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Functional role and intentionality

AMIR HOROWITZ Tel-Aviv University

CONCEPTUAL or functional role’ theories (hereafter CRT) are theories that try to specify what endows mental states with their content. My purpose in this paper is to present versions of CRT, and to show that they are basically inadequate as theories of content.

Introduction

The roots of CRT are, presumably, Sellarsiam2 Sellars (1963) de- scribes language as having ‘language-entry’ rules, ‘language- language’ rules, and ‘language-exit’ rules. In that spirit, the content of a (type of a) mental state is characterized in terms of its causal connections to perceptual inputs, behavioral outputs, and other mental states. In Block’s words (Block 1986, p. 628):

... [the conceptual role] is a matter of the causal role of the expression in reasoning and deliberation and, in general, in the way the expression combines and in- teracts with other expressions so as to mediate between sensory inputs and behavioral output^.^

It looks as though CRT is very close in nature to psychophysical functionalism. Fodor argues that the latter does not entail the former. According to him (1986, p. 14), functionalists claim that what makes something a belief is its functional role, but they do not claim that functional role makes a belief the belief that P. Fodor asks us to imagine a semantic theory according to which what makes something a water-belief is its being caused by water. Should

’ McGinn (1982) calls it ‘cognitive role’, and we can find in the literature various other names like ‘causal role’, ‘inferential role’, and ‘computational role’. Some philosophers distinguish between some of these roles (see, for example, Cummins, 1989, and Richard, 1990). I shall deal with some of the distinctions. * But since, as Loar (1982) points out, conceptual role theory can be viewed as a kind of a use theory of meaning, we can step back at least to Wittgenstein.

Among the advocates of CRT we can also find Field (1977 and 1978), Loar (1981 and 1982), Harman (1973, 1982, 1987), Lycan (1985), and Schiffer (1981).

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we then accept that the growth of strawberries is a water-beleif? We should not, according to functionalism, since it holds that for something to be a belief it must have a certain functional role in thinking. The growth of strawberries does not have whatever functional properties beliefs have to have (if functionalism is true); a fortiori it is not a belief; a fortiori it is not a water-belief. That is, there is a clear distinction between functionalism (a theory which accounts for what makes something a belief, a desire, etc.) and CRT (a theory which accounts for what grants a belief, say, its specific content), and the former does not entail the latter.

I do not question the validity of this reasoning, but I think that it deals with a rather weak and uninteresting version of functionalism. The strong and interesting claim of functionalism is that beliefs (and other mental states) are functional states when the ‘are’ is the ‘are’ of identity (as opposed to the ‘are’ of predication). That is, this theory individuates types of mental states in terms of their functional role.4 Functionalism so construed does entail CRT. Since I am going to show that CRT is false, I cannot accept functionalism in this stronger sense, and my criticism of CRT is also a criticism of it.

The term ‘conceptual’ in ‘CRT’ can be misleading by creating the impression that it characterizes content in terms of its abstract conceptual connections rather than in terms of its concrete psychological connections.’ This, of course, cannot be the case: first, because what we want is a characterization of the content of mental states, that is, of real psychological entities; second, because the idea of accounting for content in terms of its abstract conceptual connections is senseless, since if we look for an account of content we cannot appeal to conceptual connections which are semantic connections. There is an abstract conceptual connection between

That functionalism claims this seems plausible in the light of the functionalist attack against reductive materialism which individuates types of mental states in terms of types of brain states. But I don’t want to argue about what someone meant, all the more so about meanings of words.

Block (1986, p. 631) raises (without answering) the question whether conceptual role should be understood in ideal or normative terms, or should it be tied up to what people actually do. My opinion on the matter will be revealed shortly.

FUNCTIONAL ROLE AND INTENTIONALITY 199 ‘father’ and ‘parent’ only once ‘father’ and ‘parent’ (already) have their meanings.

I think that the rationale for characterizing content in terms of conceptual role comes from the fact that mental states with identical contents (which may be physically and/or phenomenologically different!) have identical causal powers, and mental states with different contents have different causal powers.6 Loar (1982, p. 275) says in a similar context that ‘the conceptual role theory of content quite naturally imposes itself. What can be seen as a compelling reason in favor of CRT is this: there is quite a good correspondence between many psychological causal relations and semantic relations. For example, we tend to reason according to various logical patterns, either valid or not. Now how can these phenomena be explained? Only thus, it seems: semantic relations just are causal relations, and this is so since to be semantic in some specific way is to have typical causal antecedents and effects. Giving up the idea that causal relations constitute content will make the correspondence between causal and semantic relations miraculous. In the light of this reasoning it seems just natural to characterize content in terms of conceptual role.

