as well as in deed. To sin in thought
is to sin in deed. To contemplate a horrible possibility, especially while smil-
ing, is already to do something bad. The thinking may be morally bad even
if it is never voiced and has no effect on anyone else.
Why this is, I am not sure. Perhaps there are issues here of psychologically
harming or demoralizing oneself. In any event, as I have said above, the
same cannot be said of natural events and processes. By definition, they are
never morally bad. No one would think of condemning a natural process or
condemning a person on account of a natural process going on inside him.
In this respect also, thinking looks to be much more like a personal action
than like an impersonal process.
Introduction 11

Thinking Is Something We Learn to Do

Unlike natural bodily processes, actions must be learned. In most cases this
means that they must be taught. Most commonly, actions are taught by
demonstration and imitation. Thus, typically, actions must be demonstra-
ble. Wittgenstein suggests that being demonstrable is part of what it means
to be an action: “. . . doing is something that one can give someone an
exhibition of.”3
The prevailing view, in both lay and professional circles, is that thinking—
or consciousness—is not something we learn but is rather a natural, biolog-
ically evolved, genetically programmed-in ability, similar in this respect to
digestion or breathing. Consciousness is a gift rather than something we
earn by learning. This assumption seems to be borne out by several consid-
erations. First, consciousness seems to be a precondition for any learning,
rather than something that is itself learned. Second, no one can remember
learning to think in the way one might conceivably remember learning to
speak. Third, because thinking or consciousness is usually or characteristi-
cally unobservable, it is difficult to see how it could be learned. At least, it
could not be taught by demonstration in the way most learned skills are.
In chapter 3, I claim that infants are at birth neither able to think nor
conscious (except in their being able to imitate in a rudimentary way) and
that they must learn how to think. And in a long argument put forth in
chapters 3–7, I claim that infants learn, for the most part, by being taught—
and taught in the way that is usual for actions, that is, by having the think-
ing trick demonstrated to them.
That thinking is in any way demonstrable might seem mysterious. What
I argue is that the ability to think begins with the infant’s acquisition of
abilities to perform certain kinds of overt communicative action, such as
speech and gestures. These are all taught by demonstration and practice in
the normal way. Thinking is the “performing” of the relevant communica-
tive actions in an especially rapid, subtle, and covert way. Although the
fully covert version may not be demonstrable, the covertizing process is.
The progressive abbreviation of originally overt communicative perform-
ances can be demonstrated. And I claim that many familiar mother-infant
games and other interactions have just this purpose. Thus, I argue that,
despite appearances, there is a plausible story according to which infants
and children are taught, and taught largely by example, how to think. They
are taught how to be conscious of things.
12 Introduction

There are other reasons for believing thinking to be a learned skill. The
concepts of natural ability, practice, skill, quality of performance, degree of
care in performance, and level of effort all apply naturally to actions and
reflect the learnability of actions. And none of them is logically applicable
to natural processes. We cannot speak of natural ability, of practice’s
improving skill, of care and quality of performance, or of effort in connec-
tion with natural bodily processes such as digestion or blood circulation.
Again, though, these skill concepts readily apply to thinking. Thinking is
a performance; it is something one may do well or badly. One may think
something out half-heartedly, perfunctorily, carelessly, or one may think it
out enthusiastically, thoroughly, carefully, systematically. Some people have
a talent for thinking and are better at it than others. Some thinking is slow,
routine, and dull; other thinking is clever, quick, creative, and adventurous.
As we will see in chapters 1 and 2, Ryle is generally adamant that think-
ing is neither an intracranial process nor an action of the person. According
to Ryle, thinking is closely tied to actions but is not a “proprietary activity”
in its own right. However, in the following passage Ryle insists that think-
ing has at least the distinctively actional quality of skill and teachability I
am talking about. And he equally insists that natural processes lack that
quality:
. . . thinking is an art, like cricket, and not just a natural process, like digesting. Or,
to put it less bluntly, the word thinking covers a wide variety of things, some, but not
all of which embody, in differing degrees and respects, such things as drills, acquired
knacks, techniques and flairs. It is just in so far as they do embody such things that
we can describe someone’s thinking as careless or careful, strenuous or lazy, rigorous
or loose, efficient or inefficient, wooden or elastic, successful or unsuccessful.
Epithets like these belong to the vocabularies of coaches and umpires, and are inap-
plicable to such natural processes as digesting. We cannot be clever or stupid at
digesting. . . .4

The Argument of This Book

My aim in this book is to present a coherent account of thinking as a

learned action. The mid-twentieth-century action-based theories of think-
ing come reasonably close to doing this, but, as I said, none of them goes
the whole hog and identifies thinking as an action. For several reasons,
however, these theories are worth looking at, and I devote chapters 1 and 2
to reviewing them.
Introduction 13

The above brief arguments as to the actional nature of thinking could

be extended and buttressed. On the other hand, no argument that think-
ing is an action we perform, however cogent, could be as compelling as a
plausible account of just what kind of action it is. That is what I attempt
in chapters 3–7.
I claim that there are two key ingredients in the act of thinking, both
themselves actional. The first is our ability to do things in concert. The sec-
ond is our ability to—jointly with others or alone—perform concerted activ-
ity in merely token form. I identify the concerting of activity as the matrix
out of which solo action, cooperation, language use, solo perceiving, and
thinking develop. And I say that the main instrument of development, the
means by which all these other abilities derive from concerting, is our abil-
ity to “token” actions. Tokening is a learned skill whereby parts and aspects
of concerted activity are merely incepted by participants, rather than being
fully performed. As the child masters more sophisticated and covert ways of
tokening actions, he eventually becomes able to, in this special token way,
“rehearse” concerted activity while alone. And the rehearsing may be done
without any overt movement. Basically, this is thinking.
If the initial hypothesis that thinking is an action and not a natural
process is correct, and if my description in chapters 3–7 of what kind of
action it is isn’t too far astray, then both popular and expert opinion accord-
ing to which thinking is an impersonal process that goes on inside people’s
heads must be gravely mistaken. This would require explanation. An “error
theory” would be required, to show how so many could have got it so
wrong for so long. In chapters 8 and 9, I offer an error theory. The gist of it
is that the assumption common to both popular and scientific theories—
that thinking goes on in people’s heads—stems from most people’s naively
literal understanding of certain metaphors in the colloquial vocabulary for
talking about thinking.
The colloquial vocabulary for talking about thinking is, I argue, basically
figurative. The stock expressions in it are nearly all metaphors, and most of
the central nouns—including mind—are derived by nominalization from
the corresponding verbs. I suggest that the content of the metaphors, the
especially seductive power of metaphors used in conjunction with nomi-
nalized verbs, and the propaganda-like repetitiveness of these idioms in
everyday speech combine to foster the illusion that there is a mysterious
agent and/or venue of thinking—the mind—inside our heads.
14 Introduction

I try to show that, when the various figures of speech are properly
unpacked, it can be seen that what the colloquial thinking vocabulary really
refers to is not—as it seems when the vocabulary is taken literally—intracra-
nial phenomena. Rather, the real, underlying subject matter is certain sub-
tle actions and meta-actions that people perform. Specifically, it is what I
describe in chapters 4–7 as covert tokening of concerted activity or covert token
concerting.
The vernacular explanation for the covertness of covert tokening—in
terms of its taking place in the person’s head—is metaphorical. Thinking
does not literally go on inside the head, any more than does watching a
football match, carefully describing a traffic accident, or pretending to be a
walrus.
I argue that cognitive scientists have taken the “in the head” metaphors
too seriously. The apparent intellectual advance in going from mind to
brain as the internal agent and/or venue of thinking really only cements the
mistake in. Certainly the brain is real and can be studied, and its functions
can be studied. If we want to study thinking, however, then taking the brain
as the agent and/or venue of thinking, and going on to study the brain and
its functions, is quite the wrong approach. The fact is that thinking has no
internal agent and/or venue. It is something the person does.
The question whether lay folk make the same sort of mistake—whether
they take the colloquial thinking vocabulary too literally, and believe there
really are such intracranial phenomena as minds, beliefs, desires, and inten-
tions—is more difficult to answer. Certainly the layperson may habitually
visualize according to, and in response to, the colloquial metaphors.
However, these visualizings are fragmentary, unsystematic, and extremely
diverse, reflecting the diversity of the metaphors. No matter how inveterate
these imaginings become, they can never approximate a theory. I suggest
that it is unrealistic to think even of a folk “concept” of mind. The most
earnest attempt to extract a concept or a theory from the colloquial vocab-
ulary could result only in a kind of minestrone of extended and mixed
metaphors. To find out what lay folk really believe about the mind, we can
only go by what they say. And what they say is figurative. They hardly ever
try to speak literally about the mind in the way philosophers do.
In chapter 10, I attempt literal paraphrases of several of the more impor-
tant families of thinking metaphors—especially those associated with the
noun mind. In each case, the metaphor can plausibly be read as intended
Introduction 15

to highlight some aspect of covert tokening of concerted activity, alias

“thinking.”
Finally, in chapter 11, I address the question I raised earlier: whether
people’s actions (including their thinking) can be reduced to or explained
in terms of natural, and especially physiological, processes and events. Is
action physicalism true? I provide two arguments that suggest it is not.
I also briefly address some further questions: What kind of things are
actions? Are they things in the world? If not, then is our knowledge of
actions more basic or less basic than our knowledge of things in the
world?
1 Action-Based Theories of Thinking (1)

In this chapter and the next I briefly review six action-based theories about
thinking. They are not cognitivist theories, and they neither define think-
ing as a brain function nor conceive the brain as a computer-like informa-
tion processor. But they are not actional theories either. They each define
thinking as some function of actions, but not as itself an action. Despite the
latter, the theories reviewed in these two chapters have all contributed
insights to the actional theory I put forward in chapters 3–7, and they can
be regarded as precursors of it.

