Structural representations are increasingly popular in philosophy of cognitive science. A key virtue they seemingly boast is that of meeting Ramsey's job description challenge. For this reason, structural representations appear tailored to play a clear representational role within cognitive architectures. Here, however, I claim that structural representations do not meet the job description challenge. This is because even our most demanding account of their functional profile is satisfied by at least some receptors, which paradigmatically (...) fail the job description challenge. Hence, the functional profile typically associated with structural representations does not identify representational posits. After a brief introduction, I present, in the second section of the paper, the job description challenge. I clarify why receptors fail to meet it and highlight why, as a result, they should not be considered representations. In the third section I introduce what I take to be the most demanding account of structural representations at our disposal, namely Gładziejewski's account. Provided the necessary background, I turn from exposition to criticism. In the first half of the fourth section, I equate the functional profile of structural representations and receptors. To do so, I show that some receptors boast, as a matter of fact, all the functional features associated with structural representations. Since receptors function merely as causal mediators, I conclude structural representations are mere causal mediators too. In the second half of the fourth section I make this conclusion intuitive with a toy example. I then conclude the paper, anticipating some objections my argument invites. (shrink)

Cognition can often be modeled as the transformation of a set of variables into another. At least two kinds of entities are needed in this process: signals and coders. Representations are usually taken to be signals, but sometimes they are the coders: sometimes the computational complexity of variable transformations can be strikingly reduced by relying on a structure that mirrors that of some task-relevant entity. These kinds of coders are what philosophers call structural representations.

Philosophers interested in the theoretical consequences of predictive processing often assume that predictive processing is an inferentialist and representationalist theory of cognition. More specifically, they assume that predictive processing revolves around approximated Bayesian inferences drawn by inverting a generative model. Generative models, in turn, are said to be structural representations: representational vehicles that represent their targets by being structurally similar to them. Here, I challenge this assumption, claiming that, at present, it lacks an adequate justification. I examine the (...) only argument offered to establish that generative models are structural representations, and argue that it does not substantiate the desired conclusion. Having so done, I consider a number of alternative arguments aimed at showing that the relevant structural similarity obtains, and argue that all these arguments are unconvincing for a variety of reasons. I then conclude the paper by briefly highlighting three themes that might be relevant for further investigation on the matter. (shrink)

Structural representations are likely the most talked about representational posits in the contemporary debate over cognitive representations. Indeed, the debate surrounding them is so vast virtually every claim about them has been made. Some, for instance, claimed structural representations are different from indicators. Others argued they are the same. Some claimed structural representations mesh perfectly with mechanistic explanations, others argued they can’t in principle mash. Some claimed structural representations are central to (...) predictive processing accounts of cognition, others rebuked predictive processing networks are blissfully structural representation free. And so forth. Here, I suggest this confusing state of affairs is due to the fact that the term “structural representations” is applied to a number of distinct conceptions of representations. In this paper, I distinguish four such conceptions, argue that these four conceptions are actually distinct, and then show that such a fourfold distinction can be used to clarify some of the most pressing questions concerning structural representations and their role in cognitive theorizing, making these questions more easily answerable. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to show that the information carried by a structural representation can be decomposed into the information carried by its component parts. In particular, the relations between the components of a structural representation carry quantifiable information about the relations between components of their signifieds. It follows that the information carried by cognitive structural representations, including cognitive maps, can in principle be quantified and decomposed. This is perhaps surprising given that the formal (...) tools of communication theory have typically only been applied to simpler representation-like states without significant structure, such as detectors or indicators. In the final section I consider using computational complexity theory to capture the processing advantages afforded by structural representation. (shrink)

The perceptual symbol system view assumes that perceptual representations have a role-argument structure. A role-argument structure is often incorporated into amodal symbol systems in order to explain conceptual functions like abstraction and rule use. The power of perceptual symbol systems to support conceptual functions is likewise rooted in its use of structure. On Barsalou's account, this capacity to use structure (in the form of frames) must be innate.

The Protein Ontology (PRO) provides a formal, logically-based classification of specific protein classes including structured representations of protein isoforms, variants and modified forms. Initially focused on proteins found in human, mouse and Escherichia coli, PRO now includes representations of protein complexes. The PRO Consortium works in concert with the developers of other biomedical ontologies and protein knowledge bases to provide the ability to formally organize and integrate representations of precise protein forms so as to enhance accessibility to (...) results of protein research. PRO (http://pir.georgetown.edu/pro) is part of the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry. (shrink)

We challenge Bruineberg et al's view that Markov blankets are illicitly reified when used to describe organismic boundaries. We do this both on general methodological grounds, where we appeal to a form of structural realism derived from Bayesian cognitive science to dissolve the problem, and by rebutting specific arguments in the target article.