Yet the reasoning is not valid. The mentioned correspondence indeed constrains theories of content in an important way, but, as will be shown at the end of this paper, it does not impose CRT.

It is common to speak of CRT as a theory of narrow content. The motivation for erecting the notion of narrow content emerges from acceptance of the thesis that meanings (or, for that matter, contents), as what determine reference, are not ‘in the head’. The most well-known argument for that thesis is Putnam’s Twin earth argument (Putnam 1975a. Putnam asks us to suppose that there is a planet named Twin Earth (hereafter TE), that is exactly like Earth except for the following difference: the liquid that is called ‘water’ on TE, and which is perceptually indistinguashable from water (that is, from our water), is not H,O but XYZ. We are asked to suppose, further, that one Earthling, Oscar,, has a TE dupli- cate, Oscar,, who shares all his mental states (non-intentionally

This is true only regarding narrow contents-see later.

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described). According to Putnam, the extension of ‘water’ when uttered by Oscar, is H,O, while the extension of ‘water’ when uttered by Oscar, is XYZ. That is, despite the identity between the Oscars’ mental states nonintentionally described these mental states differ in reference. What’s ‘in the head’, then, does not determine reference, so meanings are not in the head. Similarly, the contents of the Oscars’ ‘water’-thoughts differ, so contents are not in the head.

Putnam’s Oscars are said to share narrow contents, which are functions from context to (broad) content. That is, they determine (broad) contents relative to a context.’ As opposed to (broad) content, narrow content is taken to be internal and solipsistic (a property of what’s in the head), and it is said to be that ‘aspect’ of content that is causally responsible for behavior. So the motivation to characterize narrow content in terms of causal connections is quite understandable. Block (ibid., pp. 667-8) explains why narrow content is relevant to the explanation of behavior: ‘To have an internal representation with a certain narrow meaning is to have a representation with certain likely inferential antecedents and effects ...’.

Narrow content characterized as a conceptual role retains a feature that it must retain, namely, that it can be shared by mental states with different intentional objects, This is clear considering that Putnam’s Oscars share all their conceptual roles. Since the Oscars do not share (broad) contents, it is impossible to characterize (broad) content in terms of conceptual role.*

A similar advantage of the theory is that it is fine enough to treat differently, as it should, beliefs such as ‘The Morning-star is a distant planet’ and ‘The Evening-star is a distant planet’, beliefs which represent the same state of affairs, but which would not do so in all possible worlds. These beliefs differ in content according to CRT since they have different inferential and functional roles. Similarly, CRT retains the difference even between beliefs which

’See Fodor 1987, chapter 2. Putnam himself (see Putnam 1988) opposes the very notion of narrow content. * But see the discussion of Harman’s theory later.

FUNCTIONAL ROLE AND INTENTIONALITY 20 1 do represent the same state of affairs in all possible worlds, like beliefs about equilateral triangles and equiangular triangle^.^ Such a distinction-ability is a good thing for CRT since one can surely have beliefs about the latter without also having beliefs about the former (and, of course, vice versa).

CRT and holism

An important feature of CRT is that it accounts for contents of thoughts in terms of their total conceptual role (Block 1986, p. 628). What exactly does ‘total’ mean here? Certainly, not all causal relations of a mental state are relevant for its content. As Block says (ibid.), the fact that you take longer than I do in reasoning from x to y should not imply that your and my x and/or y differ in their contents. And, according to Cummins (1989, pp. 115-116 and p. 168 note 2)’ causal consequences that do not alter a state enough to alter its computational status should be treated as ‘noise’ which does not affect content. But what is to count as noise? What is to count as a computational status? Cummins says that only the causal arrows that eventually link the state to other computational states matter,I0 but I doubt whether it is possible to define ‘a computational state’ for our purpose. Mental processes according to a popu- lar view are held to be computational in the sense that they apply to mental states in virtue of formal, syntactic, or structural properties of these states (see Fodor 1980). But Fodor admits that he cannot say what ‘formality’ amounts to, and that being syntactic is a way of not being semantic. Many think that there can be no syntax without semantics (see, for example, Jacquette 1989). I am not going to assess this general claim here, but to make a similar claim as regards computational role: since there is no such thing as the structure of a state, then any structural characterization of a state presupposes a certain criterion of relevance, either semantic or other.’I If we don’t have it as regards mental states, we cannot say what is

I suppose that some philosophers might disagree with the claim that these beliefs represent the same state of affairs in all possible worlds. It is not important for present purposes to defend this claim. l o Cummins distinguishes in this respect causal role from computational role. I I See some further remarks on the issue below.

