to, or provide an account of, such lower-level processes, before we can
believe in the reality of the psychological. We just have to be able to have a
reasonable beliefthat they can be found. And even less is it required that
such realising processes should be speciWable more-or-lessa priori,asa
result of philosophical reXection in the light of our background beliefs. On
the contrary, surely, the interface(s) between psychology and neurology
are for science to discover and elucidate. So there is no requirement that we
should, as philosophers, be able to state, in non-psychological vocabulary,
a condition which would be suYcient for the occurrence of any given
content-bearing psychological state.
It would seem that the reality, and natural status, of content is assured
by the existence of a content-based scientiWc psychology, provided that the
latter can in principle be uniWed with the remainder of science. So if one
believes in the reality (and quasi-scientiWc status) of folk psychology, and
in the prospects for content-based scientiWc psychology more generally (as
does Fodor, 1987, and as do we), then there is nothing more which needs to
be done to naturalise content, beyond showing that psychological proces-
ses are implementable in mechanisms which can, ultimately, be physical
mechanisms. And it would appear that the computational theory of cog-
nition (also championed by Fodor, 1980) can at least make a good start on
doing that.
It remains true that we are committed, sometime, to providing a reduc-
tive explanation of some content-involving psychological phenomena –
that is, to detailing the implementing mechanisms so as to explain, in
detail, how the higher-level process is instantiated in them. And it is also
true, if we believe in at least a weak form of the unity of science, that we are
committed toWnding neurological or other lower-level theories which
should render it unmysterious why our psychological science works as well
as it does – that is, theories of underlying mechanisms in terms of which we
can see why the content-involving phenomena cluster together in the ways
that they do. But these are emphaticallynottasks to be undertaken by
philosophers from their armchairs. The task of seeking the requisite degree
of unity in science, and of oVering reductive explanations, is a scientiWc
one, not to be attempted bya priorireXection.
Our view, then, is that much of what has gone on under the banner of
‘naturalising content’ has been misguided, or at least misdirected. Even
Fodor – Mr Special Sciences himself (see his 1974) – is at fault here.
Admittedly, although Fodor at one time attempted what looked like fully
reductive accounts of content (see his 1984, 1985b, and 1987), he has now
given up seekingnecessary andsuYcient conditions for someone to enter-
tain a given content; he now seeks only suYcient conditions (1990). And
this might seem to be at least a gesture in the direction of multiple
188 Content naturalised