
Representations in Cognitive Science - Schiphol
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:bd813fd7-8871-4e0d-9d7a-1cede72a7520
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Schiphol
This is Nick Shea's new open-access book. Nick is one of the most prominent
philosophers of cognitive science. The abstract:

" 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."

