A naturalistic account of mental representation

Download

index.pdf

Date

2007

Author

Aytekin, Tevfik

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

174
views

90
downloads

My thesis is an attempt to develop a naturalistic account of mental representation based on the notion of causation. The thesis consists of two main parts. The first part (chapters II and III) develops an understanding of naturalization. According to my proposal, naturalization is a two-step process: in the first step a set of conditions is specified which are thought to be the essential aspects of the notion under study and in the second step a naturalistic system is proposed which is claimed to satisfy these conditions. In accordance with this understanding of naturalization, the second part (chapters IV and V) of the thesis sets out the conditions which a successful naturalization of mental representation has to satisfy and then develops a new naturalistic account of mental representation based on the causal connections between environmental properties and the brain.

Subject Keywords

Intentionality., naturalization.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12608272/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/17215

Collections

Graduate School of Informatics, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

The Code Model of Biosemiotics and the Fate of the Structuralist Theory of Mental Representation Davoody Benı, Majıd (2017-04-01) In this paper I am advocating a structuralist theory of mental representation. For a structuralist theory of mental representation to be defended satisfactorily, the naturalistic and causal constraints have to be satisfied first. The more intractable of the two, i.e., the naturalistic constraint, indicates that to account for the mental representation, we should not invoke "a full-blown interpreting mind". So, the aim of the paper is to show how the naturalistic and causal constraints could be satisfied. It...
THE ARGUMENT FROM CONSCIOUSNESS: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION Özketen, Mehmet; Sol, Ayhan; Department of Philosophy (2022-2-21) This thesis is devoted to critically examining the Argument from Consciousness. The Argument from Consciousness takes consciousness as its datum to arrive at the conclusion that there is a god. Accordingly, one of the premises of the argument draws either on the very existence of consciousness or the correlations between the mental and physical states. There are some different versions of the argument that have been proposed by different philosophers. These different versions of the argument are classified ...
On the Problem of Interpretation Concerning the Contemporary Philosophy of Biology Birgül, Osman Gazi (2019-06-01) In the first part of the study, I discuss three methodological problems of the interpretation of the biological data, namely subjectivity of perspective, anthropocentrism of jargon and perspective-orientation of the studies. Then, I defend intentionality of moral acts against the functionalist morality, emphasizing the interpretation of the observations on animal behavior cannot assume that animals have intentionality. In the second part, I review the ambiguity problem of the traits in the heritability stud...
An Attempt at dissolution of the notion of self Sugorakova, Daria; Sayan, Erdinç; Department of Philosophy (2014) The purpose of this thesis is to provide a plausible approach to the problems of self and personal continuity that arise in various thought experiments and reported extraordinary real-life cases. When we approach the puzzling thought experiments and actual cases in terms of the notion of sense of self, the question of whether a person’s self continues becomes moot and inconsequential. The approach based on the sense of self provides clarity, is capable of dissolving the puzzles, while the notion of an endur...
Reconstructing Probabilistic Realism: Re-enacting Syntactical Structures Davoody Benı, Majıd (2020-06-01) Probabilistic realism and syntactical positivism were two among outdated theories that Feigl criticised on account of their semantical poverty. In this paper, I argue that a refined version of probabilistic realism, which relies on what Feigl specified as the pragmatic description of the symbolic behaviour of scientists' estimations and foresight, is defendable. This version of statistical realism does not need to make the plausibility of realist thesis dependent on the conventional acceptance of a construc...

Citation Formats

T. Aytekin, “A naturalistic account of mental representation,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2007.