Mental Representation and Mental Presentation: Reflections on some definitions in The Oxford Concise Dictionary

Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 51:19-36 (2002)
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Abstract

To the memory of Alan WhiteThe idea of mental representation occupies a rather prominent place in much contemporary discussion, both in philosophy and cognitive science, and not as a particularly controversial idea either. My reflections here, however, are intended to douse much of that discussion with some cold water. I should emphasize at the outset that I have no problems at all with the very idea of mental representation. What I find quite unsatisfactory is the philosophical or doctrinal underpinning of much current theorising about it. Anyway, I shall suggest that talk of mental representation needs at least to be supplemented with, if not actually replaced by, a distinct notion of mental presentation, which cannot be reduced to it. But I start with the notion of an impression.

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Mind and World.Huw Price & John McDowell - 1994 - Philosophical Books 38 (3):169-181.
Mental Content.Jay L. Garfield - 1992 - Philosophical Review 101 (3):691.
Letter to Russell, 22.6. 1902.Gottlob Frege - 1997 - In Michael Beaney (ed.), Frege Reader. Cambridge: Wiley-Blackwell.
III*—The Very Idea of the Phenomenological.Gregory McCulloch - 1993 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 93:39-58.

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