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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
Introduction
A number of recent writers have argued that we should explain mental representation teleologically, in terms of the biological purposes of beliefs and other mental states.
A rather older idea is that the truth condition of a belief is that condition which guarantees that actions based on that belief will succeed.
What I want to show in this paper is that these two ideas complement each other. The teleological theory is inadequate unless it incorporates the thesis that truth is the guarantee of successful action. Conversely, the success-guaranteeing account of truth conditions is incomplete until it is placed in a teleological context.
I shall proceed as follows. In the next section I shall explain why mental representation is philosophically problematic. Then, in Section 3, I shall show how representational notions play a role in action explanation. This will lead to a version of the success-guaranteeing account of truth conditions, and in Section 4 I shall elaborate and defend this account. Section 5 will then show why the success-guaranteeing account of truth conditions needs to be incorporated within a more general teleological theory of mental representation. In the final section I show how a standard objection to the teleological theory can be answered.
Mental Representation
Why should we find mental representation philosophically problematic? A short answer is that representation of any kind is philosophically problematic.
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