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  1. The Story of the Ghost in the Machine.Adam Toon - forthcoming - In Sonia Sedivy (ed.), Art, Representation and Make-Believe: Essays on the Philosophy of Kendall L. Walton. New York, NY, USA:
  2. Dretske’s Naturalistic Representationalism and Privileged Accessibility Thesis.Manas Kumar Sahu - 2023 - Philosophia 51:933-955.
    The objective of the current paper is to provide a critical analysis of Dretske's defense of the naturalistic version of the privileged accessibility thesis. Dretske construed that the justificatory condition of privileged accessibility neither relies on the appeal to perspectival ontology of phenomenal subjectivity nor on the functionalistic notion of accessibility. He has reformulated introspection (which justifies the non-inferentiality of the knowledge of one's own mental facts in an internalist view) as a displaced perception for the defense of naturalistic privileged (...)
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  3. Mind as Metaphor: A Defence of Mental Fictionalism.Adam Toon - 2023 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    This book develops a new approach to the mind called mental fictionalism. The key idea behind this approach is that the mind is a useful fiction. The book begins with our ordinary conception of the mind (known as folk psychology). At present, the dominant interpretation of folk psychology sees it as an attempt to describe our inner machinery (a view the author calls Cartesianism). The representational theory of mind (or representationalism) argues that our folk theory is true, and that our (...)
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  4. Mental Fictionalism: Philosophical Explorations.Tamás Demeter, T. Parent & Adam Toon (eds.) - 2022 - New York & London: Routledge.
    What are mental states? When we talk about people’s beliefs or desires, are we talking about what is happening inside their heads? If so, might cognitive science show that we are wrong? Might it turn out that mental states do not exist? Mental fictionalism offers a new approach to these longstanding questions about the mind. Its core idea is that mental states are useful fictions. When we talk about mental states, we are not formulating hypotheses about people’s inner machinery. Instead, (...)
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  5. What is Mental Fictionalism?Tamas Demeter, T. Parent & Adam Toon - 2022 - In Tamas Demeter, T. Parent & Adam Toon (eds.), Mental Fictionalism: Philosophical Explorations. New York: Routledge. pp. 1-24.
    This chapter introduces several versions of mental fictionalism, along with the main lines of objection and reply. It begins by considering the debate between eliminative materialism (“eliminativism”) versus realism about mental states as conceived in “folk psychology” (i.e., beliefs, desires, intentions, etc.). Mental fictionalism offers a way to transcend the debate by allowing talk of mental states without a commitment to realism. The idea is to treat folk psychology as a “story” and three different elaborations of this are reviewed. First, (...)
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  6. Is radically enactive imagination really contentless?Marco Facchin - 2022 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 21 (5):1089-1105.
    Radical enactivists claim that cognition is split in two distinct kinds, which can be differentiated by how they relate to mental content. In their view, basic cognitive activities involve no mental content whatsoever, whereas linguistically scaffolded, non-basic, cognitive activities constitutively involve the manipulation of mental contents. Here, I evaluate how this dichotomy applies to imagination, arguing that the sensory images involved in basic acts of imaginations qualify as vehicles of content, contrary to what radical enactivists claim. To argue so, I (...)
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  7. Representationalism, Scepticism and Phenomenal Realism.Manas Kumar Sahu - 2022 - Prometeica - Revista De Filosofía Y Ciencias 25:51-65.
    The irreducibility thesis of phenomenal consciousness can only succeed against the sceptical attack and avoid solipsism iff it can coherently establish the transition from subjective certainty to the objectivity of knowledge. The sceptical attack on the relationship between the phenomenal qualitative character of experience about the subjects own mental fact and the awareness of the qualitative properties of the phenomenal object can be avoided through establishing the immediacy of experience. The phenomenal realist become successful in establishing the subjective certainty about (...)
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  8. La fabrique des pensées.Pierre Steiner - 2022 - Paris: Editions du Cerf.
