Abstract and Keywords
Wide or externalist content is individuated in part by reference to features of a subject's external surroundings, by her physical environment or the community with which she shares a language. Externalists hold that physically identical subjects might have thoughts with different, wide, contents. Internalists either deny that content is wide, claiming that all content supervenes on intrinsic physical states of the subject, and is hence narrow, or insist, at the very least, that the content that individuates a subject's thoughts in predictions and explanations of her behaviour must supervene on her intrinsic properties. This article begins by discussing the arguments for and against wide content. It then argues that genuinely explanatory content is wide.
Keywords: wide content, externalist content, physical environment, physical states, intrinsic states, mental state
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