Advancing Teleosemantics

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Christian Nimtz; Dr. Peter Schulte
• Subject Area: Theoretical Philosophy
• Term: from 2015 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 275653843

What is the nature of mental content? Teleosemantic accounts tackle this key issue in the philosophy of mind by drawing on the concept of a biological function. This approach is widely deemed to be very promising indeed. However, it has been a vital lesson of the classic debate on teleosemantics that any teleosemantic explanation of mental content faces serious challenges - most prominently the problem of semantic indeterminacy, the problem of explanatory irrelevance of mental content and various problems rooted in the etiological concept of biological function. Philosophy presently witnesses a renewed and intensified interest in teleosemantics. But just like the classic debate, this new debate focuses on details of definition proffered by specific accounts and on intuitions about particular cases, thus regularly leading to dialectical stalemates.The project presented here aspires to change this. It proposes to undertake a systematic inquiry into the philosophical and methodological foundations of the teleosemantic approach. The project aims to advance the new debate on teleosemantics and to rid it of its narrow focus on details of definition and intuitions about particular cases, leading to a new appraisal of teleosemantic theories informed by clear criteria and guided by a principled assessment of their explanatory power. Putting teleosemantics thus on solid foundations will allow for a coherent teleosemantic explanation of mental content well suited to accommodate the challenges enumerated above - or so we anticipate.The first sub-project starts from general consideration on the nature and the cognitive value of intentional explanations. These considerations will pave the way for principled solutions to the problem of semantic indeterminacy, as well as to the problem of explanatory irrelevance of mental content. It will be part of the sub-project to support these solutions by drawing on results from the empirical sciences. The second sub-project will examine the etiological understanding of biological function as it is presupposed in all standard versions of teleosemantics. Taking its cue from new work on function within the philosophy of biology, it will assess the prospects for a teleoesemantics based on a non-etiological account of biological function. Insights from this new work will allow teleosemantics to eventually overcome all problems rooted in its key concept of function, or so we surmise. The third sub-project discusses key meta-philosophical worries. Teleosemantics is usually taken to provide an empirical reduction of content properties to biological function properties. This requires its advocates to hold that content properties are identical to biological function properties, or are realized by those. It will be argued that teleosemantic theorizing can avoid meta-philosophical worries prompted by these options if we think of teleosemantics as a realization theory, rather than an identity theory.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants