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Intentionality :: The status of intentionality

• Naturalism and intentionality [3]
• Meaning skepticism [3]
• Rule-following [3]
• The normativity of content [3]
• Meaning holism [3]
• The explanatory role of content [3]
• Intentional objects [3]
• Collective intentionality [3]
• Intentionality, misc [3]

Naturalism and intentionality

See also: Theories of content, Meaning skepticism, Rule-following, The normativity of content, Intentionality, misc, Physicalism.

• Ansgar Beckermann (1996). Is there a problem about intentionality?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://consc.net/cgi/go.fcgi?id=BECITA&free=1&u=http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/philosophie/personen/beckermann/pbint_ve.pdf
  http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/(de)/philosophie/personen/beckermann/pbint_ve.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/G873442613V55449.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/g873442613v55449/fulltext.pdf
  
• Ruth Millikan (2000). Naturalizing intentionality.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Brentano was surely mistaken, however, in thinking that bearing a relation to something nonexistent marks only the mental. Given any sort of purpose, it might not get fulfilled, hence might exhibit Brentano's relation, and there are many natural purposes, such as the purpose of one's stomach to digest food or the purpose of one's protective eye blink reflex to keep out the sand, that are not mental, nor derived from anything mental. Nor are stomachs and reflexes "of" or"about" anything. A reply might be, I suppose, that natural purposes are "purposes" only in an analogical sense hence "fail to be fulfilled" only in an analogical way. They bear an analogy to things that have been intentionally designed by purposive minds, hence can fail to accomplish the purposes they analogically have. As such they also have only analogical "intentionality". Such a response begs the question, however, for it assumes that natural purposes are not purposes in the full sense exactly because they are not
• Stephen Stich & Stephen Laurence (1994). Intentionality and naturalism.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/stich92intentionality.html
  

Meaning skepticism

See also: Naturalism and intentionality, Rule-following, The normativity of content.

• Paul Coates (1997). Meaning, mistake, and miscalculation.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract:   The issue of what distinguishes systems which have original intentionalityfrom those which do not has been brought into sharp focus by Saul Kripke inhis discussion of the sceptical paradox he attributes to Wittgenstein.In this paper I defend a sophisticated version of the dispositionalistaccount of meaning against the principal objection raised by Kripke in hisattack on dispositional views. I argue that the objection put by the sceptic,to the effect that the dispositionalist cannot give a satisfactory account ofnormativity and mistake, in fact comprises a number of distinct lines ofargument, all of which can be satisfactorily answered by the dispositionalist.Two central problems raised by the sceptic consist in explaining (1) theextension of the term which a subject uses, and (2) the fact that the subjectintends to use the term with that extension, and is thus justified in her use.I adapt a suggestion of Blackburn's, that the extension of a word is fixed bya person's extended first-order dispositions to use it, and suggest that thereis no coherent possibility of a subject being disposed to makesystematic mistakes in connection with many ordinary words; the scepticalproblem does not apply in the same way throughout language. It is furtherargued that an account which appeals to a subject's second-orderdispositions to maintain a consistent pattern of extended first-orderdispositions to use words is able to provide a naturalistic basis to answerthe normative questions about justification of use. Three other variants ofthe mistake objection which are also revealed by a careful examination ofKripke's arguments are distinguished and it is shown that the dispositionalisthas adequate resources to meet them
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&collection=TRD&recid=322379CI
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/mind/1997/00000007/00000002/00115554
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/w733451x30526003/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=115554&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/content/w733451x30526003/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/W733451X30526003.pdf
  
