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Towards a very Idea of Representation
Review of Vacariu et al.'s Toward a very idea of representation
..."the debates in Cognitive Science focus on the problem of
representation. Unfortunately, these debates regard either representational
format(as in the computationalism-connectionism debate), or the problem of
representational content(as in representationalism-antirepresentationalism
debate), but they are not concerning with the nature of representation.
Thus one question legitimaly arises: how can beyond of these debates? Our
believe is that what completely misses in Cognitive Science is an abstract
theory of representation by means of wich it is possible to go beyond of
these debates"(Vacariu et al. 2001, 290).
"Authors like Mundy, Swoyer, Suppes, Mormann and Ibara, etc., dealt with a
general theory of representation. Thus, it is not about creating a new
abstract theory of representation, but only to search wich theory is
fitting best with the problem of mental representations.
For instance, the concept of Swoyer's structural representation (an
isomophism from relational system A regarded as a set of the physical
objects to the relational system B regarded as a set of the numerical
entities) grasps the aspects of symbolic representations..."(291)
"The general theory of representation releases by Mundy is based on
structured and unstructured representations. The unstructured
representations are different to the structured representations in the
sense that the elements of set A are mapped to elements of B by a function
f wich is understood to represents the numerical relations of the elements
of A, but the numerical and physical relations are not explicitly specified
(Mundy 1986). We believe that this concept can capture the aspects of
connectionst representations wich can not be isolated, each computing unit
being involved in representing several things.
In the case of dynamical systems theory maybe it is improper to talk
effectively about the notion of representation. But we can identify some
structures that are preserved through the continuous changing within the
state space."(Vacariu et al. 2001, 291).
I will propose a content as the content of the very idea of representation
and I will compare the previous three idea with my idea.
For Edelman, representation is not similar with something from environment,
but it present similarities between cognitive or conscious
contents/informations.
"A representation is a certain stored information wich stands-in for
something, its function being that of carrying specific information.
However, the bear existence of a correlation between a certain inner state
and some bodily or outer parameters is not enough to establish the
representational status of that inner state, more important being the
nature and the complexity of correlation"((Clark 1997) cf.Vacariu et
al.2001).
I think that, there must be first order conscious states. Even if
perception is not independent of previous experience. At l |