Intentionalism, Cognition, and Representation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Christopher Maloney
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Conscious Perception ◽  
Perceptual Representation ◽  
Perceptual State ◽  
Content Of Experience

This chapter continues consideration of reductive intentionalism without embracing the doctrine, framing it in the context of cognitive science. Cognition, including perception, is representation. An agent’s cognitive, perhaps perceptual, state is a relation binding the agent to a proposition by means of her mental representation. Intentionalism would explicate the phenomenal character of a perceiver's experience in terms of the content of her prevailing perceptual representation. While minimal intentionalism maintains that the phenomenal character of the perceiver's experience merely supervenes on her representation's content, maximal intentionalism would reduce character to content. For maximal intentionalism maintains that phenomenal character is simply what introspection finds. Yet, according to maximal intentionalism, introspection, when tuned to conscious perception, detects only the content of experience. Hence, the maximalist identifies phenomenal character with the content carried by perceptual representation.

What It Is Like To Perceive

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Christopher Maloney
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Psychological State ◽  
Cognitive State ◽  
Conscious Perception ◽  
Perceptual Representation ◽  
Perceptual State ◽  
Cognitive Representation ◽  
Direct Acquaintance

Conscious perception is a distinctive mode of cognition marked by its manifestly sensuous phenomenal character. Why? An intentionalist may reply that perception is a kind of psychological state realized by an oddly contentful mental representation. A higher order theorist might alternatively answer that a perceptual state is sensuous since it is the content of a higher order cognitive state. Neither of these representationalists is right. It is not the content of any mental state that ensures perception's phenomenal character. Rather, the unique structure of a perceptual representation determines perception's sensuous side. For a perceptual representation is an extended mental representation of a peculiar sort. It is a representation in which the vehicle of reference is itself the very object to which that vehicle refers. Perceptual representation thus differs from all other forms of cognitive representation in a way that directly acquaints a perceiver with whatever real object she perceives. Perception is sensuous because it is unbrokered cognitive contact with something present. This confrontational mode of cognition owes its phenomenal character not to what it represents but rather to how it represents. What it is like to perceive is bluntly - but exactly - to represent something real that is really at hand. Conscious perception is just direct acquaintance with what's there.

Mental Representation and Mental Presentation: Reflections on some definitions in The Oxford Concise Dictionary

2002 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
Gregory McCulloch
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Cold Water

To the memory of Alan WhiteThe idea of mental representation occupies a rather prominent place in much contemporary discussion, both in philosophy and cognitive science, and not as a particularly controversial idea either. My reflections here, however, are intended to douse much of that discussion with some cold water. I should emphasize at the outset that I have no problems at all with the very idea of mental representation. What I find quite unsatisfactory is the philosophical or doctrinal underpinning of much current theorising about it. Anyway, I shall suggest that talk of mental representation needs at least to be supplemented with, if not actually replaced by, a distinct notion of mental presentation, which cannot be reduced to it. But I start with the notion of an impression.

Perceptual Experience, Conscious Content, and Non-Conceptual Content

2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uriah Kriegel ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
Conceptual Content ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
The Face ◽  
Content Of Experience ◽  
Representational Approach

One of the promising approaches to the problem of perceptual consciousness has been the representational theory, or representationalism. The idea is to reduce the phenomenal character of conscious perceptual experiences to the representational content of those experiences. Most representationalists appeal specifically to non-conceptual content in reducing phenomenal character to representational content. In this paper, I discuss a series of issues involved in this representationalist appeal to non-conceptual content. The overall argument is the following. On the face of it, conscious perceptual experience appears to be experience of a structured world, hence to be at least partly conceptual. To validate the appeal to non-conceptual content, the representationalist must therefore hold that the content of experience is partly conceptual and partly non-conceptual. But how can the conceptual and the non-conceptual combine to form a single content? The only way to make sense of this notion, I argue, leads to a surprising consequence, namely, that the representational approach to perceptual consciousness is a disguised form of functionalism.

scholarly journals Entity Realism About Mental Representations

Erkenntnis ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bence Nanay
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
The Real ◽  
Entity Realism ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

Abstract The concept of mental representation has long been considered to be central concept of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. But not everyone agrees. Neo-behaviorists aim to explain the mind (or some subset thereof) without positing any representations. My aim here is not to assess the merits and demerits of neo-behaviorism, but to take their challenge seriously and ask the question: What justifies the attribution of representations to an agent? Both representationalists and neo-behaviorists tend to take it for granted that the real question about representations is whether we should be realist about the theory of representationalism. This paper is an attempt to shift the emphasis from the debate concerning realism about theories to the one concerning realism about entities. My claim is that regardless of whether we are realist about representational theories of the mind, we have compelling reasons to endorse entity realism about mental representations.

