Teleosemantics

Abstract

In this chapter, I argue that representational contents based on teleosemantics cannot be explanatorily relevant in constitutive mechanistic explanations of cognitive phenomena. I note that most teleosemantic theories of content rely on indicator relations or structural similarity in addition to teleofunctions. As such, they inherit the issues with constitutive relevance inherent to indicator semantics and structuralist semantics. I furthermore show that bringing teleofunctions into the mix makes the situation worse. In order to evaluate whether teleofunctional contents are constitutively relevant, I show what carrying a particular representational content comes down to on a teleosemantic account. I argue that this depends on one’s preferred analysis of teleofunctions. I consider etiological functions, historical functions, modal functions, as well as synchronic and cybernetic analyses of function. I argue that all of the surveyed analyses of function render representational contents non-local to cognitive phenomena. The mutual dependence requirement is only fulfilled if the cybernetic analysis is used. Hence, teleofunctional contents are not constitutively relevant. The only possible exception is the case of cybernetically driven neural emulators (similar to the case discussed in Chap. 6 ).