Let ‘semantic relevance’ be the thesis that the wide semantic properties of representational mental states (like beliefs and desires) are causally relevant to behavior. A popular way of arguing for semantic relevance runs as follows: start with a sufficient counterfactual condition for causal or explanatory relevance, and show that wide semantic properties meet it with respect to behavior (e.g., Loewer & Lepore (1987,1989), Rescorla (2014), Yablo (2003)).This paper discusses an in‐principle limitation of this strategy: even the most sophisticated counterfactual criteria systematically misclassify irrelevant properties as relevant when they stand in certain kinds of modal co‐variation or ‘entanglement’ relations to genuinely relevant properties. This entanglement problem, I argue, is more general and more serious than proponents of the counterfactual strategy have recognized: it threatens recent interventionist arguments for semantic relevance, and is not easily solved by appeal to proportionality or naturalness. I end by suggesting that proponents of semantic relevance may need to shift their attention from patterns of counterfactuals to the lawful psychological generalizations that explain them.

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重要的是内容吗？

让“语义相关性”成为这样的论点：表征性心理状态（如信念和欲望）的广泛语义属性与行为具有因果关系。争论语义相关性的一种流行方式如下：从因果或解释相关性的充分反事实条件开始，并表明广泛的语义属性在行为方面满足该条件（例如，Loewer＆Lepore（1987，1989），Rescorla（ 2014），Yablo（2003））。本文讨论了该策略的原则上的局限性：即使是最复杂的反事实标准，当不相关的属性处于某些类型的模态共变或“纠缠”关系中时，也会系统性地将不相关的属性错误分类为相关属性。真正相关的属性。我认为，这种纠缠问题比反事实策略的支持者所认识到的更普遍、更严重：它威胁到最近关于语义相关性的干预主义论点，并且不能通过诉诸比例性或自然性轻易解决。最后，我建议语义相关性的支持者可能需要将注意力从反事实模式转移到解释它们的合法心理概括上。