Unreliable intuitions: teleosemantics and the swampman

Abstract

The aim of my thesis is to investigate possible responses to the Swampman problem, a problem that has been uniquely difficult for proponents of the teleological theory. Briefly put, the heart of the Swampman problem is that it challenges the tenet that it is possible to fix content by reference to history. To put it more fully, Swampman challenges the idea that it is possible to determine the content of an intentional mental representation through determining the function of that representation with an etiological analysis. This complicated set of ideas is at the heart of most teleological theories of content, and to disprove this is to disprove the theory. The Swampman challenge is based on the intuitively appealing notion that given a random, perfect replica of an actual human being, this replica will not only have intentional thought (directly contra to teleology, which requires history for intentional thought) but will most likely share the same memories and dispositions of the actual human that he is a replica of.