The ontic conception of explanation is predicated on the proposition that “explanation is a relation between real objects in the world” and hence, according to this approach, scientific explanation cannot take place absent such a premise. Despite the fact that critics have emphasized several drawbacks of the ontic conception, as for example its inability to address the so-called “abstract explanations”, the debate is not settled and the ontic view can claim to capture cases of explanation that (...) are non-abstract, such as causal relations between events. However, by eliminating the distinction between abstract and non-abstract explanations, it follows that ontic and epistemic proposals can no longer contend to capture different cases of explanation and either all are captured by the ontic view or all are captured by the epistemic view. On closer inspection, it turns out that the ontic view deals with events that fall outside the scientists’ scope of observation and that it does not accommodate common instances of explanation such as explanations from false propositions and hence it cannot establish itself as the dominant philosophical stance with respect to explanation. On the contrary, the epistemic conception does account for almost all episodes of explanation and can be described as a relation between representations, whereby the explanans transmit information to the explanandum and that this information can come, dependent on context, in the form of any of the available theories of explanation (law-like, unificatory, causal and non-causal). The range of application of the ontic view thus is severely restricted to trivial cases of explanation that come through direct observation of the events involved in an explanation and explanation is to be mostly conceived epistemically. (shrink)

The ontic conception of explanation, according to which explanations are "full-bodied things in the world," is fundamentally misguided. I argue instead for what I call the eikonic conception, according to which explanations are the product of an epistemic activity involving representations of the phenomena to be explained. What is explained in the first instance is a particular conceptualization of the explanandum phenomenon, contextualized within a given research program or explanatory project. I conclude that this eikonic conception has a number (...) of benefits, including making better sense of scientific practice and allowing for the full range of normative constraints on explanation. (shrink)

Advocates of dynamical systems theory (DST) sometimes employ revolutionary rhetoric. In an attempt to clarify how DST models differ from others in cognitive science, I focus on two issues raised by DST: the role for representations in mental models and the conception of explanation invoked. Two features of representations are their role in standing-in for features external to the system and their format. DST advocates sometimes claim to have repudiated the need for stand-ins in DST models, but I argue (...) that they are mistaken. Nonetheless, DST does offer new ideas as to the format of representations employed in cognitive systems. With respect to explanation, I argue that some DST models are better seen as conforming to the covering-law conception of explanation than to the mechanistic conception of explanation implicit in most cognitive science research. But even here, I argue, DST models are a valuable complement to more mechanistic cognitive explanations. (shrink)

Some argue that the term “explanation” in science is ambiguous, referring to at least three distinct concepts: a communicative concept, a representational concept, and an ontic concept. Each is defined in a different way with its own sets of norms and goals, and each of which can apply in contexts where the others do not. In this paper, I argue that such a view is false. Instead, I propose that a scientific explanation is a (...) complex entity that can always be analyzed along a communicative dimension, a representational dimension, and an ontic dimension. But all three are always present within scientific explanations. I highlight what such an account looks like, and the potential problems it faces (namely that a single explanation can appear to have incompatible sets of norms and goals that govern it). I propose a solution to this problem and demonstrate how this account can help to dissolve current disputes in philosophy of science regarding debates between epistemic and ontic accounts of mechanistic explanations in the life sciences. (shrink)

The ontic conception of explanation is predicated on the proposition that “explanation is a relation between real objects in the world” and hence, according to this approach, scientific explanation cannot take place absent such a premise. Despite the fact that critics have emphasized several drawbacks of the ontic conception, as for example its inability to address the so-called “abstract explanations”, the debate is not settled and the ontic view can claim to capture cases of explanation that (...) are non-abstract, such as causal relations between events. However, by eliminating the distinction between abstract and non-abstract explanations, it follows that ontic and epistemic proposals can no longer contend to capture different cases of explanation and either all are captured by the ontic view or all are captured by the epistemic view. On closer inspection, it turns out that the ontic view deals with events that fall outside the scientists’ scope of observation and that it does not accommodate common instances of explanation such as explanations from false propositions and hence it cannot establish itself as the dominant philosophical stance with respect to explanation. On the contrary, the epistemic conception does account for almost all episodes of explanation and can be described as a relation between representations, whereby the explanans transmit information to the explanandum and that this information can come, dependent on context, in the form of any of the available theories of explanation (law-like, unificatory, causal and non-causal). The range of application of the ontic view thus is severely restricted to trivial cases of explanation that come through direct observation of the events involved in an explanation and explanation is to be mostly conceived epistemically. (shrink)

Nominal concepts represent things as tokens of types. Recent research suggests that we represent principled connections between the type of thing something is (e.g., DOG) and some of its properties (k‐properties; e.g., having four legs for dogs) but not other properties (t‐properties; e.g., being brown for dogs). Principled connections differ from logical, statistical, and causal connections. Principled connections license (i) the expectation that tokens of the type will generally possess their k‐properties, (ii) formal explanations (i.e., explanation of the presence (...) of k‐properties in tokens of a type by reference to the type of thing it is), and (iii) normative expectations concerning the presence of k‐properties in tokens of the type. The present paper investigates the hypothesis that representing principled connections requires representing properties as aspects of being the relevant kind of thing (Aspect Hypothesis). Experiment 1 provides a direct test of the Aspect Hypothesis. Experiments 2 and 3 provide indirect tests of the Aspect Hypothesis. All three experiments provide support for the Aspect Hypothesis. Experiment 4 investigates a prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis concerning the manner in which formal explanations are licensed by principled connections. Finally, Experiment 5 investigates a prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis concerning the nature of the normative expectations licensed by principled connections. Together these results provide strong evidence for the idea that representing principled connections involves representing a property as being an aspect of being a given kind of thing. The results also help clarify the manner in which formal explanation differs from other modes of explanation. Finally, the results of the experiments are used to motivate a proposal concerning the formal structure of the conceptual representations implicated by principled connections. This structure provides a domain‐general way of structuring our concepts and embodies the perspective we take when we think and talk of things as being instances of a kind. (shrink)

