Representation in Cognitive Science by Nicholas Shea, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

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 thecognitive 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 complicated calculations onneural 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. Unlike previous treatments, the focus is firmly on the "subpersonal" representations that pervade so much of thecognitive sciences. 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 and mind, and of considerable interest to researchers throughout the cognitivesciences. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. | Representation in Cognitive Science by Nicholas Shea, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters