A view that has been gaining prevalence over the past decade is that the human conceptual system is malleable, dynamic, context‐dependent, and task‐dependent, that is, flexible. Within the flexible conceptual representation framework, conceptual representations are constructed ad hoc, forming a different, idiosyncratic instantiation upon each occurrence. In this review, we scrutinize the neurocognitive literature to better understand the nature of this flexibility. First, we identify some key characteristics of these representations. Next, we consider how these flexible representations (...) are constructed by addressing some of the open questions in this framework: We review the age‐old question of how to reconcile flexibility with the apparent need for shareable stable definitions to anchor meaning and come to mutual understanding, as well as some newer questions we find critical, namely, the nature of relations among flexible representations, the role of feature saliency in activation, and the viability of all‐or‐none feature activations. We suggest replacing the debate about the existence of a definitional stable core that is obligatorily activated with a question of the degree and probability of activation of the information constituting a conceptual representation. We rely on published works to suggest that (1) prior featural salience matters, (2) feature activation may be graded, and (3) Bayesian updating of prior information according to current demands offers a viable account of how flexible representations are constructed. This proposal provides a theoretical mechanism for incorporating a changing momentary context into a constructed representation, while still preserving some of the concept's constituent meaning. (shrink)

This paper describes a belief understanding system which, taking an interview-text as its input, builds a conceptual representation of a respondent's belief system concerning a given object. Central to the understanding process is the identification of the connections between the object and the believer's goals. A general scheme governing the inference-processes with respect to these object-goal relationships is presented. It is suggested that the implementation of BUS could proceed from Schank's et al Integrated Partial Parsing program. The (...) system's behavior is illustrated by examining the processing of a fragment of an interview-text. Some implications for the study of belief systems are discussed. (shrink)

Consciousness is familiar to us first hand, yet difficult to understand. This book concerns six basic concepts of consciousness exercised in ordinary English. The first is the interpersonal meaning and requires at least two people involved in relation to one another. The second is a personal meaning, having to do with one's own perspective on the kind of person one is and the life one is leading. The third meaning has reference simply to one being occurrently aware of something or (...) as though of something. The fourth narrows the preceding sense to one having direct occurrent awareness of happenings in one's own experiential stream. The fifth is the unitive meaning of consciousness and has reference to those portions of one's stream that one self-appropriates to make up one's conscious being. The last is the general-state meaning and picks out the general operating mode in which we most often function. (shrink)

Conceptual understanding of representations and fluency in using representations are important aspects of expertise. However, little is known about how these competencies interact: does representational understanding facilitate learning of fluency, or does fluency enhance learning of representational understanding? We analyze log data obtained from an experiment that investigates the effects of intelligent tutoring systems support for understanding and fluency in connection-making between fractions representations. The experiment shows that instructional support for both representational (...) understanding and fluency are needed for students to benefit from the ITS. In analyzing the ITS log data, we contrast the understanding-first hypothesis and the fluency-first hypothesis, testing whether errors made during the learning phase mediate the effect of experimental condition. Finding that a simple statistical model does not the fit data, we searched over all plausible causal path analysis models. Our results support the understanding-first hypothesis but not the fluency-first hypothesis. (shrink)

Many views of utterance comprehension agree that understanding an utterance involves knowing, believing, perceiving, or, anyhow, mentally representing the utterance to mean such-and-such. They include cognitivist as well as many perceptualist views; I give them the generic label ‘representationalist’. Representationalist views have been criticized for placing an undue metasemantic demand on utterance comprehension, viz. that speakers be able to represent meaning as meaning. Critics have adverted to young speakers, say about the age of three, who do comprehend many utterances (...) but may be rather limited in their abilities to think about meaning as such, to cast doubt on this demand. This paper motivates representationalism, examines what the balance of developmental evidence and arguments shows, and identifies options for a representationalist response. Though there is some evidence that three-year-olds have limited abilities to think about meaning as such, they may yet turn out to have a concept of meaning, or at least some proto-semantic concept. Moreover, even if they lack any such concept, there is, I propose, a way of developing representationalism, drawing inspiration from Davidson’s paratactic view of indirect speech reports, on which meaning can be non-conceptually represented. Independently of developmental considerations, this paratactic-style proposal is of interest to friends of a perceptualist view of comprehension. (shrink)

There is evidence in Kant of the idea that concepts of particular numbers, such as the number 5, are derived from the representation of units, and in particular pure units, that is, units that are qualitatively indistinguishable. Frege, in contrast, rejects any attempt to derive concepts of number from the representation of units. In the Foundations of Arithmetic, he softens up his reader for his groundbreaking and unintuitive analysis of number by attacking alternative views, and he devotes the majority of (...) this attack to the units view, with particular attention to pure units. Since Frege, the units view has been all but abandoned. Nevertheless, the idea that concepts of number are derived from the representation of units has a long history, beginning with the ancient Greeks, and was prevalent among Frege's contemporaries. I am not interested in resurrecting the units view or in righting wrongs in Frege's criticisms of his contemporaries. Rather, I am interested in the program of deriving concepts of number from pure units and its history from Kant to Frege. An examination of that history helps us understand the units view in a way that Frege's criticisms do not, and in the process uncovers important features of both Kant's and Frege's views. I will argue that, although they had deep differences, Kant and Frege share assumptions about what such a view would require and about the limits of conceptual representation. I will also argue that they would have rejected the accounts given by some of Frege's contemporaries for the same reasons. Despite these agreements, however, there is evidence that Kant thinks that space and time play a role in overcoming the limitations of conceptual representation, while Frege argues that they do not. (shrink)

