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| Summary | Intentionality is an important part of the classic mind-body problem, and naturalists need to give an account of it. This should include an explanation for how mental states can have contents, both propositional and non-propositional. Many types of reductive explanations have been proposed, but none widely accepted. The two most popular are 1) accounts somehow based on causal connections or information-carrying regularities between mental representations and their referents or truth conditions, and 2) functionalist type "conceptual role" or "causal role" accounts based on causal connections among mental states and/or mental representations, possibly extending into the world as well. Two less popular approaches are 3) success semantics (according to which truth conditions are determined by success in some sense) and 4) resemblance theories (whereby representations denote by means of resemblance of some sort, e.g. isomorphism). Teleology, usually in the form of evolutionary function, may be brought in to solve problems that arise for any of the above, particularly in order to solve "disjunction problems" like allowing for the possibility of error and misrepresentation. The "phenomenal intentionality" strategy is a new kid on the block, and there are non-reductive approaches as well, including non-reductive versions of the foregoing, as well as interpretivism (content is determined by constrained possibilities for interpretation) and deflationism (claims about mental state content are largely trivial and uninformative). |
| Key works | Many of these ideas can be traced back to Stampe 1977. The most influential causal/informational approaches are Dretske 1981 (with teleology added in his 1986) and Fodor's asymmetric dependance variant Fodor 1987. Classic sources for conceptual or causal role semantics include Block 1986 and Harman 1987. Millikan 1984 presents the most influential teleological theory; her account blends teleology, resemblance (isomorphism), and success semantics. For interpretivism, see Dennett 1971 and Davidson 1973, and for phenomenal intentionality see Horgan & Tienson 2002. |
| Introductions | The Stich & Warfield 1994 introductory collection has not yet been superseded, and Eco et al 1988 is an older but still excellent book-length introduction to the subject. Two recent general reviews are Rupert 2008 and Ryder 2009. For introductions to specific approaches, see the following: Information-based: Cohen 2002; Causal (not including information-based): Adams & Aizawa 2010; Conceptual/causal role semantics: Block 1996; Teleological: Schulte & Neander 2022; Interpretivism: Byrne 1998. |
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- The Inflationary Commitments of a Deflationary Theory of Representation.Ayoob Shahmoradi - forthcoming - Philosophy and the Mind Sciences.Frances Egan's deflationary theory of mental representation aims to secure a naturalistic basis for computational explanation in cognitive science—the “theory proper”—by treating representational talk as a merely pragmatic “gloss” rather than as part of the theory proper itself. I argue that this division ultimately collapses. The indeterminacy argument motivating the turn to pragmatism fails, the alleged divide between mathematical and cognitive content is unstable, and the naturalistic theory proper is itself built upon the intentional resources it is meant to exclude. (...)
- Meaning as the Mark of Mind: A Philosophical Case for the Irreducibility of Mind.Emanuel B. David - 2026This work argues that the apprehension of meaning entails a real ontological distinction between mind and body. Beginning from the phenomenological fact that human beings do not merely register the world but encounter it as meaningful, the work distinguishes meaning-as-such from signal, syntax, utility, affect, and bodily process. It then argues that understanding cannot be reduced to processing, since the grasp of meaning involves significance, truth, normativity, and first-person presence in a way not exhausted by functional or causal description. From (...)
- Abnormal Psychobiology: A thesis on the 'anti-psychiatry debate' and the relationship between psychology and biology.Karen Neander - 1983 - Dissertation, La Trobe UniversityAbnormal Psychobiology provides a comprehensive philosophical analysis of the anti-psychiatry discourse and the relationship between psychology and biology. Part I diagnoses a methodological problem in disputes over "mental illness" and the "medical model": arguments often conflate conceptual claims about illness and dysfunction with moral and political critiques of psychiatric practice. The text proposes bracketing the political dimension (without denying it) to clarify the explanatory commitments of the medical model. Part II develops an etiological theory of biological function and dysfunction and (...)
- Teleological Theories of Mental Content.Peter Schulte & Karen Neander - 2004 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- The Quality of Thought by David Pitt. [REVIEW]Angela Mendelovici - 2025 - European Journal of Philosophy 33 (4).European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.
- Blunting concepts: The double-edged effect of popularizing psychotherapy language.Manuel Almagro & Carme Isern-Mas - forthcoming - Philosophical Psychology.The increasing presence of mental health-related language in everyday conversations gives rise to a worth-exploring tension: while it can enhance mental health literacy and provide individuals with hermeneutical resources to understand and articulate their experiences, it also risks distorting or trivializing these resources, ultimately contributing to hermeneutical injustice. This paper examines this tension from a practice-focused approach to meaning. We argue that the widespread use of mental health-related language stems from two distinct linguistic practices: mental health-speak, which aims to promote (...)
