Re exive, Symmetric and Transitive Scienti c Representations

This paper addresses the issue of what it means for something to be identifiable as an internal representation. The inquiry will proceed in a number of steps. First, it will be pointed out how, in the literature, we find a tendency to conflate the idea that something can be seen as a representation with the idea that something is, as a matter of fact, identifiable as a representation. Second, it will be argued that the notion of an internal representation cannot, and should not be divorced from an understanding of what it means for an external object to qualify as a representation. The third step follows from this: as a case in point, I will look at the external representational devices known as scientific representations, and I will draw insights from current discussions within philosophy of science concerning the representational nature of these objects. In a fourth and final step, it will be argued that all representation involves a socio-normative or prescriptive element, and that factual identification of an object as a representation is impossible outside this prescriptive context. The conclusion argues that we should therefore give up on the idea that we can discover structures in the brain that can be identified as representations.

Synthese, 2001

The actual approaches of Cognitive Science offer a partial explanation of cognition. In this paper, our main point is to catch some key elements from these approaches, that can be taken together in a future perspective for a better explanation of cognition. The key elements (levels of analysis, primitives, processes, structures, threshold, self-organisation, bidirectionality, emergency, habituation, tasks, the interaction between levels and also the interactions between the elements of the cognitive system and the environment) help us to stress the need of the representations. Then, we are discussing the following dichotomies: procedural-declarative, consciousness-unconsciousness, implicitexplicit. Finally, we will try to motivate the necessity of an abstract theory of representation in Cognitive Science.

Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 2015

The notion of scientific representation plays a central role in current debates on modeling in the sciences. One or maybe the major epistemic virtue of successful models is their capacity to adequately represent specific phenomena or target systems. According to similarity views of scientific representation, models should be similar to their corresponding targets in order to represent them. In this paper, Suárez's arguments against similarity views of representation will be scrutinized. The upshot is that the intuition that scientific representation involves similarity is not refuted by the arguments. The arguments do not make the case for the strong claim that similarity between vehicles and targets is neither necessary nor sufficient for scientific representation. Especially, one claim that a similarity view wants to uphold, still, is the following thesis: only if a vehicle is similar to a target in relevant respects and to a specific degree of similarity then the vehicle is a scientific representation of that target.

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2015

This article provides a state-of-the-art review of the philosophical literature on scientific representation. It first argues that the topic emerges historically mainly out of what may be called the modelling tradition. It then introduces a number of helpful analytical distinctions and goes on to divide contemporary approaches to scientific representation into two distinct kinds, substantive and deflationary. Analogies with related discussions of artistic representation in aesthetics and the nature of truth in metaphysics are pursued. It is finally urged that the most promising approaches—and the ones most likely to feature prominently in future developments—are deflationary. In particular, a defense is provided of a genuinely inferential conception of representation.

This article provides a state of the art review of the philosophical literature on scientific representation. It first argues that the topic emerges historically mainly out of what may be called the modelling tradition. It then introduces a number of helpful analytical distinctions, and goes on to divide contemporary approaches to scientific representation into two distinct kinds, substantive and deflationary. Analogies with related discussions of artistic representation in aesthetics, and of the nature of truth in metaphysics are pursued. It is finally urged that the most promising approaches - and the ones most likely to feature prominently in future developments - are deflationary. In particular, a defence is provided of a genuinely inferential conception of representation.

2009

ABSTRACT: In this paper we claim that the notion of cognitive representation (and scientific representation in particular) is irreducibly plural. By means of an analogy with the minimalist conception of truth, we show that this pluralism is compatible with a generally deflationary attitude towards representation.

Philosophical Psychology, 2002

Robert Cummins [(1996) Representations, targets and attitudes, Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT, p. 1] has characterized the vexed problem of mental representation as "the topic in the philosophy of mind for some time now." This remark is something of an understatement. The same topic was central to the famous controversy between Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld in the 17th century and remained central to the entire philosophical tradition of "ideas" in the writings of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Reid and Kant. However, the scholarly, exegetical literature has almost no overlap with that of contemporary cognitive science. I show that the recurrence of certain deep perplexities about the mind is a systematic and pervasive pattern arising not only throughout history, but also in a number of independent domains today such as debates over visual imagery, symbolic systems and others. Such historical and contemporary convergences suggest that the fundamental issues cannot arise essentially from the theoretical guise they take in any particular case. … if men had been born blind philosophy would be more perfect, because it would lack many false assumptions that have been taken from the sense of sight. (Galileo Galilei, 1610) Mental representation: "the topic for some time now" Robert Cummins (1996, p. 1) has recently characterized the vexed problem of mental representation as "the topic in the philosophy of mind for some time now." However, this remark is something of an understatement. In fact, the same topic was central to the famous controversy between Antoine Arnauld and Nicolas Malebranche in the 17th century, and also central to the entire philosophical tradition of "ideas" in the writings of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Reid and Kant. This pattern of recurrence is a striking fact. However, the cognitive science literature has almost no overlap with that of the history of early modern philosophy. This mutual neglect is remarkable in view of the intimate connection of their concerns. I am concerned here to reveal something of the rich and mutually illuminating connections between these disjoint literatures. In principle, such mutual illumination can make a valuable and perhaps novel contribution both to contemporary cognitive science and also to the scholarship of early modern philosophy. The possibility of mutual bene t is even

