Abstract
The problem of representation is: what do we think in? If this question were given to a cross-section of the population I suspect many would say ‘words’, many ‘words and images’, some ‘images only’ and a few ‘neither’. Some sensible souls would reject the question as meaningless. Some well-informed souls would refer to the controversy which raged some eighty years ago around the Würzburg functionalists’ claim that there are ‘imageless thoughts’. In fact, asking people does not get us very far at all.
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Notes and References
N. Malcolm, Memory and Mind (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1977).
E.g. H. H. Price, Thinking and Experience (New York: Hutchinson University Library, 1953). pp. 235–6.
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See W. V O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1953). See next chapter for a discussion of Quine’s views.
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This is the example used by E. Wolgast in ‘Wittgenstein and criteria’, Inquiry, 1964, 7.
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© 1984 James Russell
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Russell, J. (1984). Representation. In: Explaining Mental Life. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17671-7_7
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