• Jussi Haukioja (2006). Hindriks on rule-following.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper is a reply to Frank Hindriks’ paper “A Modest Solution to the Problem of Rule-Following”. Hindriks claims to find room for what he calls a modest solution to the Kripkensteinian problem of rule-following, different from both straight and sceptical solutions. Hindriks criticises Philip Pettit’s “ethocentric” solution and goes on to provide his own, “modest” one. My paper is in two parts. In the first part, I argue that there is no room for a “modest” solution to sceptical problems: depending on how one reads Kripke, Hindriks’ “modest” solution is always going to turn out either straight or sceptical. In the second part, I defend the ethocentric solution against Hindriks’ arguments. In particular, I argue that the topic-neutral specifications of favourable conditions which Pettit uses are superior to Hindriks’ topic-specific ones
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/73M4466166775411.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/73m4466166775411/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2005/00000126/00000002/00007818
  
• Jussi Haukioja (2004). Kripke's finiteness objection to dispositionalist theories of meaning.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It is often thought that Blackburn and Boghossian have provided an effective reply to the finiteness objection to dispositional theories of meaning, presented by Kripke's Wittgenstein. In this paper I distinguish two possible readings of the sceptical demand for meaning-constitutive facts. The demand can be formulated in one of two ways: an A-question or a B-question. Any theory of meaning will give one of these explanatory priority over the other. I will then argue that the standard reply only works if B-questions are seen as prior, while the dominant dispositionalist theories of meaning see A-questions as prior
• Jakob Hohwy (2003). A reduction of kripke-wittgenstein's objections to dispositionalism about meaning.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract:   A central part of Kripke's influential interpretation of Wittgenstein's sceptical argument about meaning is the rejection of dispositional analyses of what it is for a word to mean what it does (Kripke, 1982). In this paper I show that Kripke's arguments prove too much: if they were right, they would preclude not only the idea that dispositional properties can make statements about the meanings of words true, but also the idea that dispositional properties can make true statements about paradigmatic dispositional properties such as a cup's fragility or a person's bravery. However, since dispositional properties can make such statements true, Kripke-Wittgenstein's arguments against dispositionalism about meaning are mistaken
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/p56pn65126601048/fulltext.pdf
  
• Jakob Hohwy (2001). Semantic primitivism and normativity.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/rati/2001/00000014/00000001/art00141
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9329.00141
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1467-9329.00141
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/rati/2001/00000014/00000001/art00001
  
• John Humphrey (online). Some oddities in Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Oddity One : Kripke claims that Wittgenstein has invented "a new form of scepticism", one which inclines Kripke "to regard it as the most radical and original sceptical problem that philosophy has seen to date, one that only a highly unusual cast of mind could have produced" (K, p. 60). However, Kripke also claims that there are analogies (and sometimes the analogies look very much like identities) between Wittgenstein's sceptical argument and the work of at least three and maybe four other philosophers, viz., Quine, Goodman, Hume and Berkeley. Strange stuff indeed. The originality of Wittgenstein's work is especially difficult to see after Kripke claims that Wittgenstein presents a problem concerning the nexus between past . . . 'meanings' and present practice" (K, p. 62), and says that Hume is said to have questioned "the causal nexus whereby a past event necessitates a future one, and the inductive inferential nexus from the past to the future." (K, p. 62). Whither the originality? And the connection with Goodman's work with 'grue' is even closer than that between Kripke's Wittgenstein and Hume. Given that Kripke had read Goodman before "discovering" the rule-following paradox in Wittgenstein, one ought to be sceptical of Kripke's claim that Wittgenstein has invented a new form of scepticism. It would be much more accurate to say that Kripke has strapped Wittgenstein with a hybrid scepticism drawn from Hume and Goodman
• John Humphrey (online). With factualist friends, Kripke's Wittgenstein needs no enemies: On Byrne's case for Kripke's Wittgenstein being a factualist about meaning attributions.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: _Private Language_ is that it almost universally sees KW as offering, in his sceptical solution, an account of meaning attributions (i.e., statements of the form, "X means such-and-so by 's'"; hereafter, MAs) which takes their legitimate attribution to be a function of something other than facts or truth conditions. KW is almost universally read as having rejected any account of meaning attributions which takes them to be stating facts or corresponding to facts. In a word, KW is understood as offering a nonfactualist account of MAs. And given that KW's sceptical challenge to the possibility of meaning rests on his negative assertions that there are no meaning facts, and that KW offers a sceptical solution to the sceptic's claim that meaning is impossible, i.e., a solution that by definition "begins . . . by conceding that the sceptic's negative assertions are unanswerable" (K, p. 66), it seems impossible that there would be any doubts about the accuracy of the "almost universal" reading of KW as a nonfactualist
• Alexander Miller (1997). Boghossian on reductive dispositionalism about content: The case strengthened.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0017.00033
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1997/00000012/00000001/art00033
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1997/00000012/00000001/art00001
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1468-0017.00033
  
