Saddled with Content

The central issue in this thesis is whether the world, as we find it in perceptual experience, shares structure with thought. According to the view that I label “monism”, it does; according to “dualism”, it does not. It is my aim to defend monism: in a basic case, we think of something that it is some way; we can also see that something is some way, so that it is then manifest before our eyes that something is some way. Thought, experience, and the world share predicative structure. In chapter I, I argue for monism by arguing against dualism, which in chapter III is discussed more specifically as the view of Charles Travis. But an at least equally important aim is to overcome a certain philosophical framework within which monism cannot come into its own. The core assumption of this framework is that a thinkable content is, in itself, without assertoric force, and to hold it to be true one must add such force. In chapter II, I argue that a thinkable content rather has the character of a claim, even if this character can be muted in certain special contexts, or when the content occurs in a more complex whole. Only against this background can monism be understood as the truism that it is. When it comes to this framework issue, “Fregean monism” functions as a foil, which in chapter IV is discussed more specifically as the view of John McDowell in Mind and World.