Biological Approaches to Mental Representation 551than carry information in the way that natural signs do — they represent. And
representation, unlike the mere carrying of information, is normative. Nothing
can carry the information thatP unlessP, but representations can, in general,
represent thatPeven if not-P[Dretske, 1986].
Despite Grice’s reference to the second kind of meaning as “non-natural mean-
ing” not all of it can be conventional, or dependent on our intentions, although this
might well be the case, as a Gricean analysis claims it is, for linguistic meaning.
Ultimately, some of our intentional mental states must get their meaning without
having to derive it from the meaning of other intentional mental states (on pain of
either circularity or infinite regress). Teleological theories of mental content, like
other attempts to provide what are referred to as naturalistic theories of mental
content, try to explain how this is so.
Cognitive systems are systems adapted for producing and processing internal
states that carry information, and for using these states to adapt the bodies in
which they are situated to the environments in which they in turn are situated,
and vice versa. But, as we have just seen, minds and brains do not merely carry
information about their environment. They represent their environment. And
this introduces semantic norms (of correctness and incorrectness) of which some
account is needed. Teleosemantic theories propose that psycho-semantic norms
(“psycho” for psychological) derive from functional norms that in turn derive from
the selection processes that were (in part) responsible for the development, phy-
logenetic or ontogenetic, of these cognitive systems.
The relevant notion of content is said to be normative because a state with such
content can, in general, represent correctly or incorrectly. The relevant notion
of function is said to be normative because a trait with such a function can, in
general, function properly or malfunction. A robin’s wing has the function of flight
even if it is broken and cannot fly. A heart has the function of pumping blood
even if it is suffering cardiac arrest and cannot pump. According to an SE theory
of functions, a trait is said to have a natural function,x, if traits of that type were
selected forx-ing by a natural (here, meaning non-intentional) process of selection.
To a first approximation, according to an SE theory, a trait is functioning properly
if it has the capacity to do that for which traits of the type were selected, and it
malfunctions if it lacks that capacity.^1
Some dislike talk of functional norms because they like to preserve the word
“norm” for prescriptive contexts. However, its use is not in general restricted in
this way, since we sometimes talk of statistical norms and these are clearly not
prescriptive per se (it is not necessarily ideal to be of average height, looks or
intelligence). In any case, the terms are unimportant. What matters is that those
(^1) As I’ll have reason to note again in the last section, there is more than one correct way to
describe a trait’s function because traits are selected for a concertina of effects that ultimately
result in gene (meme, etc.) replication. A trait does not malfunction merely because it cannot
bring about this full concertina of effects. A woman’s ovaries do not malfunction just because her
fallopian tubes are blocked and so she cannot conceive. They malfunction only if they lack the
capacity to contribute what they were selected for more particularly contributing to an enterprise
that involves a great many other co-adapted parts [Neander, 1995].