The Metaphysics of Representation

Description

Representation is puzzling. Physical events in our heads and sounds in our mouths come to be 'about' the world around us, equipping us to think and talk about anything from�the most fundamental regularities in the universe to trivial matters of gossip. InThe Metaphysics of Representation, Robert Williams tells a story about how representational properties arise out of a fundamentally non-representational world. The representational properties of language are reduced, via convention, to the representational properties of thoughts. The representational properties of thoughts are reduced, via principles of rationalization, to the representational properties of perception and intention. This most fundamental layer of representation is grounded in the functions these structures have to cause and be caused by events in the world. Williams integrates work from rival traditions to present a combined perspective in the metaphysics of representation, gives new predictions and explanations of representational phenomena, and offers new solutions to long-standing problems. The Metaphysics of Representation Preface Interpretationist Ancestry Teleoinformational Ancestry Metaphysics, Not Conceptual Analysis The Role of Empirical Data in This Project The Scope of the Project Acknowledgements Contents Introduction 0.1 A Manifesto 0.2 A Plan PART I . RADICAL INTERPRETATION 1. Radical Interpretation as a Metaphysics of Mental Content 1.1 The Metaphysics of Mental Representation Must Say What Makes an Interpretation Correct 1.2 Radical Interpretation Comes in Two Varieties: Structural and Substantive 1.3 The Bubble Puzzle Demonstrates that Structural Radical Interpretation Won’t Work 1.4 The Grid and the Bubble 1.5 Substantive Radical Interpretation Needs a Story about Substantive Rationality 1.6 Substantive Radical Interpretation Pops the Bubble Puzzle 1.7 Conclusion 2. Radical Interpretation and the Logical Form of Thoughts 2.1 How Conjunction Gets Its Meaning 2.2 How Negation Gets Its Meaning 2.3 Skolemite Puzzles about Quantification 2.4 How Quantification Gets Its Meaning 2.5 Conclusion 3. Radical Interpretation and Reference Magnetism 3.1 Reference Magnetism Would Explain the Denotation of Observational Concepts 3.2 Explanatory Concepts Denote Potent Properties 3.3 Natural Properties May Be Reference Magnets for Explanatory Concepts 3.4 Entrenched Properties May Be Reference Magnets for Explanatory Concepts 3.5 Natural Properties Aren’t Magnetic for Inductive Concepts 3.6 Conclusion 4. Radical Interpretation and the Referential Stability of Wrongness 4.1 The Concept is Referentially Stable 4.2 Moral Twin Earth Gives Us Reason to Believe in Referential Stability 4.3 Radical Interpretation Predicts the Referential Stability of Wrongness 4.4 Conceptual Role Determinism is a Significant Side-premise 4.5 The Derivation Doesn’t Assume that Wrongness is a Reason 4.6 The Story Applies Even to the Morally Depraved 4.7 Conclusion 5. Reducing Mental Representation? 5.1 Not Every Good Metaphysical Project is a Foundational Project 5.2 Radical Interpretation can be a Reductive Account of Reference 5.3 Radical Interpretation Gives Foundations for Sense as well as Reference 5.4 Non-foundational Theories of Reference can be Foundational Theories of Sense 5.5 Conclusion Conclusion to Part I PART I I . LINGUISTIC REPRESENTATION 6. From Mental Representation to Linguistic Representation 6.1 Correct Linguistic Interpretation is Determined by the Best Theory of Linguistic Conventions 6.2 There’s No Need for a Separate Metaphysics of Words and Populations 6.3 The Mental States Expressed by Declarative Sentences Need Not be Beliefs 6.4 Conclusion 7. Linguistic Convention and Shared Mental Content 7.1 Lewis’s Account of Linguistic Conventions Set Out 7.2 Individualistic Descriptivism Seems Incompatible with Linguistic Conventions 7.3 Radical Interpretation Seems Incompatible with Linguistic Conventions 7.4 Given One Assumption, Radical Interpretation Predicts Shared Mental Content 7.5 If the Assumption Fails, Linguistic Conventions Don’t Require Shared Content 7.6 The Interpretative Pressure to Shared Content Generates a Social Externalism 7.7 Conclusion 8. Elegant Interpretations 8.1 Finding the Best Theory of Linguistic Conventions is like Fitting a Curve to Data 8.2 Elegance in Ontologese Would Generate Language-Thought Mismatches 8.3 Elegance is Elegance in a Subject’s Conceptual Scheme 8.4 Conceptual-scheme Magnetism is the Best Account of Linguistic Determinacy 8.5 There is Nothing Ad Hoc about What I Am Suggesting 8.6 Conclusion PART I I I . SOURCE INTENTIONALITY 9. The Basis of Radical Interpretation 9.1 We Need to Determine Whether the Basis of Radical Interpretation Consists in Representational States 9.2 We Need to Appeal to Representational Facts to Individuate an Agent’s Options 9.3 An Agent’s Options are Action-guiding States 9.4 Which Action-guiding States are Options? 9.5 We Update on the Fact We Have Perceived Something, Not Just on What We Perceive 9.6 Which Perceptions are Evidence? 9.7 Conclusion 10. Laying the Foundations 10.1 Neander’s Theory Gives us an Account of the Intentionality of Perception 10.2 We Can Extend This Account to Ground the Intentionality of Action-guiding States 10.3 Perceptual and Action-guiding States with the Right Causal Role Rationalize 10.4 The Basis of the Basis 10.5 Conclusion Overall Conclusions Bibliography Index