Abstract

In his book Representation Reconsidered, William Ramsey argues against the view that the concept of mental representation employed by cognitive scientists should be based on the folk-psychological concept of mental representation as propositional attitudes. The author of the present article will attempt to show that, contrary to what Ramsey himself claims, the fact that the folk concept of mental representation will most likely not be a part of the conceptual repository of cognitive science does not imply that beliefs, desires or the rationality of human cognition should be eliminated from the naturalistic outlook on the nature of mind and cognitive processes. The key to see that this is the case lies in understanding cognitive systems as multi-level, hierarchically organized mechanisms.