Large Language Models (LLMs) such as GPT-4 produce compelling responses to a wide range of prompts. But their representational capacities are uncertain. Many LLMs have no direct contact with extra-linguistic reality: their inputs, outputs and training data consist solely of text, raising the questions (1) can LLMs represent anything and (2) if so, what? In this paper, I explore what it would take to answer these questions according to a structural-correspondence based account of representation, and make an initial survey (...) of this evidence. I argue that the mere existence of structural correspondences between LLMs and worldly entities is insufficient to ground representation of those entities. However, if these structural correspondences play an appropriate role – they are exploited in a way that explains successful task performance – then they could ground real world contents. This requires overcoming a challenge: the text-boundedness of LLMs appears, on the face of it, to prevent them engaging in the right sorts of tasks. (shrink)

This paper develops a theory of analog representation. We first argue that the mark of the analog is to be found in the nature of a representational system’s interpretation function, rather than in its vehicles or contents alone. We then develop the rulebound structure theory of analog representation, according to which analog systems are those that use interpretive rules to map syntactic structural features onto semantic structural features. The theory involves three degree-theoretic measures that capture three independent ways (...) in which a system can be more or less analog. We explain how our theory improves upon prior accounts of analog representation, provides plausible diagnoses for novel challenge cases, extends to hybrid systems that are partially analog and partially symbolic, and accounts for some of the advantages and disadvantages of representing analogically versus symbolically. (shrink)

Structural Omission, originated by Deborah Scott, is a framework in contemporary realist painting that addresses the limits of observation, perception, and knowing. It is not an abstract theory but a practice formalized through three principles—Ground (Perceptual Limits), Structure (Structural Incompleteness), and Consequence (Narrative Without Resolution). It organizes painting around what can be seen and what remains beyond reach, holding the known and the unknowable together. This paper defines Structural Omission as an epistemological framework that repositions realism after (...) the collapse of certainty. By connecting art practice to the philosophical problem of incomplete knowledge, it proposes that absence within representation can operate as load-bearing structure rather than deficiency. Drawing on thinkers such as Michael Fried, Jacques Rancière, Roland Barthes, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, the text argues that Structural Omission offers realism a conceptual survival strategy in an era of algorithmic completion and digital closure. (shrink)

Five experiments investigated the role of spatial connectedness between a pair of objects presented in the change detection task for the actual capacity of visual working memory (VWM) in healthy young adults (total N = 405). Three experiments yielded a surprising nonlinear relationship between the proportion of pair-wise connected objects and capacity, with the highest capacity observed for homogenous displays, when either all objects were connected or disjointed. A drop in capacity, ranging from an average of a quarter of an (...) object out of three objects maintained in VWM, was noted when only some objects were connected while others were disjointed. As indicated by another two experiments, this effect was specific to double-feature encoding, but disappeared when single visual features had to be memorized. No existing theoretical model of VWM can directly explain this novel effect. Overall, the nonlinear effect of spatial connectedness implies that representations in VWM possess hierarchical structure defined by wholes, parts, features, and their relations, and the heterogeneity of such a structure hinders VWM performance, while homogeneity facilitates it. (shrink)

An early, very preliminary edition of this book was circulated in 1962 under the title Set-theoretical Structures in Science. There are many reasons for maintaining that such structures play a role in the philosophy of science. Perhaps the best is that they provide the right setting for investigating problems of representation and invariance in any systematic part of science, past or present. Examples are easy to cite. Sophisticated analysis of the nature of representation in perception is to be found already (...) in Plato and Aristotle. One of the great intellectual triumphs of the nineteenth century was the mechanical explanation of such familiar concepts as temperature and pressure by their representation in terms of the motion of particles. A more disturbing change of viewpoint was the realization at the beginning of the twentieth century that the separate invariant properties of space and time must be replaced by the space-time invariants of Einstein's special relativity. Another example, the focus of the longest chapter in this book, is controversy extending over several centuries on the proper representation of probability. The six major positions on this question are critically examined. Topics covered in other chapters include an unusually detailed treatment of theoretical and experimental work on visual space, the two senses of invariance represented by weak and strong reversibility of causal processes, and the representation of hidden variables in quantum mechanics. The final chapter concentrates on different kinds of representations of language, concluding with some empirical results on brain-wave representations of words and sentences. (shrink)

I reply to criticisms from King and Soames and critically examine two aspects of current orthodoxy about propositions: that they are representational and that they are structured. I argue that (especially once one gives up on intrinsically representational propositions) there is no good reason to think that propositions have representational properties, and distinguish a few different senses in which propositions might be structured, expressing some skepticism about the more ambitious ones.

