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Abstract:
(Contributed Talk)
The "New Computationalism" that is the subject of this
conference requires an appropriate notion of representation. The
purpose of this essay is to recommend such a notion. In cognitive
science generally, there have been two primary candidates for
spelling out what it is to be a representation: teleological
accounts and accounts based on "decoupling." I argue that the
latter sort of account has two serious problems. First, it is
multiply ambiguous; second, it is revisionist and alienating to
many of the potential allies of the "New Computationalism". I
also suggest that teleological accounts do not suffer from these
problems, making them more appropriate as the foundation of any
new computationalism.
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