Philosophy- representations

how does Frances Egan define mental representations

the capacity of mental states to be able to represent objects, properties and states outside of themselves

they are composed of content and a vehicle

what is the vehicle

some sort of physical thing that has some causal power, allowing it to manifest the content

what is the content, what must it have

the meaning, message or information that is conveyed by the representation

it must have correctness conditions, meaning it must be able to be misrepresented in order to support the distinction of vehicle and content

what does it mean to have a naturalised theory of mind

a naturalised theory of mind attempts to explain mental theories of mind using a framework of natural sciences like biology and neuroscience

it explains subjective experience and consciousness, as is absent in CTM theories, in terms of biological processes that can be studied objectively

define intentionality 

the property of being a representation, possessing semantic value or having meaning/ content

how does teleosemantics aim to naturalise intentionality / representations

• it grounds intentionality in evolutionary of learning-based functions 

• a mental state has a function (purpose, hence the teleological aspect) derived from natural selection and operant conditioning 

• there is therefore no mysterious purpose, just an evolutionary history 

what is a criticism of this approach to naturalising intention, and response 

• interdeterminacy objection; that informational theories cannot fix what a mental state specifically represents, as this state is caused by many similar things (frog and fly example) that its cause is indeterminate 

• response: evolutionary function breaks interdeterminacy, despite causal by multiple things, the condition was selected by natural selection, and misfiring is purely malfunction rather than disjunctive content 

define modularity

in philosophy of mind, modularity refers to the idea that the mind is composed of specialised subsystems (modules) that are each designed to perform a particular cognitive task

examples of modules

• visual modules, which can be further divided into facial recognition, colour perception etc

• speech processing, again further divided into semantic processing and syntactic recognition of word class 

what are some of Fodor characteristics of modules → are they all necessary?

no they are not all necessary attributes

• domain specificity: specialised for a particular function 

• automatic and fast processing 

• characteristic ontogenetic pace and sequencing (innateness)

• dissociabilty: loss of one function without loss of others 

how does Pessoa respond to modularity ideas

he links them to reductionist methods of divide and conquer, critiquing the localisation theory as it does not acknowledge connectionist models and connections between neurone s

how does Marr’s levels relate to ideas of modularity

• Marr’s levels provide a way to analyse the subsystems involved in modularity

• computational level: specific function and purpose of the module 

• algorithmic level: the specialised processing rules involved in each module 

• therefore modular theories map directly onto Marr’s model, allowing each module to be described as its own information-processing system with its own computational task and algorithm