Vehicles, contents and supervenience

In: Filozofija i društvo, Band 29, Heft 4, S. 473-488

Abstract

In this paper, I provide an argument for the assumption that contents
supervene on vehicles, which is based on the explanatory role of
representations in the cognitive sciences. I then show that the
supervenience thesis together with the explanatory role imply that the
individuation criteria for contents and vehicles are tightly bound together,
such that content internalism (externalism) is in effect equivalent to
vehicle internalism (externalism). In the remainder of the paper, I argue
that some of the different positions in the debate stem from different
research questions, namely the question about the acquisition conditions and
the question about the entertaining conditions for mental representation.
Finally, I argue that the thesis of externalism is much more interesting if
understood as a claim about how mental representation works in our world as
opposed to how they work in all metaphysically possible worlds. In
particular, I argue that this ?nomological? understanding of the thesis is
able to explain how and why the experimental methods used in contemporary
cognitive sciences are able to provide insight into behavior generation.