Individualism and the nature of syntactic states

Author: Bontly, T

Source: British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Volume 49, Number 4, December 1998 , pp. 557-574(18)

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Abstract:

It is widely assumed that the explanatory states of scientific psychology are type-individuated by their semantic or intentional properties. First, I argue that this assumption is implausible for theories like David Marr's [1982] that seek to provide computational or syntactic explanations of psychological processes. Second, I examine the implications of this conclusion for the debate over psychological individualism. While most philosophers suppose that syntactic states supervene on the intrinsic physical states of information-processing systems, I contend they may not. Syntactic descriptions must be adequately constrained, and the most plausible such constraints appeal to a system's teleological function or design and hence to its history. As a result, physical twins may not realize the same syntactic states.

Document Type: Research article

Publication date: 1998-12-01

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