Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:10:56.971Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Representational Capacity, Intentional Ascription, and the Slippery Slope

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Stuart Silvers
Stuart Silvers*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A long-standing objection to Fodor's version of the Representational Theory of Mind (RTM) argues that in ascribing intentional content to an organism's representational states there needs to be some way of distinguishing between the kinds of organisms that have such representational capacity and those kinds that haven't. Without a principled distinction there would be no way of delimiting the appropriate domain of intentional ascription. As Fodor (1986) suggests, if the objection holds, we should have no good reason for withholding intentional ascription from paper clips. Fodor (1986) has defended RTM against this slippery slope objection. He distinguishes between the kinds of creatures that exhibit selective responses to nomic properties of stimuli (for example, psychophysical properties) and the kinds of creatures that also respond selectively to nonnomic properties of stimuli (for example, being a crumpled shirt). The distinction marks the differences between two kinds of “primal scenes” in which lawful relations are said to hold between an organism's behavior, representational state, and stimulus property. The arguments for the distinction are provocative but counterexamples show them to be inconclusive.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , September 1989 , pp. 463 - 473
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baker, R. (1986), “Just What Do We Have in Mind?”, in P. A. French, T. E. Uehling, Jr., H. K. Wettstein (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 10. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 25–51.Google Scholar
Burge, T. (1979), “Individualism and the Mental”, in P. A. French, T. E. Uehling, Jr., and H. K. Wettstein (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 4. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 73–121.Google Scholar
Burge, T. 1986. “Individualism and Psychology”, Philosophical Review 95: 3–45.10.2307/2185131CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burge, T. (forthcoming), “Cartesian Error and the Objectivity of Perception”.Google Scholar
Dennett, D. [1976] (1978), “A Cure for the Common Code”, Reprinted in his Brainstorms. Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford Books/MIT Press.Google Scholar
Descartes, R. (1955), Philosophical Works of Descartes, vol. 2. Haldane and Ross Edition. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Dretske, F. (1986), “Misrepresentation”, in R. Bogdan (ed.), Belief. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (1975), The Language of Thought. New York: Crowell.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (1984), “Semantics, Wisconsin Style”, Synthese 59: 239–250.10.1007/BF00869335CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (1986), “Why Paramecia Don't Have Mental Representations”, in P. A. French, T. E. Uehling, Jr., and H. K. Wettstein (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 10. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 1–23.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (unpublished), “Psychosemantics: Or Where Do Truth Conditions Come From?”Google Scholar
Morton, A. (1975), “Because He Thought He Had Insulted Him”, Journal of Philosophy 72: 5–15.10.2307/2025248CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tinbergen, N. [1951] (1976), A Study of Instinct. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar