The Umeå Cognitive Science Seminar invitest you to a inaugural meeting. The inaugural meeting will feature a talk by docent Peter Schulte, Umeå University, "Representations in the Brain".
Abstract: The notion of “neural representation” plays a central explanatory role in cognitive neuroscience. However, recent studies have revealed that there is still a lot of disagreement and unclarity about this notion among scientists, especially when it comes to the question of what makes it the case that a brain state qualifies as a neural representation. In this talk, I will develop a proposal for sufficient conditions for neural representation and argue that these conditions should be widely acceptable. I then present a paradigm example (path integration in bees) where all these conditions seem to be met. Finally, I will briefly explore possible implications of my arguments for questions concerning the nature of representation in general, the character of representational explanations and the perennial debate between representationalism and anti-representationalism.
Peter Schulte is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Umeå University. He is the author of Mental Content (Cambridge UP, 2023) and numerous articles on the philosophy of mind and metaphysics.
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