Explaining the reified notion of representation from a linguistic perspective

Zahnoun, Farid

doi:10.1007/s11097-018-9603-x

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…1 The feature description (left) is taken from Evans and Stanovich (2013a). The flow diagram (right) is taken from Stanovich (2009) 6 While we are relying on Weiskopf's notion of reification, the distinction between fiction and reification remains controversial in philosophy of cognitive science and philosophical psychology (see, e.g., Buckner, 2015;Zahnoun, 2020;Beck & Grayot, 2021).…”

Section: Individuation Via Fictionalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dual process theory and the challenges of functional individuation

Grayot,

Beck,

Heijmeskamp

2024

Phenom Cogn Sci

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Despite on-going debates in philosophy and cognitive science, dual process theory (DPT) remains a popular framework for theorizing about human cognition. Its central hypothesis is that cognitive processing can be subsumed under two generic types. In this paper, we argue that the putative success and popularity of this framework remains overstated and gives rise to certain misunderstandings. If DPT has predictive and/or explanatory power, it is through offering descriptions of cognitive phenomena via functional analysis. But functional descriptions require an individuation strategy. To date, there has been no systematic exploration of how Type 1 and Type 2 are functionally individuated. Following recent debates in philosophy of cognitive science, we consider three individuation strategies (i.e., abstraction, reification, fictionalization) and assess the legitimacy of each in relation to DPT. This leads us to the verdict that the most viable route for justifying DPT is to construe Type 1 and Type 2 processes as reifications. We conclude that, construed as reifications, the common rationales offered by proponents of DPT for demarcating Type 1 and Type 2 processes do not escape criticism and require further theoretical justification.

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Section: Individuation Via Fictionalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dual process theory and the challenges of functional individuation

Grayot,

Beck,

Heijmeskamp

2024

Phenom Cogn Sci

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“…From the fact that we do indeed use the noun ''representation'' to pick out certain physical objects, it does not follow that ''representation'' is therefore metaphysically best understood as a kind of physical thing. As I have elaborated on extensively elsewhere (see Zahnoun, 2020), our pretheoretical language is rife with hypostatization, that is, the phenomenon of using object-language (nouns or substantives) to refer to non-things. We do this all the time.…”

Section: Representation: Theoretical and Pre-theoreticalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They already bypass the more rudimentary issue of what the fundamental metaphysical nature of representation is, to devote full attention to issues that only arise when it is already assumed that representations are some kind of physical object . For although authors like Ramsey are fully justified in adopting a skeptical attitude, the metaphysical mold in which their critical reflections are cast is one that already reifies representations (see Zahnoun, 2020, for a more elaborated discussion; see also Zahnoun, 2019). This becomes quite clear in the following example.…”

Section: Introduction: Metaphysical Promiscuitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The socio-normative nature of representation

Zahnoun

2020

Adaptive Behavior

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This article tries to offer a different perspective on the issue of what it means for some physical structure to be a representation. In the first sections, it will be shown how and why this issue is still far from settled. This will be done by emphasizing the—what I will call—metaphysically promiscuous character of representation. For although representations are typically assumed to be some sort of physical objects or structures, on closer inspection, the notion of representation is used in such a variety of ways that its fundamental metaphysical status is far from obvious. Proceeding from these observations, it will be argued that, even though “representation” pre-theoretically indeed often picks out objects, their representational status is best not understood in terms of their physical properties or their causal-functional profile. It will be argued that, what it means for some physical structure to be—as a matter of fact—a representation, only first becomes intelligible in relation to certain socio-normative practices in which the cognitive capacity to relate to something as something it is not is prescriptively called upon. Moreover, an answer to the oft-heard question of what makes something (i.e., some physical object or structure) a representation is readily available, provided we take into account certain cognitive abilities, as well as a socio-normative context in which these abilities are normatively regulated. It will be concluded that at the fundamental metaphysical level, the phenomenon of representation is best understood as a triadic relation which involves, but does not reduce to, certain physical objects or structures. Finally, this socio-normative account of representation will be compared with two dominant notions of representation within cognitive science: symbolic representation and S-representation.

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“…The matryoshka model forms an instance of reification, as does the idea that content is added via the overlay of an extra layer (for recent analyses of such reification, seevan Dijk and Withagen (2016) andZahnoun (2020)). 7 We thank one of our reviewers for insisting on this point.…”

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confidence: 99%

A twofold tale of one mind: revisiting REC’s multi-storey story

Myin

Herik

2020

Synthese

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The Radical Enactive/Embodied view of Cognition, or REC, claims that all cognition is a matter of skilled performance. Yet REC also makes a distinction between basic and content-involving cognition, arguing that the development of basic to content-involving cognition involves a kink. It might seem that this distinction leads to problematic gaps in REC’s story. We address two such alleged gaps in this paper. First, we identify and reply to the concern that REC leads to an “interface problem”, according to which REC has to account for the interaction of two minds co-present in the same cognitive activity. We emphasise how REC’s view of content-involving cognition in terms of activities that require particular sociocultural practices can resolve these interface concerns. The second potential problematic gap is that REC creates an unjustified difference in kind between animal and human cognition. In response, we clarify and further explicate REC’s notion of content, and argue that this notion allows REC to justifiably mark the distinction between basic and content-involving cognition as a difference in kind. We conclude by pointing out in what sense basic and content-involving cognitive activities are the same, yet different. They are the same because they are all forms of skilled performance, yet different as some forms of skilled performance are genuinely different from other forms.

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Explaining the reified notion of representation from a linguistic perspective

Cited by 5 publications

References 25 publications

Dual process theory and the challenges of functional individuation

Dual process theory and the challenges of functional individuation

The socio-normative nature of representation

A twofold tale of one mind: revisiting REC’s multi-storey story

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