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2.3. Naturalizing Mental Content (Naturalizing Mental Content on PhilPapers)

• Information-Based Accounts of Mental Content [22]
• Asymmetric-Dependence Accounts of Mental Content [7]
• Causal Accounts of Mental Content, Misc [6]
• Teleological Accounts of Mental Content [44]
• Inferentialist Accounts of Meaning and Content [26]
• Interpretivist Accounts of Meaning and Content [17]
• Naturalizing Mental Content, Misc [28]

• Pete Mandik (2010). Swamp Mary's revenge: Deviant phenomenal knowledge and physicalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Deviant phenomenal knowledge is knowing what it’s like to have experiences of, e.g., red without actually having had experiences of red. Such a knower is a deviant. Some physicalists have argued and some anti-physicalists have denied that the possibility of deviants undermines anti-physicalism and the Knowledge Argument. The current paper presents new arguments defending the deviant-based attacks on anti-physicalism. Central to my arguments are considerations concerning the psychosemantic underpinnings of deviant phenomenal knowledge. I argue that physicalists are in a superior position to account for the conditions in virtue of which states of deviants constitute representations of phenomenal facts
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/l07pw010561jx1m5/fulltext.pdf
  

Information-Based Accounts of Mental Content

• Frederick R. Adams (2003). The informational turn in philosophy.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/content/j6l8530k657u8650/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/j6l8530k657u8650/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5142080&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/J6L8530K657U8650.pdf
  
• Jon Barwise (1986). Information and circumstance.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.projecteuclid.org/Dienst/UI/1.0/Display/euclid.ndjfl/1093636678
  
• Radu J. Bogdan (1988). Information and semantic cognition: An ontological account.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Information is the fuel of cognition. At its most basic level, information is a matter of structures interacting under laws. The notion of information thus reflects the (relational) fact that a structure is created by the impact of another structure. The impacted structure is an encoding, in some concrete form, of the interaction with the impacting structure. Information is, essentially, the structural trace in some system of an interaction with another system; it is also, as a consequence, the structural fuel which drives the impacted system's subsequent processes and behavior. Information takes various forms because the world has many levels of compositional and functional complexity, under different constraints. The key constraints that matter in the understanding of information are natural patterns of organization, or types, and systematic correlations among types, or laws. These level- sensitive constraints, in the form of types and laws, shape the very form in which information is tokened in some structure, that is, the very form in which it is encoded. As a result, the information-producing interactions bring about different sorts of structures, with various sorts of causal effects and functions, whence so many ways in which information is coded and utilized
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0017.1988.tb00136.x
  
• Radu J. Bogdan (1987). Mind, content and information.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: What is it that one thinks or believes when one thinks or believes something? A mental formula? A sentence in some natural language? Its truth conditions? Or perhaps an abstract proposition? The current story of content is fairly ecumenical. It says that a number of aspects, some mental, other semantic, go into our understanding of content. Yet the current story is incomplete. It leaves out a very important aspect of content, one which I call incremental information. It is information in a specific format, information as a limited or local increment, structured by a number of underlying parameters. It is in the form of such increments that information drives cognition and behavior. This is why, perhaps of all aspects of content, it is incremental information which matters most when we want to understand cognitive attitudes and performances. This in turn must have an impact on our philosophical notions of content, propositional attitudes, inference, justification and knowledge
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/p107202818r62286/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/P107202818R62286.pdf
  
• Jason Bridges (2006). Does informational semantics commit euthyphro's fallacy.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this paper, I argue that informational semantics, the most well-known and worked-out naturalistic account of intentional content, conflicts with a fundamental psychological principle about the conditions of belief-formation. Since this principle is an important premise in the argument for informational semantics, the upshot is that the view is self-contradictory??indeed, it turns out to be guilty of a sophisticated version of the fallacy famously committed by Euthyphro in the eponymous Platonic dialogue. Criticisms of naturalistic accounts of content typically proceed piecemeal by narrowly constructed counterexamples, but I argue that the current result is more robust. It affects a broad family of accounts, and provokes a wider doubt about the possibility of successful execution of the naturalistic project
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://home.uchicago.edu/~bridges/papers/Bridges--Does Informational Semantics Commit Euthyphro's Fallacy.pdf
  http://home.uchicago.edu/~bridges/papers/Bridges--Does Informational Semantics Commit Euthyphro's Fallacy, pre-print version.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0068.2006.00622.x?ai=2l6&mi=85vxf&af=R
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0068.2006.00622.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/2006/00000040/00000003/art00005
  
• Anthony Chemero (2003). Information for perception and information processing.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=947737.947763
  http://edisk.fandm.edu/tony.chemero/papers/infoandinfo.pdf
  http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/Papers/Papers.by.Others/mm.chemero.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/content/j862682860127888/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/j862682860127888/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5142087&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/J862682860127888.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/mind/2003/00000013/00000004/05142087
  
• Jonathan Cohen (2006). An objective counterfactual theory of information.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: We offer a novel theory of information that differs from traditional accounts in two respects: (i) it explains information in terms of counterfactuals rather than conditional probabilities, and (ii) it does not make essential reference to doxastic states of subjects, and consequently allows for the sort of objective, reductive explanations of various notions in epistemology and philosophy of mind that many have wanted from an account of information
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a758270032~fulltext=713240930
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/758270032.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~db=all~content=a758270032~fulltext=713240930
  
• Jonathan Cohen (2002). Information and content.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Mental states differ from most other entities in the world in having semantic or intentional properties: they have meanings, they are about other things, they have satisfaction- or truth-conditions, they have representational content. Mental states are not the only entities that have intentional properties - so do linguistic expressions, some paintings, and so on; but many follow Grice, 1957 ] in supposing that we could understand the intentional properties of these other entities as derived from the intentional properties of mental states (viz., the mental states of their producers). Of course, accepting this supposition leaves us with a puzzle about how the non-derivative bearers of intentional properties (mental states) could have these properties. In particular, intentional properties seem to some to be especially difficult to reconcile with a robust commitment to ontological naturalism - the view that the natural properties, events, and individuals are the only properties, events, and individuals that exist. Fodor puts this intuition nicely in this oft-quoted passage:

  I suppose that sooner or later the physicists will complete the catalogue they've been compiling of the
  ultimate and irreducible properties of things. When they do, the likes of _spin_, _charm_, and _charge_ will perhaps
  appear upon their list. But _aboutness_ surely won't; intentionality simply doesn't go that deep.... If aboutness is
  real, it must be really something else ([ Fodor, 1987 ], 97).

  Some philosophers have reacted to this clash by giving up one of the two views generating the tension. For example, Churchland, 1981 ] opts for intentional irrealism in order to save ontological naturalism, while
• David J. Cole (ms). Natural language and natural meaning.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In Book II of the _Essay_, at the beginning of his discussion of language in Chapter II ("Of the Signification of Words"), John Locke writes that we humans have a variety of thoughts which might profit others, but that unfortunately these thoughts lie invisible and hidden from others. And so we use language to communicate these thoughts. As a result, "words, in their primary or immediate signification,stand for nothing but _the ideas in the mind of him that uses them_
• Luciano Floridi (2005). Is semantic information meaningful data?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: There is no consensus yet on the definition of semantic information. This paper contributes to the current debate by criticising and revising the Standard Definition of semantic Information (SDI) as meaningful data, in favour of the Dretske-Grice approach: meaningful and well-formed data constitute semantic information only if they also qualify as contingently truthful. After a brief introduction, SDI is criticised for providing necessary but insufficient conditions for the definition of semantic information. SDI is incorrect because truth-values do not supervene on semantic information, and misinformation (that is, false semantic information) is not a type of semantic information, but pseudo-information, that is not semantic information at all. This is shown by arguing that none of the reasons for interpreting misinformation as a type of semantic information is convincing, whilst there are compelling reasons to treat it as pseudo-information. As a consequence, SDI is revised to include a necessary truth-condition. The last section summarises the main results of the paper and indicates some interesting areas of application of the revised definition
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002536/
  http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002536/01/iimd.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2005.tb00531.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ips/ppr/2005/00000070/00000002/art00004
  
• Luciano Floridi (2003). Two approaches to the philosophy of information.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.hi.is/~lobbi/ut1/a_a/tattpi.pdf
  http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=947737.947756
  http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/Papers/Papers.by.Others/mm.floridi.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/content/g0m77uh8853308u4/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/g0m77uh8853308u4/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5142079&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/G0M77UH8853308U4.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/mind/2003/00000013/00000004/05142079
  
• Jerry A. Fodor (1986). Information and association.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://projecteuclid.org/Dienst/Repository/1.0/Disseminate/euclid.ndjfl/1093636677/body/pdf
  http://www.projecteuclid.org/DPubS/Repository/1.0/Disseminate?handle=euclid.ndjfl/1093636677&view=body&content-type=pdf_1
  
• Patrick Grim, P. St Denis & T. Kokalis (2004). Information and meaning: Use-based models in arrays of neural nets.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/510/mm-grim-etal.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/x520ur52t8x7746q/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5142091&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/X520UR52T8X7746Q.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/mind/2004/00000014/00000001/05142091
  
