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Full Idea
People who ask what the narrow content of the thought that water is wet is (for example) get what they deserve: phenomenalism, verificationism, 'procedural' semantics, or scepticism, according to temperament.
Gist of Idea
Obsession with narrow content leads to various sorts of hopeless anti-realism
Source
Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 51)
Book Ref
Fodor,Jerry A.: 'Psychosemantics' [MIT 1993], p.51
A Reaction
The question is whether content IS narrow. We could opt for broad content because then we wouldn't have to worry about scepticism, but I doubt whether we would then sleep well at night.
| 3506 | We explain behaviour in terms of actual internal representations in the agent [Searle] |
| 3417 | Content depends on other content as well as the facts [Kim] |
| 3419 | Pain, our own existence, and negative existentials, are not external [Kim] |
| 3114 | Concepts aren't linked to stuff; they are what is caused by stuff [Fodor] |
| 2999 | Obsession with narrow content leads to various sorts of hopeless anti-realism [Fodor] |
| 7057 | Intentionality is based in dispositions, which are intrinsic to agents, suggesting internalism [Heil] |
| 3121 | If content is narrow, my perfect twin shares my concepts [Segal] |
| 6147 | The hypothesis of solipsism doesn't seem to be made incoherent by the nature of mental properties [Merricks] |
| 6146 | Before Creation it is assumed that God still had many many mental properties [Merricks] |
| 14711 | Rationalists say knowing an expression is identifying its extension using an internal cognitive state [Schroeter] |