Identity Conditions for Indicator State Types within Dretskes Theory of :: Psychology Dretske Papers

Identity Conditions for Indicator State Types within Dretskes realizable action ofPsychological Content NaturalizationABSTRACT Within the context of Dretskes possibleness of psychological subject matter naturalization, as laid out in Explaining Behavior, the concept of an indicant state type plays a pivotal habit. Providing a general (and non-circular) description of the identity conditions for being a token of an indicator state type is a prerequisite for the ultimate success of Dretskes theory. However, Dretske fails to address this topic. Thus, his theory is incomplete. Several different risees for specifying these identity conditions are possible however, each is inadequate. Of the various theories for psychological content naturalization put in advance within the past two decades, I believe that a Dretske-style approach that explains the content of a mental state in terms of the causative history of past tokens of that state holds out the most promise of bountiful us a workable theory describing the role that content plays in learned behavior. While I favor this general approach, the particular theory laid out by Dretske in Explaining Behavior has a defect that must be addressed before his theory can be applied to real systems Dretske fails to provide an analysis of identity conditions for being a token of an indicator state type. The shortcoming is serious because of the critical role that past tokens of an indicator type play in fixing the content of a current token of the indicator type without identity conditions, in that respect is no way to specify which previously tokened states among the many that have been instantiated during the education period of the organism are of that indicator type.I begin with a very brief review of Dretskes theory from Explaining Behavior. Some organisms possess indicator states (i.e., internal states that indicate whether some remote conditions hold). For example, organism O may token an instance of I (t he internal indicator state type) whenever external conditions F obtain. Prior to learning, I indicates F does not mean F. Lets consider that external conditions F are relevant in some port to Os continued functioning, perhaps because environments in which F obtains are environments that are comparatively inhospitable for O. Lets also suppose that O is capable of learning utilise reinforcement information (via operant conditioning), such that future tokenings of I have sex to cause movements that are abstract to conditions F. (My use the evaluative term appropriate here rests on two assumptions (1)