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Darwin and Disjunction: Foraging Theory and Univocal Assignments of Content

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Lawrence A. Shapiro
Lawrence A. Shapiro*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

According to Jerry Fodor, “[h]uffing and puffing and piling on the teleology just doesn’t help with the disjunction problem; it doesn’t lead to univocal assignments of intentional content” (1990, p. 72). That Fodor separates these two claims with only a semicolon is unfortunate, for each merits individual scrutiny. First, there is the claim that appeals to the theory of evolution by natural selection will not help with the disjunction problem. I will argue that the truth of this claim depends upon how we characterize the relation between a representational state and that which it is about Fodor assumes this relation must be a causal one, and this assumption leads inevitably to the disjunction problem.

Type
Part XII. Issues in the Philosophy of Psychology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1992 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1992 , 1992 , pp. 469 - 480
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

In writing this paper I have benefitted from many useful discussions with Gary Hatfield. Thanks also go to Gary Ebbs.

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