‘Neuronal representation’ is not a defective concept: Ambiguity as a sign of science in progress Lotem Elber-Dorozko and Devin Gouvêa The term “neural representation” is extremely popular in cognitive neuroscience. Scientists often claim to have discovered neural properties that represent environmental features, such as specific visual objects or specific sounds. …
The Evidence for Representations Ken Aizawa It is commonly said that one reason to postulate mental representations is in order to explain behavior. I take this reasoning to be an instance of abductive reasoning, not to be identified with inference to the best explanation.[1] Empiricists have long been skeptical of …
Corey J. Maley Department of Philosophy Cognition, Agency, and Intelligence Center Purdue University cmaley@purdue.edu coreymaley.net The thesis of this paper is simple: structural representation and analog representation turn out to be two names for the same kind of representation. This may seem implausible, given that typical examples of structural representation …
Representations are thought to be among the essential ingredients for explaining cognition. In cognitive psychology, behaviour and decision making are modelled in terms of computations performed over representations. In neuroscience, responses of single cells, neural populations, and structural features are claimed to function as representations for the agent in question. …
We are very excited to introduce our next joint symposium with Philosophy of the Mind Sciences. This one highlights PhiMindSci’s recent special issue on representation in neuroscience and AI. Tomorrow, we’ll have an introductory post by Mark Sprevak that gives an overview of the special issue. Then we’ll have posts …
Mindcraft is a series of opinion posts on current issues in cognitive science by Brains Blog founder Gualtiero Piccinini. Do you agree? Disagree? Please contribute on the discussion board below! If you’d like to write a full-length response, please contact editor Dan Burnston. A guest post by Jack Copeland: 2026 …
Book Symposium on The Brain Abstracted in Philosophy and the Mind Sciences Philipp Haueis, Department of Philosophy and Institute for Studies of Science (ISOS), Bielefeld University, Germany The journal Philosophy of the Mind Sciences has just published a book symposium (LINK) of The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and …
