Extending a construction of Andreka, Givant, and Nemeti (2019), we construct some finite vector spaces and use them to build finite non-representable relation algebras. They are simple, measurable, and persistently finite, and they validate arbitrary finite sets of equations that are valid in the variety RRA of representable relation algebras. It follows that there is no finitely axiomatisable class of relation algebras that contains RRA and validates every equation that is both valid in RRA and preserved by completions of relation (...) algebras. Consequently, the variety generated by the completions of representable relation algebras is not finitely axiomatisable. This answers a question of Maddux (2018). (shrink)

There are two main approaches in the phenomenological understanding of the unconscious. The first explores the intentional theory of the unconscious, while the second develops a non-representational way of understanding consciousness and the unconscious. This paper aims to outline a general theoretical framework for the non-representational approach to the unconscious within the phenomenological tradition. In order to do so, I focus on three relevant theories: Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, Thomas Fuchs’ phenomenology of body memory, and Edmund Husserl’s (...) phenomenology of affectivity. Both Merleau-Ponty and Fuchs understand the unconscious as a “sedimented practical schema” of subjective being in the world. This sedimented unconscious contributes to the way we implicitly interpret reality, fill in the gaps of uncertainty, and invest our social interactions with meaning. Husserl, however, approaches the unconscious in terms of affective non-vivacity, as a sphere of sedimentation and the horizon of the distant past which stays affectively connected to the living present. Drawing on these ideas, I argue that these two accounts can reinforce one another and provide the ground for a phenomenological understanding of the unconscious in terms of the horizontal dimension of subjective experience and a non-representational relation to the past. (shrink)

Buddhist traditions understand emptiness in various ways, and two streams of interpretation, “self-emptiness” and “other-emptiness” , have emerged in Tibet that help bring into focus the extent to which interpretations diverge.1 In contrast to self-emptiness, other-emptiness does not refer to a phenomenon’s lack of its own essence; it refers to the ultimate reality’s lack of all that it is not. Rather than claiming the universality of self-emptiness , proponents of other-emptiness assert another way to understand emptiness with regard to the (...) ultimate . These two interpretations of emptiness—as ground and as groundless .. (shrink)

This paper argues that investigations into how to best make something often provide researchers with an objectual understanding of their target phenomena. This argument starts with an extended investigation into the non-representational uses of models. In particular, we identify a special sort of “design model” whose aim is to guide the production of phenomena. Clarifying how these design models are evaluated shows that they are evaluated in different ways than representational models. Once the character of design models has (...) been fixed, we argue that grasping design models can provide objectual understanding of phenomena. This argument proceeds through a critical engagement with Dellsén’s ( 2020 ) position that a grasp of a good representational model of dependencies provides objectual understanding of a phenomenon. We agree with Dellsén that this is one way to achieve understanding, but maintain that grasping a good design model is another way to achieve understanding. The paper concludes by considering some important objections to our proposal and also by noting some of the broader questions about understanding and knowledge in both science and engineering. (shrink)

The standard opinion is that the force of the constitution hinges on the fact that it is willingly endorsed by the people or, at least representative of the people. This Article challenges this view. More specifically, I differentiate between two types of legitimation: representational legitimation and non-representational or reason-based legitimation. While representational legitimation rests on the fact that the constitution is representative of who the people are or what they want, reason-based constitutions are based on the judgement (...) that the constitution is just or, at least grounded in reason. I also show that some of the puzzles in constitutional theory can be resolved by acknowledging the significance of the latter type of legitimation. For instance, I illustrate that constitutions that were not adopted freely by the nations and could not have been characterized as representative of the people such as the German Constitution can still be legitimate. To put it provocatively: the legitimation of a constitution need not rest on the conviction that it represents the people whom it governs; it may simply rest on the belief that it is a good or just constitution. Representational legitimacy is only one form of legitimacy but not the only one. (shrink)

This study addresses the dynamical nature of a “representation‐hungry” cognitive task involving an imagined action. In our experiment, participants were handed rods that systematically increased or decreased in length on subsequent trials. Participants were asked to judge whether or not they thought they could reach for a distant object with the hand‐held rod. The results are in agreement with a dynamical model, extended from Tuller, Case, Ding, and Kelso (1994). The dynamical effects observed in this study suggest that predictive judgments (...) regarding the possibility or impossibility of a certain action can be understood in terms of dynamically evolving basins of attraction instead of as depending on representational structures. (shrink)