This paper argues that various phenomenological considerations support a non-representational causal account of visual experience. This position claims that visual experiences serve as a non-representational causally efficacious medium for the production of beliefs concerning the external world. The arguments are centered on defending a non-representational causal account’s understanding of the cognitive significance of visual experience. Among other things, such an account can easily explain the inextricable role that background beliefs and conceptual capacities play in perceptually-based (...) external world belief-formation processes, the fact that visual mental states constrain beliefs because of their presentational phenomenology, and the phenomenon known as the transparency of visual experience. (shrink)

I argue that embodied understanding and conceptual-representational understanding interact through schematic structure. I demonstrate that common conceptions of these two kinds of understanding, such as developed by Wheeler (2005, 2008) and Dreyfus (2007a, b, 2013), entail a separation between them that gives rise to significant problems. Notably, it becomes unclear how they could interact; a problem that has been pointed out by Dreyfus (2007a, b, 2013) and McDowell (2007) in particular. I propose a Kantian strategy (...) to close the gap between them. I argue that embodied and conceptual-representational understanding are governed by schemata. Since they are governed by schemata, they can interact through a structure that they have in common. Finally, I spell out two different ways to conceive of the schematic interaction between them—a close, grounding relationship and a looser relationship that allows for a minimal interaction, but preserves the autonomy of both forms of understanding. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Some stage setting on the value of understanding words and plans Agreement and shared understandings Davidson's challenge to representation Are we confusing semantics and pragmatics? Why we need possible worlds Voyages through logical space How to finesse the issue in analytic ontology The need for centered worlds Getting information from sentences with centered content Saying things a new now that centering is in the story Where to now?

Presented in this book is a theory of concept formation and understanding that does not make use of a notion of an innate mental language as a means of concept representation. Instead, experimental concepts are treated semantically as stabilising structuring of growing sets of data, which are sets of experienced satisfaction situations for expressions, and theoretical concepts are based on coherent sets of general sentences held true. There are two kinds of structures to be established: general concepts by means (...) of similarity sets under perspectives and historical concepts. This gives rise to a theory of understanding new situations and expressions by integrating new data into established sets of data salva stability, or by extending the conceptual structure in a metaphorical or metonymical way. The theory provides a way to understand what identity between propositional attitudes amounts to, especially how people can have more or less the same belief. (shrink)

Philosophers often hold that the aim of conceptual analysis is to discover the representational content of a given concept such as freewill, belief, or law. In From Metaphysics to Ethics and other recent work, Frank Jackson has developed a theory of conceptual analysis that is one of the most advanced systematizations of this widespread idea. I argue that this influential way of characterizing conceptual analysis is too narrow. I argue that it is possible that an expressivist (...) account could turn out to be correct as a genuine conceptual analysis of a genuine concept. I claim that since an expressivist analysis does not aim to discover the representational content of a given concept—and, indeed, might itself be based on the idea that the concept in question is not even representational in nature—the possibility of expressivist conceptual analysis shows that Jackson’s theory of conceptual analysis is incomplete as it currently stands. I conclude that Jackson needs to either shift his basic understanding of the nature of conceptual analysis or commit to a particular normative reinterpretation of his project. (shrink)

We represent the world in a variety of ways: through percepts, concepts, propositional attitudes, words, numerals, recordings, musical scores, photographs, diagrams, mimetic paintings, etc. Some of these representations are mental. It is customary for philosophers to distinguish two main kinds of mental representations: perceptual representation (e.g., vision, auditory, tactile) and conceptual representation. This essay presupposes a version of this dichotomy and explores the way in which a further kind of representation – procedural representation – represents. It is argued that, (...) in some important respects, procedural representations represent differently from both purely conceptual representations and purely perceptual representations. Although procedural representations, just like conceptual and perceptual representations, involve modes of presentation, their modes of presentation are distinctively practical, in a sense which I will clarify. It is argued that an understanding of this sort of practical representation has important consequences for the debate on the nature of know-how. (shrink)

According to conceptual metaphor theory, there are two basic metaphorical models for conceptualising time in terms of space: the ego-moving model maps our movement through space onto our imagined movement through time, while the time-moving model represents time as an entity moving through spatial locations, the ego being just a passive observer. The aim of this article is to investigate how time is conceptualized in film where ego, movement, time and space also play basic roles. I compare the two (...) linguistic models to Gilles Deleuze’s conceptualization of filmic time: the movement-image and the time-image. While the movement-image and the moving-ego metaphor directly map spatial structures onto the domain of time, the time-image and the moving-time metaphor correlate only in their basic structures and involve different levels of conceptual integrations and conversions. Due to film techniques such as a mobile camera, montage and image manipulation, the time-image seems to transcend the constraints of natural perception and maps onto mental rather than external space, thus giving rise to a new reverse metaphor where space acquires characteristics of the time domain. (shrink)

In this essay, I specify types of representational content that can be attributed to Kant’s account of representation. The more specific aim is to examine which of these types of content can be regarded as possible without the application of concepts. In order to answer the question, I proceed as follows. First, I show how intuition (in Kant’s sense) can be seen as providing indexical content independently of empirical concepts. Second, I show in what sense the generation of spatial (...) content can be regarded as non-categorial. A key distinction is that a perceptual examination of an object can be understood as thoroughly sensible and particular, whereas a conceptual determination always grasps the object via its generalisable features. Third, I propose that the faculties of sensibility and understanding are not only separable in principle, but that their contributions remain in a certain sense separate in actual cognition as well. This is to say that a conceptual determination of an object does not entail that the object ceases to be non-conceptually available to the perceiver, which further suggests the autonomy of sensibility and its perceptual content. Finally, I raise difficulties in attributing non-conceptual representational content to Kant’s judgment-centered stance on representation and experience, only to emphasise how these difficulties easily lead to a misappreciation of Kant’s fundamental distinction between sensibility and understanding and their unique cognitive contributions. (shrink)