Two different conceptions of language dominate philosophical reflection on the nature of human language and of human linguistic powers. The first is the conception of language as a calculus of meaning, and of understanding as computational interpretation. This conception is rooted in the exigencies of function-theoretic logic. The notions pivotal to this conception are truth, truth-condition, sense and force, naming and describing (representation), and theory of meaning for natural languages. The alternative conception is an anthropological one, which conceives of language (...) above all as a form of human communicative behaviour, constituted by human practices and manifest in human action. The notions pivotal to this conception are practice, language-game, use and rule of use as given by explanations of meaning, understanding and criteria of understanding. The fundamental principles that inform each of these conceptions are explained. The radical flaws of calculus conceptions of language are laid bare. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, when it comes to explaining what can be described as “representational” properties of propositions, Soames’s new conception of propositions—on which the proposition that Seattle is sunny is the act of predicating the property being sunny of Seattle and to entertain that proposition is to perform that act—does not have an advantage over traditional ones.

In this wide-ranging book the author presents his critique of the contemporary portrayal of cognition, an analysis of the conceptual foundations of cognitive science and a proposal for a new concept of the mind. Shanon argues that the representational account is seriously lacking and that far from serving as a basis of cognitive activity, representations are the products of such activity. He proposes an alternative view of the mind in which the basic capability of the cognitive system is (...) not the manipulation of symbols but rather action in the world. His book offers a different outlook on the phenomenon of consciousness and presents a new conception of psychological theory and explanation. This revised second edition includes a new Postscript. (shrink)

Philosophers have always tried to explain what concepts are. Currently, most neo- Fregean philosophers identify concepts with abilities peculiar to cognitive agents. Philosophers who defend a psychological view, in contrast, identify concepts with representations located in the mind. In this paper, I argue that concepts should be understood neither in terms of mental representations nor in terms of abilities. Concepts, I argue, are rules for sorting an inferring. To support this, I follow Ginsborg’s Kantian conception of concepts. Nevertheless, unlike Ginsborg, (...) I provide an explanation of the cognitive relationship between concepts and thinkers that presupposes no linguistic awareness of any normative concept. In doing so, a dispositional approach to the normativity of concepts is proposed. (shrink)

A promising strategy for defending the role that representation plays in explanations of cognition frames the concept in terms of internal models or map‐like mechanisms. “Structural representation” offers an account of representation that is grounded in well‐specified, empirical criteria. However, anti‐representationalists continue to press the issue of how to account for the paradigmatic semantic properties of representation at the subpersonal level. In this paper, I offer an account of how the proponent of structural representation should think about content. There (...) are really two problems of content any account of representation must overcome: the “hard problem of content” and the “content determination problem.” I argue that the structural representation account has the resources to provide a naturalistically respectable notion of content that overcomes both problems. (shrink)

Most of this work is concerned with two theories that underlie cognitive science; theories which I call "the representational theory of intentionality" and "the computational theory of cognition" . While the representational theory of intentionality asserts that mental states are about the world in virtue of a representation relation between the world and the state, the computational theory of cognition asserts that humans and others perform cognitive tasks by computing functions on these representations. CTC draws upon a rich (...) analogy between the mind and digital computers, portraying cognizers as receiving input and generating outputs . ;Since researchers within cognitive science--especially within cognitive psychology, computer science, and philosophy of mind--share a common theoretic background in their adherence to the combination of RTI and CTC, what I call "computationalism" most of the work done in philosophy of mind has been aimed at either refuting or further articulating these two theories. This work is strongly within that tradition. ;RTI and CTC combine to create an explanatory framework for explanation in cognitive science. In this work, I seek to delineate the exact structure of this framework, to determine its components and their overall relationships. In my mind, this involves making implicit aspects of computational explanation explicit, providing an overall rationale for the various components and their relationships, and defending that rationale against criticism. ;In particular, the project of this work is to argue that computationalist explanations of cognition within cognitive science need to make appeals to both representation and knowledge; to distinguish the respective roles of knowledge and of representation in an overall picture of computational explanations, and to develop and argue for definitions of representation and knowledge that would allow those concepts to play their respective roles within computational explanations in cognitive science. ;The first half of this work , therefore, is devoted to theories of representation, especially to the need for, and role of representation in computational explanations. The first half of the work culminates in chapter three with a definition of representation and a picture of the structure of computational explanations. The second half of the project then becomes to generate a definition of knowledge that defines knowledge in non-epistemic language amenable to computationalism and that carries the epistemic burdens placed upon knowledge by its use in computational explanations, as well as to offer a limited defence of that definition within the framework of traditional epistemology. (shrink)

