Troubles for Content II: Explaining Grounding
Chapter 6 in Metasemantics: New Essays on the Foundations of Meaning, Edited By Alexis Burgess and Brett Sherman (Oxford University Press, 2014).
17 Pages Posted: 24 Feb 2015
Date Written: February 23, 2015
Abstract
In this paper, I address the question whether it is adequate for a theory of linguistic or mental representation to provide a specification of modal determinants or, differently, grounds of content. (I focus on grounding, but my arguments generally apply to modal determination as well.) I first show that a specification of the grounds of a phenomenon is not an account of the nature of the phenomenon and does not permit straightforward derivation of such an account. I then argue for the claim that, in general, what grounds a phenomenon can be explained by an account of the nature of the phenomenon. Theorists of content have often assumed that an appeal to deference to other people can explain how a thinker with incomplete understanding of a concept can have thoughts involving the concept. In a companion paper, "Troubles with Content I," I argue that, once a theory of content appeals to deference, it no longer offers a unified account of what it is to have content. In the present paper, I address the potential response that we should be satisfied with such a disjunctive account – one that specifies different ways in which having content can be grounded. Similarly, I address attempts, such as that of David Lewis, to offer determinants or grounds of content without saying what it is for a representation to have content. I argue that specifications of determinants or grounds leave important questions unresolved, e.g., whether the phenomenon is fundamentally disjunctive, or whether it is unified but a complete account of its nature is not possible. We should seek a unified account of the nature of the phenomenon that explains its determinants or grounds. I am not optimistic about the prospects for a reduction of what it is for a representation to have content to the physical, the functional, or the like. But an account of a phenomenon need not offer such a low-level reduction in order to explain the way in which the phenomenon is grounded.
Keywords: theory of linguistic or mental representation, modal determinants, grounds of content, theory of content
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