Sinan Dogramaci, The University of Texas, Austin, Aposteriori Naturalism about Intentionality:

The last several decades have taught us that a reduction of the intentional to the non-intentional is surprisingly hard to find. Does our historical failure to reduce intentionality give us inductive evidence that intentionality is irreducible? An answer of “no” would be defensible if we accept a response that Paul Horwich and Scott Soames gave to Kripkenstein’s skeptical challenge about intentionality. Horwich and Soames say the intentional reduces to the non-intentional, but the reduction is aposteriori. If this aposteriori naturalist view is right, it’s no wonder a reduction hasn’t been discovered by philosophers working from the armchair. But aposteriori naturalism faces a challenge that’s generated using only a few plausible, anti-skeptical assumptions about our ordinary knowledge of others’ minds. I articulate the challenge, and sketch what I offer as the best line of response on behalf of aposteriori naturalism.