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 "second hardest puzzle" of philosophy of mind (the first
being consciousness). The puzzle at the heart of the book is sometimes
called "the problem of mental content," "Brentano's problem," or "the
problem of intentionality." 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.