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computationally noisy, and what is not. It is clear that not being semantic cannot suffice, since what is computationally noisy is not, as such, to count as semantic. But can we characterize as computational those properties that are, though not semantic, semantically relevant? Cummins (ibid, p. 116) believes that such a move involves circularity, since CRT tries to define content. However, CRT tries to define content not in the sense of saying what it is to have content in the first place, but rather, to say what it is to have a certain content,I2 and to infer from the unavailability of an answer to the former the unavailability of an answer to the latter is a non se- quitur. But what’s important for our present purposes is that theorists who endorse CRT must also have an answer to the former question, otherwise they won’t be able to specify-in a general way-what causal relations of a state are relevant to its semantic interpretation.

Now let’s return to the question of what does ‘totar in ‘total conceptual role’ mean. It means that all causal chains that are computationally relevant (assuming that a sense can be given to this) should be taken into account in characterizing a state’s content. Thus, no analytichynthetic distinction is available for CRT, since all causal links of a state (that are computationally relevant) are taken to constitute its content, and there are no such non-con- stitutive links.

In this context it is worth pointing out that not only actual links are relevant, but rather all possible ones. This must be so, since otherwise if, say, you tokened a concept only once and I tokened a concept many times, using it in different mental processes, it would follow that our concepts differ in content, and this is im- plausible. Thus, Block speaks of CRT in terms of [ikely inferential antecedents and effects (1986, pp. 667-668). Yet there can be at least two options regarding the meaning of ‘possible‘ conceptual role, as we shall later see.

CRT faces serious difficulties due to the fact that the identification of the narrow contents of a certain mental state according to

On this distinction see Bogdan 1989, and a reply to him in Dascal and Horowitz, 1992.

FUNCTIONAL ROLE AND INTENTIONALITY 203 it depends on other mental states of the subject. Since it is only in philospher’s examples that two sujects have the same psychologies, and since the psychologies of most of us differ from each other to a great extent, it follows that hardly ever (if not never) can two subjects share content, i.e., think the same thought (even narrowly considered). For example, if both of us believe ‘Fa’, but only I believe ‘a=b’, then in some circumstances it is likely that only I will come to believe ‘Fb’. According to CRT, the contents of ‘Fa’ for me and for you are different. I find this consequence absurd. I am aware of the fact that one can think that this is a desired consequence, and not be disturbed by the fact that this view entails that none of us ever really understand any other (or at least that such an understanding is a rare phenomenon). One can endorse such a view, and hold that content is individuable only intra-individually and not inter-indi~idual1y.l~ Perhaps this may sound plausible when CRT is taken to account for narrow content. But one must also be aware that such a position is incompatible with a central motivation for introducing the notion of narrow content, namely, the attempt to account for there being laws of belief-desire psychology, which seem to be essential for its status as an explanatory and predictive science. The existence of inter-individual laws that generalize over narrow contents is incompatible with narrow contents that are only intra-individually indi~iduab1e.l~

But the situation is even worse: as Putnam notices (1988, pp. 48-9) overall conceptual role can change enormously without there being a change in meaning. Putnam’s example is that of ‘water’, which in early Greece was a name of an element, an element that was virtually a universal principle of liquidity. So many of our (important) beliefs about water change, and thereby the inferential (and hence functional) connections of ‘water’ change. Indeed, one can argue that in cases of such enormous changes of beliefs

l 3 Field (1977) endorses such a view. l 4 If you don’t see the need to introduce the notion of narrow content, and you take CRT to account for (referential) content, you will face, of course, the same dificulties: the existence of inter-individual laws that generalize over (referential) contents is incompatible with (referential) contents that are only intra-individually individuable.

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the meanings cannot remain one and the same, but the point is that according to CRT any change in functional role is, ips0 facto, a change in meaning, so that even the slightest change in one’s ‘water’-belief is necessarily a change in the meaning of ‘water’.

Since we do change our beliefs frequently, adherence to CRT means that we cannot account for many psychological processes in terms of contents and narrow contents, and that there cannot be inter-individual content psychology, but also intra-individual content psychology. Further, the Individuation of mental states in terms of content that we thus get is so different from our pre-theoretic one-according to which it is possible to change many beliefs which involve a concept without changing the content of the concept-that CRT seems to characterize something else, and not content (either narrow or b r ~ a d ) . ’ ~

A plausible way to avoid these difficulties is to claim that only some of our beliefs should be taken into account, some beliefs that constitute (or define) the (narrow) contents of our words and concepts. However, endorsing such a claim amounts to no less than abandoning CRT, since, as I said, it is the total conceptual role of a mental state that matters for its narrow content according to CRT. One might claim that this is only a quarrel about words, but it is not: a theory of content according to which the contents of some mental representations ‘define’ the contents of others require the existence of ‘primitive’ mental representations which do not have their contents in virtue of their relations with other mental representations. That is, the revised ‘CRT’ depends on there being another theory of content.

