According to Fodor, robustness of meaning is an essential aspect of intentionality and his causal theory of content can account for it. The robustness of meaning refers to the fact that kennings of a symbol are occasionally caused by instantiations of properties which are not expressed by the symbol. This, according to Fodor, is the source of the phenomenon of misrepresentation. The authors claim that Fodor's treatment of content and misrepresentation is infected with a couple of flaws. After criticizing Fodor's theory of content, they propose a new theory of content which explains how misrepresentation is possible as a result of meaning-forming causation, and extend it to account for the property of robustness of meaning.
Jerry Fodor’s causal theory of content is a well-known naturalistic attempt purporting to show that Brentano was wrong in supposing that physical states cannot possess meaning and reference. Fodor’s theory contains two crucial elements: one is a notion of “asymmetric dependence between nomic relations,” and the other is an assumption about the nature of the “causally operative properties” involved in the causation of mental tokens. Having dealt elsewhere with the problems Fodor’s notion of asymmetric dependence poses, we show in this paper a difficulty with the other element of his theory concerning what kinds of properties are the causally operative ones in the tokening of a semantic symbol in the brain of a perceiver. After presenting this difficulty, we examine three possible responses that Fodorian might make to our criticism.
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