    Un citron, La Joconde et le Père Noël. Aucun de ces trois objets ne se trouve dans notre esprit, pourtant, nous parvenons à les concevoir. Comment ? Mobilisant les ressources du pragmatisme et de la philosophie des techniques, Pierre Steiner développe l’idée que nos pensées ne visent pas le monde mais y sont inscrites. -/- Les principales traditions philosophiques ont en commun le présupposé que l’esprit serait comme un archer qui aurait le pouvoir, par la pensée, de « viser le (...)
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  9. Predictive processing and anti-representationalism.Marco Facchin - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):11609-11642.
    Many philosophers claim that the neurocomputational framework of predictive processing entails a globally inferentialist and representationalist view of cognition. Here, I contend that this is not correct. I argue that, given the theoretical commitments these philosophers endorse, no structure within predictive processing systems can be rightfully identified as a representational vehicle. To do so, I first examine some of the theoretical commitments these philosophers share, and show that these commitments provide a set of necessary conditions the satisfaction of which allows (...)
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  10. Structural representations do not meet the job description challenge.Marco Facchin - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):5479-5508.
    Structural representations are increasingly popular in philosophy of cognitive science. A key virtue they seemingly boast is that of meeting Ramsey's job description challenge. For this reason, structural representations appear tailored to play a clear representational role within cognitive architectures. Here, however, I claim that structural representations do not meet the job description challenge. This is because even our most demanding account of their functional profile is satisfied by at least some receptors, which paradigmatically fail the job description challenge. Hence, (...)
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  11. Are Generative Models Structural Representations?Marco Facchin - 2021 - Minds and Machines 31 (2):277-303.
    Philosophers interested in the theoretical consequences of predictive processing often assume that predictive processing is an inferentialist and representationalist theory of cognition. More specifically, they assume that predictive processing revolves around approximated Bayesian inferences drawn by inverting a generative model. Generative models, in turn, are said to be structural representations: representational vehicles that represent their targets by being structurally similar to them. Here, I challenge this assumption, claiming that, at present, it lacks an adequate justification. I examine the only argument (...)
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  12. Deflationary realism: Representation and idealisation in cognitive science.Dimitri Coelho Mollo - 2021 - Mind and Language 37 (5):1048-1066.
    Debate on the nature of representation in cognitive systems tends to oscillate between robustly realist views and various anti‐realist options. I defend an alternative view, deflationary realism, which sees cognitive representation as an offshoot of the extended application to cognitive systems of an explanatory model whose primary domain is public representation use. This extended application, justified by a common explanatory target, embodies idealisations, partial mismatches between model and reality. By seeing representation as part of an idealised model, deflationary realism avoids (...)
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  13. On Ur-intentionality.Ludovic Soutif & Carlos Mario Márquez Sosa - 2021 - Revista de Filosofia Moderna E Contemporânea 9 (2):79-99.
    Starting from Brentano’s classical characterization of intentionality, we review the radical enactivist proposal about basic cognition and show that the underlying assumption that stripping teleosemantics of its representationalist commitments results in no explanatory loss is unwarranted. Significant features of basic cognition are lost, or so we argue, with the RECtification of teleosemantics that are retrieved by means of an alternative dubbed metaphysically non-committal content-ascriptivism.
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  14. Minds, materials and metaphors.Adam Toon - 2021 - Philosophy 96 (2):181-203.
    What is the relationship between mental states and items of material culture, like notebooks, maps or lists? The extended mind thesis offers an influential and controversial answer to this question. According to ExM, items of material culture can form part of the material basis for our mental states. Although ExM offers a radical view of the location of mental states, it fits comfortably with a traditional, representationalist account of the nature of those states. I argue that proponents of ExM would (...)
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  15. Referential Reality.Ilexa Yardley - 2021 - Https://Medium.Com/the-Circular-Theory.
