Single Idea 7884

[catalogued under 18. Thought / C. Content / 6. Broad Content]

Full Idea

Broadness of content is sometimes defended purely on intuitive grounds, but it is also a corollary of most reductive accounts of representation, including standard teleosemantic and causal accounts.

Gist of Idea

Most reductive accounts of representation imply broad content

Source

David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002])

Book Reference

Papineau,David: 'Thinking about Consciousness' [OUP 2004], p.193


A Reaction

(For Causal and Teleosemantic views, see Idea 7871, Idea 7872) Presumably a causal/purposeful relationship would only make sense if both halves of the relationship were specified. I suspect this is obscured by over-simplifications. Cf Idea 6634!

Related Ideas

Idea 7871 Perceptual concepts can't just refer to what causes classification [Papineau]

Idea 7872 Teleosemantics equates meaning with the item the concept is intended to track [Papineau]

Idea 6634 Physicalists must believe in narrow content (because thoughts are merely the brain states) [Lowe]