Concepts as Beliefs About Essences

1. The Problems As all of you know, Putnam (1975) and Burge (1979) have made a convincing case that neither meanings nor beliefs are in the head. Most philosophers, I think, have accepted their argument. Putnam explained to us that a subject's internal notions often do not fix their reference by themselves, but are helped by its natural and social environment; and Burge explained to us that having a belief, even in the de dicto sense, is really a relational property which may be changed by merely changing the implicit relatum, the linguistic community. To accept this, however, does not necessarily mean to accept all the consequences Burge has drawn from these insights. On the contrary, these consequences have met much more reluctance. Many share the view, and I definitely do, that there must be something in the head, not only a brain, but also a mind, indeed a mind with internal or intrinsic representational or semantic properties. This view was also backed up by arguments, having to do mainly with psychological explanation and the causation of individual behavior on the one hand and knowledge of oneself on the other. Of course, these arguments have been disputed; but as far as I am concerned , the dispute has not shattered my prejudice, and I think I am at least in good company. Here, I would simply like to presuppose the correctness of this view without any further comments. Thus, all those sharing the prejudice set out to characterize what's in the head, i.e., to characterize so-called narrow contents. Now, narrow contents are rather expressed by, or associated with, whole sentences. But sentences are composed of 2 parts, a singular and a general term in the most primitive case, and hence narrow contents also seem to be composed in some way. I would like to reserve the term