• Timothy Schroeder (2003). Donald Davidson's theory of mind is non-normative.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Donald Davidson's theory of mind is widely regarded as a normative theory. This is a something of a confusion. Once a distinction has been made between the categorisation scheme of a norm and the norm's force-maker, it becomes clear that a Davidsonian theory of mind is not a normative theory after all. Making clear the distinction, applying it to Davidson's theory of mind, and showing its significance are the main purposes of this paper. In the concluding paragraphs, a sketch is given of how a truly normative Davidsonian theory of mind might be formulated
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.doaj.org/abstract?id=8648
  http://www.doaj.org/abstract?id=8648&toc=y
  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/phimp/images/3521354.0003.001.pdf
  http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=abstract&id=8648&recNo=1&toc=1
  

Rule-following

See also: Meaning skepticism, The normativity of content.

• Peter Alward (online). Are functional properties causally potent?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Jaegwon Kim has recently[1] argued that a solution to the exclusion argument against the intelligibility of mental causation is to found if mental properties can be shown to be reducible to physical properties “in an appropriate way.”[2] In a departure from some of his earlier work,[3] however, Kim seems to recognize that reducibility by itself is not sufficient to rescue mental causation. In particular, he attempts to secure the efficacy of mentality by means of the deployment of the “causal inheritance principle” and the identification of instantiations of mental properties with instantiations of their realizing physical properties.[4]
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://people.uleth.ca/~peter.alward/papers/FunctionalProperties.htm
  http://sorites.org/Issue_17/sorites17.pdf#page=51
  http://www.sorites.org/Issue_17/sorites17.pdf#page=51
  http://www.ifs.csic.es/sorites/Issue_17/sorites17.pdf#page=51
  
• Jussi Haukioja (2004). Is solitary rule-following possible?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/160032P108155M43.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/160032p108155m43/fulltext.pdf
  
• Susan Hurley (1998). Wittgenstein on practice and the myth of the giving.   (More)
• Saul Traiger (1994). The secret operations of the mind.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract:   David Hume is widely believed to be one of the founders of functionalism. His principles of association are seen as an early attempt to articulate a mechanics of the mind akin to Newtonian mechanics. It is argued that this view is based on a failure to appreciate that Hume''s skepticism about reason extends to our ability to understand the representation of everyday knowledge. For Hume there are secret operations of the mind, operations for which functional explanations are not forthcoming. Hume''s place in the history of cognitive science is reevaluated in light of his views on common sense knowledge and belief formation
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&collection=TRD&recid=0148101CI
  http://faculty.oxy.edu/traiger/publications/secret.html
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/G77508WW3145V448.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/g77508ww3145v448/fulltext.pdf
  

The normativity of content

See also: Conceptual role approaches, Naturalism and intentionality, Meaning skepticism, Rule-following, Anomalous monism.

