Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2007. / Title from file title page. Andrea Scarantino, Eddy Nahmias, committee co-chairs; Sebastian Rand, committee member. Electronic text (84 p. : ill.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Dec. 13, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 80-84).

In "A Narrow Representationalist Account of Qualitative Content" and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind, Georges Rey challenges the tradition of combining externalism and representationalism about mental states. Specifically, his challenge takes the form of an internalist representationalist account of states with qualitative content. I examine his account, and find it problematic on the grounds that it fails to appropriately account for the substantiality and determinacy of qualitative content. However, I propose a solution to this problem in the form of an alternative view. This view compromises several aspects of Rey's view, most importantly in virtue of being a weak externalist position rather than internalist one. Yet, in keeping with Rey's project, this alternative view challenges the traditional combination of representationalism and externalism. It is a view on which mental states with qualitative contents are only indirectly individuated by elements in the external world. Mental states are not, as on a standard representationalist account, individuated by elements in the external world that they represent. While I conclude that Rey's view is incorrect, I salvage his project.

Pei Kong-ngai. / Thesis submitted in: September 2002. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves i-vi). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter Chapter One: --- Introduction / Chapter 1. --- Intentional States and Folk Psychology --- p.1 / Chapter 2. --- "Eliminativism, Externalism, and Individualism" --- p.5 / Chapter 3. --- Overview of The Thesis --- p.8 / Chapter Chapter Two: --- Mental States and Externalism / Chapter 1. --- The Distinction between Intrinsic and Relational Properties --- p.11 / Chapter 2. --- Supervenience --- p.14 / Chapter 3. --- Externalism --- p.18 / Chapter 4. --- The Classical Arguments for Semantic Externalism: The Twin Earth Thought Experiments --- p.19 / Chapter 5. --- From Semantic Externalism to Mental Content Externalism --- p.23 / Chapter 6. --- Externalism and Physicalism --- p.26 / Chapter 7. --- The Common Concept Strategy Objection to Externalism --- p.28 / Chapter Chapter Three: --- Stich's Argument for Individualism: The Argument from Below / Chapter 1. --- Stich's Argument for Individualism --- p.34 / Chapter 2. --- Narrow and Wide Behaviour --- p.37 / Chapter 3. --- Refining the Argument --- p.39 / Chapter 4. --- Is Replacement Argument Successful in establishing Individualism? --- p.44 / Chapter 5. --- Fodor's Argument for Premise 2*: Narrow Behaviour and Crazy Causal Mechanisms --- p.46 / Chapter 6. --- Causal vs. Non-Causal (Constitutive) Causal Powers --- p.51 / Chapter 7. --- Conclusion: Stich's Unsuccessful Argument from Below --- p.53 / Chapter Chapter Four: --- Fodor's Argument for Individualism: The Argument from Abo --- p.ve / Chapter 1. --- Fodor's Explanan Argument --- p.56 / Chapter 2. --- A Response to Individualism: Rendering Intentional States Individualistic --- p.65 / Chapter 2.1 --- Fodor's Account of Narrow Content --- p.69 / Chapter 2.2 --- Criticisms of Fodor's Account of Narrow Content --- p.71 / Chapter 3. --- Examining Global Individualism: Fodor's A Priori Argument --- p.74 / Chapter 3.1 --- Counterexamples to Global Individualism --- p.76 / Chapter 3.2 --- Can Global Individualism be Reconciled with Relational Taxonomies? --- p.81 / Chapter 3.3 --- Two Senses of Causal Relevance of External Conditions --- p.83 / Chapter 3.4 --- The Failure of The Argument from Above --- p.89 / Chapter Chapter Five: --- Conclusion --- p.91 / Bibliography --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.vi

