Deflating representation : computation, structure, and content
The present work focuses on the notions of representation and computation, and the explanatory role they play in the cognitive sciences. I put forward a deflationary view of representational content, and argue that explanatory internal states in the cognitive sciences are primarily individuated by their computational structure, rather than by content. In Part I, I survey the mainstream accounts of representation and content present in the philosophical literature: functional role semantics, informational semantics, teleosemantics, and structural representation. I also briey examine some of the crucial issues that any satisfactory theory of content has to tackle, with special attention to the problem of indeterminacy of content. I present and develop, in Part II, a version of the mechanistic view of concrete computation able to account for how cognitive systems compute, and for how to individuate their computational structures. The account avoids pancomputationalism and triviality of computation, yielding a robust, objective theory of computation in physical systems. With this mechanistic view of concrete computation in hand, in Part III I present my deflationary approach to representation, which shifts much
Coelho Mollo, Dimitri
Deflating representation : computation, structure, and content. The present work focuses on the notions of representation and computation, and the explanatory role they play in the cognitive sciences. I put forward a deflationary view of representational content, and argue that explanatory internal states in the cognitive sciences are primarily individuated by their computational structure, rather than by content. In Part I, I survey the mainstream accounts of representation and content present in the philosophical literature: functional role semantics, informational semantics, teleosemantics, and structural representation. I also briey examine some of the crucial issues that any satisfactory theory of content has to tackle, with special attention to the problem of indeterminacy of content. I present and develop, in Part II, a version of the mechanistic view of concrete computation able to account for how cognitive systems compute, and for how to individuate their computational structures. The account avoids pancomputationalism and triviality of computation, yielding a robust, objective theory of computation in physical systems. With this mechanistic view of concrete computation in hand, in Part III I present my deflationary approach to representation, which shifts much
representation computation structure_content present_work focus notion representation computation explanatory role_play cognitive_science put_forward deflationary view representational content argue explanatory internal state cognitive_science primarily individuate computational structure rather content part survey mainstream account representation content present philosophical_literature functional_role semantics informational semantics structural representation also examine crucial issue satisfactory theory content tackle special_attention problem indeterminacy content present develop part version mechanistic view concrete computation able_account cognitive system compute individuate computational structure account avoids computation yield robust objective theory computation physical system mechanistic view concrete computation hand part_iii present deflationary representation shift much