The Epistemological Objection to Opaque Teleological Theories of Content
Abstract
After you've seen someone walk through a minefield, you have a pretty good idea where they think the mines are located. After you've dined regularly with someone, you have a pretty good idea of what they like to eat and drink. And so on and so forth. It is a commonplace that what people do and say tells the folk that is, you and me, Shakespeare and Aristotle, most of us when we are not drawing on specialist knowledge in cognitive science or whatever a good deal about the contents of the beliefs and desires of our fellow human beings, and more generally about what they think. The observation of behaviour in circumstances often grounds justified belief about the contents of intentional states, and, what is more, we qua members of the folk know this.