In this paper we criticize the commonly accepted theory of memory, and offer an alternative. According to the traditional view, memory is a stored mental representation of things past. We show, through an analysis of a single act of recognition, the logical oddities to which this view leads. Since, however, these are generally ignored, we also consider those characteristics of the traditional view which apparently make it attractive to those who hold it, namely its consonance with the commonly held conception (...) of time, its explanation for the fallibility of memory, and its way of making behavior predictable. We then present the alternative view, the direct realist theory. According to it, there is no such thing as a stored mental representation. The theory redefines memory as the perception of sequential structure, and in so doing successfully treats of the fallibility of memory and the necessity for making behavior predictable. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, it does not lead to the logical difficulties of the traditional theory. (shrink)

The essay addresses the debates about the ontology of norms considering the case of accounting for customary norms. It undertakes and defends a stance in favor of a semantic ontology by developing a framework for the explanation of norms as abstract objects and their linking with social facts to be identified in categories like “customary”, “enacted”, “legal”, “grammatical”, and so on. Furthermore, the work addresses the rival conceptions (pragmatic and eclectic) by showing the specific impossibility that these face for (...) giving a satisfactory account on customary norms. The inquiry concludes by exploring some possible insights from the philosophy of mind to explain the conceptual nature of norms as mental representations. (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)

Kind representations, concepts like table, triangle, dog, and planet, underlie generic language. Here, we investigate the formal structure of kind representations—the structure that distinguishes kind representations from other types of representations. The present studies confirm that participants distinguish generic‐supporting properties of individuals (e.g., this watch is made of steel) and accidental properties (e.g., this watch is on the nightstand). Furthermore, work dating back to Aristotle establishes that only some generic‐supporting properties bear a principled connection to the kind, that is, are (...) true of an individual by virtue of its being a member of a specific kind (e.g., telling time for a watch). The present studies tested the hypothesis that principled connections are part of the formal structure of kind representations. Specifically, they tested whether they structure a newly learned kind representation. Experiment 1 found that introducing a property of a newly encountered novel kind in any one of four linguistic frames that provide evidence that a property has a principled connection to a kind (e.g., “It has fur because it is a blick”) led participants to infer a different conceptual consequence of principled connections (i.e., “There is something wrong with this blick, which does not have fur”) for which they had no direct evidence. Two introduction frames that provided no evidence for principled connections (e.g., “Almost all blicks have fur”) did not generate the same consequence. Experiment 2 found that all of the targeted properties were generic licensing, irrespective of the introduction frame. That the distinction between properties that bear principled connections to their kinds, and merely generic‐supporting properties structures novel kind representations, provides strong evidence that this distinction is part of the formal structure of kind representations. (shrink)

Recent discussions in the philosophy of psychology have examined the use and legitimacy of such notions as ‘representation’, ‘content’, ‘computation’, and ‘inference’ within a scientific psychology. While the resulting assessments have varied widely, ranging from outright rejection of some or all of these notions to full vindication of their use, there has been notable agreement on the considerations deemed relevant for making an assessment. The answer to the question of whether the notion of, say, representational content may be admitted (...) into a scientific psychology has often been made to hinge upon whether the notion can be squared with our ‘ordinary’ or ‘folk’ style of psychological explanation, with its alleged commitment to the idiom of beliefs and desires. The emphasis on ‘folk psychology’ in arguments concerning the status of various concepts within scientific psychology is unfortunate, because it runs afoul of the ideal that the philosophy of psychology, by analogy with the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of physics, should have at its core the discussion of ongoing psychological theories. For while it may be admitted that the status of appeals to ‘folk psychology’ in order to justify a role for the belief-desire idiom within psychology proper is a matter that is of interest in its own right, it is not at all clear that mainstream experimental psychology has adopted either the language or the conceptions of ‘belief-desire’ psychology. (shrink)

This paper starts with an intuitive notion of representational spaces, which is intended to provide an improved version of Kuhn's concept of paradigms. It then proceeds to study the following topics in terms of this new notion: incommensurability, paradigm change, explanation of anomalies, explanation of regularities, explanation of irregularities, and physical necessity. In the course of the investigation, "representational space" gets clarified and defined. It is envisaged that this new concept should throw light (...) on many issues in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

The philosophical conception of mechanistic explanation is grounded on a limited number of canonical examples. These examples provide an overly narrow view of contemporary scientific practice, because they do not reflect the extent to which the heuristic strategies and descriptive practices that contribute to mechanistic explanation have evolved beyond the well-known methods of decomposition, localization, and pictorial representation. Recent examples from evolutionary robotics and network approaches to biology and neuroscience demonstrate the increasingly important role played by computer simulations (...) and mathematical representations in the epistemic practices of mechanism discovery and mechanism description. These examples also indicate that the scope of mechanistic explanation must be re-examined: With new and increasingly powerful methods of discovery and description comes the possibility of describing mechanisms far more complex than traditionally assumed. (shrink)

