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What are we talking about? Clarifying the fuzzy concept of representation in neuroscience and beyond
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What do neuroscientists mean when they use the term representation? That's part of what Luis Favela and Edouard Machery set out to answer a couple years ago by surveying lots of folks in the cognitive sciences, and they concluded that as a field the term is used in a confused and unclear way. Confused and unclear are technical terms here, and Luis and Edouard explain what they mean in the episode. More recently Luis and Edouard wrote a follow-up piece arguing that maybe it's okay for everyone to use the term in slightly different ways, maybe it helps communication across disciplines, perhaps. My three other guests today, Frances Egan, Rosa Cao, and John Krakauer wrote responses to that argument, and on today's episode all those folks are here to further discuss that issue and why it matters. Luis is a part philosopher, part cognitive scientists at Indiana University Bloomington, Edouard is a philosopher and Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, Frances is a philosopher from Rutgers University, Rosa is a neuroscientist-turned philosopher at Stanford University, and John is a neuroscientist among other things, and co-runs the Brain, Learning, Animation, and Movement Lab at Johns Hopkins.
0:00 - Intro 3:55 - What is a representation to a neuroscientist? 14:44 - How to deal with the dilemma 21:20 - Opposing views 31:00 - What's at stake? 51:10 - Neural-only representation 1:01:11 - When "representation" is playing a useful role 1:12:56 - The role of a neuroscientist 1:39:35 - The purpose of "representational talk" 1:53:03 - Non-representational mental phenomenon 1:55:53 - Final thoughts