Visual representations (photographs, diagrams, etc.) play crucial roles in scientific processes. They help, for example, to communicate research results and hypotheses to scientific peers as well as to the lay audience. In genuine research activities they are used as evidence or as surrogates for research objects which are otherwise cognitively inaccessible. Despite their important functional roles in scientific practices, philosophers of science have more or less neglected visual representations in their analyses of epistemic methods and tools of reasoning in science. (...) This book is meant to fill this gap. It presents a detailed investigation into central conceptual issues and into the epistemology of visual representations in science. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the enterprise of evaluating and improving our representational devices. But how should we conduct this enterprise? One increasingly popular answer to this question proposes that conceptual engineering should proceed in terms of the functions of our representational devices. In this paper, we argue that the best way of understanding this suggestion is in terms of normative functions, where normative functions of concepts are, roughly, things that they allow us to do that matter (...) normatively (for example, things in virtue of which we have normative reasons to have these concepts). Not only does this introduce a novel view about functions to the literature. This proposal also fits more naturally than the alternatives with conceptual engineering as a normative enterprise, and it allows functions to play all of the explanatory roles assigned to them in the conceptual engineering literature. Our discussion of the explanatory advantages of normative functions also advances the understanding of the ways in which concepts can be authoritative, what this means for conceptual engineering, and highlights the importance of political philosophy for thinking about conceptual engineering in practice. Furthermore, the paper explicates what kind of role considerations about function can and should actually play in conceptual engineering. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to an ongoing and controversial debate about non-conceptuality in Kantian aesthetics. It is a replica on a paper of Dietmar Heidemann in Con-Textos Kantianos N.° 12, to which I do consent, but I’d like to give some additional comments on a specific issue: I show in this paper that the problem about whether or not the understanding contributes to aesthetic judgment can be elucidated by means of a revaluation of the imagination’s capacity of formal (...) representation and the subsuming activity of the power of reflective judgment. I argue that the understanding is considered by the power of reflective judgment merely in his lawfulness in order to find a universal under which the imagination’s particular, the formal representation of the beautiful shape, can be subsumed. (shrink)

Understanding scientific modelling can be divided into two sub-projects: analysing what model-systems are, and understanding how they are used to represent something beyond themselves. The first is a prerequisite for the second: we can only start analysing how representation works once we understand the intrinsic character of the vehicle that does the representing. Coming to terms with this issue is the project of the first half of this chapter. My central contention is that models are akin to places (...) and characters of literary fictions, and that therefore theories of fiction play an essential role in explaining the nature of model-systems. This sets the agenda. Section 2 provides a statement of this view, which I label the fiction view of model-systems, and argues for its prima facie plausibility. Section 3 presents a defence of this view against its main rival, the structuralist conception of models. In Section 4 I develop an account of model-systems as imagined objects on the basis of the so-called pretence theory of fiction. This theory needs to be discussed in great detail for two reasons. First, developing an acceptable account of imagined objects is mandatory to make the fiction view acceptable, and I will show that the pretence theory has the resources to achieve this goal. Second, the term ‘representation’ is ambiguous; in fact, there are two very different relations that are commonly called ‘representation’ and a conflation between the two is the root of some of the problems that beset scientific representation. Pretence theory provides us with the conceptual resources to articulate these two different forms of representation, which I call p-representation and t-representation respectively. Putting these elements together provides us with a coherent overall picture of scientific modelling, which I develop in Section 5. (shrink)

Attention to scientific practice offers a novel response to philosophical queries about how conceptual understanding is empirically accountable. The locus of the issue is thereby shifted, from perceptual experience to experimental and fieldwork interactions. More important, conceptual articulation is shown to be not merely ?spontaneous? and intralinguistic, but instead involves a establishing a systematic domain of experimental operations. The importance of experimental practice for conceptual understanding is especially clearly illustrated by cases in which entire domains (...) of scientific investigation were first made accessible to articulated conceptual understanding. We thereby see more clearly how experimental systems themselves, and not merely the theories and models they make possible, have an intentional directedness and ?representational? import. (shrink)

There is substantial evidence that traditional instructional methods have not been successful in helping students to restructure their commonsense conceptions and learn the conceptual structures of scientific theories. This paper argues that the nature of the changes and the kinds of reasoning required in a major conceptual restructuring of a representation of a domain are fundamentally the same in the discovery and in the learning processes. Understanding conceptual change as it occurs in science and in learning (...) science will require the development of a common cognitive model of conceptual change. The historical construction of an inertial representation of motion is examined and the potential instructional implications of the case are explored. (shrink)

This is the text of the Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthopology 1999 (To appear in the Proceedings of the British Academy). In it, I argue that to approach society and culture in a naturalistic way, the domain of the social sciences must be reconceptualised by recognising only entities and processes of which we have a naturalistic understanding. These are mental representations and public productions, the processes that causally link them, the causal chains that bond these links, and the complex (...) webs of such causal chains that criss-cross human populations over time and space. Such causal chains may distribute and stabilise representations and productions throughout a human population, thereby generating culture. The lecture introduces several conceptual tools useful for such a naturalistic approach, and illustrates their use with the case study of ritual activity in a Southern Ethiopian household. (shrink)

The study “Psychoanalysis—its image and its public” intimates that common sense is increasingly informed by science. But common sense asserts its autonomy and, in turn, may affect the trajectory of science. This is a process that leads to many differentiations—in common sense, in scientific innovation and in political and regulatory structures. Bauer and Gaskell's toblerone model of triangles of mediation provided a distillation of their reading of “La Psychanalyse.” Here it was argued that representations are multi-modal phenomena necessitating the use (...) of multiple methodologies .In this paper we briefly summarise these arguments and elaborate ways in which social representation theory can be considered a progressive research programme. “Progressive” because as the theory has developed it has extended the range and depth of its conceptual basis; it provides a new synthesis for the social scientific understanding of the phenomena of common sense and of representation; it acts as an antidote to the reductionism of public opinion and, finally, it is a stimulus to depart from disciplinary silos. However, there remain unresolved issues: how to segment the relevant social milieus and how to close the feedback loop from common sense to science? (shrink)

