Burge, Tyler (b. 1946)

Individualism and the Mental

September, 1979

"Indeed, some philosophers have thought of intentional mental events as being inner, physical sentence (or symbol) tokens--a sort of brain writing."

There are prima facie viable philosophical accounts that take sentences (whether tokens or types) as truth-bearers. One might hope to extend such accounts to mental contents. On such treatments, contents are not things over and above sentences. They simply are sentences interpreted in a certain context, treated in a certain way. Given a different context of linguistic interpretation, the content of the same sentence might be different. One could imagine mental events to be analogous to the sentences on this account. Indeed, some philosophers have thought of intentional mental events as being inner, physical sentence (or symbol) tokens--a sort of brain writing. Here again, there is a picture according to which the same thought event might have had a different content. But here again the question is whether there is any reason to think it is a true picture. There is the prior question of whether sentences can be reasonably treated as contents. (I think sentence types probably can be; but the view has hardly been established, and defending it against sophisticated objections is treacherous.) Even if this questions is answered affirmatively, it is far from obvious how the analogy between sentences and contents, on the one hand, and thought events and contents, on the other, is a good one. Sentences (types or tokens) are commonly identified independently of their associated contents (as evidence by inter- and intra-linguistic ambiguity). It is relatively uncontroversial that sentences can be identified by syntactical, morphemic, or perceptual criteria that are in principle specifiable independently of what particular content the sentence has. The philosophical question about mental events and contents is 'What is the nature of events?' 'Regardless of what contents are, could the very same thought event have a different content?' The analogous question for sentences--instead of thought events--has an uncontroversial affirmative answer. Of course, we know that when and where non-intentionally identifiable physical events have contents, the same physical event could have had a different content. But it can hardly be assumed for purposes of arguing a position on the mind-body problem that mental events are non-intentionally identifiable physical events.
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Tyler Burge, "Individualism and the Mental," Midwest Studies In Philosophy 4:1 (September 1979): 73–121.

Text from Tyler Burge, Foundations of Mind (Oxford: OUP, 2007).

03/09/2012