Professor Block is exploring the case for and against an internal aspect of intentional content -- what has come to be called "narrow content." Intentionality is usually characterized in terms of the "aboutness" of beliefs, desires, etc.; Professor Block's concern is whether there is a purely internal aspect of this aboutness that is itself a kind of content. If two people are thinking about different kinds of things, but are unaware of any of the differences between the two things, so that they are thinking of them in exactly the same way -- their "point of view" on the two things is the same -- is there a kind of content that they therefore share? The field of study for this project is the foundations of psychology. The overall objective is to determine whether intentionality has a role to play in the science of mind, and, if it does, whether the appropriate scientific concept of intentionality is narrow intentionality. More specifically, the questions are: Is psychological practice committed to intentional content? Should it be? Assuming psychology should be concerned with content, why narrow content? Is narrow content holistic? Must any scientific psychology that relies on narrow content be radically different from common sense psychology? Professor Block will address these questions by first giving some prima facie motivation for postulating narrow content, and then moving to objections to it. He will try to produce a substantial rationale for narrow content and a theory of what it is.
