Results for 'representationalism'

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  1. Tracking Representationalism.David Bourget & Angela Mendelovici - 2014 - In Andrew Bailey (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: The Key Thinkers. Continuum. pp. 209-235.
    This paper overviews the current status of debates on tracking representationalism, the view that phenomenal consciousness is a matter of tracking features of one's environment in a certain way. We overview the main arguments for the view and the main objections and challenges it faces. We close with a discussion of alternative versions of representationalism that might overcome the shortcomings of tracking representationalism.
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  2. Representationalism about consciousness.William E. Seager & David Bourget - 2007 - In Max Velmans & Susan Schneider (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. Blackwell. pp. 261-276.
    A representationalist-friendly introduction to representationalism which covers a number of central problems and objections.
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  3. Representationalism and Sensory Modalities: An Argument for Intermodal Representationalism.David Bourget - 2017 - American Philosophical Quarterly 54 (3):251-268.
    Intermodal representationalists hold that the phenomenal characters of experiences are fully determined by their contents. In contrast, intramodal representationalists hold that the phenomenal characters of experiences are determined by their contents together with their intentional modes or manners of representation, which are nonrepresentational features corresponding roughly to the sensory modalities. This paper discusses a kind of experience that provides evidence for an intermodal representationalist view: intermodal experiences, experiences that unify experiences in different modalities. I argue that such experiences are much (...)
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  4. Representationalism.Frances Egan - 2012 - In Eric Margolis, Richard Samuels & Stephen Stich (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Oxford University Press.
    Representationalism, in its most widely accepted form, is the view that the human mind is an information-using system, and that human cognitive capacities are to be understood as representational capacities. This chapter distinguishes several distinct theses that go by the name "representationalism," focusing on the view that is most prevalent in cogntive science. It also discusses some objections to the view and attempts to clarify the role that representational content plays in cognitive models that make use of the (...)
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  5. Affect: Representationalists' Headache.Murat Aydede & Matthew Fulkerson - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 170 (2):175-198.
    Representationalism is the view that the phenomenal character of experiences is identical to their representational content of a certain sort. This view requires a strong transparency condition on phenomenally conscious experiences. We argue that affective qualities such as experienced pleasantness or unpleasantness are counter-examples to the transparency thesis and thus to the sort of representationalism that implies it.
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  6. Self-Representationalism and the Explanatory Gap.Uriah Kriegel - 2011 - In J. Liu & J. Perry (eds.), Consciousness and the Self: New Essays. Cambridge University Press.
    According to the self-representational theory of consciousness – self- representationalism for short – a mental state is phenomenally conscious when, and only when, it represents itself in the right way. In this paper, I consider how self- representationalism might address the alleged explanatory gap between phenomenal consciousness and physical properties. I open with a presentation of self- representationalism and the case for it (§1). I then present what I take to be the most promising self-representational approach to (...)
     
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  7. Representationalism, perceptual distortion and the limits of phenomenal concepts.David Bourget - 2015 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 45 (1):16-36.
    This paper replies to objections from perceptual distortion against the representationalist thesis that the phenomenal characters of experiences supervene on their intentional contents. It has been argued that some pairs of distorted and undistorted experiences share contents without sharing phenomenal characters, which is incompatible with the supervenience thesis. In reply, I suggest that such cases are not counterexamples to the representationalist thesis because the contents of distorted experiences are always impoverished in some way compared to those of normal experiences. This (...)
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  8. The Representationalism versus Relationalism Debate: Explanatory Contextualism about Perception.Bence Nanay - 2015 - European Journal of Philosophy 23 (2):321-336.
    There are two very different ways of thinking about perception. According to representationalism, perceptual states are representations: they represent the world as being a certain way. They have content, which may or may not be different from the content of beliefs. They represent objects as having properties, sometimes veridically, sometimes not. According to relationalism, perception is a relation between the agent and the perceived object. Perceived objects are literally constituents of our perceptual states and not of the contents thereof. (...)
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  9. Representationalism about Consciousness.Adam Pautz - forthcoming - In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness. Oxford University Press.