Block suggests that ‘Without an analytic/synthetic distinction we would ... move to a scientific conception of meaning that does away with the crude dichotomy of same/different meaning in favor of a multidimensional gradient of similarity of meaning’ (1986, p. 629). But Block doesn’t try to show how that could be done and of what kind the similarity criterion he has in mind would be. Lepore and Loewer (1987, p. 98) also agree that for two mental states to mean the same they need not have exactly the same conceptual

Putnam (1988, p. 49) says similar things in a similar context.

FUNCTIONAL ROLE AND INTENTIONALITY 205 roles, but could have conceptual roles that are ‘appropriately similar.’ Again, they do not try to specify what is the criterion of ‘ap- propriate similarity.’16 I doubt whether this can be done. Note that the required similarity criterion must be formulated in functional terms. What nontrivial functional similarity is there between, for instance, the concept ‘Arab’ in the mental life of two Israelis with opposite polar political opinions? And surely their respective concepts do have the same content. At least, such a case is possible. To say that cases of this kind are not possible would amount to characterizing something other than content. And suggesting that only some beliefs constitute narrow content would mean, as I said, abandoning CRT.

Another way to get out of these difficulties is to regard narrow content as constituted by all its potential causal connections in a strong sense (a strong sense of ‘potential’, which amounts to a minimal requirement). I already mentioned that CRT speaks of the possibfe conceptual role, rather than the actual one. One interpretation of the identification of contents of mental states with their possible conceptual roles is this: two beliefs, say, of different subjects have the same narrow content if and only if the subjects share all the possible (computationally relevant) causal chains that involve these beliefs. This interpretation, we saw, demands too much: I, and not you, may come to believe ‘Fb’ due to believing ‘Fa’, since I, and not you, believe ‘a=b’. The alternative interpretation is the following: two beliefs, say, of different subjects have the same narrow content if and only if the beliefs have the same (computationally relevant) antecedents and effects when the subjects are in the same overall mental constellations. The idea upon which conceptual role accounts of content are based is that a mental state has the narrow content that it has in virtue of its ten- dency to cause-and be caused by-some other (specific) mental states (and sensorial inputs and behavioral outputs). Now one mental state considered in isolation from any other mental state of the subject presumably has no specific causal tendencies. The pres- ently suggested theory takes this point into consideration. Accord-

l 6 They just say, commenting on Field, that this can’t be done in probabilistic terms.

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ing to it, the (narrow) content of a mental state is determined by its having a certain set of possible causal tendencies, each of which corresponds to a certain possible overall mental constellation of a subject (of any subject!).

Such a version of CRT-a ‘dispositional CRT’-is not subject to the above difficulty of enormous (or any) change in conceptual role without change in narrow content, since, by definition, the conceptual role it refers to does not change with changes of beliefs. However, this version has difficulties of its own. Since it is the monadic properties of a state which determine its potential causal tendencies, this revised CRT is committed to the view that mental states which are monadically identical share their (narrow) contents. In other words, (narrow) content thus characterized is a necessary property of a (type of a) mental state, a property which it has regardless of anything that actually happens, either in the subject or not, as long as the causal laws that prevail in the world remain unchanged. (We can say it is a necessary property of the state in the sense of ‘scientific necessity’, a property it has in all possible worlds with the same laws as those of the actual

That fact creates a difficulty for that theory. The difficulty is that its individuation-scheme is nor fine enough, in being totally system-independent. That is, according to that version all mental states that have the same causal powers, and therefore all mental states that share their monadic properties, have the same narrow content. This is too strong. We can see it in the case of subjects who speak (and think) in different languages: two subjects can have in mind two concepts which are phenomenologically identical, and yet differ in content. For example, the Hebrew concept that is phenomenologically identical to the English ‘he’ means what the English ‘she’ does. But the causal powers of the Hebrew concepr ‘he’ and the English concept ‘he’ (phenomenologically speaking, though not semantically speaking, they are one concept) are identical, since their monadic properties are identical.lX This is

The claim that narrow content is such a necessary property of mental states does not entail that mental states with identical narrow contents must have identical monadic physical or phenomenal properties. See below.

The actual causal effects are of course different, but this is because the overall

FUNCTIONAL ROLE AND INTENTIONALITY 207 incompatible with the theory in question, according to which identity in causal power entails identity in (narrow) content.

