Mental representation and its philosophical background

In this study, it is aimed to make an overall assessment of the concept, mental representation from a philosophical point of view. This concept is so merged with countless studies in many disciplines that it becomes indispensible and becomes one of the leading areas of study in cognitive science as well as cognitive linguistics. What is aimed is to present the opposing philosophical views regarding cognitive representations and mental models and to set a general framework. Representationalists and eliminativists offer contradictory arguments. The latter group take the physical aspects, i.e., brain itself, into account while the former focus on mind to study representation of the world and divided mainly into two groups; symbolic vs. distributed representationalists. Symbolic and distributed representationalists offer different mental models for representing world knowledge, thought and language. The result of the discussion indicates that representationalists offer more efficient answers, moreover symbolic (classical) representationalists put forward a more fruitful approach to mental representation especially in terms of computationalism.

Keywords:

Mental Representation, Representationalists, Eliminativists Connectionists,

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