    Discusses recent work on representationalism, including: the case for a representationalist theory of consciousness, which explains consciousness in terms of content; rivals such as neurobiological type-type identity theory (Papineau, McLaughlin) and naive realism (Allen, Campbell, Brewer); John Campbell and David Papineau's recent objections to representationalism; the problem of the "laws of appearance"; externalist vs internalist versions of representationalism; the relation between representationalism and the mind-body problem.
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  10. Strong representationalism and centered content.Berit Brogaard - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 151 (3):373 - 392.
    I argue that strong representationalism, the view that for a perceptual experience to have a certain phenomenal character just is for it to have a certain representational content (perhaps represented in the right sort of way), encounters two problems: the dual looks problem and the duplication problem. The dual looks problem is this: strong representationalism predicts that how things phenomenally look to the subject reflects the content of the experience. But some objects phenomenally look to both have and (...)
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  11. Anti-representationalism and the dynamical stance.Anthony Chemero - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (4):625-647.
    Arguments in favor of anti-representationalism in cognitive science often suffer from a lack of attention to detail. The purpose of this paper is to fill in the gaps in these arguments, and in so doing show that at least one form of anti- representationalism is potentially viable. After giving a teleological definition of representation and applying it to a few models that have inspired anti- representationalist claims, I argue that anti-representationalism must be divided into two distinct theses, (...)
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  12. Representationalism and the transparency of experience.Michael Tye - 2002 - Noûs 36 (1):137-51.
    Representationalism is a thesis about the phenomenal character of experiences, about their immediate subjective ‘feel’.1 At a minimum, the thesis is one of supervenience: necessarily, experiences that are alike in their representational contents are alike in their phenomenal character. So understood, the thesis is silent on the nature of phenomenal character. Strong or pure representationalism goes further. It aims to tell us what phenomenal character is. According to the theory developed in Tye 1995, phenomenal character is one and (...)
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  13. Strong Representationalism and Bodily Sensations: Reliable Causal Covariance and Biological Function.Coninx Sabrina - 2021 - Philosophical Psychology 34 (2):210-232.
    Bodily sensations, such as pain, hunger, itches, or sexual feelings, are commonly characterized in terms of their phenomenal character. In order to account for this phenomenal character, many philosophers adopt strong representationalism. According to this view, bodily sensations are essentially and entirely determined by an intentional content related to particular conditions of the body. For example, pain would be nothing more than the representation of actual or potential tissue damage. In order to motivate and justify their view, strong representationalists (...)
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  14.  77
    Neural representationalism, the Hard Problem of Content and vitiated verdicts. A reply to Hutto & Myin.Matteo Colombo - 2014 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 13 (2):257-274.
    Colombo’s (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2013) plea for neural representationalism is the focus of a recent contribution to Phenomenology and Cognitive Science by Daniel D. Hutto and Erik Myin. In that paper, Hutto and Myin have tried to show that my arguments fail badly. Here, I want to respond to their critique clarifying the type of neural representationalism put forward in my (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2013) piece, and to take the opportunity to make a few (...)
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  15. Representationalism vs. anti-representationalism: A debate for the sake of appearance.Pim Haselager, Andre´ de Groot & Hans van Rappard - 2003 - Philosophical Psychology 16 (1):5-23.
    In recent years the cognitive science community has witnessed the rise of a new, dynamical approach to cognition. This approach entails a framework in which cognition and behavior are taken to result from complex dynamical interactions between brain, body, and environment. The advent of the dynamical approach is grounded in a dissatisfaction with the classical computational view of cognition. A particularly strong claim has been that cognitive systems do not rely on internal representations and computations. Focusing on this claim, we (...)
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  16. Self-representationalism and phenomenology.Uriah Kriegel - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 143 (3):357-381.
    To a first approximation, self-representationalism is the view that a mental state M is phenomenally conscious just in case M represents itself in the appropriate way. Proponents of self-representationalism seem to think that the phenomenology of ordinary conscious experience is on their side, but opponents seem to think the opposite. In this paper, I consider the phenomenological merits and demerits of self-representationalism. I argue that there is phenomenological evidence in favor of self-representationalism, and rather more confidently, (...)