• David R. Hilbert (ms). Content, intention, and explanation.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Naturalistic theories of content and whether or not reason-giving explanations of human behavior are causal explanations have been central topics in recent philosophy of mind. Fred Dretske, in his book Explaining Behavior, attempts to construct a naturalistic theory of the contents of beliefs and desires that gives these mental states an important role in the causation of behavior. Even if Dretske is granted that the theory adequately accounts for individual behaviors the theory still faces problems in offering an adequate account of important features of extended sequences of behavior. Some sequences of behavior exhibit coherence in the sense that the elements of the sequence either contribute to the atttainment of a goal state or only make sense on the supposition that the goal state will be attained. Two ways of attaining coherence are distinguished. In chaining behavior coherence is guaranteed by the fit between the internal structure of the organism and the structure of the external environment. In other cases of coherence chaining is not available as an explanation. It is argued that Dretske
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://tigger.uic.edu/~hilbert/papers/intandcont.pdf
  
• David J. Israel & John Perry (1990). What is information?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~john/PHILPAPERS/whatisinfo.pdf
  http://www-csli.stanford.edu/users/john/PHILPAPERS/whatisinfo.pdf
  
• Max Kistler (2000). Source and Channel in the informational theory of mental content.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://max.kistler.free.fr/articles/MK9.pdf
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/ijn_00000032/fr/
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/05/32/35/HTML/
  
• Barry M. Loewer (1987). From information to intentionality.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/K67708N68T700052.pdf
  
• Ruth G. Millikan (2001). What has Natural Information to Do with Intentional Representation?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: "According to informational semantics, if it's necessary that a creature can't distinguish Xs from Ys, it follows that the creature can't have a concept that applies to Xs but not Ys." (Jerry Fodor, The Elm and the Expert, p.32)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iJekyHohFlQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA105&dq=What+has+natural+information+to+do+with+intentional+representation?+Millikan&ots=Gbmp3i65AN&sig=nmaOolClVje4UgqWrE7pp0VPxSQ
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iJekyHohFlQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA105&dq=What+has+natural+information+to+do+with+intentional+representation?+Millikan&ots=Gbmp3h06CO&sig=Nc0cd_mgxj-UHcbnxHX78X1Jde0
  
• Paul G. Skokowski (1999). Information, belief, and causal role.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~paulsko/papers/IBCRPenultimate.pdf
  
• Donna M. Summerfield & Pat A. Manfredi (1998). Indeterminacy in recent theories of content.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&collection=TRD&recid=371130CI
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/h323q28t63240108/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/H323Q28T63240108.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/mind/1998/00000008/00000002/00160297
  
• Matthew Usher (2001). A statistical referential theory of content: Using information theory to account for misrepresentation.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psyc/staff/academic/musher/documents/ML.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1468-0017.00172
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0017.00172
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/2001/00000016/00000003/art00172
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/2001/00000016/00000003/art00005
  
• Corey G. Washington (2002). A conflict between language and atomistic information.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/dlkglkuef033ck9r/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=399589&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/DLKGLKUEF033CK9R.pdf
  

Asymmetric-Dependence Accounts of Mental Content

• Frederick R. Adams (online). Fodor's asymmetrical causal dependency theory of meaning.   (More)
• Mark H. Bickhard (1998). A Process Model of the Emergence of Representation.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Two challenges to the very possibility of emergence are addressed, one metaphysical and one logical. The resolution of the metaphysical challenge requires a shift to a process metaphysics, while the logical challenge highlights normative emergence, and requires a shift to more powerful logical tools -- in particular, that of implicit definition. Within the framework of a process metaphysics, two levels of normative emergence are outlined: that of function and that of representation
• Carl Gillett (2006). Samuel Alexander's emergentism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Samuel Alexander was one of the foremost philosophical figures of his day and has been argued by John Passmore to be one of ‘fathers’ of Australian philosophy as well as a novel kind of physicalist. Yet Alexander is now relatively neglected, his role in the genesis of Australian philosophy if far from widely accepted and the standard interpretation takes him to be an anti-physicalist. In this paper, I carefully examine these issues and show that Alexander has been badly, although understandably, misjudged by most of his contemporary critics and interpreters. Most importantly, I show that Alexander offers an ingenious, and highly original, version of physicalism at the heart of which is a strikingly different view of the nature of the microphysical properties and associated view of emergent properties. My final conclusion will be that Passmore is correct in his claims both that Alexander is significant as one of the grandfather’s of Australian philosophy and that he provides a novel physicalist position. I will also suggest that Alexander’s emergentism is important for addressing the so-called ‘problem of mental causation’ presently dogging contemporary non-reductive physicalists
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/3215n21p7746r538/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/3215N21P7746R538.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/synt/2006/00000153/00000002/00005470
  
• Joseph Mendola (2003). A dilemma for asymmetric dependence.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Accounts of mental content rooted in asymmetric dependence hold, crudely speaking, that the content of a mental representation is the cause of that representation on which all its other causes depend.1 To speak somewhat less crudely, such accounts, hereafter
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1468-0068.00437
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0068.00437
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/2003/00000037/00000002/art00003
  
• Steve Palmquist (1992). Unknown.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: At what stage in its development does a foetus become a living human being? When is it proper to refer to a network of pulsating neurons as a
• Lynne Rudder Baker (1989). On a causal theory of content.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1520-8583(1989)3<165:OACTOC>2.0.CO;2-M
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=1520-8583(1989)3<165:OACTOC>2.0.CO;2-M
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2214267.pdf
  

Causal Accounts of Mental Content, Misc

• Fred Adams & Ken Aizawa (online). Causal theories of mental content.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Causal theories of mental content attempt to explain how thoughts can be about things. They attempt to explain how one can think about, for example, dogs. These theories begin with the idea that there are mental representations and that thoughts are meaningful in virtue of a causal connection between a mental representation and some part of the world that is represented. In other words, the point of departure for these theories is that thoughts of dogs are about dogs because dogs cause the mental representations of dogs
• Todd Buras (2009). An Argument against Causal Theories of Mental Content.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Some mental states are about themselves. Nothing is a cause of itself. So some mental states are not about their causes; they are about things distinct from their causes. If this argument is sound, it spells trouble for causal theories of mental content—the precise sort of trouble depending on the precise sort of causal theory. This paper shows that the argument is sound (§§1-3), and then spells out the trouble (§4).
• Robert E. Cummins (1997). The LOT of the causal theory of mental content.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: hc thcsis of this paper is that thc causal themy of mental cantent (hcrcaftcr CT) is incompatible with an clcmcntary fact of pcrccptual psychology, namely, that thc detection 0f distal propcrtics generally requires thc mediation of a “the- 0ry.” I shall call this fact thc nontransducibility of distal properties (hcrcaftcr NTDP). The argument proceeds in two stages. Thc burden of stage 0nc is that, taken together, CT and thc language 0f thought hypothesis (hcrcaftcr LOT) arc incompatible with NTDP. The burden of stage two is that acceptance of CT rcquircs acceptance of LOT as well. It follows that CT is incompatiblc with NTDP. I organize things in this way in part bccausc it makcs the argument casicr t0 understand, and in part bccausc thc stage-two thcsis—that CT cntails LOT—has somc independcnt interest and is thcrcforc worth separating from thc rcst 0f thc argument. 1. STAGE ONE; THE CONJUNCTION OF CT AND LOT Is INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE NONTRANSDUCIBILITY OF DISTAL PROPERTIES Let us begin by clarifying some tcrms. By LOT, I mean the hypothesis that thc human schcmc 0f mental rcprcscmation satisfies the following conditions: (1) It has a finite number of semantically primitive expressions individuatcd syntactically
  Additional links for this entry:
  https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rcummins/www/HomePage/Papers/LOTctmc.pdf
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(199710)94:10<535:TLOTCT>2.0.CO;2-N
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(199710)94:10<535:TLOTCT>2.0.CO;2-N
  http://www.jstor.org/view/0022362x/di010539/01p00357/0
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2564550.pdf
  
• James Franklin, Symbolic connectionism in natural language disambiguation.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: language into these formalisms. However, they make use of only small subsets of knowledge. This article will describe how to..
• Robert D. Rupert (2001). Coining terms in the language of thought: Innateness, emergence, and the lot of Cummins's argument against the causal theory of mental content.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Robert Cummins argues that any causal theory of mental content (CT) founders on an established fact of human psychology: that theory mediates sensory detection. He concludes,
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(200110)98:10<499:CTITLO>2.0.CO;2-Y
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3649467.pdf
  
• Robert Rupert (2008). Causal theories of mental content.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2008.00130.x
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/119423024/PDFSTART
  
• Robert D. Rupert (forthcoming). Causal Theories of Intentionality.   (More)

