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Accidental Associations, Local Potency, and a Dilemma for Dretske
Author(s) -
NOORDHOF PAUL
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0017.1996.tb00042.x
Subject(s) - dilemma , epistemology , appeal , relevance (law) , accidental , content (measure theory) , philosophy , association (psychology) , law , physics , mathematics , political science , acoustics , mathematical analysis
Abstract: I argue that Fred Dretske's account of the causal relevance of content only works if another account works better, that put forward by Gabriel Segal and Elliot Sober. Dretske needs to appeal to it to deal with two problems he faces: one arising because he accepts that the mere association between indicators and indicated is causally relevant to the recruitment of indicators in causing behaviour, the other from the need to explain how a present token of a certain type of content is causally relevant. For this and other reasons their approach has clear advantages over Dretske's.