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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Causal-informational theories (Dretske, Fodor) ground belief content in reliable causal covariations with external states, independent of linguistic meaning.

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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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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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 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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