Representation In Cognitive Science

Author : Nicholas Shea
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0198812884
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.83/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Representation in Cognitive Science written by Nicholas Shea and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2018-10-04 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our thoughts are meaningful. We think about things in the outside world; how can that be so? This is one of the deepest questions in contemporary philosophy. Ever since the 'cognitive revolution', states with meaning-mental representations-have been the key explanatory construct of the cognitive sciences. But there is still no widely accepted theory of how mental representations get their meaning. Powerful new methods in cognitive neuroscience can now reveal information processing in the brain in unprecedented detail. They show how the brain performs complex calculations on neural representations. Drawing on this cutting-edge research, Nicholas Shea uses a series of case studies from the cognitive sciences to develop a naturalistic account of the nature of mental representation. His approach is distinctive in focusing firmly on the 'subpersonal' representations that pervade so much of cognitive science. The diversity and depth of the case studies, illustrated by numerous figures, make this book unlike any previous treatment. It is important reading for philosophers of psychology and philosophers of mind, and of considerable interest to researchers throughout the cognitive sciences.

Author : Jerry Bobrow
Publisher : Elsevier
ISBN 13 : 1483299155
Total Pages : 442 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Representation and Understanding written by Jerry Bobrow and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2014-06-28 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representation and Understanding

Author : William M. Ramsey
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521859875
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Representation Reconsidered written by William M. Ramsey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-06-21 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description

Author : Fred Keijzer
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262263327
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Representation and Behavior written by Fred Keijzer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2001-02-12 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keijzer provides a reconstruction of cognitive science's implicit representational explanation of behavior, which he calls Agent Theory (AT), the use of mind as a subpersonal mechanism of behavior. Representation is a fundamental concept within cognitive science. Most often, representations are interpreted as mental representations, theoretical entities that are the bearers of meaning and the source of intentionality. This approach views representation as the internal reflection of external circumstances—that is, as the end station of sensory processes that translate the environmental state of affairs into a set of mental representations. Fred Keijzer stresses, however, that representations are also the starting point for a set of processes that lead back to the external environment. They are used as theoretical components within an explanation of a person's outwardly visible behavior. In this book Keijzer investigates the usefulness of representation for behavioral explanation, irrespective of mental issues. Viewing representation solely in terms of its contribution to explaining behavior allows him to build a serious case for a nonrepresentational approach and to evaluate representation's role in cognitive science. Keijzer provides a reconstruction of cognitive science's implicit representational explanation of behavior, which he calls Agent Theory (AT). AT is the use of mind as a subpersonal mechanism of behavior. He proposes an alternative to AT called Behavioral Systems Theory (BST), which explains behavior as the result of interactions between an organism and its environment. Keijzer compares BST to related work in the biology of cognition, in the building of animal-like robots, and in dynamical systems theory. Most important, he extends BST to the difficult issue of anticipatory behavior through an analogy between behavior and morphogenesis, the process by which a multicellular body develops.

Author : Jerry A. Fodor
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262560275
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Representations written by Jerry A. Fodor and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1983 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays will shape discussion in the philosophy of psychology for years to come. A collection of eleven essays dealing with methodological and empirical issues in cognitive science and in the philosophy of mind, Representations convincingly connects philosophical speculation to concrete empirical research.One of the outstanding methodological issues dealt with is the status of functionalism considered as an alternative to behavioristic and physicalistic accounts. of mental states and properties. The other issue is the status of reductionism considered as an account of the relation between the psychological and physical sciences. The first chapters present the main lines of argument which have made functionalism the currently favored philosophical approach to ontology of the mental.The outlines of a psychology of propositional attitudes which emerges from consideration of current developments in cognitive science are contained in the remaining essays.Not all of these essays are re-presentations. The new introductory essay seeks to present an overview and gives some detailed proposals about the contribution that functionalism makes to the solutions of problems about intentionality. The concluding essay, also not previously published, is a sustained examination of the relation between theories about the structure of concepts and theories about how they are learned. Finally, the essay "Three cheers for propositional attitudes", a critical examination of some of D. C. Dennett's ideas, has been completely rewritten for this volume. A Bradford Book.

Author : Nicholas Shea
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780191850677
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Representation in Cognitive Science written by Nicholas Shea and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can we think about things in the outside world? There is still no widely accepted theory of how mental representations get their meaning. In light of pioneering research, Nicholas Shea develops a naturalistic account of the nature of mental representation with a firm focus on the subpersonal representations that pervade the cognitive sciences.

