Mental or Neural Representations: Justifying the terminology used in cognitive neuroscience

Fabiana Mesquita Carvalho,Nara M Figueiredo

doi:10.15448/1984-6746.2020.2.35387

Fabiana Mesquita Carvalho, Nara M Figueiredo

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-6746.2020.2.35387

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Abstract

In this paper we investigate whether one of the most common uses of the concept of representation is justifiable by suggesting the conditions under which it can be accepted and how it can be related to mental states. We present mental states in terms of private experiences and public events. We argue that a representation is a relation involving three main elements as well as the user of the representation, and defend that the conditions in which we can conceive neural activity as representational are set by the context of observing a correlation between public events and patterns of neural activity. We aim at demonstrating that neural activity can be seen as both representational and non-representational - but rather constitutive - depending upon if we are considering public events under the perspective of the observer, or if we are considering private experiences under the subjective perspective.

Highlights

Cognitive neuroscience is surely developing at a fast pace
Contrary to representationalist accounts in cognitive science which embrace the notion that mental states can be taken as mental representations, we argue that in the personal level there is no representation relation
We have suggested that representation is a relation, that neural activity can represent public events and that intentional states are not representational

Summary

Introduction

Cognitive neuroscience is surely developing at a fast pace. Eric Kandel has suggested that “cognitive neuroscience - with its concern about perception, action, memory, language and selective attention - will increasingly come to represent the central focus of all neurosciences in the 21st century.” (Kandel & Squire, 2000). Cognitive neuroscientists talk about sub-personal representations both in terms of active or on-line representations (e.g. a current perceptual or emotional state) and stored or off-line representations (e.g. memory) According to their causal description, when the neural representation performs “the right functional role in the rest of the neural architecture, they can be the basis on which a whole person has mental properties like perceiving and desiring” (Shea, 2013a). We will consider Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations to clarify the conceptual misunderstandings that have led us to the problem of mental representation (Section 4). These steps will allow us to defend that neural activity can both represent and constitute mental states. We will suggest, based on wittgensteinian arguments, that the use of the concept of representation referring to any private mental state is awry

The foundations of the concept of representation

Concluding remarks