The present study aims at supporting the argument that emotions, unlike a physicalistic interpretation, cannot be reduced to the conceptual elements used in the communication or exteriorization process. The subject is based on two hypotheses: the first is that the relation between the issuance of an emotive content (emotion) and a possible mental representation presents a linguistic nature. In general terms, this means that an emotion, or the psychological content associated with it is based on the plot of other (...) concepts. The second hypothesis is that it is not possible to refer to emotions without considering cognition from a semantic problem and, consequently, in the refusal of a realistic or anti-realistic posture in relation to the way the phenomena - internal and/or external to our consciousness - are referred. Thus, a conceptual model to understand emotions would be essential to settle the problem associated with ordinary language, realism, and the computational tendencies that comprehend the mental content in strictly syntactic terms. (shrink)

Almost any mainstream reading about the nature of Kant's 'content of cognition' in both non-conceptualist and conceptualist camps agree that 'singular representations' (sensible intuitions) are, at least in some weak sense, objectdependent because they supervene on a manifold of sensations that are given through the disposition of our sensibility and parallel thus the real and physical components of the world (cf. McDowell 1996, Allison 1983, Ginsborg 2008, Allais 2009). The relevant class of sensible intuitions should refer, as they argue, only (...) to empirical and not to pure ones. Kant's transcendental argument creates, however, no implications as to the metaphysics of properties. Neither does he consider the world to be consisted of sensory content simpliciter nor do sensations refer to objects per se. Instead, he provides an all-encompassing pattern for sensible intuitions of any kind through the representation of space as a cognitive map in that an object can be represented if spatial properties are attributed to it. Sensible intuitions of any kind could be referring, that is to say, and can be conceptualized if they are spatial. Consequently and unlike the contemporary philosophy of perception, Kant contrasts sensible intuitions and pure concepts of understanding 'altogether' against one single experience, from which the justification of objects should proceed. In other words, what stands at the core of exposing the content of cognition concerns not the phenomenological status and actuality of sensible intuitions in the sense of 'bits of experiential intake', but the logical structure of possibility of sensible intuitions of any (external or internal) causal background. The aim of this discussion is to clarify that Kant's transcendental idealism mutatis mutandis reviews multiple and diverse kinds of 'data of mind' and cognition in the background, without reducing the content of cognition to metaphysically determined referents as 'matters of fact' and to pure concepts of understanding. Sensible intuitions in the sense of content of cognition vary, most importantly, from unstructured and unjustifiable data of mind including (physical) contents of perception and stuff of mind and also from reflective and intellectual intuitions that are the cognates of the structured complex singular representations. Put it in simple terms, Kant advocates the thesis that 'facts' are objects for concepts if they are already well-founded trough the cognitive map of the representation of space. -/- . (shrink)

Our growing understanding of human mind and cognition and the development of neurotechnology has triggered debate around cognitive enhancement in neuroethics. The dissertation examines the normative issues of memory enhancement, and focuses on two issues: the distinction between memory treatment and enhancement; and how the issue of authenticity concerns memory interventions, including memory treatments and enhancements. rnThe first part consists of a conceptual analysis of the concepts required for normative considerations. First, the representational nature and the function (...) of memory are discussed. Memory is regarded as a special form of self-representation resulting from a constructive processes. Next, the concepts of selfhood, personhood, and identity are examined and a conceptual tool—the autobiographical self-model —is introduced. An ASM is a collection of mental representations of the system’s relations with its past and potential future states. Third, the debate between objectivist and constructivist views of health are considered. I argue for a phenomenological account of health, which is based on the primacy of illness and negative utilitarianism.rnThe second part presents a synthesis of the relevant normative issues based on the conceptual tools developed. I argue that memory enhancement can be distinguished from memory treatment using a demarcation regarding the existence of memory-related suffering. That is, memory enhancements are, under standard circumstances and without any unwilling suffering or potential suffering resulting from the alteration of memory functions, interventions that aim to manipulate memory function based on the self-interests of the individual. I then consider the issue of authenticity, namely whether memory intervention or enhancement endangers “one’s true self”. By analyzing two conceptions of authenticity—authenticity as self-discovery and authenticity as self-creation, I propose that authenticity should be understood in terms of the satisfaction of the functional constraints of an ASM—synchronic coherence, diachronic coherence, and global veridicality. This framework provides clearer criteria for considering the relevant concerns and allows us to examine the moral values of authenticity. rn. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 31, Issue 1, pp 48 - 74 According to Hobbes, a commonwealth can only occur when the natural multitude of men are made one thanks to a covenantal device. The artificial unity of the political community can be seen as strengthened by the use of concepts that reflect some natural unity, such as “body” or “person”. Both notions can indeed be found in Hobbes’s political treatises, but the degree of importance attached to them varies greatly. The key (...) to this evolution is to be found in _De cive_, where Hobbes explicitly dismisses the notion of a body politic and substitutes the concept of person for it. This paper examines the significance of this conceptual change by following its trajectory from _Elements of Law_ to _Leviathan_ and discussing its implications for Hobbes’s understanding of civil unity. (shrink)

Our aim in this article is to show how the theory of conceptual spaces can be useful in describing diachronic changes to conceptual frameworks, and thus useful in understanding conceptual change in the empirical sciences. We also compare the conceptual space approach to Moulines’s typology of intertheoretical relations in the structuralist tradition. Unlike structuralist reconstructions, those based on conceptual spaces yield a natural way of modeling the changes of a conceptual framework, including noncumulative (...) changes, by tracing the changes to the dimensions that reconstitute a conceptual framework. As a consequence, the incommensurability of empirical theories need not be viewed as a matter of conceptual representation. (shrink)

