Mark of the Mental (eBook)

Drawing on insights from causal theories of reference, teleosemantics, and state space semantics, a theory of naturalized mental representation.In A Mark of the Mental, Karen Neander considers the representational power of mental states-described by the cognitive scientist Zenon Pylyshyn as the "e;second hardest puzzle"e; of philosophy of mind (the first being consciousness). The puzzle at the heart of the book is sometimes called "e;the problem of mental content,"e; "e;Brentano's problem,"e; or "e;the problem of intentionality."e; Its motivating mystery is how neurobiological states can have semantic properties such as meaning or reference. Neander proposes a naturalistic account for sensory-perceptual (nonconceptual) representations. Neander draws on insights from state-space semantics (which appeals to relations of second-order similarity between representing and represented domains), causal theories of reference (which claim the reference relation is a causal one), and teleosemantic theories (which claim that semantic norms, at their simplest, depend on functional norms). She proposes and defends an intuitive, theoretically well-motivated but highly controversial thesis: sensory-perceptual systems have the function to produce inner state changes that are the analogs of as well as caused by their referents. Neander shows that the three main elements-functions, causal-information relations, and relations of second-order similarity-complement rather than conflict with each other. After developing an argument for teleosemantics by examining the nature of explanation in the mind and brain sciences, she develops a theory of mental content and defends it against six main content-determinacy challenges to a naturalized semantics.