This study addresses the dynamical nature of a “representation‐hungry” cognitive task involving an imagined action. In our experiment, participants were handed rods that systematically increased or decreased in length on subsequent trials. Participants were asked to judge whether or not they thought they could reach for a distant object with the hand‐held rod. The results are in agreement with a dynamical model, extended from Tuller, Case, Ding, and Kelso (1994). The dynamical effects observed in this study suggest that predictive judgments (...) regarding the possibility or impossibility of a certain action can be understood in terms of dynamically evolving basins of attraction instead of as depending on representational structures. (shrink)

This paper follows recent debates around theorizations of ‘affect’ and its distinction from ‘emotion’ in the context of non-representational theories to exemplify how the ontologization of affects creates important openings of ethical and political potential in educators’ efforts to make productive interventions in pedagogical spaces. The ontological orientation provided by NRT has two important implications for educational theory and practice. First, it exposes the indeterminacy and inventiveness of affective capacities of bodies, illustrating how diverse socio-materials events are variously enrolled (...) in everyday school life processes of differentiation. Second, it emphasizes an affirmative account of the ethics and politics of affect in which connections and relations forged between bodies, things and spaces constitute the basis of new configurations of affects and emotions in schools. (shrink)

Many scientific models are non-representational in that they refer to merely possible processes, background conditions and results. The paper shows how such non-representational models can be appraised, beyond the weak role that they might play as heuristic tools. Using conceptual distinctions from the discussion of how-possibly explanations, six types of models are distinguished by their modal qualities of their background conditions, model processes and model results. For each of these types, an actual model example – drawn from economics, (...) biology, psychology or sociology – is discussed. For each case, contexts and purposes are identified in which the use of such a model offers a genuine opportunity to learn – i.e. justifies changing one’s confidence in a hypothesis about the world. These cases then offer novel justifications for modelling practices that fall between the cracks of standard representational accounts of models. (shrink)

This paper argues that various phenomenological considerations support a non-representational causal account of visual experience. This position claims that visual experiences serve as a non-representational causally efficacious medium for the production of beliefs concerning the external world. The arguments are centered on defending a non-representational causal account’s understanding of the cognitive significance of visual experience. Among other things, such an account can easily explain the inextricable role that background beliefs and conceptual capacities play in perceptually-based external world (...) belief-formation processes, the fact that visual mental states constrain beliefs because of their presentational phenomenology, and the phenomenon known as the transparency of visual experience. (shrink)

Life, but not as we know it -- Still life in nearly present time -- Driving and the city -- Movement-space -- Afterwords -- From born to made -- Spatialities of feeling -- But malice aforethought -- Turbulent passions.

The title explores a range of ideas which have recently engaged geographers and have led to the development of an alternative approach to the conception, practice, and production of geographic knowledge. It offers the first sole-authored, accessible introduction to this work and its impact on geography drawing together the work of a range of established and emerging scholars working on the development of non-representational theories. This volume is essential reading for undergraduates and post-graduate students interested in the social, cultural, (...) and political geographies of everyday living. (shrink)

Whether perception involves the manipulation of representations is currently heavily debated. The embedded view advanced by Nico Orlandi seeks a middle passage between representationalism and radical enactivism. In this paper I argue for a non-representational take on EV. I argue that this is the best way to resolve the objections EV has received from both representationalists and non-representationalists. I analyze this debate, and distinguish four sorts of objections: the objection of the wrongfully cut middleman, the argument against explanatory exclusionism, (...) the case for scientific benefits of representations, and the charge of inconsistent ascription of representational status in EV. I argue that the middleman was never cut in EV, and is controversial to boot, otherwise equal, non-representational explanations have primacy over representational explanations, due to the lack of naturalistic grounds for representations and the unnecessarily ascribed cognitive load to the system. Further, I show that puts the cart before the horse, and the arguments on offer are viciously circular. However, the final objection, lays bare a deeper issue for EV. At the cost of giving up the middle position, however, the explanatory tools already available to EV can be shown to cover the work initially thought to require representation. I conclude that EV is best altered to be a non-representational theory of perception. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to convince anti-realists that their correct intuitions against the metaphysical inflationism derived from some versions of mathematical realism do not force them to embrace non-standard, epistemic approaches to truth and existence. It is also an attempt to convince mathematical realists that they do not need to implement their perfectly sound and judicious intuitions with the anti-intuitive developments that render full-blown mathematical realism into a view which even Gödel considered objectionable. I will argue for the following (...) two theses: that realism, in its standard characterization, is our default position, a position in agreement with our pre-theoretical intuitions and with the results of our best semantic theories, and that most of the metaphysical qualms usually related to it depends on a poor understanding of truth and existence as higher-order concepts. (shrink)