This authored book provides an innovative and systematic account of key debates within the social psychology of knowledge, using the theory of social representations as a guide. This account is then elaborated and integrated into a conceptually coherent theoretical framework to further the social psychological dimensions of the relationship between representations, knowledge and context. Jovchelovitch highlights the social psychological components of the process of knowledge formation and their impact in the constitution of communities, culture and public spheres. Whilst this exploration (...) contributes to an understanding of the genesis, logic and function of knowledge in social life, it also shows that context is essential to understanding the dynamics of representation and emphasises the fundamental unity between the two. This book offers a significant and stimulating contribution to the field of social representations and will make essential reading for those wanting to follow this debate at thecutting edge of social, cultural and developmental psychology as well as sociology, anthropology and cultural studies. (shrink)

One of the core themes of Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel Solaris is the encounter with radical otherness. The ocean planet being studied by scientists form earth is usually interpreted as a representation of radical otherness, which eludes human efforts of understanding. In this paper we argue that in Solaris Lem attempts to show not merely that the ocean is unknowable, but that the unknowability is itself impossible to adequately conceptualise and represent. However, we further argue that this impossibility is (...) the subject of an experience in which the presence of otherness is made available. We focus on the images of chaos which Kelvin discovers on Solaris to show that Lem presents the epistemic situation of the main protagonist as radically unstable. Contrary to most interpretations, however, we argue that the discursive narration in the novel engages with the presence of otherness only superficially. Rather, we suggest that the encounter with otherness is shown as something that manifests itself in bodily emotions, and is, therefore, only possible to convey non-discursively. The fear and dread inspired by the vastness and strangeness of the ocean are always presented by appeal to sensuality and bodily experience. These emotive reactions to encounters with otherness subvert its conceptual representations. We suggest that in this way Lem attempts to convey what cannot be discursively described, or even depicted. He presents radical otherness as something impossible to represent conceptually but offers a vision of the possibility of an encounter with otherness through bodily emotions. On this interpretation Solaris is not only a novel about the encounter with otherness, but also about the very possibility of representing such an encounter. (shrink)

After elaborating the idea of liminality and briefing defending an understanding of representation as practice, the chapter will focus on four distinctions often deployed to divide up and map conceptually the field of political representation. Representation’s liminal character presses us to question the neatness and the realism of many such distinctions. For each of the four distinctions I focus on the transitional or intermediate nature of representation, and the consequences that follow for theoretical analysis. Finally, I show how these (...) four contribute to a larger and more encompassing distinction between representative democracy and democratic representation, arguing that the former –often the sole focus of debates on representation –is one part of the latter. (shrink)

A central goal of the scientific endeavor is to explain phenomena. Scientists often attempt to explain a phenomenon by way of representing it in some manner—such as with mathematical equations, models, or theory—which allows for an explanation of the phenomenon under investigation. However, in developing scientific representations, scientists typically deploy simplifications and idealizations. As a result, scientific representations provide only partial, and often distorted, accounts of the phenomenon in question. Philosophers of science have analyzed the nature and function of how (...) scientists construct representations, deploy idealizations, and provide explanations. As such, our aim in this special issue is to bring these three pillars of research into closer contact with the contributions to it focusing on three main themes. -/- The first set of papers, Alan Baker (2021) and Marc Lange (2021), address mathematical explanations in science. Baker (2021), a proponent of mathematical Platonism, examines its capacity to evade the critique that the so-called Enhanced Indispensability Argument is circular. Lange (2021) examines distinctively mathematical explanations, arguing that neither Platonism nor representationalism are successful paths, and instead argues in favor of Aristotelian realism. A second theme emerging from the papers in this special issue is the impact that various conceptualizations of idealization have on our abilities to offer scientific explanations, to pro- duce an analysis of what explanations are or should be, and to understand scientific representation. Peter Tan (2021) suggests amending inferentialist accounts of scientific representation to account for inconsistent idealizations. Michael Strevens (2021) advocates a view wherein the introduction of idealizations into a model is legitimate so long as it pertains to non-difference-making factors, arguing for a logical reading of the notion of difference-making. Natalia Carrillo and Tarja Knuuttila (2022) offer an alternative account to the idealization-as-distortion view, emphasizing instead the holistic nature of idealization. -/- Finally, contributions by Carrillo and Knuuttila (2022), Terzian (2021), Valente (2021), and Rodriguez (2021) illustrate how issues regarding idealization, representation, and explanation are applied to specific contexts and across various sciences. Carrillo and Knuuttila (2022) examine conceptions of idealization in the context of models of the nerve impulse. Giulia Terzian (2021) extends the discussion of idealizations to the context of generative linguistics. Giovanni Valente (2021) examines how idealizations and evaluations of accurate representation impact capacities to explain phenomena in the context of statistical thermodynamics. Quentin Rodriguez (2021) examines the role of idealizations and analogies in various strategies to explain critical phenomena. -/- In what follows, we offer a brief overview of important philosophical issues connected to representation, idealization, and explanation in science. We then provide short summaries of the eight papers in this special issue. (shrink)

