Mental representation Hypothetical internal cognitive symbol that represents external reality A mental representation (or cognitive representation), in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science, is a hypothetical internal cognitive symbol that represents external reality or its abstractions.[1][2] Mental representation is the mental imagery of things that are not actually present to the senses.[3] In contemporary philosophy, specifically in fields of metaphysics such as philosophy of mind and ontology, a mental representation is one of the prevailing ways of explaining and describing the nature of ideas and concepts. Mental representations (or mental imagery) enable representing things that have never been experienced as well as things that do not exist.[4] Our brains and mental imageries allow us to imagine things have either never happened or are impossible and do not exist. Representational theories of mind[edit] Canadian philosopher P. Responses[edit] Philosophers[edit]
Information The ASCII codes for the word "Wikipedia" represented in binary, the numeral system most commonly used for encoding textual computer information In Thermodynamics, information is any kind of event that affects the state of a dynamic system that can interpret the information. Etymology[edit] The English word was apparently derived from the Latin stem (information-) of the nominative (informatio): this noun is derived from the verb informare (to inform) in the sense of "to give form to the mind", "to discipline", "instruct", "teach". The ancient Greek word for form was μορφή (morphe; cf. morph) and also εἶδος (eidos) "kind, idea, shape, set", the latter word was famously used in a technical philosophical sense by Plato (and later Aristotle) to denote the ideal identity or essence of something (see Theory of Forms). Information theory approach[edit] As sensory input[edit] Often information can be viewed as a type of input to an organism or system. As representation and complexity[edit]
Cognitive science Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the mind and its processes.[1] It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on intelligence and behavior, especially focusing on how information is represented, processed, and transformed (in faculties such as perception, language, memory, reasoning, and emotion) within nervous systems (human or other animal) and machines (e.g. computers). Cognitive science consists of multiple research disciplines, including psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, linguistics, and anthropology.[2] It spans many levels of analysis, from low-level learning and decision mechanisms to high-level logic and planning; from neural circuitry to modular brain organization. The fundamental concept of cognitive science is "that thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures."[2] Principles[edit]
Observation Active acquisition of information from a primary source Science[edit] The scientific method requires observations of natural phenomena to formulate and test hypotheses.[3] It consists of the following steps:[4][5] Human senses are limited and subject to errors in perception, such as optical illusions. Scientific instruments were developed to aid human abilities of observation, such as weighing scales, clocks, telescopes, microscopes, thermometers, cameras, and tape recorders, and also translate into perceptible form events that are unobservable by the senses, such as indicator dyes, voltmeters, spectrometers, infrared cameras, oscilloscopes, interferometers, Geiger counters, and radio receivers. Considered as a physical process itself, all forms of observation (human or instrumental) involve amplification and are thus thermodynamically irreversible processes, increasing entropy. Paradoxes[edit] Biases[edit] Confirmation bias[edit] Processing bias[edit] Philosophy[edit] See also[edit]
Empirical evidence Knowledge acquired by means of the senses Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and plays a role in various other fields, like epistemology and law. Scientific evidence is closely related to empirical evidence but not all forms of empirical evidence meet the standards dictated by scientific methods. Sources of empirical evidence are sometimes divided into observation and experimentation, the difference being that only experimentation involves manipulation or intervention: phenomena are actively created instead of being passively observed. A thing is evidence for a proposition if it epistemically supports this proposition or indicates that the supported proposition is true. Knowledge a posteriori and a priori [edit] Empiricism and rationalism Scientific evidence
Mental process A specific instance of engaging in a cognitive process is a mental event. The event of perceiving something is, of course, different from the entire process, or capacity of perception—one's ability to perceive things. In other words, an instance of perceiving is different from the ability that makes those instances possible. See also[edit] External links[edit] Mental Processes at the US National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) Belief Mental state of holding a proposition or premise to be true Beliefs are the subject of various important philosophical debates. Notable examples include: "What is the rational way to revise one's beliefs when presented with various sorts of evidence?", "Is the content of our beliefs entirely determined by our mental states, or do the relevant facts have any bearing on our beliefs (e.g. if I believe that I'm holding a glass of water, is the non-mental fact that water is H2O part of the content of that belief)?" Various conceptions of the essential features of beliefs have been proposed, but there is no consensus as to which is the right one. Representationalism [edit] Representationalism characterizes beliefs in terms of mental representations. There are different ways of conceiving how mental representations are realized in the mind. Interpretationism can be combined with eliminativism and instrumentalism about beliefs. Occurrent and dispositional Belief-in and belief-that Rules.
Perception Since the rise of experimental psychology in the 19th Century, psychology's understanding of perception has progressed by combining a variety of techniques.[3] Psychophysics quantitatively describes the relationships between the physical qualities of the sensory input and perception.[5] Sensory neuroscience studies the brain mechanisms underlying perception. Perceptual systems can also be studied computationally, in terms of the information they process. Perceptual issues in philosophy include the extent to which sensory qualities such as sound, smell or color exist in objective reality rather than in the mind of the perceiver.[3] The perceptual systems of the brain enable individuals to see the world around them as stable, even though the sensory information is typically incomplete and rapidly varying. Process and terminology[edit] An example would be a person looking at a shoe. Psychologist Jerome Bruner has developed a model of perception. Perception and reality[edit] Features[edit]