- Millikan vs. Millikan: biosemantics and the role of the consumer.Peter Schulte - 2025 - Synthese 206 (3):1-14.Millikan’s biosemantics is commonly characterized as a “consumer theory” of representational content. Proponents of this characterization interpret Millikan as privileging representation consumers over representation producers in her account of content determination. However, Millikan herself rejects this interpretation and claims to give producers and consumers equal weight in her theory. In this paper, I propose to resolve this issue by arguing that there are actually two Millikanian theories of content, a consumer theory that is explicitly formulated in her earlier work and (...)
- ¿Intencionalidad colectiva, o conducta regida por patrones?Miguel Cabrera Machado - 2022 - In Manuel Bermúdez Vázquez, El reto del pensamiento: ensayos sobre filosofía, cultura y sociedad. Córdoba: Ediciones Egregius.Las teorías que propugnan la denominada intencionalidad colectiva tienen como fuentes principales los planteamientos de Wilfrid Sellars (1956, 1967) y de John Searle (1994, 1995, 2009). El primero propuso un tipo de estado mental denominado we-intentions, o “intención en modo nosotros”, según el cual el comportamiento intrínsecamente moral estaría caracterizado por un modo de pensamiento comunitario, el cual no sería ego centrado, y que se dirigiría a la búsqueda del bien común. El modo de pensamiento comunitario no estaría conformado por (...)
- Referring Without Individuating the Referent.Ayoob Shahmoradi - 2024 - Philosophical Quarterly.A theory of reference attributed to Frege, Russell, and others holds that referring to an object requires the ability to uniquely individuate it. According to a famous story told around campfires on winter nights, a group of young revolutionaries, led by Kripke and Donnellan, was destined to tear down the Frege–Russell edifice of reference—and indeed, they did. Reflecting the spirit of the 60s and 70s, this makes for a compelling tale. However, the truth is that what these young revolutionaries actually (...)
- Are Plants Representational Systems?Peter Schulte - 2024 - In Gabriele Ferretti, Peter Schulte & Markus Wild, Philosophy of Plant Cognition: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Routledge.
- Relational Ontology and Cosmic Consciousness: A Unified Framework for Scientific Explanation.Bautista Baron - manuscriptThis paper develops a unified ontological framework that reconciles scientific realism and empiricism through the lens of relational ontology. Building on structural realism and information theory, it proposes that existence is grounded in relational structures rather than in substantial entities. This framework is applied to the study of consciousness, offering a naturalistic account in which subjective experience arises from cosmic-scale organizational complexity and self-referential dynamics. Integrating thermodynamic and information-theoretic principles, the paper positions consciousness as a natural continuation of cosmic evolutionary (...)
- The debate on continuity between the waking and dreaming minds.Marina Trakas & Kaylee Miceli - forthcoming - In de Brigard Felipe & Sinnott-Armstrong Walter, Neuroscience and Philosophy. Vol. 2. MIT Press.In the film Dark City, mysterious pale-skinned creatures rearrange a city and alter the inhabitants’ identities and memories each night. Every morning, residents awaken in a different city with new identities, unaware of what changed while they slept. Though fictional, this scenario seems to mirror an intriguing aspect of our lives—not when we wake up, but when we go to sleep. Each night, as we dream, we often find ourselves in strange environments, experiencing unrealistic or implausible events, intense negative emotions, (...)Find it on Amazon.com (collection)Remove from this list Direct downloadExport citationBookmark 1 citation
- (1 other version)Fregean Particularism.Susanna Schellenberg - 2025 - In Peter van Elswyk, Dirk Kindermann, Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini & Andy Egan, Unstructured Content. Oxford University Press.In this chapter, Susanna Schellenberg develops a new understanding of singular modes of presentation. According to Fregean Particularism, singular modes of presentation are generated by the mental capacities employed that bring about the relevant mental state and the objects or features in the world (if any) thereby singled out. Consequently, modes of presentation can be individuated at the level of content types and token contents. Content types are individuated by the capacities employed. Content tokens are individuated by the capacities employed (...)Find it on Amazon.com (collection)Remove from this list Direct download (2 more)Export citationBookmark
- Can structural correspondences ground real world representational content in Large Language Models?Iwan Williams - 2026 - Mind and Language.Basic large language models (LLMs) have no direct contact with extra-linguistic reality: Their inputs, outputs and training data consist solely of text. Can they represent the world beyond that text, nevertheless? This paper considers whether LLMs represent real-world domains partly thanks to structural correspondences between their internal states and those domains. I clarify the requirements for a structural correspondence to play a genuinely content-grounding role, and argue (i) that it is a live empirical possibility that text-based LLMs meet those requirements (...)