Teleological Accounts of Mental Content

• Marshall Abrams (2005). Teleosemantics without natural selection.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Ruth Millikan and others advocate theories which attempt to naturalize wide mental content (e.g. beliefs
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/m3qx5n807h1714l0/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5274298&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/M3QX5N807H1714L0.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/biph/2005/00000020/00000001/00004298
  
• Ruth G. Millikan (2007). An Input Condition for Teleosemantics? Reply to Shea (and Godfrey-Smith).   (More)
• Colin Allen (2001). A tale of two froggies.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: There once was an ugly duckling. Except he wasn’t a duckling at all, and once he realized his error he lived happily ever after. And there you have an early primer from the animal literature on the issue of misrepresentation -- perhaps one of the few on this topic to have a happy ending. Philosophers interested in misrepresentation have turned their attention to a different fairy tale animal: the frog. No one gets kissed in this story and the controversial issue of self-recognition is avoided. There are simply some scientifically established facts about ways to get a frog to stick out its tongue. (Who would want to kiss a frog under those conditions, anyway?) Some frogs, it seems, are fairly indiscriminate about sticking out their tongues. Not just flies, but a whole slew of other things will go down the hatch if propelled at just the right velocity and range through a frog’s visual field, provoking a tongue-flicking response. Fortunately for us all, frogs seem to be a bit more discriminating about whom they will kiss. At first sight, the frog’s tongue-flicking response seems like an ideal starting point for those who wish to promote evolutionary or "teleological" theories of intentional content. The signals passed from the frog’s retina to the frog’s brain were undoubtedly honed by the deaths of untold millions of insects snagged by countless generations of amphibians. Those amphibian ancestors whose eyes generated signals that were more 1 reliable guides to the location of food in the environment did better at propagating their genes, all other things being equal, than their cohorts whose eye to brain signals were less reliable. The teleosemanticist identifies the content of frogs’ intracranial signals in terms of the environmental conditions that historically corresponded to successful tongue-flicking, namely the presence of frog food -- typically flies -- in tongue-flicking range. And their descendants live happily ever after. But this would not be a fairy tale unless there were something to pose a credible threat to this happy ending..
• Michael L. Anderson (2005). Representation, evolution and embodiment.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: As part of the ongoing attempt to fully naturalize the concept of human being--and, more specifically, to re-center it around the notion of agency--this essay discusses an approach to defining the content of representations in terms ultimately derived from their central, evolved function of providing guidance for action. This 'guidance theory' of representation is discussed in the context of, and evaluated with respect to, two other biologically inspired theories of representation: Dan Lloyd's dialectical theory of representation and Ruth Millikan's biosemantics
• Louise M. Antony (1996). Equal Rights for Swamp-persons.   (More)
• Ruth G. Millikan (2009). Biosemantics.   (More)
• Crystal L'Hôte (forthcoming). Biosemantics: an evolutionary theory of thought.   (More)
• Jason Bridges (2006). Teleofunctionalism and psychological explanation.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0114.2006.00269.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/papq/2006/00000087/00000004/art00002
  
• Nicholas Shea (2007). Consumers Need Information: supplementing teleosemantics with an input condition.   (More)
• Joe Cruz (online). On teleosemantics and natural maps (comments on work by Rob Cummins et al.).   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Let me begin by signaling my enthusiasm both for the specific case offered by Cummins et al. against teleosemantics and for the overall framework from which this work derives. If the first approximation of the idea is that there will be material implicit in a representation that can be exploited by a cognitive agent that later acquires the right abilities to extract this material, and if this material looks a great deal like content, then the teleosemanticist will find accommodating it challenging. Moreover, the distinction between representation and indication is intriguing and important, and the discussion of structural transformation and isomorphism is illuminating. While Cummins has been urging these themes for some time now, it seems to me that they have not been sufficiently appreciated in the literature
• Robert E. Cummins, James Blackmon, David Byrd, Alexa Lee & and Martin Roth (2006). Representation and unexploited content.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this paper, we introduce a novel difficulty for teleosemantics, viz., its inability to account for what we call unexploited content—content a representation has, but which the system that harbors it is currently unable to exploit. In section two, we give a characterization of teleosemantics. Since our critique does not depend on any special details that distinguish the variations in the literature, the characterization is broad, brief and abstract. In section three, we explain what we mean by unexploited content, and argue that any theory of content adequate to ground representationalist theories in cognitive science must allow for it.1 In section four, we show that teleosemantic theories of the sort we identify in section two cannot accommodate unexploited content, and are therefore unacceptable if intended as attempts to ground representationalist cognitive science. Finally, in section five, we speculate that the existence and importance of unexploited content has likely been obscured by a failure to distinguish representation from indication, and by a tendency to think of representation as reference
• Daniel C. Dennett (1988). Evolution, error and intentionality.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Sometimes it takes years of debate for philosophers to discover what it is they really disagree about. Sometimes they talk past each other in long series of books and articles, never guessing at the root disagreement that divides them. But occasionally a day comes when something happens to coax the cat out of the bag. "Aha!" one philosopher exclaims to another, "so that's why you've been disagreeing with me, misunderstanding me, resisting my conclusions, puzzling me all these years!"
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/evolerr.htm
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000431/
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000431/00/evolerr.htm
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:431
  http://cogprints.org/431/1/evolerr.htm
  http://cogprints.org/431/0/evolerr.htm
  
• Daniel C. Dennett (1993). Evolution, teleology, intentionality.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: No response that was not as long and intricate as the two commentaries combined could do justice to their details, so what follows will satisfy nobody, myself included. I will concentrate on one issue discussed by both commentators: the relationship between evolution and teleological (or intentional) explanation. My response, in its brevity, may have just one virtue: it will confirm some of the hunches (or should I say suspicions) that these and other writers have entertained about my views. For more closely argued defenses of my points, see Dennett 1990a,b,c; 1991a,b
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000275/00/evoltele.htm
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?archiveID=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:275
  http://cogprints.org/275/1/evoltele.htm
  http://cogprints.org/275/0/evoltele.htm
  
• Fred Dretske (2001). Norms, history, and the mental.   (More)
• Crawford Elder (forthcoming). Mental Causation, Invariance, and Teleofunctional Content.   (More)
• Crawford L. Elder (1998). What sensory signals are about.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In ‘Of Sensory Systems and the “Aboutness” of Mental States’, Kathleen Akins (1996) argues against what she calls ‘the traditional view’ about sensory systems, according to which they are detectors of features in the environment outside the organism. As an antidote, she considers the case of thermoreception, a system whose sensors send signals about how things stand with themselves and their immediate dermal surround (a ‘narcissistic’ sensory system); and she closes by suggesting that the signals from many sensory systems may not in any familiar sense be about anything at all. Her presentation of the issues, however, overlooks resources available to ‘the traditional view’—or so I shall argue. Akins’s own thumbnail sketch of what is wrong with the traditional view is that it asks, concerning a given sensory system, ‘what is it detecting?’, when we should instead be asking ‘what is it doing?’ (352). Her point is that on the traditional view the function of a sensory system—what it's ‘for’—is to detect or indicate (values of) features of the outside environment. But at least on one version of the traditional view—namely Ruth Millikan’s—this would never be the sole or main proper function of a sensory system. (Akins does not list Millikan as a traditionalist, but Millikan fits squarely Akins’s description of them, since she believes in a naturalistic theory of aboutness and thinks it should begin with the senses.) For Millikan (1989, 1993), the proper function of a sensory system is in the first instance enabling behavioural systems—in the simplest case, motor routines—to perform their proper function. This they do, roughly, by switching on and steering the behavioural routines. Where features of the outside environment come in is as Normal (= assumed-by-the-design) conditions for the successful performance of the sensory system's proper function. That is, the only strategy for switching on and steering that is simple enough for evolution to have hit upon it, and reliable enough for evolution to have liked it, is a strategy which gears the steering to (values of) features of the outside environment. But as soon as one starts fleshing out the details of this story, one notices that they are probably quite different in the case of thermoreception from how they are with ‘distance’ senses such as vision and olfaction--a point which Akins overlooks..
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.philosophy.uconn.edu/department/elder/akins.pdf
  https://web1.uits.uconn.edu:4443/philosophy/department/elder/akins.pdf
  http://digitalcommons.uconn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=philo_articles
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1467-8284.00131
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8284.00131
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/anal/1998/00000058/00000004/art00004
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/anal/1998/00000058/00000260/art00131
  
• Crawford L. Elder (1998). What versus how in naturally selected representations.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Empty judgements appear to be about something, and inaccurate judgements to report something. Naturalism tries to explain these appearances without positing non-real objects or states of affairs. Biological naturalism explains that the false and the empty are tokens which fail to perform the function proper to their biological type. But if truth is a biological 'supposed to', we should expect designs that achieve it only often enough. The sensory stimuli which trigger the frog's gulp-launching signal may be a poor guide to the signal's content. Teleosemantics should be anti-verificationist
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-4423(199804)2:107:426<349:WVHINS>2.0.CO;2-Z
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-4423(199804)2:107:426<349:WVHINS>2.0.CO;2-Z
  http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/107/426/349
  http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/107/426/349
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2659880.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oup/mind/1998/00000107/00000426/art00349
  http://www.philosophy.uconn.edu/department/elder/wvh.pdf
  