A key theme in the historiographical work of Machamer has been the ways that motion is made intelligible through explanatory means of natural motion and models of the simple machines such as the lever and pendulum. One way of spelling out the explanatory value of these strategies is through the concept of equilibrium. Natural motion and simple machines allow the simplification of complex problems in terms of self-evident, intelligible equilibrium conditions. This chapter connects the theme of equilibrium and natural (...) motion across Machamer’s work on mechanisms and mechanical explanation, on Aristotle, Galileo, Descartes and Newton, and on the pendulum and mental models. Just as equilibrium can be found within science, it also becomes a model of intelligibility for doing history and philosophy of science: a normative but objective representation of the important properties of science. (shrink)

A representation is a remnant of previous experience that allows that experience to affect later behavior. This paper develops a metatheoretical view of representation and applies it to issues concerning representation in animals. To describe a representational system one must specify the following: thedomainor range of situations in the represented world to which the system applies; thecontentor set of features encoded and preserved by the system; thecodeor transformational rules relating features of the representation to the corresponding features of the (...) represented world; themedium, or the representation's physical instantiation; and thedynamics, or how the system changes with time. In part because of the behaviorist assumption that the hypothetical, covert changes occurring in an organism during learning correspond to the overt physical changes that are observed, issues of representation in animal behavior have been largely ignored as irrelevant or misleading. However, it can be inferred that representations, acting as models of environmental regularities, operate at many levels of behavioral functioning, both cognitive and noncognitive. Objections to the use of this concept in explanations of animal behavior, based on the claim that it is indeterminate and on behaviorist considerations of parsimony, can be answered. Animal representations may be specialized in terms of tasks and species. Data from tasks involving spatial memory, delayed matching-to-sample, and sequence learning suggest some foundations for a general theory of animal representations. (shrink)

David Rosenthal's higher-order thought theory is one of the most widely argued for of the higher-order accounts of consciousness. I argue that Rosenthal vacillates between two models of the HOT theory. First, I argue that these models employ different concepts of 'state consciousness'; the two concepts each refer to mental state tokens, but in virtue of different properties. In one model, the concept of 'state consciousness' is more consistent with how the term is typically used, both by philosophers and (...) scientists, and in commonsense usage. This model, however, also has its problems. In the second part of the paper, I develop a modified version of Rosenthal's transitivity principle, thereby avoiding some complications that stem from the original transitivity principle. I suggest that Rosenthal occasionally employs this modified model himself, and that the inconsistency identified in the first section of this paper might really reflect Rosenthal's vacillation between these two versions of the transitivity principle. I offer one explanation for how this equivocation may have occurred. These two versions would result if articulations of the transitivity principle employed the term 'mental state' inconsistently, to refer on some occasions merely to mental state types, and on others, to tokened mental states. I conclude by arguing, contrary to Rosenthal and others, that the theory is not incompatible with view that conscious states are uniquely casual efficacious. (shrink)

An early, very preliminary edition of this book was circulated in 1962 under the title Set-theoretical Structures in Science. There are many reasons for maintaining that such structures play a role in the philosophy of science. Perhaps the best is that they provide the right setting for investigating problems of representation and invariance in any systematic part of science, past or present. Examples are easy to cite. Sophisticated analysis of the nature of representation in perception is to be found already (...) in Plato and Aristotle. One of the great intellectual triumphs of the nineteenth century was the mechanical explanation of such familiar concepts as temperature and pressure by their representation in terms of the motion of particles. A more disturbing change of viewpoint was the realization at the beginning of the twentieth century that the separate invariant properties of space and time must be replaced by the space-time invariants of Einstein's special relativity. Another example, the focus of the longest chapter in this book, is controversy extending over several centuries on the proper representation of probability. The six major positions on this question are critically examined. Topics covered in other chapters include an unusually detailed treatment of theoretical and experimental work on visual space, the two senses of invariance represented by weak and strong reversibility of causal processes, and the representation of hidden variables in quantum mechanics. The final chapter concentrates on different kinds of representations of language, concluding with some empirical results on brain-wave representations of words and sentences. (shrink)

Although 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 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. (shrink)

We present different constructions for nonprioritized belief revision, that is, belief changes in which the input sentences are not always accepted. First, we present the concept of explanation in a deductive way. Second, we define multiple revision operators with respect to sets of sentences (representing explanations), giving representation theorems. Finally, we relate the formulated operators with argumentative systems and default reasoning frameworks.