- Legislative Intent and the Hard Problem of Content.Krzysztof Poslajko - 2025 - Law and Philosophy 44 (3):327-356.The general aim of this paper is to investigate how philosophical problems with the notion of mental content affect the debate about legislative intent. Specifically, the aim is to define and criticize the metaphysically strongest-possible version of realism about legislative intent, namely “Strong Realism”: the idea that the content of legislation is objectively determined by legislatures that are treated as irreducible group agents that are bearers of corporate, functionalist intentions. Against this view, it will be argued that legislatures are insufficiently (...)
- Three Roads from Sensory Awareness to Dualism.Brian Cutter - forthcoming - Philosophia.In this commentary on Neil Mehta's excellent book, A Pluralist Theory of Perception, I argue that Mehta's commitments lead to dualism. To this end, I give three arguments against physicalism that centrally rely on claims Mehta accepts. Since the relevant claims are highly plausible, the three arguments give everyone, not just Mehta, reason to reject physicalism.
- Symbolic AI Over Quantum Tensor Fields in Non-Commutative Domains.Parker Emmerson - 2025 - Journal of Liberated Mathematics 1.In this paper, we extend the mathematical framework of **non-commutative scalar fields** and numerical techniques discussed previously to build a foundation for **AI-based reasoning systems**. The goal is to enable AI to operate over **symbolic hierarchies, semantic transformations**, and **large-scale infinite or non-commutative domains**. Inspired by quantum tensor field operations, we integrate reasoning over symbolic, numeric, and approximate representations into machine learning pipelines. This work leverages concepts from numerical techniques for non-commutative mixed derivatives, recur- sive tensor calculus, and symbolic transformation (...)
- Unreal beliefs: an anti-realist approach in the metaphysics of mind.Poslajko Krzysztof - 2024 - London: Bloomsbury Academic.Krzysztof Poslajko offers a novel version of an anti-realist view about beliefs, rejecting the extreme proposal of eliminativism that claims beliefs do not exist. He argues we should rather say that beliefs exist, but they are not real. By arguing for the antirealist view as a revision of our common-sense view about the nature of mind, Poslajko makes the case for adopting a pragmatic metaphilosophy when we deal with philosophical questions about belief.
- Replies to Hatzimoysis, Hufendiek and Sievers, Majeed, Gerrans, and Whiting.Tom Cochrane - 2024 - Journal of Philosophy of Emotion 5 (2):52-61.The concerns of each commentary are addressed in turn. I clarify and defend the claims of The Emotional Mind with regards to the plausibility of automatic responses to representational content, the distinction between emotions and bodily feelings, the influence of social contexts upon emotional responses, the complex issue of whether emotions are modular or form natural kinds, the nature of pain asymbolia, and the nature of emotional authenticity.
- A plea for epistemic ontologies.Gilles Kassel - 2023 - Applied ontology 18 (4):367-397.In this article, we advocate the use of “epistemic” ontologies, i.e., systems of categories representing our knowledge of the world, rather than the world directly. We first expose a metaphysical framework based on a dual mental and physical realism, which underpins the development of these epistemic ontologies. To this end, we refer to the theories of intentionality and representation established within the school of Franz Brentano at the turn of the 20th century and choose to rehabilitate the notion of a (...)
- The selective advantage of representing correctly.Bence Nanay - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107 (3):706-717.Here is a widespread but controversial idea: those animals who represent correctly are likely to be selected over those who misrepresent. While various versions of this claim have been traditionally endorsed by the vast majority of philosophers of mind, recently, it has been argued that this is just plainly wrong. My aim in this paper is to argue for an intermediate position: that the correctness of some but not all representations is indeed selectively advantageous. It is selectively advantageous to have (...)
- Perfect Thinkers, Perfect Speakers and Internalism about Thought Content.Madelaine Angelova-Elchinova - 2023 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 30 (3):281-309.In the following paper I propose an argument against internalism about thought content. After a brief preview of the recent debate between Sarah Sawyer and Åsa Wikforss, the paper outlines the central issue in their discussion. I show that, even if Wikforss’ objections against Sawyer are granted, externalism about thought content can still prevail. For my argument, I use Wikforss` own objection against externalism and show how, if accepted, it binds one to the mythical figure of the perfect speaker – (...)
