Porter, Brian (2019) Teleosemantics and Tetrachromacy. [Preprint]
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Abstract
Teleosemantics explains mental representation in terms of etiological history: a mental state’s representational contents are the result of natural selection, or some other selection process. Critics have argued that the “swampman” thought experiment poses a counterexample to teleosemantics. In several recent papers, Papineau has argued that a merely possible swampman cannot serve as a counterexample to teleosemantics, but has acknowledged that actual swampmen would pose a problem for teleosemantics. In this paper, I argue that there are real-world cases of swampman-like representation, in the form of functional tetrachromacy. People with functional tetrachromacy are born with four types of cones in each eye, rather than the usual three, and as a result can represent a wider variety of colors than the average person. I argue that the functional tetrachromat’s additional color representations are not the result of a selection process. Functional tetrachromacy is therefore a real-world case of mental representation without an etiological history, and therefore poses a genuine counterexample to teleosemantics.
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Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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Keywords: | Teleosemantics; tetrachromacy; mental representation; philosophy of mind; color perception | ||||||
Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology Specific Sciences > Biology > Function/Teleology Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Concepts and Representations Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Perception |
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Depositing User: | Mr. Brian Porter | ||||||
Date Deposited: | 08 Dec 2019 03:32 | ||||||
Last Modified: | 08 Dec 2019 03:32 | ||||||
Item ID: | 16692 | ||||||
Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology Specific Sciences > Biology > Function/Teleology Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Concepts and Representations Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Perception |
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Date: | 5 December 2019 | ||||||
URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/16692 |
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