New Game Paradigm for IoT Systems

2017 ◽  
pp. 101-147 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Markov Game ◽  
Inspection Game ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Behavioral Game ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
The Impact

Game theory is a mathematical language for describing strategic interactions, in which each player's choice affects the payoff of other players. The impact of game theory in psychology has been limited by the lack of cognitive mechanisms underlying game theoretic predictions. Behavioral game, inference game, inspection game and Markov game are recent approaches linking game theory to cognitive science by adding cognitive details, theories of limits on iterated thinking, and statistical theories of how players learn and influence others. These new directions include the effects of game descriptions on choice, strategic heuristics, and mental representation. These ideas will help root game theory more deeply in cognitive science and extend the scope of both enterprises.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto G. de Almeida
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Cognitive Architecture ◽  
Language Of Thought ◽  
Conceptual Representation ◽  
Jerry Fodor ◽  
Present Book ◽  
Cognitive Revolution ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Language Of Thought Hypothesis

It is patent that the so-called cognitive revolution of the 1950s and 1960s was the result of ideas emerging at the confluence of psychology, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, and neuroscience—what became known as cognitive science. In the last 60 years or so, Jerry Fodor has been one of the most important exponents of this revolution. He has advanced key ideas on the foundations of cognitive science, in particular on the nature of mental representation and on mental processes seen as computations over symbols. Many of his contributions have been the subject of deep divides and have generated classical controversies. The chapter provides a rough guide to Fodor’s contributions to psycholinguistics, to the modularity of mind, to atomism as a theory of conceptual representation, to the language of thought hypothesis, and to cognitive architecture more broadly—topics that figure prominently in the present book.

Direct Realism and the Extended Mind

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Christopher Maloney
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Direct Realism ◽  
Perceptual Representation ◽  
Cognitive Representation ◽  
Direct Acquaintance ◽  
The World

Representationalism rightly treats perception as a type of cognitive representation. However, it wrongly proposes that perceptual content determines phenomenal character. Rather, it is the form, not the content, of a perceptual representation that constitutes phenomenal character. For direct realism is true: Perception is that form of cognition in which representation and represented are the same. Other forms of cognition recruit representations that are distinct from what they represent. In contrast, perceptual representation extends the mind's reach into the world by casting the very object perceived in the role of a self-referential demonstrative. By fusing representation and represented perception provides direct acquaintance with what is seen exactly as it is seen to be and thus determines phenomenal character.

Intentionalism and Recurrent Cognitive Content

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Christopher Maloney
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Conscious Perception ◽  
Cognitive Content ◽  
The Poor

Conscious perception carries distinctive phenomenal character. Intentionalism would account for this character by appeal to the wealth of information embedded in perceptual content while also cautioning that such opulent content exceeds the poor grasp of other types of conscious cognitive consideration. Intentionalism adds that introspective comparison of the differing phenomenal characters of contrastive perceptual episodes reveals only the episodes’ difference in content. Accordingly, intentionalism concludes that perceptual content alone determines phenomenal character. However, this conclusion fatally fails to accommodate the recalcitrant fact that the content of perceptual experience inferentially permeates reasoning, both theoretical and practical. So, the content of perception cannot be peculiar to that sensuous mode of cognition. Hence, it would seem that intentionalism is false.

Perception

2019 ◽  
pp. 74-112
Author(s):  
Declan Smithies
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Justify Belief ◽  
Perceptual Representation ◽  
Evil Demon ◽  
De Re ◽  
Epistemic Role ◽  
New Evil Demon Problem

Chapter 3 explores the epistemic role of consciousness in perception. Section 3.1 argues that unconscious perceptual representation in blindsight cannot justify beliefs about the external world. Section 3.2 argues that this is because phenomenal consciousness, rather than access consciousness or metacognitive consciousness, is necessary for perceptual representation to justify belief. Section 3.3 argues that perceptual experience has a distinctive kind of phenomenal character—namely, presentational force—that is not only necessary but also sufficient for perception to justify belief. Section 3.4 uses a version of the new evil demon problem to argue that the justifying role of perceptual experience supervenes on its phenomenal character alone. Section 3.5 defends this supervenience thesis against the objection that phenomenal duplicates who perceive distinct objects thereby have justification to believe different de re propositions.

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