Mental Representation and Content

El antirrepresentacionalismo de Hegel y su concepción del conocimiento como praxis intersubjetiva

by Hector Ferreiro

Este artículo aparecerá publicado próximamente en una antología de trabajos sobre la filosofía de Hegel editada por Daniel Brauer en la Editorial Prometeo, Buenos Aires, 2012.

Gruesome Diagonals

by Laura Schroeter

Philosophers' Imprint 2003

Argues that 2D semantics cannot simultaneously fulfill two different roles: determining reference and capturing... more Argues that 2D semantics cannot simultaneously fulfill two different roles: determining reference and capturing plausible conditions of linguistic or conceptual competence.

Is the Notion of Nonconceptual Representational Content Coherent Without Truth Conditions?

by Daniel. J. Woolley

This was submitted as my dissertation/project for my final year as an undergraduate. It is now a draft in the early stages as my views have changed and I would like to modify the paper to reflect this. Any feedback would be most welcome

In what follows only consider proposals that assume nonconceptual content is representational in some sense and that... more In what follows only consider proposals that assume nonconceptual content is representational in some sense and that are offered within the naturalistic framework. I will not attempt to critique all of the possible ways for thinking about nonconceptual content. For example, this essay does not explore John McDowell’s attempt to make sense of nonrepresentational content of experience that is conceptualisable.“In the end, I restrict my investigation to examining the coherence of Fodor’s recent proposal about nonconceptual representation. I have chosen Fodor as my prime target since his proposal is one of the most carefully developed and detailed, and the difficulties it encounters serves to highlight important general problems for anyone trying to make coherent room for a notion of nonconceptual representational content within a naturalist framework. I recognize that this does not exhaust all of the possibilities.

Function and Content Reconsidered

by Marcin Miłkowski

draft for Content and Consciousness 2.0

In this chapter, I show that the theory of content as sketched in Daniel Dennett’s Content and Consciousness is,... more In this chapter, I show that the theory of content as sketched in Daniel Dennett’s Content and Consciousness is, contrary to appearances, quite different from the later developments in teleofunctional biosemantics. There are reasons to believe that his earlier theory fares in some respects much better than theories he later endorses. In contrast to Millikan's notion of function, Dennett's notion of functional structure is not historical (diachronic). Just because of that, his functional account of content is also not purely dependent on historical considerations. Note that according to Dennett, historically-dependent content is causally irrelevant, and its role in the explanation of behavior may be merely heuristic. The early account of Dennett stresses that the content is ascribed to the system by tracing the normal causes and effects of events, states and structures all the way to both the afferent and efferent peripheries. By relying on the notion of afferent/efferent peripheries, he requires, in fact, that the content be relevant for guiding the behavior. Just because of it, his early theory of content is closer to such proposals as the guidance theory of representation (GTR) of Anderson and Rosenberg and interactivism of Bickhard. Such a construal of content, notably, does vindicate the notion against current anti-representationalism in cognitive science. Yet the broad conception of function makes it really hard to justify claims about malfunction, and, consequently, misrepresentation.
I argue that the early theory should not be abandoned in favor of Millikan’s account of representation. Instead, I propose two relatively minor amendments: another construal of function along broadly Dennettian lines, and explication of his requirement of intensionality-sensitivity of representational explanations in terms of contrast-classes in causal explanations, as vindicated by Jim Woodward. The resulting conception is then tested by analyzing two cases.

Stepping Off the Pendulum: Why Only an Action-based approach Can Transcend the Nativist-Empiricist Debate

by Jedediah Allen

This paper has been selected by the Jean Piaget Society as a target article for commentary and response in its official journal of Cognitive Development

