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Troubles with mathematical contents

Facchin, Marco (2021) Troubles with mathematical contents. [Preprint]

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Abstract

To account for the explanatory role representations play in
cognitive science, Egan’s deflationary account introduces a
distinction between cognitive and mathematical contents.
According to that account, only the latter are genuine
explanatory posits of cognitive-scientific theories, as they
represent the arguments and values cognitive devices need to
represent to compute. Here, I argue that the deflationary
account suffers from two important problems, whose roots trace
back to the introduction of mathematical contents. First, I will
argue that mathematical contents do not satisfy important and
widely accepted desiderata all theories of content are called to
satisfy, such as content determinacy and naturalism. Secondly, I
will claim that there are cases in which mathematical contents
cannot play the explanatory role the deflationary account claims
they play, proposing an empirical counterexample. Lastly, I will
conclude the paper highlighting two important implications of my
arguments, concerning recent theoretical proposals to naturalize
representations via physical computation, and the popular
predictive processing theory of cognition


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Facchin, Marcomarco.facchin@iusspavia.it0000-0001-5753-9873
Keywords: Representation, Content, Mathematical contents, Computation, Implementation, Adversarial examples.
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Neuroscience > Cognitive Neuroscience
Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Computation
General Issues > Computer Simulation
Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Concepts and Representations
General Issues > Explanation
Specific Sciences > Artificial Intelligence > Machine Learning
Depositing User: Dr. Marco Facchin
Date Deposited: 19 Jul 2022 13:00
Last Modified: 19 Jul 2022 13:00
Item ID: 20929
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Neuroscience > Cognitive Neuroscience
Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Computation
General Issues > Computer Simulation
Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Concepts and Representations
General Issues > Explanation
Specific Sciences > Artificial Intelligence > Machine Learning
Date: 2021
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/20929

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