This paper starts by considering an argument for thinking that predictive processing (PP) is representational. This argument suggests that the Kullback–Leibler (KL)-divergence provides an accessible measure of misrepresentation, and therefore, a measure of representational content in hierarchical Bayesian inference. The paper then argues that while the KL-divergence is a measure of information, it does not establish a sufficient measure of representational content. We argue that this follows from the fact that the KL-divergence is a measure of relative (...) entropy, which can be shown to be the same as covariance (through a set of additional steps). It is well known that facts about covariance do not entail facts about representational content. So there is no reason to think that the KL-divergence is a measure of (mis-)representational content. This paper thus provides an enactive, non-representational account of Bayesian belief optimisation in hierarchical PP. (shrink)

Taking technological developments in urban mapping and the megacity phenomena of rapid change and sprawling space as its starting point, this essay provides a history of the present through a genealogy of maps of Montpellier in France, a rapidly growing modern city that provides examples from the earliest printed maps of the 16th century through to the most recent innovations in public-sponsored 3D mapping. By tracing the shifting correlations of narrative elements, it places in historical perspective the relationship between those (...) concepts, such as verticality and horizontality, and perception and representation, which are problematized in the contemporary contexts of megacities and digital technology. (shrink)

While classical phenomenology, as represented by Edmund Husserl’s work, resists certain forms of representationalism about perception, I argue that in its theory of horizons, it posits representations in the sense of content-bearing vehicles. As part of a phenomenological theory, this means that on the Husserlian view such representations are part of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. I believe that, although the intuitions supporting this idea are correct, it is a mistake to maintain that there are such representations defining the (...) phenomenal character of low-level perception. What these representations are called on to explain, i.e., the phenomenal character of perceiving objects in their full presence, can be more parsimoniously explained by appealing to certain affective states or affect schemas that shape the intentional directedness of low-level perceptual experience and define its phenomenal character in a non-representational way. This revision of the Husserlian view, it is shown, also helps us understand the normative character of perception. (shrink)

The representational mode of thinking assumes a correspondence between appearance and reality that is supported by a metaphysical edifice. This way of thinking uses the metaphor of the mirror, which suggests a reflected image of consciousness and confusion between the representation and original consciousness. Jacque Derrida, a leading postmodern philosopher, wants to overcome the mode of representational thinking and extricate himself from it by attempting to think and emphasize differences. Like Derrida, the Daoist sage Zhuangzi and the Japanese (...) Zen master Dōgen also seek to avoid representational thinking; however, these Eastern philosophers accomplish this in a very different way. This paper will compare their differences with respect to overcoming the representational mode of thinking. (shrink)

We give a simple new construction of representable relation algebras with non-representable completions. Using variations on our construction, we show that the elementary closure of the class of completely representable relation algebras is not finitely axiomatizable.

Pure representationalism or intentionalism for phenomenal experience is the theory that all introspectible qualitative aspects of a conscious experience can be analyzed as qualities that the experience non-conceptually represents the world to have. Some philosophers have argued that experiences such as afterimages, phosphenes and double vision are counterexamples to the representationalist theory, claiming that they are non- representational states or have non-representational aspects, and they are better explained in a qualia-theoretical framework. I argue that these states are fully (...) representational states of a certain kind, which I call “automatically non-endorsed representations”, experiential states the veridicality of which we are almost never committed to, and which do not trigger explicit belief or disbelief in the mind of the subject. By investigating descriptive accounts of afterimages by two qualia theorists, I speculate that the mistaken claims of some anti-representationalists might be rooted in confusing two senses of the term “seeming”. (shrink)