Mental representation is one of 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. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I provide the logical foundation for a solution to the mind-body problem, a solution which is directly based upon Wilfrid Sellars' analogical theory of thought and sensation. Chapters I-IV are devoted to an interpretation, analysis, and constructive criticism of Sellars' notions of the inner thought episode and the sensing state. My analysis is offered in support of three general contentions: I argue that the postulation of inner thought episodes and sensing states is necessary for adequate explanations of (...) agent behavior; I hope to show how the analogical theory of inner thought episodes and sensing states actually generates a legitimate problem concerning the relationship between the mental and the physical; and I demonstrate the importance of the notion of analogy in philosophical theory construction. I suggest that the role of analogy provides the key for the solution to the mind-body problem. ;Chapter One is essentially introductory in nature. I offer an interpretation and reconstruction of Sellars' illustrative story entitled "The Jonesean Myth" . The "Myth" provides a suitable representation of Sellars' overall philosophy of mind. But perhaps more importantly, the "Myth" is a paradigm example of what I shall call the analogical method of inquiry, a method employed for the introduction of the notions of inner thought episodes and sensing states. In brief, I want to show how the "Myth" provides the logical basis for a theory adequate for explanations of the mental activity of agents. ;Chapters II and III are closely related. In Chapter II, I present a theory of linguistic representation which will serve as the analogical base for the introduction and characterization of the inner thought episode. In Chapter III, I develop the notion of the inner thought episode , and I examine its nature and status as a theoretical construct. Chapters II and III are thus related by the Sellarsian thesis that the concept of mental representation is to be understood in terms which apply, primarily, to characterizations of the features of the linguistic framework presented in Chapter II. ;In Chapter IV, I argue, again following Sellars' lead, that the explication of the notion of the perceptual thought episode requires the introduction of a second distinct sort of inner episode, namely, that of the sense experience or sensing state. The argument offered in Chapter IV is designed to show that sensing states are theoretical constructs, the reference to which is essential for explanations concerning the occurrence and nature of perceptual representations. Sensing states are introduced and characterized by an analogical extension of families of predicates which are suitable for the identification and description of ordinary physical objects . ;In Chapter V, I propose a solution to the mind-body problem, as the latter is generated by the analysis given to the thought episode and the sensing state . In general terms, I argue that any purported solution to the mind-body problem must provide an explanatory basis for agent behavior, and it is for this reason that I reject "reductionistic" theories of mind of the kind represented by logical behaviorism, type-identity physicalism, and Turing Machine functionalism. My solution, instead, involves a commitment to what I shall call token physicalism, a thesis which is contingent upon the development of a theory of neurophysiology which is rich enough to capture, in an analogical sense, both the intentional features of the thought episode, and the occurrent-like qualities which are exemplified by the sensing state. (shrink)

Individualism in psychology is the view that mental states must be individuated so as to be intrinsic to particular individuals. This view has been thought to impose an intuitive and plausible constraint on explanation in psychology. The dissertation is a sustained examination of individualism, especially with respect to its role in psychological explanation. My particular interest is in showing that individualism is not a constraint on psychology which follows from either psychology's scientific nature, or from the nature of (...) causation or materialism. ;Apart from an extended introduction in which I explain why individualism is both a substantive and plausible constraint on taxonomy and explanation in psychology, the dissertation has three parts. The aim of Part One is to reconstruct and critically discuss three influential, recent arguments for individualism: an a priori argument , a empirical argument , and a methodological argument. I argue that each of these arguments is unsound and should be rejected. In an Appendix to Chapter 2 I argue that individualism does not follow from the causal theory of properties. ;In Part Two I turn to examine individualism itself. The aim of this part of the dissertation is to address the view that psychological kinds and explanations which are not individualistic cannot be part of an adequate account of mental causation. Chapter 5 both responds to particular charges that have been made about denials of individualism, and articulates and criticizes a central intuition about the local nature of causation from which individualism has sometimes been thought to follow. Chapter 6 focusses on folk psychology and attempts to show how one can view folk psychological explanation as unproblematically causal even though it is not individualistic. ;In Part Three I develop a core case against individualism using the concepts of causal depth and theoretical appropriateness, concepts which form the basis for two constraints on good causal explanations. I argue that individualism should be rejected because individualistic explanations of behavior, including individualistic psychological explanations, are not always the causally deepest or most theoretically appropriate explanations available. (shrink)

Many debates in philosophy focus on whether folk or scientific psychological notions pick out cognitive natural kinds. Examples include memory, emotions and concepts. A potentially interesting type of kind is: kinds of mental representations (as opposed, for example, to kinds of psychological faculties). In this chapter we outline a proposal for a theory of representational kinds in cognitive science. We argue that the explanatory role of representational kinds in scientific theories, in conjunction with a mainstream approach to (...) class='Hi'>explanation in cognitive science, suggest that representational kinds are multi-level. This is to say that representational kinds’ properties cluster at different levels of explanation and allow for intra- and inter-level projections. (shrink)

This chapter clarifies the concept of validation of computer simulations by comparing various definitions that have been proposed for the notion. While the definitions agree in taking validation to be an evaluationEvaluation, they differ on the following questions: What exactly is evaluated—results from a computer simulation, a model, a computer codeCode? What are the standardsStandard of evaluationEvaluation––truthTruth, accuracyAccuracy, and credibilityCredibility or also something else? What type of verdict does validation lead to––that the simulation is such and such good, or (...) that it passes a testTest defined by a certain threshold? How strong needs the case to be for the verdict? Does validation necessarily proceed by comparing simulation outputsOutput with measured dataData? Along with these questions, the chapter explains notions that figure prominently in them, e.g., the concepts of accuracy and credibility. It further discusses natural answers to the questions as well as arguments that speak in favor and against these answers. The aim is to obtain a better understandingUnderstanding of the options we have for defining validation and how they are related to each other. (shrink)

Several philosophers have argued that to capture the generality of certain scientific explanations, we must count mathematical facts among their explanantia. I argue that we can better understand these explanations by adopting a more nuanced stance toward mathematical representations, recognizing the role of mathematical representation schemata in representing highly abstract features of physical systems. It is by picking out these abstract but nonmathematical features that explanations appealing to mathematics achieve a high degree of generality. The result is a rich conception (...) of the role of mathematics in scientific explanations that does not require us to treat mathematical facts as explanantia. (shrink)

