Misrepresentation and Robustness of Meaning

Date

2010-01-01

Author

AYTEKİN, TEVFİK
Sayan, Erdinc

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According to Fodor, robustness of meaning is an essential aspect of intentionality, and his causal theory of content can account for it. Robustness of meaning refers to the fact that tokenings; of a symbol are occasionally caused by instantiations of properties which are not expressed by the symbol. This, according to Fodor, is the source of the phenomenon of misrepresentation. We claim that Fodor's treatment of content and misrepresentation is infected with a couple of flaws. After criticizing Fodor's theory of content, we propose a new theory of content which explains how misrepresentation is possible as a result of meaning-forming causation, and extend it to account for the property of robustness of meaning.

Subject Keywords

Intentionality, Causal theory of content, Meaning, Misrepresentation, Asymmetric dependence, Disjunction problem

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/65844

Journal

ORGANON F

Collections

Department of Philosophy, Article

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Citation Formats

T. AYTEKİN and E. Sayan, “Misrepresentation and Robustness of Meaning,” ORGANON F, pp. 21–38, 2010, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/65844.