Behaviorism

From early in the twentieth century until the 1970s, when cognitive science
took over, the dominant theories in psychology and the philosophy of mind
were behaviorist ones. Behaviorists believed as cognitivists do that popular
talk of “mental” phenomena does not reflect the existence of non-physical
processes and entities. Where cognitivism redefines mental phenomena as
neural representations in and functions of the brain, behaviorism redefines
them in terms of people’s overt behavior. However, behaviorists do not say
that thinking is itself a behavior. What do they say? There are several kinds
of behaviorism.1 I will summarize two.

Logical Behaviorism
Logical behaviorism, whose foremost representative is Gilbert Ryle, denies
that there are any mental phenomena at all, whether these are conceived in
the popular way, as ghostly entities and processes in the head, or in the
scientific way, as neurophysiological entities and processes in there. Ryle
denies, in addition, that there is any distinctive action or activity one could
18 Chapter 1

call thinking—or remembering, believing, imagining, etc. In his best-

known book, The Concept of Mind,2 Ryle says that we come to believe in the
existence of intracranial “mental” entities and processes, and to believe that
there is a ghostly inner activity called thinking, because we mistake the
“logical grammar” of our everyday vocabulary for talking about thinking.
Despite appearances, the terms in this everyday vocabulary—verbs like
thinking, imagining, conceiving, believing, desiring, and remembering, and the
nouns derived from them—do not refer to unobservable intracranial
processes, entities, or activities. Rather, Ryle claims, these terms register
abstractions from or “logical constructions on” aspects of our ordinary
observable activity. Ryle suggests that colloquial mentalist talk is really a
way of talking about people’s “dispositions and abilities” to do certain
things—solve problems, write poems, display cheerfulness, make confident
avowals, and so on. We describe and explain people’s behavior in terms of
the dispositions and abilities we observe and infer.
Although we may fancy otherwise (and, regrettably, some colloquial
expressions and some philosophical doctrines encourage these fancies),
none of these behavioral dispositions and/or abilities, Ryle says, are ghostly
inner states. Nor are they flesh-and-blood behavioral or physiological reali-
ties. They are merely logical constructs, concepts we have devised to help us
describe behavior. Thus, terms that apparently refer to ghostly intracranial
phenomena in fact relate to dispositions and abilities to do things.
Emotion terms, for example, relate to dispositions toward particular kinds
of emotionally demonstrative behavior. Personal attributes such as intelli-
gence reflect tendencies to intelligent, thoughtful behavior and also certain
abilities. To say that P has a certain belief about X is to say only that P has
a disposition to say and do certain things in relation to X:
. . . to believe that the ice is dangerously thin is to be unhesitant in telling oneself
and others that it is thin, in acquiescing in other people’s assertions to that effect, in
objecting to statements to the contrary, in drawing consequences from the original
proposition, and so forth. But it is also to be prone to skate warily, to shudder, to
dwell in imagination on possible disasters and to warn other skaters. It is a propen-
sity not only to make certain theoretical moves but also to make certain executive
and imaginative moves, as well as to have certain feelings.3

One objection to this account is that it is circular. Ryle has included,

among the behaviors P is disposed to perform things such as “dwelling in
imagination,” “making theoretical and imaginative moves,” and “having
Action-Based Theories of Thinking (1) 19

certain feelings.” These are mental phenomena such as were to be explained

in the first place. Ryle is relaxed about this, but it is hard to see why. In fact,
it has been plausibly argued that, if any mental phenomenon is to be satis-
factorily described in terms of dispositions to do things X1 . . . n, there must
always be a mental component among those X1 . . . n. This would make any
behaviorism that is based on dispositions circular and empty.
Other critics say that Ryle’s having shunted mental phenomena off into
the mythical (and/or the merely grammatical) leaves our actions and our
dispositions unexplained. Common sense explains people’s actions at least
partly in terms of beliefs and desires. Performing an action presupposes that
one has beliefs about the present situation and a desire to achieve some
end. More generally, rational action presupposes, and is motivated by, pre-
vious or concurrent mentation of some kind. Ryle does not show that com-
mon sense is mistaken about this.

Methodological Behaviorism
Methodological behaviorism is a psychological theory that defined itself
against the introspectionism that dominated experimental psychology up
until 1920 or so. Introspectionism required the psychologist’s subject to
observe and report on the contents of his own mind. Methodological behav-
iorists such as J. B. Watson rightly rejected this method of research as unre-
liable and unscientific. If psychology is to be a science, Watson said, its data
must be publicly and objectively observable, and verifiable. Following on
from Watson, B. F. Skinner recognized only two kinds of subject matter for
psychology: the external stimulus to which the organism is subjected and
the ensuing overt behavioral response. Skinner claimed that by studying just
these two scientifically observable variables, stimulus and response, and by
establishing reliable correlations between them, the behavioral scientist can
in principle find out all there is to know about human and animal behavior.
Skinner believed that once law-like correlations between stimuli and
responses were established, they would explain all the behaviors and aspects
of behavior popularly attributed to internal mental phenomena.
Strictly speaking, methodological behaviorism neither asserts nor denies
the existence of mental phenomena as popularly conceived. Because the
supposed mental phenomena are unobservable, the existence question can-
not be decided on scientific grounds and is thus outside the psychologist’s
field. So it never arises.
20 Chapter 1

The attitude of methodological behaviorists to neurophysiology and

brain science is also noncommittal. Although brain science cannot be dis-
missed as unscientific, most behaviorists wanted their area of study to
exclude anything intracranial or even subcutaneous. Apart from the fact
that brain science was young at the time and had come up with few find-
ings of interest to psychologists, behaviorists were convinced that the
important brain processes could all be determined indirectly, by inference
from the laws of stimulus and response. Some behaviorists, including
Donald Hebb, did speculate about neurophysiological processes; for most of
them, however, the brain was of as little interest as the mind. The subject’s
head might as well be an unopenable black box.

The Problems with Behaviorism

All behaviorists face two problems. First is the cluster of essentially philo-
sophical questions as to whether, and/or in what sense, mental phenomena
exist—and, if they do exist, what kind of things they are. Logical behavior-
ists deny they are anything real, and this strikes many as just too implausi-
ble. Surely one feels the glee and the grief, and sees them in other people.
Surely there are underlying causes or “categorical bases” for our dispositions
and abilities, whether these underlying causes are mental or physiological.
Methodological behaviorists effectively ignore the ontological questions,
which is perhaps even less satisfactory.
Second, behaviorists have to make up their minds what “behavior” is,
what “actions” are. Some behaviorists believe that people’s actions are just
physical events, the same for scientific purposes as biological events and
processes. For these “action physicalists,” behavior is describable solely in
terms of objectively observable and recordable bodily movements—
in terms of complex body-part trajectories, say. Other behaviorists believe
that a behavior’s external circumstances—the “stimulus conditions”—must
be specified before we can define it. Others, including Ryle, concede that
even specification of physical movements and external circumstances is not
enough. In fact, the main opposition to behaviorism comes from phil-
osophers who believe that our concept of behavior presupposes the very
concepts—of belief, desire, intention, etc.—that the behaviorist is trying to
do without.
There is some good in behaviorism though. For one thing, it highlights
the important fact that, whatever thinking is, it is closely related to our abil-
Action-Based Theories of Thinking (1) 21

ities and dispositions to do things in the ordinary overt way. Behaviorism

brings the relationship between thinking and overt action to center stage.
Perhaps even more important, behaviorism contributes a salutary skepti-
cism about the everyday mentalist vocabulary we have for talking about
thinking. Wittgenstein, Ryle, and others warned about how the metaphors
and grammatical false appearances in our everyday talk about thinking can
affect philosophical talk about thinking. For example, look at the passages
I quote at the end of chapter 8. Such warnings have generally been disre-
garded by cognitivist theorists. However, for better or worse, they prompted
me to undertake the analysis of the rhetoric of mind idiom I present later
in this book.