In this paper I will investigate the possibility of defending the concept of ‘mental representation’ against certain contemporary critiques. Some authors, likeAnthony Chemero, argue that it is possible to explain offline actions with dynamic concepts. Hence, the dynamic discourse preempts the representational one. I doubt that this is a recommendable strategy. A form of representation is necessary, though one which is different from the classical one. Instead of eliminating the concept of representation (as radical dynamicists do) or (...) of splitting cognitive explanation in two separate discourses (as the adepts of the hybrid cognition version do), I consider that a dynamic concept of ‘representation’ is a better option. In my view, the higher level order resulted from the complex brain-body-environment coupling can be interpreted as being representational in nature. The dynamic paradigm involves a significant change concerning the intentional nature of representational states: the basic forms of representations are not maps of reality implemented as such in the brain, but limit conditions, attractors constraining the cognitive system’s evolution in its space state to reach its goals. On a certain threshold of complexity, the system develops stable attractors and attractor landscapes which could be interpreted as standing for something outside the system. This conception offers the advantages of avoiding preemptionargument, of unifying the cognitive explanation and, by its interscalar account, offers dynamic tools for building more complex artificial intelligent systems. (shrink)

In this dissertation I address three philosophical problems in the philosophy of biology united by the underlying, and interlocking, issues of the explanatory role of teleological, normative, and representational concepts in biology. In the first chapter, I argue that extant accounts of functions have foundered on a problem I dub the Dysfunction Dilemma, and I offer a way to move forward. Functions are of philosophical interest because the concept plays an important explanatory role in biology, and other sciences, (...) but is apparently teleological and normative –an item’s function is its end, purpose, or goal, and a dysfunctional item is one that fails to realize a particular norm, performance of its proper function. Extant accounts of function do not successfully capture both its explanatory import and its normative and teleological character, either painting dysfunction as conceptually incoherent or painting functions as epiphenomenal. I diagnose the source of the dilemma and offer an account of functional explanation which avoids it. In the second chapter, I defend the idea that genes, like words or concepts, have intentionality or representational/semantic content. First, I argue that while the standard motivation for this idea is mechanistic analogies between molecular mechanisms and digital computation, Ernst Mayr, one of the architects of the modern synthesis in biology, has provided an alternative and more defensible justification for taking the idea seriously. Parallel to the standard case for representational and computational theories of cognition, Mayr’s justification rests on the need to invoke representations to explain end-directed processes. I then put Mayr’s argument to work answering three kinds of objection to the idea that genes are representational: 1) Genetic representations are causally or explanatorily inert, 2) Genetic processes are too complex and context sensitive to be captured by representational concepts, and 3) Details of molecular biology undermine representational conceptions of genes. In the final chapter, I develop a historical and philosophical interpretation of Ernst Mayr’s distinction between proximate and ultimate causes and its relation to Niko Tinbergen’s "four questions." Both frameworks have been influential in the biological study of behavior and are typically presented as a single framework, with Mayr’s proximate-ultimate distinction corresponding to one of two axes dividing Tinbergen’s four questions. I argue that this interpretation misrepresents Mayr’s and Tinbergen’s philosophical positions. I offer a positive account of both frameworks and their relation to one another, and I argue that contrary to many critics, Mayr’s proximate-ultimate distinction, when properly interpreted, does not present a barrier to the project of integrating biological work on Tinbergen’s four questions. (shrink)

This paper argues that social representations cannot be used as independent variables in causal explanations of social behaviour. It is shown that the structure of investigations often follows a causally explanatory design despite explicit statements to the contrary by the researchers. This fact is analyzed with three investigations. It is argued that verbal data used to assess the contents of a representation as independent variable are logically equivalent to data obtained from the “dependent” overt behaviour. Therefore these two kinds of (...) data must be seen as two illustrations of the same representational contents. The researchers’preference for using verbal data to assess the independent variable and the tendency to introduce a causal relationship between representation and behaviour is shown to result from misplacing folk-beliefs. Folk-beliefs about intentional causality, it is shown, pertain to the same level as other beliefs about the world on the part of the subjects. Hence they are part of the folk-representation itself and must be treated as such; their use in scientific accounts of the belief-action relationship is not implied by data on rational belief systems. It is suggested to conceptualize social representations as integral units of beliefs and action which may be used to explain causally subsequent contingent social events. The function of folk-beliefs in intentional causality for the self-concept of rational people and for social accountability is discussed. (shrink)

The "teleosemantic" program is part of the attempt to give a naturalistic explanation of the semantic properties of mental representations. The aim is to show how the internal states of a wholly physical agent could, as a matter of objective fact, represent the world beyond them. The most popular approach to solving this problem has been to use concepts of physical correlation with some kinship to those employed in information theory (Dretske 1981, 1988; Fodor 1987, 1990). Teleosemantics, which tries (...) to solve the problem using a concept of biological function, arrived in the mid 1980s with ground-breaking works by Millikan (1984) and Papineau (1984, 1987).¹. (shrink)

This essay develops an inferential account of model explanation, based on Mauricio Suárez’s inferential conception of scientific representation and Alisa Bokulich’s counterfactual account of model explanation. It is suggested that the fact that a scientific model can explain is essentially linked to how a modeler uses an established model to make various inferences about the target system on the basis of results derived from the model. The inference practice is understood as a two-step activity, with the first step (...) involving making counterfactual statements about the model itself and the second step involving making hypothetical statements transferring over claims derived from the model onto the target. To illustrate how this two-step activity proceeds, an agent-based simulation model is discussed. (shrink)

