Since the 1960's, work in the analytic tradition on the nature of mental and linguistic content has converged on the views that social facts about public language meaning are derived from facts about the thoughts of individuals, and that these thoughts are constituted by properties of the internal states of agents. I give a two-part argument against this picture of intentionality: first, that if mental content is prior to public language meaning, then a view of mental content much like the (...) causal-pragmatic theory presented by Robert Stalnaker in Inquiry must be correct; second, that the causal-pragmatic theory is false. I conclude with some positive suggestions regarding alternative solutions to the `problem of intentionality.'. (shrink)

It is well known that informational theories of representation have trouble accounting for error. Informational semantics is a family of theories attempting a naturalistic, unashamedly reductive explanation of the semantic and intentional properties of thought and language. Most simply, the informational approach explains truth-conditional content in terms of causal, nomic, or simply regular correlation between a representation and a state of affairs. The central work is Dretske, and the theory was largely developed at the University of Wisconsin by Fred Dretske, (...) Dennis Stampe, and Berent Enc. Recently, informational semantics has roamed far beyond its Wisconsin home, and built a sizeable collection of followers. Converts include Jerry Fodor, Robert Stalnaker and, less faithfully, Paul and Patricia Churchland and Hartry Field. But for some years informational semantics has been hounded by a problem with error – the classic presentation is Fodor – and no other problem has hounded the theory so persistently. (shrink)

It is well known that informational theories of representation have trouble accounting for error. Informational semantics is a family of theories attempting a naturalistic, unashamedly reductive explanation of the semantic and intentional properties of thought and language. Most simply, the informational approach explains truth-conditional content in terms of causal, nomic, or simply regular correlation between a representation and a state of affairs. The central work is Dretske (1981), and the theory was largely developed at the University of Wisconsin by Fred (...) Dretske, Dennis Stampe, and Berent Enc. Recently, informational semantics has roamed far beyond its Wisconsin home, and built a sizeable collection of followers. Converts include Jerry Fodor (1987), Robert Stalnaker (1984) and, less faithfully, Paul and Patricia Churchland (1983) and Hartry Field (1986). But for some years informational semantics has been hounded by a problem with error – the classic presentation is Fodor (1984) – and no other problem has hounded the theory so persistently. (shrink)

It would be good to have a Bayesian decision theory that assesses our decisions and thinking according to everyday standards of rationality — standards that do not require logical omniscience (Garber 1983, Hacking 1967). To that end we develop a “fragmented” decision theory in which a single state of mind is represented by a family of credence functions, each associated with a distinct choice condition (Lewis 1982, Stalnaker 1984). The theory imposes a local coherence assumption guaranteeing that as an agent's (...) attention shifts, successive batches of "obvious" logical information become available to her. A rule of expected utility maximization can then be applied to the decision of what to attend to next during a train of thought. On the resulting theory, rationality requires ordinary agents to be logically competent and to often engage in trains of thought that increase the unification of their states of mind. But rationality does not require ordinary agents to be logically omniscient. (shrink)

In a series of publications, Robert Stalnaker and Hartry Field have undertaken a dispute about what is the correct way to explain intentionality naturalistically. Field wishes to assimilate mental intentionality to linguistic intentionality and to explain both kinds of intentionality using Tarskian truth theory plus the causal theory of reference. Stalnaker wishes to subsume mental intentionality under the notion of indication and to explain it on the model of measurement theory, leaving linguistic intentionality to be explained derivatively. I attempt to (...) adjudicate their dispute, paying particular attention to the question whether Tarskian truth theory has a role to play in explaining intentionality naturalistically. ;The first half of the dissertation examines Tarski's theory. I argue that Field and Stalnaker are incorrect when they agree that Tarski's reduction of the notion of truth is defective and I explain Tarski's 'structural' notion of truth. In the second half of the dissertation, I argue that Stalnaker's criticisms of Field mostly do not stand up to scrutiny, but that Field's theory is unsatisfactory nonetheless; I also argue that certain criticisms of Stalnaker do more damage than he thinks. I conclude that neither has solved 'the problem of intentionality', but that Stalnaker is right that truth theory as such will not have a role in the correct solution. (shrink)