- Mental content.Peter Schulte - 2023 - Cambridge University Press.This Element provides a comprehensive introduction to contemporary theories of mental content. After clarifying central concepts and identifying the questions that dominate the current debate, it presents and discusses the principal accounts of the nature of mental content (or mental representation), which include causal, informational, teleological and structuralist approaches, alongside the phenomenal intentionality approach and the intentional stance theory. Additionally, it examines anti-representationalist accounts which question either the existence or the explanatory relevance of mental content. Finally, the Element concludes by (...)
- The Gruesome Truth About Semantic Dispositionalism.Adam C. Podlaskowski - 2023 - Acta Analytica 38 (2):299-309.The resemblance is plain to see between Kripke’s Wittgenstein introducing bizarre rules such as quaddition (in illustrating the sceptical paradox against theories of meaning) and Goodman’s introducing the equally bizarre grue (in generating the new riddle of induction). But the two sorts of bizarre cases also differ in interesting respects. For those familiar with Goodman’s case, this similarity sparks a strong temptation to enlist to the meaning sceptic’s cause key elements of Goodman’s new riddle, which are missing from Kripke’s case. (...)
- Revisiting the Intentionality All-Stars.Walter Veit - 2022 - Review of Analytic Philosophy 2 (1):31-54.Eliminativism is a position most readily associated with the eliminative materialism of the Churchlands, denying that there are such things as propositional states. This position has created much controversy, despite the fact that intentionality has long been seen as perhaps the core problem for naturalistic philosophy. There is a more radical interpretation of eliminativism, however, denying not only mental states, such as beliefs and desires, but also intentionality (i.e., aboutness) on a global level. This position traces its contemporary origin back (...)
- Corporeità e cognizione: la filosofia della mente incorporata.Silvano Zipoli Caiani - 2016 - Firenze: Le Monnier università.
- Representationalism, Scepticism and Phenomenal Realism.Manas Kumar Sahu - 2022 - Prometeica - Revista De Filosofía Y Ciencias 25:51-65.The irreducibility thesis of phenomenal consciousness can only succeed against the sceptical attack and avoid solipsism iff it can coherently establish the transition from subjective certainty to the objectivity of knowledge. The sceptical attack on the relationship between the phenomenal qualitative character of experience about the subjects own mental fact and the awareness of the qualitative properties of the phenomenal object can be avoided through establishing the immediacy of experience. The phenomenal realist become successful in establishing the subjective certainty about (...)
- Troubles with mathematical contents.Marco Facchin - forthcoming - Philosophical Psychology.To account for the explanatory role representations play in cognitive science, Egan’s deflationary account introduces a distinction between cognitive and mathematical contents. According to that account, only the latter are genuine explanatory posits of cognitive-scientific theories, as they represent the arguments and values cognitive devices need to represent to compute. Here, I argue that the deflationary account suffers from two important problems, whose roots trace back to the introduction of mathematical contents. First, I will argue that mathematical contents do not (...)
- Bolzano on the Intransparency of Content.Stephan Krämer - 2011 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 82 (1):189-208.Content, according to Bolzano, is intransparent: our knowledge of certain essential features of the contents of our contentful mental acts (such as their identity and composition) is often severely limited. In this paper, I identify various intransparency theses Bolzano is committed to and present and evaluate the defence he offers for his view. I argue that while his intransparency theses may be correct, his defence is unsuccessful. Moreover, I argue that improving on his defence would require substantially modifying his general (...)
- Sensing Qualia.Paul Skokowski - 2022 - Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience 16:1-16.Accounting for qualia in the natural world is a difficult business, and it is worth understanding why. A close examination of several theories of mind—Behaviorism, Identity Theory, Functionalism, and Integrated Information Theory—will be discussed, revealing shortcomings for these theories in explaining the contents of conscious experience: qualia. It will be argued that in order to overcome the main difficulty of these theories the senses should be interpreted as physical detectors. A new theory, Grounded Functionalism, will be proposed, which retains multiple (...)
