Narrow Mental Content
Curtis Brown,
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
May 03, 2022
According to this article, "A (mental) state with content is a state that represents some part or aspect of the world; its content is the way it represents the world as being." And "A narrow content of a particular state is a content of that state... that does not depend at all on the individual's environment." For example, when Descartes says "I think, therefore, I am," the notion of the self would count as narrow content, because it is a mental state that represents something, but which does not depend on any external environment. The idea of narrow mental content is important because, if there is no narrow mental content, then all mental content depends on the individual's environment, leading to a sort of mental determinism. This article looks at the concept in all its permutations. To my own mind, this whole argument is a reductio - there is no notion of mental content that is coherent.
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