Representational capacity, intentional ascription, and the slippery slope
Philosophy of Science 56 (3):463-473 (1989)
| Abstract | A long-standing objection to Fodor's version of the Representational Theory of Mind (RTM) argues that in ascribing intentional content to an organism's representational states there needs to be some way of distinguishing between the kinds of organisms that have such representational capacity and those kinds that haven't. Without a principled distinction there would be no way of delimiting the appropriate domain of intentional ascription. As Fodor (1986) suggests, if the objection holds, we should have no good reason for withholding intentional ascription from paper clips. Fodor (1986) has defended RTM against this slippery slope objection. He distinguishes between the kinds of creatures that exhibit selective responses to nomic properties of stimuli (for example, psychophysical properties) and the kinds of creatures that also respond selectively to nonnomic properties of stimuli (for example, being a crumpled shirt). The distinction marks the differences between two kinds of "primal scenes" in which lawful relations are said to hold between an organism's behavior, representational state, and stimulus property. The arguments for the distinction are provocative but counter-examples show them to be inconclusive | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,701 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesThomas Douglas (2010). Intertemporal Disagreement and Empirical Slippery Slope Arguments. Utilitas 22 (2):184-197.
Lynne Rudder Baker (1991). Has Content Been Naturalized? In Barry M. Loewer & Georges Rey (eds.), Meaning in Mind: Fodor and His Critics. Blackwell.
Lisa Bortolotti (2004). Can We Interpret Irrational Behavior? Behavior and Philosophy 32 (2):359 - 375.
Jonathan Cohen (2002). Information and Content. In Luciano Floridi (ed.), Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Information and Computing. Blackwell.
Paul Coates (2009). The Multiple Contents of Experience. Philosophical Topics 37 (1):25-47.
Julia Tanner (2009). The Argument From Marginal Cases and the Slippery Slope Objection. Environmental Values (18):51-66.
Pete Mandik & Rick Grush (2002). Representational Parts. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1 (389):394.
Jonathan Knowles (2001). Does Intentional Psychology Need Vindicating by Cognitive Science? Minds and Machines 11 (3):347-377.
Randall K. Campbell (1991). Nonnomic Properties of Stimuli and Psychological Explanation. Behavior and Philosophy 19 (1):77 - 92.
Analytics
Monthly downloads
Sorry, there are not enough data points to plot this chart.
|
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads2 ( #232,575 of 549,124 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,361 of 549,124 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
