Intentional Anti-Realism I

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 5 presents the negative thesis of intentional anti-realism, according to which there can be no intentional states and content ascriptions, in themselves, lack truth conditions. The chapter begins by drawing together, from the preceding chapters, the threads of an argument for this thesis. The elements of the positive thesis are then developed. Among them is the idea that content ascriptions have practice-dependent truth conditions. Another is the claim that mental states that are standardly considered intentional exist along with most of the properties that are standardly attributed to them, but absent intentional properties and, thus, absent representational truth values. A notion of thick logico-syntactic structure is developed, and it is argued that, due to having such structures, mental states can be true (or epistemically “adequate,” in a coherentist, or coherentist-pragmatist, sense). Nonetheless, content ascriptions cannot be true (or adequate) even in this sense; they lie outside the field of knowledge.