tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post21128909265454542..comments2024-03-27T20:37:09.185-05:00Comments on Alexander Pruss's Blog: Thinking derivativelyAlexander R Prusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-46167415506185845262015-10-12T14:22:11.940-05:002015-10-12T14:22:11.940-05:00There is also a teleological account, which may no...There is also a teleological account, which may not have been developed in print. A belief B has p as its content iff it is a telos of the mind to be such that (B occurs only if p is true). It's harder to account for desires.<br /><br />I suppose you could say that this is a scorekeeping account, though. But maybe what we should say is that the teleological and scorekeeping accounts are just special cases of normative accounts.<br /><br />By the way, I think it's really hard for normative accounts to account for the contents of entertainings. It's also really hard for causal accounts to do that.Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-16098665770163425222015-10-04T18:34:38.051-05:002015-10-04T18:34:38.051-05:00There are basically two types of accounts of inten...There are basically two types of accounts of intentional mental content, causal accounts and scorekeeping accounts. On the former, to be a thought/belief/desire with a certain content is to have a certain causal role. On the latter, one attributes a thought/belief/desire with a certain content to someone as a way of keeping track of their rational commitments. Obviously, on no plausible story are these going to come radically apart, but there is a difference of emphasis and starting point.<br /><br />The considerations in this post seem to me to lend support to the scorekeeping accounts. For the bearer of a causal role really could be a non-personal entity. Whereas there are principled reasons why the thing whose rational commitments we would want to keep track of would have to be a member of our rational community.<br /><br />Heath Whitehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13535886546816778688noreply@blogger.com