In this article I am going to reconstruct Stephen Toulmin’s procedural theory of concepts and explanations in order to develop two overlooked ideas from his philosophy of science: methods of representations and inferential techniques. I argue that these notions, when properly articulated, could be useful for shedding some light on how scientific reasoning is related to representational structures, concepts, and explanation within scientific practices. I will explore and illustrate these ideas by studying the development of the notion of (...) instantaneous speed during the passage from Galileo’s geometrical physics to analytical mechanics. At the end, I will argue that methods of representations could be considered as constitutive of scientific inference; and I will show how these notions could connect with other similar ideas from contemporary philosophy of science like those of models and model-based reasoning. (shrink)

Many philosophers and psychologists have attempted to elucidate the nature of mental representation by appealing to notions like isomorphism or abstract structural resemblance. The ‘structural representations’ that these theorists champion are said to count as representations by virtue of functioning as internal models of distal systems. In his 2007 book, Representation Reconsidered, William Ramsey endorses the structural conception of mental representation, but uses it to develop a novel argument against representationalism, the widespread view that cognition essentially involves the manipulation of (...) mental representations. Ramsey argues that although theories within the ‘classical’ tradition of cognitive science once posited structural representations, these theories are being superseded by newer theories, within the tradition of connectionism and cognitive neuroscience, which rarely if ever appeal to structural representations. Instead, these theories seem to be explaining cognition by invoking so-called ‘receptor representations’, which, Ramsey claims, aren’t genuine representations at all—despite being called representations, these mechanisms function more as triggers or causal relays than as genuine stand-ins for distal systems. I argue that when the notions of structural and receptor representation are properly explicated, there turns out to be no distinction between them. There only appears to be a distinction between receptor and structural representations because the latter are tacitly conflated with the ‘mental models’ ostensibly involved in offline cognitive processes such as episodic memory and mental imagery. While structural representations might count as genuine representations, they aren’t distinctively mental representations, for they can be found in all sorts of non-intentional systems such as plants. Thus to explain the kinds of offline cognitive capacities that have motivated talk of mental models, we must develop richer conceptions of mental representation than those provided by the notions of structural and receptor representation. (shrink)

The theory of social representations must be understood in terms of its proper epistemology so that it can accomplish its full potential in social sciences. This is often difficult to achieve because researchers comprehend it in terms of concepts that are part of static and individualistic Newtonian epistemology rather than in terms of dynamic and relational Einsteinian epistemology. This article considers three signposts that Moscovici identifies and analyses in the theory of relativity, namely the relation between epistemology and science, theory (...) and method, and the argument against the explanation of effects by their causes. The following question is posed: are these signposts also characteristic of the theory of social representations? This question is examined focusing on interactional epistemology, theory and method and the diversity of natural thinking and communication. Moscovici's Psychoanalysis shows that natural thinking appears in a plurality of modes according to the situation in which it takes place and according to social groups towards which it is directed. Natural thinking is controversial and communication-centred. Different professionals, groups and lay people use different kinds of speaking and different communicative genres when they try to resolve “the same” problem. The article suggests that bringing together dialogicality, dialogical linguistics and the theory of social representations may open up new possibilities for theoretical developments in social psychology. (shrink)

What role does the concept of representation play in the contexts of experimentation and explanation in cognitive neurobiology? In this article, a distinction is drawn between minimal and substantive roles for representation. It is argued by appeal to a case study that representation currently plays a role in cognitive neurobiology somewhere in between minimal and substantive and that this is problematic given the ultimate explanatory goals of cognitive neurobiological research. It is suggested that what is needed is for (...) representation to instead play a more substantive role. (shrink)

The character of computational modelling of cognition depends on an underlying theory of representation. Classical cognitive science has exploited the syntax/semantics theory of representation that derives from logic. But this has had the consequence that the kind of psychological explanation supported by classical cognitive science is " _conceptualist_: " psychological phenomena are modelled in terms of relations that hold between concepts, and between the sensors/effectors and concepts. This kind of explanation is inappropriate for the Proper Treatment of Connectionism.

The role played by language in our cognitive lives is a topic at the centre of contemporary debates in cognitive (neuro)science. In this paper we illustrate and compare two theories that offer embodied explanations of this role: the WAT (words as social tools) and the LENS (language is an embodied neuroenhancement and scaffold) theories. WAT and LENS differ from other current proposals, because they connect the impact of the neurologically realized language system on our cognition to the ways in which (...) language shapes our interaction with the physical and social environment. Examining these theories together, their tenets and supporting evidence, sharpens our understanding of each, but also contributes to a better understanding of the contribution that language might make to the acquisition, representation and use of abstract concepts. Here we focus on how language provides a source of inner grounding, especially metacognition and inner speech, and supports the flexibility of our thought. Overall, the paper outlines a promising research program focused on the importance of language to abstract concepts within the context of a flexible, multimodal, and multilevel conception of embodied cognition. (shrink)

The character of computational modelling of cognition depends on an underlying theory of representation. Classical cognitive science has exploited the syntax/semantics theory of representation that derives from logic. But this has had the consequence that the kind of psychological explanation supported by classical cognitive science is