Behavior-Abbreviation Theories

In addition to the various behaviorisms, there is another kind of theory of

thinking that defines thinking in terms of its relation to action. It is some-
times called behavior-abbreviation theory or abbreviationism. Many of the
prominent behavioral psychologists (including Watson, Pavlov, de Laguna,
Guthrie, Hull, Skinner, and Hebb) had versions of abbreviationism as add-
ons to their respective behaviorist theories. Although it has never been as
well known or as influential as behaviorism, abbreviationism has a much
longer history.4 Its first advocate is arguably the Scottish philosopher David
Hume, who distinguished (mental) imaginings from (physical) perceivings
on the basis of the latter’s greater “vivacity” or “force and liveliness.”5
Abbreviationism survives as a theoretical orientation within neuroscience
today.6
The abbreviationist idea is that what are popularly called mental phenom-
ena are in fact ordinary overt behaviors that are occurring in greatly abbre-
viated form. The person is “performing” an action, but in so abbreviated a
fashion that little or nothing of the performance is observable. The only indi-
cators that the action is being performed (in the special abbreviated way) are
certain micro-behavioral phenomena—vestigial muscle and/or gland activ-
ity, pulse rate changes, blushing or blanching, and so on. Such phenomena
are overt in principle but are usually so subtle as to be difficult to observe
without special instruments. Other manifestations of this radically abbrevi-
ated “behavior” are entirely internal and physiological—for example, vestig-
ial neuron firing in sense organs, in the brain, and in muscles.
22 Chapter 1

I argue later that the very subtle micro-behavioral and internal physio-
logical phenomena on which abbreviation theorists concentrate represent
only the subtle end of what is essentially a continuum. “Abbreviated”
behavior is sometimes quite large scale and easily observable to the naked
eye. Emotions, for example, are characterized by clearly visible facial expres-
sions and other bodily agitations, sometimes including quite large gestures.
Abbreviationists tend to look at just the very subtle and the internal mani-
festations, those requiring special instruments and a white coat to investi-
gate. They assume, too, that if mental phenomena are the quarry then
“inside the person” is the place to look.
The various kinds of thinking (or mental phenomena) are thought to be
or to be “physically underpinned by” the relevant abbreviated behavior.
Watson7 and Skinner8 identify most thinking as abbreviated speech. And
abbreviationists generally believe that, in the words of Durant Drake,
. . . in thinking, or in dreaming, we are reacting, though merely in slight, tentative
ways, not visible to a spectator. Whatever we are conscious of (whether in perception
or in conception, with our eyes open or in brooding reverie) we are reacting to. The
behaviorists have dragged to light these multitudinous, minute, incipient reactions,
and shown us that all organisms, and especially the higher organisms, are incessantly
performing these delicate reactive movements, and, in that way, keeping in touch, as
it were, with their world. . . . We might be content to call this incessant play of reac-
tions, incipient and overt, the organism’s consciousness of things. . . .9

Behavior-Abbreviation Experiments
The classic abbreviation experiments compare the micro-behavioral and
internal physiological phenomena that appear when a subject is asked to
imagine or think about X-ing against what happens during an actual per-
formance of X. In most cases, it transpires that the phenomena that occur
during thinking are, basically, abbreviations of the overt movements and
physiological phenomena that would be occurring were the action in
question being fully and/or actually performed. For example, if I am
angry, although I may remain motionless, the program of physiological
events going on in my body will be a miniature version of the program
that would be occurring were I performing some overt aggressive act. If I
don’t actually make a fist, at least the relevant hand muscles will tense,
say, and my adrenal gland will become active. Or, if I am thinking about
making a bookcase, I will likely make tiny eye movements consistent with
visually inspecting a bookcase, my larynx may exhibit slight muscular
Action-Based Theories of Thinking (1) 23

contractions as of speech (relating to bookcases), the muscles in my arm

that would be involved in sawing and hammering may be vestigially
active, and so on.
In the standard experiment, the subject S performs some simple action X
and physiological events PX relating to the X-ing are concurrently recorded.
S is then asked to just imagine X-ing; while S is doing this imagining,
related physiological events PIX are recorded. Comparison of PX with PIX
generally supports the abbreviation hypothesis. That is, PIX is found to be
similar to, but a reduced version of, PX. Numerous experiments with this
format have been and still are being published in the literature of psychol-
ogy and neuroscience.
Edmund Jacobson’s work is typical. His 1930–31 experiments culminated
in an investigation of “imagination, recollection and abstract thinking
involving the speech musculature.”10 Electrodes were inserted in the tongue
and/or lower lip and electromyograph recordings (registering electrical
activity of motor neurons in muscles) were made while various acts of
speaking were both performed (sotto voce) and imagined. In addition, sub-
jects were asked to “think of abstract matters such as ‘eternity,’ electrical
resistance,’ ‘Ohm’s law,’ [and] ‘the meaning of the word incongruous,’” and
recordings were made. The results conformed to expectations, the electro-
micrograph readings showing significantly lower voltages for imagined
speech than for actual whispered speech.
Richard Davidson and Gary Schwartz showed that EEG readings corre-
lated with two different kinds of action—attention to a flashing light and
finger tapping—may be identical to those taken when the respective actions
are imagined.11 Thus, brain activation occurring when S imagines seeing the
flashing light or imagines tapping a finger is similar to that when S actually
does these things.
As a third illustration, Jean Decety and co-workers measured heart and
breathing rates concomitant with treadmill running and pedaling at differ-
ent speeds.12 They found that, as the speed of running or pedaling
increased, so did these physiological indicators. Heart and breathing rates
were then recorded during imagined running and pedaling, and these were
found to vary in the same way—depending on what speed of running or
pedaling was being imagined. As expected, absolute pulse and respiration
rates were consistently greater with real exertion than with imagined exer-
tion. For example, the heart and respiration rates of a subject imagining
24 Chapter 1

running at 12 kilometers per hour were the same on average as those

recorded when the subject was actually walking at 5 kph.
A final example seems to suggest a physiological basis for empathy.
Giacomo Rizzolatti and Michael Arbib researched monkeys and humans
and found that grasping and manipulating activity is accompanied by a dis-
tinctive pattern of firing in special “mirror neurons” in the pre-motor area
of the brain.13 This pattern of neural activity is duplicated, minus corre-
sponding overt activity, when the monkey or person is watching another
monkey or person perform the same grasping and manipulating move-
ments. On these results, observation of others’ actions requires empathy—
that is, oneself imagining doing what the other is actually doing.14

What Kind of “Abbreviation”?

Abbreviated behavior has many aliases: “tentative movement” and “incipi-
ent motor process,”15 “implicit response,”16 “the incomplete act,”17 “inhib-
ited response,”18 “fractional antedating goal response,”19 “readinesses” that
“are not complete acts but . . . consist in tensions of the muscles that will
take part in the complete act,”20 “trace activity,”21 “simulation,”22 “anticipa-
tory phases of activity” and “mental practice,”23 “covert action,” and
“scaled-down action.”24
Are abbreviated responses just physiologically weak versions of actions,
too weak to produce overt movement? Or does the action start off at full
strength, only to be immediately inhibited by countervailing neural activ-
ity? Margaret Floy Washburn, the pioneer of abbreviationism as a physio-
logical theory, opts for weakness, but she despairs of certainty:
The precise nature of the physiological process which underlies a tentative move-
ment, and the precise difference between this process and that underlying a full
movement, it would be useless to conjecture. Is there simply a difference in the
amount of nervous energy sent along a given motor pathway to the muscles, a less
amount producing the very slight contractions of tentative movements; or do full
movements require the action of more neurons than tentative movements do?25

B. F. Skinner construes abbreviation—in the case of verbal behavior, at

least—in terms of how much energy is put into a performance:
The range of verbal behavior is roughly suggested, in descending order of energy, by
shouting, loud talking, quiet talking, whispering, muttering “under one’s breath,”
subaudible speech with detectable muscular action, sub-audible speech of unclear
dimensions, and perhaps even the “unconscious thinking” sometimes inferred in
instances of problem solving.26
Action-Based Theories of Thinking (1) 25