• Paul Boghossian (online). Is meaning normative?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: in Christian Nimtz and Ansgar Beckermann (eds.): Philosophy - Science - Scientific Philosophy. Main Lectures and Colloquia of GAP.5, Fifth International Congress of the Society for Analytical Philosophy, Bielefeld, 2003, Mentis, 2005
• Robert Brandom (2001). Modality, normativity, and intentionality.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(200111)63:3<587:MNAI>2.0.CO;2-R
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(200111)63:3<587:MNAI>2.0.CO;2-R
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2001.tb00127.x
  
• Alex Byrne (2002). Semantic values?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2002.tb00196.x
  
• Pascal Engel (2002). Intentionality, normativity, and community.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/ijn_00000235
  
• Pascal Engel (2002). The norms of thought: Are they social?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.cwi.nl/projects/boid/pub/Projects/EpistemicNorms/social.epistemology.html
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/documents/disk0/00/00/02/50/ijn_00000250_00/ijn_00000250_00.htm
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/N87012062RM552G1.pdf
  
• Pascal Engel (2000). Wherein lies the normative dimension in meaning and mental content?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.unige.ch/lettres/philo/enseignants/pe/Engel 2000 Wherein lies the normative dimension in mental content.pdf
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/ijn_00000263
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/n2221747g8l815l4/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/N2221747G8L815L4.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2000/00000100/00000003/00208074
  
• Jerry Fodor & Ernest Lepore (1993). Is intentional ascription intrinsically normative?   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: In a short article called “Mid-Term Examination: Compare and Contrast” that epitomizes and concludes his book _The Intentional Stance,_ D. C. Dennett (1987) provides a sketch of what he views as an emerging Interpretivist consensus in the philosophy of mind. The gist is that Brentano’s thesis is true (the intentional is irreducible to the physical) and that it follows from the truth of Brentano’s thesis that: strictly speaking, ontologically speaking, there are no such things as beliefs, desires, or other intentional phenomena. But the intentional idioms are “practically indispensable,” and we should see what we can do to make sense of their employment in what Quine called an “essentially dramatic” idiom…. Not just brute facts , then but an element of interpretation…must be recognized in any use of the intentional vocabulary. (Dennett, 1987, p. 342)¹² In this context, “making sense of” the prevalence of the intentional idiom is not explaining why it should be indispensable if there are no beliefs or desires for it to refer to. Nor is it specifying the truth conditions of intentional attribution inevitably involves “an element of interpretation.” The discussion that follows treats these two papers together
• Kathrin Glüer-Pagin & Åsa Wikforss (online). Against content normativity.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: As meaning’s claim to normativity has grown increasingly suspect the normativity thesis has shifted to mental content. In this paper, we distinguish two versions of content normativism: ‘CE normativism’, according to which it is essential to content that certain ‘oughts’ can be derived from it, and ‘CD normativism’, according to which content is determined by norms in the first place. We argue that neither type of normativism withstands scrutiny. CE normativism appeals to the fact that there is an essential connection between content and correctness conditions. But, we argue, this fact is by itself normatively innocent, and attempts to add a normative dimension via the normativity of belief ultimately fails. CD normativism, in turn, falls prey to the ‘dilemma of regress and idleness’: the appeal to rules either leads to some form of regress of rules, or the notion of rule following is reduced to an idle label. We conclude by suggesting that our arguments do not support naturalism: it is a mistake to assume that normativism and naturalism are our only optio
• David Papineau (1999). Normativity and judgment.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0309-7013(1999)73<17:NAJ>2.0.CO;2-B
  
• Asa Maria Wikforss (2001). Semantic normativity.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.philosophy.su.se/personliga/normativity.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/x7129787327w4215/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/X7129787327W4215.pdf
  

Meaning holism

See also: Conceptual role approaches.

