Cognitive Turn and Linguistic Turn

1998 ◽  
pp. 37-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Michel Roy
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Double Reduction ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Representational System ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
The Mind

My first goal is to question a received view about the development of Analytical Philosophy. According to this received view Analytical Philosophy is born out of a Linguistic Turn establishing the study of language as the foundation of the discipline; this primacy of language is then overthrown by the return of the study of mind as philosophia prima through a second Cognitive Turn taken in the mid-sixties. My contention is that this picture is a gross oversimplification and that the Cognitive Turn should better be seen as an extension of the Linguistic one. Indeed, if the Cognitive Turn gives explicit logical priority to the study of mind over the study of language, one of its central features is to see the mind as a representational system offering no substantial difference with a linguistic one. However, no justification is offered for the fundamental assimilation of the nature of a mental representation with that of a linguistic symbol supporting this picture of the mind, although the idea that a system of mental representations is identical in structure with a system of linguistic symbols has been argued over and over. I try to demonstrate this point through a close critical examination of Fodor's paradigmatic notion of 'double reduction.' My second claim is that the widespread contemporary assimilation of a mental representation with a symbol of a linguistic kind is no more than a prejudice. Finally I indicate that this prejudice cannot survive a rigorous critical examination.

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.

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.

Passione e immaginazione in Lucrezio: il caso dell’inganno onirico

Elenchos ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-279
Author(s):  
Francesca G. Masi
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
Emotional Aspect ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Ethical Point ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Epistemological Point

Abstract Lucretius devotes some sections of his De rerum natura to the treatment of dreams. He is particularly interested in the phenomenon of dream deception, namely the belief that the dreamt object is the object itself. This psychological phenomenon has some both unwanted and philosophically interesting implications. Firstly, from an ethical point of view, it can stimulate uncontrolled worries and feelings in the dreamer that undermine his/her mental tranquility and health. Secondly, from a physiological perspective, it seems to reveal a failure in the mechanism undergoing the formation of mental representation. Thirdly, from the epistemological point of view, it seems to compromise the veracity of mental representations. This paper aims to explain how Lucretius dealt with this phenomenon. In particular, it will show how he succeeded, on the one hand, to explain the nature and the origin of dream deception and of its emotional aspect, and, on the other hand, to preserve the informative contents of dreams and their correspondence to reality. For this purpose the present essay will address the following issues: (1) which is the condition of the soul and of the mind while sleeping; (2) what kind of mental activity is dreaming; (3) which is the nature and the origin of the simulacra responsible for dreams; (4) which is the contents of dreams and how dream deception comes about; (5) and finally why and how dream deception emotionally effects the dreamer.

Précis ofThe Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality

2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 439-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth M. J. Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Causal Relation ◽  
Temporal Sequence ◽  
Recent Event ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rational Thought ◽  
Fault Lines ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Central Claim

AbstractThe human imagination remains one of the last uncharted terrains of the mind. People often imagine how events might have turned out “if only” something had been different. The “fault lines” of reality, those aspects more readily changed, indicate that counterfactual thoughts are guided by the same principles as rational thoughts. In the past, rationality and imagination have been viewed as opposites. But research has shown that rational thought is more imaginative than cognitive scientists had supposed. InThe Rational Imagination,I argue that imaginative thought is more rational than scientists have imagined. People exhibit remarkable similarities in the sorts of things they change in their mental representation of reality when they imagine how the facts could have turned out differently. For example, they tend to imagine alternatives to actions rather than inactions, events within their control rather than those beyond their control, and socially unacceptable events rather than acceptable ones. Their thoughts about how an event might have turned out differently lead them to judge that a strong causal relation exists between an antecedent event and the outcome, and their thoughts about how an event might have turned out the same lead them to judge that a weaker causal relation exists. In a simple temporal sequence, people tend to imagine alternatives to the most recent event. The central claim in the book is that counterfactual thoughts are organised along the same principles as rational thought. The idea that the counterfactual imagination is rational depends on three steps: (1) humans are capable of rational thought; (2) they make inferences by thinking about possibilities; and (3) their counterfactual thoughts rely on thinking about possibilities, just as rational thoughts do. The sorts of possibilities that people envisage explain the mutability of certain aspects of mental representations and the immutability of other aspects.

Mental representation of economic crisis in Italian and Swiss samples 1The authors would like to thank Maurizio Mistri for his help in the construction of items. This research was supported by a grant from the Italian Murst (ex 40%).

2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Savadori ◽  
Eraldo Nicotra ◽  
Rino Rumiati ◽  
Roberto Tamborini
Keyword(s):  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
National Context ◽  
Cluster Procedure ◽  
Total N ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
Important Symptom

The content and structure of mental representation of economic crises were studied and the flexibility of the structure in different social contexts was tested. Italian and Swiss samples (Total N = 98) were compared with respect to their judgments as to how a series of concrete examples of events representing abstract indicators were relevant symptoms of economic crisis. Mental representations were derived using a cluster procedure. Results showed that the relevance of the indicators varied as a function of national context. The growth of unemployment was judged to be by far the most important symptom of an economic crisis but the Swiss sample judged bankruptcies as more symptomatic than Italians who considered inflation, raw material prices and external accounts to be more relevant. A different clustering structure was found for the two samples: the locations of unemployment and gross domestic production indicators were the main differences in representations.

scholarly journals Analysing the Nature of Meaning in Modal Auxiliary Use in Standard Six English in Nakuru County, Kenya