The essay discusses a significant shift in conceptualizing the notion of representation found in Alain Badiou’s ontology and Jacques Rancière’s aesthetics. From Heidegger to Deleuze, the artwork was able to express an ontological truth about the world on the condition that it does not represent it. Badiou’s ‘subtractive’ approach to ontology and Rancière’s redefinition of the modern aesthetic break with representation, however, suggest that there is nothing to express beyond the veil of representation. Instead, representation can only be counteracted by (...) the occurrence of surplus representations that subvert the principles of the dominant regime of representation. The essay provides an understanding of this shift by reversing the Leibnizian conceptual metaphor Adorno used to describe the modern artwork. Unlike ‘windowless monads’, whose seclusion from the world enables them to convey an ontological truth, artworks as ‘monadless windows’ reframe the parameters of what is perceived as reality. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the notion and role of metaphors and illustrations in Maxwell's works in exact science as a pathway into a broader and richer philosophical conception of a scientist and scientific practice. While some of these notions and methods are still at work in current scientific research-from economics and biology to quantum computation and quantum field theory-, here I have chosen to attest to their entrenchment and complexity in actual science by attempting to make some conceptual (...) sense of Maxwell's own usage; this endeavour includes situating Maxwell's conceptions and applications in his own culture of Victorian science and philosophy. I trace Maxwell's notions to the formulation of the problem of understanding, or interpreting, abstract representations such as potential functions and Lagrangian equations. I articulate the solution in terms of abstract-concrete relations, where the concrete, in tune with Victorian British psychology and engineering, includes the muscular as well as the pictorial. This sets the basis for a conception of understanding in terms of unification and concrete modelling, or representation. I examine the relation of illustration to analogies and metaphors on which this account rests. Lastly, I stress and explain the importance of context-dependence, its consequences for realism-instrumentalism debates, and Maxwell's own emphasis on method. (shrink)

Herman Cappelen investigates how language and other representational devices can go wrong, and how to fix them. We use language to understand and talk about the world, but what if our language has deficiencies that prevent it from playing that role? How can we revise our concepts, and what are the limits on revision?

The explosion of data grows at a rate of roughly five trillion bits a second, giving rise to greater urgency in conceptualizing the infosphere and understanding its implications for knowledge and public policy. Philosophers of technology and information technologists alike who wrestle with ontological and epistemological questions of digital information tend to emphasize, as Floridi does, information as our new ecosystem and human beings as interconnected informational organisms, inforgs at home in ambient intelligence. But the linguistic and conceptual (...) representations of Big Data—the massive volume of both structured and unstructured data—and the real world practice of data-mining for patterns and meaningful interpretation of evidence reveal tension and ambiguity in the bold promise of data analytics. This paper explores the tacit epistemology of the rhetoric and representation of Big Data and suggests a richer account of its ambiguities and the paradox of its real world materiality. We argue that Big Data should be recognized as manifesting multiple and conflicting trajectories that reflect human intentionality and particular patterns of power and authority. Such patterns require attentive exploration and moral appraisal if we are to resist simplistic informationist ontologies of Big Data, and the subtle forms of control in the political ecology of Big Data that undermine its promise as transformational knowledge. (shrink)

Cognitive science has been beset for thirty years by foundational disputes about the nature and extension of cognition—e.g. whether cognition is necessarily representational, whether cognitive processes extend outside the brain or body, and whether plants or microbes have them. Whereas previous philosophical work aimed to settle these disputes, I aim to understand what conception of cognition scientists could share given that they disagree so fundamentally. To this end, I develop a number of variations on traditional conceptual explication, and (...) defend a novel explication of cognition called the sensitive management hypothesis. -/- Since expert judgments about the extension of “cognition” vary so much, I argue that there is value in explication that accurately models the variance in judgments rather than taking sides or treating that variance as noise. I say of explications that accomplish this that they are ecumenically extensionally adequate. Thus, rather than adjudicating whether, say, plants can have cognitive processes like humans, an ecumenically adequate explication should classify these cases differently: human cognitive processes as paradigmatically cognitive, and plant processes as controversially cognitive. -/- I achieve ecumenical adequacy by articulating conceptual explications with parameters, or terms that can be assigned a number of distinct interpretations based on the background commitments of participants in a discourse. For example, an explication might require that cognition cause “behavior,” and imply that plant processes are cognitive or not depending on whether anything plants do can be considered “behavior.” Parameterization provides a unified treatment of embattled concepts by isolating topics of disagreement in a small number of parameters. -/- I incorporate these innovations into an account on which cognition is the “sensitive management of organismal behavior.” The sensitive management hypothesis is ecumenically extensionally adequate, accurately classifying a broad variety of cases as paradigmatically or controversially cognitive phenomena. I also describe an extremely permissive version of the sensitive management hypothesis, arguing that it has the potential to explain several features of cognitive scientific discourse, including various facts about the way cognitive scientists ascribe representations to cognitive systems. (shrink)

The structural representation (S-representation) account provides an increasingly popular way of understanding the role and value of representation in cognitive science. Yet critics remain unconvinced that the account has the resources to rescue representationalism. This paper reviews problems faced by the S-representation account. In doing so, it offers a novel taxonomy that divides objections into two broad camps that ought to be disambiguated: ‘conceptual’ and ‘empirical’. It further shows how these objections can be met, bolstering existing responses in (...) the literature with novel solutions, thus strengthening the S-representation account. Finally, this paper suggests that the types of objections identified provide a generalisable taxonomy for a better understanding of any version of anti-representationalism. Thus, this review is of value to the representation debate more broadly. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical study of the relations between hearing and thinking about music. The central problem it addresses is as follows: how is it possible to talk about what a listener perceives in terms that the listener does not recognize? By applying the concepts and techniques of analytic philosophy the author explores the ways in which musical hearing may be described as nonconceptual, and how such mental representation contrasts with conceptual thought. The author is both philosopher and (...) musicologist and uniquely combines the perspectives of both disciplines. Exploring the philosophical questions of mental representation in the relatively neglected, nonverbal domain of music, this study is a major contribution to the philosophical understanding of music perception and cognitive theory. (shrink)