I might now be accused of misunderstanding CRT. What matters for the identity of content according to it, one might say, is not the physical or phenomenological nature of the causes and effects of the state having it. The English and Hebrew ‘he’ indeed have the same potential causal connections under a physical or a phenomenal description, but this doesn’t matter. As we all know, mental states of the same type may have multiple realizations. What matters is ... what? Semantic properties are out of place here, since we are now looking for their characterization. Syntactic or functional characterizations are also out of place: CRT tries to identify content functionally, that is, in terms of (some) causal relations. The identity of causal connections is determined by the identity of the causal relata. The question we are now facing is how to identify these relata; to say that they are identified functionally is to put us back where we ~ tar ted . ’~

It won’t do to say that the identity among mental states that we seek is functional in the sense that they are related to the same types of sensory input and behavioral output: we should have to characterize these outputs and inputs, and this can’t work for several reasons. First, the typical behavioral effects of many beliefs are linguistic, and surely the relevant identity criterion of linguistic behavior is semantic: it cannot be physical, since we should count two utterances of two sentences of different languages that share meaning (but differ physically) as identical; it cannot also be syntactic in the sense of ‘linguistic syntax’ (as opposed, say, to mental ‘computational syntax’), since we should not count all the sentences that belong to a certain syntactic category in this sense as identical. The relevant criterion must be semantic because the typical behavioral effects of a certain mental constellation under its semantic characterization can be characterized only semant-

mental constellations of a Hebrew speaker and an English speaker-as speakers of different languages differ. But what is important for the present purpose is that the causal powers are identical, in the sense that relative to any given overall mental constellation the concepts have the same causal effects. ’’ The term ‘functional role’ can be contrasted with ‘causal role’. Functional roles, as I understand the term, are a subclass of causal roles.

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ically.*O Second, such a move would make CRT to a great extent behavioristic, and in particular it would thus inherit one of the notorious problems of behaviorism: it cannot account for mental states without mentioning other mental states. So characterizing (narrow) content in terms of input and output alone cannot work.

Of course, we cannot be satisfied with the general claim that conceptual role is characterized according to the program that runs the individual and the position of the mental state in the program. What I said above amounts to saying that there cannot be an adequate non-question-begging criterion for identities of programs and positions of states in programs. How shall we identify these states? According to Putnam (1975b, p. 291) two systems are ‘functionally isomorphic’ if “there is a correspondence between the states of one and the states of the other that preserve functional relations.” But Putnam is aware that the notion of functional iso- morphism presupposes the notion of a thing being a functional description, and claims that people are Turing machines: Turing machines have a machine table-a normal form for their functional description. The counterpart of a machine table in the case of human beings is taken by Putnam to be the psychological theory. Yet if such a theory applies-as it should-to real human beings, not to abstract machines, then at least part of the types of states over which the theory quantifies should be identified by a certain pre-theoretic criterion. So the functional description of a psychological state depends on the chosen criterion.

In addition to this, one of the main difficulties of functionalism is that it requires too much, because no two actual individuals can be said to have the same program.*’

It is not clear, I conclude, how CRT characterizes content.

2o One may claim that this would not be problematic if we had a semantic theory of meanings of linguistic acts according to which these meanings do not depend on mental contents. I am skeptic about the prospects of such a theory, but anyhow, as we shall now see, characterizing input and output cannot suffice.

There can be a non-semantic equivalence between programs, and I shall speak below about two computer programs which are indistinguishable when compiled but differ semantically. However, such an equivalence is relative to the rules of the relevant program, which are not ‘given’. That is, as, I hope, the above discussion makes it clear, the equivalence is relative to a certain criterion of relevance. Further, if indeed such programs can differ semantically, then the syntactic

FUNCTIONAL ROLE AND INTENTIONALITY 209 CRT and intentionality

Another characteristic of CRT as it was presented here so far (as a solipsistic CRT) is that in principle it cannot exhaust content since it cannot account for the relations between content and the world, or, putting it differently, for the fact that content has reference, intentional objects, and truth-conditions. Connections between internal states of a subject cannot by themselves account for the relation of internal states to the world. This becomes clear once we notice that functional roles are actually syntactic. Causal powers of a given internal state have nothing (nothing conceptual, to be precise) to do with extra-mental facts, and hence with semantic interpretations of the state. The same is true for the actual causal connections of the state. Thus Fodor (1972, p. 207) speaks about two computer programs that simulate, respectively, the Six-Day War and a chess game, and can be indistinguishable when compiled, so that the internal career of a machine running one program would be identical, step by step, to that of a machine running the other. Rey (1980) speaks, similarly, about a computer that deals on Wednesday with the intricacies of the SALT negotiations, and on Thursday it plays chess with Bobby Fischer, and can pass through type identical computational and physical states on both days.22 The states of the computer can be said to have functional roles. So functional role does not determine semantics.

