A realist about mental representation is committed to the reality of the internal. Conceptual role and truth conditions, notre dame journal of formal logic 23. Synopsis and critical evaluation of robert cummins representations, targets and attitudes sitting outside at dusk one evening on a family vacation i erroneously exclaimed oh a baby deer at the sight of a rather large hare. Second, causal theories of mental content distinguish what has come to be known as natural meaning and nonnatural meaning. Mental representation in the brain remains an unresolved issue. We should be careful to distinguish two problems about mental representation. A mental representation or cognitive representation, in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science, is a hypothetical internal cognitive symbol that represents external reality, or else a mental process that makes use of such a symbol. Representation in the brain frontiers research topic. In rare instances, a publisher has elected to have a zero moving wall, so their current issues are available. I have long investigated alternatives to languagelike schemes of mental representation. I take cummins meaning and mental representation as my stalkinghorse, and argue that his view, once properly developed, is selfdefeating. Cummins, robert, meaning and mental representation cambridge, ma. Meaning and mental representation bradford book pdf free.
In this potted history, rob cummins 1989, 1996 plays the trailblazer. The first, the problem of representations plural is to say which sorts of things play the role of representations in cognitive systems of various sorts. Understanding the representational mind clf f josef perner. Lecture notes available here as word document and here as pdf. The concept of representation has come to occupy a new and important place in the study of culture. The mental lexicon is defined as a mental representation of words stored in memory, including information about a words meaning, pronunciation, syntactic characteristics, and so on carroll, 1999 mental lexicon theory mainly studies the construction and characteristics of the psychological representation of words and their meanings. Cummins book is basically a very dense investigation of the various theories of mental representation. I defend the view of representation urged in meaning and mental representation against the charge that it makes content stipulative and therefore irrelevant to the explanation of cognition. Go to page top go back to contents go back to site navigation. Externalism about mental content stanford encyclopedia of. More recent approaches have used neuroimaging tools to tap into brain processes associated with the mental lexicon. Cummins, 1989, 25 in the above example of a calculator, non mental meaning was.
In this provocative study, robert cummins takes on philosophers, both old and new, who pursue the question of. Meaning and mental representation exlib by robert cummins. Cumminss argument against ct generally speaking, ct asserts that the content of a primitive mental representation, or term in a. Reviewed by david larson, central missouri state university. A commentary on stichs what is a theory of mental representation.
Robert cummins looks at accounts by locke, fodor, dretske, and millikan concerning the nature of mental representation, and discusses connectionism and representation. Meaning and mental representation by robert cummins. The word stands for or represents the concept, and can be used to reference or designate either a real object in the world or indeed even some imaginary object, like angels dancing on the head of a pin, which no one has ever actually seen. In this lecture we consider internalism and externalism about linguistic and mental content. The second, the problem of representation singular, is to specify the nature of the representation relation. Such an account must be able to explain misrepresentation, by showing what a representation s content isexactly and also how a representation can be caused to be activated by something to which that content does not apply. Notes toward a structuralist theory of mental representation.
Fodors guide to mental representation jerry fodor mental representation hartry h. Meaning and mental representation by robert cummins a copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. Review peter carruthers 1990 philosophical quarterly 40 61. Cases where an object or event x has natural meaning are those in which, given certain background conditions, the existence or occurrence of x entails the existence or occurrence of some state of affairs. Connectionism content interpretation meaning mental image representation science semantics similarity categories naturalizing mental content, misc in philosophy of mind. It is motivated by the idea that perception and cognition require representations that are subject to meaningful structural transformationsisomorphs, essentially, of representationl targets rather than terms that refer to them.
Cummins looks at existing and traditional accounts by locke, fodor. If the inline pdf is not rendering correctly, you can download the pdf file here. Definition of mental representation in the dictionary. I have put considerable effort into investigating alternatives to languagelike schemes of mental representation. Our conjectures and analysis of the representational issue has been mainly focused at the level of the. Distinguished philosopher of mind robert cummins looks at the familiar problems of representation theory what information is represented in the mind, what form mental representation takes, how representational schemes are implemented in the brain, what it is for one thing to represent another from an unprecedented angle. To better understand the nature of mental representation, it is useful to begin with a consideration of representation in general. This means that they, like propositions, carry truth valuesor maybe it means that they, like. This story motivates cummins account that he gave in meaning and mental representation but that story is no good because it is a use theory, a version of crs see critique in chapter 4 the picture theory of representation ptr holds the idea of representations as proxies while avoiding crs. May 31, 2012 for cummins, then, there is a deep division between linguistic meaning and mental content. Meaning holists hold, roughly, that each representation in a linguistic or mental system depends semantically on every other representation in the system. Peter carruthers, meaning and mental representation. Dennetts, and millikans more recent ideas about mental representation. Intentionality and mental representation philosophy.
This is how you give meaning to things through language. Such mental internal or cognitive representations paivio, 1990 are widely investigated in cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, philosophy of mind and related fields carruthers and cummins, 1990, but often without a clear connection to neural representations, which are more commonly addressed in brain research, neuroscience and. Many of our mental states such as beliefs and desires are intentional mental states, or mental states with content. A mental representation is a system of symbols isomorphic to some aspect of the environment, used to make behaviorgenerating decisions that anticipate events and relations in that environment. Finally, disputes about mental content cannot be settled by appeal to our linguistic. It was argued that this making of new mean ing is rooted in the existing knowledge. Worldview the term worldview is often used as the most encompassing mental representation.
