This Element provides a comprehensive introduction to contemporary theories of mental content. After clarifying central concepts and identifying the questions that dominate the current debate, it presents and discusses the principal accounts of the nature of mental content (or mental representation), which include causal, informational, teleological and structuralist approaches, alongside the phenomenal intentionality approach and the intentional stance theory. Additionally, it examines anti-representationalist accounts which question either the existence or the explanatory relevance of mental content. Finally, the Element concludes by considering some recent developments in the debate about mental content, specifically the "explanatory turn" and its implications for questions about representations in basic cognitive systems and the representational character of current empirical theories of cognition.
Author(s): Peter Schulte
Series: Elements in Philosophy of Mind
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2023
Language: English
City: Cambridge
Cover
Title page
Copyright page
Mental Content
Contents
1 Introduction
2 Basic Concepts and Distinctions
2.1 Mental Content and Intentionality
2.2 Mental Content and Mental Representation
2.3 Meaning and Two Conceptions of Mental Content
2.4 The Distinction between Mental Content and Phenomenal Character
3 Mental Content: Main Questions
3.1 The Fundamental Issue: The Nature and Reality of Content Properties
3.2 Is Mental Content Narrow or Broad (or Both)?
3.3 Reified Contents: The Nature and Existence of Propositions
3.4 Can Mental Content Be Nonconceptual?
4 Theories of Mental Content I: Naturalizing Content
4.1 Causal Theories
The Problem of Error and The “Disjunction Problem”
The Problem of Content Indeterminacy
The Problem of Pansemanticism
4.2 Informational Theories
4.3 Structuralist Theories
4.4 Teleological Theories
4.5 Conceptual Role Semantics
5 Theories of Mental Content II: Interpretationism andIntentional Stance Theory
6 Theories of Mental Content III: The Phenomenal IntentionalityApproach
7 Skepticism about Content: Anti-representationalist Approaches
8 Recent Developments
8.1 The Explanatory Turn
8.2 The Status Question Reloaded: Content, Basal Cognition and Predictive Processing
References
Acknowledgments
