Publication
Title
Entity realism about mental representations
Author
Abstract
The concept of mental representation has long been considered to be central concept of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. But not everyone agrees. Neo-behaviorists aim to explain the mind (or some subset thereof) without positing any representations. My aim here is not to assess the merits and demerits of neo-behaviorism, but to take their challenge seriously and ask the question: What justifies the attribution of representations to an agent? Both representationalists and neo-behaviorists tend to take it for granted that the real question about representations is whether we should be realist about the theory of representationalism. This paper is an attempt to shift the emphasis from the debate concerning realism about theories to the one concerning realism about entities. My claim is that regardless of whether we are realist about representational theories of the mind, we have compelling reasons to endorse entity realism about mental representations.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Erkenntnis: an international journal of analytical philosophy. - Dordrecht
Publication
Dordrecht : Springer , 2022
ISSN
0165-0106 [print]
1572-8420 [online]
DOI
10.1007/S10670-019-00185-4
Volume/pages
87 (2022) , p. 75-91
ISI
000492645100001
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Project info
Seeing things you don't see: Unifying the philosophy, psychology and neuroscience of multimodal mental imagery (STYDS).
The diversity of unconscious mental processes.
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 09.12.2019
Last edited 10.01.2025
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