Six tricky pieces: naturalistic accounts of mental content and the problem of determinacy

Abstract

The present report identifies six problems concerning the determinacy of mental content which confront naturalistic accounts of such content. In the light of these six problems, an evaluation of representative exemplars of four alternative types of naturalistic account (namely basic causal, informational, producer-based teleological and consumer-based teleological) is provided. It is argued that whilst each type of account makes important contributions none satisfactorily addresses all six difficulties. The results of this evaluation are used to propose an alternative naturalistic account of mental content which promises to meet this challenge in a more satisfactory way. The proposed strategy can be seen as a blend of a consumer-based teleosemantics with an information-based condition. Hence, the account is broadly teleological and appeals: (i) both to the proper functions of representation producers and to the proper functions of representation consumers; (ii) both to the relations between an internal state and its external conditions and to the relations between internal states.