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    Causal-informational theories (Dretske, Fodor) ground bel... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→Belief content and sentence meaning cannot be defined independently of one another

    Causal-informational theories (Dretske, Fodor) ground belief content in reliable causal covariations with external states, independent of linguistic meaning.

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    1 reason for
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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Content must ground in mind-independent facts; reliable causal covariations provide this grounding without circularity.
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    • 2.Infants and animals have beliefs without language, suggesting content derives from causal-informational relations, not linguistic meaning.
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    • 3.Explanatory power: causal-informational theories explain why false beliefs misrepresent and why learning updates beliefs based on reliable feedback.
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    Reasons Against

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    • 1.The disjunction problem: a belief reliably caused by barns also responds to barn-facades, but content is determinate, not disjunctive.
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    • 2.Counterfactual content (thoughts about unicorns, Zeus) have no reliable causal covariations; pure causal theories cannot ground such content.
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    • 3.Content seems partly individuated by conceptual role and inferential relations, not exhausted by external causal dependencies.
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    Connections

    1 linked claim · 2 topics

    Truth & Knowledge1 linkedPhilosophy of Language1 linked
    Belief content and sentence meaning cannot be defined independently of one anoth...

    Related

    Belief content and sentence meaning cannot be defined independently of one anoth...Content must ground in mind-independent facts; reliable causal covariations prov...Content seems partly individuated by conceptual role and inferential relations, ...Counterfactual content (thoughts about unicorns, Zeus) have no reliable causal c...
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    Explanatory power: causal-informational theories explain why false beliefs misre...Infants and animals have beliefs without language, suggesting content derives fr...The disjunction problem: a belief reliably caused by barns also responds to barn...

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    2 (1 for, 1 against)
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