the environment (whereinformationis a causal notion). Content can then
come to be of causal relevance, provided that the mental state in question
becomes harnessed to the control of a particular type of behaviour (either
through evolution or through learning)because ofthe information that it
carries. But it is obvious that this solution to the present problem must be
unsuccessful. One reason is that the behavioural success of my water-
thoughts, for example, has nothing to do with the fact that they carry
information aboutH 2 O(as opposed to XYZ), but rather with the fact that
they carry information about water’s properties of potability, solvency,
and so on – properties, note, which are equally shared with XYZ. Another
reason is that many singular thoughts (widely individuated) are one-oV.If
I think ‘Thatcat is dangerous’ and act accordingly, then there can be no
historical explanation of the causal powers of the thought in terms of the
information which it carries about that particular cat, since I may never
before have encountered that cat, nor entertained that thought.
Some wide-content theorists have replied that there is really no problem
here for them to answer (Klein, 1996). For on most accounts of wide
content, the relation in question, in terms of which the content of a state is
partly individuated, is itself acausalone. (This is true in connection with all
varieties of what McGinn calls ‘strong externalism’. See his 1989.) Thus,
when I think, ‘Thatcat is dangerous’, for example, my thought comes to
have the wide content which it does in virtue of thecausalrelationship
which obtains between my tokening of the thought and that particular cat.
In fact, to individuate thoughts widely is to individuate them in terms of
their causes, on most accounts. And then, it may be said, the (wide) content
of a thought must, after all, be causally relevant. For the cause of a cause
must be causally relevant to the latter’s eVects. If my thought about the cat
explains my attempt to kick it, and my thought is caused by the presence of
a particular cat, then that particular cat is causally relevant to my kicking.
And then to individuate my thought in terms of its causation by that
particular cat is to individuate it in a way which must be causally relevant
to the kicking.
This reply fails, however. For it does not show that wide content is
relevant to the distinctive causal powers of (as opposed to the mere
existence of) a thought. Individuating states in terms of their causes does
not automatically mean (indeed, will normallynotmean) individuating
them in a manner relevant to their causal powers. (Note that by a causal
power, here, we mean a capacity to bring about certaineVects. Our topic
now is whether reasons, as such, are causes; not whether reasonshave
causes.) Consider, for comparison, the conceptchair.To oversimplify
somewhat, this, too, individuates items in terms of their causal history: to
be a chair is to be an object which was caused to exist by someone’s
152 Content for psychology