1. I am inclined sometimes to weaken this to the statement that " A is a conceptually adequate explanation of B just in case the conceptual content of A—augmented by nothing more than purely formal (i.e., mathematical) resources —is enough to derive the conceptual content of B without the addition of contingent bridge laws." To derive thermodynamic equations from statistical mechanics, for example, one needs computational techniques that are not, strictly speaking, present in the mechanical equations themselves. [BACK]

2. This notion of strong naturalization has its roots in a view of science that emerged around the beginning of the seventeenth century in the "method of resolution and composition" espoused by Galileo and adopted from him by Hobbes, and the "mechanical philosophy" championed by Descartes. Key to this approach to science is the idea that explaining something involves breaking it down into its constituent parts (the resolutive step), examining the properties of those, and then deriving the properties of the whole from the properties of the parts (the compositive step). Significantly, the notion of "derivation" here seems to be geometric rather than logical in origin: complex processes are "derived" from simpler ones in a fashion analogous to geometric construction rather than logical deduction. Thus Hobbes's simple objects in De Corpore are not simple material solids, but points in motion, from which it is possible to "derive'' (i.e., to construct) first planar and then solid figures. [BACK]

3. I am, however, in sympathy with Searle's (1992) argument to the effect that these states are only called mental by virtue of their relationship to the conscious states, which are "mental" in the first instance. [BACK]

4. The reader may note that verbs of perception are systematically ambiguous between reports of veridical intentional states ("No, I wasn't hallucinating, I really saw her") and reports of intentional character alone ("And in my dream, I saw my dead grandmother sitting there looking at me"). [BACK]

6. Phenomenological content may determine broad content partially, if the phenomenological content involves a rule like "'P' means the stuff, whatever it is, that causes experiences like this ." break [BACK]

7. Richard DeWitt suggested in response to a draft of this chapter that not all presentations have a phenomenology, but rather only the conscious ones do. There is surely an important distinction here between the elements (and episodes) of visual experience that are consciously accentuated and those that are not. I think there can probably even be episodes of vision that are truly nonconscious. But I have stipulatively reserved my intentional modalities such as VISUAL PRESENTATION for states that are conscious. I should rather express DeWitt's point by saying that within conscious perceptions of, say, a room full of objects, some aspects are given greater attention than others, and this "turns up the gain," as it were, on their phenomenology. I should say that features of a scene that are not focal but are nonetheless truly perceived do have a phenomenology, but that it is very unobtrusive when not attended to. [BACK]

8. In fairness, Descartes does point out elsewhere the extent to which our knowledge of our own minds is fallible (see Principles, I.67 [AT VIIIA.32-33]). Descartes does not think that all introspection is incorrigible; merely that we can sometimes have clear and distinct knowledge of our own mental states, and in these instances we cannot be mistaken. My point here will once again ride roughshod over the objections of writers like Sellars (1956) and Garfield (1988), who dispute this kind of incorrigibility. [BACK]

9. See Husserl, Ideas, §§, 145. Kant says things that can be interpreted in a similar manner in the A version of the "Transcendental Deduction of the Categories" ( Critique of Pure Reason, A108). [BACK]

10. On this view it is in fact likely that our "discourse about the mental" will itself be a distortion of its subject-matter. For discourse is linguistic, and language "thematizes" its subject-matter—it treats it as an object. Thus Husserl points out that thematizing the self and thematizing thoughts distorts them and Kant points out that we know the transcendental ego only through the transcendental unity of apperception and cannot know it as noumenon except through the postulates of practical reasoning. [BACK]

11. It is, of course, possible simply to ignore intentional content or deny the phenomenological side of intentionality. I take it that Millikan's analysis, for example, which concludes that the intentionality of mental states is radically dependent upon history, could be seen simply as an account of something other than intentional character, and an account that has nothing to say about intentional character. [BACK]

12. I think this line of argument finds kindred spirits in Baker (1987) and Garfield (1988). 13. Again, a somewhat parallel argument is to be found in Garfield (1988). [BACK]

13. Again, a somewhat parallel argument is to be found in Garfield (1998). [BACK]