contents,quacontents, can be causes, since essentially the same problem
will arise in connection with all conceptions of content. For after all, as
physicalists we must believe that all bodily movements will have suYcient
causes at a neurological level – brain events causing brain events, causing
muscles to contract, causing arms to move in certain directions, and so on.
So how can there be any space for reasons to be causes as well, unless
reason-descriptions are justalternative ways of describingbrain events? In
which case it will not bequareason that a given brain event is a cause.
There are a number of diVerent possibilities for responding to the
allegation that all content must be epiphenomenal. The most direct (and,
to our minds, the most convincing) is to point out (1) that reasons will be
causes in virtue of their content if theyWgure in a distinctive set of
content-involving causallaws; and (2) to claim that there are, indeed, such
laws. TheWrst part of this response is relatively uncontroversial. For there
are few who are prepared to claim that the only real causes which exist are
at the level of sub-atomic physics. Yet there is exactly the same sort of
reason to claim that all processes – of whatever level, and whatever degree
of complexity – must be realised in sub-atomic physical ones. At any rate,
the second part of the above response, if true, would show that reasons
have the same sort of causal status as genes, or H 2 O molecules, or any
other natural kind above the level of basic physics. So:isclaim (2) true?
It would certainly appear that there are many content-involving laws,
ranging from the highly particular (‘The moon looks bigger near the
horizon’; ‘People have an aversion to the thought of mother–son incest’) to
the general (‘People try,ceteris paribus, to get what they want’ – and note
thatalllaws above the level of basic physics areceteris paribus). And if the
arguments above are sound, such laws will only employ, and vindicate,
contents which are narrowly individuated.
5 Folk-psychological content
Suppose it had turned out that folk-psychological content is wide, whereas
scientiWc-psychological content would have to be narrow; and suppose,
too, that it had turned out that narrow content is actually incoherent; then
this would have meant that the prospects for an intentional scientiWc
psychology were bleak. It would have meant that folk psychology is the
only kind of intentional psychology we could ever have. Although we
have, indeed, argued that scientiWc-psychological content should be nar-
row, we have denied that the notion of narrow content is incoherent. So
there is no threat to scientiWc psychology from this quarter. But is there,
now, an eliminativist threat to folk psychology? If folk psychology is
Folk-psychological content 155