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  17. Projectivist representationalism and color.Wayne Wright - 2003 - Philosophical Psychology 16 (4):515-529.
    This paper proposes a subjectivist approach to color within the framework of an externalist form of representationalism about phenomenal consciousness. Motivations are presented for accepting both representationalism and color subjectivism, and an argument is offered against the case made by Michael Tye on behalf of the claim that colors are objective, physical properties of objects. In the face of the considerable difficulties associated with finding a workable realist theory of color, the alternative account of color experience set out, (...)
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  18. Tracking representationalism and the painfulness of pain.Brian Cutter & Michael Tye - 2011 - Philosophical Issues 21 (1):90-109.
  19. Representationalism and the problem of vagueness.Ryan Perkins & Tim Bayne - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 162 (1):71-86.
    This paper develops a novel problem for representationalism (also known as "intentionalism"), a popular contemporary account of perception. We argue that representationalism is incompatible with supervaluationism, the leading contemporary account of vagueness. The problem generalizes to naive realism and related views, which are also incompatible with supervaluationism.
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  20. Does representationalism undermine the knowledge argument?Torin Alter - 2006 - In Torin Andrew Alter & Sven Walter (eds.), Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism. Oxford University Press. pp. 65--76.
    The knowledge argument aims to refute physicalism, the view that the world is entirely physical. The argument first establishes the existence of facts about consciousness that are not a priori deducible from the complete physical truth, and then infers the falsity of physicalism from this lack of deducibility. Frank Jackson gave the argument its classic formulation. But now he rejects the argument . On his view, it relies on a false conception of sensory experience, which should be replaced with (...) , the view that phenomenal states are just representational states. And he argues that mental representation is physically explicable. (shrink)
     
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  21. Representationalism, Scepticism and Phenomenal Realism.Manas Kumar Sahu - 2022 - Prometeica - Revista De Filosofía Y Ciencias 25:51-65.
    The irreducibility thesis of phenomenal consciousness can only succeed against the sceptical attack and avoid solipsism iff it can coherently establish the transition from subjective certainty to the objectivity of knowledge. The sceptical attack on the relationship between the phenomenal qualitative character of experience about the subjects own mental fact and the awareness of the qualitative properties of the phenomenal object can be avoided through establishing the immediacy of experience. The phenomenal realist become successful in establishing the subjective certainty about (...)
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  22. Representationalism and the perspectival character of perceptual experience.René Jagnow - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 157 (2):227-249.
    Perceptual experiences inform us about objective properties of things in our environment. But they also have perspectival character in the sense that they differ phenomenally when objects are viewed from different points of view. Contemporary representationalists hold, at a minimum, that phenomenal character supervenes on representational content. Thus, in order to account for perspectival character, they need to indentify a type of representational content that changes in appropriate ways with the perceiver’s point of view. Many representationlists, including Shoemaker and Lycan, (...)
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  23. Representationalist Theories of Consciousness.Michael Tye - 2009 - In B. McLaughlin & A. Beckermann (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind. Oxford University Press.
    This essay surveys representationalist theories of phenomenal consciousness as well as the major arguments for them. It also takes up two major objections. The essay is divided into five sections. Section I offers some introductory remarks on phenomenal consciousness. Section II presents the classic view of phenomenal consciousness to which representationalists are opposed. Section III canvasses various versions of representationalism about consciousness. Section IV lays out the main arguments for the representationalist stance. The final section addresses the two objections.
     
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  24.  53
    Representationalism is a dead end.Guilherme Sanches de Oliveira - 2018 - Synthese 198 (1):209-235.
    Representationalism—the view that scientific modeling is best understood in representational terms—is the received view in contemporary philosophy of science. Contributions to this literature have focused on a number of puzzles concerning the nature of representation and the epistemic role of misrepresentation, without considering whether these puzzles are the product of an inadequate analytical framework. The goal of this paper is to suggest that this possibility should be taken seriously. The argument has two parts, employing the “can’t have” and “don’t (...)
