Mental Representations in a Mechanical World. The State of the Debate in Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Science

28.-29.11.2019, RUB, Veranstaltungszentrum, Saal 4

This workshop investigates the status of representations in a mechanical account of the mind and cognition. One core question will be whether the status of neural and mental representation is equally problematic. While sub-personal phenomena seem to be less resistant to mechanistic explanation, many personal-level mental phenomena seem to be “representation hungry”. The burden of argument seems to be on the side of the mechanists to show how to explain these phenomena without invoking mental representations. A second core question concerns the relationship between neural and mental representations. It is often assumed that the former are needed to account for the latter. However, naturalising neural representations, and accounting for their explanatory utility in a mechanistic neuroscience proves difficult. How intertwined are beliefs and desires with neural representations? Do they only come together, or is a conceptual repertoire including one but not the other a coherent possibility?

Organisation: Matej Kohár, Dr. Beate Krickel

Financial support: RUB Research School, funded by Germany’s Excellence Initiative [DFG GSC 98/3], RTG “Situated Cognition”, Prof. Dr. Albert Newen