Abstract
The goal of this paper is to argue that the ontological status of representations can only be evaluated within a theory. In other words, what counts as representation, or whether a certain representation is better than another one, depends solely on the (level of) description of the phenomenon under scrutiny. It is shown how “representation”, being a semantic notion, can be defined in terms of the notion “meaning”. For cognitive science, in particular, it follows that representations, functioning as mere descriptive devices to facilitate one’s goal of explaining and modeling brain/thought processes, cannot in and by themselves give rise to ontological or epistemological claims.
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© 1999 Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers
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Scheutz, M. (1999). The Ontological Status of Representations. In: Riegler, A., Peschl, M., von Stein, A. (eds) Understanding Representation in the Cognitive Sciences. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-585-29605-0_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-585-29605-0_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-306-46286-3
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