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Njuguna Jane Ngoiri
Keyword(s):  
Primary Schools ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
School Level ◽  
Appropriate Use ◽  
Written Composition ◽  
Linguistic Feature ◽  
Auxiliary Verbs ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
The Mind

The objective of the study was to describe appropriateness of modal auxiliary verbs in class six written English. The study focused on the use of English modal auxiliary verbs by class six pupils from diverse language backgrounds in Kenyan primary schools. Modal auxiliary verbs are difficult as their use entails syntactic and semantic appropriateness. As such, most pupils often find themselves unable to use this complex linguistic feature in written English. In spite of this, there is no known documentation that focuses on modal auxiliary verbs among children. It is this gap that the current study sought to fill. Forty pupils were randomly selected from four primary schools in Nakuru County. Data was elicited by means of written composition and grammar exercises. Further, it was analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively and presented in the form of graphs and tables. The Representational Theory of The Mind was used to explain the research findings. The findings revealed that modal auxiliary verbs are indeed difficult and their appropriate use present difficulties in pupils' written work. It was therefore recommended that learning of English should be meaningful. In order to enrich pupil's mental representations pupils should be exposed to a linguistically rich environment to enhance acquisition and learning. It is hoped that these findings will be of benefit to school stakeholders in ensuring that appropriate learning environment is created for pupils. Additionally, it could be a reference for researchers interested in language use at the school level.

scholarly journals Redundancy and reducibility in the formats of spatial representations

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sami Ryan Yousif
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representations ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
Spatial Behavior ◽  
Polar Coordinates ◽  
Levels Of Analysis ◽  
Spatial Representations ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Mind

Mental representations are the essence of cognition. Yet, to understand how the mind works, we must understand not just the content of mental representations (i.e., what information is stored), but also the format of those representations (i.e., how that information is stored). But what does it mean for representations to be formatted? How many formats are there? Is it possible that the mind represents some pieces of information in multiple formats at once? To address these questions, I discuss a ‘case study’ of representational format: the representation of spatial location. I review work (a) across species and across development, (b) across spatial scales, and (c) across levels of analysis (e.g., high-level cognitive format vs. low-level neural format). Along the way, I discuss the possibility that the same information may be organized in multiple formats simultaneously (e.g., that locations may be represented in both Cartesian and polar coordinates). Ultimately, I argue that seemingly ‘redundant’ formats may support the flexible spatial behavior observed in humans, and that we should approach the study of all mental representations with this possibility in mind.

scholarly journals On the Return to Metaphysics in Analytical Philosophy of Mind

2018 ◽  
pp. 130-142
Author(s):  
G. A. Zolotkov
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind

The article examines the change of theoretical framework in analytic philosophy of mind. It is well known fact that nowadays philosophical problems of mind are frequently seen as incredibly difficult. It is noteworthy that the first programs of analytical philosophy of mind (that is, logical positivism and philosophy of ordinary language) were skeptical about difficulty of that realm of problems. One of the most notable features of both those programs was the strong antimetaphysical stance, those programs considered philosophy of mind unproblematic in its nature. However, the consequent evolution of philosophy of mind shows evaporating of that stance and gradual recovery of the more sympathetic view toward the mind problematic. Thus, there were two main frameworks in analytical philosophy of mind: 1) the framework of logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy dominated in the 1930s and the 1940s; 2) the framework that dominated since the 1950s and was featured by the critique of the first framework. Thus, the history of analytical philosophy of mind moves between two highly opposite understandings of the mind problematic. The article aims to found the causes of that move in the ideas of C. Hempel and G. Ryle, who were the most notable philosophers of mind in the 1930s and the 1940s.

scholarly journals Intentionality: A philosophical-cognitive approach to mental representations

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (39) ◽  
pp. 819
Author(s):  
Cleverson Leite Bastos ◽  
Tomas Rodolfo Drunkenmolle
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Hard Core ◽  
Explanatory Models ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Definition Of

This article critically analyses the notion of intentionality from several philosophical cognitive points of view. The authors argue that the notion of mental representation in the wider sense and intentionality in the narrower sense remains elusive despite accommodated paradoxes, improved semantic precision and more sophisticated strategies in dealing with intentionality. We will argue that different approaches to intentionality appear to be coherent in their inferences. However, most of them become contradictory and mutually exclusive when juxtaposed and applied to borderline questions. While the explanatory value of both philosophy of mind as well as cognitive psychology should not be underestimated, we must note that not even hard-core neuroscience has been able to pin point what is going on in our minds, let alone come up with a clear cut explanation how it works or a definition of what thought really is. To date, however, intentionality is the best of all explanatory models regarding mental representations.

Mental representations of multimodal constructions

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masaru Kanetani
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representations ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Actual Use ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Kinetic Features ◽  
Bodily Movements

Abstract Japanese mimetics, and its psychomimes (e.g. gakkuri ‘disappointed’), in particular, are usually accompanied in speech with bodily movements, including gestures and postures. I have already argued that certain patterns in co-speech gestures and postures that accompanied psychomimes showed a relatively high rate of concord across speakers (Kanetani 2019). Taking the co-speech bodily movements as metonymic representations of embodied metaphors of emotion, this paper suggests that these kinetic features may be stored as part of the speaker’s knowledge of the words and argue that Japanese psychomimes are multimodal lexical constructions. I also show how such multimodal constructions are represented in the mind and how they are expressed in actual use. In particular, I describe and examine two-dimensional form-meaning pairings (based on Kita 1997) and show that one of the two dimensions may be selectively expressed in a given context.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document