Kursinformation

Mental representation is the central explanatory notion of contemporary cognitive science. It is what presumably distinguishes the subject matter of psychology from the subject matter of the rest of the empirical sciences (physics, chemistry, biology etc.). And it is routinely appealed to, to explain how humans act, reason, remember, perceive and understand. Yet there is little agreement concerning what mental representations are, how they acquire their intentional content, and whether they are needed in a scientific study of the mind. This class explores contemporary accounts of mental representation in western cognitive science. It starts by outlining the function that the notion of representation is called to perform, and it then looks at two central debates: the debate concerning how representations acquire their content, and the debate concerning whether the notion of representation is needed to explain mental activity -- a debate framed in the context of the contrast between classical and connectionist accounts of mental representation.

This is a fairly advanced course in philosophy of mind designed for graduate students but recommended also to advanced undergraduates who are interested in cognitive science. The class does not require prior knowledge of philosophy of mind, but it does require an understanding of what arguments are and of how they should be reconstructed and evaluated. A prior introductory logic class or a prior writing-intensive philosophy class is strongly recommended.