Social philosophy at the end of the twentieth century must be prefixed by what it follows. It has become commonplace to describe our moment as postmodern and post-structuralist, perhaps also post-Marxian. While true enough, our situation more specifically must be post-Lacan, post-Althusser, post-Foucault, and post-Critical Theory. A number of theorists highlight the context this dissertation places itself in, but Slavoj Žižek and Judith Butler should be emphasized in this regard. The positive project of this dissertation begins with radical doubts about (...) the operation of epistemic truth in subjectivity and in language. The dissertation is a series of case studies in the modes of failure of truth, and of the manner in which ideology functions within the void left by the necessary absence of truth. It has a political project of determining what forms counter-hegemony can take absent a traditional assumption of a solid ground for veracity. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Pour plusieurs, la troisième notion primitive, celle de l'union de l'esprit et du corps, est un ajout obscur et inexplicable dans la philosophie de Descartes, et qui est venu après coup. Je soutiens, pour ma part, que nous pouvons réconcilier la conception que se fait Descartes de cette troisième notion primitive avec l'approche dualiste des Méditations par le biais d'un modèle non représentationnaliste des passions. Je montre, pour y parvenir, que les passions, qui sont des manifestations de la troisième (...) notion primitive, sont autoréflexives et présentent ainsi la même structure que la conscience du cogito. (shrink)

Description: Contents: Preface 1. General Remarks on the Vedanta 2. Fundamental Distinction Between The Self and the Ego 3. The Vital Centre of the Human Being, Seat of Brahma 4. Purusha and Prakriti 5. Purusha Unaffected by Individual Modifications 6. The Degrees of Individual Manifestation 7. Buddhi or the Higher Intellect 8. Manas or the Inward Sense : The Ten External Faculties of Sensation and Action 9. The Envelopes of the Self ; The Five Vayus or Vital Functions 10. The (...) Essential Unity and Identity of the Self in all the States of the Being 11. The Different Conditions of Atma in the Human Being 12. The Waking State or the Condition of Vaishwanara 13. The Dream State or the Condition of Taijasa 14. The State of Deep Sleep or the Condition of Prajna 15. The Unconditioned State of Atma 16. The Symbolical Representation of Atma and its Conditions by the Sacred Monosyllable Om 17. The Posthumous Evolution of the Human Being 18. The Reabsorption of the Individual Faculties 19. Differences in the Posthumous Conditions According to the Degrees of Knowledge 20. The Coronal Artery and the Solar Ray 21. The Divine Journey of the Being on the Path of Liberation 22. Final Deliverance 23. Videha-mukti and Jivana-mukti 24. The Spiritual State of the Yogi : The Supreme Identity. (shrink)

Enaction, as put forward by Varela and defended by other thinkers (notably Alva Noë, 2004; Susan Hurley, 2006; and Kevin O’Regan, 1992), departs from traditional accounts that treat mental processes (like perception, reasoning, and action) as discrete, independent processes that are causally related in a sequen- tial fashion. According to the main claim of the enactive approach, which Thompson seems to fully endorse, perceptual awareness is taken to be a skill-based activity. Our perceptual contact with the world, according to the (...) enactionists, is not mediated by representations but is enacted, and the notion of representation, belonging to the classic computational paradigm, has no place in this alternative approach. Though Thompson does not pronounce directly on the issue of representationalism, he is most definitely keeping the company of anti-representationalists, and in that context it is not unreasonable to take his silence for consent. In this paper, we will argue that the enactive approach to imagery is unworkable unless it makes appeal to representations, understood in a particular way. Not understood as pictures, to be sure. Or sentences for that matter. But those aren’t the only options. (shrink)

The contents of linguistic and mental representations may seem to be individuated by what they are about. But a problem arises with regard to representation of the non-existent - words and thoughts that are about things that don't exist. Fourteen new essays get to grips with this much-debated problem.

What can we learn about the existence of non-physical entities from close inquiry into special kinds of experiences? Contemporary analytic philosophy has sometimes studied mystic experiences as evidence for the existence of such entities. The article is organized as follows: first, I discuss several distinctions that seem to me to play substantive roles in philosophizing about such experiences. I will then offer and criticize two arguments that support the significance of the experiences. The arguments do not show whether a non-physical (...) entity does or does not exist; they highlight a philosophical framework that can be beneficial to a variety of different approaches. Based on a heuristic strategy, the arguments will focus on the possibility/impossibility of objective representation of non-physical entities. They invite the reader to reflect on deeper philosophical grounds necessary for evaluating any positive or negative claims about the significance/insignificance of such experiences. The first argument rests on contemporary theories and assumptions. The second argument will use notions that drive from Classic Arabic-Persian Philosophy. (shrink)

Hoerl & McCormack argue that comparative and developmental psychology teaches us that “neither animals nor infants can think and reason about time.” We argue that the authors neglect to take into account pivotal evidence from ethology that suggests that non-human animals do possess a capacity to represent and reason about time, namely, work done on Sumatran orangutans’ long travel calls.

Natura non facit saltum (Nature does not make leaps) was the lovely aphorism on which Darwin based his work on evolution. It applies as much to the formation of mental representations as to the formation of species, and therein lies our major disagreement with the SOC model proposed by Perruchet & Vinter.

The approach to expert communities and political representation of non-experts in Harry Collins and Robert Evans’ elective modernism reflects the conviction that experts are not representative of ordinary citizens. I use an analysis of aspects of representation and the argument from inductive risk to argue that experts can be seen as representative of non-experts, when we understand representation as resemblance based on shared social perspectives and acknowledge the inevitable involvement of such perspectives in decisions under inductive risk. This, in turn, (...) has implications for some of the proposals about practices and institutions made in elective modernism. (shrink)

Many views of utterance comprehension agree that understanding an utterance involves knowing, believing, perceiving, or, anyhow, mentally representing the utterance to mean such-and-such. They include cognitivist as well as many perceptualist views; I give them the generic label ‘representationalist’. Representationalist views have been criticized for placing an undue metasemantic demand on utterance comprehension, viz. that speakers be able to represent meaning as meaning. Critics have adverted to young speakers, say about the age of three, who do comprehend many utterances but (...) may be rather limited in their abilities to think about meaning as such, to cast doubt on this demand. This paper motivates representationalism, examines what the balance of developmental evidence and arguments shows, and identifies options for a representationalist response. Though there is some evidence that three-year-olds have limited abilities to think about meaning as such, they may yet turn out to have a concept of meaning, or at least some proto-semantic concept. Moreover, even if they lack any such concept, there is, I propose, a way of developing representationalism, drawing inspiration from Davidson’s paratactic view of indirect speech reports, on which meaning can be non-conceptually represented. Independently of developmental considerations, this paratactic-style proposal is of interest to friends of a perceptualist view of comprehension. (shrink)

In this paper a new trajectory-based representation to non-relativistic quantum mechanics is formulated. This is ahieved by generalizing the notion of Lagrangian path which lies at the heart of the deBroglie-Bohm “ pilot-wave” interpretation. In particular, it is shown that each LP can be replaced with a statistical ensemble formed by an infinite family of stochastic curves, referred to as generalized Lagrangian paths. This permits the introduction of a new parametric representation of the Schrödinger equation, denoted as GLP-parametrization, and of (...) the associated quantum hydrodynamic equations. The remarkable aspect of the GLP approach presented here is that it realizes at the same time also a new solution method for the N-body Schrödinger equation. As an application, Gaussian-like particular solutions for the quantum probability density function are considered, which are proved to be dynamically consistent. For them, the Schrödinger equation is reduced to a single Hamilton–Jacobi evolution equation. Particular solutions of this type are explicitly constructed, which include the case of free particles occurring in 1- or N-body quantum systems as well as the dynamics in the presence of suitable potential forces. In all these cases the initial Gaussian PDFs are shown to be free of the spreading behavior usually ascribed to quantum wave-packets, in that they exhibit the characteristic feature of remaining at all times spatially-localized. (shrink)

Seit jeher sind Künstler und Publikum zugleich fasziniert und abgestoßen von obszönen Darstellungen. Dabei lässt sich gar nicht genau definieren, was das Obszöne ist. Eine Auslegung besagt, dass das Obszöne - in seiner Ableitung von "ob skene": abseits der Szene - dasjenige bezeichnet, das nicht gesehen werden darf. Es ist demnach das, was moralisch verwerflich oder gar verboten, was gefährlich oder unerträglich anzusehen ist. An den drei Themenfeldern Sexualität, Abjektion und Gewalt orientiert sich der Band, der Spielarten des Obszönen in (...) der Kunstgeschichte beleuchtet. Im diachronen Blick auf die historisch wechselnden Auffassungen des Obszönen wird danach gefragt, mit welchen Mitteln Künstlerinnen und Künstler seit dem Mittelalter herrschende Moral-, Sexual- oder Wertvorstellungen - und ihre Überschreitung - zum Thema gemacht haben, welche Ziele sie damit verfolgten und welche Aussagen über die kulturelle Physiognomie ihrer Epoche sich aus ihren "obszönen" Werken ableiten lassen. (shrink)

