Abstract

This chapter addresses Quinean worries about the version of the analytic-synthetic distinction developed in the two previous chapters. Attention is paid to a potential objector who, for the sake of argument, concedes that there are abstract objects that stand in rational (“analytic”) entailment relations, but denies that intentional psychology exhibits the same organization. A theory of content is given that denies the requirement that a subject directly realize these relations via psychologically realized inferential links; instead, the relations depend on the way the links would be realized at the limit, should the subject exercise higher-order abilities to systematize those inferential patterns that are present. The theory has the result that propositional content of mental representations is sometimes indeterminate, particularly where singular terms are involved; but this indeterminacy is not pernicious.