| Literature DB >> 24563661 |
Abstract
This paper sets out a view about the explanatory role of representational content and advocates one approach to naturalising content - to giving a naturalistic account of what makes an entity a representation and in virtue of what it has the content it does. It argues for pluralism about the metaphysics of content and suggests that a good strategy is to ask the content question with respect to a variety of predictively successful information processing models in experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience; and hence that data from psychology and cognitive neuroscience should play a greater role in theorising about the nature of content. Finally, the contours of the view are illustrated by drawing out and defending a surprising consequence: that individuation of vehicles of content is partly externalist.Entities:
Year: 2013 PMID: 24563661 PMCID: PMC3928558 DOI: 10.1111/phc3.12033
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Philos Compass ISSN: 1747-9991