Mental representation and its philosophical background

Yıl 2015, , 903 - 907, 01.07.2015

Elif Başıbüyük

https://doi.org/10.24289/ijsser.279167

Cited By: 1

Öz

In this study, it is aimed to make an overall assessment of the concept, mental representation from a philosophical point of view. This concept is so merged with countless studies in many disciplines that it becomes indispensible and becomes one of the leading areas of study in cognitive science as well as cognitive linguistics. What is aimed is to present the opposing philosophical views regarding cognitive representations and mental models and to set a general framework. Representationalists and eliminativists offer contradictory arguments. The latter group take the physical aspects, i.e., brain itself, into account while the former focus on mind to study representation of the world and divided mainly into two groups; symbolic vs. distributed representationalists. Symbolic and distributed representationalists offer different mental models for representing world knowledge, thought and language. The result of the discussion indicates that representationalists offer more efficient answers, moreover symbolic (classical) representationalists put forward a more fruitful approach to mental representation especially in terms of computationalism.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Mental Representation, Representationalists, Eliminativists, Connectionists

Kaynakça

• References
• Churchland, P. M. (1981). Eliminative materialism and the propositional attitudes, Journal of Philosophy, 78: 67–90.
• Churchland, P. M. (1989). On the nature of theories: A neurocomputational perspective, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 14, 59-101.
• Clark, A. (1992). The presence of a symbol, In Haugeland, J., editor, Mind Design II, (pp. 377–394). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Clapin, H. (2002). Philosophy of mental representation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
• Cummins, R. (1989). Meaning and mental representation. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
• Edelman, S. (2008). Computing the mind. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
• Feldman, J. A., Ballard D. (1982). Connectionist models and their properties, Cognitive Science, 6,205-254.
• Fodor, J. A. (1975). The language of thought. New York: Crowell.
• Fodor, J. A., Pylyshyn, Z. W. (1988). Connectionism and cognitive architecture: A critical analysis. Cognition, 28 (1-2), 3-71.
• Kintsch, W. (1974). The representation of meaning in memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Minsky, M. (1974). A framework for representing knowledge, MIT AI Lab Memo, 306.
• Morgan, A. (2014). Representations gone mental, Synthese, 191.2: 213-244.
• Newell, A., Rosenbloom, P. S., Laird, J. E. (1989). Symbolic architectures for cognition, In Posner, M., editor. 1998, Foundations of Cognitive Science, (pp.93-132). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Rumelhart, D. E. (1989). The architecture of mind: A connectionist approach, In Haugeland, J., editor, Mind Design II, (pp 205–232). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Smolensky, P. (1989). Connectionist modeling: Neural computation / mental connections, In Haugeland, J., editor, Mind Design II, (pp.233–250). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Stich, S. (1992). What is a theory of mental representation?, Mind, New Series, Vol. 101, No. 402, 243-261. Oxford University Press.
• Trigg, J. & Kalish, M. (2010). Thought, language and mental representation. In S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (Eds.). Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 188- 193.