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Revisiting the Intentionality All-Stars

Veit, Walter (2022) Revisiting the Intentionality All-Stars. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Eliminativism is a position most readily associated with the eliminative materialism of the Churchlands, denying that there are such things as propositional states. This position has created much controversy, despite the fact that intentionality has long been seen as perhaps the core problem for naturalistic philosophy. There is a more radical interpretation of eliminativism, however, denying not only mental states, such as beliefs and desires, but also intentionality (i.e., aboutness) on a global level. This position traces its contemporary origin back to Quine, but has generally been assumed to undermine naturalism or, worse, to be incoherent by the majority of philosophers who maintain that there clearly are things or mental states that are about others. In a recent paper, Hutto and Satne (2015a) offer an update that tries to revive John Haugeland’s baseball analogy from his influential 1990 review paper The Intentionality All-Stars on the state of the game to argue that the failure of Neo-Cartesians, Neo-Behaviorists, and Neo-Pragmatists should urge us to make them work together to naturalize content and “win the game.” But Hutto and Satne misunderstand what the game is ultimately about. The goal of the Intentionality All-Stars is not to naturalize content against eliminativism but to defend a naturalist “third-person” view of the problem against first-person phenomenalists. And for this goal, a naturalist defense of global content eliminativism would equally enable them to emerge victorious. Revisiting Haugeland, I will offer my own analysis of the current state of play to argue that global content eliminativism has not received sufficient attention and deserves a more prominent place in the debate than it currently occupies.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Veit, Walterwrwveit@gmail.com0000-0001-7701-8995
Keywords: Haugeland, eliminativism, content, mental representation, Quine, Churchland
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Psychology > Evolutionary Psychology
Specific Sciences > Neuroscience > Cognitive Neuroscience
Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science
Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Concepts and Representations
General Issues > Explanation
General Issues > Natural Kinds
Specific Sciences > Neuroscience
General Issues > Philosophers of Science
Specific Sciences > Psychology
Depositing User: Dr. Walter Veit
Date Deposited: 21 Apr 2022 04:12
Last Modified: 15 Feb 2023 00:50
Item ID: 20491
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Psychology > Evolutionary Psychology
Specific Sciences > Neuroscience > Cognitive Neuroscience
Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science
Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Concepts and Representations
General Issues > Explanation
General Issues > Natural Kinds
Specific Sciences > Neuroscience
General Issues > Philosophers of Science
Specific Sciences > Psychology
Date: 2022
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/20491

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