- On Concepts and Ideas: Themes from G. W. Leibniz's New Essays.Lucia Oliveri - 2016 - In David Hommen, Christoph Kann & Tanja Oswald, Concepts and Categorization. Systematic and Historical Perspectives. Münster: mentis. pp. 141-167.The topic of my paper is the virtual controversy between Leibniz and Lockeover concepts and ideas. At the end of the 17th century John Locke made a crucial contribution to semantics and philosophy: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The work represents a decisive turning point for the discussion about ideas and innatism. Indeed, Locke’s aim was to dismantle the Cartesian theory according to which ideas are innate in our soul. Against this onto-epistemological thesis, Locke maintains that all our knowledge starts (...)
- Numbers, numerosities, and new directions.Jacob Beck & Sam Clarke - 2021 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44:1-20.In our target article, we argued that the number sense represents natural and rational numbers. Here, we respond to the 26 commentaries we received, highlighting new directions for empirical and theoretical research. We discuss two background assumptions, arguments against the number sense, whether the approximate number system represents numbers or numerosities, and why the ANS represents rational numbers.
- The Sense of Effort: a Cost-Benefit Theory of the Phenomenology of Mental Effort.Marcell Székely & John Michael - 2020 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 12 (4):889-904.In the current paper, we articulate a theory to explain the phenomenology of mental effort. The theory provides a working definition of mental effort, explains in what sense mental effort is a limited resource, and specifies the factors that determine whether or not mental effort is experienced as aversive. The core of our theory is the conjecture that the sense of effort is the output of a cost-benefit analysis. This cost-benefit analysis employs heuristics to weigh the current and anticipated costs (...)
- The constancy mechanism proposal for the limits of intentionality.Sérgio Farias de Souza Filho - 2017 - Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society 25:38-40.Remove from this listExport citationBookmark
- Ruth Garrett Millikan: O cómo la biosemántica revolucionó la filosofía de la mente.Erika Torres - 2022 - In Aurora Georgina Bustos Arellano & Jocelyn Martínez, Las filósofas que nos formaron. Injusticias, retos y propuestas en la filosofía. Nuevo Leon, Mexico: Centro de Estudios Humanísticos, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León. pp. 24-40.In this chapter I will present, in a general way, Millikan's biosemantic theory of the phenomenon of intentionality. For this purpose, the text will take the following path. First, I will present the problem of intentionality and an overview of the dominant theories of intentional content during the twentieth century and part of the twenty-first century. Then, I will present a general version of Millikan's biosemantic theory, appearing in 1984, which will allow us to see what the relevance and originality (...)Find it on Amazon.com (collection)Remove from this list Direct download (2 more)Export citationBookmark
- Reflections on Mirror Man.Frank Jackson & Daniel Stoljar - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (12):4227-4237.Juhani Yli-Vakkuri and John Hawthorne have recently presented a thought experiment—Mirror Man—designed to refute internalist theories of belief and content. We distinguish five ways in which the case can be interpreted and argue that on none does it refute internalism.
- The Possibility of Epistemic Nudging.Thomas Grundmann - 2023 - Social Epistemology 37 (2):208-218.Typically, nudging is a technique for steering the choices of people without giving reasons or using enforcement. In benevolent cases, it is used when people are insufficiently responsive to reason. The nudger triggers automatic cognitive mechanisms – sometimes even biases – in smart ways in order to push irrational people in the right direction. Interestingly, this technique can also be applied to doxastic attitudes. Someone who is doxastically unresponsive to evidence can be nudged into forming true beliefs or doxastic attitudes (...)
- Constructing a Naturalistic Theory of Intentionality.J. H. van Hateren - 2021 - Philosophia 49 (1):473-493.A naturalistic theory of intentionality is proposed that differs from previous evolutionary and tracking theories. Full-blown intentionality is constructed through a series of evolvable refinements. A first, minimal version of intentionality originates from a conjectured internal process that estimates an organism’s own fitness and that continually modifies the organism. This process produces the directedness of intentionality. The internal estimator can be parsed into intentional components that point to components of the process that produces fitness. It is argued that such intentional (...)
- Models, information and meaning.Dr Marc Artiga - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 82 (C):101284.There has recently been an explosion of formal models of signalling, which have been developed to learn about different aspects of meaning. This paper discusses whether that success can also be used to provide an original naturalistic theory of meaning in terms of information or some related notion. In particular, it argues that, although these models can teach us a lot about different aspects of content, at the moment they fail to support the idea that meaning just is some kind (...)
- Unfollowed Rules and the Normativity of Content.Eric V. Tracy - 2020 - Analytic Philosophy 61 (4):323-344.Foundational theories of mental content seek to identify the conditions under which a mental representation expresses, in the mind of a particular thinker, a particular content. Normativists endorse the following general sort of foundational theory of mental content: A mental representation r expresses concept C for agent S just in case S ought to use r in conformity with some particular pattern of use associated with C. In response to Normativist theories of content, Kathrin Glüer-Pagin and Åsa Wikforss propose a (...)