  16. What Are Mental Representations?Joulia Smortchkova, Krzysztof Dołrega & Tobias Schlicht (eds.) - 2020 - New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press.
    Mental representation is one of core theoretical constructs within cognitive science and, together with the introduction of the computer as a model for the mind, is responsible for enabling the ‘cognitive turn’ in psychology and associated fields. Conceiving of cognitive processes, such as perception, motor control, and reasoning, as processes that consist in the manipulation of contentful vehicles representing the world has allowed us to refine our explanations of behavior and has led to tremendous empirical advancements. Despite the central role (...)
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  17. Reconceiving rationality: situating rationality into radically enactive cognition.Giovanni Rolla - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 1):571-590.
    Rational beliefs and actions are typically evaluated against certain benchmarks, e.g., those of classical logic or probability theory. Rationality therefore is traditionally taken to involve some sort of reasoning, which in turn implies contentful cognition. Radically Enactive views of Cognition, on the other hand, claim that not all cognition is contentful. In order to show that rationality does not need to lie outside of REC’s scope of radicalizing cognition, I develop a Radically Enactive notion of Rationality, according to which rationality (...)
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  18. Naturalized Representations—a Useful Goal or a Useful Fiction?Piotr Wilkin - 2019 - Studia Semiotyczne—English Supplement 30:5-19.
    One of the key concepts of naturalized epistemology as well as the cognitive sciences that stem from it is the naturalized concept of mental representation. Within this naturalized concept, many attempts have been made to unify the notion of representation error. This text makes an attempt to argue against the adequacy of using a naturalized concept of representation error as well as casts doubt on the wide program of naturalizing concepts related to human conceptuality.
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  19. Qu'est-ce que la pensée ?Pierre Steiner - 2017 - Paris: Vrin.
    Qu'est-ce que la pensée? La pensée est-elle une activité? La pensée a-t-elle un lieu qui lui est propre? Pense-t-on en mots ou en images? Peut-on penser sans langage? Existe-t-il des normes de la pensée? Commentaire : "La pensée et la représentation" - Antoine Arnauld - Des vraies et des fausses idées. chapitre VI. "Rationalité et pensée" -Gilbert Ryle - "A rational animal n. Collected Papers II.
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  20. The Sceptical Paradox and the Nature of the Self.Tony Cheng - 2015 - Philosophical Investigations 39 (1):3-14.
    In the present article, I attempt to relate Saul Kripke's “sceptical paradox” to some issues about the self; specifically, the relation between the self and its mental states and episodes. I start with a brief reconstruction of the paradox, and venture to argue that it relies crucially on a Cartesian model of the self: the sceptic regards the Wittgensteinian “infinite regress of interpretation” as the foundation of his challenge, and this is where he commits the crucial mistake. After the diagnosis, (...)
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  21. Being Clear on Content - Commentary on Hutto and Satne.Dimitri Coelho Mollo - 2015 - Philosophia 43 (3):687-699.
    In the target article Hutto and Satne propose a new approach to studying mental content. Although I believe there is much to commend in their proposal, I argue that it makes no space for a kind of content that is of central importance to cognitive science, and which need not be involved in beliefs and desires: I will use the expression ‘representational content’ to refer to it. Neglecting representational content leads to an undue limitation of the contribution that the neo-Cartesian (...)
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  22. The Hard Problem Of Content: Solved (Long Ago).Marcin Miłkowski - 2015 - Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric 41 (1):73-88.
    In this paper, I argue that even if the Hard Problem of Content, as identified by Hutto and Myin, is important, it was already solved in natu- ralized semantics, and satisfactory solutions to the problem do not rely merely on the notion of information as covariance. I point out that Hutto and Myin have double standards for linguistic and mental representation, which leads to a peculiar inconsistency. Were they to apply the same standards to basic and linguistic minds, they would (...)
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  23. Perceptual Representation / Perceptual Content.Bence Nanay - 2015 - In Mohan Matthen (ed.), Oxford Handbook for the Philosophy of Perception. Oxford University Press. pp. 153-167.
