A Mark of the Mental: In Defense of Informational Teleosemantics

by Karen Neander

Drawing on insights from causal theories of reference, teleosemantics, and state space semantics, a theory of naturalized mental representation. In A Mark of the Mental, Karen Neander considers the representational power of mental states--described by the cognitive scientist Zenon Pylyshyn as the "second hardest puzzle" of philosophy of mind (the first being consciousness). The puzzle at the heart of the book is sometimes called "the problem of mental content," "Brentano's problem," or "the problem of intentionality." Its motivating mystery is how neurobiological states can have semantic properties such as meaning or reference. Neander proposes a naturalistic account for sensory-perceptual (nonconceptual) representations.

Neander draws on insights from state-space semantics (which appeals to relations of second-order similarity between representing and represented domains), causal theories of reference (which claim the reference relation is a causal one), and teleosemantic theories (which claim that semantic norms, at their simplest, depend on functional norms). She proposes and defends an intuitive, theoretically well-motivated but highly controversial thesis: sensory-perceptual systems have the function to produce inner state changes that are the analogs of as well as caused by their referents. Neander shows that the three main elements--functions, causal-information relations, and relations of second-order similarity--complement rather than conflict with each other. After developing an argument for teleosemantics by examining the nature of explanation in the mind and brain sciences, she develops a theory of mental content and defends it against six main content-determinacy challenges to a naturalized semantics.

Genres: Philosophy

344 pages, Hardcover

Published June 16, 2017

Reviews

[Zo]

Only read about half, and didn't necessarily give it the most rich/in-depth reading. The theory seems highly plausible, and the writing is pretty navigable for the philosophical subject matter it tackles, but I wasn't motivated enough to pay the attention necessary to appreciate the more fine-grained distinctions Neander was laying out / wrestling with. Still a strong work that definitely gave me a better understanding of and way of thinking about how representation works.

[Eric Fossum]

This is a must-read for anyone interested in informational teleosemantics, or working on mental representation generally. The book is littered with insights, in addition to providing an accessible introduction to the central issues facing naturalistic approaches to mental representation.

Neander's book is not a good first introduction to the topic. Some pretty significant background in the philosophy of mind and language is probably required in order to get much out of the book, especially the content beyond the first chapter.

The two main focuses of the book are on Neander's own teleological twist on the (relatively) widely adopted structural correspondence view of mental representation, in addition to a sustained response to the so-called "disjunction problem."

While I found Neander's correspondence view plausible, at no point in my journey through the chapters devoted to the disjunction problem did I get the sense that Neander's discussion had gone any way towards solving the problem. At the same time, I probably couldn't point to anything Neander says in those chapters that is obviously false. Take from that what you will.