Thought-Contents: On the Ontology of Belief and the Semantics of Belief Attribution

According to our commonsense view of the matter, beliefs, desires, intentions and the like are special kinds of internal states the possession of which by a given cr— ture potentially explains its behavior and otherwise renders the creature intelligible to us. So—called folk psychology provides us with a rough—and—ready network of counterfactuals delimiting the role supposedly played by these internal states v— à—vis perceptual input, inference, and behavioral output in a normal member of o...