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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Troubles with mathematical contents. (deposited 05 Nov 2021 04:12)
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Troubles with mathematical contents. (deposited 25 Mar 2022 04:26)
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Troubles with mathematical contents. (deposited 25 Mar 2022 04:26)
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