This Tuesday, the Macquarie philosophy work-in-progress talk will be
given by Glenn Carruthers (MACCS). He'll be talking on:
'What a difference a TCD makes. How theories of content determination
affect explanation in cognitive neuropsychology'
11–12 in the philosophy seminar room, W6A, Macquarie University. All
welcome.
Abstract:
In the philosophy mind many researchers have been troubled about the
question of how mental states come to represent the world. In
particular there has been great discussion of the issue of ‘aboutness’
or how a mental state comes to be about something in the world. It is
considered to be the job of a theory of content determination (or TCD)
to solve this problem. Although central to the philosophy of mind,
this problem has been largely ignored by the cognitive sciences
(Palmer 1978 being a notable exception). In one way this a bit
surprising, given the rate at which cross disciplinary research is
growing. Yet in another way it is not surprising in the least.
Although interesting in its own right, it is far from obvious how a
TCD could affect a cognitive theory. Such work could proceed on the
assumption that there are mental representations without needing a
commitment to a theory of how they come to be representations in the
first place, or so it seems.
In this paper we argue that far from being irrelevant to theory
building a commitment to a particular theory of content determination
can drastically alter the nature of cognitive explanation. We begin
with some background as to the nature of mental representation put
forward in the philosophy of cognitive science and mind. In particular
we describe the triadic analysis of representation and briefly
describe the most common classes of TCDs, those being causal,
teleological and resemblance (later we differentiate between
functional and structural resemblance). We argue that these TCDs are
tied to different notions of computation. Causal, teleological and
functional resemblance TCDs commit one to a digital (or physical
symbol system) notion of computation, on which all the computational
work is done by the syntax of symbols and the rules which govern their
manipulation. In contrast we argue, following O’Brien and Opie, that a
structural resemblance TCD commits one to an analogue notion of
computation, on which computational work is done by the content of
representing vehicles. In the final two sections we argue that a
commitment one way or the other should lead theorists to posit
different entities in their cognitive explanations, either processors
which syntactically apply rules or representing vehicles
differentiated by their content. We illustrate this difference with
reference to the proposed comparator model which is intended to
account for the causal history of the sense of agency over one’s body.
See you there,
Mark_______________________________________________
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