Semantics, Wisconsin Style

Abstract

There are, of course, two kinds of philosophers. One kind of philosopher takes it as a working hypothesis that belief/desire psychology (or, anyhow, some variety of propositional attitude psychology) is the best theory of the cognitive mind that we can now envision; hence that the appropriate direction for psychological research is the construction of a belief/desire theory that is empirically supported and methodologically sound. The other kind of philosopher takes it that the entire apparatus of propositional attitude psychology is conceptually flawed in irremediable ways; hence that the appropriate direction for psychological research is the construction of alternatives to the framework of belief/desire explanation. This way of collecting philosophers into philosopher-kinds cuts across a number of more traditional, but relatively superficial, typologies. For example, eliminativist behaviorists like Quine and neurophiles like the Churchlands turn up in the same basket as philosophers like Steve Stich, who think that psychological states are computational and functional all right, but not intentional. Dennett is probably in that basket too, along with Putnam and other (how should one put it?) dogmatic relativists. Whereas, among philosophers of the other kind one finds a motley that includes, very much inter alia, reductionist behaviorists like Ryle and (from time to time) Skinner, radical individualists like Searle and Fodor, mildly radical anti-individualists like Burge, and, of course, all cognitive psychologists except Gibsonians.