How to think about mental content

• Autores: Frances Egan
• Localización: Philosophical Studies, ISSN-e 1573-0883, Vol. 170, Nº. 1, 2014, págs. 115-135
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Most theorists of cognition endorse some version of representationalism, which I will understand as the view that the human mind is an information-using system, and that human cognitive capacities are representational capacities. Of course, notions such as �representation� and �information-using� are terms of art that require explication. As a first pass, representations are �mediating states of an intelligent system that carry information� (Markman and Dietrich 2001, p. 471). They have two important features: (1) they are physically realized, and so have causal powers; (2) they are intentional, in other words, they have meaning or representational content. This presumes a distinction between a representational vehicle�a physical state or structure that has causal powers and is responsible for producing behavior�and its content. Consider the following characterization of a device that computes the addition function.