Notice Board

The Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series presents:

Mental representation and the theory crisis in psychology

Speaker: Brendan Ritchie (University of Lethbridge)
Friday, Mar. 27  | 3:30 - 5 p.m.
University Hall B716

Abstract: Philosophical discussion of the role of mental representations in the explanations of the cognitive sciences tends to focus on issues of metaphysics. The goal is to determine whether positing mental representations is indeed crucial for explaining varied mental capacities. Yet, progress has been hard to come by, and the role of mental representations remains contested. It is argued that this persistent disagreement is a manifestation of the broader so-called “theory crisis” in the cognitive sciences and may benefit from the same solution. In brief, the crisis is that theories (still) lack sufficient detail to be evaluated empirically, and many have proposed solutions that take the form of multi-step strategies for the formalization of theories. Mental representations are posits that buttress scientific theories of mental capacities, yet they are typically characterized without sufficient precision to allow for empirically evaluating the importance of these posits to the theories. In a slogan: the myriad problems with mental representation do not arise from a lack of metaphysics, but of modelling. In the interest of making up for this shortcoming, a strategy is sketched for how philosophical claims about mental representation can be formalized to better link them with scientific practice.