when anchored in the context of Tiddles has the truth-condition,Tiddles
is dangerous, and when anchored in the context of Twiddles has the truth-
condition,Twiddles is dangerous.
Notice that Fodor’s approach makes narrow contents entirely parasitic
upon wide content – indeed, upon wide content conceived of purely in
terms of truth-conditions, or worldly states of aVairs. For Fodor will have
no truck with Fregean senses, ormodes of presentationof truth-conditions.
In fact, there is nothingmoreto any given narrow content than its being
that state which, when embedded in one context yields one truth-condi-
tion, and when embedded in another context yields another. Indeed, as we
shall see in the next chapter, Fodor’s project is to oVer a naturalistic
wide-content semantics, characterising meaning and reference in purely
causal terms, and then to construct a notion of narrow content to ride
piggy-back on that. Why is Fodor so minimalist about the nature of
narrow content? In part because of an obsessive fear ofholism, as we shall
see in due course. If one said more, of an intra-cranial sort, about what
makes any given narrow content the content that it is, this would
presumably have to work by relating that content to others (what further
beliefs that content may lead the thinker to by inference, for example). But
then there may be no way of stopping short of saying that the (narrow)
content of any one belief will implicateallthe subject’s other beliefs. This is
a consequence Fodor is keen to avoid.
The main problem with Fodor’s minimalist approach, however, is that it
fails to give us a notion of content which satisWes the Fregeanintuitive
criterion of diVerence. Thus, let us return to an earlier example, comparing
the two thoughts, ‘Pavarotti is fat’ and ‘That manis fat.’ These are plainly
distinct, by the intuitive criterion, since I might doubt the one while
believing the other, or vice versa. But they come out as possessing the same
narrow content, on Fodor’s account (and so as having the same wide
content too, of course). For, ofeachof these thoughts you can say that it is
the thought which, when embedded in a context containing the singer
Pavarotti, in such a way that the referential element of the thought is
causally connected to that person, it has the truth-condition,Pavarotti is
fat. Both thoughts end up with a truth-condition which attributes fatness
to one and the same man. Similarly, consider the two thoughts one might
express by saying, ‘Thatman is well paid’ (both, again, involving reference
to the singer Pavarotti), where the one is grounded in vision and the other
in hearing. By the intuitive criterion these should come out as distinct,
since one might of course doubt whetherthatman (seen) isthatman
(heard). But by Fodor’s account they will come out as the very same, since
the same function from contexts to truth-conditions is instantiated. The
two thoughts are such that, whenever the demonstrative elements are
The coherence of narrow content 139