An examination of Fodor's disjunction problem and the nature of misrepresentation from within natural teleological theories of intentionality

The purposes of this study are: (1) to examine a teleological and informational theory of the fixation of representational content that has been proposed by Fodor, Dretske, and Millikan, (2) to offer an explanation of the phenomena of misrepresentation, and (3) to show the irrelevance Fodor's "Disjunction Problem" and rebut Dennett's denial of human original intentionality.;The theory developed was based upon early Fodor's "Yes-box" theory but incorporated both Millikan's notion of "Normal function" and Dretske's notion of "information extraction". The theory thus provided the Nomicity Requirement and the Normalcy Requirement as two constraints upon the fixation of representational content.;Based on the two constraints the theory then explained the phenomena of misrepresentation as follows: A cognitive subject misrepresents an external object if and only if the object has no nomological correlation with the mental representation in question, or the cognitive mechanism of the cognitive subject is not functioning in the way it is biologically "supposed" to function, or the epistemically appropriate conditions do not obtain.;In addition, the study attempts to dismiss Fodor's Disjunction Problem as ill-formed. One main reason is that Fodor ignores the Nomicity Requirement. His problem may well threaten crude causal theories of representational content. But because of the Nomicity Requirement, the problem cannot be raised for the theory developed in this study.;On the other hand, the study also attempts to rejected Dennett's denial of human original intentionality. Dennett's argument from the possibility of functional re-ascription is rejected because epistemological indefiniteness is not at issue here, and it does not even warrant the inference to the ontological denial of psychological reality. His "argument from selfish genes" is rejected because we deny that Mother Nature has any intentionality.