Representations gone mental.
Many philosophers and psychologists have attempted to elucidate the nature of mental representation by appealing to notions like isomorphism or abstract structural resemblance. The 'structural representations' that these theorists champion are said to count as representations by virtue of functionin...
| Publicado en: | Synthese Vol. 191; no. 2; pp. 213 - 245 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Springer Nature
Jan2014
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=94095470&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 94095470 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00397857 4LI jtl: Synthese issn: 00397857 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jan2014 vid: 191 iid: 2 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 94095470 10.1007/s11229-013-0328-7 ppf: 213 ppct: 32 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 351KB tig: atl: Representations gone mental. aug: au: Morgan, Alex affil: Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University of New Jersey, New Brunswick 08901 USA su: Mental representation Psychologists Isomorphism (Mathematics) Theorists Cognition Episodic memory Biological neural networks sug: subj: Mental representation Psychologists Isomorphism (Mathematics) Theorists Cognition Episodic memory Biological neural networks keyword: Circadian clocks Dretske Eliminativism Feature detectors Isomorphism Mental models Neural networks Psychological Explanation Representation ab: Many philosophers and psychologists have attempted to elucidate the nature of mental representation by appealing to notions like isomorphism or abstract structural resemblance. The 'structural representations' that these theorists champion are said to count as representations by virtue of functioning as internal models of distal systems. In his 2007 book, Representation Reconsidered, William Ramsey endorses the structural conception of mental representation, but uses it to develop a novel argument against representationalism, the widespread view that cognition essentially involves the manipulation of mental representations. Ramsey argues that although theories within the 'classical' tradition of cognitive science once posited structural representations, these theories are being superseded by newer theories, within the tradition of connectionism and cognitive neuroscience, which rarely if ever appeal to structural representations. Instead, these theories seem to be explaining cognition by invoking so-called 'receptor representations', which, Ramsey claims, aren't genuine representations at all-despite being called representations, these mechanisms function more as triggers or causal relays than as genuine stand-ins for distal systems. I argue that when the notions of structural and receptor representation are properly explicated, there turns out to be no distinction between them. There only appears to be a distinction between receptor and structural representations because the latter are tacitly conflated with the 'mental models' ostensibly involved in offline cognitive processes such as episodic memory and mental imagery. While structural representations might count as genuine representations, they aren't distinctively mental representations, for they can be found in all sorts of non-intentional systems such as plants. Thus to explain the kinds of offline cognitive capacities that have motivated talk of mental models, we must develop richer conceptions of mental representation than those provided by the notions of structural and receptor representation. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Synthese is a copyright of Springer, 2014. All Rights Reserved. item: Synthese holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2014 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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