Narrow Content I

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Narrow Content I

• Advanced Topics in Mind and Knowledge Lecture 3

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Externalist Thought Experiments

• According to Burge (1996, p.343) their
• "common strategy is to hold constant the history
  of the person's bodily motion, surface
  stimulations, and internal chemistry. Then, by
  varying the environment with which the person
  interacts while still holding constant the
  molecular effects on the person's body, one can
  show that some of the person's thoughts vary. The
  upshot is that which thoughts one has ... is
  dependent on relations one bears to one's
  environment."

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Responding to Externalist Thought Experiments I

• Here are a range of possible responses to the
  Twin Earth and Arthritis in the Thigh thought
  experiments
• Strong externalists take them at face value, to
  show that most or even all content is broad, i.e.
  individuated by environmental as well as
  intrinsic factors. (Burge 1986, Davidson 1987)
• Strong internalists claim that the thought
  experiments fail to show that any content is
  broad. For example, Tim Crane (1991) claims that
  there is no reason to think that Alf has
  different concepts in both situations as his
  behavioural dispositions remain the same (see
  also Searle 1983, Segal 2000).

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Responding to Externalist Thought Experiments II

• In the middle, there are a number of more
  moderate positions which recognise both narrow
  and broad content, e.g.
• Moderate internalism, according to which
  (roughly) narrow contents plus environments
  determine broad contents. (Dennett 1982, Fodor
  1987, Loar 1988)
• Two-factor theories, which recognise and assign a
  role to both narrow and broad content. (Dretske
  1988, Jackson Pettit 1988)

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Externalism and Narrow Content

• Roughly
• Strong Internalism Narrow only.
• Moderate Positions Narrow and Broad.
• Strong Externalism Broad only.
• Key concept in evaluating externalism regarding
  mental content is that of narrow content What is
  it like? How does it relate to broad content? Can
  thoughts be individuated by narrow content alone?

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Conceptions of Narrow Content I Mapping

• Fodor 1987 narrow contents are functions from
  contexts onto truth conditions.
• Functions conceived as in mathematics, as a
  mapping from or transformation of their arguments
  to their products.
• Contexts are everything relevant outside of us.
• Broad content is what you get when you specify a
  narrow content and fix a context.
• So there is a single function which (1) takes
  Oscars situation and produces H2O-related truth
  conditions, and (2) takes Twin Oscars situation
  and produces XYZ-related truth conditions.

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More on Mapping

• Motivated by the Language of Thought hypothesis,
  according to which beliefs are internal sentences
  stored in the mind.
• Although the contents of these beliefs may be
  externally individuated, their status as beliefs
  is determined purely by their (internal)
  functional role.
• So how content depends on the environment is
  determined by internal factors.

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Problems for Mapping

• Narrow content seems to be ineffable we cant
  produce a synonymous sentence to express it which
  isnt itself broad.
• Similarly, cant give narrow contents for
  specific broad contents (its a schematic account
  of content).
• Narrow content isnt truth-functional, so is it
  really content?
• Strange outside of Twin Earth cases, e.g. 3
  miles from a burning barn.
• Note Fodor later claimed that narrow content is
  superfluous to psychological explanation, in his
  The Elm and the Expert.

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Conceptions of Narrow Content IINotional
attitudes

• Dennett 1982 although my Doppelganger and I
  live in different real worlds Twin Earth and
  Earth we have the same notional world.
• Notional worlds are like fictional worlds.
• notional attitude environment ? propositional
  attitude
• Not a mapping conception, because narrow content
  is the same sort of thing as broad content, it is
  just defined in terms of the internal properties
  of individuals.

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Problems for Notional Attitudes

• How to characterise an organisms notional world
  based upon its characteristics and behaviour?
• Dennett 1982 imagine the environment (or class
  of environments) for which the organism as
  currently constituted is best fitted.
• Stalnaker 1989 no necessary connection between
  beliefs and being best fitted for an environment.
  E.g. porcupine which is unaware of the predators
  its spines keep at bay.