The first lecture will be held wednesday, september 14, at 1pm in hh357. The aim of this chapter is to introduce you to this topic, and to explain what it is about and why we give it such importance in cultural studies. In this volume ten original essays present new approaches to the definition of meaning and mental representation. It was argued that this making of new mean ing is rooted in the existing knowledge of individual speakers. This brief discussion has focused on what cummins deems the philosophical problem of representation. In this provocative study, robert cummins takes on philosophers, both old and new, who pursue the question of mental representation as an abstraction, apart from the constraints of any particular read. Synopsis and critical evaluation of robert cummins. There are theories that treat meaning as asymmetrical, a treatment that accords priority originality to mental meaning, and those that instead hold that mental and nonmental representation are basically the same. Lecture notes available here as word document and here as a pdf. The representation of bilingual mental lexicon and english. A variety of terms associated with mental representations worldviews, paradigms, frameworks, models, schema, and scriptswill be discussed in the following sections. Pdf meaning and mental representation denise gamble. In this potted history, rob cummins 1989,1996 plays the trailblazer. Why there are no mental representations springerlink.
The first lecture will be held monday, september 10, at 1pm in hh357. In response to michael morris, i attempt to refute the crucial second premise of the argument, which states that the formality condition cannot be satisfied nonstipulatively in computational systems. Explaining cognitive phenomena with internal representations. This is one of the central issues in contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and we will address it by examining some of the. Chapter 4 approaches to meaning and mental representation.
However, it is likely that a better understanding of what kinds of things mental representations are i. Externalism with regard to mental content says that in order to have certain types of intentional mental states e. At this meeting we will arrange the time and place for the remaining lectures. Robert cummins, meaning and mental representation philpapers. Only one philosopherrobert cumminsis concerned with the second of these families.
Representations, targets, and attitudes mit cognet. To the extent that the problems include distracting information irrelevant to the solution e. The relationship between bilingualism and the development. Representational development and theoryofmind computations. Form, interpretation, and the uniqueness of content. Metaphysical functionalism the last functionalism, the one that this part is mainly about, is a theory of the nature of the mind, rather than a theory of psychological explanation. Cummins looks at existing and traditional accounts by. This is motivated by the idea that perception and cognition require representations that are subject to meaningful structural transformationsisomorphs, essentially, of representationl targets rather than terms that refer to them.
Project muse meaning and mental representations ed. Pdf representation and mental representation rob rupert. Cummins, and in his recent book, meaning and mental. Not surprisingly, then, cummins favours connectionist over computational models of mental processes. What it means to represent, and several types of representation e. Thus, he has not written mmr as an introductory text. This course examines how the mind fits into the physical world.
Pdf the relationship hetween mental representation and consciousness is considered. In this provocative study, robert cummins takes on philosophers, both old and new, who pursue the question of mental representation as an abstraction, apart. Sorry, we are unable to provide the full text but you may find it at the following locations. This list of values can be compared to another list for their similarities or for the subject distance between them. Robert cummins is professor of philosophy at the university of california, davis. A significant amount of work in the last decades has examined the nature and processes in the mental lexicon in a variety of languages. May 04, 2018 rather, being a mental representation is a matter of being a representation that contributes representation and mental representation 209 its covariationrelated or structuraliconic. Pdf on apr 1, 1992, stephen stich and others published what is a theory of. Cummins 1989 has an analogous argument for treating the question about the nature of mental representation as a question within philosophy of science.
Conversely, neuroscientists seem to be uninterested in the metaphysical status of representations and the representation relation, while philosophers tend. The mental representation of the lexicon has been a central focus of psycholinguistic inquiry. Approaches to meaning and mental representation at the end of chapter 3, linguistic creat ivity was defined essentially as the making of new meaning which is sometimes but not always accompanied by new form. Information about mental representation in the dictionary, synonyms and antonyms. He is the author of the nature of psychological explanation 1983, meaning and mental representation 1987, and representations, targets and attitudes 1996, as well as many articles and several edited volumes. Cummins asserts that mental representation is, in fact, a problem in the philosophy of science, a theoretical. Cummins presupposes that the reader already has a solid repertoire of knowledge of the philosophy of mind and language. Mental representation from the bottom up, synthese 70.
Cummins asserts that mental representation is, in fact, a problem in the philosophy of science, a theoretical assumption that serves different explanatory roles within the. Proper usage and audio pronunciation plus ipa phonetic transcription of the word mental representation. Rethinking representation in the middle ages a vademecum to medi. Pdf representation and mental representation researchgate. I argue that there are no mental representations, in the sense of representation used in standard computational theories of the mind.
Causal theories of mental content presuppose that mental contents are underived, hence attempt to explain how underived meaning arises. Causal theories of mental content stanford encyclopedia of. One might, for example, consider the image of a tree that is visible through a window hav. Burge, tyler, individualism and the mental, studies in metaphysics, midwest studies in philosophy, 4 1979.
Meaning, which his theory is trying to explain, is representation and independent of meaningfor, which is, in essence, what something communicates to its users. Causal theories of mental content stanford encyclopedia. Instead he takes mental representation to be largely nonpropositional. However, there has been significant research in a variety of fields in the last four decades from various forms of neuroscience to theoretical computer science which can provide new insights on the issue of representation. Cummins introduces the distinction between meaning and meaningfor page 86 to make this point. This is a course about the way in which mental states, like beliefs, hopes. Cummins asserts that mental representation is, in fact, a problem in the philosophy of science, a theoretical assumption that serves different explanatory rol in this provocative study, robert cummins takes on philosophers, both old and new, who pursue the question of mental representation as an abstraction, apart from the constraints of any.
What it means to represent, and several types of representation. Mental representations and concepts in medieval philosophy. The lot of cumminss argument against causal theories of. The argument implicitly undermines fodors view of the mind. Cummins asserts that mental representation is, in fact, a problem in the philosophy of science, a theoretical assumption that serves different explanatory roles within the different contexts of commonsense or folk psychology, orthodox computation, connectionism, or neuroscience.
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