    A straightforward way of thinking about perception is in terms of perceptual representation. Perception is the construction of perceptual representations that represent the world correctly or incorrectly. This way of thinking about perception has been questioned recently by those who deny that there are perceptual representations. This article examines some reasons for and against the concept of perceptual representation and explores some potential ways of resolving this debate. Then it analyzes what perceptual representations may be: if they attribute properties to (...)
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  24. Daniel D. Hutto and Erik Myin, Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds Without Content. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013; 206pp. [REVIEW]D. Campbell - 2014 - Analysis 74 (1):174-176.
  25. Debunking enactivism: a critical notice of Hutto and Myin’s Radicalizing Enactivism. [REVIEW]Mohan Matthen - 2014 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 44 (1):118-128.
    In this review of Hutto and Myin's Radicalizing Enactivism, I question the adequacy of a non-representational theory of mind. I argue first that such a theory cannot differentiate cognition from other bodily engagements such as wrestling with an opponent. Second, I question whether the simple robots constructed by Rodney Brooks are adequate as models of multimodal organisms. Last, I argue that Hutto and Myin pay very little attention to how semantically interacting representations are needed to give an account of choice (...)
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  26. Functions between reasons and causes : on picturing.Johanna Seibt - 2009 - In Willem A. DeVries (ed.), Empiricism, Perceptual Knowledge, Normativity, and Realism: Essays on Wilfrid Sellars. Oxford University Press.
  27. Action in Perception. [REVIEW]Tobias Schlicht & Ulrike Pompe - 2007 - Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 61 (2):250-254.
  28. Intelligence without representation – Merleau-Ponty’s critique of mental representation.Hubert L. Dreyfus - 2002 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1 (4):367-83.
    Existential phenomenologists hold that the two most basic forms of intelligent behavior, learning, and skillful action, can be described and explained without recourse to mind or brain representations. This claim is expressed in two central notions in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: the intentional arc and the tendency to achieve a maximal grip. The intentional arc names the tight connection between body and world, such that, as the active body acquires skills, those skills are “stored”, not as representations in the mind, (...)
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  29. Refocusing the question: Can there be skillful coping without propositional representations or brain representations? [REVIEW]Hubert L. Dreyfus - 2002 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1 (4):413-25.
  30. Representational parts.Rick Grush & Pete Mandik - 2002 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1 (4):389-394.
    In this reply we claim that, contra Dreyfus, the kinds of skillful performances Dreyfus discusses _are_ representational. We explain this proposal, and then defend it against an objection to the effect that the representational notion we invoke is a weak one countenancing only some global state of an organism as a representation. According to this objection, such a representation is not a robust, projectible property of an organism, and hence will gain no explana- tory leverage in cognitive scientific explanations. We (...)
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  31. Why there are no mental representations.Michael Morris - 1991 - Minds and Machines 1 (1):1-30.
    I argue that there are no mental representations, in the sense of “representation” used in standard computational theories of the mind. I take Cummins' Meaning and Mental Representation as my stalking-horse, and argue that his view, once properly developed, is self-defeating. The argument implicitly undermines Fodor's view of the mind; I draw that conclusion out explicitly. The idea of mental representations can then only be saved by appeal to a Dennett-like instrumentalism; so I argue against that too. Finally, I argue (...)
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  32. Representations: Who needs them?Walter J. Freeman & Christine A. Skarda - 1990 - In J. McGaugh, Jerry Weinberger & G. Lynch (eds.), Brain Organization and Memory. Guilford Press.
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  33. Representationalism Defended.Mohan Matthen - manuscript
    This is a comment on Frances Egan's paper, "How to Think About Mental Content." Egan distinguishes mathematical and cognitive content; she accepts the former and rejects the latter. In this comment, which was delivered at the Oberlin Colloquium in 2012, I defend cognitive content.
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