Lecturer: Gottfried Vosgerau
Fields: Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Cognition
Content
Although Cognitive Science started as an interdisciplinary approach to the mind based on the concept of mental representations, mental representations are much debated in the current literature. In this course, we will first look at arguments why mental representations are still necessary for truly causal explanations of behavior. We will also discuss what mental representations are not and which shortcomings of classical definitions should be abandoned. One critical issue concerns the question of how mental representations come into place and how they acquire their content. We will discuss ideas that propose specific transitions from action control to simple mental representations to concepts.
Literature
- Egan, F. (2020): “A Deflationary Account of Mental Representation”, in J. Smortchkova, K. Dołęga, and T. Schlicht (eds.): What are Mental Representations?, Oxford University Press, 26–54.
- Gentsch, A.; Weber, A.; Synofzik, M.; Vosgerau, G. & Schütz-Bosbach, S. (2016): „Towards a common framework of grounded action cognition: Relating motor control perception and cognition“, Cognition 146, 81-89.
- Newen, A. & Vosgerau, G. (2020): “Situated Mental Representations: Why we need mental representations and how we should understand them”, in J. Smortchkova, K. Dołęga, and T. Schlicht (eds.): What are Mental Representations?, Oxford University Press, 178–212.
- Ramsey, W. M. 2017. Must Cognition Be Representational? Synthese 194 (11): 4197–4214.
- Vosgerau, G., Seuchter, T., Petersen, W., (2015), “Analyzing Concepts in Action-Frames”, in: T. Gamerschlag, R. Osswald, W. Petersen (eds.): Meaning, Frames, and Conceptual Representation, Studies in Language and Cognition. Düsseldorf University Press, Düsseldorf; S.293-310.
- Weber, A. & Vosgerau, G. (2012), „Grounding Action Representations“, Review of Philosophy and Psychology 3, 53-69.
Lecturer
Prof. Dr. Gottfried Vosgerau received his PhD in Philosophy in 2007 with a dissertation on mental representation. He is professor for Philosophy of Mind and Cognition at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf since 2019. His main research interests include mental representations, other mental entities and their role in the explanation of behavior, the relation between thought and language, and the philosophical implications of mental disorders.
Affiliation: Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
Homepage: https://www.philosophie.hhu.de/personal/philosophie-vi-philosophie-des-geistes-und-der-kognition