Mental and cognitive states have a dependency relation for the formation between a particular observer that has them and the natural environment that observer occupies. Tyler Burge makes this clear in his theory of mentality, which he calls “anti-individualism”. He is correct in this assessment of the formation of mental states; however, I make the argument that the dependency relation is not only between the observer and the natural environment. Mental and cognitive states are also species-specific and spatio-temporally specific with regards to their formation and instantiation. The observer’s species-specific cognitive system and the observer’s location in spacetime will determine the natures of the mental and cognitive states that it has. In this thesis, I make the argument that Burge ought to have regarded the physical sciences (e.g., physics, quantum mechanics, and biology) because of the insights they bring to the evolution of perceptual and representational capacities.