Some truths are not hidden; they are simply beyond reach. No matter how long you look or how fully you render, the whole story will not appear because it was never fully there. This essay examines that epistemological limit and its implications for representational painting. Structural Omission is a framework I originated that structures representational painting around omissions as compositional architecture. These are load-bearing absences that reveal the limits of perception, narrative, and knowing. Rather than disguising uncertainty, the work (...) builds from it. Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s embodied perception, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s unsayable, and contemporary painter Megan Rooney’s resistance to finality, I argue that painting can acknowledge what cannot be known without surrendering rigor or depth. Structural Omission does not conceal truth; it asserts that some truth is inaccessible and refuses to offer false wholeness or narrative closure. This position reframes realism for a post-certainty era, resisting the polished, algorithmic completeness of contemporary image culture and restoring honesty about the limits of seeing and knowing. (shrink)

The nature of linguistic understanding is a much-debated topic. Among the issues that have been discussed, two questions have recently received a lot of attention: (Q1) ‘Are states of understanding direct (i.e. represent solely what is said) or indirect (i.e. represent what is said as being said/asserted)?’ and (Q2) ‘What kind of mental attitude is linguistic understanding (e.g. knowledge, belief, seeming)?’ This paper argues that, contrary to what is commonly assumed, there is no straightforward answer to either of these questions. (...) This is because linguistic understanding cannot be identified with a single mental attitude towards a particular representation. Instead, we should characterize states of linguistic understanding as involving complex representational structures generated by a dual-stream process. The first stream operates on direct representations of what is said, while the second operates on representations of what is said as being said/asserted by a given source. Both these streams feed a situation model, i.e. a complex representation of a state of affairs described by a given piece of discourse. (shrink)

Often philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians employ a notion of intended structure when talking about a branch of mathematics. In addition, we know that there are foundational mathematical theories that can find representatives for the objects of informal mathematics. In this paper, we examine how faithfully foundational theories can represent intended structures, and show that this question is closely linked to the decidability of the theory of the intended structure. We argue that this sheds light on the trade-off between expressive power (...) and meta-theoretic properties when comparing first-order and second-order logic. (shrink)

Representational theories treat consciousness as states, contents, or neural correlates. The KOGNETIK framework introduces a structural alternative: Consciousness is not a state. Consciousness is the rule by which states are transformed under recurrence. Starting from the operator Ψ = ∂S/∂R (structural sensitivity to recurrence), the paper defines consciousness as the second-order operator Consciousness = ∂Ψ/∂R, the system’s ability to modify the rules that modify structure.

This unpublished paper, written in 2005 in the PhD philosophy program at Notre Dame, argues that algebraic structural realism faces a potentially fatal difficulty raised by the existence of inequivalent representations in quantum field theory.

This thesis starts with three challenges to the structuralist accounts of applied mathematics. Structuralism views applied mathematics as a matter of building mapping functions between mathematical and target-ended structures. The first challenge concerns how it is possible for a non-mathematical target to be represented mathematically when the mapping functions per se are mathematical objects. The second challenge arises out of inconsistent early calculus, which suggests that mathematical representation does not require rigorous mathematical structures. The third challenge comes from renormalisation group (...) (RG) explanations of universality. It is argued that the structural mapping between the world and a highly abstract minimal model adds little value to our understanding of how RG obtains its explanatory force. I will address the first and second challenges from the similarity perspective. The similarity account captures representations as similarity relations, providing a more flexible and broader conception of representation than structuralism. It is the specification of the respect and degree of similarity that forges mathematics into a context of representation and directs it to represent a specific system in reality. Structuralism is treatable as a tool for explicating similarity rela-tions set-theoretically. The similarity account, combined with other approaches (e.g., Nguyen and Frigg’s extensional abstraction account and van Fraassen’s pragmatic equivalence), can dissolve the first challenge. Additionally, I will make a structuralist response to the second challenge, and suggestions regarding the role of infinitesimals from the similarity perspective. In light of the similarity account, I will propose the “hotchpotch picture” as a method-ological reflection of our study of representation and explanation. Its central insight is to dissect a representation or an explanation into several aspects and use different theories (that are usually thought of competing) to appropriate each of them. Based on the hotchpotch picture, RG explanations can be dissected to the “indexing” and “inferential” conceptions of explanation, which are captured or characterised by structural mappings. Therefore, structuralism accommodates RG explanations, and the third challenge is resolved. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the view that the representational structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for implicitly biased behaviour is propositional—as opposed to associationist. The proposal under criticism moves from the claim that implicit biased behaviour can occasionally be modulated by logical and evidential considerations to the view that the structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for such biased behaviour is propositional. I argue, in particular, against the truth of this conditional. Sensitivity to logical and evidential considerations, I (...) contend, proves to be an inadequate criterion for establishing the true representational structure of implicit attitudes. Considerations of a different kind, which emphasize the challenges posed by the structural social injustice that implicit attitudes reflect, offer, I conclude, better support for deciding this issue in favour of an associationist view. (shrink)

