An epiphenomenalist argument against output theories of mental content

Abstract

According to output theories of mental content, the semantic content of mental representations is fixed by the effects of these internal states, that is, by their causal contribution to cognitive activity. On this view, use antedates content, and not the other way around. However, if it is by having a causal role in cognitive activity that mental representations get their semantic content fixed, semantic content cannot be taken as one of the factors that explain this causal role. Mental representations, as such, might be a mere by-product of cognitive activity. The aim of this paper is to develop this epiphenomenalist argument and to show how it applies to recent proposals.