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Mental Representation and Intentionality
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Mental Representation and Intentionality
Annotation
PII
S004287440000229-6-
DOI
10.31857/S004287440000229-6
Publication type
Article
Status
Published
Authors
Dmitry V. Ivanov 
Occupation: Senior researcher, DSc in Philosophy
Affiliation: The Institute of Philosophy of Russian Academy of Sciences
Address: Russian Federation, Moscow
Edition
Issue 7
Pages
86-95
Abstract

The paper represents the study of the concepts of content, intentionality and mental representation. The concept of mental representation, often identified with the concept of intentionality, occupies a central place in cognitive science. However, according to eliminativists and radical enactivists, explaining the nature of the mental states, we must abandon the concepts of content and mental representation. The paper demonstrates that we can abandon the concept of mental representation, while preserving the concepts of content and intentionality. To do so, we need to interpret content from the standpoint of externalism. The paper shows that not all externalist theories are able to offer an interpretation of content that avoids criticism from eliminativism and radical enactivism. The classical externalist theories, proposed by Putnam and Burge, being compatible with the concept of narrow mental content, are not suitable for this task. Enactivist theories and active externalism of Clark and Chalmers are also not appropriate for this task, since these approaches rather support vehicle externalism, than content externalism. The paper concludes that externalism proposed by McDowell allows us to preserve the concepts of content and intentionality by abandoning the concept of mental representation.

Keywords
mental representation, intentionality, content, cognitive science, enactivism, externalism
Received
17.08.2018
Date of publication
24.09.2018
Number of purchasers
10
Views
1082
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0.0 (0 votes)
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S004287440000229-6-1 Дата внесения правок в статью - 31.07.2018
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References

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2. Clark, Andy (2001) Mindware: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Oxford Univer-sity Press, New York.

3. Clark, Andy, Chalmers, David (1998) ‘The Extended Mind’, Analysis, 58 (1), pp.7–19.

4. Colombetti, Giovanna (2010) ‘Enaction, sense-making, and emotion’, Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science, MIT Press, pp. 145–164.

5. Dennett, Daniel (1991) ‘Real patterns’, Journal of Philosophy, 88 (1), pp. 27–51.

6. Fodor, Jerry (1987) Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind, MIT Press.

7. Gibson, James J. (1979) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Houghton Mifflin (Russian Translation 1988).

8. Hurley, Susan L. (2010) ‘Varieties of externalism’, The Extended Mind, MIT Press, pp. 101–153.

9. Hutto, Daniel D., Myin, Erik (2013) Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds Without Content, MIT Press.

10. Ivanov, Dmitry V. (2016) ‘Radical Enactivism and the Problem of Subjectivity’, Voprosy Filosofii, Vol. 11 (2016), pp. 60–69 (in Russian).

11. Ivanov, Dmitry V. (2017) ‘The Problem of Subjectivity and John McDowell’s Direct Realism’, Vo-prosy Filosofii, Vol. 12 (2017), pp. 110–119 (in Russian).

12. McDowell, John (1994) Mind and World, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

13. Newell, Allen, Simon, Herbert (1976) ‘Computer science as empirical inquiry: Symbols and search’, Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, 19 (3), pp. 113–26.

14. Noe, Alva (2004) Action in Perception, MIT Press.

15. Putnam, Hilary (1973) ‘Meaning and reference’, Journal of Philosophy, 70 (19), pp. 699–711.

16. Searle, John R. (1984) Minds, Brains and Science, Harvard University Press (Russian Translation 1993).

17. Thompson, Evan (2007) Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, Harvard University Press.

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