This article develops an axiom system to justify an additive representation for a preference relation ${\succsim}$ on the product ${\prod_{i=1}^{n}A_{i}}$ of extensive structures. The axiom system is basically similar to the n-component (n ≥ 3) additive conjoint structure, but the independence axiom is weakened in the system. That is, the axiom exclusively requires the independence of the order for each of single factors from fixed levels of the other factors. The introduction of a concatenation operation on each factor A i (...) makes it possible to yield a special type of restricted solvability, i.e., additive solvability and the usual cancellation on ${\prod_{i=1}^{n}A_{i}}$ . In addition, the assumption of continuity and completeness for A i implies a stronger type of solvability on A i . The additive solvability, cancellation, and stronger solvability axioms allow the weakened independence to be effective enough in constructing the additive representation. (shrink)

This paper proposes a theory of representation centered on invariance as the constitutive condition of objectivity. Any objective representational system functions as a sieve: it stabilizes identity by enforcing invariance over a structured possibility space. I demonstrate that binary relational representation under global invariance forces exactly four exhaustive stability profiles, determined by whether each argument position behaves as instance-like or role-like under substitution. These four profiles appear across representational systems: as fundamental verbs in natural language (IS, HAS, MEANS, CAUSES), as (...) arithmetic operations in mathematics (addition, multiplication, subtraction, division), and as interaction roles in physics. This convergence is not analogical but necessary: the four-fold emerges from the constraint structure of objective binary relational representation itself. (shrink)

Gödel’s incompleteness theorems are often treated either as purely technical results with no broader philosophical significance or as evidence for far-reaching metaphysical conclusions. This paper rejects both extremes. I argue that incompleteness is best understood as revealing a structural limitation of formal representation rather than a contingent defect of particular axiomatic systems or an epistemic shortcoming of mathematical practice. After clarifying what Gödel’s theorems do and do not establish, I critically examine formalist, Platonist, and instrumentalist interpretations, showing that none (...) adequately accounts for the systematic persistence of incompleteness across expressive formal frameworks. I propose a conceptually modest notion of ontological excess to characterize the mismatch between formal systems and what they represent, without invoking speculative ontology or empirical claims. On this view, incompleteness reflects limits of formal capture, not limits of truth or knowledge. The result is a restrained account of the philosophical significance of Gödelian incompleteness, with implications for metaphysical explanation and scientific realism that remain firmly within the bounds of logical analysis. (shrink)

This essay tries to elucidate structural elements of consciousness by drawing on phenomenological descriptions of consciousness and employing representationalist models of consciousness. The aim is not to explain the genesis of self-awareness, but to outline different aspects of its structure.

Many philosophers and psychologists have attempted to elucidate the nature of mental representation by appealing to notions like isomorphism or abstract structural resemblance. The ‘structural representations’ that these theorists champion are said to count as representations by virtue of functioning as internal models of distal systems. In his 2007 book, Representation Reconsidered, William Ramsey endorses the structural conception of mental representation, but uses it to develop a novel argument against representationalism, the widespread view that cognition (...) essentially involves the manipulation of mental representations. Ramsey argues that although theories within the ‘classical’ tradition of cognitive science once posited structural representations, these theories are being superseded by newer theories, within the tradition of connectionism and cognitive neuroscience, which rarely if ever appeal to structural representations. Instead, these theories seem to be explaining cognition by invoking so-called ‘receptor representations’, which, Ramsey claims, aren’t genuine representations at all—despite being called representations, these mechanisms function more as triggers or causal relays than as genuine stand-ins for distal systems. I argue that when the notions of structural and receptor representation are properly explicated, there turns out to be no distinction between them. There only appears to be a distinction between receptor and structural representations because the latter are tacitly conflated with the ‘mental models’ ostensibly involved in offline cognitive processes such as episodic memory and mental imagery. While structural representations might count as genuine representations, they aren’t distinctively mental representations, for they can be found in all sorts of non-intentional systems such as plants. Thus to explain the kinds of offline cognitive capacities that have motivated talk of mental models, we must develop richer conceptions of mental representation than those provided by the notions of structural and receptor representation. (shrink)