Another alternative, in which behavior and its physiological correlate are

activated in the normal way but then immediately inhibited, is proposed by
Douglas Hofstadter:
It may be that imagery is based on our ability to suppress motor activity. . . . If you
imagine an orange, there may occur in your cortex a set of commands to pick it up,
to smell it, to inspect it, and so on. Clearly these commands cannot be carried out,
because the orange is not there. But they can be sent along the usual channels . . .
until, at some critical point, a “mental faucet” is closed, preventing them from actu-
ally being carried out. Depending how far down the line this “faucet” is situated, the
images may be more or less vivid and real-seeming.27

In the same vein, Marc Jeannerod suggests that “simulating a movement is

the same thing as actually performing it except that execution is blocked.”28
He points out that imagining often produces involuntary overt bodily agi-
tations as “spillover.” In these cases, some neural commands must be reach-
ing motor neurons on muscles: “. . . the fact that muscular activity is only
partially blocked during motor simulation emphasizes the delicate equilib-
rium between excitatory and inhibitory influences at the motoneuron level
and suggests that motoneurons are close to threshold.”
From a somewhat broader cognitivist perspective, Nico Frijda supports
the equilibrium idea. Talking about emotion, he describes “the regulatory
tuning of impulse by the reciprocal action of inhibitory and facilitatory
mechanisms”29 as working to fine-tune the intensity levels of both overt
emotional behavior and suppressed “action tendencies.” He concludes:
Regulation is an essential component of the emotion process. Emotion—outwardly
manifest emotion, but equally emotion as experienced—is to be considered the prod-
uct of excitation of action tendency of the one hand and inhibition of that same
action tendency on the other. What is observed or felt depends on the balance
between these two.
The emotion system should be viewed as a system governed by dual, reciprocal
control. Dual control is rather usual in biological systems. It is found in movement
control by the simultaneous action of antagonistic muscles, in autonomic response in
the interplay of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity, in hormonal response, to
name a few instances. Evidently, dual control permits finer tuning than does single-
graded excitation.30

Function of the Abbreviated Response

There is general agreement as to the function of the abbreviated (or men-
tal) response. This is consistently described as a “readying” or “priming”
26 Chapter 1

of subsequent actual performance. The readying effect is thought to apply

whether the delay preceding action is long or short. The abbreviated
behavior is a kind of interim, provisional response to an environmental
stimulus, an internal dummy run or rehearsal before actual behavior. In
cases where the stimuli that would normally trigger behavior X are
incomplete, or where the situation is otherwise unfamiliar or ambiguous,
the abbreviated response establishes a readiness to X which can be sus-
tained until the situation clarifies. The readying enables quicker, more
efficient X-ing if and when the stimulus situation does subsequently
become propitious for X-ing. If it turns out that the situation becomes less
propitious, at least the person or animal will not have made a faux pas
initially.
Ulrich Neisser’s version of the priming hypothesis is as follows:
If images are anticipations, they should facilitate subsequent perception. Perceptual
readiness is not a minor by-product of visualizing, but its essence. . . . A subject who
has just seen a given letter, say A, will identify another A as the same letter more
quickly if . . . the subject is not shown but merely told what the coming letter will
be, so that he can imagine it in advance.31

In many sports, “mental practice” is an important supplement to actual

practice for improving the reliability and skill level of subsequent per-
formance.32 “Imagined movements,” Neisser concludes, “have a real effect
on subsequent overt behavior. Indeed imagined movement is often car-
ried out deliberately in an effort to improve proficiency in a skill. Many
athletes are convinced that ‘mental practice’ of this kind improves their
performance, and a number of experimental studies substantiate that
opinion.”33
As the psychologist and philosopher Grace de Laguna notes, the ready-
ing may also ensure sustained effort once an action has begun: “. . . this
tendency to anticipate the final stage of an act is not merely to prepare
the organism, but to reinforce the course of action that has been initiated
and to assure its being carried to completion.”34 The effects of readying a
response in advance—quickness off the mark, skill, reliability, sustained-
ness of effort, etc.—can be pictured in terms of the action being “warmed
up” in advance. The physiological mechanism now thought to underlie the
warming-up is “synaptic facilitation.” The abbreviated X-ing exercises and
improves the connections between the neurons involved in actual X-ing,
enabling them to transmit pulses faster and more reliably.35
Action-Based Theories of Thinking (1) 27

Problems with Abbreviation Theory

Like behaviorism, abbreviationism is beset with logical and terminological
confusions and uncertainties. Can we view abbreviated responses as purely
physical events that are objectively describable in trajectorial and/or physi-
ological terms? Or do they require a richer conceptualization—as “actions,”
perhaps? How do they “correspond to” or “correlate with” mental events?
In addition to these uncertainties about the physical or actional status of
abbreviated responses, and about how abbreviated responses relate to
“mental” phenomena, there is also uncertainty as to how abbreviated
responses relate to the behaviors of which they are abbreviations. The the-
oretical basis of abbreviation research—whether in psychology or physiol-
ogy—has never been systematically spelled out.36
Few if any of the “aliases” mentioned earlier can be taken literally. And
the technical term abbreviation on its own is no use. If an action is abbrevi-
ated to the point where little or no overt movement is occurring, then that
action is no longer being performed at all. Notions of “silent speech” are
often invoked in this connection—as with Skinner’s “subaudible speech,”37
Theodore Sarbin’s “muted speech,”38 and Daniel Dennett’s “entirely silent
talking to oneself.”39 Yet the expression silent speech is not only metaphori-
cal but oxymoronic. Silent speaking is a contradiction in terms. Imagined
X-ing is not literally a kind or version of X-ing. It is as much, or more, like
a refraining from X-ing, as Ryle says (see chapter 2 below).
Many abbreviation theorists, aware of the hirsute nature of the abbrevi-
ation concept, appeal also to notions of “internalized” behavior, “inner”
rehearsal, “inner” speech, etc. The fancy of someone’s doing something
inside his head is a very familiar and useful one. However, obviously, it is
as figurative as silent speech. Only metaphorically may one do something
inside one’s head. There is no question of anyone’s literally getting in
there, let alone doing things in there once entry has been gained. Certainly
though, the metaphor is apt. The “abbreviated” doing we are talking about
is in some respects just like doing something behind the scenes, or doing
it “under wraps.” But it is only a metaphor. And “doing in the head” is just
the kind of metaphor that invites back in those notions of goings-on in the
mind that the abbreviationist, as much as the behaviorist, is so keen to
evict.
Clearly, “abbreviated” behavior is a real and familiar phenomenon.
Equally clearly, there are close relations between this “abbreviated” X-ing
28 Chapter 1

and both actual X-ing and imagined X-ing. However, none of the abbrevi-
ation theorists comes close to explaining, in literal terms, just what those
relations are. All the same, abbreviation research has established that these
questions are important. The nature of abbreviated behavior and its rela-
tions to actual doing and imagined doing are things that psychologists and
philosophers of mind should think about.

Ryle’s Adverbial Theory

In addition to his well-known dispositional account of mental concepts in

The Concept of Mind, Ryle advanced two other theories of thinking, neither
of which can be described as behaviorist. These are the “adverbial” theory
and the “refraining” theory. Both identify thinking as not itself a kind of
action but rather as a function of, or meta-operation on, actions. I discuss
the adverbial theory here and the refraining theory in the next chapter.40

