Foundations of Cognitive Science Mental Representation

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Michael Rescorla • The University of California, Los Angeles • October 08, 2018 • Just as the heart serves to pump blood and the stomach serves to digest food, one of the mind’s principal functions is to represent the world. For instance, I have various beliefs about Barack Obama: that he was once president of the United States, that he is married to Michelle Obama, and so on. These beliefs represent Barack Obama as being a certain way. Thus, the mind somehow reaches beyond itself to external reality, depicting the world as having certain features. In that sense, the mind is a representational organ. Traditionally, philosophers have emphasized the mind’s representational capacity as among its most important properties. Cognitive science builds upon this tradition, assigning a foundational role to mental representation when constructing theories of perception, motor control, navigation, reasoning, decision-making, planning, linguistic communication, and other core mental activities. Cognitive scientists elaborate the traditional picture of the mind as a representational organ into rigorous, empirically well-confirmed theories. • PRIME SPONSORS • The Office of the Dean of Social Sciences • Cotsen Institute of Archaeology • The Human Behavior Evolution Society • ADDITIONAL SUPPORT • Department of Ecology Evolutionary Biology • Department of Communication • The following is a presentation in the UCLA Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture Speaker Series. For more information on this speaker series, including a searchable archive of all previous presentations, please see http://bec.ucla.edu/ • BEC relies on the generosity of a variety of organizations and individuals. If you find this presentation valuable and would like to assist in advancing research and education in the evolutionary behavioral sciences, please see https://giving.ucla.edu/Standard/NetD...

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