Résumé
Humans and other animals have minds because reality is predictable. The world is full of items that behave in regular ways. Our minds lock onto these items so that we can anticipate events and act accordingly.
The central role of thoughts is thus to refer to items in the world. I shall argue on this basis that reference is the only notion of semantic content we need.
A long tradition of philosophical analysis holds we need a semantics for senses as well as referents. Frege held that we need senses to explain how subjects can erroneously disbelieve true identity claims like Hesperus = Phosphorous.
However, an alternative is simply to posit that such subjects have two distinct vehicles of thought that are semantically alike. We should view “Frege cases” (of disbelieved true identities) as no less breakdowns of rationality than “confused ideas” (that conflate two referents under a single mental name).
Not all cognition is directly relevant to practical action. Even so, the approach to semantic content that starts with action can be extended to all species of thought.