• Ned Block (1998). Mental and semantic holism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Mental (or semantic) holism is the doctrine that the identity of a belief content (or the meaning of a sentence that expresses it) is determined by its place in the web of beliefs or sentences comprising a whole theory or group of theories. It can be contrasted with two other views: atomism and molecularism. Molecularism characterizes meaning and content in terms of relatively small parts of the web in a way that allows many different theories to share those parts. For example, the meaning of 'chase' might be said by a molecularist to be try to catch. Atomism characterizes meaning and content in terms of none of the web; it says that sentences and beliefs have meaning or content independently of their relations to other sentences or beliefs. One major motivation for holism has come from reflections on the natures of confirmation and learning. As Quine (1953) observed, claims about the world are confirmed not individually, but only in conjunction with theories of which they are a part. And typically, one cannot come to understand scientific claims without understanding a significant chunk of the theory of which they are a part. For example, in learning the Newtonian concepts of 'force', 'mass', kinetic energy' and 'momentum', one doesn't learn any definitions of these terms in terms that are understood beforehand, for there are no such definitions. Rather, these theoretical terms were all learned together in conjunction with procedures for solving problems. The major problem with holism is that it threatens to make generalization in psychology virtually impossible. If the content of any state depends on all others, it would be extremely unlikely that any two believers would ever share a state with the same content. Moreover, holism would appear to conflict with our ordinary conception of reasoning. What sentences one accepts influence what one infers. if i accept a sentence and then later reject it, i thereby change the inferential role of that sentence, so the meaning of what i accept wouldn't be the same as what i later reject. but then it would be difficult to understand on this view how one could rationally --or even irrationally!-- change one's mind. and agreement and translation are also problematic for much the same reason. holists have responded (1) by proposing that we should think not in terms of "same/different" meaning but in terms of a gradient of similarity of meaning, (2) by proposing "two factor" theories or (3) by simply accepting the consequence that there is no real difference between changing meanings and changing beliefs
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/233/00/199712006.html
  
• Ingo Brigandt (2004). Holism, concept individuation, and conceptual change.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The paper discusses concept individuation in the context of scientific concepts and conceptual change in science. It is argued that some concepts can be individuated in different ways. A particular term may be viewed as corresponding to a single concept (which is ascribed to every person from a whole scientific field). But at the same time, we can legitimately individuate in a more fine grained manner, i.e., this term can also be considered as corresponding to two or several concepts (so that each of these concepts is attributed to a smaller group of persons only). The reason is that there are different philosophical and explanatory interests that underlie a particular study of the change of a scientific term. These interests determine how a concept is to be individuated; and as the same term can be subject to different philosophical studies and interests, its content can be individuated in different ways
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://phonline.org/paper.php?keynum=929
  http://www.ualberta.ca/~brigandt/SEFA_04.pdf
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003934/01/SEFA_04_Brigandt.pdf
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:3934
  http://cogprints.org/3934/01/SEFA_04_Brigandt.pdf
  http://cogprints.org/3934/
  
• William Cornwell (2002). Epistemological holism and semantic holism.   (More)
• Cesare Cozzo (2002). Does epistemological holism lead to meaning holism?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://w3.uniroma1.it/home/htopoi.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/8DB3GGJ9Q9RPTH4J.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/topo/2002/00000021/F0020001/00391972
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/8db3ggj9q9rpth4j/fulltext.pdf
  
• Jerry Fodor & Ernest Lepore (1999). All at sea in semantic space: Churchland on meaning similarity.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It’s old news that the identity conditions for contents, meanings and the like are problematic, perhaps because there can’t be identity conditions for meanings unless there is an analytic/synthetic (a/s) distinction, and there isn’t. We’re not, in the present paper, proposing to consider whether the notion of content identity can be made metaphysically respectable. But we want to discuss a proposal about how to save semantics if it does turn out that ‘same meaning’ can’t be reconstructed; it’s one that is currently popular in both the philosophical and the cognitive science literature.[1]
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/ftp/pub/papers/MeaningSim46.doc
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(199908)96:8<381:AASISS>2.0.CO;2-K
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(199908)96:8<381:AASISS>2.0.CO;2-K
  