Author : Joulia Smortchkova
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190686677
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book What are Mental Representations? written by Joulia Smortchkova and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-03 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The topic of this book is mental representation, a theoretical concept that lies at the core of cognitive science. Together with the idea that thinking is analogous to computational processing, this concept is responsible for the "cognitive turn" in the sciences of the mind and brain since the 1950s. Conceiving of cognitive processes (such as perception, reasoning, and motor control) as consisting of the manipulation of contentful vehicles that represent the world has led to tremendous empirical advancements in our explanations of behaviour. Perhaps the most famous discovery that explains behavior by appealing to the notion of mental representations was the discovery of 'place' cells that underlie spatial navigation and positioning, which earned researchers John O'Keefe, May-Britt Moser, and Edvard I. Moser a joint Nobel Prize in 2014. And yet, despite the empirical importance of the concept, there is no agreed definition or theoretical understanding of mental representation. This book constitutes a state-of-the-art overview on the topic of mental representation, assembling some of the leading experts in the field and allowing them to engage in meaningful exchanges over some of the most contentious questions. The collection gathers both proponents and critics of the notion, making room for debates dealing with the theoretical and ontological status of representations, the possibility of formulating a general account of mental representation which would fit our best explanatory practices, and the possibility of delivering such an account in fully naturalistic terms. Some contributors explore the relation between mutually incompatible notions of mental representation, stemming from the different disciplines composing the cognitive sciences (such as neuroscience, psychology, and computer science). Others question the ontological status and explanatory usefulness of the notion. And finally, some try to sketch a general theory of mental representations that could face the challenges outlined in the more critical chapters of the volume.

Author : Barbara Landau
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199921377
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Spatial Representation written by Barbara Landau and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-23 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our experience of the spatial world is a unitary one; we perceive objects and layouts, we remember them and act on them, and we can even talk about them with ease. Despite this impression of seamlessness, spatial representations in human adults appear to be specialized in domain-dependent manner, engaging different properties and computational mechanisms for different functions. In this book, the authors present evidence that this domain-specific specialization in cognitive function emerges early in development and is reflected in patterns of breakdown that occur under genetic defect. The authors focus on spatial representation in children and adults with Williams syndrome, a relatively rare genetic syndrome that gives rise to an unusual profile of severely impaired spatial representation together with spared language. Results from a variety of spatial domains -- including object representation, motion perception, action, navigation, and spatial language -- appear to display a strikingly uneven profile of sparing and deficit within spatial representations, consistent with the idea that specialization of function drives development and breakdown. These findings raise a crucial question: Can specific genes target specific aspects of cognitive structure? Looking deeper into the patterns of performance across spatial domains, the book explores the notion that understanding patterns of normal development across domains is crucial to understanding unusual development. Using insights from normal development, the authors propose a speculative hypothesis that explains the emergence of the William syndrome profile, and how complex cognitive outcomes can arise from the deletion of a small set of genes.

Author : Roberto G. de Almeida
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 9783319382425
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.2X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cognitive Science Perspectives on Verb Representation and Processing written by Roberto G. de Almeida and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-09-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Verbs play an important role in how events, states and other “happenings” are mentally represented and how they are expressed in natural language. Besides their central role in linguistics, verbs have long been prominent topics of research in analytic philosophy—mostly on the nature of events and predicate-argument structure—and a topic of empirical investigation in psycholinguistics, mostly on argument structure and its role in sentence comprehension. More recently, the representation of verb meaning has been gaining momentum as a topic of research in other cognitive science branches, notably neuroscience and the psychology of concepts. The present volume is an expression of this recent surge in the investigation of verb structure and meaning from the interdisciplinary perspective of cognitive science, with up-to-date contributions by theoretical linguists, philosophers, psycholinguists and neuroscientists. The volume presents new theoretical and empirical studies on how verb structure and verb meaning are represented, how they are processed during language comprehension, how they are acquired, and how they are neurologically implemented. Cognitive Science Perspectives on Verb Representation and Processing is a reflection of the recent collaboration between the disciplines that constitute cognitive science, bringing new empirical data and theoretical insights on a key element of natural language and conceptualization.

Author : Stephen Schiffer
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429693532
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cognition And Representation written by Stephen Schiffer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-02-23 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a result of a Cognitive Science program conducted to identify some of the leading issues and approaches that dominate in cognitive science research. The discussion is organized under four groups: psychological theories, mental representation, cognitive development, and semantic theory.