Teleosemantics without Etiology

Abstract

The aim of teleosemantics is to give a scientifically respectable or ‘naturalistic’ theory of mental content. This paper focuses on one of the key concepts of teleosemantics: biological function. It has been universally accepted in the teleosemantics literature that the account of biological function one should use to flesh out teleosemantics is that of etiological function. My claim is that if we replace this concept of function with an alternative one and if we also restrict the scope of teleosemantics, we can arrive at an account of biologizing mental content that is much less problematic than the previous attempts.