Full Description
urrently a paradigm shift is occurring in for the conventional understanding of represen- which the traditional view of the brain as tions. The paper also summarizes the rationale for C representing the "things of the world" is the selection of contributions to this volume, which challenged in several respects. The present volume will roughly proceed from relatively "realist" c- is placed at the edge of this transition. Based on the ceptions of representation to more "constructivist" 1997 conference "New Trends in Cognitive Sci- interpretations. The final chapter of discussions, ence" in Vienna, Austria, it tries to collect and in- taped during and at the end of the conference, p- grate evidence from various disciplines such as p- vides the reader with the possibility to reflect upon losophy of science, neuroscience, computational the different approaches and thus contributes to b- approaches, psychology, semiotics, evolutionary ter and more integrative understanding of their biology, social psychology etc. , to foster a new thoughts and ideas. understanding of representation. The subjective experience of an outside world This book has a truly interdisciplinary character. It seems to suggest a mapping process where environ- is presented in a form that is readily accessible to mental entities are projected into our mind via some professionals and students alike across the cognitive kind of transmission. While a profound critique of sciences such as neuroscience, computer science, this idea is nearly as old as philosophy, it has gained philosophy, psychology, and sociology.
Contents
Position Paper.- Does Representation Need Reality?.- Overview of Contributions.- Different Facets of Representation.- The Connectionist Route to Embodiment and Dynamicism.- The Ontological Status of Representations.- Empirical and Metaphysical Anti-Representationalism.- Representation in Cognitive Neuroscience.- Cognition without Representation?.- Computational Approaches.- On Computing Systems and Their Environment.- Representation and Cognitive Explanation.- When Coffee Cups Are Like Old Elephants, or Why Representation Modules Don't Make Sense.- The Recommendation Architecture: Relating Cognition to Physiology.- Cognition as a Dynamical System.- Neurodynamics and the Revival of Associationism in Cognitive Science.- The Dynamic Manifestation of Cognitive Structures in the Cerebral Cortex.- Response Selectivity, Neuron Doctrine, and Mach's Principle in Perception.- Mental Representations: A Computational-Neuroscience Scheme.- Relevance of Action for Representation.- Sketchpads In and Beyond the Brain.- Inductive Learning with External Representations.- Does the Brain Represent the World? Evidence Against the Mapping Assumption.- Perception Through Anticipation. A Behaviour-Based Approach to Visual Perception.- Symbol Grounding nad Language.- Rethinking Grounding.- Reality: A Prerequisite to Meaningful Representation.- Explorations in Synthetic Pragmatics.- Communication and Social Coupling.- Does Semantics Need Reality?.- Empiricism and Social Reality: Can Cognitive Science Be Socialized?.- Habitus and Animats.- Processing Concepts and Scenarios: Electrophysiological Findings on Language Representation.- Constructivist Consequences: Translation and Reality.- Qualitative Aspects of Representation and Consciousness.- The Observer in the Brain.- Reality andRepresentation Qualia, Computers, and the "Explanatory Gap".- Constructivism.- Can a Constructivist Distinguish between Experience and Representation?.- How Animals Handle Reality- The Adaptive Aspect of Representation.- Piaget's Legacy: Cognition as Adaptive Activity.
