Analogue Magnitude Representations: A Philosophical Introduction

Abstract

Empirical discussions of mental representation appeal to a wide variety of representational kinds. Some of these kinds, such as the sentential representations underlying language use and the pictorial representations of visual imagery, are thoroughly familiar to philosophers. Others have received almost no philosophical attention at all. Included in this latter category are analogue magnitude representations, which enable a wide range of organisms to primitively represent spatial, temporal, numerical, and related magnitudes. This article aims to introduce analogue magnitude representations to a philosophical audience by rehearsing empirical evidence for their existence and analysing their format, their content, and the computations they support. 1 Background 1.1 Evidence of analogue magnitude representations 1.2 Weber’s law 1.3 Scepticism about analogue magnitude representations 2 Format 2.1 Carey’s analogy 2.2 Neural realization 2.3 Analogue representation 2.4 Analogue magnitude representation components 3 Content 3.1 Do analogue magnitude representations have representational content? 3.2 What do analogue magnitude representations represent? 3.3 What content types do analogue magnitude representations have? 4 Computations 4.1 Arithmetic computation 4.2 Practical deliberation 5 Conclusion