Biology and Philosophy 34 (3):36 (2019)
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Abstract |
Mainstream teleosemantics is the view that mental representation should be understood in terms of biological functions, which, in turn, should be understood in terms of selection processes. One of the traditional criticisms of teleosemantics is the problem of novel contents: how can teleosemantics explain our ability to represent properties that are evolutionarily novel? In response, some have argued that by generalizing the notion of a selection process to include phenomena such as operant conditioning, and the neural selection that underlies it, we can resolve this problem. Here, we do four things: we develop this suggestion in a rigorous way through a simple example, we draw on recent neurobiological research to support its empirical plausibility, we defend the move from a host of objections in the literature, and we sketch how the picture can be extended to help us think about more complex “conceptual” representations and not just perceptual ones.
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Keywords | Teleosemantics biological functions selected effects theory novel representations neural selection |
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DOI | 10.1007/s10539-019-9689-8 |
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References found in this work BETA
The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus.Elliott Sober - 1984 - University of Chicago Press.
A Mark of the Mental: A Defence of Informational Teleosemantics.Karen Neander - 2017 - Cambridge, USA: MIT Press.
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Citations of this work BETA
Deflating the Functional Turn in Conceptual Engineering.Jared Riggs - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):11555-11586.
Biological Functions and Natural Selection: A Reappraisal.Marc Artiga - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (2):1-22.
Long-Arm Functional Individuation of Computation.Nir Fresco - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):13993-14016.
Review of Efficient Cognition: The Evolution of Representational Decision Making. [REVIEW]Justin Garson - 2019 - Biology and Philosophy 34 (3):38.
Cognition Without Neural Representation: Dynamics of a Complex System.Inês Hipólito - 2022 - Frontiers in Psychology 12.
View all 11 citations / Add more citations
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