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Conceptual role semantics and the explanatory role of content

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I've tried to argue that there is more to representational content than CRS can acknowledge. CRS is attractive, I think, because of its rejection of atomism, and because it is a plausible theory of targets. But those are philosopher's concerns. Someone interested in building a person needs to understand representation, because, as AI researchers have urged for some time, good representation is the secret of good performance. I have just gestured in the direction I think a viable theory of representation must take. I hope, however, to have created some advance sympathy for the gesture by distinguishing the problem of representation from the problem of targets on the one hand, and from the problem truth-conditions for the attitudes on the other.

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Cummins, R. Conceptual role semantics and the explanatory role of content. Philos Stud 65, 103–127 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00571319

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