_conceptualist_:

psychological phenomena are modelled in terms of relations that hold between concepts, and between the sensors/effectors and concepts. This kind of explanation is inappropriate for the Proper Treatment of Connectionism (...) (Smolensky 1988). (shrink)

Observations from philosophy and psychology heavily favor the Empiricist tenet that many lexical concepts are learned. However, many observations also heavily favor the Nativist tenet that such concepts are representationally atomic. Fodor Representations: Philosophical essays on the foundations of cognitive science, 1981, LOT2: The language of thought revisited, 2008) has famously argued that representationally atomic concepts cannot be learned, at least not learned by hypothesis formation and testing. Concept theorists who want to preserve observations about concept learning have (...) developed acquisition models on which the acquired concepts are either non-atomic or are acquired by a process that doesn’t involve hypothesis formation and testing. I offer a model, Baptizing Meanings for Concepts, in which representationally atomic concepts are learned by hypothesis formation and testing. The concepts are learned by the agent’s hypothesizing the existence of a latent/hidden/imperceptible property in objects to explain the objects’ perceptible similarities. Once a hidden property is hypothesized, a new atomic mental name is assigned to it, and this atomic name becomes the concept. Any connections between the name and the representations involved in linking the name to its referent are stored as contingent. Further experience may give the agent reason to revise its hypotheses about latent properties as explanations for its observations. I discuss a software robot implementation of the BMC process that uses a Bayesian learning network. The implementation provides an existence proof of the possibility of learning representationally atomic concepts by hypothesis formation and testing. (shrink)

Contemporary literature distinguishes two ways to defend the claim that cognition is a matter of representations: one, cognition involves representation-hungry tasks; two, cognition involves a complex form of informational covariation between subcomponents of a system with an adaptive function. Each of these conceptions involves a different notion of representation, and promotes a particular view of the architecture of cognition. But despite the differences, each of them aims to support the claim that cognition is a matter of representations on architectural constraints. (...) The objective of this article is twofold: one, it is argued that architectural constraints do not entail either of those two ways to defend the claim that cognition is a matter of representations; two, it is claimed that both notions of representation share an objectionable common element – namely, the idea of a model that grounds the representational reading– that must be abandoned, in favor of a more economical explanation in terms of causal relations, in order to get a clear view of cognition. (shrink)

The character of computational modelling of cognition depends on an underlying theory of representation. Classical cognitive science has exploited the syntax/semantics theory of representation that derives from logic. But this has had the consequence that the kind of psychological explanation supported by classical cognitive science is

_conceptualist_:

psychological phenomena are modelled in terms of relations that hold between concepts, and between the sensors/effectors and concepts. This kind of explanation is inappropriate for the Proper Treatment of Connectionism (...) (Smolensky 1988). (shrink)

Fodor’s radical concept nativism flowed from his view that hypothesis testing is the only route to concept acquisition. Many have successfully objected to the overly-narrow restriction to learning by hypothesis testing. Existing representations can be connected to a new representational vehicle so as to constitute a sustaining mechanism for a new representation, without the new representation thereby being constituted by or structured out of the old. This paper argues that there is also a deeper objection. Connectionism shows (...) that a more fundamental assumption underpinning the debate can also be rejected: the assumption that the development of a new representation must be explained in content-involving terms if innateness is to be avoided. -/- Fodor has argued that connectionism offers no new resources to explain concept acquisition: unless it is merely an uninteresting claim about neural implementation, connectionism’s defining commitment to distributed representations reduces to the claim that some representations are structured out of others (which is the old, problematic research programme). Examination of examples of representational development in connectionist networks shows, however, that some such models explain the development of new representational capacities in non-representational terms. They illustrate the possibility of representational development that is not explicable-by-content. Connectionist representations can be distributed in an important sense, which is incompatible with the assumption of explanation-by-content: they can be distributed over non-representational resources that account for their development. Rejecting the assumption of explanation-by-content thereby opens up a more radical way of rejecting Fodor’s argument for radical concept nativism. (shrink)

This article is an exercise in computational jurisprudence. It seems clear thatthe field of AI and Law should draw upon the insights of legal philosophers,whenever possible. But can the computational perspective offer anything inreturn? I will explore this question by focusing on the concept of OWNERSHIP,which has been debated in the jurisprudential literature for centuries. Althoughthe intellectual currents here flow mostly in one direction – from legal philosophy to AI – I will show that there are also some insights (...) to be gained from a computational analysis of the OWNERSHIP relation. In particular, the article suggests a computational explanation for the emergence of abstract property rights, divorced from concrete material objects. (shrink)

Some recent cognitive-scientific research suggests that a considerable amount of intelligent action is generated not by the systematic activity of internal representations, but by complex interactions involving neural, bodily, and environmental factors. Following an analysis of this threat to representational explanation, we pursue an analogy between the role of genes in the production of biological form and the role of neural states in the production of behaviour, in order to develop a notion of genic representation. In both cases (...) an appeal to normal ecological context is used to balance multi-factoral, interactive causal determination against the intuition that certain aspects of the causal nexus play a special role in promoting adaptive success. Certain worries abut this vision help us to get a better grip on the concept of genic representation itself. We end with a puzzle concerning the relation between cognition and representation. (shrink)