Christopher Peacocke

Only computational explanations of a content‐involving sort can answer certain ‘how’‐questions; can support content‐involving counterfactuals; and have the generality characteristic of psychological explanations. Purely formal characteriza‐tions of computations have none of these properties, and do not determine content. These points apply not only to psychological explanation, but to Turing machines themselves. Computational explanations which involve content are not opposed to naturalism. They are also required if we are to explain the content‐involving properties of mental states.

This paper has five theses, which are intended to address the claims in Jerry Fodor's paper. (1) The question arises of the relation between the philosophical theory of concepts and epistemology. Neither is explanatorily prior to the other. Rather, each relies implicitly on distinctions drawn from the other. To explain what makes something knowledge, we need distinctions drawn from the theory of concepts. To explain the attitudes mentioned in a theory of concepts, we need to use the notion of knowledge. (2) Concepts can have a normative dimension without their nature being interpretation‐dependent, and without their nature being mind‐dependent. The normative dimension traces back instead to the role of truth as a constitutive aim of judgement. (3) Conceptual combination is to be explained at the level of reference and semantic value. When we respect this fact, there is no difficulty in explaining compositionality for epistemically‐constrained concepts. (4) Epistemically‐constrained theories of concepts are committed to the applicability of the notion of the a priori. They are not committed to the applicability of the notion of analyticity, where this is construed as truth purely in virtue of meaning or the identity of concepts. (5) Possession of a concept has causal‐explanatory powers, whether given by a possession condition in the form presented in A Study of Concepts, or by possession of an implicit conception. A possession‐condition theory of concepts need not be a form of dispositionalism.

What is it to be capable of thoughts about an objective world? What is involved in the unity of consciousness? How is the ability to attribute attitudes to other persons to be understood? The three symposia in this volume develop new approaches to these central questions in the philosophy of mind. The contributors include leading philosophers of the middle and younger generation working in Britain. All the issues discussed have an interdisciplinary dimension, and each symposium contains a contribution from a noted psychologist working in the same field. The volume will be of interest not only to philosophers of mind, but also to those concerned with metaphysics, epistemology, developmental pscychology, animal psychology, and the nature of consciousness.

This paper begins by considering Dummett's justificationist treatment of statements about the past in his book Truth and the Past (2004). Contrary to Dummett's position, there is no way of applying the intuitionistic distinction in the arithmetical case between direct and indirect methods of establishing a content to the case of past-tense statements. Attempts to do so either give the wrong truth conditions, or rely on notions not available to a justificationist position. A better, realistic treatment makes ineliminable use of identity of state in its positive account of understanding of the past tense; this account can also be applied to other subject matters besides the past. A theory is developed of how realists should conceive of the relation between meaning and evidence. Points from this discussion are used in criticism of Wright's minimalist conception of truth. Three grades of possible involvement of truth and reference in a substantive theory of intentional content are distinguished, and reasons are given for thinking that a range of contents involve the highest degree of involvement of reference and truth in their substantive individuation.