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Externalism, Naturalizability of Content, and Research Programs in Semantics

Semantic externalism, in its causal (as opposed to social) variety, is the view that the content of certain classes of terms/concepts (viz. names/singular concepts and natural kind terms/concepts) is in part determined or individuated by factors external to the mind/brain – in particular, by causal interaction with the environment (cf. Kallestrup 2011). In this paper I differentiate between two types of causal semantic externalism, and attempt to show that neither of them leads to a promising research program with regard to naturalizing content. In the final part of the paper I show why semantic internalism, due to a very different way it construes the (possible) role of causation in studying meaning, does seem to be able to form the basis of a promising research program with the aim of naturalizing content. I will term the two types of causal externalism as follows: "ultimate cause" externalism and "causal co-variance" externalism. They share the problem of needing the relevant causal links to "self-identify", to somehow keep track of themselves. Ultimate cause externalism is the view that the content of certain classes of terms/concepts is (partly) determined by an individual (but repeatable) event of causal grounding of the term/concept in its referent or member of extension, with the referent or member of extension causally affecting the grounder in some way. This is the original Kripke-Putnam idea concerning proper names and natural kind terms, elaborated by Devitt & Sterelny (1999). I show that, although there is nothing incoherent in this idea (at least on a careful construal that Devitt and Sterelny miss), it is extremely vague, both in the single-grounding version and the multiple-grounding version. This kind of externalism amounts to what Evans (1973) called a "magic trick" holding the reference relation steady, and since it doesn't show promise of becoming less vague, it can hardly form the basis of a promising research program. Causal co-variance externalism, associated notably with Fodor (1990, 1994, 1998, 2008), attempts to achieve naturalization of content by claiming that content depends on reliable causal co-variance of the tokenings of the relevant term/concept with instantiations of the property that it "locks onto". I will show that it fails in this attempt. The failure is due to the inability of this approach to isolate the cause that is supposed to be the meaning of the term, given that there will always be other ineliminable candidates for this role, viz. other causes that are also part of the causal chain. Fodor's asymmetric dependence cannot solve this problem. The causal co-variance approach might achieve the desired results in controlled experimental conditions – however, externalism is not a theory about what happens in such conditions, but a theory of the constitution of content as such. This approach also faces the problem of giving untestable, or wrong, or extremely counterintuitive, results in certain cases of semantic analysis. Therefore, the externalistic approaches to content don't seem to be able to deliver promising research programs with regard to naturalizing content. Internalism does seem to be able to do this, in part because of a very different view of the role of causation in investigating content. In the basic causal link schema C → E, externalism locates content (or at least part of it) in the cause (C), and so runs into the problems enumerated above. Internalism, on the other hand, locates content in the effect (E), e. g. the mental effect that occurs upon hearing certain sequences of noises or seeing certain entities. It thus avoids the said problems, and offers a promising way of naturalizing content by investigating how meanings/concepts are instantiated in the brain. References Devitt, M. and K. Sterelny (1999). Language and Reality. MIT. Evans, G. (1973). The Causal Theory of Names. Aristotelian Society: Supplementary Volume, 47, 187-208. Fodor, J. A. (1990). A Theory of Content and Other Essays. MIT. Fodor, J. A. (1994). The Elm and the Expert. MIT. Fodor, J. A. (1998). Concepts. Oxford: Clarendon. Fodor, J. A. (2008). LOT 2. Oxford: Clarendon. Kallestrup, J. (2011). Semantic Externalism. Routledge.

externalism; content; naturalizability

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