What’s more important for the present purposes is that functional role does not determine even narrow non-referential semantics. Indeed, the requirement of non-referential narrow content is not so strong as that of broad content, since non-referential narrow content is just afunction to truth-conditions. But how can CRT account even for narrow content’s being such a function? What is the connection between that feature of mental states in virtue of which a certain ‘context’ maps them onto a certain reference, and the states’ functional role? The above examples of Fodor and Rey actually show also that conceptual role cannot determine one specific function of that kind. I don’t see how the very fact

equivalence does not constitute semantic equivalence. 22 See note 21 above.

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that a ‘water’-concept has its conceptual role determines that Earthlings would refer by it to H,O, Twin Earthlings-to XYZ, etc., or, in general, that people would refer by it to that local liquid which they saw on several occasions. I do not intend to suggest here what does determine this, but only that it can’t be conceptual role.?3 So CRT, as it was so far presented here, cannot exhaust narrow content, and hence it cannot also be (or support) a theory of (broad) content.

Most of the conceptual role theorists accept this moral (perhaps only some A1 theorists do not). Now they have two options: either to account for mental content within a dual-aspect theory (hereafter ‘DAT’), a CRT and a supplementary account for intentionality, or to account for it within a single-factor theory, a nonsolipsistic CRT which ‘reaches’ the world. Let us examine these two strategies.

Avoiding narrow content-a nonsolipsistic CRT

Harman suggests a nonsolipsistic CRT. Harman’s CRT is nonsolipsistic in that it takes conceptual role to be also a matter of relations between the concept and things in the external world. By in- cluding remote inputs and outputs among the determinators of conceptual role Harman tries to overcome the gap between conceptual role and truth-conditions: what makes the concept ‘red’, for example, the concept that it is, is, in part, the way in which that concept is involved in perceiving red things (1987, p. 67, and 1982, p. 14).

By being nonsolipsistic, Harman’s theory of content opposes the very notion of narrow content. I believe that a theory of content cannot do without that notion, and therefore that Harman’s theory cannot be ~orrect.’~ Let us now examine the theory.

The perceived object, as Harman says, determines a concept’s content only in part. It is determined also by all other links of the

*’ As I show in “Individualism and Narrow Content” (in preparation) narrow content must have an interpretation. The above example show that conceptual role does not determine any interpretation, even a narrow ‘semantic’ interpretation. ?4 In particular, I believe, Harman’s theory cannot explain how the external contents it speaks of can have psychological explanatory role. See Fodor 1987 chapter 2, and my “Individualism and Narrow Content” (in preparation).

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causal chains in which the concept is involved, and that’s what makes the theory a CRT rather than merely a causal theory of content. In virtue of cases such as the Hesperus/Phosphorus one, it seems that what goes on inside must play a role in determining content, and the external object cannot do the whole job of this determination, because it can cause different concepts (and thus different concepts of it), concepts which are involved in different internal causal links. We can distinguish between the concepts ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ on the basis of their different conceptual roles in our mental life.25 On the other hand, in virtue of cases such as the Twin Earth case, what goes on inside does not suffice for determining content (i.e., referential content). So Harman’s proposal seems to be well motivated.

But now one can get the impression that the difference between Harman’s one-aspect theory and DAT is merely verbal. Block gets this impression: ‘Harman certainly owes us a reason for thinking that the outside-the-body part of his long-arm conceptual role dif- fers from the referential factor of two-factor theory ... it appears that one could easily transform a theory of the sort he advocates into a theory of the sort I have been advocating ...’ (Block 1986, p. 637). However, as Cummins says (1989, note 1 on p. 168), Block’s argument assumes that a DAT understands the external factor in a functional-role manner, and this is not necessary. Further, Harman’s theory claims to be different from DAT in denying that there is a ‘natural border between inner and outer. Should the inner realm ... stop at the skin ... the nerve ends ... the brain ... or what? (1987, p. 73). It thus seems that if Block really has in mind a DAT whose two factors are understood in a functional-role manner, then he must show what distinguishes these two factors, and where the border lies.”j

Does Harman’s theory, due to the fact that the content determination according to it involves external objects, overcome the dif-

zs They do have different conceptual roles even for those subjects who know, and perhaps even are always aware, that they denote the same entity. That is so for when such subjects have ‘Hesperus’-beliefs they may come to have (in addition) ‘Phosphorus’ -beliefs rather than additional ‘Hesperus’ ones, and vice versa. So ‘Hesperus’-beliefs and ‘Phosphorus’-beliefs have different typical effects. 26 Harman’s claim that there is no natural border between inner and outer does nor

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ficulty of CRT that any change in a subject’s beliefs is ips0 facto a change in the content of her concept(s)? It does not, since the identity of the external factor does not by itself determine content according to it, and the internal conceptual role also participates in this determination. So a change in the internal conceptual role is still a change in content.

