ABSTRACT

After this digression through some apparent alternatives to representation, and (let’s face it) a few dead ends, let’s now return to the prospects for explaining mental representation by giving a reductive definition of it. As we saw, philosophical attempts to explain the notion of representation by reducing it have had trouble with the problems of error. But even if the reductive approach manages to solve the problem of error, one of the problems that we postponed earlier still remains: how do we explain the representational powers of concepts other than very simple concepts such as water, food, predator and so on? Reductive theories of representation tend to treat this as largely a matter of detail – their approach is: let’s get the simple concepts right before moving on to the complex concepts. But, even if they do get the simple concepts right, how exactly are we supposed to move on to the complex concepts? How are we supposed to explain a concept like (for example) baroque architecture in causal or biological terms?