2000

REPRESENTATION MODELS AS DEVICES FOR SCIENTIFIC THEORY APPLICATIONS V5. THE SEMANTIC VIEW OF SCIENTIFIC THEORIES: The Case of Models of the Nuclear Structure Analyses of the nature and structure of scientific theories have predominantly focused on formalisation. The Received View of scientific theories considers theories as axiomatised sets of sentences. In Hilbert-style formalisation theories are considered formal axiomatic calculi to which interpretation is supplied by a set of correspondence rules. The Received View has long been abandoned. The Semantic View of scientific theories also considers theories as formal systems. In the Semantic conception, a theory is identified with the class of intended models of the formal language, if the theory were to be given such linguistic form. The proponents of the Semantic View, however, hold that this class of models can be directly defined without recourse to a formal language. Just like its predecessor, the Semantic View is also not free of untenable implications. The uniting feature of the arguments in this work is the topic of theoretical representation of phenomena. The Semantic View implies that theoretical representation comes about by the use of some model, which belongs to the class that constitutes the theory. However, this is not what we see when we scrutinise the features of actual representation models in physics. In this work particular emphasis is given to how representation models are constructed in Classical Mechanics and Nuclear Physics and what conceptual resources are used in their construction. The characteristics that these models demonstrate instruct us that to regard them as families of theoretical models, as the Semantic View purports, is to obscure how they are constructed, what is used for their construction, how they function and how they relate to the theory. For instance, representation models are devices that frequently postulate physical mechanisms for which the theory does not provide explanations. Thus it seems more appropriate to claim that these representation devices mediate between theory and experiment, and at the same time possess a partial independence from theory. Furthermore, when we focus our attention to the ways by which representation models are constructed we discern that they are the result of the processes of abstraction and concrétisation. These processes are operative in theoretical representation and they demand our attention if we are to explicate how theories represent phenomena in their domains. A cknowledgements I wish to thank my supervisor, Colin Howson, for reading and criticising several earlier versions of this work, and for his patience and help during the earlier more confused times. But I owe Colin Howson a lot more, I only hope to have benefited from his acute observation skills. I would also like to thank Stathis Psillos, John Worrall, Craig Callender, Jeff Ketland and Margaret Morrison, who read earlier versions of parts of this work and offered invaluable comments. Finally, my thanks go to Antigone Nounou, George Portides and Kristin Ross for their generous help at different stages. 6.3 Further Remarks on Idealisation: The Process of Abstraction and Concrétisation 6.3.1 A Terminological Change: Abstraction and Concrétisation 196 6.3.2 The Process of Abstraction and Concrétisation 201 6.4 Conclusion Bibliography Following Suppe, let TC be the conjunction of T and C, where T is the conjunction of the theoretical postulates and C is the conjunction of the correspondence rules. Then TC designates the scientific theory that is based on L, T, and C. The above sketch of the RV contains many features the rationale and implications of which shall not be treated here. Indeed, I shall limit myself only to those features of the RV that are relevant to the main criticisms. The above version of the Received View, as well as previous versions of it, has been criticised inter alia on the following grounds: (1) On its reliance on an observation-theory distinction and in addition on an analytic-synthetic distinction. (2) On its employment of a correspondence-rule account of the interpretation of theoretical terms. (3) On its commitment to a theory consistency condition and to a meaning invariance condition. (4) On the fact that it obscures a number of epistemologically important features of scientific theories. (5) On the fact that it assigns a deductive status to empirical theories. Although the conclusive power of these criticisms is, as will be seen, doubtful, collectively they have been persuasive among philosophers of science and as a result the Logical Positivist analysis of scientific theories gradually gave room to other schools of thought.

In this paper I will argue that Cassirer makes a case for a non-standard representationalist model for scientific knowledge. Roughly put, representationalism (R) is the view that a prop-osition p (belonging to a certain physical model) holds for a part w of the world iff p appropriately depicts or accurately reproduces w. However, R has been seriously undermined by quantum mechanics. For instance, Heisenberg’s matrix mathematics shows that quantum ob-jects are in fact not representable in any cognitive sense. Cassirer’s main agenda in the philosophy of science is to make the general claim that R is not a good theoretical account of scien-tific knowledge. Cassirer argues that scientific knowledge obtains as a process of idealization (rather than of representation) through which the very object of scientific knowledge can be first grasped. By Cassirer’s light, the mathematical formulas do not correspond to anything given sensu stricto as part of the world, but, rather, intervene as constitutive elements of what can in principle count as the object of scientific knowledge, and thereby correspond to nomic structures. These nomic structures are, in Cassirer’s idiom, ‘symbols’, which as such do not denote objects properly, but systems of instructions for operatively ordering the physical domain of objects. Therefore, I will argue that Cassirer advocates a kind of operationalist model for scientific knowledge. Keywords: Cassirer; representationalism; physics; idealization; symbol.