Thinking What One Is Doing

According to the adverbial theory, thinking is not a separate action or activ-
ity in its own right; rather, it is the performing of some ordinary activity in
a distinctive “thinking” way. It is performing it “thinkingly.” Ryle claims
that the paradigm case of thinking is “thinking what one is doing.” And
“what one is doing” may be just about anything—anything, that is, that
can be done in a thinking or a thoughtful manner, as opposed to unthink-
ingly or thoughtlessly.
One kind of thinking that looks as if it would be quite resistant to an
adverbial analysis is the kind of motionless, absorbed thinking that Le
Penseur is doing on his rock. Certainly, a behaviorist analysis does not seem
promising. Here, if anywhere, thinking is an actually occurring activity or
process, something that cannot be glossed in terms of dispositions, abilities,
or other “logical constructs.” The thinking is going on right now in front of
us. On the other hand, since he is motionless, there does not seem to be
anything that Le Penseur is doing “thinkingly,” either.
The aim of much of Ryle’s later work is to find out what is going on in
the Penseur case. This makes it somewhat surprising that he opts for the
adverbial theory, with thinking what one is doing as the paradigm of think-
ing. To all appearances what Le Penseur is doing is very different from, say,
what the thinking tennis player intent on getting his shots right and out-
Action-Based Theories of Thinking (1) 29

playing his opponent is doing, and very different from what the absorbed
conversationalist is doing—being thoughtful, inventive, amusing, polite. Le
Penseur is conspicuously not doing anything—apart from thinking.
However, Ryle aims to explain Le Penseur’s thinking on the same model,
as also a case of thinking what one is doing. His aim is “to show that it is
the notion of engaged thinking, like that of the tennis-player or the con-
versationalist, that is the basic notion, while that of disengaged thinking or
reflecting, like that of Le Penseur, is supervenient. The notions of being
pensive and having thoughts do not explain, but need to be explained via,
the notion of intelligently X-ing, where ‘X’ is not a verb of thinking.”41
Ryle claims that the conventional idea of thinking what one is doing is of
person P performing some overt action and accompanying this external per-
formance with a separate internal performance, which is the thinking.
Making a chess move is doing one thing, and thinking about that move is
doing another. Against this, Ryle insists that the thinking is not another
(ghostly, internal) action performed in parallel with the moving of the chess
piece. Rather, it is an adverbial quality of the chess move. The thinking is
“higher-order” than or “parasitic on” the per se action—e.g., the chess
move—but does not constitute a separate performance. Generally, the think-
ing agent “conducts his operation efficiently, and to operate efficiently is not
to perform two operations. It is to perform one operation in a certain man-
ner or with a certain style or procedure. . . .”42 Thus, “to X, thinking what
one is doing, is not to be doing both some X-ing and some separately do-
able Y-ing; it is to be X-ing under a variety of qualifications, such as X-ing on
purpose, with some tentativeness, some vigilance against known hazards,
some perseverance and with at least a modicum of intended or unintended
self-training. It is to X intentionally, experimentally, circumspectly and prac-
ticingly, and these by themselves are not additional things that he is doing
or might be doing.”43 So thinking what one is doing is not a matter of doing
two things in tandem—the overt X-ing, plus some interior thinking-about-
X-ing. Instead, it is a matter of doing the one thing, the X-ing, in a certain
manner. Just one action or activity is in question, not two.
Ryle claims think is really an “adverbial verb,” like obey. One can “obey”
only by performing some infra act of X-ing—washing one’s hands, say, or
getting one’s feet off the table.44 Thinking and obeying are “actions” only in
a formal grammatical sense. They are not themselves doings. They need an
actual, per se, infra action to realize them.
30 Chapter 1

Doing X Heedfully
What manner of X-ing is the “thinking” manner of doing X? How does one
do X “thinkingly”? The adverb Ryle singles out is heedfully. One performs X in
a heedful way. There are other adverbial verbs of thinking,45 but according to
Ryle heed is implicit in all of them. And none of them names a per se action
or activity. Their logical role is supra-actional and adverbial. Each marks a
particular heedful or thinking manner of performing some infra activity.
Ryle says that we judge whether or not person P is doing X in the think-
ing, heedful way by using two kinds of criteria. First, does P have certain dis-
positions and/or abilities? To drive carefully or heedfully is to be prepared
for certain emergencies, to be able to answer questions about the road, and
so on. A connection is thus maintained with the dispositional account. But,
second, to drive heedfully is also to exhibit, while driving, a certain disci-
plined and attentive demeanor. A driver’s “readiness to cope with . . . emer-
gencies would show itself in the operations he would perform, if they were
to occur. But it also does show itself by the ways in which he converses and
handles his controls even when nothing critical is taking place.”46 Although
in his earlier writing Ryle has reservations about this kind of “concurrent
behavioral evidence” of heed,47 by 1979 he has decided on a criterial role for
behavioral evidence, especially in cases where P is learning as he goes. If P’s
performance is improving, and/or he is appropriately admonishing himself
for deficiencies in it, this is conclusive evidence of heed and thinking. Thus,
“if someone is doing something on purpose and is exercising some ordinary
care in doing it; and if, moreover, he is learning something, or at least being
ready to learn something, however minimal, from his successes, failures,
difficulties and facilities, so that he is in fact, if not in intention, tending to
improve as he goes along, we shall not and should not hesitate to say that
he is thinking what he is doing. He himself deplores some of his lapses,
omissions, falterings and inadequacies in epistemic terms of abuse as mis-
takes, misestimates, muddles or at least stupidities.”48

Doing X Self-Teachingly
Some kinds of thinking are more difficult and effortful than others.49 Ryle
is primarily interested in what Le Penseur is doing, and this seems to be at
the more difficult, problem-solving, brow-knitting, pondering, calculating
end of the spectrum. For Ryle, the essence of this kind of thinking is “teach-
ing oneself” how to cope in the problematic situation. It is a matter of self-
Action-Based Theories of Thinking (1) 31

education. Problem-solving involves a “self-teaching” kind of heeding.

“Thinking things out involves saying things to oneself, or to one’s other
companions, with an instructive intent.”50
According to Ryle, in thinking one has to bring one’s past experience as
a pupil to bear. One’s experience as a pupil helps prepare one to be a teacher,
and to be one’s own teacher. Thinking is more than the rote application of
past lessons. A more sophisticated brand of heeding is required. Typically,
the thinker must now apply previously acquired “heuristic techniques” to
new problems and/or in new ways. Thus, “Le Penseur is tentatively, exper-
imentally, suspiciously, and quite likely despondently trying out on himself
expedients, routines, procedures, exercises, curbs and dodges of types which
teachers do employ, not always successfully, when they want to teach
things that they do know to pupils who do not. . . . Naturally my Penseur
knows what it is like to be taught things that he does not know by teachers
who do; and he knows what it is or would be like himself to be the teacher
of some things he knows to others who do not. So now he experimentally
applies to himself, just in case they may turn out to be effective, operations
of the types that are often or sometimes employed effectively by live teach-
ers upon live pupils.”51 Ryle suggests that “we might parody Plato and say
that in thinking the soul is not just conversing or debating with herself; she
is experimentally conveying could-be lessons to herself.”52

But What Infra Action Is Le Penseur Performing?

If Ryle has satisfactorily characterized “thinking what one is doing,” can
what the motionless Penseur is doing be explained as a variant or derivative
of it? In particular, what is the infra X-ing in the Penseur case? “I have,”
Ryle confesses, “said nothing about what Le Penseur is engaged in, that is,
about the person who is engaged in the thinking of thoughts. He is surely
so meditating, reflecting, pondering or thinking that the report “he is
thinking” is not an unfinished adverbial report. . . . The notion of thinking
what one is doing does not amount to any of the notions of for example
meditating, reflecting, examining, deliberating, pondering or calculating.
The telephone interrupts the typist’s attentive and careful typing; but it
interrupts Le Penseur’s attentive and careful thinking.”53 He confesses that
“we now seem to be stumped to nominate any . . . autonomous X-ing or
X-ings such that Le Penseur must be X-ing more or less exploratively, ten-
tatively, pertinaciously, pugnaciously, scrupulously or cannily.”54 However,
32 Chapter 1

he does suggest possible X-ings for Le Penseur to be doing. If Le Penseur is

composing a tune or a speech, solving a problem of arithmetic, or prepar-
ing a chess move, then he may well be respectively fingering piano keys or
humming tentatively, uttering or muttering part-sentences out loud, jotting
down numbers, or moving a chess piece experimentally and without letting
it go. On the other hand, these are straightforward cases of thinking what
one is doing, to which the adverbial story straightforwardly applies. Tune-
playing, speech-making, sum-solving, and chess-piece-moving are all overt
actions, performed (albeit in fragments) tentatively, experimentally, mind-
fully, and self-instructively.
Certainly, Le Penseur might be doing such things and doing them heed-
fully. It is true that “the sealing of the lips is no part of the definition of
thinking. A man may think aloud or half under his breath; he may think
silently yet with lip-movements conspicuous enough to be read by a lip-
reader. . . .”55 And it is true that “the child, told to think again, is not dis-
obeying if he mutters audibly, ‘Seven times seven is forty-nine, nine and
carry four.’”56 However, it is also true that none of these are things the
thinker must do while thinking. They are optional. The thinker might just
as well, “as most of us have done since nursery-days, think in silence and
with motionless lips.”57 At any rate, there seem to be no action fragments
which the rockbound Penseur is heedfully performing.
Ryle offers other candidate X-ings—such as brow-knittings, beard-
tuggings, cheek-scratchings, mouth puckerings, other facial expressings, chin-
supportings, breath-holdings, sighings, groanings, gazings heavenward, and
stayings stock-still. Certainly another Penseur might be doing things such
as these. Only, for two reasons, they cannot be the X-ings that are being
done heedfully and self-teachingly. First, far from being done heedfully,
such behavioral epiphenomena of thinking are typically “done” at best
half-consciously. Second, like the fragmentary X-ings mentioned above,
they are dispensable.
In his final attempt to reconcile the fact that Le Penseur is thinking but
conspicuously not doing any X-ing, Ryle is reduced to postulating intra-
cranial X-ings, doings in the head. There is no other way he can identify an
infra activity for Le Penseur to be engaged in thinkingly. He brazens it out:
“It does not matter whether Le Penseur actually draws his diagrams on
paper, or visualizes them as so drawn; and it does not matter whether in his
quasi-posing his on appro [on-approval] Socratic questions to himself he
Action-Based Theories of Thinking (1) 33

