Pragmatic aspects of content determination

Frances Egan

pp. 217-228

in: Denis Fisette (ed), Consciousness and intentionality, Berlin, Springer, 1999

Abstract

"Naturalistic" semantic theories attempt to specify sufficient conditions, in a non-intentional and non-semantic vocabulary, for a mental representation's having a particular meaning. Information-basedtheories, for example, identify the meaning of a mental representation with the cause of its tokening in certain specifiable circumstances.¹Teleological theories hold that the meaning of a mental representation is determined by its biological function, what it was selected for.²