PHIL 212 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Intentionality, Lightning, Physicalism
4 May 2018
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Philosophy of Mind
10.17 Lecture Notes – Intentionality
Problem of Intentionality
- How can my thoughts represent (or be about) other things?
o Mental states can have intentionality if they are about an external thing
- For the physicalist, this amounts to the question: how can certain patterns of activity in
my brain represent or be about other things?
- Itetioalit = aoutess
o Most thigs i the orld a’t represet, the just eist
o Brains can think about things – interested in discovering exactly why it is this way
- Representation: anything that has intentionality
- Content: the thing that the representation is about
Two Naïve Theories of Mental Representation
- The Resemblance Theory: Representation R represents some content C if and only if R
resembles C.
o Problems:
▪ 1. Resemblance theory might not work for physicalists.
▪ If physicalism is true, my thoughts about Paris are ultimately patterns of
neural firings in my brain. But do these patterns of neural firings really
resemble the actual city of Paris? – probably not
▪ Some thoughts are not image-like – some thoughts are verbal (like saying
something in your head)
▪ 2. Resemblance is a symmetrical relation, while representation is not.
▪ If A resembles B, then B also resembles A. But if A represents B, it does
not follow that B represents A.
▪ We want representation to go only in one direction, but resemblance
goes both ways
▪ 3. Resemblance is not sufficient for representation. (e.g., the twin
example)
- The Causal Theory: mental representation is a causal relation
o R represents C if and only if R is caused by C.
o Problems:
▪ 1. Causatio is’t suffiiet for represetatio (eaple of lightig olt
creating a crack in a tree)
▪ 2. Causal theory cannot explain misrepresentation
• If your representation is caused by a cow, then it has to be about
a cow, and so you cannot explain how you mistake a cow for a
horse.
▪ 3. Causal theory does not explain how we represent fictional entities
• I a thoughts aout thigs that do’t eist
Biological Functions and Teleosemantics
- It sometimes seems natural to talk about the function of a biological trait
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