Intentional content and demonstrative thought

Abstract

Recently J. R. Searle1 has attempted to defend the view that the full content of all Intentional mental states is entirely determined by intrinsic features of internal representations; entirely, that is, by what is 'going on' inside an agent's head. One notorious problem that any such form of internalism will face is that of explaining how the full content of demonstrative thoughts may be so determined. For it has seemed to many theorists that demonstrative thought content depends on representation in a context not on full representation of that context. In order to substantiate his claims Searle has argued that indexical utterances/expressions and demonstrative thoughts have a completing Fregean sense enabling them to determine or pick out a unique object of reference. My aim here is to argue that the analysis of indexical sense presented is unable to account for object determination and, therefore, ought to be abandoned. The argument which I offer can be directed against any token-reflexive analysis of indexical expressions and is additionally interesting for this reason. The strategy Searle adopts2 is one of spelling out the so-called 'sense' of indexical expressions (and, eo ipso, the 'content' of demonstrative thoughts) by means of indicating the relations in which the object(s) of reference allegedly stand to utterances of token occurrences of in dexical expressions, that is,