Neural structural representations are cerebral map- or model-like structures that structurally resemble what they represent. These representations are absolutely central to the “cognitive neuroscience revolution”, as they are the only type of representation compatible with the revolutionaries’ mechanistic commitments. Crucially, however, these very same commitments entail that structural representations can be observed in the swirl of neuronal activity. Here, I argue that no structural representations have been observed being present in our neuronal activity, (...) no matter the spatiotemporal scale of observation. My argument begins by introducing the “cognitive neuroscience revolution” (Sect. 1 ) and sketching a prominent, widely adopted account of structural representations (Sect. 2 ). Then, I will consult various reports that describe our neuronal activity at various spatiotemporal scales, arguing that none of them reports the presence of structural representations (Sect. 3 ). After having deflected certain intuitive objections to my analysis (Sect. 4 ), I will conclude that, in the absence of neural structural representations, representationalism and mechanism can’t go together, and so the “cognitive neuroscience revolution” is forced to abandon one of its commitments (Sect. 5 ). (shrink)

We introduce the **Compressed Probabilistic Yoneda Tree (CPYT)**, a framework for representing, comparing, and compressing probability distributions. By integrating Yoneda lemma principles, minimum spanning trees (MST), and ternary tree structures, CPYT enables a hierarchical and minimal structural representation of distributions based on a selected set of probes (e.g., Markov blankets). This approach allows provably correct reconstruction, comparison, and analysis of complex probabilistic systems without relying on traditional Shannon entropy or Kolmogorov complexity measures.

Structural Omission is a framework for realist painting developed for the post-certainty era of generative AI, when images can be produced at scale with a surface of total certainty. This essay argues that realism remains viable only by abandoning completion as its premise. Traditional realism, even at its best, carried an old promise: that completion was available in principle, and that the artist could deliver wholeness if they chose. Generative AI systems now manufacture that kind of closure faster, cheaper, (...) and more convincingly than any human hand. Structural Omission rebuilds realism on a different ground rooted in perception itself: perceptual limits are not an error in representation. They are the condition of representation. The framework formalizes planned, load-bearing incompleteness through three criteria—Ground (perceptual limits), Structure (structural incompleteness), and Consequence (narrative without resolution). Completion-biased image systems can imitate the look of omissions, but they usually treat gaps as a visual effect rather than structural absence. Rather than competing with algorithmic finish, Structural Omission treats partial visibility as the architecture holding the painting together. The result is realism that is accountable to human perception. (shrink)

This essay examines the collapse of traditional narrative structure within realist painting and positions Structural Omission as a framework for making that collapse visible. For centuries, storytelling — in literature, visual art, and culture — has relied on the arc Aristotle defined: beginnings, middles, and ends. Roland Barthes disrupted the author’s control by exposing the “hermeneutic code,” while Joan Didion chronicled the fragility of narrative as a way to contain lived experience. My work builds on this intellectual lineage but (...) departs from the idea that wholeness could ever be restored. Structural Omission is a framework originated by Deborah Scott that structures representational painting around omissions as compositional architecture — load-bearing absences that reveal the limits of perception, narrative, and knowing. It names a deliberate design strategy: paintings planned with intentional voids that disable the expectation of resolution, confronting the limits of both maker and viewer. In a cultural moment dominated by AI-generated completeness and seamless digital storytelling, this framework challenges realism to remain honest about what cannot be seen or known. It offers a post-certainty realism: precise, perceptually rigorous, yet built around absence as structure rather than accident. (shrink)

In my review of Steven French's The structure of the world. Metaphysics & Representation. OUP, Oxford, 2014 I argue that the author is forced to navigate between the Scilla of Tegmark’s Pitagoreanism (2008) and the Carybdis of “blobobjectivism” (Horgan and Potrč 2008), namely the claim that the whole physical universe is a single concrete structurally complex but partless cosmos (a “blob”).