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Conceptions of Narrow Content IIIConceptual
Role Semantics

• The contents of mental states are determined or
  explained by the role of the mental states in
  thinking. (Greenberg Harman 2006).
• Inspired by Wittgensteinian use theories of
  meaning.
• But role is here conceived in terms of the
  function of symbols in the brain (Block 1998).

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More on Conceptual Role Semantics

• Functionalism says that what makes a state a
  mental state is the role it plays in interacting
  with other mental states in a creature's
  psychology.
• CRS says that the content of individual states
  depends upon the same role. Not necessarily all
  causal interactions relevant, just those
  connected to inferential relations (conjunction,
  deduction etc).
• Supported by many terms being only definable in
  terms of each other, e.g. truth, knowledge,
  perception, memory, belief.

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Problems for CRS

• Holism
• Seems to be committed to the view that the
  meaning of a single term is determined by its
  inferential relations with every other term in
  the language (Fodor Lepore 1992).
• How to differentiate correct from mistaken
  inferences and word uses? (For words, this is a
  general problem for naturalistic semantics
  though).

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Next week

• Having surveyed some ways of characterising
  narrow content, well take a look at two
  arguments, proposed by Fodor and Loar
  respectively, designed to show that it is
  required for psychological explanation.

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Recommended Readings I

• Block, N. (1986) Advertisement for a Semantics
  for Psychology Midwest Studies in Philosophy 10,
  pp.615-678. Reprinted in Stich, S. Warfield, T.
  eds. (1994) Mental Representation A Reader.
  Oxford Blackwell.
• Block, N. (1998) Semantics, Conceptual Role
  Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Also
  available at http//www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/fa
  culty/block/papers/ConceptualRoleSemantics.html
• Brown, C. (2002) Narrow Mental Content Stanford
  Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Available at
  http//plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2002/entries
  /content-narrow/
• Chalmers, D. (2003) The Nature of Narrow
  Content Philosophical Issues 13, pp.46-66. Also
  available at http//www.u.arizona.edu/chalmers/pa
  pers/narrow.html (Makes some use of two
  dimensional semantics, which is not covered in
  this course)
• Davidson, D. (1987) Knowing Ones Own Mind.
  Proceedings and Addresses of the American
  Philosophical Association 61, pp.441-458.
  Reprinted in his Subjective, Intersubjective,
  Objective Oxford OUP, and in Pessin Goldberg
  eds.
• Dennett, D. (1982) Beyond Belief. In Woodfield,
  A. ed. Thought and Object Essays in
  Intentionality, Oxford Clarendon Press, pp.1-96.
  Reprinted in his (1987) The Intentional Stance,
  pp.117-202. Pages 36-60 reprinted in Pessin
  Goldberg eds.

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Recommended Readings II

• Greenberg, M. Harman, G. (2006) Conceptual
  Role Semantics. In Lepore, E. Smith, B. eds.
  The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language.
  Oxford OUP. Pre-print available at
  http//www.princeton.edu/harman/Papers/CRS.pdf
• Fodor, J. A. (1987) Individualism and
  Supervenience Ch 2. of his Psychosemantics,
  Cambridge, MA MIT Press. Reprinted in Pessin
  Goldberg eds.
• Fodor, J. A. (1994) The Elm and The Expert.
  Cambridge, MA MIT Press (Ch. 2).
• Fodor, J. A. Lepore, E. (1992) Holism A
  Shoppers Guide. Oxford Blackwell (Ch. 3)
• Lau, J. (2004) Externalism about Mental Content
  Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Available
  at http//plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2004/ent
  ries/content-externalism/
• Segal, G. (2000) A Slim Book about Narrow
  Content. Cambridge, MA MIT Press (Ch. 34)
• Stalnaker, R. (1989) On Whats in the Head.
  Philosophical Perspectives 3, pp.287-316.
  Reprinted in Pessin Goldberg eds.
• See also David Chalmers' Annotated Bibliography
  of Mind, section 2.2h at http//consc.net/biblio/2
  .html2.2h