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  25. Attenuated Representationalism.Angela Mendelovici - forthcoming - Analysis.
    In The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience, David Papineau offers some metaphysical reasons for rejecting representationalism. This paper overviews these reasons, arguing that while some of his arguments against some versions of representationalism succeed, there are versions of phenomenal intentionalism that escape his criticisms. Still, once we consider some of the contents of perceptual experiences, such as their perspectival contents, it is clear that perceptual experience does not present us with the world as we take it to be. This (...)
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    Representationalism, Double Vision, and Afterimages: A Response to Işık Sarıhan.René Jagnow - 2020 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 20 (6):435-451.
    In his paper “Double Vision, Phosphenes and Afterimages: Non-Endorsed Representations rather than Non-Representational Qualia,” Işık Sarıhan addresses the debate between strong representationalists and qualia theorists. He argues that qualia theorists like Ned Block and Amy Kind who cite double-vision, afterimages, etc., as evidence for the existence of qualia are mistaken about the actual nature of these states. According to Sarıhan, these authors confuse the fact that these states are non-endorsed representational states with the fact that they are at least partly (...)
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  27. Representationalism, peripheral awareness, and the transparency of experience.Rocco J. Gennaro - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 139 (1):39-56.
    It is often said that some kind of peripheral (or inattentional) conscious awareness accompanies our focal (attentional) consciousness. I agree that this is often the case, but clarity is needed on several fronts. In this paper, I lay out four distinct theses on peripheral awareness and show that three of them are true. However, I then argue that a fourth thesis, commonly associated with the so-called "self-representational approach to consciousness," is false. The claim here is that we have outer focal (...)
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  28. Liberal Representationalism: A Deflationist Defense.Marc Artiga - 2016 - Dialectica 70 (3):407-430.
    The idea that only complex brains can possess genuine representations is an important element in mainstream philosophical thinking. An alternative view, which I label ‘liberal representationalism’, holds that we should accept the existence of many more full-blown representations, from activity in retinal ganglion cells to the neural states produced by innate releasing mechanisms in cognitively unsophisticated organisms. A promising way of supporting liberal representationalism is to show it to be a consequence of our best naturalistic theories of representation. (...)
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  29. Representationalism, supervenience, and the cross-modal problem.John W. O’dea - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 130 (2):285-95.
    The representational theory of phenomenal experience is often stated in terms of a supervenience thesis: Byrne recently characterises it as the thesis that “there can be no difference in phenomenal character without a difference in content”, while according to Tye, “[a]t a minimum, the thesis is one of supervenience: necessarily, experiences that are alike in their representational contents are alike in their phenomenal character.” Consequently, much of the debate over whether representationalism is true centres on purported counter-examples – that (...)
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  30. How representationalism can account for the phenomenal significance of illumination.René Jagnow - 2009 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8 (4):551-572.
    In this paper, I defend a representationalist account of the phenomenal character of color experiences. Representationalism, the thesis that phenomenal character supervenes on a certain kind of representational content, so-called phenomenal content, has been developed primarily in two different ways, as Russellian and Fregean representationalism. While the proponents of Russellian and Fregean representationalism differ with respect to what they take the contents of color experiences to be, they typically agree that colors are exhaustively characterized by the three (...)
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  31. Inferentialism, representationalism and derogatory words.Daniel Whiting - 2007 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 15 (2):191 – 205.
    In a recent paper, after outlining various distinguishing features of derogatory words, Jennifer Hornsby suggests that the phenomenon raises serious difficulties for inferentialism. Against Hornsby, I claim that derogatory words do not pose any insuperable problems for inferentialism, so long as it is supplemented with apparatus borrowed from Grice and Hare. Moreover, I argue, derogatory expressions pose difficulties for Hornsby's favoured alternative theory of meaning, representationalism, unless it too is conjoined with a similar Grice/Hare mechanism. So, the upshot of (...)