- Turning Aboutness About.Alexander Sandgren - 2021 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (1):136-155.There are two families of influential and stubborn puzzles that many theories of aboutness (intentionality) face: underdetermination puzzles and puzzles concerning representations that appear to be about things that do not exist. I propose an approach that elegantly avoids both kinds of puzzle. The central idea is to explain aboutness (the relation supposed to stand between thoughts and terms and their objects) in terms of relations of co-aboutness (the relation of being about the same thing that stands between the thoughts (...)
- Defending Discontinuism, Naturally.Sarah Robins - 2020 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 11 (2):469-486.The more interest philosophers take in memory, the less agreement there is that memory exists—or more precisely, that remembering is a distinct psychological kind or mental state. Concerns about memory’s distinctiveness are triggered by observations of its similarity to imagination. The ensuing debate is cast as one between discontinuism and continuism. The landscape of debate is set such that any extensive engagement with empirical research into episodic memory places one on the side of continuism. Discontinuists concerns are portrayed as almost (...)
- Killing Kripkenstein's Monster.Jared Warren - 2020 - Noûs 54 (2):257-289.Here I defend dispositionalism about meaning and rule-following from Kripkenstein's infamous anti-dispositionalist arguments. The problems of finitude, error, and normativity are all addressed. The general lesson I draw is that Kripkenstein's arguments trade on an overly simplistic version of dispositionalism.
- Capacities First.Susanna Schellenberg - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (3):744-757.
- A metarepresentational theory of intentional identity.Alexander Sandgren - 2019 - Synthese 196 (9):3677-3695.Geach points out that some pairs of beliefs have a common focus despite there being, apparently, no object at that focus. For example, two or more beliefs can be directed at Vulcan even though there is no such planet. Geach introduced the label ‘intentional identity’ to pick out the relation that holds between attitudes in these cases; Geach says that ’[w]e have intentional identity when a number of people, or one person on different occasions, have attitudes with a common focus, (...)
- Acts of desire.Henry Ian Schiller - 2021 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 64 (9):955-972.ABSTRACT Act-based theories of content hold that propositions are identical to acts of predication that we perform in thought and talk. To undergo an occurrent thought with a particular content is just to perform the act of predication that individuates that content. But identifying the content of a thought with the performance of an act of predication makes it difficult to explain the intentionality of bouletic mental activity, like wanting and desiring. In this paper, I argue that this difficulty is (...)
- Explaining representation: a reply to Matthen.Frances Egan - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 170 (1):137-142.Mohan Matthen has failed to understand the position I develop and defend in “How to Think about Mental Content.” No doubt some of the fault lies with my exposition, though Matthen often misconstrues passages that are clear in context. He construes clarifications and elaborations of my argument to be “concessions.” Rather than dwell too much on specific misunderstandings of my explanatory project and its attendant claims, I will focus on the main points of disagreement.RepresentationalismMy project in the paper is to (...)
- How to think about mental content.Frances Egan - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 170 (1):115-135.Introduction: representationalismMost theorists of cognition endorse some version of representationalism, which I will understand as the view that the human mind is an information-using system, and that human cognitive capacities are representational capacities. Of course, notions such as ‘representation’ and ‘information-using’ are terms of art that require explication. As a first pass, representations are “mediating states of an intelligent system that carry information” (Markman and Dietrich 2001, p. 471). They have two important features: (1) they are physically realized, and so (...)
- What's wrong with grandma's guide to procedural semantics: A reply to Jerry Fodor.Philip N. Johnson-Laird - 1978 - Cognition 6 (3):249-261.
- Perception, Action and the Notion of Grounding.Gottfried Vosgerau & Alexandros Tillas - 2016 - In Vincent C. Müller, Fundamental Issues of Artificial Intelligence. Cham: Springer. pp. 457-476.Traditionally, philosophers and cognitive scientists alike considered the mind as divided into input units (perception), central processing (cognition), and output units (action). In turn, they allowed for little – if any – direct interaction between perception and action. In recent years, theorists challenged the classical view of the mind by arguing that bodily states ground cognition. Even though promising, the notion of grounding is largely underspecified. In this paper, we focus on the debate about the relation between perception and action (...)Find it on Amazon.com (collection)Remove from this list Direct downloadExport citationBookmark 1 citation
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