• Henry Jackman (online). Holism, context, and content.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper will argue that while traditional accounts of word meaning have problems accounting for how the referent of a non-ambiguous/non-indexical term can shift from context to context, a moderate version of semantic holism can do so by understanding the comparative weight of the extension-determining beliefs as itself something which can vary from context to context. The view will then be used to give an account of some of the more problematic cases in the literature associated with semantic externalism
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.yorku.ca/hjackman/papers/Locality.pdf
  
• Henry Jackman (online). Holism, relevance, and thought content.   (More)
• Henry Jackman (1999). Moderate holism and the instability thesis.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper argues that popular criticisms of semantic holism (such as that it leaves the ideas of translation, disagreement and change of mind problematic) are more properly directed at an "instability assumption" which, while often associated with holism, can be separated from it. The versions of holism that follow from 'interpretational' account of meaning are not committed to the instability assumption and can thus avoid many of the problems traditionally associated with holism
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.yorku.ca/hjackman/papers/holism-and-inst.pdf
  
• Eric Lormand (1996). How to be a meaning holist.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/phil/meaning/atomism.htm
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(199602)93:2<51:HTBAMH>2.0.CO;2-#
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X(199602)93:2<51:HTBAMH>2.0.CO;2-#
  
• Kirk Ludwig (1993). Is content holism incoherent?   (More)
• Ron Mallon (online). Differences between interpersonal and intrapersonal belief ascription: A problem with Block's argument for holism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: instead he argues for a conditional: "if there is such a thing as narrow content, it is holistic," where holism is taken to be "the doctrine that any _substantial_ difference in W-beliefs, whether between two people or between one person at two times, requires a difference in the meaning or content of W" (153, 152)
• Ron McClamrock (1989). Holism without tears: Local and global effects in cognitive processing.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8248(198906)56:2<258:HWTLAG>2.0.CO;2-T
  http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/289486
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8248(198906)56:2<258:HWTLAG>2.0.CO;2-T
  
• Peter Pagin (1997). Is compositionality compatible with holism?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://people.su.se/~ppagin/papers/compholism.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1997/00000012/00000001/art00002
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1997/00000012/00000001/art00034
  
• William Rapaport (2002). Holism, conceptual-role semantics, and syntactic semantics.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract:   This essay continues my investigation of `syntactic semantics': the theory that, pace Searle's Chinese-Room Argument, syntax does suffice for semantics (in particular, for the semantics needed for a computational cognitive theory of natural-language understanding). Here, I argue that syntactic semantics (which is internal and first-person) is what has been called a conceptual-role semantics: The meaning of any expression is the role that it plays in the complete system of expressions. Such a `narrow', conceptual-role semantics is the appropriate sort of semantics to account (from an `internal', or first-person perspective) for how a cognitive agent understands language. Some have argued for the primacy of external, or `wide', semantics, while others have argued for a two-factor analysis. But, although two factors can be specified–-one internal and first-person, the other only specifiable in an external, third-person way–-only the internal, first-person one is needed for understanding how someone understands. A truth-conditional semantics can still be provided, but only from a third-person perspective
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://historical.ncstrl.org/litesite-data/suny_buffalo_cs/2001-09.tr.pdf.Z
  http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=596926
  http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/tech-reports/2001-09.tr.pdf
  http://historical.ncstrl.org/litesite-data/suny_buffalo_cs/2001-09.tr.pdf
  http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/Papers/crs.pdf
  http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/477926.html
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/J8H7Q02UK0545981.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/mind/2002/00000012/00000001/00389767
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/j8h7q02uk0545981/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=389767&PDF=1
  