We argue that the nativist-empiricist debate in developmental psychology is distorted, both theoretically and... more We argue that the nativist-empiricist debate in developmental psychology is distorted, both theoretically and methodologically, by a shared framework of assumptions concerning the nature of representation. In particular, both sides of the debate assume models of representation that make the emergence of representation impossible. This, in turn, distorts conceptions of cognitive development by forcing developmentally new representation to be constructed out of some already available (innate) foundation of atomistic representations — it forces a foundationalism.
Contemporary nativists and empiricists differ with respect to the size and scope of such foundations, but are equally committed to some form of foundationalism. In further consequence, this foundationalism distorts methodologies by rendering any form of developmental emergence of representation impossible, and, thus, renders control conditions in experiments for such kinds of development (and their precursors) seemingly irrelevant. In precluding representational emergence, foundationalisms motivate an assumption that infants perceive the world in the same way as adults (adultomorphism) because the possibility of the developmental emergence of perceptual representation is already conceptually excluded.
In this discussion, we focus most strongly on the currently dominant nativist framework, and, in particular, on two seminal sets of studies: Baillargeon’s drawbridge studies and Wynn’s addition and subtraction studies. We begin with an historical overview of the growth of developmental nativist frameworks, showing how they emerged out of a synergy between a competence-performance distinction and the methodology of infant looking studies. Both of these enabling conditions for the historical rise of nativist positions are themselves flawed. We then proceed to a discussion of extant criticisms of the two focal sets of studies. We argue that these criticisms explore various empirical and conceptual alternatives to the standard nativist interpretations of such studies — alternatives that avoid the adultomorphisms of standard interpretations, and, thus, are open to the possibility of anti- foundationalist developmental emergence of representation.
We then explore some non- and anti-nativist positions, showing that they too involve a foundationalist commitment, which thus weakens their criticisms of nativist positions, and argue that the common foundationalism follows from a common assumption about the nature of representations: that representation is fundamentally constituted as encodings.
Finally, we outline an approach to modeling representation that is not committed to foundationalism because it explicitly models representational emergence. This is an action based approach, akin to Piaget’s model. Ironically, it was the (invalid) rejection of Piaget’s model that fueled much of the growth of nativism in the first place.

You Can't Get There From Here: Foundationalism and Development

by Jedediah Allen

BBS, 2011, 34, 124-125.

The thesis of our commentary is that the framework used to address what are taken to be the open issues is highly... more The thesis of our commentary is that the framework used to address what are taken to be the open issues is highly problematic. The presumed necessity of an innate stock of representational primitives fails to account for the emergence of representation out of a non-representational base. This failure manifests itself in problematic ways throughout Carey’s book.

Centered Communication

by Clas Weber

Review--Robert Matthews, The Measure of Mind

by Guy Longworth

An Ecological Approach to Nonconceptual Self-Awareness

by Michael J. Braund

"Draft Only"

In this paper I will advance and defend a minimal conception of self- consciousness, which I shall call nonconceptual... more In this paper I will advance and defend a minimal conception of self- consciousness, which I shall call nonconceptual self-awareness (henceforth, NCSA). As a contrastive term, the central idea behind NCSA is that the possession of a “self- concept” is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for representing oneself as an embodied agent in the ecological and social environments. To be sure, concept- possession is needed for activities such as mastering the grammar of the first-person pronoun, constructing autobiographical narratives, and formulating long term plans. It has its place in theoretical specifications of the contents of representational states, and as John McDowell points out, it allows us to “coherently credit experiences with rational relations to judgment and belief.” However, I will argue that these “higher-order” cognitive achievements are parasitic on a more primitive and already-existing form of self-awareness that operates independently of concepts. This primitive capacity is built into the very structure of perceptual experience and manifests as co-perception of the embodied self and the environment. In what follows, I will elaborate the thesis that this co-perception constitutes the foundations for full-fledged self-conscious activities (such as the capacity to maintain some form of detached perspective on oneself as the enduring subject of oneʼs own actions and mental states) precisely because these activities are experientially grounded in a unified, albeit nonconceptual, form of perspectivity. While my approach draws broadly on recent developments in ecological psychology, the debate on conceptual/nonconceptual mental content provides a convenient starting point for discussion.

Is Gödel a plagiarist? Building Blocks for a New Experimental Semantics.

by Carlos M. Muñoz-Suárez

DRAFT.