I've tried to argue that there is more to representational content than CRS can acknowledge. CRS is attractive, I think, because of its rejection of atomism, and because it is a plausible theory of targets. But those are philosopher's concerns. Someone interested in building a person needs to understand representation, because, as AI researchers have urged for some time, good representation is the secret of good performance. I have just gestured in the direction I think a viable theory of (...) representation must take. I hope, however, to have created some advance sympathy for the gesture by distinguishing the problem of representation from the problem of targets on the one hand, and from the problem truth-conditions for the attitudes on the other. (shrink)

Traditionally, the language faculty was supposed to be a device that maps linguistic inputs to semantic or conceptual representations. These representations themselves were supposed to be distinct from the representations manipulated by the hearer.s perceptual and motor systems. Recently this view of language has been challenged by advocates of embodied cognition. Drawing on empirical studies of linguistic comprehension, they have proposed that the language faculty reuses the very representations and processes deployed in perceiving and acting. I review some of (...) the evidence in favor of the embodied view of language comprehension, and argue that none of it is conclusive. Moreover, the embodied view itself blurs two important distinctions: first, the distinction between linguistic comprehension and its typical consequences; and second, the distinction between representational content and vehicles. Given that these distinctions are well-motivated, we have good reason to reject the embodied view of linguistic understanding. (shrink)

The theorization of culture in psychology continues to gain momentum in spite of little agreement concerning the most suitable theoretical frameworks for examining cultural phenomena. We explore two contemporary approaches to culture--social constructionism and cultural studies--and examine their relevance for psychology. In juxtapositioning them we map their continuities and discontinuities in terms of ontological and epistemological stances on language, representation, knowledge, identity, history, ideology, social action and emancipation. We propose a bridge between the two, and discuss ways in which the (...) dialogue between social constructionism and cultural studies can deepen psychology's understanding of culture in the postmodern world. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Understanding compositional practices is a major goal of musicology and music theory. Compositional practices have been traditionally viewed as disembodied and idiosyncratic. This view makes it hard to integrate musical creativity into our understanding of the general cognitive processes underlying meaning construction. To overcome this unnecessary isolation of musical composition from cognitive science, in this conceptual analysis, we approach compositional processes with the analytic tools of blending theory, material anchoring, and enaction. Our case study is Iannis Xenakis’ (...) use of sieves for distributing rhythmic patterns in Psappha. Though disregarded in previous accounts, the timeline and the gearwheel provide crucial conceptual templates for anchoring Xenakis’ idea of time for this score. This case study of conceptual integration templates for temporal representation seeks to gain insight into musical creativity, embodiment, and blending, especially into how virtual interactions with material structures facilitate the construction of complex meanings. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss an approach called grounded action cognition, which aims to provide a theory of the interdependencies between motor control and action-related cognitive processes, like perceiving an action or thinking about an action. The theory contrasts with traditional views in cognitive science in that it motivates an understanding of cognition as embodied, through application of Barsalou’s general idea of grounded cognition. To guide further research towards an appropriate theory of grounded action cognition we distinguish between grounding (...) qua acquisition and grounding qua constitution. On this basis, we distinguish three possible theoretical conceptions of grounded action cognition. In addition to these methodological and conceptual analyses, we draw on recent empirical evidence to motivate our inclination towards a particular theory. According to this theory certain representations are involved in action cognition and action perception that are not modality-specific as usually proposed by advocates of grounded cognition. Further, the evidence is in favor of our more specific theory stating that for some cognitive abilities, some motor abilites are constitutive. (shrink)

As a method of family formation, cross-border surrogacy is controversial and beset by risks of exploitation. This article extends the literature on surrogacy by examining the way Australian surrogacy promotion and information events represent cross-border surrogacy. It examines the emerging phenomenon of surrogacy events held by a not-for-profit surrogacy organization to promote cross-border surrogacy in Australia—a country that prohibits commercial surrogacy. The article draws on observations from a series of surrogacy events in Australia and online during the 2019–21 time period. (...) It examines the presentations given at these events by surrogacy facilitators, surrogate mothers, and intended parents. We observed four themes: (1) Intended parents are positioned as consumers, (2) the benefits of cross-border commercial surrogacy are highlighted relative to other methods of family formation, (3) the positive side of cross-border surrogacy is accentuated, and (4) reproductive rights are emphasized. These representations run counter to feminist framings of cross-border surrogacy as exploitative and risky. This paper understands that the framing of surrogacy that occurs at these promotion events to be neoliberal in nature. The conceptualization helps explain their consumerist peppiness and commodifying subjectivity. (shrink)

Can a constructive empiricist make sense of scientific representation? Usually, a scientific model is an abstract entity, and scientific representation is conceptualized as an intentional relation between scientific models and certain aspects of the world. On this conception, since both the models and the representation relation are abstract, a constructive empiricist, who is not committed to the existence of abstract entities, would be unable to invoke these notions to make sense of scientific representation. In this paper, instead of understanding (...) representation as a relation between abstract entities, I focus on the activity of representing, and argue that it provides a way of making sense of representation within the boundaries of empiricism. The activity of representing doesn’t deal with abstract entities, but with concrete ones, such as inscriptions, templates, and blueprints. In the end, by examining the practice of representing, rather than an artificially reified product—the representation—the constructive empiricist has the resources to make sense of scientific representation in empiricist terms. (shrink)

Metaphors are found all throughout science: in published papers, working hypotheses, policy documents, lecture slides, grant proposals, and press releases. They serve different functions, but perhaps most striking is the way they enable understanding, of a theory, phenomenon, or idea. In this paper, we leverage recent advances on the nature of metaphor and the nature of understanding to explore how they accomplish this feat. We attempt to shift the focus away from the epistemic value of the content of (...) metaphors, to the epistemic value of the metaphor’s consequences. Many famous scientific metaphors are epistemically good, not primarily because of what they say about the world, but because of how they cause us to think. Specifically, metaphors increase understanding either by improving our sets of representations, or by making it easier for us to encode and process data about complex subjects by changing how we are disposed to conceptualize those subjects. This view hints towards new positions concerning testimonial understanding, factivity, abilities, discovery via metaphor, and the relation between metaphors and models. (shrink)

