ABSTRACT
It is not difficult to see why the representational function of language should have assumed such importance in human affairs. It is the representational function that has been used to underpin the development, dissemination, and storage of the accumulated beliefs, knowledge, and wisdom of human beings. This knowledge was stored in the collectivity of their brains long before people invented the various modes of representation external to themselves and which have facilitated cumulative records to be made. It still is stored in brains. Additionally, from the beginnings of written records, it has also been accumulated in the texts that have filled archives, museums, libraries, and homes. It is encoded in all the artifacts and technologies the human species has created. Whereas the social functions of language realize a vast set of 'knowing how to' (relevant to social behavior or presumptive know how) and much language use is for social functions (see chap. 4), all the 'believing/ knowing that' is in propositional form, as are so many of the products of the processes of imagining, thinking, learning, and remembering. It is via representational heuristics that human beings have been able to imagine and construct alternatives to contemporarily accepted views about the world-and to develop and use appropriate means to check and perhaps change these. So far, it has been a never-ending process. To date these activities have helped to reduce ignorance and dispose of much nonsense, replacing the latter with better descriptions and explanations. All being well, the intelligent exploitation of representational heuristics should continue to serve as significant activity in the advancement of knowledge.