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  32. Reductive Representationalism and Emotional Phenomenology.Uriah Kriegel - 2017 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 41 (1):41-59.
    A prominent view of phenomenal consciousness combines two claims: (i) the identity conditions of phenomenally conscious states can be fully accounted for in terms of these states’ representational content; (ii) this representational content can be fully accounted for in non-phenomenal terms. This paper presents an argument against this view. The core idea is that the identity conditions of phenomenally conscious states are not fixed entirely by what these states represent (their representational contents), but depend in part on how they represent (...)
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  33.  93
    Self-Representationalism and the Neo-Russellian Ignorance Hypothesis: A Hybrid Account of Phenomenal Consciousness.Tom McClelland - 2012 - Dissertation, Sussex
    This thesis introduces the Problem of Consciousness as an antinomy between Physicalism and Primitivism about the phenomenal. I argue that Primitivism is implausible, but is supported by two conceptual gaps. The ‘–tivity gap’ holds that physical states are objective and phenomenal states are subjective, and that there is no entailment from the objective to the subjective. The ‘–trinsicality gap’ holds that physical properties are extrinsic and phenomenal qualities are intrinsic, and that there is no entailment from the extrinsic to the (...)
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  34.  47
    Representationalism and beyond: A phenomenological critique of Thomas Metzinger's self-model theory.Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl - 2004 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 11 (10-11):88-108.
    Thomas Metzinger's self-model theory offers a framework for naturalizing subjective experiences, e.g. first-person perspective. These phenomena are explained by referring to representational contents which are said to be interrelated at diverse levels of consciousness and correlated with brain activities. The paper begins with a consideration on naturalism and anti-naturalism in order to roughly sketch the background of Metzinger's claim that his theory renders philosophical speculations on the mind unnecessary. In particular, Husserl's phenomenological conception of consciousness is refuted as uncritical and (...)
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  35.  97
    Non-representationalist cognitive science and realism.Karim Zahidi - 2014 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 13 (3):461-475.
    Embodied and extended cognition is a relatively new paradigm within cognitive science that challenges the basic tenet of classical cognitive science, viz. cognition consists in building and manipulating internal representations. Some of the pioneers of embodied cognitive science have claimed that this new way of conceptualizing cognition puts pressure on epistemological and ontological realism. In this paper I will argue that such anti-realist conclusions do not follow from the basic assumptions of radical embodied cognitive science. Furthermore I will show that (...)
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  36. Rosenthal's Representationalism.Jacob Berger & Richard Brown - forthcoming - In Josh Weisberg (ed.), Qualitative Consciousness: Themes from the Philosophy of David Rosenthal. Cambridge.
    David Rosenthal explains conscious mentality in terms of two independent, though complementary, theories—the higher-order thought (“HOT”) theory of consciousness and quality-space theory (“QST”) about mental qualities. It is natural to understand this combination of views as constituting a kind of representationalism about experience—that is, a version of the view that an experience’s conscious character is identical with certain of its representational properties. At times, however, Rosenthal seems to resist this characterization of his view. We explore here whether and to (...)
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  37.  63
    Self-representationalism.Tom McClelland - forthcoming - In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    To understand Self-Representationalism you need to understand its family. Self-Representationalism is a branch of the Meta-Representationalist family, and according to theories in this family what distinguishes conscious mental representations from unconscious mental representations is that conscious ones are themselves the target of a mental meta¬-representational state. A mental state M1 is thus phenomenally conscious in virtue of being suitably represented by some mental state M2. What distinguishes the Self-Representationalist branch of the family is the claim that M1 and (...)
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    A Representationalist Argument Against Contemporary Panpsychism.Raamy Majeed - 2013 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 20 (5-6):105-123.
    Consider (i) the humility thesis that we only know the causal natures of the external world and (ii) the thesis we are directly acquainted with the intrinsic natures of our phenomenal experiences. The conjunction of these two theses has motivated a version of panpsychism, which states that the intrinsic nature of all matter is phenomenal. Contemporary panpsychists, such as Lockwood (1991, 1993), Rosenberg (1999, 2004) and Maxwell (2002), have taken it upon themselves to flesh out a plausible story of how (...)