Production and comprehension have long been viewed as inseparable components of language. The study of vision, by contrast, has centered almost exclusively on comprehension. Here we investigate drawing—the most basic form of visual production. How do we convey concepts in visual form, and how does refining this skill, in turn, affect recognition? We developed an online platform for collecting large amounts of drawing and recognition data, and applied a deep convolutional neural network model of visual cortex trained only on natural (...) images to explore the hypothesis that drawing recruits the same abstract feature representations that support natural visual object recognition. Consistent with this hypothesis, higher layers of this model captured the abstract features of both drawings and natural images most important for recognition, and people learning to produce more recognizable drawings of objects exhibited enhanced recognition of those objects. These findings could explain why drawing is so effective for communicating visual concepts, they suggest novel approaches for evaluating and refining conceptual knowledge, and they highlight the potential of deep networks for understanding human learning. (shrink)

The author examines the idea of "mind" in three linguistic pictures of the world - Russian, French and Chinese. The study is contrastive, the results are compared. The description of each idea is made according to a clear algorithm: the etymology of the word, the mythological roots of the concept, its compatibility, from the compatibility is distinguished real connotation according to V. A. Uspensky, a comparison of dictionary definitions is made. The aim of the study is to identify the peculiarities (...) of the idea of "mind" in the Russian, French and Chinese languages. The purpose of the comparison is to see the similarities and differences in the worldview of different peoples. Scientific methods of research are: comparative-historical method, method of generalization, method of semantic analysis. This topic is understudied, no linguocultural studies analyzing this idea in Russian, French and Chinese culture have been observed earlier, which constitutes the scientific novelty of the work. The results will contribute to mutual understanding between peoples, forming a kind of conceptual bridge, and will also be used in courses on regional studies, comparative studies of cultures, and in the teaching of the respective languages. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza by Michael Della RoccaWilliam SackstederMichael Della Rocca. Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp xiv + 223. Cloth, $39.95.A first virtue in elucidating any great philosopher is stating exactly the project the commentator undertakes, showing what is to be concluded, and how, and what of necessity must be omitted. Here, Della Rocca’s success is (...) exemplary.I cannot do better than to paraphrase, with running quotations, his remarkably succinct preliminaries. He undertakes two problems “crucial to Spinoza’s philosophy of mind,” first, “the requirement for having a thought about a particular object,” and second, “the traditional problem of whether or not the mind is identical with the body.” These inquiries are to be interconnected systematically by showing their dependence on Spinoza’s “denial of causal or explanatory or conceptual relations between the mental and the physical.”With exceptions I note later, the nine chapters of this book follow precisely. Chapter 1 prepares basic concepts and claims, along with formulation of the principle indicated, now called “the barrier between thought and extension.” Chapters 2 through 5 present and question Spinoza’s “theory of representation” (the first problem, as in the title) with its consequences respecting the announced principle. Chapters 7 and 8 turn to insights on “the mind-body problem” (the second problem), as illuminated by these investigations and secured by the governing principle. Della Rocca tidily exemplifies ruling expository virtues, but I question whether this very exactitude does not inhibit a needed species of escapement. Any commentator is obliged to acknowledge and detach himself from his own assumptions, from mannerisms and jargon current in the profession, from his present status or mannered tics, and from accidental skewing subsequent to current practices of language and translation. For such commitments also govern his treatment and they may often occlude his or our understanding. Let me be picky in initial illustration. [End Page 136]On pages 25f., the author correctly warns about pitfalls occasioned by lack of articles, definite or indefinite, in Latin. Thus, as he is aware, both interpretation and translation are queasy and infected with responses and glosses insinuated by demands from our own language, especially our prevailing fondness for definite articles, for solidity, univocal designation, and instantiation. So far, so good. But I invite my readers here to reflect whether Della Rocca’s own pervasive use of the definite article in the quotations I indulged in surveying his task does not distort his whole conception of that project. Momentum from the word the converts issues and verbalisms entertained into furniture of the world.Perhaps even more insidiously, Della Rocca invokes a peculiar itemization whereby recent formulations impose “at least one” and “for any x” on all quantified inferential usages. Moderns need rather liberation from membership suggestions in set theory and its associated logic. His remarks about “extension” and “intension” help, but they do not remedy modernist ineptness regarding Spinoza’s use of ipse, per se, and in se. Further, like precision obscures care about subordinate and causal differentiations. A sort of subsumed merging under a unit whole simple in nature is dear to Spinoza, though such moves are uncongenial to us.My earlier account scanted chapters 6 and 9, which also follow from the basic project, though not as tidily. Chapter 6, “Falsity,” “solves certain thorny problems” in the account of that and its opposite; Chapter 9 gathers ruling materials to shed light on “substantive monism.” Their arrangement ought to assist our perplexities about involvement and simple grasp, whereas 6 is noticeably brief and 9 sketchy. Together, they scant (rather than illuminate) subtlety in Spinoza’s investigations of intellect and its involvment in the nature of things.Expository clarity also shows in current fashions for multiple cross-references between indented and numbered claims, paraphrases, inferential premisses, and glosses by others. But beyond hiding preference for propositional reductions, and beyond hindering smooth reflection, such dismemberment prejudices against modes of reasoning tracing “some certain sort of eternity” or “what is common to all and equally in part and whole.”Efforts to work rigorously with made-up words or adapted phrases only... (shrink)