How to Argue Against ( Some ) Theories Of Content

An argument is offered against three naturalistic theories of intentional content: causalcovariation theories, teleological theories, and certain versions of conceptual role semantics. The strategy involves focusing on a normative problem regarding the practice of associating content expressions (e.g., that-clauses) with internal entities (states, symbol structures, etc.). The problem can be expressed thus: Which content expressions are the right ones to associate with internal entities? I argue, first, that an empirical solution to this problem—what I call the Normative Problem—will follow naturally from a descriptive-explanatory account of the practice of associating content expressions with internal entities; and second, that the empirical solution will be accepted and adopted within cognitive science. Naturalistic theories of content also entail solutions to the Normative Problem, and such theories are shown to be false by showing that their solutions to the Normative Problem are inconsistent with the empirical solution coming out of cognitive science. In this paper I present an argument against three broad classes of naturalistic theories of intentional content for mental representations: causal-covariation theories, teleological theories, and certain versions of conceptual role semantics. 1 It would perhaps be more accurate to call what I present a sketch of an argument, since there are a number of points that demand more elaboration and defense than I can provide here. My main aim, however, is just to make plausible that there is a convincing argument against the three theories of content along the lines I suggest. In addition, although I confine myself to the three theories, I believe the basic strategy of my argument applies to any naturalistic theory of intentional content (hence the parenthetical ̳some‘ in the title), and possibly to philosophical theories of meaning quite generally. I hope to provide the fuller story in a longer work.