Title: Representational content in humans and machines
Abstract: Abstract This article focuses on the problem of representational content. Accounting for representational content is the central issue in contemporary naturalism: it is the major remaining task facing a naturalistic conception of the world. Representational content is also the central barrier to contemporary cognitive science and artificial intelligence: it is not possible to understand representation in animals nor to construct machines with genuine representation given current (lack of) understanding of what representation is. An elaborated critique is offered to current approaches to representation, arguing that the basic underlying approach is, at root, logically incoherent, and, thus, that standard approaches are doomed to failure. An alternative model of representation— interactivism is presented that avoids or solves the problems facing standard approaches. Interactivism is framed by a version of functionalism, and a naturalization of that functionalism completes an outline of a naturalization of representation and representational content. Keywords: artificial intelligencecognitive scienceconnectionismcontrolemergenceencodingismepistemologyFodorfunctionalismidealisminformationinnatisminteractivismnarrow contentnaturalismontologyrepresentationsemanticsskepticismtransduction
Publication Year: 1993
Publication Date: 1993-10-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 353
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