• Berent Enc (2002). Indeterminacy of Function Attributions.   (More)
• Peter Godfrey-Smith (2004). Mental representation, naturalism, and teleosemantics.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The "teleosemantic" program is part of the attempt to give a naturalistic explanation of the semantic properties of mental representations. The aim is to show how the internal states of a wholly physical agent could, as a matter of objective fact, represent the world beyond them. The most popular approach to solving this problem has been to use concepts of physical correlation with some kinship to those employed in information theory (Dretske 1981, 1988; Fodor 1987, 1990). Teleosemantics, which tries to solve the problem using a concept of biological function, arrived in the mid 1980s with ground-breaking works by Millikan (1984) and Papineau (1984, 1987).¹
• Pierre Jacob (2000). Can selection explain content?   (More)
• Richard Joyce (2002). Moral realism and teleosemantics.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In a recent article, William F. Harms (2000) argues in a novel way for a form of moral realism. He does not actually argue that moral realism is true, but rather that if morality is the product of natural selection
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=358503&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/U7K40246163080GG.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/biph/2001/00000016/00000005/00358503
  http://www-personal.usyd.edu.au/~rjoyce/acrobat/joyce_moral.realism.teleosemantics.pdf
  
• Brendan Lalor (1998). Swampman, Etiology, and Content.   (More)
• Graham Macdonald & David Papineau (2006). Introduction: Prospects and problems for teleosemantics.   (More)
• Ruth G. Millikan (2000). Naturalizing intentionality.   (More)
• Ruth G. Millikan (2005). The father, the son, and the daughter: Sellars, Brandom, and Millikan.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jbp/pc/2005/00000013/00000001/art00005
  
• Ruth G. Millikan (2002). Teleological Theories of mental content.   (More)
• Ruth G. Millikan (2001). What has Natural Information to Do with Intentional Representation?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: "According to informational semantics, if it's necessary that a creature can't distinguish Xs from Ys, it follows that the creature can't have a concept that applies to Xs but not Ys." (Jerry Fodor, The Elm and the Expert, p.32)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iJekyHohFlQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA105&dq=What+has+natural+information+to+do+with+intentional+representation?+Millikan&ots=Gbmp3i65AN&sig=nmaOolClVje4UgqWrE7pp0VPxSQ
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iJekyHohFlQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA105&dq=What+has+natural+information+to+do+with+intentional+representation?+Millikan&ots=Gbmp3h06CO&sig=Nc0cd_mgxj-UHcbnxHX78X1Jde0
  
• Karen Neander (2007). Biological Approaches to Mental Representation.   (More)
• Karen Neander (1999). Fitness and the Fate of Unicorns.   (More)
• Karen Neander (2007). Teleological Theories of Mental Content: Can Darwin Solve the Problem of Intentionality?   (More)
• David Papineau (2003). Is representation rife?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1467-9329.00210/enhancedabs/
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118834885/PDFSTART
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9329.00210
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/rati/2003/00000016/00000002/art00001
  
• David Papineau (1990). Truth and Teleology.   (More)
• Mark Perlman (2002). Pagan teleology: Adaptational role and the philosophy of mind.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=o23-SrWDAL0C&oi=fnd&pg=RA1-PA263&ots=27RzphXNFd&sig=_tm2Ix3YEV9e5To_CMQlvLjX9oE
  
• P. M. Pietroski (1992). Intentionality and teleological error.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Theories of content purport to explain, among other things, in virtue of what beliefs have the truth conditions they do have. The desire for such a theory has many sources, but prominent among them are two puzzling (and related) facts that are notoriously difficult to explain: beliefs can be false, and there are normative constraints on the formation of beliefs.2 If we knew in virtue of what beliefs had truth conditions, we would be better positioned to explain how it is possible for an agent to believe that which is not the case. Moreover, we do not say merely of such an agent that he believes that p when p is not the case. We say the agent made a mistake, and often criticize him accordingly; we think agents ought not have false beliefs, and that such beliefs should be changed; etc. An adequate theory of content would, presumably, reveal the source of these normative facts about the mental lives of agents. Indeed, it is typically taken to be an adequacy constraint on a theory of content that it help explain the possibility of error and the "normativity" of content. Teleological theories of content promise to do just this
• Mark Rowlands (online). Teleosemantics.   (More)
• Dan Ryder (2006). On thinking of kinds: A neuroscientific perspective.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://homepage.mac.com/ancientportraits/drsite/representingkinds.pdf
  
• Dan Ryder (2004). SINBaD neurosemantics: A theory of mental representation.   (More)
• Itay Shani (2007). Teleonomic Functions and Intrinsic Intentionality: Dretske's Theory as a Test Case.   (More)
• Nicholas Shea (2006). Millikan's contribution to materialist philosophy of mind.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: One of the great outstanding problems in materialist philosophy of mind is the problem of how there can be space in the material world for intentionality. In the 1980s Ruth Millikan formulated a detailed theory according to which representations are physical particulars and their contents are complex relational properties of those particulars which can be specified in terms of respectable properties drawn from the natural sciences. In particular, she relied on the biological concept of the function of a trait, and the existence of historical conditions which enter into an evolutionary explanation of the operation of that trait. The present article is an introduction to this influential theory of intentionality
• Nicholas Shea (forthcoming). Millikan's Isomorphism Requirement.   (More)
• Josefa Toribio (1998). Meaning and other non-biological categories.   (More)
• Karen Neander (online). teleological theories of mental content.   (More)
• Matthew Usher (2004). Comment on Ryder's SINBAD neurosemantics: Is teleofunction isomorphism the way to understand representations?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psyc/staff/academic/musher/documents/06_mila_006.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0017.2004.00256.x
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0017.2004.00256.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/2004/00000019/00000002/art00006
  
• Denis M. Walsh (2002). Brentano's chestnuts.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=o23-SrWDAL0C&oi=fnd&pg=RA1-PA312&ots=27Rzph_SKf&sig=t8cww5GYFFZwzGF5pbf8XwqpUA8
  

Inferentialist Accounts of Meaning and Content

• Ned Block (1997). Semantics, conceptual role.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: According to Conceptual Role Semantics ("CRS"), the meaning of a representation is the role of that representation in the cognitive life of the agent, e.g. in perception, thought and decision-making. It is an extension of the well known "use" theory of meaning, according to which the meaning of a word is its use in communication and more generally, in social interaction. CRS supplements external use by including the role of a symbol inside a computer or a brain. The uses appealed to are not just actual, but also counterfactual: not only what effects a thought does have, but what effects it would have had if stimuli or other states had differed. The view has arisen separately in philosophy (where it is sometimes called "inferential," or "functional" role semantics) and in cognitive science (where it is sometimes called "procedural semantics"). The source of the view is Wittgenstein (1953) and Sellars, but the source in contemporary philosophy is a series of papers by Harman (see his 1987) and Field (1977). Other proponents in philosophy have included Block, Horwich, Loar, McGinn and Peacocke (1992). In cognitive science, they include Woods (1981) and Miller and Johnson-Laird (1976). (See references in Block, 1987.)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/232/1/199712005.html
  http://cogprints.org/232/0/199712005.html
  
• Robert B. Brandom (1994). Reasoning and representing.   (More)
• Ingo Brigandt (2004). Conceptual role semantics, the theory theory, and conceptual change.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The purpose of the paper is twofold. I first outline a philosophical theory of concepts based on conceptual role semantics. This approach is explicitly intended as a framework for the study and explanation of conceptual change in science. Then I point to the close similarities between this philosophical framework and the theory theory of concepts, suggesting that a convergence between psychological and philosophical approaches to concepts is possible. An underlying theme is to stress that using a non-atomist account of concepts is crucial for the successful study of conceptual development and change
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://phonline.org/paper.php?keynum=930
  http://www.ualberta.ca/~brigandt/SPP_ESPP.pdf
  http://cogprints.org/3576/1/SPP_ESPP_Brigandt.pdf
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003576/
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003576/01/SPP_ESPP_Brigandt.pdf
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:3576
  
• J. L. Dowell (2006). Making it totally explicit.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ajol.info/viewarticle.php?jid=190&id=28213&layout=abstract
  
• Jerry A. Fodor & Ernest LePore (1991). Why meaning (probably) isn't conceptual role.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It's an achievement of the last couple of decades that people who work in linguistic semantics and people who work in the philosophy of language have arrived at a friendly, de facto agreement as to their respective job descriptions. The terms of this agreement are that the semanticists do the work and the philosophers do the worrying. The semanticists try to construct actual theories of meaning (or truth theories, or model theories, or whatever) for one or another kind of expression in one or another natural language; for example, they try to figure out how the temperature could be rising compatibly with the substitutivity of identicals. The philosophers, by contrast, keep an eye on the large, foundational issues, such as: what's the relation between sense and denotation; what's the relation between thought and language; whether translation is determinate; and whether life is like a fountain. Every now and then the philosophers and the semanticists are supposed to get together and compare notes on their respective progress. Or lack thereof
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/pub/papers/WhyMeaning.pdf
  http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/faculty/lepore/WhyMeaning.html
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0017.1991.tb00260.x
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1533-6077(1993)3<15:WM(ICR>2.0.CO;2-D
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=1533-6077(1993)3<15:WM(ICR>2.0.CO;2-D
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1522936.pdf
  
