The Philosophy of Psychology
3.1 The case for teleo-semantics One source of attraction is to note that the mind is an evolved system as well as the body. Sin ...
eagleshould mostly be a false alarm, triggered by any large birdXying overhead. For the costs to the squirrels of taking cover u ...
and not to shrews-or-mice. Thus frommousethe system infersnot shrew, and also perhapscan be an indoor pest. And it will lead me ...
doctor–patient relationship. Since it is the beat of the heart which enables the doctor to diagnose heart disease, that beat wil ...
opposed toXies-or-shot-gun-pellets? Fodor argues not, since in the en- vironments in which the frog’s perceptual system has evol ...
teleo-semanticist would be conceding that determinate functions – and so determinate contents – only appear as one moves up the ...
cannot have their contents individuated in terms of evolutionary function, contrary to what the teleo-semanticist claims. The po ...
What these points suggest, then, is that the most promising way to develop an analysis of content in terms of function would bri ...
rhythmical sound. But both are equally eVects of the heart. What is the diVerence? The diVerence is that it is (in part)becauset ...
4.1 In support of functional-role semantics One argument in support of functional-role semantics is an argument from functionali ...
set of conditionals about what the subjectwouldthink or do in the presence of (some but not all) other – hypothetical – beliefs ...
exhibit something red; and if I want to check on the truth of the former I shall open my eyes, whereas if I want to check on the ...
naturalise content, in a way which would be tantamount to abandoning the project altogether. There would appear to be two possib ...
that defenders of narrow content might be well advised to look to some such form of functional-role semantics if they seek a nat ...
quantifying overthe entities they concern. We will not pursue this further here. Fodor has argued, however, that functional-role ...
a great many psychological generalisations relate toparticularcontents or types of content. Consider the claim that there exist ...
which are true of us in virtue of our possession of a folk psychology are inapplicable. And most psychologists say, in consequen ...
state, in terms not involving the target concept, the conditions necessary and suYcient for something to satisfy that concept. C ...
are reduced to statistical mechanics. Boyle’s Law states this: PV = kT. So if the volume (V) of a gas is kept constant, an incre ...
In which case, for those of us who believe in the scientiWc status of psychology, there is nothing more that we need do, in orde ...
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