• William Rapaport (2003). What did you mean by that? Misunderstanding, negotiation, and syntactic semantics.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract:   Syntactic semantics is a holistic, conceptual-role-semantic theory of how computers can think. But Fodor and Lepore have mounted a sustained attack on holistic semantic theories. However, their major problem with holism (that, if holism is true, then no two people can understand each other) can be fixed by means of negotiating meanings. Syntactic semantics and Fodor and Lepores objections to holism are outlined; the nature of communication, miscommunication, and negotiation is discussed; Bruners ideas about the negotiation of meaning are explored; and some observations on a problem for knowledge representation in AI raised by Winston are presented
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=781081.781093
  http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/Papers/negotiation.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/G6T2064N25176133.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/g6t2064n25176133/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/mind/2003/00000013/00000003/05124467
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5124467&PDF=1
  
• Wayne Wright (2002). Fodor's epistemic intuitions of analyticity.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Semantic holism has it that the semantic properties of an individual expression are determined by that expression’s relations to all of the other elements in a system of expressions to which it belongs. A standard argument for holism about the semantic properties of concepts goes as follows:1 (1) The meaning of a concept C is determined by its intrinsic/constitutive connections to other concepts within the cognitive economy of a thinker T. (2) There is no principled distinction between the concepts to which C is intrinsically/constitutively connected and those to which it is not so connected. Therefore, (3) The meaning of a concept C is determined by T’s entire stock of concepts
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ifs.csic.es/sorites/Issue_14/sorites14.zip#page=107
  http://www.ifs.csic.es/sorites/Issue_14/wright.htm
  http://www.mindstuff.net/ConceptsFodorWTW2.PDF
  http://www.mindstuff.net/ConceptsFodorWTW2.doc
  

The explanatory role of content

See also: Mental causation.

• Jose Luis Bermudez (1995). Syntax, semantics, and levels of explanation.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8094(199507)45:180<361:SSALOE>2.0.CO;2-O
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8094(199507)45:180<361:SSALOE>2.0.CO;2-O
  
• Radu Bogdan (1989). Does semantics run the psyche?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(198906)49:4<687:DSRTP>2.0.CO;2-0
  http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205(198906)49:4<687:DSRTP>2.0.CO;2-0
  
• David Braun (2000). Russellianism and psychological generalizations.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ling.rochester.edu/~braun/Papers/gen.htm
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/0029-4624.00208
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/2000/00000034/00000002/art00002
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0029-4624.00208
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/2000/00000034/00000002/art00208
  
• Fred Dretske (2004). Psychological vs. biological explanations of behavior.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.behavior.org/journals_BP/2004/16Dretske.pdf
  http://behavior.org/journals_BP/2004/16Dretske.pdf
  
• Hartry Field (ms). Remarks on content and its role in explanation.   (More)
• Pierre Jacob (1998). What can the semantic properties of innate representations explain?   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/05/32/43/HTML/
  
• John Perry & David Israel (1991). Fodor and psychological explanation.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: [In Meaning in Mind, edited by Barry Loewer and Georges Rey. Oxford: Basil Black- well, 1991, 165–180. Reprinted in John Perry, The Problem of the Essential Indexical and Other Essays. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.]
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~john/PHILPAPERS/fodor.pdf
  http://www.ai.sri.com/pubs/files/74.ps.gz
  
• Stephen Schiffer (online). An introduction to content and its role in explanation.   (More)
• Julia Tanney (2005). Reason-explanation and the contents of the mind.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/rati/2005/00000018/00000003/art00008
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9329.2005.00295.x
  
• Andrew Ward (2001). The compatibility of psychological naturalism and representationalism.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.disputatio.com/articles/011-1.pdf
  

Intentional objects

See also: The objects of perception, The representation of objects.

• Ben Blumson (online). Images, intentionality and inexistence.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
• Uriah Kriegel (forthcoming). Intentional inexistence and phenomenal intentionality.   (More)
• Uriah Kriegel (forthcoming). The dispensability of (merely) intentional objects.   (More)

Collective intentionality

See also: The extended mind.