But the theory also has difficulties of its own. It is clear that not all causal chains that involve a concept are relevant for its content. Think of Oscar,’s visit to Twin Earth. In his first minutes there, his thought ‘there is water here’ in face of XYZ is a false one, since his ‘water’-concept still refers to H,O. So the causal chains that relate his ‘water’-concept to XYZ shbuld not count. Which chains, then, count, and which do not? According to Harman, the content of a concept is determined by its functional role in some ‘normal context’. The normal context of Oscar, in his first minutes on TE is still Earth, and that’s why his ‘water’-concept still refers to water (Harman 1987, p. 70). But what exactly is ‘normal context’? Harman does not suggest even a rough criterion. We cannot characterize it as the subject’s local environment, not only because it is not always clear what should count as local,” but also because we have no justification to conclude that it is always geography which matters.

Confining ourselves to the causal chains of ‘normal context’ does not suffice. As Harman notices (1987, pp. 73-75), there are cases of illusions and other mistakes, where (even in one’s normal context) a concept is causally related through perception to a different external object than the one it is usually related to.28 Now

threaten every account of narrow content, but only conceptual role accounts. Harman does not claim (and, 1 believe, cannot show) that we cannot in principle identify a solipsistic ‘intentional’ state (i.e., a state with narrow content). 27 Harman admits (ibid.) that there is a certain amount of arbitrariness in decisions about when concepts change their contents. I don’t think it is fair to press him regarding ‘visiting cases’, since they are problematic for everyone (see Putnam 1983). But of course Harman does owe us a certain characterization, even a rough one, of ‘normal context.’ 28 Allowing for all possible causal chains (even only those that take place in the normal context) to be considered would make it the case that any concept is the concept of any kind of external objects.

FUNCTIONAL ROLE AND INTENTIONALITY 213 why shouldn’t the different object play a part in the content-determination of the concept? It cannot do to say that these are, ex hypothesi, cases of mistakes, since what we need to know is what makes some cases mistaken. Such cases, Harman says, are cases of ‘misfunctioning’, and ‘the content of a concept is determined by the way in which the concept functions in paradigm or standard cases in which nothing goes wrong’ (ibid., p. 75). So we need to appeal not only to normal context, but to paradigm cases of normal functioning. However, to characterize such cases is not an easy task at aRZ9 Harman does not even try to do it. I think that the failure of Harman’s theory is not accidental. It reflects two truths: that there must be a solipsistic interpreted contribution to content (i.e., narrow content), and that the causal psychological aspect of content cannot explain what makes it interpreted (even narrowly, since CRT fails, we saw, even as a theory of non-referential narrow content). The realization that conceptual role cannot exhaust content since it cannot account for the relations between content and the world opens the door for DAT.

Dual Aspect Theories of content

Frege talked about the ‘sense’ as something that is both psychologically graspable and determines reference. But as Putnam showed regarding some kinds of thoughts, no single entity can both be ‘in the head’ (what is psychologically graspable is ‘in the head’) and determine reference. In particular, the significance of this point is that the referential character of many mental states is not necessarily encoded in their psychological causal role.30 One reaction to this was to develop the notion of narrow content, that is said to be both psychologically real (and solipsistic) and a function to reference. As McGinn says, however, the discovery that the referential character of our mental states is not encoded in their causal role should not

29 See Dretske’s (1 986) attempt to Characterize misrepresentations. The truth of this claim depends on the truth of the thesis that psychological

causal role is wholly determined by internal solipsistic features of the individual (see Fodor 1987 and 1991). I take this thesis here for granted, though it is not un- controversial (see Burge 1986 and 1989).

214 AMIR HOROWITZ

surprise us, since it is the mental representations themselves and not their referential properties that play a causal role in an agent’s psychology: ‘It is not what is encoded that matters to causal role, but what it is coded into’ (see McGinn 1982, pp. 209-210). McGinn’s point is that it is a general phenomenon that the referential character of our mental states is not encoded in their causal role. McGinn thus echoes Fodor, who argued that mental states play a role in the agent’s psychology just in virtue of their intrinsic properties, while their semantic relations to the world are irrelevant (Fodor 1980, but see also McGinn 1982, pp 207-210). Following Fodor, who argud that we need two kinds of psychology, one of internal representation (which is solipsistic) and another of the representation-relation (which investigates the relations between mental representations and the environment), McGinn and many others (e.g., Lycan 1981 and 1985, Schiffer 1981, Loar 1981 and 1982, Block 1986) adcocate a dual aspect theory of content, whose one aspect deals with the causal role of content, the other with its referential role. These two aspects, according to McGinn, reflect the fact that our intuitive conception of belief-content combines two separable components: one consists in a mode of representation of things in the world, while the other deals with relations between the representations and the things represented. We take beleifs to be both explanatory states in the head and bearers of truth-conditions. We thus get different and potentially conflicting standards of individuation (McGinn 1982, pp. 210-21 l).3’

DAT, then, analyzes content in terms of two components, a causal one and a referential one. It seems that according to dual- aspect theories the conceptual-role component accounts for the causal aspect of narrow content (broad content cannot play such a role), while the truth-conditions component accounts for the referential aspect of broad content (narrow content does not have such an aspect).32 This is what makes it possible for the two standards

31 Thus DAT-if it can be defended-accounts for the Twin Earth case, for it al- lows for the possibility of identical conceptual roles with different truth-conditions. 32 Thus, we can find Block saying that ‘conceptual role is supposed to completely determine narrow meaning’ (1986, p. 629).