Traditional accounts of justification can be characterized as trying to analyze justification in such a way that having a justified belief brings with it assurance of truth. The internalist offers a demanding requirement on justification: one's having a justified belief requires that one see what the belief has going for it. Externalists worry that the internalist's narrow conception of justification will lead to unacceptably radical and implausible skepticism. According to the externalist, one need not know what a belief has going for it in order for that belief to be justified. Externalism, though, comes with its own problems. Ernest Sosa has attempted to bridge the divide between internalism and externalism by pairing the strengths of internalism (assurance) with the strengths of externalism (an answer to skepticism). Sosa distinguishes two kinds of knowledge: animal knowledge that is essentially externalist in character and reflective knowledge that is intended to capture our best intellectual procedure in regards to knowledge. On Sosa's view, one gains reflective knowledge by building upon (by adding further epistemic components to) animal knowledge. As a result, Sosa's view seems to illustrate a bottom-up approach to the analysis of knowledge (or justification): reflective knowledge is the result of animal knowledge and some other epistemic factor. My project, in contrast to Sosa's, is to argue that one should start with an account of ideal justification (justification that is paradigmatically internalist) and then proceed by loosening the standards on ideal justification in an effort to develop the possibility of non- ideal kinds of justification. The view that I will develop will adopt Sosa's strategy of distinguishing kinds of knowledge (or justification), but will result in a top-down approach to the analysis of justification. Instead of starting with an undemanding standard and layer levels on top, I will start with an ideal standard and strip layers away. I will also argue that my view has some important advantages over Sosa's. Not only does Sosa's view seem to run into many of the problems that threaten externalism, but his view is incapable of offering the kind of assurance that the internalist is after. The view I develop will maintain the internalist's interest in assurance while also providing a response to some of the skeptical problems that have plagued internalists. If my project is successful, then, even if the justification that results in many of the cases I will be exploring is (admittedly) not ideal, we can use these conceptions of justification to help explicate how one might have justified beliefs about a great number of things. The essentially internalist account that I have offered will not only illustrate a serious approach to dealing with skepticism, but it will also capture how many of our commonsensically justified beliefs are in fact justified (albeit in a less than ideal sense).

The philosophical discussion of conceptual content and linguistic meaning in the 20th century has been dominated by two contrasting approaches - the descriptive-internalist approach, and the causal-externalist approach. Recent semantic models, for example the two-dimensional semantics of Jackson and Chalmers, attempt to integrate these two approaches. In this dissertation I explore a series of puzzles that highlight points at which the resources of these two approaches combined fall short. Particularly, the dissertation is an argument for the claim that facts about a linguistic community can affect the conceptual and linguistic content of individual members of that community, developing insights of theorists such as Quine, Wittgenstein, Kripke, Lewis and Davidson. The study proceeds along two lines simultaneously, as an investigation into puzzles concerning conceptual content on the one hand, and concerning linguistic meaning on the other. The centerpiece of the investigation into linguistic meaning is a proposal for an irreducibly social aspect of linguistic meaning, which I call the ‘public content’ of linguistic terms. This proposal is motivated by the identification of some points at which neither individualist models of linguistic meaning nor the ‘social’ models of meaning currently available give convincing accounts. Drawing on recent developments in social epistemology, I argue that this aspect of meaning is determined by what speakers engaged in discourse would agree on under an ideal process of collective reasoning as the meaning of the terms they use. In the last chapter I attempt to reconcile this model of meaning with the two-dimensional semantic model, arguing for a three-dimensional model of meaning that includes internal, external, and public dimensions. Alongside the discussion of linguistic meaning I explore a series of related puzzles that arise for conceptual content, particularly a new puzzle of referential indeterminacy, and the problem of conceptual error or normativity. I propose and defend solutions to these puzzles that lean heavily on the rational resources of individuals, focusing on the ‘personal level’ contents of thought to resolve puzzles in this domain, and rejecting models that lean on ‘sub-personal’ states such as neuronal, historical, or dispositional states of thinkers.