The content of perceptual experience

by michelle montague

Mental Representation

by Barbara Von Eckardt

Inhalt und kausale Rolle von phänomenalen Erfahrungen und Überzeugungen bei Fred Dretske

by Fabian Hundertmark

Not Published

Im ersten Teil der Hausarbeit stelle ich Überzeugungen und phänomenale Erfahrungen vor. Ich werde zeigen, dass diese... more Im ersten Teil der Hausarbeit stelle ich Überzeugungen und phänomenale Erfahrungen vor. Ich werde zeigen, dass diese einen Gehalt bzw. Intentionalität haben und welchen Einfluss diese Eigenschaft auf die kausale Rolle hat, wenn es darum geht, welche Überzeugungen von welchen phänomenalen Erfahrungen verursacht werden. Im zweiten Teil stelle ich Dretskes Position im Bezug auf phänomenale Zustände und Überzeugungen dar, wie er sie in Dretske (1988, 1998) vertreten hat.

Im letzten, kritischen Abschnitt, will ich Dretskes Position dahingehend kritisieren, dass er es nicht schafft, Introspektion und die Kausalbeziehung zwischen phänomenalen Zuständen und Überzeugungen im Allgemeinen mit deren Inhalt zu verknüpfen, da der Gehalt phänomenaler Zustände in der Evolutionsgeschichte (Phylogenese), der Gehalt von Überzeugungen hingegen aus der Ontogenese stammt und da der Gehalt phänomenaler Erfahrungen, in seiner Theorie, keinen Einfluss auf ihre kausale Rolle hat.

The Limits of Conceptual Analysis

by Laura Schroeter

(2004) Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 85.

Argues that conceptual analysis is committed to an implausible type of epistemic foundationalism. Argues that conceptual analysis is committed to an implausible type of epistemic foundationalism.

Teleosemantics without natural selection

by Marshall Abrams

Teleosemantics without Natural Selection, Biology and Philosophy 20(1), 2005

Ruth Millikan and others advocate theories which attempt to naturalize wide mental content (e.g. beliefs' truth... more Ruth Millikan and others advocate theories which attempt to naturalize wide mental content (e.g. beliefs' truth conditions) in terms of function in the teleological sense, where a function is constituted in part by facts concerning past natural selection involving ancestors of a current entity. I argue that it is a mistake to base content on selection. Content should instead be based on functions which though historical, do not involve selection. I sketch an account of such functions, which defines "function" in terms of changes in objective probabilities due to changes in ancestral traits.

Reading the mind's eye: Decoding category information during mental imagery

by Thomas Serre

Mental and Motor Representation for Music Performance

by Andy McGuiness

This research proposes a theory of nonconscious motor representation which precedes mental
representation of the... more This research proposes a theory of nonconscious motor representation which precedes mental
representation of the outcome of motor actions in music performance. The music performer faces the
problem of how to escape sedimented musical paradigms to produce novel configurations of dynamics,
timing and tone colour. If the sound were mentally represented as an action goal prior to being produced,
it would tend to be assimilated to a known action goal. The proposed theory is intended to account for
creativity in music performance, but has implications in other areas for both creativity and motor actions.
The investigation began with an ethnographic study of two ‘posthardcore’ rock bands in London and
Bristol. Posthardcore musicians work with minimal explicit knowledge of music theory and cognitive
involvement in performance is actively eschewed. Serendipitous musical felicities in performance are
valued. Such felicities depend on adjustment and fine control of dynamics, timing and tone colour within
the parameters of the given.
A selective survey of music aesthetics shows that the defining qualities of music are the production of
immanent rather than representational meaning; polysemy; and processuality. Taking an analytic
philosophy and cognitive science approach, I argue that apprehensions of immanent meaning depend on
relationships between proximal percepts within the specious present. A general argument for
nonconceptual perceptual content as perception of relations between magnitudes within the specious
present is extended to music and argued to account for both the polysemic richness of music and its
processuality. Nonconceptual relational perception can account for novel apprehensions by music
listeners, but not for the production of novel configurations by the performer. I argue that motor creativity
in music performance is achieved through the nonconscious parameterization of inverse models without
conscious representation of the goal of the action. Conscious representation for the performer occurs
when they hear their own performance.

Perception and Representation in Leibniz

by Stephen Puryear

Media, mental health and discrimination: a frame of reference for understanding reporting trends

by Lee Knifton

Implicit and Explicit Representation

by David Kirsh

Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (2003)

The degree to which information is encoded explicitly in a representation is related to the computational cost of... more The degree to which information is encoded explicitly in a representation is related to the computational cost of recovering or using the information. Knowledge that is implicit in a system need not be represented at all, even implicitly, if the cost of recovering it is prohibitive.