speaks these aloud, mutters them under his breath, or only As-If mutters
them on his mind’s tongue.”58
Ryle’s use of the phrase on his mind’s tongue suggests that he wants to
make light of his appeal to the doing-in-the-head idiom. However, in the
absence of any other likely X-ing for Le Penseur to be doing, he is having
to rely on it.59 Ryle well knows that talk of intracranial doings is metaphor-
ical,60 and he cannot say that “it does not matter whether” one does the X-
ing overtly or in the head, as if there are two kinds of X-ing here. “X-ing in
the head” is not a kind of X-ing.
Ryle’s argument for the adverbial theory and the numerous examples he
discusses at least establish that heed and self-teaching are of the essence in
thinking what one is doing. And Ryle does establish that thinking what one
is doing, heedful X-ing, is derivative of educative activity. Plausibly, heed-
ing is originally a joint enterprise. And Ryle begins to answer the very
important question of how this earlier educative experience is brought to
bear in subsequent solo action. His suggestion that earlier lessons are some-
how reprised in the heedful and self-teaching manner in which the solo
agent is X-ing is a valuable initial contribution.
However, Ryle’s application of the adverbial account to “just thinking” is
not convincing. There is heedful X-ing and, some way down the road
toward just thinking, there is heedful doing of fragments of X. Further
down the road, the X-ing stops getting done in any form. At this point, Ryle
resorts to metaphor and his adverbial analysis fails. Just thinking is not a
special case of heedful X-ing. It is not a case of X-ing at all. The kind of
thinking Le Penseur is doing on the rock consists in the performance—
perhaps the heedful performance—of some other, unobservable, activity,
which Ryle does not identify. Admittedly though, this other unspecified
activity is in some obscure way like X-ing.
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S PAW N O F T H E D E S E RT
SPAWN OF THE DESERT
BY
W. C. TUTTLE

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK

GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., Inc.
1924
 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES

AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
SPAWN OF THE DESERT
 CONTENTS

