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Single Idea 15588

[filed under theme 18. Thought / C. Content / 1. Content ]

Full Idea

There is no determining the full content of what someone thinks or believes from the individual things that he thinks or believes; we must also look at the threads that tie the contents of these thoughts or beliefs together.

Gist of Idea

You cannot determine the full content from a thought's intrinsic character, as relations are involved

Source

Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], Intro)

Book Ref

Fine,Kit: 'Semantic Relationism' [OUP 2007], p.3

A Reaction

I'm not sure what 'full' content could possibly mean. Does that include all our background beliefs which we hardly ever articulate. Content comes in degrees, or needs an arbitrary boundary?

Related Idea

Idea 15587 That two utterances say the same thing may not be intrinsic to them, but involve their relationships [Fine,K]

The 26 ideas with the same theme [how minds internally represent reality]:

21541 The complexity of the content correlates with the complexity of the object [Russell]
6164 Sartre rejects mental content, and the idea that the mind has hidden inner features [Sartre, by Rowlands]
3492 Content is much more than just sentence meaning [Searle]
6977 Egocentric or de se content seems to be irreducibly so [Jackson]
4889 Although we may classify ideas by content, we individuate them differently, as their content can change [Perry]
23794 Some representational states, like perception, may be nonconceptual [Evans, by Schulte]
23803 States have content if we can predict them well by assuming intentionality [Dennett, by Schulte]
3708 All thought represents either properties or indexicals [Bonjour]
2983 Maybe narrow content is physical, broad content less so [Lyons on Fodor]
3115 Are meaning and expressed concept the same thing? [Burge, by Segal]
3147 Problem-solving clearly involves manipulating images [Rey]
3175 Animals map things over time as well as over space [Rey]
2977 All thinking has content [Lyons]
15588 You cannot determine the full content from a thought's intrinsic character, as relations are involved [Fine,K]
6636 The naturalistic views of how content is created are the causal theory and the teleological theory [Lowe]
6168 The content of a thought is just the meaning of a sentence [Rowlands]
7637 Thought content is either satisfaction conditions, or exercise of concepts [Maund, by PG]
16381 The content of thought is what is required to understand it (which involves hearers) [Recanati]
18035 Two sentences with different meanings can, on occasion, have the same content [Magidor]
19264 Aboutness is always intended, and cannot be accidental [Vaidya]
23806 Naturalist accounts of representation must match the views of cognitive science [Schulte]
23792 Phenomenal and representational character may have links, or even be united [Schulte]
23793 On the whole, referential content is seen as broad, and sense content as narrow [Schulte]
23796 Naturalists must explain both representation, and what is represented [Schulte]
23795 Naturalistic accounts of content cannot rely on primitive mental or normative notions [Schulte]
23804 Maybe we can explain mental content in terms of phenomenal properties [Schulte]