Abstract

The nature of representation has been a central but controversial issue of cognitive philosophy. After 2,500 years of reflection (cf. Rolf 2006), opinions are still divided. On the one hand, there are those who are convinced that we have reached a crisis of representation in the arts, the media, and cultural theory; on the other hand, representation has remained right at the top of the agenda of cognitive science and Artificial Intelligence research (cf. Nöth & Ljungberg, eds. 2003; Nöth 1997). The words in which Daniel Dennett, in 1978, postulates the necessity for a new theory of representation as a foundation of cognitive science are symptomatic of a certain unease about the state of the art: "What is needed is..