• Ronald Giere (2004). The problem of agency in scientific distributed cognitive systems.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: From the perspective of cognitive science, it is illuminating to think of much contemporary scientific research as taking place in distributed cognitive systems. This is particularly true of large-scale experimental and observational systems such as the Hubble Telescope. Clark, Hutchins, Knorr-Cetina, and Latour insist or imply such a move requires expanding our notions of knowledge, mind, and even consciousness. Whether this is correct seems to me not a straightforward factual question. Rather, the issue seems to be how best to develop a theoretical understanding of such systems appropriate to the study of science and technology. I argue that there is no need to attribute to such systems as a whole any form of cognitive agency. We can well understand the importance of such systems while restricting agency to the human components. The implication is that we think of these large-scale distributed cognitive systems not so much as unified wholes, but as hybrid systems including both physical artifacts and ordinary humans
• Stevan Harnad (2005). Distributed processes, distributed cognizers and collaborative cognition.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Cognition is thinking; it feels like something to think, and only those who can feel can think. There are also things that thinkers can do. We know neither how thinkers can think nor how they are able do what they can do. We are waiting for cognitive science to discover how. Cognitive science does this by testing hypotheses about what processes can generate what doing ( know-how ) This is called the Turing Test. It cannot test whether a process can generate feeling, hence thinking -- only whether it can generate doing. The processes that generate thinking and know-how are distributed within the heads of thinkers, but not across thinkers' heads. Hence there is no such thing as distributed cognition, only collaborative cognition. Email and the Web have spawned a new form of collaborative cognition that draws upon individual brains' real-time interactive potential in ways that were not possible in oral, written or print interactions
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12073/
  http://cogprints.org/4765/
  http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12073/03/distribcog.doc
  http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10997/01/distribcog.pdf
  http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10997
  http://eprints.resist.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12073/
  http://cogprints.org/4404/02/distribcog.doc
  http://eprints.resist.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10997/
  http://cogprints.org/4404/
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:cogprints.soton.ac.uk:4404
  http://cogprints.org/4765/02/distribcog.pdf
  http://cogprints.org/4404/01/distribcog.pdf
  http://cogprints.org/4765/03/distribcog.doc
  http://cogprints.org/4404/1/distribcog.pdf
  http://cogprints.org/4765/01/distribcog.htm
  http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk:10997
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jbp/pc/2005/00000013/00000003/art00005
  
• Christian List (2003). Distributed cognition: A perspective from social choice theory.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Distributed cognition refers to processes which are (i) cognitive and (ii) distributed across multiple agents or devices rather than performed by a single agent. Distributed cognition has attracted interest in several fields ranging from sociology and law to computer science and the philosophy of science. In this paper, I discuss distributed cognition from a social-choice-theoretic perspective. Drawing on models of judgment aggregation, I address two questions. First, how can we model a group of individuals as a distributed cognitive system? Second, can a group acting as a distributed cognitive system be ‘rational’ and ‘track the truth’ in the outputs it produces? I argue that a group’s performance as a distributed cognitive system depends on its ‘aggregation procedure’ – its mechanism for aggregating the group members’ inputs into collective outputs – and I investigate the properties of an aggregation procedure that matter
• Christian List & Philip Pettit (2006). Group agency and supervenience.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Can groups be rational agents over and above their individual members? We argue that group agents are distinguished by their capacity to mimic the way in which individual agents act and that this capacity must ‘supervene’ on the group members’ contributions. But what is the nature of this supervenience relation? Focusing on group judgments, we argue that, for a group to be rational, its judgment on a particular proposition cannot generally be a function of the members’ individual judgments on that proposition. Rather, it must be a function of their individual sets of judgments across many propositions. So, knowing what the group members individually think about some proposition does not generally tell us how the group collectively adjudicates that proposition: the supervenience relation must be ‘set-wise’, not ‘proposition-wise’. Our account preserves the individualistic view that group agency is nothing mysterious, but also suggests that a group agent may hold judgments that are not directly continuous with its members’ corresponding individual judgmen