• Mark Greenberg & Gilbert Harman (2007). Conceptual role semantics.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: CRS says that the meanings of expressions of a language or other symbol system or the contents of mental states are determined and explained by the way symbols are used in thinking. According to CRS one
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.princeton.edu/~harman/Papers/CRS.pdf
  http://repositories.cdlib.org/uclalaw/plltwps/5-16
  http://repositories.cdlib.org/uclalaw/plltwps/5-16/
  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=800187
  
• Steven Gross (ms). Review of Brandom's Articulating Reasons.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: There is nothing in [the six chapters that make up the body of Articulating Reasons] that will come as a surprise to anyone who has mastered [Making It Explicit]. … I had in mind audiences that had perhaps not so much as dipped into the big book but were curious about its themes and philosophical consequences. (35–36)
• Gilbert Harman (1982). Conceptual role semantics.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.projecteuclid.org/Dienst/UI/1.0/Display/euclid.ndjfl/1093883628
  http://www.projecteuclid.org/DPubS/Repository/1.0/Disseminate?handle=euclid.ndjfl/1093883628&view=body&content-type=pdf_1
  
• Gilbert Harman (1987). (Nonsolipsistic) conceptual role semantics.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oso/22848/1999/00000001/00000001/art00016
  
• Steven Horst (ms). Goldilocks searches for a conceptual semantics.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This is a relatively breezy version of an exploration of some issues about how to provide a theory of concepts and conceptual semantics. I have also written more conventional versions of some of this material (without the Three Bears motif), though those are set in a broader context.
• Mark Eli Kalderon (2001). Reasoning and representing.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://markelikalderon.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/rr.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/u5286534982v0317/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=333698&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/U5286534982V0317.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2001/00000105/00000002/00333698
  
• Daniel Laurier (2005). Pragmatics, pittsburgh style.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jbp/pc/2005/00000013/00000001/art00010
  
• Brian Loar (1982). Conceptual role and truth conditions.   (More)
• Barry M. Loewer (1982). The role of 'conceptual role semantics'.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://projecteuclid.org/Dienst/Repository/1.0/Disseminate/euclid.ndjfl/1093870090/body/pdf
  http://www.projecteuclid.org/DPubS/Repository/1.0/Disseminate?handle=euclid.ndjfl/1093870090&view=body&content-type=pdf_1
  
• Mark McCullagh (2005). Inferentialism and singular reference.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Basic to Robert Brandom’s project in Making It Explicit is the demarcation of singular terms according to the structure of their inferential roles---rather than, as is usual, according to the kinds of things they purport to denote. But the demarcational effort founders on the need to distinguish extensional and nonextensional occurrences of expressions in terms of inferential roles; the closest that an inferentialist can come to drawing that distinction is to discern degrees of extensionality, and that is not close enough. The general moral applies as well to “two factor” theories of content: the notion of inferential role lacks the independence from the notion of denotation that many proponents of such theories have attributed to it.
• Mark McCullagh (2005). Motivating inferentialism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Robert Brandom has supported his inferentialist conception of semantic content by appealing to the claim that it is a necessary condition on having a propositional attitude that one appreciate the inferential relations it stands in. When we see what considerations can be given in support of that claim, however, we see that it doesn’t even motivate an inferentialist semantics. The problem is that that claim about what it takes to have a propositional attitude does nothing to show that its inferential relations are a feature of its content rather than of the relation that the subject stands in to that content---that is, the attitude.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.uoguelph.ca/~mmcculla/papers/mi.pdf
  
• John McDowell (2005). Motivating inferentialism: Comments on making it explicit (ch. 2).   (More)
• Carlo Penco (forthcoming). Truth, charity and assertion.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In this paper I discuss the relation between truth and assertion, starting from an example by Leonard Linsky which has been used in the debate on definite description by Keith Donnellan and Saul Kripke. To treat the problem of the referential use of definite descriptions we need not only to take into account the contest of utterance, but also the context of reception, or the cognitive context. If the cognitive context is given the right relevance we may even accept the possibility to speak of "pragmatic ambiguity" as Donnellan did. However I will not give a definite answer to the debate between Donnellan and Kripke, but I will try to show that there is a moral to be drawn by the discussion: it is advisable to use truth attribution in a charitable way if we want to entertain conversation with people who have beliefs not necessarily similar to ours.
• Jaroslav Peregrin, Inferentialism and the compositionality of meaning.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Inferentialism, which I am going to present in detail in the following sections, is the view that meanings are, roughly, roles that are acquired by types of sounds and inscriptions in virtue of their being treated according to rules of our language games, roughly in the sense in which wooden pieces acquire certain roles by being treated according the rules of chess. The most important consequences are that (i) a meaning is not an object labeled (stood for, represented ...) by an expression; and that (ii) meaning is normative in the sense that to say that an expression means thus and so is to say that it should be used so and so. The founding father of inferentialism is Brandom (1994; 2000). (However, nothing in this paper hinges on the fact that the version of inferentialism defended here is identical with Brandom's). This position provokes two kinds of objections. First there are general objections towards the very normativity of meaning, which do not target especially inferentialism; these I have addressed elsewhere 1. Besides this, there are objection targeted more specifically at inferentialism. Probably the most discussed specimen of such objections is the objection - repeatedly raised especially by Jerry Fodor and Ernest LePore and others - to the effect that though meanings should be compositional, the compositionality of inferential roles is unattainable. This is the kind of objection I am going to deal with here 2. (Hand in hand with this objection then go various allegations of circularity of inferentialism, which we will also discuss.) To do this, I will exploit the long-standing comparison of language to chess, as it seems particularly helpful for making the inferentialist account of language plausible3. This comparison, to be sure, has its limits beyond which it may become severely misleading; but as long as we keep them in mind, it can serve us very well
• Mark Perlman (1997). The trouble with two-factor conceptual role theories.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&collection=TRD&recid=316237CI
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/l27w078265k67058/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=135593&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/L27W078265K67058.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/mind/1997/00000007/00000004/00135593
  
• Susanna Schellenberg (2006). Sellarsian perspectives on perception and non-conceptual content.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/~susanna/SchellenbergSellarsPerceptionNonConceptualContent.pdf
  
• Susanna Schellenberg (2000). Begriff, gehalt, folgerung.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/~susanna/SchellenbergBegriffGehaltFolgerung.pdf
  
• Daniel Whiting (online). Conceptual role semantics.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.iep.utm.edu/c/conc-rol.htm
  
• Robert Williams (2008). The price of inscrutability.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~phljrgw/wip/thepriceofinscrutability.pdf
  http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~phljrgw/wip/REVISEDvaliditityinscrutabilitycontextshorter.pdf
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121540976/PDFSTART
  
• Daniel J. Whiting (2008). Conservatives and racists: Inferential role semantics and pejoratives.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract:  According to inferential role semantics (IRS), for any given expression to possess a particular meaning one must be disposed to make or, alternatively, acknowledge as correct certain inferential transitions involving it. As Williamson points out, pejoratives such as ‘Boche’ seem to provide a counter-example to IRS. Many speakers are neither disposed to use such expressions nor consider it proper to do so. But it does not follow, as IRS appears to entail, that such speakers do not understand pejoratives or that they lack meaning. In this paper, I examine recent responses to this problem by Boghossian and Brandom and argue that their proposed construal of the kind of inferential rules governing a pejorative such as ‘Boche’ is to be ruled out on the grounds that it is non-conservative. I defend the appeal to conservatism in this instance against criticism and, in doing so, propose an alternative approach to pejoratives on behalf of IRS that resolves the problem Williamson poses
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/t7705336hq756437/fulltext.pdf
  http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/55234/1/Conservatives_and_racists_-_Inferential_Role_Semantics_and_Pejoratives_-_Daniel_Whiting.pdf
  
• Daniel Whiting (2007). Inferentialism, representationalism and derogatory words.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In a recent paper, after outlining various distinguishing features of derogatory words, Jennifer Hornsby suggests that the phenomenon raises serious difficulties for inferentialism. Against Hornsby, I claim that derogatory words do not pose any insuperable problems for inferentialism, so long as it is supplemented with apparatus borrowed from Grice and Hare. Moreover, I argue, derogatory expressions pose difficulties for Hornsby's favoured alternative theory of meaning, representationalism, unless it too is conjoined with a similar Grice/Hare mechanism. So, the upshot of the discussion is that, contra Hornsby, focus on derogatory expressions alone does not provide grounds for deciding between competing theories of meaning, but nevertheless serves to highlight important features that any such theory must acknowledge and incorporate
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a780387795~fulltext=713240930
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/780387795.pdf
  http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/52405/1/Inferentialism%2C_Representationalism_and_Derogatory_Words_-_Daniel_Whiting.pdf
  http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/52405/01/Inferentialism%2C_Representationalism_and_Derogatory_Words_-_Daniel_Whiting.pdf
  