According to general wisdom, Carnap's quasianalysis is an ingenious but definitively flawed approach to epistemology and philosophy of science. I argue that this assessment is mistaken. Rather, Carnapian quasianalysis can be reconstructed as a special case of a general theory of structural representation. This enables us to exploit some interesting analogies of quasianalysis with the representational theory of measurement. It is shown how Goodman's well-known objections against the quasianalytical approach may be defused in the new framework. As an application, (...) I sketch how the thesis of empirical underdetermination of theories may be elucidated in the framework of quasianalysis. (shrink)

This study investigates whether word embeddings -- language models that transform words into numerical vectors based on distributional patterns -- constitute genuine semantic representations grounded in structural reality, or merely sophisticated statistical artifacts. To address this fundamental question in computational linguistics and philosophy of mind, we developed a novel microsimulation methodology using a virtual `supermarket' with known spatial topology comprising four departments (fruit, vegetables, beverages, extras) across forty networked shelves. Computer simulations of 80,000 `shoppers' navigating this space generated (...) unique sentences from their shopping trajectories, creating a corpus where language users metaphorically `shop' for words during sentence formulation. -/- When the GloVe embedding algorithm was applied to this artificial corpus -- derived purely from distributional co-occurrence patterns without external semantic annotation -- the model successfully reconstructed the original (hidden) supermarket layout with remarkable fidelity, correctly identified departmental clusters, and preserved spatial relationships between products. Dimensionality reduction of the 50-dimensional embedding space revealed striking one-to-one correspondence with the ground-truth network topology across all product variants, demonstrating distributional robustness. -/- From a philosophical perspective, these findings contribute empirically to debates about statistical pattern recognition versus genuine semantic understanding. The successful structural recovery suggests the distributional hypothesis may capture more profound relational properties than critics acknowledge, though questions remain about whether such correspondence constitutes authentic grounding in real-world conceptual frameworks or sophisticated pattern matching disconnected from experiential meaning dimensions. -/- The theoretical framework draws upon Shannon's information theory and minimum description length principles, suggesting that optimal data compression underlying embedding generation may naturally align with discovering generative structures. This implies Occam's razor may operate as a computational pathway toward semantic representation, though whether this achieves genuine intentionality remains philosophically contested. These results have implications for contemporary debates about artificial intelligence, computational semantics, and machine understanding. (shrink)

This paper engages critically with anti-representationalist arguments pressed by prominent enactivists and their allies. The arguments in question are meant to show that the “as-such” and “job-description” problems constitute insurmountable challenges to causal-informational theories of mental content. In response to these challenges, a positive account of what makes a physical or computational structure a mental representation is proposed; the positive account is inspired partly by Dretske’s views about content and partly by the role of mental representations in contemporary cognitive (...) scientific modeling. (shrink)

This working paper introduces Coordination Games over Belief–Action Geometry (CG-BAG), a formal framework for analyzing collective coordination among agents with heterogeneous representations of belief, value, and action. The paper develops the core definitions, structural admissibility conditions, and stability concepts underlying CG-BAG, including the notion of coordination-stable outcomes and critical representational bases.

Why do people create extra representations to help them make sense of situations, diagrams, illustrations, instructions and problems? The obvious explanation— external representations save internal memory and com- putation—is only part of the story. I discuss seven ways external representations enhance cognitive power: they change the cost structure of the inferential landscape; they provide a structure that can serve as a shareable object of thought; they create persistent referents; they facilitate re- representation; they are often a more (...) natural representation of structure than mental representations; they facilitate the computation of more explicit encoding of information; they enable the construction of arbitrarily complex structure; and they lower the cost of controlling thought—they help coordinate thought. Jointly, these functions allow people to think more powerfully with external representations than without. They allow us to think the previously unthinkable. (shrink)

There are two versions of the language-of-thought hypothesis (LOT): Representational LOT (roughly, structured representation), introduced by Ockham, and computational LOT (roughly, symbolic computation) introduced by Fodor. Like many others, I oppose the latter but not the former. Quilty-Dunn et al. defend representational LOT, but they do not defend the strong computational LOT thesis central to the classical-connectionist debate.

