Correspondence and Construction: The Representational Theory of Mind and Internally Driven Classificatory Schemes

Abstract

There is a tension at the heart of much contemporary work in philosophy of psychology—specifically, within representational theories of mind. On the one hand, the central insight of this tradition is that mental and behavioral processes are understood by appeal to mental representations: mental tokens which function as internal proxies for some aspect of the environment, on which behavioral interaction with the environment can depend. On the other, it has long been noted that many purported representations seriously distort, or even simply fabricate, those aspects of the environment they are alleged to represent. I will focus on the examples of color vision and speech perception. At a minimum, this puts pressure on the explanatory goals of representationalism. Many representational theories explain behavior with reference to accurate representation, but if we can seemingly function perfectly well with wildly inaccurate representations, the centrality of this strategy is threatened. At worst, this undermines the representationalist project itself, posing insuperable worries for any account that seeks to ground mental content in relations to the environment.