Abstract

According to scientific naturalism, the solution to the mind-body problem is ultimately to be found in scientific theory-construction. The "commonsense" concepts we use to understand ourselves as subjects of mentality are to be seen as concepts in a "folk theory" of behavior. In my dissertation, I argue that the complaint that materialist theories of mind proposed by scientific naturalists leave out "the first-person point of view" is sound, but that, as typically formulated, the complaint must be seen as resting on an appeal to the given and so as begging the question against the naturalist's methodology, which is predicated on Sellars' contention that the given is a myth. ;I argue, further, that scientific naturalism founders on an internal problem, that of giving a naturalist account of intentionality, which a materialism rooted in science requires. I try to show: that causal theories of mental representation meant to vindicate "folk psychology" rest, methodologically, on the notion of a theory-builder's "ascribing propositional content" to x , and that such theories cannot make sense of this notion; that causal theories of mental representation meant to impugn "folk psychology" also rest, methodologically, on the notion of a theory-builder's "ascribing propositional content" to x, and that this vitiates the eliminativist vision; that insofar as and hold, causal theories of mental representation effectively reduce to Daniel Dennett's "interpretivist" theory of intentionality; finally, that Dennett's theory is inconsistent with his naturalism, since a non-intentional account of "stance-taking", as such, cannot be given on pain of circularity. I conclude that attempts to naturalize intentionality cannot be carried through. ;If scientific naturalism is the wrong approach to the mind-body problem, there are two options left open: we can return to the traditional Cartesian perspective according to which we have infallible introspective acquaintance with certain mental items or we can give up both traditional Cartesianism and scientific naturalism and pursue a third course. I explore this third alternative in the last chapter.