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Sententialism and the problem of clutter

  • Language And Mind
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Abstract

Among the difficulties that sentential theories of belief face, the problem of clutter asserts that treating beliefs as sentences would make it difficult or impossible to literally fit the number of beliefs possessed by ordinary human cognizers into the mind-brain. I argue that concerns about clutter arise from a misunderstanding of how belief states, whether sentences or not, are causally related. Insofar as a weak computer model of the mind treats information states as virtual states, I explain how the ontology of virtual states seriously mitigates the problem of clutter for sententialism.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Clark University, 950 Main Street, 01610, Worcester, MA, USA

    Scott Hendricks

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  1. Scott Hendricks
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Hendricks, S. Sententialism and the problem of clutter. Acta Anal 21, 74–84 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-006-1010-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-006-1010-1

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