Representational Capacity, Intentional Ascription, and the Slippery Slope

Bibliographic Data

ID10708279
AuthorsSTUART SILVERS (Tilburg University, corresponding author)
Year1989
Volume56
Issue3
Pages463-473
Publication date1989-09-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhilosophy of Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8248 • E-ISSN: 1539-767X
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1086/289501
OpenAlexW2002791039
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited6

A long-standing objection to Fodor's version of the Representational Theory of Mind (RTM) argues that in ascribing intentional content to an organism's representational states there needs to be some way of distinguishing between the kinds of organisms that have such representational capacity and those kinds that haven't. Without a principled distinction there would be no way of delimiting the appropriate domain of intentional ascription. As Fodor (1986) suggests, if the objection holds, we should have no good reason for withholding intentional ascription from paper clips. Fodor (1986) has defended RTM against this slippery slope objection. He distinguishes between the kinds of creatures that exhibit selective responses to nomic properties of stimuli (for example, psychophysical properties) and the kinds of creatures that also respond selectively to nonnomic properties of stimuli (for example, being a crumpled shirt). The distinction marks the differences between two kinds of “primal scenes” in which lawful relations are said to hold between an organism's behavior, representational state, and stimulus property. The arguments for the distinction are provocative but counterexamples show them to be inconclusive

Ascription · Cognitive science · Creatures · Epistemology · Natural (archaeology) · Property (philosophy) · Embodied and Extended Cognition · History · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Psychology

Tools

Open DOI