In this paper, we study three representations of lattices by means of a set with a binary relation of compatibility in the tradition of Ploščica. The standard representations of complete ortholattices and complete perfect Heyting algebras drop out as special cases of the first representation, while the second covers arbitrary complete lattices, as well as complete lattices equipped with a negation we call a protocomplementation. The third topological representation is a variant of that of Craig, Haviar, and Priestley. We then (...) extend each of the three representations to lattices with a multiplicative unary modality; the representing structures, like so-called graph-based frames, add a second relation of accessibility interacting with compatibility. The three representations generalize possibility semantics for classical modal logics to non-classical modal logics, motivated by a recent application of modal orthologic to natural language semantics. (shrink)

This paper solves a natural but still open question: can abstract categorial grammars (ACGs) respresent usual categorial grammars? Despite their name and their claim to be a unifying framework, up to now there was no faithful representation of usual categorial grammars in ACGs. This paper shows that Non-Associative Lambek grammars as well as their derivations can be defined using ACGs of order two. To conclude, the outcome of such a representation are discussed.

:Space is not an empirical concept that has been drawn from outer experiences. For in order for certain sensations to be related to something outside me , thus in order for me to represent them as outside and next to one another, thus not merely different but as in different places, the representation of space must already be their ground. Thus the representation of space cannot be obtained from the relations of outer appearance through experience, but this outer experience is (...) itself first possible only through this representation. 1Abstract:Der Raum is kein empirischer Begriff, der von äußeren Erfahrungen abgezogen worden. Denn damit gewisse Empfindungen auf etwas außer mir bezogen werden, imgleichen damit ich sie als außer und neben einander, mithin nicht bloß verschieden, sondern als in verschiedenen Orten vorstellen können, dazu muß die Vorstellung des Raumes schon zum Grunde liegen. (shrink)

This article criticises David Chalmers’ ‘Reality+’ by interrogating its distinction of virtual reality (VR) from 2D, non-VR video games, a distinction made on the grounds that VR is immersive and these types of video games are not because immersion is a distinct characteristic of 3D perceptually represented VR. Building on the Balcerak Jacksons’ account of ‘representational immersion’, which they acknowledge has ‘perceptual’ and ‘non-perceptual’ elements, I develop an account of ‘non-perceptual representational immersion’ and use it to critique Chalmers’ (...) treatment of VR, immersion, and video games, indirectly problematizing his central ontological claim that ‘virtual reality is genuine reality’ and the reflections he makes about future society which rest upon it. I argue that video games are rich in non-perceptual representational immersion, which includes the representation of non-perceptual information about the structure and behaviour of a virtual world and its systems, the non-perceptual cognitive states that are generated in the player by the virtual world, and the immersion which comes from the constitutively cognitive nature of the player’s engagement with the virtual world, a cognitive engagement construed in an enactive sense. These are just as crucial to the phenomenon of digital immersion as perception. Immersion generally is a much more complicated phenomenon than Chalmers allows for, and it is better conceived as taking place on a spectrum which includes both 3D and 2D experiences of virtual worlds, not as hinging on 3D perceptual representation. I use ‘immersive simulation’ games as a case study. (shrink)

