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What is a theory of neural representation for?

This paper asks how representational notions figure into cognitive science, especially neuroscience. Philosophers have a way of skipping over that question and going straight to another: what is neural representation? What is the property or relation that representational notions pick out? I argue t...

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Published in:Synthese Vol. 205; no. 1; pp. 1 - 25
Main Author: Richmond, Andrew
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Jan2025
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        au: Richmond, Andrew
        affil: https://ror.org/02grkyz14 Rotman Institute, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada
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      keyword: Philosophy and Religious Studies Philosophy Psychology and Cognitive Sciences Psychology
      ab: This paper asks how representational notions figure into cognitive science, especially neuroscience. Philosophers have a way of skipping over that question and going straight to another: what is neural representation? What is the property or relation that representational notions pick out? I argue that this is a mistake. Our ultimate questions, as philosophers of cognitive science, are about the function and epistemology of cognitive scientific explanations—in this case, explanations that use representational notions. To answer those questions we must understand what representational notions contribute to science: what they enable scientists to do or explain, and how. But I show that we can do this without raising traditional and vexing questions about the definition of neural representation, or the nature of a property or relation that notion picks out. Taking this approach, I defend a realist account of representational explanation that underwrites important connections between philosophy and neuroscience.
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    language: English
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