Narrow Content Meets Fat Syntax

This chapter begins with a quick overview of Fodor's account of narrow content. It provides a sketch of how Fodor proposes to construct the notion and sets out a pair of reasons for doubting that Fodor's notion of narrow content will do what he wants. It then argues that the real problem with narrow content is that the taxonomy of mental states it imposes is both too coarse and too ill behaved to exploit in a serious scientific psychology. It illustrates the coarseness of a narrow content taxonomy by comparing three taxonomic schemes: the one imposed by fat syntax, the one imposed by broad content, and the one imposed by narrow content.