FUNCTIONAL ROLE AND INTENTIONALITY 215 of individuation to conflict.33 But this cannot be the case since, as I showed, narrow content cannot be exhausted by conceptual role. It seems, therefore, that we need DAT as an account of narrow content itself. That is, the first aspect of DAT has to account for the psychological causal role of narrow content, while the other aspect has to account for narrow content’s being a function from context onto reference (and broad content). The need to appeal to DAT is not removed by the introduction of narrow content that is accounted for in terms of conceptual role. On the other hand, the need to appeal to narrow content is not removed by the introduction of DAT. The reason for this is that DAT without narrow content would involve conflicting standards of individuation of beliefs (recall the Twin Earth case), and this means that the two aspects of DAT do not characterize the same entities. It seems, then, that we need both a notion of narrow content and a DAT that accounts for its two features.

We saw that CRT is pr~blemat ic .~~ In face of its difficulties, it would be a good thing not to need a conceptual-role component. I wish to suggest that indeed we don’t need it. A belief that P, say, is not as such (i.e., as the belief that P ) characterized in terms of its causal role, but in terms of what it represents (and under what mode). Many things in the world have causal powers, but only contentful states have intenti~nality.~~ Attributions of beliefs are, therefore, attributions of intentionality. Contentful states as such are intentional states. They also have causal powers, but having causal powers is commonplace and does not require a special account in the case of content.

33 His view that belief-ascriptions involve two conflicting standards of Individuation is one of the reasons that lead Stich to doubt whether there are such things as beliefs. See Stich 1983, especially chapter 11. 34 Lepore and Loewer (1987) raise doubts about how can the two features of DAT can be combined into meaning. I believe that according to dual aspect theories content-identity requires identity of the two aspects. If so, DAT inherits the difficulty of CRT that a change in belief is a change in content according to it. The problem of a lack of an adequate non-question begging criterion for conceptual- role-identity also remains, since according to DAT there should be an independent characterization of the conceptual-role aspect. 35 If this sounds to you tautological, this is because you agree that the intentional aspect is what characterizes content.

216 AMIR HOROWITZ

The causal powers of intentional states supervene on their (narrow) intenti~nality,~~ and there must be an explanation for that fact. That is, on the basis of a theory of intentionality we must be able to show how the content of a mental state is relevant to its causal power, or, in other words, what makes it the case that an intentional state with a given (narrow) content has a typical causal power. I believe that this is p~ssible.~’ Anyhow, we don’t need an independent account (independent, that is, of the theory of intentionality) of the causal aspect of content.

Thus, at least so I argue, CRT is both redundant and false as a theory of content, either broad or narrow. If so, I must show why the supervenience of the causal powers of intentional states on the (narrow) content of these states does not imply CRT. At the be- ginning of the paper I presented an argument to the effect that the only possible explanation of the correspondence between semantic relations and causal psychological relations is that semantic relations just are causal relations, and this is so because to be semantic in a specific way is to have typical causal antecedents and effects. This is not precise, and does not constitute an argument for CRT. It does seem to me right that the only possible explanation of the correspondence between semantic relations and causal psychological relations is that semantic relations just are causal relations. But this does not entail that to be semantic in a specific way is to have typical causal antecedents and effects. We can explain the causal psychological connection between the beliefs whose contents are P andfP (i.e., a certain function of P) by showing that what gives the belief that f P its content is some typical causal relation that it bears to the belief that P. It is still possible that what gives the belief that P its content has nothing to do with the belief that f P, or even with any other mental state. That is, though causal relations must be relevant, they do not necessarily constitute all contents. Likewise, the contents of those mental states whose determination does involve causal relations with other mental states are not necessarily determined by their total causal roles. It is possible

36 That is, there is no change in their causal power without a change in their narrow intentionality. 37 See my “Content and Sensitivity”.

FUNCTIONAL ROLE AND INTENTIONALITY 217 that only some of their typical causal relations are relevant to the determination of their contents. So the semantic/causal correspondence does not impose CRT.

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Received on October 29, 1991

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