Abstract

In my dissertation, "Psychosemantics and its Thematic Duality", I have examined Fodor, Dretske and Millikan's psychosemantic approaches to meaning and mind. The focus is to disclose the fact that there is a thematic duality with which psychosemantics begins and also ends. Psychosemantics is committed to the belief that psychological states and processes are not fully explained unless their semantic properties are grasped. For, according to psychosemantics, semantic properties are causally efficacious in our mental transactions--cognition is best described as semantic causation. To say that semantic properties are causally efficacious is intentional realism. To say that semantic properties are physical properties is physicalism. Psychosemantics wants to build intentional realism under physicalism or physicalism under intentional realism. The duality thesis is that intentional realism and physicalism have failed to be unified in psychosemantics. ;The dissertation has six chapters plus a short introduction. Chapter 1: "What is psychosemantics?" provides a general characterization of psychosemantics. Chapter 2: "Dretske's proof of mental causation" examines the problems in Dretske's proof of mental causation. Chapter 3: "Dual Contents and Fodor's Representational Theory of Mind" argues for the duality thesis in general by criticizing Fodor's representational theory of mind in specific. Chapter 4: "Mental Causation: Causal Efficacy and Causal Relevance" criticizes mental causation thesis from a broad perspective. Chapter 5: "Millikan's Biosemantics and its Thematic Duality" argued that Millikan's biosemantics also fails to bring physicalism and intentional realism together. Chapter 6: "Psychological Explanation" is the conclusion