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  39. Representationalism and the argument from hallucination.Brad Thompson - 2008 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 89 (3):384-412.
    Phenomenal character is determined by representational content, which both hallucinatory and veridical experiences can share. But in the case of veridical experience, unlike hallucination, the external objects of experience literally have the properties one is aware of in experience. The representationalist can accept the common factor assumption without having to introduce sensory intermediaries between the mind and the world, thus securing a form of direct realism.
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  40. Representationalism and the Intentionality of Moods.Anthony Hatzimoysis - 2017 - Philosophia 45 (4):1515-1526.
    It seems hard to comprehend how, during mood experience, the ‘inner’ meets the ‘outer’. The objective of this paper is to show that a currently popular attempt at providing a neat solution to that problem fails. The attempt comes under the heading of representationalism, according to which the phenomenal aspects of mood are exhausted by its representational content. I examine three accounts of intentionality developed within the representationalist camp, and I show that they incur phenomenological and metaphysical costs.
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  41. Representationalism, symmetrical supervenience and identity.Dimitris Platchias - 2009 - Philosophia 37 (1):31-46.
    According to some representationalists (M. Tye, Ten problems of consciousness, MIT Press, Massachusetts, USA, 1995; W.G. Lycan, Consciousness and experience, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 1996; F. Dretske, Naturalising the mind, MIT Press, Massachusetts, USA 1995), qualia are identical to external environmental states or features. When one perceives a red rose for instance, one is visually representing the actual redness of the rose. The represented redness of the rose is the actual redness of the rose itself. Thus redness is not (...)
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  42. The Case Against Representationalism About Moods.Amy Kind - 2013 - In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Mind.
    According to representationalism, the phenomenal character of a mental state reduces to its intentional content. Although representationalism seems plausible with respect to ordinary perceptual states, it seems considerably less plausible for states like moods. Here the problem for representationalism arises largely because moods seem to lack intentional content altogether. In this paper, I explore several possible options for identifying the intentional content of moods and suggest that none of them is wholly satisfactory. Importantly, however, I go on (...)
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  43.  7
    Representationalism About Sensory Phenomenology.Matthew Ivanowich - unknown
    This dissertation examines representationalism about sensory phenomenology—the claim that for a sensory experience to have a particular phenomenal character is a matter of it having a particular representational content. I focus on a particular issue that is central to representationalism: whether reductive versions of the theory should be internalist or externalist. My primary goals are to demonstrate that externalist representationalism fails to provide a reductive explanation for phenomenal qualities, and to present a reductive internalist version of (...) that utilizes the empirical framework of psychophysics and neuroscience to develop a philosophical theory of content. The bulk of the project is an attempt to provide the outlines of what such an empirically-based representationalist theory would look like. In chapter 2, I argue that reductive externalist representationalism fails because it is vulnerable to the problem of bad structural correlation: the mismatch between the structure of phenomenal qualities and the structure of physical properties “tracked” by our sensory systems with which phenomenal qualities are identified. In chapter 3, I develop the outlines of a reductive internalist version of representationalism that characterizes phenomenal qualities as modes of presentation of sensory representations that can be reductively characterized in terms of a location in a psychophysically-defined quality space, which can in turn be given a neurophysiological interpretation. In addition, I argue that the neural mechanisms responsible for the representation of spatial locations and visual objects serve a referential role in sensory psychosemantics that grounds the intentionality of sensory states. In chapter 5 I provide a detailed account of the representation of spatial locations in sensory experience, and in chapter 6 I examine the “binding problem”, demonstrating how object-based sensory representations function to demonstratively pick out sensory individuals without explicitly representing any of their features. I describe the resulting view as methodological representationalism: an attempt to demonstrate how a particular philosophical theory of sensory phenomenology can be integrated into the empirical framework of cognitive science, and thereby provide an explanatory psychosemantic framework for sensory phenomenology that is valuable to both philosophers and cognitive scientists. (shrink)
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    Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism.Huw Price, Simon Blackburn, Robert Brandom, Paul Horwich & Michael Williams - 2013 - Burlington, VT: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Simon Blackburn, Robert Brandom, Paul Horwich & Michael Williams.
