Intentionality, analysis, and naturalism: An essay on metaphilosophy and mind

Naturalism is currently popular in the philosophy of mind, as in epistemology and ethics. One example of the naturalistic trend concerns the intentionality of mental states: the property by which they are directed at, or about, objects and states of affairs. Attempts to naturalize intentionality--to give an account of it in naturalistic terms--abound, but rarely do philosophers stop to ask questions like: What is the epistemic status of naturalizations? Why should we want them? And is it in principle possible to get what we want? The questions motivate a deeper examination of naturalism, philosophical methodology, and the relationship between the two.; Naturalism says that the scientific description of the world is complete, so intentionality, if real, must be implicit in the scientific image. In response to Stephen Stich and Michael Tye, I explain why naturalists about intentionality must be reductionists, seeking to identify naturalism with something else. The open question argument against reductive naturalism claims that common sense properties like intentionality cannot be identified with natural properties because the respective vocabularies are not synonymous. I examine two responses to the open question argument: first, it wrongly assumes that philosophical analysis cannot be informative; second, it supposes that reductive identities must be analytic. Pursuing the first, I develop an account of analysis which explains its informativeness and undercuts recent skepticism grounded in cognitive psychology.; The second half of the dissertation investigates whether philosophical naturalists should be scientific essentialists, holding that naturalist reductions are a posteriori necessities. Exploring the work of Hilary Putnam and Saul Kripke, I defend scientific essentialism about sensations but conclude that it fails to give a plausible account of either moral or intentional properties. It follows that naturalists about intentionality must engage in classical analysis.