 If one accepts a representational view of belief, it’s plausible to suppose that the relevant representations are structured in some way—that the belief that P &amp; Q, for instance, shares something structurally in common with the belief that P. To say this is not merely to say that the belief that P &amp; Q has the following property: It cannot be true unless the belief that P is true. Consider the following possible development of Dretske’s representational approach: An organism has developed a system that functions to detect whether P is or is not the case. It’s supposed to enter state alpha when P is true; its being in alpha has the function of indicating P. Also, the organism has developed a separate system for detecting whether P &amp; Q is the case. It’s supposed to enter state beta when P &amp; Q is true; its being in beta has the function of indicating P &amp; Q. But alpha and beta have nothing important in common other than what, in the outside world, they are supposed to represent; they have no structural similarity; one is not compounded in part from the other. Conceivably, all our beliefs could be set up in this way, having as little in common as alpha and beta—one internally unstructured representational state after another. To say that mental representations are structured is in part to deny that our minds work like that.