What does conceptual-role semantics give us?

Conceptual role semantics (CRS) is an approach to investigate intentional mental states basing on the idea of linguistic nature of thinking. The matters discussed in this paper are the ability of CRS to provide an acceptable criterion for the content of functional states and also some advantages and difficulties that occur when CRS is used to describe mental content itself.The problem of criterion for the content of functional states is closely connected with the problem of differing intrinsic and derived intentionality, in Searle's terms. CRS does not explain genesis of intrinsic intentionality but gives some account of it by analyzing so-called conceptual roles. The main assumption of CRS is that thought has content because it consists of concepts, each of which have syntactic and semantic properties that is supposed by the subject himself to be stable enough to use this concept in reasoning.Being the extension of the theory of meaning in use CRS is faced to the characteristic problems of this theory, such as the rule-following problem and the problem of grounding the principle of compositional-ity. The ways to solve them are barely outlined at best. For all that CRS seems to be able to cope with some other problems better than classical semantic theory. Specifically, it provides more plausible way to interpret indexical concepts and gives simpler account of the logical form of thoughts.

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