INDIVIDUALISM AND NARROW CONTENT
INDIVIDUALISM AND NARROW CONTENT

Summary/Abstract: The view that psychological explanations cannot but be individualistic (i.e., shared by duplicates) and the view of semantic externalism (i.e., that mental contents are not determined by individualistic features) seem to jeopardize the idea of intentional psychology. Introducing the notion of narrow content (as a function from environment to broad, referential, content) is supposed to defend the possibility of intentional psychology, and to reconcile it with both psychological individualism and semantic externalism. The introduction of narrow content is necessary to defend intentional psychology from the externalist threat. My argument to this effect will also shed light on the sense in which narrow content is semantic and indeed deserves to be called "narrow content". Though content ascriptions are, on their face value, ascriptions of broad content, they also have narrow readings that capture individualistic features.

• Details
• Contents