Representation as the Representation of Experience

This essay deals, mainly, with the notion of representation. Representation is associated with texts and, as such, is contrasted to the true singular statement. It is argued that the relationship between the text and what the text represents can never be modeled on the relationship between a true singular statement and what the statement is true of, and, furthermore, that the former relationship is aesthetic while the latter is epistemological in nature. This aesthetic relationship between the represented and its representation is investigated from the perspective of historical writing. This offers an interesting perspective because historical texts are representations, but they also aim at giving us "the truth" about the past. Historical representation, therefore, is the kind of representation coming closest to the cognitive claims traditionally investigated by epistemology. The notion of aesthetic and historical experience is explored in order to define the relationship between historical representation and what it represents.     

幼儿在地图任务中自我位置与自我朝向表征能力的发展

使用地图定向任务, 探讨了不同任务模式下, 4~6岁幼儿自我位置与自我朝向表征能力的发展特点。结果发现, 位置表征能力的获得先于朝向表征能力, 幼儿从4岁起即开始使用地图表征自我位置, 但到5岁才表现出对自我朝向的表征能力。此外, 对于年龄较小的儿童, 相比于空间–地图的任务模式, 地图–空间的任务模式更有利于完成任务。上述结果第一次从个体发展层面证明了位置与朝向表征的分离现象, 说明位置与朝向的表征能力在发展过程中具有一定的顺序性。     

Anti‐Atomism about Color Representation

According to anti‐atomism, we represent color properties (e.g., red) in virtue of representing color relations (e.g., redder than). I motivate anti‐atomism with a puzzle involving a series of pairwise indistinguishable chips. I then develop two versions of anti‐atomism.     

Representation for reciprocal agent–environment interaction

Declarative modelling approaches in principle assume a notion of representation or representational content for the modelling concepts. The notion of representational content as discussed in literature in cognitive science and philosophy of mind shows complications as soon as agent and environment have an intense reciprocal interaction. In such cases an internal agent state is affected by the way in which internal and external aspects are interwoven during (ongoing) interaction. In this paper it is shown that the classical correlational approach to representational content is not applicable, but the temporal-interactivist approach is. As this approach involves more complex temporal relationships, formalisation was used to define specifications of the representational content more precisely. These specifications have been validated by automatically checking them on traces generated by a simulation model. Moreover, by mathematical proof it was shown how these specifications are entailed by the basic local properties.     

问题解决中对问题的外部表征和内部表征

传统观点认为,问题表征是问题解决者构建问题的心理结构,是内在的知识、结构和神经网络,是问题解决的根本机制。但近来研究发现,问题的呈现方式、问题情景的成分和结构也对问题解决行为具有独立的指导、约束或决定作用,因此可以把问题表征划分为外部表征和内部表征。这两种表征具有不同的特征,对问题解决具有不同的作用机制。就学科问题解决来说,当前研究主要集中在表征的结构及影响因素方面,未来一个时期,此方面的研究迫切需要探明外部表征的结构、形式、内容及其与内部表征之间相互作用的机制,并建构适宜的研究方法体系。     

具身认知视角下的道德隐喻表征

道德隐喻已成为道德心理学研究的热点问题,随着具身认知相关理论的兴起,道德隐喻的具身研究逐渐展开。目前,具身道德隐喻的维度主要包括空间、温度、洁净、颜色、明暗、触觉、味觉、嗅觉等。具身道德隐喻的相关理论解释主要包括概念隐喻理论、具身认知理论、知觉符号理论和架构理论。今后的具身道德隐喻应更多的探讨跨文化的差异性,丰富道德隐喻具身维度的内容以及各维度之间的相关性,同时要引入道德隐喻的影响机制分析。     

