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.

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 Variation is information: Analyses of variation across items, participants, time, and methods in metalinguistic judgment data

Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-81
Author(s):  
Véronique Verhagen ◽  
Maria Mos ◽  
Joost Schilperoord ◽  
Ad Backus
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Prepositional Phrases ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
Judgment Data

AbstractIn a usage-based framework, variation is part and parcel of our linguistic experiences, and therefore also of our mental representations of language. In this article, we bring attention to variation as a source of information. Instead of discarding variation as mere noise, we examine what it can reveal about the representation and use of linguistic knowledge. By means of metalinguistic judgment data, we demonstrate how to quantify and interpret four types of variation: variation across items, participants, time, and methods. The data concern familiarity ratings assigned by 91 native speakers of Dutch to 79 Dutch prepositional phrases such as in de tuin ‘in the garden’ and rond de ingang ‘around the entrance’. Participants performed the judgment task twice within a period of one to two weeks, using either a 7-point Likert scale or a Magnitude Estimation scale. We explicate the principles according to which the different types of variation can be considered information about mental representation, and we show how they can be used to test hypotheses regarding linguistic representations.

Measuring Information Content of Freehand Sketches Using a Cognitive Chunk Visualization Protocol

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiradeep Sen ◽  
Quintcey Parrish ◽  
Omar Galil
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Information Content ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
New Method ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Software Program ◽  
Er Model ◽  
Protocol Study

This paper first presents a protocol study and its software realization for visualizing cognitive chunks as they form in real time during freehand sketching of design concepts, and then illustrates a method and metrics for measuring the information content of freehand sketches based on those chunks. A manual protocol for detecting cognitive chunks during sketching was reported earlier. In this research, the said protocol was automated into a software program and validated in a new protocol study, using new participants. The chunks detected by the program, by definitions in cognitive science literature, serve as entities or units of information conceived at once by the designer. The relations between these entities, esp. spatial relations, are then computed using a new method, which represents the sketch as an entity-relation (ER) model. An established protocol for measuring information of ER models is then applied to compute the information content of the sketches.

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.

Furniture, vegetables, weapons

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cliff Goddard
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Selective Review

This chapter deals with the semantic structure of functional collective superordinates, concentrating on three formally distinguishable classes. These can be termed ‘singular only’ (mass), e.g. furniture, cutlery; ‘plural mostly’, e.g. vegetables, cosmetics; and ‘countable’, e.g. weapons, vehicles. The chapter begins with a semantic overview, then moves to a selective review of the psycholinguistic and other cognitive science literature on superordinates. It is argued that much of this literature is flawed by the ‘All Superordinates are Taxonomic’ Fallacy. The study then presents semantic templates and explications for a sample of words from the three different formal classes just mentioned, in the process differentiating a number of semantic subclasses. A novel proposal is that the semantic structure of functional collective superordinates includes one or more hyponymic exemplars. This proposal and other semantic issues are reprised and discussed before some concluding remarks are offered.

The Representativeness Representative

2020 ◽  
pp. 123-128
Author(s):  
Pat Croskerry
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Pattern Matching ◽  
Young Male ◽  
Science Literature

This case, involving a young male, focuses on one of the metaheuristics first described in the cognitive science literature: representativeness. Essentially, it is about pattern matching—one is more inclined to believe a patient is a member of a particular class the more features the patient manifests of that class. If these features are not present, one is less inclined to believe the patient belongs to that class—thus, prototypical presentations of disease may result in representativeness restraint as evidenced in this case.

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