Formal ontologies are nowadays widely considered a standard tool for knowledge representation and reasoning in the Semantic Web. In this context, they are expected to play an important role in helping automated processes to access information. Namely: they are expected to provide a formal structure able to explicate the relationships between different concepts/terms, thus allowing intelligent agents to interpret, correctly, the semantics of the web resources improving the performances of the search technologies. Here we take into account a problem regarding (...) Knowledge Representation in general, and ontology based representations in particular; namely: the fact that knowledge modeling seems to be constrained between conflicting requirements, such as compositionality, on the one hand and the need to represent prototypical information on the other. In particular, most common sense concepts seem not to be captured by the stringent semantics expressed by such formalisms as, for example, Description Logics (which are the formalisms on which the ontology languages have been built). The aim of this work is to analyse this problem, suggesting a possible solution suitable for formal ontologies and semantic web representations. The questions guiding this research, in fact, have been: is it possible to provide a formal representational framework which, for the same concept, combines both the classical modelling view (accounting for compositional information) and defeasible, prototypical knowledge ? Is it possible to propose a modelling architecture able to provide different type of reasoning (e.g. classical deductive reasoning for the compositional component and a non monotonic reasoning for the prototypical one)? We suggest a possible answer to these questions proposing a modelling framework able to represent, within the semantic web languages, a multilevel representation of conceptual information, integrating both classical and non classical (typicality based) information. Within this framework we hypothesise, at least in principle, the coexistence of multiple reasoning processes involving the different levels of representation. (shrink)

This paper connects the debate regarding perceptual representation of high-level properties and the debate regarding non-conceptual perceptual representation. I present and defend a distinction between representationally-complex properties and properties that are simpler to represent and offer ways of assessing whether a property is representationally complex. I address conditions under which such a property might be non-conceptually represented and conclude that most representationally-complex properties are simply too complex to be non-conceptually represented. Thus, most mental states that represent representationally-complex properties must be (...) conceptual. This conclusion is relevant for a variety of philosophical theories (perception, ethics, emotions, pain) and is especially dramatic with respect to accounts according to which a mental state can non-conceptually represent such properties. As a test case for applying my argument I consider a group of such accounts: non-conceptual perceptual views of emotions, which my argument entails are false. I end by considering the implications my argument has for different theories. -/- . (shrink)

The commentators have raised many pertinent points that allow us to refine and clarify our view. We classify our response comments into seven sections: automaticity; developmental and educational questions; priming; multiple representations or multiple access(?); terminology; methodological advances; and simulated cognition and numerical cognition. We conclude that the default numerical representations are not abstract.

This article proposes a neurobiologically motivated theory of meaning as internal representation that holds on to the principle of compositionality, but negates the principle of semantic constituency. The approach builds on neurobiological findings regarding topologically structured cortical feature maps and the mechanism of object-related binding by neuronal synchronization. It incorporates the Gestalt principles of psychology and is implemented by recurrent neural networks. The semantics to be developed is structurally analogous to some variant of model-theoretical semantics. The semantics to be developed (...) is a neuro-emulative model-theoretical semantics of a first-order language. The model-theoretical semantics is merely denotational and does not imply anything about the structures of the mind or the underlying neural mechanisms that enable producing and comprehend meaningful expressions. The relation between a mental representation and its content is some form of causal-informational covariation. (shrink)

Recent scholarship emphasizes the scaffolding role of language for cognition. Language, it is claimed, is a cognition-enhancing niche ( Clark, 2006 ), a programming tool for cognition ( Lupyan and Bergen, 2016 ), even neuroenhancement ( Dove, 2019 ) and augments cognitive functions such as memory, categorization, cognitive control, and meta-cognitive abilities (“thinking about thinking”). Yet, the notion that language enhances or augments cognition, and in particular, cognitive control does not easily fit in with embodied approaches to language processing, or (...) so we will argue. Accounts aiming to explain how language enhances various cognitive functions often employ a notion of abstract representation. Yet, embodied approaches to language processing have it that language processing crucially, according to some accounts even exclusively, involves embodied, modality-specific, i.e., non-abstract representations. In coming to understand a particular phrase or sentence, a prior experience has to be simulated or reenacted. The representation thus activated is embodied (modality-specific) as sensorimotor regions of the brain are thereby recruited. In this paper, we will first discuss the notion of representation, clarify what it takes for a representation to be embodied or abstract, and distinguish between conceptual and (other) linguistic representations. We will then put forward a characterization of cognitive control and examine its representational infrastructure. The remainder of the paper will be devoted to arguing that language augments cognitive control. To that end, we will draw on two lines of research, which investigate how language augments cognitive control: (i) research on the availability of linguistic labels and (ii) research on the active usage of a linguistic code, specifically, in inner speech. Eventually, we will argue that the cognition-enhancing capacity of language can be explained once we assume that it provides us with (a) abstract, non-embodied representations and with (b) abstract, sparse linguistic representations that may serve as easy-to-manipulate placeholders for fully embodied or otherwise more detailed representations. (shrink)