Reductive, naturalistic psychosemantic theories do not have a good track record when it comes to accommodating the representation of kinds. In this paper, I will suggest a particular teleosemantic strategy to solve this problem, grounded in the neurocomputational details of the cerebral cortex. It is a strategy with some parallels to one that Ruth Millikan has suggested, but to which insufficient attention has been paid. This lack of attention is perhaps due to a lack of appreciation for the severity of (...) the problem, so I begin by explaining why the situation is indeed a dire one. One of the main tasks for a naturalistic psychosemantic theory is to describe how the extensions of mental representations are determined. (Such a theory may also attempt to account for other aspects of the “meaning” of mental representations, if there are any.) Some mental representations, e.g. the concept of water, denote kinds (I shall be assuming this is non-negotiable). How is this possible? Unfortunately, I haven’t the space to canvass all the theories out there and show that each one fails to accommodate the representation of kinds, but I will point out the major types of problems that arise for the kinds of theories that, judging by the literature, are considered viable contenders.1 In general, the theories either attempt and fail to account for the representation of kinds, or they fall back on something like an intention to refer to a kind – not exactly the most auspicious move for a reductive theory. There are a number of problems that prevent non-teleosemantic theories from explaining how it is possible to represent kinds. A concept of a kind K must.. (shrink)

In this paper, I will introduce you to a new theory of mental representation, emphasizing two important features. First, the theory coheres very well with folk psychology; better, I believe, than its competitors (e.g. Cummins, 1996; Dretske, 1988; Fodor, 1987 and Millikan, 1989, with which it has the most in common), though I will do little by way of direct comparison in this paper. Second, it receives support from current neuroscience. While other theories may be consistent with current neuroscience, none (...) that I know of actually receives some degree of confirmation from it. There are many different kinds of representations. Some examples are maps, words, meter and gauge readings, diagrams, pictures, scale models, computer simulations, blueprints, charts, musical notation, smoke signals, semaphore, and computer data structures. Qua representations, they all possess intentionality, or aboutness: maps are about places, most words are about the entities they refer to, meters and gauges are about the quantities they measure, etc. However, it seems they have little in common beyond this aboutness (Millikan, 1984, p. 85). Therefore we should be open to the possibility that the aboutness of different representations is ultimately to be explained in different ways. It is becoming increasingly popular to understand the aboutness of a large class of these representations in terms of function.1 For example, a tire gauge represents one of the properties that it indicates or carries information about, namely air pressure. However, it also carries information about other quantities. If the pressure and volume of the tire are kept constant, the tire gauge will indicate the temperature of the air inside the tire, and if the temperature and pressure are kept constant, the gauge will indicate the tire volume. However, although the tire gauge indicates these things, it does not represent them. It only.. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy of mind tends to theorize about the propositional attitudes primarily in terms of belief and desire. But there is a propositional attitude, sometimes called ‘entertaining,’ that seems to resist analysis in terms of belief and desire, and has been thought at other times and places (notably, in late nineteenth-century Austrian philosophy) to be more fundamental than belief and desire. Whether or not we accept the fundamentality of entertaining, it certainly seems to be an attitude ill understood in contemporary (...) philosophy of mind. The purpose of this paper is to make first steps – very first steps – toward a more mature understanding of entertaining. (shrink)