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Millikan’s biosemantics is commonly characterized as a “consumer theory” of representational content. Proponents of this characterization interpret Millikan as privileging representation consumers over representation producers in her account of content determination. However, Millikan herself rejects this interpretation and claims to give producers and consumers equal weight in her theory. In this paper, I propose to resolve this issue by arguing that there are actually two Millikanian theories of content, a consumer theory that is explicitly formulated in her earlier work and a significantly different, “hybrid” theory that is implicitly presupposed in much of her later work. This result is not only of exegetical value, but also of great systematic interest, since both theories turn out to be interesting proposals in their own right that face significantly different tasks and challenges.

Fagerberg and Garson have recently questioned a crucial assumption that is widely accepted in the literature on biological functions, namely, the idea that functions can be attributed at different levels of distality. They argue that all proper functions are proximal, that is, that there are no distal functions. Here, we criticize Fagerberg and Garson's approach, by showing that their arguments are unconvincing and that there is a strong prima facie case in favour of distal functions.

It is a standard assumption in philosophy of mind and cognitive science that many animals are representational systems: they possess states that represent the world as being a certain way, and that can thus be true or false, correct or incorrect, satisfied or unsatisfied. This raises an interesting question that has recently attracted considerable attention: do some plants qualify as representational systems, too? This chapter will begin by arguing that we should adopt a thoroughly gradualist picture of representation, where an organism's degree of “representationality” is determined (roughly speaking) by the complexity of the information processing underlying its cognitive and behavioral capacities. On this basis, the chapter examines some prominent empirical arguments that have recently been advanced in favor of the thesis that plants are representational systems and argues that they are unsuccessful. However, it will also be suggested that there are some studies that might actually provide support for ascribing a certain degree of representationality to plants, albeit one that is well below the degree that would justify characterizing them as representational systems simpliciter.

AI systems, like self-driving cars, healthcare robots, or Autonomous Weapon Systems, already play an increasingly important role in our lives and will do so to an even greater extent in the near future. This raises a fundamental philosophical question: who is morally responsible when such systems cause unjustified harm? In the paper, we argue for the admittedly surprising claim that some of these systems can themselves be morally responsible for their conduct in an important and everyday sense of the term—the attributability sense. More specifically, relying on work by Nomy Arpaly and Timothy Schroeder (In Praise of Desire, OUP 2014), we propose that the behavior of these systems can manifest their ‘quality of will’ and thus be regarded as something they can be blameworthy for. We develop this position in detail, justify some of its crucial presuppositions, and defend it against potential objections.

This volume features new research about the philosophy of plant intelligence and plant cognition, one of the most intriguing and complex current debates at the intersection of biology, cognitive science and philosophy. The debate about plant cognition is marked by deep disagreements. Some theorists are confident that the empirical evidence supports the ascription of cognitive capacities to plants. Others hold that such claims are overblown, and defend more traditional, non-cognitive accounts of plant behavior. Still others seek to formulate intermediate positions. This volume brings together leading researchers from across this theoretical spectrum to tackle the foundational questions that are at issue in the debate about plant cognition. The contributions focus on the philosophical questions raised by recent discoveries and controversies in the empirical sciences, such as: Can plants be said to have genuine cognitive abilities? Can they be characterized as representing or perceiving their environment, as pursuing goals, or even as having some form of conscious experience? Which data could provide evidence for such characterizations? And what are possible implications of these issues for general questions about the nature of cognition, representation, perception, and consciousness? Philosophy of Plant Cognition will be of interest to scholars and students working in philosophy of mind, philosophy of biology, cognitive science, and plant biology.

This Element provides a comprehensive introduction to contemporary theories of mental content. After clarifying central concepts and identifying the questions that dominate the current debate, it presents and discusses the principal accounts of the nature of mental content (or mental representation), which include causal, informational, teleological and structuralist approaches, alongside the phenomenal intentionality approach and the intentional stance theory. Additionally, it examines anti-representationalist accounts which question either the existence or the explanatory relevance of mental content. Finally, the Element concludes by considering some recent developments in the debate about mental content, specifically the “explanatory turn” and its implications for questions about representations in basic cognitive systems and the representational character of current empirical theories of cognition.

Sensory perceptions represent things in the outside world. This mundane fact raises a major problem for naturalistic theories of content: the ‘distality problem’. In a previous paper for this journal, I presented a solution to this problem which makes central appeal to constancy mechanisms. Justin Garson, also in this journal, recently criticized my solution and suggested a Dretskean alternative to it. Here, I defend my proposal by arguing, first, that Garson's criticisms ultimately miss the mark, and secondly, that his Dretskean alternative is not viable, because it faces two fundamental problems: the empirical problem and the problem of changing response functions.