An ongoing philosophical discussion concerns how various types of mental states fall within broad representational genera—for example, whether perceptual states are “iconic” or “sentential,” “analog” or “digital,” and so on. Here, I examine the grounds for making much more specific claims about how mental states are structured from constituent parts. For example, the state I am in when I perceive the shape of a mountain ridge may have as constituent parts my representations of the shapes of each peak and (...) saddle of the ridge. More specific structural claims of this sort are a guide to how mental states fall within broader representational kinds. Moreover, these claims have significant implications of their own about semantic, functional, and epistemic features of our mental lives. But what are the conditions on a mental state's having one type of constituent structure rather than another? Drawing on explanatory strategies in vision science, I argue that, other things being equal, the constituent structure of a mental state determines what I call its distributional properties—namely, how mental states of that type can, cannot, or must co‐occur with other mental states in a given system. Distributional properties depend critically on and are informative about the underlying structures of mental states, they abstract in important ways from aspects of how mental states are processed, and they can yield significant insights into the variegation of psychological capacities. (shrink)

Epistemic justifications for democracy have been offered in terms of two different aspects of decision-making: voting and deliberation, or ‘votes’ and ‘talk.’ The Condorcet Jury Theorem is appealed to as a justification in terms votes, and the Hong-Page “Diversity Trumps Ability” result is appealed to as a justification in terms of deliberation. Both of these, however, are most plausibly construed as models of direct democracy, with full and direct participation across the population. In this paper, we explore how these results (...) hold up if we vary the model so as to reflect the more familiar democratic structure of a representative hierarchy. We first recount extant analytic work that shows that representation inevitably weakens the voting results of the Condorcet Jury Theorem, but we question the ability of that result to shine light on real representative systems. We then show that, when we move from votes to talk, as modeled in Hong-Page, representation holds its own and even has a slight edge. (shrink)

Abstract — Finger I: Structural Block Theory -/- Structural Block Theory (SBT) extends Structural Resonance Theory (SRT) by formalizing the granularity of conscious experience as a necessary consequence of finite integration under constraint. Rather than treating consciousness as continuous, atomic, representational, or computational, SBT defines experience as occurring in maximal contiguous intervals of threshold-satisfying resonance integration, termed experiential blocks. Blocks are not perceptual snapshots or symbolic units, but structurally delimited integration regimes whose existence, duration, and dominance are (...) governed by integration density, constraint topology, and update nontriviality. -/- The theory derives experiential discreteness without appealing to phenomenology or fixed sampling rates, showing that block formation follows inevitably from finite integration capacity, variable constraints, and the impossibility of perfectly coherent, update-invariant states. Attention is formalized as a weighting function over competing blocks rather than as a gate or generator of experience, resolving long-standing dissociations between attention and awareness. Memory is reframed as attractor-level bias that increases block re-instantiation probability rather than as stored content, while sleep and dreaming are modeled as constraint-relaxed regimes enabling block dissolution, recombination, and structural maintenance. Pathological states are analyzed as systematic distortions of block dynamics, including fragmentation, over-stabilization, boundary failure, and identity decoupling. -/- By specifying explicit formal definitions, operational hooks, and falsifiable constraints, Structural Block Theory provides a disciplined, substrate-neutral account of experiential segmentation compatible with neuroscience and dynamical systems theory while avoiding panpsychism, representationalism, and reductive elimination. (shrink)

This work aims to contribute to the explanation of cognitive capacities that are essential to human intelligence: commonsense and situation holism. The attempt to explain them within the field of cognitive sciences raises a foundational challenge. How can human cognition distinguish what’s relevant and what’s not in an open-ended set of contexts? The challenge is characterized by a circularity. Potential solutions end up relying on the very capacity that they should be explaining, i.e. the sensitivity to what’s contextually relevant. The (...) argument here developed is an attempt to get out of this circularity. It is grounded on a bi-dimensional analysis of the problem. The first one is representational and is about how cognitive knowledge on what’s relevant can be stored. This dimension is related to the frame problem from artificial intelligence. I claim that this representational aspect of the issue can be neutralized by abandoning language-like representational schemes and sticking to a plurality of structural ones. They allow representational states to play a clear and non-trivial explanatory role while enabling a kind of representational productivity that is not bothered by the frame problem. The second dimension is the inferential one. It encompasses our relevance-sensitive inferential productivity, i.e. our capacity to efficiently infer what’s relevant in indefinitely many contexts, including ones we’ve never faced before. I argue that such relevance sensitivity cannot be neither innate, for innate mechanisms result in the aforementioned circularity, nor learned through innate mechanisms, for learning processes themselves rely on relevance sensitivity. The suggested alternative is that relevance sensitivity is a cognitive gadget. A kind of mental mechanism that is culturally, rather than genetically, inherited. This possibility is rendered plausible within Cecilia Heyes’ “cognitive gadgets” framework. She shows how developmental tweaks and biases culturally established can participate in the constitution of cognitive mechanisms. Thus, cultural elements can participate in human cognition not only as information sources, but also in the form of tweaks that bias the processing of that information towards what’s culturally established as contextually relevant. (shrink)

Linguistic representations are taken by some to be representations of something, specifically of Standard Linguistic Entities, such as phonemes, clauses, noun phrases etc. This perspective takes them to be intentional. Rey (2021) further argues that the SLEs themselves are inexistent. Here I argue that linguistic representations are simply structures, abstractions of brain states, and hence not intentional, and show how they nevertheless connect to the systems that use them.

