Groundwork and Overview of the Project

Abstract

The problem to be explored here is that of mental representation and misrepresentation. There seems to be a fundamental premise of all theories of content that representation must include the possibility of misrepresentation, and that beliefs, if they are to have content at all, must be capable of being false. This book will challenge that premise, which seems sufficiently entrenched as to be called a dogma of meaning. This book has two main parts, one critical and one constructive. The first, critical, part will examine theories of content, and scrutinize their attempts to ground misrepresentation. The conclusion of the critical analysis will be that no naturalistic theory of the content of mental representations can consistently allow the possibility of misrepresentation or error. This leaves us with a very unenviable choice: follow the dogma, discard meaning, and support meaning nihilism, or try to retain the notion of mental content despite the impossibility of misrepresentation. I will investigate the possibility of holding on to meaning and representation while, reluctantly, giving up on the notions of misrepresentation, falsity, and error. I will propose a way of understanding representation without misrepresentation, by identifying content with conceptual role, and giving a pragmatic theory which will explain talk of (apparent) misrepresentation. The result will be a view of content according to which content is not explanatory of cognitive processing and behavior, but is merely descriptive of the cognitive processing of representations and the role they play in causing behavior. The result will be what can be called a valence theory of the content of mental representations, and I will refer to the resulting theory of content as Strict Conceptual Role Theory, or SCRT.