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9780199608515

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In Necessary Intentionality, Ori Simchen crafts razor-sharp arguments for a surprising package of theses in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. On Simchen's view, all modal facts are determined by the essences of actual particular objects, a wordas being of a given type depends necessarily on what the word is about, and a thought of a given type cannot occur absent its particular object. In developing these views, Simchen rejects many bits of prevailing philosophical wisdom ... Most radically, he develops a parameter-based account of cognitive states that explains much about cognition while doing entirely without mental representations or mental content. Simchen masterfully integrates these strands into a single coherent picture and in doing so provides a model of careful, substantive philosophical investigation. Professor Robert D. Rupert, University of Colorado at Boulder A sustained defense of the necessary aboutness of language and of cognitive states, based on an account of modality according to which the space of possibilities is determined by the natures of existing particular things. Simchen revisits arguments about, among other topics, actualism, essentialism, rigidity, the de re/de dicto distinction, and the distinction between narrow and wide content shedding new light on old themes. This book should be of interest to anyone working on reference, modality or cognition. Professor Genoveva Marti of Western University, Ontario

In Necessary Intentionality, Ori Simchen crafts razor-sharp arguments for a surprising package of theses in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. On Simchen's view, all modal facts are determined by the essences of actual particular objects, a wordas being of a given type depends necessarily on what the word is about, and a thought of a given type cannot occur absent its particular object. In developing these views, Simchen rejects many bits of prevailing philosophical wisdom ... Most radically, he develops a parameter-based account of cognitive states that explains much about cognition while doing entirely without mental representations or mental content. Simchen masterfully integrates these strands into a single coherent picture and in doing so provides a model of careful, substantive philosophical investigation. Professor Robert D. Rupert, University of Colorado at Boulder

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Ori Simchen received his PhD in 1999 from Harvard University and is now Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Colombia.

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