The Explanatory Need for Mental Representations in Cognitive Science

2003 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-439
Author(s):  
Barbara von Eckardt
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representations

scholarly journals Legal Concepts as Mental Representations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Jakubiec
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Cognitive Tools ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Cognitive Aspect ◽  
Fundamental Level ◽  
Legal Concepts ◽  
Mental Constructs

AbstractAlthough much ink has been spilled on different aspects of legal concepts, the approach based on the developments of cognitive science is a still neglected area of study. The “mental” and cognitive aspect of these concepts, i.e., their features as mental constructs and cognitive tools, especially in the light of the developments of the cognitive sciences, is discussed quite rarely. The argument made by this paper is that legal concepts are best understood as mental representations. The piece explains what mental representations are and why this view matters. The explanation of legal concepts, understood as mental representations is one of (at least) three levels of explanation within legal philosophy, but—as will be argued—it is the most fundamental level. This paper analyzes the consequences of such understanding of concepts used in the field of legal philosophy. Special emphasis is put on the current debate on the analogical or amodal nature of concepts.

scholarly journals Representations, Affordances, and Interactive Systems

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Robert Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Data Structures ◽  
Digital Computer ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Interactive Systems ◽  
Algorithmic Composition ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

The history of algorithmic composition using a digital computer has undergone many representations—data structures that encode some aspects of the outside world, or processes and entities within the program itself. Parallel histories in cognitive science and artificial intelligence have (of necessity) confronted their own notions of representations, including the ecological perception view of J.J. Gibson, who claims that mental representations are redundant to the affordances apparent in the world, its objects, and their relations. This review tracks these parallel histories and how the orientations and designs of multimodal interactive systems give rise to their own affordances: the representations and models used expose parameters and controls to a creator that determine how a system can be used and, thus, what it can mean.

scholarly journals How Wide the Divide? – Theorizing ‘Constructions’ in Generative and Usage-Based Frameworks

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew T. Carlson ◽  
Antonio Fábregas ◽  
Michael T. Putnam
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Structure Building ◽  
And Function

What is the nature and function of mental representations in cognitive science, and in human language in particular? How do they come into existence and interact, and how is the information attributed to them stored in and retrieved from the human mind? Some theories treat constructions as primitive entities used for structure-building, central in both production and comprehension, while other theories only admit construction-like entities as devices to map the structure into semantics or to relate them to specific morphophonological exponents. In this positional piece, we seek to elucidate areas of commonality across what have traditionally been divergent approaches to the role of constructions in language. Here we outline a robust specification of the differences in how chunks of structure containing information are treated in the two main approaches, and we seek to offer a path toward a more unified theoretical stance.

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.

Consciousness, explanatory inversion, and cognitive science

1990 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 585-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Searle
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Explanatory Models ◽  
Essential Point ◽  
Functional Aspects ◽  
Neurophysiological Mechanisms ◽  
Aspectual Shape ◽  
The One ◽  
Functional Explanations

AbstractCognitive science typically postulates unconscious mental phenomena, computational or otherwise, to explain cognitive capacities. The mental phenomena in question are supposed to be inaccessible in principle to consciousness. I try to show that this is a mistake, because all unconscious intentionality must be accessible in principle to consciousness; we have no notion of intrinsic intentionality except in terms of its accessibility to consciousness. I call this claim the “Connection Principle.” The argument for it proceeds in six steps. The essential point is that intrinsic intentionality has aspectual shape: Our mental representations represent the world under specific aspects, and these aspectual features are essential to a mental state's being the state that it is.Once we recognize the Connection Principle, we see that it is necessary to perform an inversion on the explanatory models of cognitive science, an inversion analogous to the one evolutionary biology imposes on preDarwinian animistic modes of explanation. In place of the original intentionalistic explanations we have a combination of hardware and functional explanations. This radically alters the structure of explanation, because instead of a mental representation (such as a rule) causing the pattern of behavior it represents (such as rule-governed behavior), there is a neurophysiological cause of a pattern (such as a pattern of behavior), and the pattern plays a functional role in the life of the organism. What we mistakenly thought were descriptions of underlying mental principles in, for example, theories of vision and language were in fact descriptions of functional aspects of systems, which will have to be explained by underlying neurophysiological mechanisms. In such cases, what looks like mentalistic psychology is sometimes better construed as speculative neurophysiology. The moral is that the big mistake in cognitive science is not the overestimation of the computer metaphor (though that is indeed a mistake) but the neglect of consciousness.

Are representations glorified receptors? On use and usage of mental representations

Semiotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paweł Grabarczyk
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Original Theory ◽  
Linguistic Representations

Abstract In the paper I present an application of Jerzy Pelc’s functional semiotics to contemporary cognitive science. I argue that, even though the original theory addressed only linguistic representations, it can be fruitfully applied to mental representations. I show how Pelc’s distinction between use and usage helps us clarify the notion of mental representations and how it makes it immune to skeptical challenges presented in contemporary cognitive science literature.

What are Mental Representations?

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Mental representation is one of the 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 that the concept plays in cognitive science, there is no unanimously accepted characterization of mental representation. Technological and methodological progress in the cognitive sciences has produced numerous computational models of the brain and mind, many of which have introduced mutually incompatible notions of mental representation. This proliferation has led some philosophers to question the metaphysical status and explanatory usefulness of the notion. This book contains state-of-the-art chapters on the topic of mental representation, assembling some of the leading experts in the field and allowing them to engage in meaningful exchanges over some of the most contentious questions. The collection gathers both proponents and critics of the concept of mental representation, allowing them to engage with topics such as the ontological status of representations, the possibility of formulating a general account of mental representation which would fit our best explanatory practices, and the possibility of delivering such an account in fully naturalistic terms.

scholarly journals What does the silent planet tell us? The analysis of selected philosophical themes found in Stanisław Lem’s Solaris

2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 69-80
Author(s):  
Paweł Grabarczyk
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
Main Subject ◽  
Theories Of Mind ◽  
History Of

The paper analyses selected philosophical aspects of Stanisław Lem’s Solaris. I argue that there is an interesting similarity between the history of “Solarist studies” –the fictional scientific discipline depicted by Lem and cognitive science. I show that both disciplines go through similar stages as they try to describe their main subject (the planet Solaris and human consciousness respectively). In the further part of the paper, I focus on two problems identified in cognitive science that can be directly related to the themes found in Solaris: the problem of the detection of intelligence and the problem of the notion of mental representations. I finish the paper by looking at the mysterious guests that stalk the main protagonists and show that they can be understood as heuristic models that are taken into account in the theories of mind uploading.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Joulia Smortchkova ◽  
Krzysztof Dołęga ◽  
Tobias Schlicht
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Cognitive States ◽  
The Individual

In the introduction we overview the main debates about mental representations. In the first part we focus on three questions. First, what explanatory role do mental representations play in different paradigms of cognitive science, such as classicism, connectionism, dynamical theories, and predictive processing? Second, what criteria do we need to introduce mental representations, and how can we distinguish between non-representational and representational cognitive states? And finally, how can intentionality be naturalized and what are the main challenges for naturalistic theories of intentionality? In the second part of the introduction, we present the individual chapters in the volume, and situate them within the context of broader debates.

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