    Pragmatists have traditionally been enemies of representationalism but friends of naturalism, when naturalism is understood to pertain to human subjects, in the sense of Hume and Nietzsche. In this volume Huw Price presents his distinctive version of this traditional combination, as delivered in his René Descartes Lectures at Tilburg University in 2008. Price contrasts his view with other contemporary forms of philosophical naturalism, comparing it with other pragmatist and neo-pragmatist views such as those of Robert Brandom and Simon Blackburn. (...)
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  45.  90
    Representationalism, First-person Authority, and Second-order Knowledge.Sven Bernecker - 2011 - In Anthony Hatzimoysis (ed.), Self-Knowledge. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 33-52.
    This paper argues that, given the representational theory of mind, one cannot know a priori that one knows that p as opposed to being incapable of having any knowledge states; but one can know a priori that one knows that p as opposed to some other proposition q.
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  46. Representationalism and the determinacy of visual content.Ben Bronner - 2015 - Philosophical Psychology 28 (2):227-239.
    DETERMINACY is the claim that covert shifts in visual attention sometimes affect the determinacy of visual content (capital letters will distinguish the claim from the familiar word, 'determinacy'). Representationalism is the claim that visual phenomenology supervenes on visual representational content. Both claims are popular among contemporary philosophers of mind, and DETERMINACY has been employed in defense of representationalism. I claim that existing arguments in favor of DETERMINACY are inconclusive. As a result, DETERMINACY-based arguments in support of representationalism (...)
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  47. Representationalism and the scene-immediacy of visual experience: A journey to the fringe and back.Robert Schroer - 2012 - Philosophical Psychology 25 (4):595 - 615.
    Both visual experience and conscious thought represent external objects, but in visual experience these objects seem present before the mind and available for direct access in a way that they don?t in conscious thought. In this paper, I introduce a couple of challenges that this ?Scene-Immediacy? of visual experience raises for traditional versions of Representationalism. I then identify a resource to which Representationalists can appeal in addressing these challenges: the low-detail fringe of visual experience. I argue that low-detail contents (...)
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  48. Representationalism and Anti-Representationalism About Perceptual Experience.Keith A. Wilson - 2013 - Dissertation, University of Warwick
    Many philosophers have held that perceptual experience is fundamentally a matter of perceivers being in particular representational states. Such states are said to have representational content, i.e. accuracy or veridicality conditions, capturing the way that things, according to that experience, appear to be. In this thesis I argue that the case against representationalism — the view that perceptual experience is fundamentally and irreducibly representational — that is set out in Charles Travis’s ‘The Silence of the Senses’ (2004) constitutes a (...)
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  49. Non-Representationalist Theories of Knowledge and Quantum Mechanics.Michel Bitbol - 2001 - SATS 2 (1):37-61.
    Quantum Mechanics has imposed strain on traditional (dualist and representationalist) epistemological conceptions. An alternative was offered by Bohr and Heisenberg, according to whom natural science does not describe nature, but rather the interplay between nature and ourselves. But this was only a suggestion. In this paper, a systematic development of the Bohr-Heisenberg conception is outlined, by way of a comparison with the modern self-organizational theories of cognition. It is shown that a perfectly consistent non-representationalist (and/or relational) reading of quantum mechanics (...)
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  50. Environmental representationalists on afterimages and phosphenes: Putting our best foot forward.Robert Schroer - 2004 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 42 (4):531-546.
    Environmental representationalism is the position that phenomenal differences between visual experiences are determined by the representational claims those experiences make about the surrounding environment. Afterimage and phosphene experiences are an important and widely cited objection to this position. In this paper, I defend environmental representationalism from this objection. In particular, I point out several ways in which typical environmental representationalist accounts of these experiences are lacking while developing a more satisfying account which focuses on how the visual system (...)
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