" Biosemantics " was the title of a paper on mental representation originally printed in The Journal of Philosophy in 1989. It contained a much abbreviated version of the work on mental representation in Language Thought and Other Biological Categories. There I had presented a naturalist theory of intentional signs generally, including linguistic representations, graphs, charts and diagrams, road sign symbols, animal communications, the "chemical signals" that regulate the function of glands, and so forth. But the term " biosemantics " (...) has usually been applied only to the theory of mental representation. Let me first characterize a more general class of theories called "teleological theories of mental content" of which biosemantics is an example. Then I will discuss the details that distinguish biosemantics from other naturalistic teleological theories. (shrink)

Internalism and Externalism in Speech Act Theory Internalism and externalism are related doctrines in the philosophy of language and mind, mostly centered on the role of reference in the individuation of propositions. This debate has recently been extended in speech act theory from content to force. But here the landscape becomes more complicated. It has been recently argued that speech act theory got off the track after Austin by internalizing Austin's "felicity" conditions. In reply it is noted that the issue (...) of internalism and externalism is more nuanced—there are internal and external elements in many theories, and a preliminary categorization is attempted here. Furthermore, internalism also has its virtues, which are largely overlooked, and we attempt to redress that imbalance. (shrink)

In the classic Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts,Kent Bach and Robert M. Harnish advocated the idea that to perform an illocutionary actoften just means to express certain attitudes. The underlying definition of attitudeexpression, however, gives rise to serious problems because it requires intentions of a peculiarkind. Recently, Wayne Davis has proposed a different analysis of attitude expression whichis not subject to these difficulties and thus promises a more plausible account of illocutions.It will be shown, however, that this account is too (...) weak since it does not exclude cases wherethe utterer merely pretends to perform an illocutionary act. Davis' analysis also callsinto question a weaker doctrine widely held among speech act theorists by suggesting that, inorder to perform an illocutionary act, it is not even necessary to express mental states. (shrink)