Chapter Page
I 1
II 30
III 35
IV 42
V 57
VI 67
VII 86
 SPAWN OF THE DESERT

T HE Mohave Indians have a legend of the Calico Mountains and their

origin. According to their beliefs, the Great Spirit finished the big
task of making the world at this spot.
The desert was the final work of the Great Spirit, and he was much
pleased; but in his arms he held a big jumble of rocks, sand and
pigments, which were left from the great work. The world was all
made and very good to look upon, so he had no place for this extra
material.
To get rid of it he simply dropped it at his feet in a mass, and the
many-hued pigments spilled over it until the whole was as a bright-
hued piece of cloth.
Thus, according to the Indians, was formed these mountains, which
are but a jumble of barren rocks, rising sheer from the level desert;
scourged through the centuries by the desert sun, wind and sand—an
unfading proof that, unlike man, the Great Spirit painted deeper than
the surface.
But with all their gaudy colors in the sun, these mountains, at night,
are black silhouettes, which appear to be without breadth or
thickness; or broken into misty, hazy, unreal piles in the moonlight.
On all sides the desert stretches away to the haze of nothingness—
a land of the mirage; scenes which the jealous desert steals from arid
lands and holds up to the eyes of desert men to lure them on. Cities,
rivers, lakes, with cool, nodding palms, rippling brooks, which seem
only a few feet away, then fade out to show a waste of dust-gray
mesquite, which rattles in the hot winds, Joshua-trees, with their
agonized arms—and sand. Always the sand.
 On a rocky plateau of this painted range stood a town—one street
of adobe shacks, paved with the solid rock of the mountain. Even the
houses were tinted with fantastic colors, where the clay had been
mixed with the muck of the silver mines.
At the upper end of the street the cliffs arose sheer for several
hundred feet, like gaudy drapes of calico. At the lower end was a
succession of broken ledges, which sloped off to the desert, where
the winding trails came in from the rest of the world.
To the left of the town was a deep, rocky gorge, so grotesque in
formation that it did not appear to be a work of nature. There were
natural stone bridges, caves, barriers—unreal in color and design, as
though a child-minded giant had modeled them in colored clay and
left them to harden in the blistering sun.
This was the residence section of Calico Town, and was known as
Sunshine Alley. Just below where the Alley opened onto the desert, on
a slight rise of ground, full in the glare of the sun, and with no
protection from the ever-sifting sand, was the graveyard, which was
known as Hell’s Depot. Not a blade of grass, not even a spray of sage
grew here. The ground was a mass of small stones, seemingly laid
close together like tiles, but showing patterns in colors that would put
any man-made mosaic to shame.
One foot deep was the limit of the graves, as the rock below that
depth was glass-like flint, but what the graves lacked in depth was
made up in height. The mounds of rock were piled until one might
believe that the corpse had been of gigantic proportions, or that the
sexton wished to preclude any chance of the dead coming back in
material form.
Such was Calico in the early ’fifties, when men were gold- and
silver-mad. A town of thirty-five hundred population—a population
which lived in caves, hollowed places in Sunshine Alley, or picked a
corner in the rock and builded a rock barrier around them. This gave
a roofless dwelling, but rain did not come to Calico, so there was no
need for roofs. Water was worth more than whiskey, and morals were
as scarce as orchids.
 Just now a funeral was in progress, or rather, had been in progress.
The corpse was there in the rough casket; the grave was dug and the
pall-bearers stood aside, reverently holding their hats in their hands.
Clustered around was a cosmopolitan mining-camp audience. Frock-
coated, tall-hatted gamblers rubbed elbows with muck-stained miners.
Calico-clad wives of miners, children, dogs, and even a group of
burros poked onto the flat to add their faces to the mournful
proceedings.
Up the desert trail came two men and a lightly-packed burro; all of
them gray with the dust and heat. The one who led the caravan was a
mighty, weatherbeaten man, with a long, white beard. In appearance
he might have been a saint. Surely he could not be a sinner, with the
eyes of a dreamer, the nose of a prophet and the beard of a saint; but
nature does queer things to disappoint students of physiognomy.
The other man was also tall. His face showed him to be about thirty
years of age—a face seemingly hewed from stone, although
handsome in its stern mold. His hair was black and he wore it low
between his cheek and ear. There was the free, easy swing to his
walk, like the half-lope of a desert wolf.
The patriarch halted the caravan on the trail, just short of the street
end, and gazed across at the funeral. The younger man glanced over
there, with little show of interest.
“Duke,” the old man jerked his head toward the graveyard, “I
reckon they’re plantin’ somebody. Let’s me and you go over.”
They left their burro on the trail and crossed over, attracting little
attention. The crowd seemed to be waiting for someone. Two men
were standing near the grave, talking earnestly. Suddenly one of them
looked up and saw the newcomers. He walked abruptly away from his
companion and halted a few feet from the white-bearded man.
“Podner, by yore whiskers yo’re a preacher; are yuh?”
The bearded one’s right hand came up and slowly stroked the white
mass of hair, which hung nearly to his waist-line.
 “By my beard,” nodded the old man slowly, which neither affirmed
nor denied in fact, but seemed to bring joy to the heart of his
questioner, who turned on his heel, facing the crowd.
“Folks, we’re playin’ in luck. The funeral will proceed jist like nothin’
happened extraordinary.”
“Just a moment, pardner,” said the bearded one, “What happens to
be the matter?”
“Not a damn thing,” laughed the man. “We needed a preacher
awful bad—you showed up. There yuh are!”
“Have you no preacher?”
“We did have. Yessir, we shore had a reg’lar one, and he was plumb
tidy and slick on funerals—yessir. But he forgot himself complete-like
last night when he ’lowed there wasn’t no honest rules of averages,
which gives him small cards all the time, while ‘Ace’ Ault get nothin’
smaller than kings-up in ten deals.”
“Hm-m-m,” the white bearded one almost smiled, “Where is this
poker-playin’ preacher now?”
“Well, hell’s delight!” grunted the other. “He’s in the casket! We
plumb forgot that he couldn’t say his own oration. That’s where you
comes in handy, like a gun in a boot.”
The patriarch’s head turned slightly and his eyes flashed to the face
of his companion, who was regarding him with stony countenance,
although the eyes twitched slightly at the outer corners, a sure sign
that Duke Steele was greatly amused.
The bearded one crossed to the grave and looked down at the
rough coffin, while the audience moved in closer. A burro brayed
raucously and two more of the long-eared beasts added their brazen
throats to the racket. A miner heaved a rock against the ribs of the
nearest beast, and the animal clattered away for a few jumps, looking
back solemnly, sadly.
“Friends,” the bearded man’s voice was deep and musical, as he
lifted his bared head and let his eyes travel around the assemblage,
“friends, I have been asked to say a few words over the mortal
remains of one of God’s anointed; a man who has labored in this land
of sin and sinners that the Gospel might be brought home to you all.
He was fearless in his righteousness; a guide, friend and spiritual
counselor.
“He is with you no more, except in spirit, but his many good works
will live long after his name has been forgotten. I can see him now—a
bulwark of strength to the weak, a solace to the suffering and a friend
to all mankind. I can see him——”
“Wait a moment, parson,” interrupted the man who had asked the
bearded one to deliver the sermon. He stepped forward, hat in hand,
clearing his throat apologetically. “I ain’t no hand to stop a feller from
sayin’ what he thinks; but did you know ‘Preacher Bill’ Bushnell?”
The old man shook his head.
“No, I did not know him, friend.”
“I didn’t reckon yuh did, parson. We did. I believe in sayin’
everythin’ good yuh can fer a dead man, but there ain’t no use of yuh
lyin’ to us about Preacher Bill.”
The old man glanced down at the coffin, lifted his head slowly and
nodded.
“If the Lord is willing, I will take back what I said about him, and
start all over again. Wasn’t he your minister? Did he not labor among
you?”
“He preached,” admitted a bearded miner seriously, and added,
“when he was sober enough. He owed everybody in Calico, and if he
left any good works he sure had ’em cached where nobody’ll ever find
’em.”
The bearded man nodded slowly and cleared his throat.
“Under those conditions, friends, I suppose I might as well keep
away from personalities, and stick to the ordinary burial service. Has
anyone a Bible?”
 The assemblage looked at each other and back at the bearded one.
“Preacher Bill had one—once,” stated a frock-coated gambler. “I
dunno what he done with it. If you’re a preacher where is your Bible?”
The bearded one glanced quickly at the gambler and held out his
hand.
“Let me have a deck of cards, will you?”
“Cards?” queried the gambler, “I have no cards.”
“Then you are no better heeled than I am, partner. I have no Bible,
you have no cards.” He leaned down and placed a hand on the rough
casket.
“Preacher Bill, I wish I had known you well enough to have
something to say about you. No doubt you were a hard drinker, of
very little value to any community, and showed poor judgment in
objecting audibly against a run of bad poker luck, but no man can live
through childhood and well into life’s narrow span without doing some
good—leaving somebody better for having known you. Let him who is
without sin cast the first stone. Good-by, Preacher Bill.”
The bearded man straightened up and looked at the crowd.
“Friends, I ask you to try and remember the good things he has
done and forget the bad. We are all children of circumstance. The
Bible says, ‘The son of man goeth as it is written of him.’
“Whether or not this means that our destiny is all written out in the
good book, I do not know. Perhaps poor Preacher Bill merely traveled
according to what had been written of him—powerless to do
otherwise. Shall we say that he was unfit? I think that is all I can say.”
“Parson,” one of the miners stepped out of the crowd and held out
his hand to the old man, “if you start a church here, I’ll sure as hell go
to hear yuh preach.”
The old man smiled sadly, shook hands with several of the miners
and turned back to where Duke Steele stood. They looked closely at
each other, turned and went back to their burro, without a word;
while the mortal remains of Preacher Bill Bushnell were lowered one
foot deep into Hell’s Depot and piled high with heavy stones.
“Le Saint,” said Duke Steele, as they plodded toward the street, “I
wonder what will be said over your remains?”
The old man turned his head and glanced back toward the group at
the cemetery.
“I wonder, Duke. Perhaps I shall be lucky enough to have my
funeral oration spoken by a man who did not know me any better
than I knew Preacher Bill. Will he say, ‘This is Paget Le Saint,’ or will
he say ‘The Saint?’ I wonder. Still, what should I care, Duke?”
“Damn little difference it makes, after a man’s dead,” nodded Duke
Steele.
“True as Gospel, Duke. Life is the only thing that interests me;
death I know nothing about—nor care.”
And the Saint spoke truly, when he said he did not care; for the
Saint was a fatalist, a gambler, who staked his life against other men’s
gold. Just as surely as Kidd and Morgan were pirates of the seas, the
Saint was a pirate of the Desert, whose appearance belied his calling.
Men seemed to speak softly in his presence, as though awed by the
majesty of his face and great white beard. Oaths never passed his lips
and no man had ever seen him take a drink of liquor. He censured no
man for doing evil, and his open philosophy of life fitted in well with
the rough lands of the West.
No man, except Duke Steele, knew the real business of the Saint,
and he knew only because they were of a kind. Duke Steele was a
gunman, a killer, a gambler, and he, alone, knew that the Saint was all
of these. An old wolf in the raiment of a sheep; as resourceful and
dangerous as an old wolf, and with the brain of a Solomon.
But no man, not excepting Duke Steele, knew anything more about
the Saint than they had observed from contact with him, for he
confided in no man. He had wandered much, and at times would
mention distant parts of the country.
 Names seemed to interest him greatly—names of men. It was as
though he was always searching for a certain name, which he could
only remember by hearing it spoken. Duke Steele wondered at times
if the Saint was not just a trifle insane.
For he was a strange personality at times; given to brooding,
violence, turning in a flash to extreme kindness and good humor. He
often spoke his own name, as though mocking himself. But of his
ancestry, his early life, he made no mention.
Duke Steele had been one of his gang in a raid on the Cohise
mines, which had been skilfully planned and executed, and without
the loss of a man.
Three weeks before the Saint’s outfit had boasted of twelve men.
Where the other ten were now could only be told by a bunch of
Apaches, who ambushed them beyond the Colorado. The Saint and
Duke Steele were the only ones to escape.
The plunder of the Cohise mining camp had been taken by the
Indians, and the Saint and Steele were forced to be content with
saving their lives and one burro. But Steele was an optimist and the
Saint did not care for money. It meant nothing to him.
Men believed him insane, at times, because of his total disregard
for wealth. He would nurse a sick man with all the tenderness of a
woman, or kill a malcontent with the cold-bloodedness of a tiger. But
travel, he must. His eyes ever turned toward the hills, as though he
was wondering what was on the other side. A prospector had told
them of Calico, and to Calico they had come, with not a drop of water
nor a crumb of food left.
“The Lord must be looking out for us,” observed Duke Steele, as
they herded their burro up the main street.
“Fate,” corrected the Saint. “The Lord has nothing to do with this
place, Duke. It looks like the devil might have located it, did one or
two assessments, and relinquished it on account of the heat.”
A man crossed the street ahead of them and the Saint stopped him
with the question, “Friend, can you tell us where we may find
lodging?”
“Lodging?” The man parroted the word. “There ain’t a hotel in
Calico. Better see Sleed, I reckon. Since Preacher Bill got killed there’s
a vacant hole in Sunshine Alley, and maybe yuh can rent it from
Sleed.”
“And who is Sleed?” asked the Saint.
“Who?” The man looked curiously at them. “Yuh must be strangers
in this part of the country if yuh don’t know who Sleed is. He’s the big
man around here.
“Owns the Silver Bar saloon over there, and owns the California at
Cactus City. Owns the Lady Slipper and the Nola mines, which are the
biggest producers here. Sleed was one of the original locators, and he
sure does own this town, y’betcha.”
“He owns the hole yuh spoke about?” queried Steele.
“Yep—owns most all of the Alley. You just ask for Silver Sleed over
at the Silver Bar saloon. ’S funny yuh never heard of Silver Sleed.”
“No doubt,” nodded the Saint. “Our sources of information appear
very lax in not apprising us of this great personage. Still, it is never
too late to meet the great. We both thank you, friend.”
The Saint turned the burro toward the front of the Silver Bar
saloon, while their informant shuffled his feet in the gravel street and
wondered whether or not the old patriarch was making fun of him.
The Saint was not over fifty years of age, but looked seventy.
Silver Sleed was a giant of a man, with a great black beard, which
grew almost to his eyes; eyes that reflected a greenish light, like the
sheen of jade. He wore his hair long, after the fashion of the time,
and his clothes were a trifle extreme, but befitted his occupation and
position as the richest and most powerful man in the country. The law
had never penetrated the Calico hills, so Silver Sleed set himself up as
judge and arbiter, from which there was no appeal. In all cases which
did not directly or indirectly affect himself or his interests, he was fair
in his decisions.
 The Silver Bar saloon was not a pretentious place, being one story
high, built of adobe, but it was the largest building in Calico. The floor
space was about forty feet wide by sixty feet deep, which was taken
up by a long bar, gambling layouts and a dance floor. It was the only
saloon in Calico, which was conclusive evidence that Sleed owned the
town.
Calico spoke many languages, but among this polyglot of tongues,
only one, Louie Yen, spoke Chinese. Sleed did not like Chinese, so he
limited the camp to Louie Yen, who was a “velly good laundly—
yessum.” Louie was so old that he claimed to remember the time
when Ruby Hill was nothing but a hole in the ground; old and very
wise, after his own fashion.
But no man may rule a community without assistance. Sleed
surrounded himself with a few trusted men, who were paid for doing
certain things without asking the why and wherefore; men who might
be undesirable to a village of God-fearing folk, but passing unnoticed
in Calico, where, according to the parlance of Sunshine Alley,
everything went, except the cook-stove and one joint of pipe.
Just now Sleed was standing with his back to the bar, in the saloon,
his eyes squinted, as though in deep thought. Beside him stood a
slender, dark-featured man, dressed in the habiliments of the
professional gambler. His black eyes were sullen and shifty, and his
long fingers moved nervously at his sides, as he flashed a sidewise
glance at Sleed.
“That’s your idea of a square deal, is it, Sleed?”
Sleed turned his head and looked coldly at the gambler.
“Ace Ault, this ain’t no deal. You killed Preacher Bill because—well,
not because he said yuh dealt a crooked game, but because yuh was
jealous.”
“Jealous, hell!” snapped Ault. “He said——”
“I know what he said,” interrupted Sleed coldly. “It gave yuh the
chance yuh wanted, Ault. Preacher Bill was a dirty old bum and his
tongue was against him, but he was educatin’ Luck. He was smart,
and he was learnin’ her a lot of things. She liked him.”
“And because I protected my honor against his lying tongue I’ve got
to leave the camp, eh?” queried Ault sarcastically.
“Honor?” Sleed laughed into his beard. “Honor? Good God, when
did a tinhorn like you get any honor?”
Ault’s face went a trifle darker, and he lifted his hands to a level
with his waist.
“You travel muy pronto ,” snapped Sleed. “Better go north, Ault, so
yuh won’t have any reason even to pass Calico town again.”
“Think so?” snapped Ault. His right hand flashed up from under his
coat. From across the room came the jarring thud of a pistol shot,
and Ault jerked back, firing his pistol a foot over Sleed’s head. For a
moment Ault’s eyes shifted around the room, as he grasped at the bar
for support, half-turned toward the door and fell sprawling.
One of Sleed’s men came slowly across the room, pistol in hand,
watching Ault closely. Sleed’s expression had not changed.
“Quick work, Loper,” he said softly. Loper nodded and shoved his
gun back into its holster.
Just then the Saint and Duke Steele came into the door. Sleed
looked at them indifferently, and motioned for some more men to
assist in carrying Ault’s body out of the place. The Saint and Steele
stood aside and watched the men file out.
“Silver Sleed?” asked Steele.
Sleed looked at him for a moment; glanced toward the door as he
nodded. Some of the men who had been at the graveyard were
coming in, looking curiously back at the men carrying Ace Ault.
“We’re lookin’ for a place to live in,” said Steele. “A man told us to
see Silver Sleed.”
“Yeah?” Sleed squinted at the Saint and back to Steele.
“Whatcha goin’ to do in Calico?”
 “You didn’t expect an answer to that, did yuh?” asked Steele, with a
smile.
Sleed grunted softly. One of the men from the graveyard stepped in
and spoke to Sleed.
“The graybeard’s a preacher, Sleed. He said a few things for
Preacher Bill, and they was damn well said, after he got put right.”
Sleed looked at the Saint curiously, and found the Saint looking
straight at him. Something in that glance seemed to bother Sleed. It
was as though this tall, white-bearded, hawk-eyed man was peering
into things that Sleed did not want anyone to see. Sleed glanced
down at the floor for a moment and nodded.
“I reckon there’s places to live in. Yuh can have Preacher Bill’s place
or yuh can have—” Sleed looked up and glanced toward the door—“I
think yuh can have the place where Ace Ault lived.”
“We both thank you, sir.” The Saint’s voice boomed like the deep
notes of a pipe-organ.
Sleed glanced quickly at him and saw that the Saint’s eyes were
closed, as though he had shut out material things while he thought
deeply.
“I’ll show ’em the places, Sleed.”
It was the miner who had offered to come to church in case the
Saint would do the preaching. Sleed nodded and turned back to the
bar, but he watched the three men go out of the door.
“Loper, who are them two men?” he asked.
“I dunno.” Loper shook his head.
“Find out.”
Sleed turned back to the bar and called for whiskey. For some
unknown reason he was worried. The killing of Ault amounted to
nothing. He discarded that as a possible reason for his unrest. Was it
the white-bearded man? Sleed scowled at his glass of liquor for a
moment and placed it back on the bar untasted.
 II

