Abstract

A general problem faced by psychology is that of accounting for an organism’s sensitivities to _non-local, non-physical_, and/or _non-instantiated_—what I call “abstruse”—properties, such as, e.g., being a dinosaur, being a triangle, or being a noun or a sentence. I argue that only an intentionalistically understood CRT (an “II-CRT”) offers the best prospect of explaining these sensitivities, which it does by a mutually supporting combination of the BasicAsymmetry proposal of §10.3 and of the kind of probability theories routinely presupposed by theories of perception. I will then briefly discuss various sources of resistance to intentionalism and how they motivate the methodological dualism that Chomsky deplores, despite his sharing many of those motivations and the dualism himself. I will conclude the book with some comments on the “mind/body” problem(s) that, _pace_ Chomsky’s recent writings, are as alive and interesting as ever.