Biologically Plausible,Human‐Scale Knowledge Representation

Several approaches to implementing symbol‐like representations in neurally plausible models have been proposed. These approaches include binding through synchrony (Shastri & Ajjanagadde, 1993 ), “mesh” binding (van der Velde & de Kamps, 2006 ), and conjunctive binding (Smolensky, 1990 ). Recent theoretical work has suggested that most of these methods will not scale well, that is, that they cannot encode structured representations using any of the tens of thousands of terms in the adult lexicon without making implausible resource assumptions. Here, we empirically demonstrate that the biologically plausible structured representations employed in the Semantic Pointer Architecture (SPA) approach to modeling cognition (Eliasmith, 2013 ) do scale appropriately. Specifically, we construct a spiking neural network of about 2.5 million neurons that employs semantic pointers to successfully encode and decode the main lexical relations in WordNet, which has over 100,000 terms. In addition, we show that the same representations can be employed to construct recursively structured sentences consisting of arbitrary WordNet concepts, while preserving the original lexical structure. We argue that these results suggest that semantic pointers are uniquely well‐suited to providing a biologically plausible account of the structured representations that underwrite human cognition.     

Music and the Representation of Emotion

The claim that many musical works are representational is highly controversial. The formalist view that music is pure form and without any, or any significant, representational content is widely held. Two facts about music are, however, well-established by empirical science: Music is heard as resembling human expressive behaviour and music arouses ordinary emotions. This paper argues that it follows from these facts that music also represents human expressive behaviour and ordinary emotions.     

Re-inflating the Conception of Scientific Representation

This article argues for an anti-deflationist view of scientific representation. Our discussion begins with an analysis of the recent Callender–Cohen deflationary view on scientific representation. We then argue that there are at least two radically different ways in which a thing can be represented: one is purely symbolic, and therefore conventional, and the other is epistemic. The failure to recognize that scientific models are epistemic vehicles rather than symbolic ones has led to the mistaken (deflationary) view that whatever distinguishes scientific models from other representational vehicles must merely be a matter of pragmatics. It is then argued that even though epistemic vehicles also contain conventional elements, they do their job of demonstration (or showing) in spite of such elements.     

Representation and the First-Person Perspective

The orthodox view in the study of representation is that a strictly third-person objective methodology must be employed. The acceptance of this methodology is shown to be a fundamental and debilitating error. Toward this end I defend what I call “the particularity requirement, ”discuss an important distinction between representers and information bearers, and identify what I call “the fundamental fact of representation” I argue that any theory of representation must accommodate these, but that any theory that also is based upon a strictly third-person methodology lacks the resources to provide for any of them. It is shown that this failure extends to teleological accounts of representation, despite appearances to the contrary. In the course of this, I argue for the acceptance of a methodological principle, methodological chauvinism, and I show how it implicates a restricted use of the first-person perspective in the study of representation. I explain a nonphenomenal first-person concept, minimal content, which I have introduced and defended more fully elsewhere, the features of which lead to the recognition of a unique intentional state that I call the fundamental intentional state. It is so called since “normal” intentional states presuppose it. Importantly, the logical structure of this state is different from all other intentional states. Lastly, I argue that the expanded methodology I adopt is neither unscientific nor anthropomorphic, despite its employment of a first-person perspective. Ironically, it is the exclusive use of third-person methodologies that leads to anthropomorphism in the study of representation.     

Representation and the active consumer

One of the central tasks for naturalistic theories of representation is to say what it takes for something to be a representation, and some leading theories have been criticised for being too liberal. Prominent discussions of this problem have proposed a producer-oriented solution; it is argued that representations must be produced by systems employing perceptual constancy mechanisms. However, representations may be produced by simple transducers if they are consumed in the right way. It is characteristic of representations to be consumed by systems which are capable of independent action. This paper defends this claim; discusses more precise, naturalistic formulations; and shows how it can illuminate the explanatory payoffs which science achieves by appealing to representation.

     

Representation of time

Memory representation for time was studied in two settings. First, an analysis of timing in a laboratory analog of a foraging situation revealed that departure times from a patchy resource followed a Weber Law-like property implied by scalar timing. A trial-by-trial analysis was then pursued in a similar but more structured experimental paradigm, the Peak procedure. Study of covariance structures in the data implicated scalar variance in the memory for time as well as in the decision process, but the correlation pattern ruled out multiple access to memory within a trial.