Interpretivist Accounts of Meaning and Content

• Kristin Andrews (2002). Interpreting autism: A critique of Davidson on thought and language.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Donald Davidson's account of interpretation purports to be a priori , though I argue that the empirical facts about interpretation, theory of mind, and autism must be considered when examining the merits of Davidson's view. Developmental psychologists have made plausible claims about the existence of some people with autism who use language but who are unable to interpret the minds of others. This empirical claim undermines Davidson's theoretical claims that all speakers must be interpreters of other speakers and that one need not be a speaker in order to be a thinker. The falsity of these theses has consequences for other parts of Davidson's world-view; for example, it undermines his argument against animal thought
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a713690571~fulltext=713240930
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/XTGFKTEJAJKD885J.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/XTGFKTEJAJKD885J.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/cphp/2002/00000015/00000003/art00005
  http://www.yorku.ca/andrewsk/andrews/PHILO%20PSYCH%20-%20OCR.pdf
  
• Alex Byrne (1998). Interpretivism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In the writings of Daniel Dennett and Donald Davidson we find something like the following bold conjecture: it is an a priori truth that there is no gap between our best judgements of a subject's beliefs and desires and the truth about the subject's beliefs and desires. Under ideal conditions a subject's belief-box and desire-box become transparent
• H. G. Callaway (1985). Meaning without Analyticity (Reprinted in Callaway, 2008 Meaning without Analyticity).   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In a series of interesting and influential papers on semantics, Hilary Putnam has developed what he calls a “post-verificationist” theory of meaning. As part of this work, and not I think the most important part, Putnam defends a limited version of the analytic-synthetic distinction. In this paper I will survey and evaluate Putnam’s defense of analyticity and explore its relationship to broader concerns in semantics. Putnam’s defense of analyticity ultimately fails, and I want to show here exactly why it fails. However, I will also argue that this very failure helps open the prospect of a new optimism concerning the theory of meaning, a theory of meaning finally liberated from the dead weight of the notions of analyticity and necessary truth. Putnam’s work, in fact, makes valuable contributions to such a theory.
• H. G. Callaway & J. van Brakel (1996). No Need to Speak the same Language? Review of Ramberg, Donald Davidson's Philosophy of Language.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The book is an “introductory” reconstruction of Davidson on interpretation —a claim to be taken with a grain of salt. Writing introductory books has become an idol of the tribe. This is a concise book and reflects much study. It has many virtues along with some flaws. Ramberg assembles themes and puzzles from Davidson into a more or less coherent viewpoint. A special virtue is the innovative treatment of incommensurability and of the relation of Davidson’s work to hermeneutic themes. The weakness comes in a certain unevenness. While generally convincing and well written, the book has low points which may leave the reader confused or unconvinced. Davidson is the hero in this book, and our hero is sometimes over idealized.
• Jerry A. Fodor (1993). Is radical interpretation possible?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1520-8583(1994)8<101:IRIP>2.0.CO;2-P
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=1520-8583(1994)8<101:IRIP>2.0.CO;2-P
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2214165.pdf
  
• Jerry A. Fodor & Ernest LePore (1994). Is radical interpretation possible?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1520-8583(1994)8<101:IRIP>2.0.CO;2-P
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=1520-8583(1994)8<101:IRIP>2.0.CO;2-P
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2214165.pdf
  
• Gl (2006). Triangulation.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, ed. E. Lepore/B. Smith, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006, 1006-1019
• John R. Cook (2009). Is Davidson a Gricean?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In his recent collection of essays, Language, Truth and History (2005), Donald Davidson appears to endorse a philosophy of language which gives primary importance to the notion of the speaker’s communicative intentions, a perspective on language not too dissimilar from that of Paul Grice. If that is right, then this would mark a major shift from the formal semanticist approach articulated and defended by Davidson in his Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (1984). In this paper, I argue that although there are many similarities between these two thinkers, Davidson has not abandoned his earlier views on language
• Henry Jackman (1996). Radical interpretation and the permutation principle.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/k411352477274001/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/K411352477274001.pdf
  
• Uriah Kriegel (forthcoming). Cognitive Phenomenology as the Basis of Unconscious Content.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Since the seventies, it has been customary to assume that intentionality is independent of consciousness. Recently, a number of philosophers have rejected this assumption, claiming intentionality is closely tied to consciousness, inasmuch as non- conscious intentionality in some sense depends upon conscious intentionality. Within this alternative framework, the question arises of how to account for unconscious intentionality, and different authors have offered different accounts. In this paper, I compare and contrast four possible accounts of unconscious intentionality, which I call potentialism, inferentialism, eliminativism, and interpretivism. The first three are the leading accounts in the existing literature, while the fourth is my own proposal, which I argue to be superior. I then argue that an upshot of interpretivism is that all unconscious intentionality is ultimately grounded is a specific kind of cognitive phenomenology.
• Daniel Laurier (2001). Non-conceptually contentful attitudes in interpretation.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ifs.csic.es/sorites/Issue_13/laurier.htm
  http://www.ifs.csic.es/sorites/Issue_13/sorites13.pdf#page=8
  
• B. Ramberg (2004). Naturalizing idealizations: Pragmatism and the interpretivist strategy.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/rodopi/cpm/2004/00000001/00000002/art00001
  
• Barry C. Smith (2006). Davidson, interpretation and first-person constraints on meaning.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: International Journal of Philosophical Studies 0967-2559 (print)/1466-4542 (online) Original Article
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/757927671.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~db=all~content=a757927671~fulltext=713240930
  
• Robert Williams (2008). The price of inscrutability.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~phljrgw/wip/thepriceofinscrutability.pdf
  http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~phljrgw/wip/REVISEDvaliditityinscrutabilitycontextshorter.pdf
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121540976/PDFSTART
  
• J. Robert G. Williams (2007). Eligibility and inscrutability.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Inscrutability arguments threaten to reduce interpretationist metasemantic theories to absurdity. Can we find some way to block the arguments? A highly influential proposal in this regard is David Lewis’ ‘eligibility’ response: some theories are better than others, not because they fit the data better, but because they are framed in terms of more natural properties. The purposes of this paper are (1) to outline the nature of the eligibility proposal, making the case that it is not ad hoc, but instead flows naturally from three independently motivated elements; and (2) to show that severe limitations afflict the proposal. In conclusion, I pick out the element of the eligibility response that is responsible for the limitations: future work in this area should therefore concentrate on amending this aspect of the overall theory
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~phljrgw/JRGWilliamsPhilRevEligibilityInscrutability.pdf
  http://philreview.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/116/3/361
  
• Robert Williams (2008). Gavagai again.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Quine (1960, Word and object. Cambridge, Mass.:MIT Press, ch. 2) claims that there are a variety of equally good schemes for translating or interpreting ordinary talk. ‘Rabbit’ might be taken to divide its reference over rabbits, over temporal slices of rabbits, or undetached parts of rabbits, without significantly affecting which sentences get classified as true and which as false. This is the basis of his famous ‘argument from below’ to the conclusion that there can be no fact of the matter as to how reference is to be divided. Putative counterexamples to Quine’s claim have been put forward in the past (see especially Evans 1975; 1975, Journal of Philosophy, LXXII(13), 343–362. Reprinted in McDowell (Ed.), Gareth Evans: Collected papers. Oxford: Clarendon Press.), and various patches have been suggested (e.g. Wright (1997, The indeterminacy of translation. In C. Wright & B. Hale (Eds.), A companion to the philosophy of language (pp. 397–426). Oxford: Blackwell)). One lacuna in this literature is that one does not find any detailed presentation of what exactly these interpretations are supposed to be. Drawing on contemporary literature on persistence, the present paper sets out detailed semantic treatments for fragments of English, whereby predicates such as ‘rabbit’ divide their reference over four-dimensional continuants (Quine’s rabbits), instantaneous temporal slices of those continuants (Quine’s rabbit-slices) and the simple elements which compose those slices (undetached rabbit parts) respectively. Once we have the systematic interpretations on the table, we can get to work evaluating them
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~phljrgw/wip/GavagaiAgain.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/h8g71342118740k6/fulltext.pdf
  
• J. Robert G. Williams (2008). Permutations and Foster problems: Two puzzles or one?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: How are permutation arguments for the inscrutability of reference to be formulated in the context of a Davidsonian truth-theoretic semantics? Davidson (1979) takes these arguments to establish that there are no grounds for favouring a reference scheme that assigns London to “Londres”, rather than one that assigns Sydney to that name. We shall see, however, that it is far from clear whether permutation arguments work when set out in the context of the kind of truth-theoretic semantics which Davidson favours. The principle required to make the argument work allows us to resurrect Foster problems against the Davidsonian position. The Foster problems and the permutation inscrutability problems stand or fall together: they are one puzzle, not two
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~phljrgw/wip/Twopuzzlesorone.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9329.2007.00387.x
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/119395804/PDFSTART
  

