Document Type : Research Paper

Author

• Ali Kalantari

Assistant Professor of Philosophy Department, University of Isfahan

Abstract

The normativity of mental content thesis has been very influential in contemporary philosophy of mind. Paul Boghossian (2003, 2005) has developed an argument for the normativity of mental content on the basis of two premises, i.e. firstly, the normativity of the notion of belief and secondly, the priority of the notion of belief to the notion of desire. In his recent article Alexander Miller (2008) has criticised Boghossian’s argument for the normativity of mental content. To make the objection against the normativity of content Miller has argued that the second premise of Boghossian’s argument is false to the effect that belief and desire are conceptually interdependent. My purpose in this paper is to show that content normativity thesis survives Miller's attack. In order to establish the claim I will argue that content is normative even if belief and desire are conceptually interdependent.

Keywords

• normativity
• belief
• desire
• content
• interdependency