Representation and Content

(S) "The statement S describes C"

This is a common construction, and it suggests a relationship between 'things' (events, objects) in the world and the assertions which represent them.

The statement that a list of such statements can be constructed must be a member of the list, since it is a statement about the way the world is - given the picture of 'description' that is suggested here, the possibility of such a list would be a fact about the world.

Also, and somewhat intractably, any statement about why this was the case would also have to be a member of the list. This obviously generates an OQ paradox, since membership of the list is a kind of truth test.

Finally, since any general account of representation could be used to generate such a list (to determine whether a statement was a member of it or not), any general account of representation generates an OQ paradox.

Taking representation - somewhat loosely, but, I suspect, validly - as a proxy for content, I think that any account of content must generate the same problem. This includes supernatural accounts (mind, emergence) etc.

Since we can't intelligibly deny that our statements have content (since such a denial would render itself unintelligible), we are left with only the possibility of a recursive account - an account which makes the nature of content, and the validity of attributing content, depend upon the possibility that some things we say (including our discussion of content) must have content.

This applies to our most 'basic' statements about the world - the kinds of simple statement of fact that a naïve materialist might wish to take as metaphysical fundamentals. Since we can only guarantee their content by a recursive account, they cannot be the kinds of fundamentals that are required.

And this also applies to basic statements about the tools of language.

If we think of these tools just in terms of strings of text and rules for manipulating them, we find that statements about the natures of the strings (what they contain) and the consequences of the rules can only be validated recursively. The illusion of simplicity here arises from the 'obviousness' of the basic presumptions - an obviousness which is rooted in, but not validated by, something like our 'language instinct'. Human beings just find some things more 'obvious' than others, and persist in trying to give this metaphysical or epistemological significance.

Imagining the world as mechanism - and intelligence as complex signalling and manipulation machinery - may be a useful heuristic, especially for those scientists engaged in enquiries which seek to produce models of this kind. But the usefulness of the heuristic, like the 'obviousness' of some 'atomistic' statements of fact or rule, is just epistemologically misleading.