Naturalizing Mental Content, Misc

• Kenneth Aizawa & Frederick R. Adams (2005). Defending non-derived content.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://personal.centenary.edu/~kaizawa/Defending Nonderived Content (Blind).doc
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a727334011~fulltext=713240930
  http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/J44785163TH56N18.pdf
  http://www.informaworld.com/index/727334011.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/cphp/2005/00000018/00000006/art00001
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~db=all~content=a727334011~fulltext=713240930
  
• Mark Alfano (forthcoming). Nietzsche, naturalism, and the tenacity of the intentional.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche demands that “psychology shall be
  recognized again as the queen of the sciences.” While one might cast a dubious glance at the “again,” many of Nietzsche’s insights were indeed psychological, and many of his arguments invoke psychological premises. In Genealogy, he criticizes the “English psychologists” for the “inherent psychological absurdity” of their theory of the origin of good and bad, pointing out the implausibility of the claim that the utility of unegoistic
  actions would be forgotten. Tabling whether this criticism is valid, we see Nietzsche’s methodological naturalism here: moral claims should be grounded in empirical psychological claims. Later in Genealogy, Nietzsche advances his own naturalistic account of the origins of good, bad, and evil.
  Three cheers for methodological naturalism, but it was not Nietzsche’s innovation, and he did not pioneer its application to morality. The list of moral naturalists who appealed to psychology arguably includes Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Bentham, and Mill, among many others. If Nietzsche’s naturalism is to be worth the candle of contemporary scholarship, it must involve more than the methodological naturalism that predated him by centuries and to which he made no serious contribution. Nietzsche’s key contribution to naturalism is not his adherence to its methodology, but his discovery of certain psychological facts. In particular, he realized that mental states are not ordinary dyadic relations between a subject and an intentional content. Nietzsche discovered the tenacity of intentional states: when an intentional state loses its object (because the subject realizes the object does not exist, because the object is forbidden, or because of something else), a new object replaces the original; the state does not disappear entirely. As Nietzsche puts it Genealogy, “Man would rather will the void than be void of will.” Nietzsche relies on the tenacity thesis in his explanation of the origin of bad conscience: “All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward […. They turn] against [their] possessors.” When hostility towards others becomes impossible, hostility does not disappear; instead, its object is replaced.
• Mark Alfano (forthcoming). The Tenacity of the Intentional Prior to the Genealogy.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I have argued elsewhere that the psychological aspects of Nietzsche’s later works are best understood from a psychodynamic point of view. Nietzsche holds a view I dubbed the tenacity of the intentional (T): when an intentional state loses its object, a new object replaces the original; the state does not disappear entirely. In this essay I amend and clarify (T) to (T``): When an intentional state with a sub-propositional object loses its object, the affective component of the state persists without a corresponding object, and that affect will generally be redeployed in a state with a distinct object. I then trace the development of the tenacity thesis through Nietzsche’s early and middle works. Along the way, I discuss a number of related topics, including the scope of the tenacity thesis (does it apply to all intentional states?), the reflexive turn one often finds in Nietzsche’s examples (why does he so often say the new object is oneself?), and the relations among will to power, drives, and the tenacity of the intentional.
• Peter Alward (2009). The inessential quasi-indexical.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: As Perry originally formulated things, the primary casualty of the problem of the essential indexical was the analysis of belief as a two-place relation between a subject and a proposition.1 Strictly speaking, of course, Perry argued that the problem he identified undermined the “doctrine of propositions” which consists of this analysis of belief together with the claims that the truth-values of propositions are independent of contextual parameters (other than worlds) and that propositions are individuated more finely than truth-conditions.2 But he went on to assert that the only adequate solution to the problem involved the rejection of the “propositional-relation” (let‟s call it) analysis of belief.3 The central aim of this paper is to defend a version of the propositional-relation analysis from Perry‟s criticisms
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://people.uleth.ca/~peter.alward/papers/inessential_quasi-indexical.htm
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/l046g72376292x20/fulltext.pdf
  
• Michael L. Anderson & Gregg H. Rosenberg (online). Content and action: The guidance theory of representation.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: b>. The current essay introduces the guidance theory of representation, according to which the content and intentionality of representations can be accounted for in terms of the way they provide guidance for action. The guidance theory offers a way of fixing representational content that gives the causal and evolutionary history of the subject only an indirect (non-necessary) role, and an account of representational error, based on failure of action, that does not rely on any such notions as proper functions, ideal conditions, or normal circumstances. Moreover, because the notion of error is defined in terms of failure of action, the guidance theory meets the
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.agcognition.org/papers/CNA.pdf
  http://www.cs.umd.edu/~anderson/papers/CNA.pdf
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003953/
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:3953
  
• Andrew Brook & Robert J. Stainton (1997). Fodor's new theory of content and computation.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Eq80HtunbIkC&oi=fnd&pg=PA86&ots=xjpvqDo6vs&sig=Ookx_sBmrrPL1DYMA2BfbmzClj4
  http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=0S3JeDO8I6sC&oi=fnd&pg=PA86&ots=5PBApzOgpi&sig=xj9ShFRT2gIzeTjgpvCObo4yuKw
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0017.1997.tb00083.x
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/119154915/PDFSTART
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0017.00057
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1997/00000012/F0020003/art00011
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1997/00000012/00000003/art00057
  
• Todd Buras (2009). An Argument against Causal Theories of Mental Content.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Some mental states are about themselves. Nothing is a cause of itself. So some mental states are not about their causes; they are about things distinct from their causes. If this argument is sound, it spells trouble for causal theories of mental content—the precise sort of trouble depending on the precise sort of causal theory. This paper shows that the argument is sound (§§1-3), and then spells out the trouble (§4).
• Mike Collins (2009). The Nature and Implementation of Representation in Biological Systems.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I defend a theory of mental representation that satisfies naturalistic constraints. Briefly, we begin by distinguishing (i) what makes something a representation from (ii) given that a thing is a representation, what determines what it represents. Representations are states of biological organisms, so we should expect a unified theoretical framework for explaining both what it is to be a representation as well as what it is to be a heart or a kidney. I follow Millikan in explaining (i) in terms of teleofunction, explicated in terms of natural selection. To explain (ii), we begin by recognizing that representational states do not have content, that is, they are neither true nor false except insofar as they both “point to” or “refer” to something, as well as “say” something regarding whatever it is they are about. To distinguish veridical from false representations, there must be a way for these separate aspects to come apart; hence, we explain (ii) by providing independent theories of what I call f-reference and f-predication (the ‘f’ simply connotes ‘fundamental’, to distinguish these things from their natural language counterparts). Causal theories of representation typically founder on error, or on what Fodor has called the disjunction problem. Resemblance or isomorphism theories typically founder on what I’ve called the non-uniqueness problem, which is that isomorphisms and resemblance are practically unconstrained and so representational content cannot be uniquely determined. These traditional problems provide the motivation for my theory, the structural preservation theory, as follows. F-reference, like reference, is a specific, asymmetric relation, as is causation. F-predication, like predication, is a non-specific relation, as predicates typically apply to many things, just as many relational systems can be isomorphic to any given relational system. Putting these observations together, a promising strategy is to explain f-reference via causal history and f-predication via something like isomorphism between relational systems. This dissertation should be conceptualized as having three parts. After motivating and characterizing the problem in chapter 1, the first part is the negative project, where I review and critique Dretske’s, Fodor’s, and Millikan’s theories in chapters 2-4. Second, I construct my theory about the nature of representation in chapter 5 and defend it from objections in chapter 6. In chapters 7-8, which constitute the third and final part, I address the question of how representation is implemented in biological systems. In chapter 7 I argue that single-cell intracortical recordings taken from awake Macaque monkeys performing a cognitive task provide empirical evidence for structural preservation theory, and in chapter 8 I use the empirical results to illustrate, clarify, and refine the theory.
• Robert E. Cummins (2002). Haugeland on representation and intentionality.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Haugeland doesn’t have what I would call a theory of mental representation. Indeed, it isn’t clear that he believes there is such a thing. But he does have a theory of intentionality and a correlative theory of objectivity, and it is this material that I will be discussing in what follows. It will facilitate the discussion that follows to have at hand some distinctions and accompanying terminology I introduced in Representations, Targets and Attitudes (Cummins, 1996; RTA hereafter). Couching the discussion in these terms will, I hope, help to identify points of agreement and disagreement between Haugaland and myself. In RTA, I distinguished between the target a representation has on a given occasion of its application, and its content. RTA takes representation deployment to be the business of intenders: mechanisms whose business it is to represent some particular class of targets. Thus, on standard stories about speech perception, there is a mechanism (called a parser) whose business it is to represent the phrase structure of the linguistic input currently being processed. When this intender passes a representation R to the consumers of its products, those consumers will take R to be a representation of the phrase structure of the current input. There is no explicit vocabulary to mark the target-content distinction in ordinary language. Expressions like "what I referred to," "what I meant," and the like, are ambiguous. Sometimes they mean targets, sometimes contents. Consider the following dialogue
• Daniel C. Dennett (2001). Intentionality.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Intentionality is _aboutness_. Some things are about other things: a belief can be about icebergs, but an iceberg is not about anything; an idea can be about the number 7, but the number 7 is not about anything; a book or a film can be about Paris, but Paris is not about anything. Philosophers have long been concerned with the analysis of the phenomenon of intentionality, which has seemed to many to be a fundamental feature of mental states and events
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/252/1/intentio.htm
  http://cogprints.org/252/0/intentio.htm
  
