Has content been naturalized?
In Barry M. Loewer & Georges Rey (eds.), Meaning in Mind: Fodor and His Critics. Blackwell (1991)
| Abstract | The Representational Theory of the Mind (RTM) has been forcefully and subtly developed by Jerry A. Fodor. According to the RTM, psychological states that explain behavior involve tokenings of mental representations. Since the RTM is distinguished from other approaches by its appeal to the meaning or "content" of mental representations, a question immediately arises: by virtue of what does a mental representation express or represent an environmental property like coto or shoe? This question asks for a general account of the semantics of mental representation. Fodor places two conditions on the requisite theory: it must be physi calistic (that is, it must be couched in nonsemantic and nonintentional terms, free of expressions like "refers to" or "denotes" or "means that"), and it must be atomistic (that is, it must allow that the thinker can have a single intentional state without having any others). What is wanted, then, is a reductive theory that "naturalizes" content by specifying sufficient conditions, in physicalistic and atomistic terms, for a mental symbol to represent or express a certain property | |||||||||
| Keywords | Content Mind Representationalism | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,875 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesKatalin Balog (2009). Jerry Fodor on Non-Conceptual Content. Synthese 167 (3):311 - 320.
Alberto Voltolini (1997). Is Narrow Content the Same as Content of Mental State Types Opaquely Taxonomized? In Analyomen 2, Volume III: Philosophy of Mind, Practical Philosophy, Miscellanea. Hawthorne: De Gruyter.
Amy Kind (2007). Restrictions on Representationalism. Philosophical Studies 134 (3):405-427.
William E. Seager (1993). Fodor's Theory of Content: Problems and Objections. Phiosophy of Science 60 (2):262-77.
York H. Gunther (2001). Content, Illusion, Partition. Philosophical Studies 102 (2):185-202.
Jonathan Knowles (2001). Does Intentional Psychology Need Vindicating by Cognitive Science? Minds and Machines 11 (3):347-377.
Lynne Rudder Baker (1989). On a Causal Theory of Content. Philosophical Perspectives 3:165-186.
Robert D. Rupert (2000). Dispositions Indisposed: Semantic Atomism and Fodor's Theory of Content. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 81 (3):325-349.
J. Christopher Maloney (1994). Content: Covariation, Control, and Contingency. Synthese 100 (2):241-90.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads7 ( #134,983 of 556,895 )Recent downloads (6 months)3 ( #27,428 of 556,895 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
