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Mental Representation and Intentionality
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1 ФИЛОСОФИЯ. ПСИХОЛОГИЯ
Date of publication
24.09.2018
Public year
2018
DOI
10.31857/S004287440000229-6
Mental Representation and Intentionality
Annotation

The paper represents the study of the concepts of content, intentionality and mental representation. The concept of mental representation, often identified with the concept of intentionality, occupies a central place in cognitive science. However, according to eliminativists and radical enactivists, explaining the nature of the mental states, we must abandon the concepts of content and mental representation. The paper demonstrates that we can abandon the concept of mental representation, while preserving the concepts of content and intentionality. To do so, we need to interpret content from the standpoint of externalism. The paper shows that not all externalist theories are able to offer an interpretation of content that avoids criticism from eliminativism and radical enactivism. The classical externalist theories, proposed by Putnam and Burge, being compatible with the concept of narrow mental content, are not suitable for this task. Enactivist theories and active externalism of Clark and Chalmers are also not appropriate for this task, since these approaches rather support vehicle externalism, than content externalism. The paper concludes that externalism proposed by McDowell allows us to preserve the concepts of content and intentionality by abandoning the concept of mental representation.

About authors
Dmitry V. Ivanov
Institute of Philosophy RAS
References

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