7.3—
Intentions, Conventions, and the Representational Account

The first three versions of Fodor's representational account of cognitive states share an important feature: all three involve (covert) appeals to intentions and conventions. The Authoring Intention Version involves the claim that cognitive states involve mental representations that are intended as signifiers. But the logical form of the locutional schema 'is intended as signifying (that) P ' requires a specification of some author of the marker token whose intention it was that the token signify (that) P . Likewise, the Actual Interpretation Version involves the claim that cognitive states involve mental representations that are interpreted as signifiers. But for something to be interpreted as a signifier, there must be

some symbol user who does the interpreting. The Interpretability Version involves the claim that cognitive states involve representations that are interpretable as signifiers. But for a marker to be interpretable as a signifier, there must be a convention licensing the interpretation; and for there to be such a convention, there must be a community of symbol users who share a common understanding that such an interpretation is licensed.

In each of these cases, the resulting account of intentional states itself contains further reference to intentional states. In the case of authoring intentions and actual interpretation, it will involve reference to the intentional states involved in intending the marker to bear an interpretation or in construing it as bearing an interpretation, respectively. In the case of interpretability under a convention, the situation is only slightly more complex: conventions themselves are not intentional states, but the presence of a shared set of beliefs about how marker types may be used is a necessary (if not quite sufficient) condition for the presence of a semantic convention.

It thus turns out that versions of CTM based on interpretability, authoring intention, and actual interpretation are infected with exactly the kind of covert reference to cognitive states that was discussed in the development of the Conceptual Dependence Objection in chapter 3: the logical forms of attributions of intentional and semantic properties to symbols contain references to cognitive states. What remains to be seen is whether this fact imperils these versions of the account. I wish to claim that such accounts face four serious problems. First, they are empirically implausible. Second, they do not provide an explanation of the intentional and semantic properties of cognitive states. Third, they undercut one of the fundamental tenets of representational accounts of mind: namely, the intuition that access to extramental reality is mediated by mental representations. Finally, they lead to circularity and regress.