Abstract

In this thesis, I undertake to examine the naturalistic reduction of thought content along two axes: First, by examining three of the more influential naturalistic proposals extant , and second, by looking at arguments that attempt to show that no naturalistic proposal, in principle, can succeed owing to the essential normativity of thought content. As regards the first axis, I argue that none of these naturalistic proposals will suffice as a reduction of thought content. Millikan's fails owing to her dependence on an etiological notion of biological function and the indeterminacy problems it has. Dretske's fails owing to an inability naturalistically to characterize the learning situation on which his account depends. And Fodor's account fails owing to its susceptibility to counterexamples. ;Along the second axis I argue that, despite these failures, naturalism as a general research program need not fear from criticisms by Saul Kripke, Paul Boghossian, and Julia Tanney that it cannot accommodate the fact that thinking thoughts is governed by certain normative constraints. All of their arguments are easily resisted on fairly neutral assumptions, and, moreover, their arguments come with assumptions that, if accepted, lay a rather large swath of phenomena in principle inaccessible to the purview of theoretical explanation. In addition, I argue that there is a perfectly serviceable account of whatever normatitivy there is to content that fits comfortably within an overall picture of naturalism. In the end, the theoretical anemia of the antinaturalist perspective plus the availability of a naturalistic account of normativity tips the balance in the favor of naturalism even if no current naturalistic approach compels