• Chris Eliasmith (2000). How Neurons Mean: A Neurocomputational Theory of Representational Content.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Questions concerning the nature of representation and what representations are about have been a staple of Western philosophy since Aristotle. Recently, these same questions have begun to concern neuroscientists, who have developed new techniques and theories for understanding how the locus of neurobiological representation, the brain, operates. My dissertation draws on philosophy and neuroscience to develop a novel theory of representational content
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blutner.de/philom/repres/Eliasmith_How neurons mean.pdf
  http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~celiasmi/Papers/Eliasmith.2000.How neurons mean.PhD.pdf
  http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~celiasmi/Papers/Eliasmith.2000.How neurons mean.PhD.pdf
  
• Hartry Field (1994). Deflationist views of meaning and content.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-4423(199407)2:103:411<249:DVOMAC>2.0.CO;2-#
  http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/103/411/249.pdf
  http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/103/411/249
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2253740.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oso/80566/2001/00000001/00000001/art00005
  
• Justin C. Fisher (online). Representational content and the keys to success.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: I consider the question of whether success-linked theories of content
• Don Garrett (2006). Hume's naturalistic theory of representation.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Hume is a naturalist in many different respects and about many different topics; this paper argues that he is also a naturalist about intentionality and representation. It does so in the course of answering four questions about his theory of mental representation: (1) Which perceptions represent? (2) What can perceptions represent? (3) Why do perceptions represent at all? (4) Howdo perceptions represent what they do? It appears that, for Hume, all perceptions except passions can represent; and they can represent bodies, minds, and persons, with their various qualities. In addition, ideas can represent impressions and other ideas. However, he explicitly rejects the view that ideas are inherently representational, and he implicitly adopts a view according to which things (whether mental or non-mental) represent in virtue of playing, through the production of mental effects and dispositions, a significant part of the causal and/or functional role of what they represent. It is in virtue of their particular functional roles that qualitatively identical ideas are capable of representing particulars or general kinds; substances or modes; relations; past, present, or future; and individuals or compounds
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/13974731148146R4.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/synt/2006/00000152/00000003/00009007
  
• Mark Greenberg (2005). A new map of theories of mental content.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://repositories.cdlib.org/uclalaw/plltwps/5-14
  http://repositories.cdlib.org/uclalaw/plltwps/5-14/
  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=795726
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1533-6077.2005.00068.x
  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/120710717/PDFSTART
  
• Steven Gross, The nature of semantics: On Jackendoff's arguments.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Jackendoff defends a mentalist approach to semantics that investigates con- ceptual structures in the mind/brain and their interfaces with other structures, including specifically linguistic structures responsible for syntactic and phono- logical competence. He contrasts this approach with one that seeks to charac- terize the intentional relations between expressions and objects in the world. The latter, he argues, cannot be reconciled with mentalism. He objects in par- ticular that intentionality cannot be naturalized and that the relevant notion of object is suspect. I critically discuss these objections, arguing in part that Jackendoff’s position rests on questionable philosophical assumptions
• Henry Jackman (online). Conventionalism, objectivity, and constitution.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: John Haugeland has recently attempted to provide a naturalistic account of intentionality that explains how we can (collectively) misidentify objects in the world in terms of the interplay of two types of 'recognitional' skill. Nevertheless, it is argued here that his inegalitarian conception of the two sorts of skill leaves him with a quasi-conventionalist account of our relation to the world which lacks the more robust sort of objectivity that a more holistic theory could provide
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.yorku.ca/hjackman/papers/Haugeland.pdf
  http://www.yorku.ca/hjackman/papers/haugeland.html
  
• Henry Jackman (1998). James' pragmatic account of intentionality and truth.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: William James presents a preference-sensitive and future-directed notion of truth that has struck many as wildly revisionary. This paper argues that such a reaction usually results from failing to see how his accounts of truth and intentionality are intertwined. James' forward-looking account of intentionality (or "knowing") compares favorably the 'causal' and 'resemblance-driven' accounts that have been popular since his day, and it is only when his remarks about truth are placed in the context of his account of intentionality that they come to seem as plausible as they manifestly did to James
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.yorku.ca/hjackman/papers/James-int-truth.pdf
  http://www.yorku.ca/hjackman/papers/James-int-truth.html
  
• Barry M. Loewer (1997). A guide to naturalizing semantics.   (More)
• Gregg H. Rosenberg & Michael L. Anderson, A brief introduction to the guidance theory of representation.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Recent trends in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science can be fruitfully characterized as part of the ongoing attempt to come to grips with the very idea of homo sapiens--an intelligent, evolved, biological agent--and its signature contribution is the emergence of a philosophical anthropology which, contra Descartes and his thinking thing, instead puts doing at the center of human being. Applying this agency-oriented line of thinking to the problem of representation, this paper introduces the Guidance Theory, according to which the content and intentionality of representations can be accounted for in terms of the way they provide guidance for action. We offer a brief account of the motivation for the theory, and a formal characterization
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/3952/1/CNA_cogsci04.pdf
  http://cogprints.org/3952/01/CNA_cogsci04.pdf
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003952/
  http://www.cs.umd.edu/~anderson/papers/CNA_cogsci04.pdf
  http://www.cogsci.northwestern.edu/cogsci2004/papers/paper122.pdf
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003952/01/CNA_cogsci04.pdf
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:3952
  
• Robert D. Rupert (forthcoming). Causal Theories of Intentionality.   (More)
• Dan Ryder (2006). On thinking of kinds: A neuroscientific perspective.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://homepage.mac.com/ancientportraits/drsite/representingkinds.pdf
  
• Dan Ryder (2004). SINBaD neurosemantics: A theory of mental representation.   (More)
• Dan Ryder (ms). The brain as a model-making machine.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/660673.html
  http://homepage.mac.com/ancientportraits/drsite/models.pdf
  
• Lawrence A. Shapiro (1997). The nature of nature: Rethinking naturalistic theories of intentionality.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: While there is controversy over which of several naturalistic theories of the mental is most plausible, there is consensus regarding the desideratum of a naturalistically respectable theory. A naturalistic theory of the mental, it is agreed, must explicate representation in nonintentional terms. I argue that this constraint does not get at the heart of what it is to be natural. On the one hand, it fails to provide us with a meaningful distinction between the natural and the unnatural. On the other hand, it unfairly suggests that we withhold judgment on those successes our sciences of the mind have already achieved until a convincing decomposition of the mental is available. I urge a new conception of naturalism that focuses less upon ontological considerations and more upon methodological ones
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a793922691~fulltext=713240930
  
• Liza Skidelsky (2003). Mental content: Many semantics, one single project.   (More)
• Kenneth A. Taylor (2003). Toward a naturalistic theory of rational intentionality.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This essay some first steps toward the naturalization of what I call rational intentionality or alternatively type II intentionality. By rational or type II intentionality, I mean that full combination of rational powers and content-bearing states that is paradigmatically enjoyed by mature intact human beings. The problem I set myself is to determine the extent to which the only currently extant approach to the naturalization of the intentional that has the singular virtue of not being a non-starter can be aggregated up into an account of rational intentionality. I have in mind a broadly defined family of accounts whose main members are the indicator/information-theoretic approach of Dretske (1988), the asymmetric dependence theory of Jerry Fodor (1987, 1990, 1994) and the teleo-semantics of Ruth Millikan (1984, 1993). Somewhat inaccurately, I will call this family of approaches the information-theoretic family. To be sure, there is only a rough family resemblance among the members of the information-theoretic family. Indeed, several intense quarrels divide the members of that family one from another, but the precise outcome of those internecine struggles is not directly relevant to the aims of this essay.² Taken collectively, the information-theoretic family yields a compelling picture of the place of at least a crude form of intentionality -- what I call frog-like or type I intentionality -- in the natural order. Though frog-like or type I intentionality is, I think, a genuine species of intentionality, it may subsist in the absence of rational powers. It is that species of intentionality enjoyed by irritable creatures who, following Brandom (1994)
• Matthew Usher (2004). Comment on Ryder's SINBAD neurosemantics: Is teleofunction isomorphism the way to understand representations?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psyc/staff/academic/musher/documents/06_mila_006.pdf
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0017.2004.00256.x
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0017.2004.00256.x
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/2004/00000019/00000002/art00006