Interpretation, intentionality, and sociological conditions for content identification
The study of the mind and its methodological tensions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62506/phs.v5i3.200Keywords:
Mind, Intentionality, Interpretation, Psychology, SociologyAbstract
This article will take the following route to explore a reflective approach to the problem of
mind and its possible contents. First, we will highlight the tension between psychology and semantics in
order to explain the content of mental acts from a third-person perspective. We will examine how Kant's
theory of apperception explored the conditions of objective representative expression to determine the
content of the intentional acts of mind. Second, we will outline how Davidson's theory of interpretation,
using an extensional semantic theory based on Tarski, explores the underdeterminacy of compatible in
terpretive hypotheses in order to arrive at a collectively-sensitive conception of the mutual understan
ding and internal content of beliefs. Kant and Davidson agree that the conditions for understanding
mental (or intentional) content depend on a theory of truth (or judgement) that provides the non-unila
teral parameter for interpreting that content. We will then observe how this perspective accommodates
skeptical notions of mind, content, and intention. We conclude with a series of remarks on the metho
dological tensions within psychology, showing that psychology and phenomenology face skepticism and
possible absorption by sociologically infused conditions of study. The problem is that the study of the
intentionality and content of mental beliefs can dissolve its object – the mind and consciousness – into
a kind of ghost behind language or a mere reification of the normative conditions of rational behavior
under the conditions of language influence.
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