The philosophical discussion of conceptual content and linguistic meaning in the 20th century has been dominated by two contrasting approaches - the descriptive-internalist approach, and the causal-externalist approach. Recent semantic models, for example the two-dimensional semantics of Jackson and Chalmers, attempt to integrate these two approaches. In this dissertation I explore a series of puzzles that highlight points at which the resources of these two approaches combined fall short. Particularly, the dissertation is an argument for the claim that facts about a linguistic community can affect the conceptual and linguistic content of individual members of that community, developing insights of theorists such as Quine, Wittgenstein, Kripke, Lewis and Davidson. The study proceeds along two lines simultaneously, as an investigation into puzzles concerning conceptual content on the one hand, and concerning linguistic meaning on the other. The centerpiece of the investigation into linguistic meaning is a proposal for an irreducibly social aspect of linguistic meaning, which I call the ‘public content’ of linguistic terms. This proposal is motivated by the identification of some points at which neither individualist models of linguistic meaning nor the ‘social’ models of meaning currently available give convincing accounts. Drawing on recent developments in social epistemology, I argue that this aspect of meaning is determined by what speakers engaged in discourse would agree on under an ideal process of collective reasoning as the meaning of the terms they use. In the last chapter I attempt to reconcile this model of meaning with the two-dimensional semantic model, arguing for a three-dimensional model of meaning that includes internal, external, and public dimensions. Alongside the discussion of linguistic meaning I explore a series of related puzzles that arise for conceptual content, particularly a new puzzle of referential indeterminacy, and the problem of conceptual error or normativity. I propose and defend solutions to these puzzles that lean heavily on the rational resources of individuals, focusing on the ‘personal level’ contents of thought to resolve puzzles in this domain, and rejecting models that lean on ‘sub-personal’ states such as neuronal, historical, or dispositional states of thinkers.

In several works, Ruth Millikan (1998a, 2000, 2006) has developed a ‘teleosemantic’ theory of concepts. Millikan’s theory has three explicit desiderata for concepts: wide scope, non-descriptionist content, and naturalism. I contend that Millikan’s theory cannot fulfill all of these desiderata simultaneously. Theoretical concepts, such as those of chemistry and physics, fall under Millikan’s intended scope, but I will argue that her theory cannot account for these concepts in a way that is compatible with both non-descriptionism and naturalism. In these cases, Millikan’s view is subject to the traditional ‘indeterminacy problem’ for teleosemantic theories. This leaves the content of theoretical concepts indeterminate between a descriptionist and non-descriptionist content. Furthermore, this problem cannot be overcome without giving up the naturalism desideratum. I suggest that the scope of Millikan’s theory should be limited. At best, the theory will be able to attribute naturalistic, non-descriptionist content to a smaller range of concepts.

It is widely agreed that some concepts can be possessed only by those who have undergone a certain type of phenomenal experience. The orthodox view among contemporary philosophers of mind that these phenomenal concepts provide the key to understanding the dispute between physicalists and their opponents. I reject the orthodox view; I defend an externalist conception of mental content according to which there are no phenomenal concepts. But the fact that there are no phenomenal concepts should not worry the physicalist: there are better accounts of the data that phenomenal concepts are used to explain. / text

This is an essay about reasons for action. It begins with two rather ordinary observations. The first is that these two uses of the term ‘reason’ roughly correspond with the two main roles that a reason can play: the role of favoring a prospective course of action, and the role of explaining action. Each of these roles seems crucial to a philosophical account of reasons, and it is not obvious that either has claim to priority. The second observation is that accommodating each of these roles seems to place restrictions on what we can say about reasons for action, and those who lean toward giving priority to one role rather than the other tend also to give priority to the corresponding set of restrictions. They take that set as given, and then focus their efforts on finding a way to meet the other set if they can. Accommodating the explanatory role has seemed to many to require that a reason bear some relation to the motivations of the agent for whom it is reason. One might wonder: what sense could there be in calling something a reason for me to act if it were not in any way capable of explaining my being moved to act? I argue, however, that accepting this sort of internalist condition on something’s being a reason to act precludes accepting a condition of objectivity that is imposed on us if we wish to accommodate the favoring role: sometimes, at least, when we have a reason to act, we could not cease to have that reason simply by having a (perhaps radically) different set of attitudes. I then consider whether the reverse might be true of externalist theories. Does taking the favoring role as one’s starting point preclude a full account of the explanatory role of reasons? I argue that it does not. I show that an Anscombean conception of intentional action allows for a fairly clean solution to a pair of puzzles that motivate this worry. This approach relieves much of the pressure to think of reasons as being tied to motivational attitudes. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.