T HE Saint and Steele found that there was little choice between the
two dwellings, but they selected the one made vacant by the
death of Preacher Bill. It was a roofless, windowless, rock hut about
ten feet square, built in an angle of the canyon which supplied two of
the walls. An open fireplace was used for cooking, and the utensils
were either placed on rock shelves or on the ground.
Preacher Bill’s blankets were still spread from his last night’s sleep,
but the larder was empty.
“I reckon yuh can get along,” said their guide. “I’m Jim Cates, but
most everybody calls me ‘Mica.’ ’S I said before, if yuh start preachin’,
I’m goin’ t’ have a front seat.”
He started away, but turned back.
“Say, if yuh get a call to speak over the remains of Ace Ault, I can
tell yuh a few things to make yore oration easier. Ault was crooked as
a snake in a cactus patch. He never——”
Mica Cates stopped talking and cleared his throat. A girl had come
up near the doorway and was looking at them. She was about twenty
years of age, fairly well dressed. A pair of big, brown eyes, misty with
tears, looked at them from a cameo-like face, which was framed in a
mass of brown hair. Her cheeks were streaked with tear-marks and
her lips quivered as she looked around. Then she turned, without a
word, and disappeared around the canyon wall.
“Sleed’s daughter,” said Cates softly. “Her name is Nola, but Sleed
said she was his luck so many times that everybody calls her Luck.”
“Been cryin’,” said Steele wonderingly.
“Uh-huh. Mebbe yuh didn’t see her down to Hell’s Depot. She was
there. I reckon she was the only one to care about Preacher Bill. Yuh
see, she ain’t had no chance to learn book teachin’s, until Preacher
Bill took to learnin’ her. He was eddicated a lot, and she sure wanted
to learn.”
Steele nodded. “She’s a mighty pretty girl, Cates.”
“And ’nother thing,” said Cates softly, “yuh don’t want to have
nothin’ t’ do with her. Sleed’s a killer, where Luck’s concerned. Mebbe
that’s one reason why Ault got a ticket for the Depot. Jist let her alone
and don’t cross Silver Sleed, and you’ll git along here. What did yuh
say yore names was?”
The Saint held out his hand and Cates shook hands with him,
flinching from the crushing grip of the Saint’s hand.
“We both thank you, Mica Cates,” boomed the Saint. “If I preach in
Calico town I shall deem it a pleasure to see you in the front row.”
Mica Cates bobbed his head and hurried away. He flexed his right
hand and shook his head.
“My Gawd, I never knowed a preacher with a grip like that—nossir!
I didn’t find out their names and I’m danged if I’d ever ask any man
twice.”
Cates climbed back up the rocky trail to the street, where he met
Loper.
“Where did they hole up?” asked Loper.
“Preacher Bill’s place.”
“Ask ’em their names, Mica?”
“Y’betcha, I did.”
“What names did they give yuh?”
Mica Cates glanced back down the trail, wiped the perspiration off
his brow with the back of his hand.
“They ain’t givin’ away names, I reckon.”
“Yuh asked ’em, didn’t yuh?” snapped Loper angrily.
“Y’betcha, I did. Mebbe they didn’t hear me—I dunno.”
 Loper hitched up his belt and strode back to the street. It was very
hot and he had no desire to climb down into Sunshine Alley and argue
about names.
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