Abstract -/- Structural Resonance Theory (SRT) proposes a unified structural framework for understanding time, experience, identity, and meaning without reducing these phenomena to computation, representation, or metaphysical primitives. The theory advances a single ontological commitment: resonance under constraint is fundamental, while time, entropy, consciousness, and identity emerge as necessary structural consequences of finite integration capacity within constrained systems. -/- SRT formalizes experience as a thresholded property of cross-temporal integration, introducing an integration functional that distinguishes experiential states from (...) non-experiential dynamics without invoking panpsychism. Identity is defined as a stable attractor in resonance configuration space, explaining continuity across interruption, transformation, and loss of consciousness without reliance on memory storage or narrative persistence. A central result of the framework—the Perfection Limit—demonstrates that perfectly coherent, update-invariant states are structurally incompatible with experience, establishing imperfection and ongoing reconfiguration as necessary conditions for subjectivity, meaning, and temporal progression. -/- The theory reframes entropy as enforced exploration rather than disorder, time as an emergent sequencing relation rather than a fundamental dimension, and meaning as a consequence of persistent near-alignment rather than final resolution. By deriving explicit structural constraints and identifying falsifiable prohibitions, SRT situates itself as a foundational framework compatible with—but not reducible to—existing approaches in physics, neuroscience, and dynamical systems theory. -/- The present work establishes the core axioms, formal definitions, limit results, and domain-general implications of Structural Resonance Theory, providing a disciplined foundation for subsequent extensions addressing experiential granularity, neural correlates, biological evolution, and cosmological structure. (shrink)

The primary justification for mathematical structuralism is its capacity to explain two observations about mathematical objects, typically natural numbers. Non-eliminative structuralism attributes these features to the particular ontology of mathematics. I argue that attributing the features to an ontology of structural objects conflicts with claims often made by structuralists to the effect that their structuralist theses are versions of Quine’s ontological relativity or Putnam’s internal realism. I describe and argue for an alternative explanation for these features which instead explains (...) the attributes them to the mathematical practice of representing numbers using more concrete tokens, such as sets, strokes and so on. (shrink)

Philosophical theories of language frequently assume that meaning and reference depend upon privileged access either to internal mental content or to mind-independent entities. At the same time, scientific and ordinary linguistic practices reliably support coordination, explanation, and successful reference despite operating through indirect, theory-laden representational systems rather than transparent access. What remains underdeveloped is an ontological framework capable of explaining how reference and meaning achieve stability without appealing to ontological transparency or mental foundations. This paper proposes a structural interpretation (...) grounded in the Three-Circle Ontology, according to which language functions as a rendered representational system governed by shared structural constraints rather than as a medium of direct access to reality. The account is not intended as a semantic theory, a theory of truth, or a mentalist explanation of meaning. Its primary contribution is to reframe meaning as structural alignment within constraint-governed representational practices, thereby clarifying how reference, coordination, and error remain intelligible without invoking privileged epistemic or metaphysical access. (shrink)

Some views articulate reality's hierarchical structure using relations from the fundamental to representations of reality. Other views instead use relations from the fundamental to constituents of non-representational reality. This paper argues against the first kind of view.

How conscious experience can be both physically instantiated and phenomenally differentiated without reducing experience to localized neural states remains a central problem for theories of consciousness. This paper advances a structural solution within Structural Resonance Theory (SRT) by introducing the concept of neural fingerprints: spatiotemporal resonance geometries that instantiate the qualitative character of experiential blocks. Neural fingerprints are defined not as instantaneous neural states, representational contents, or symbolic encodings, but as temporally extended, distributed regions of resonance space that (...) remain invariant under structure-preserving transformations. -/- The paper formalizes neural fingerprints as equivalence classes of resonance trajectories satisfying integration thresholds, cross-scale coherence, and identity anchoring constraints. This framework explains how similar experiences can arise from distinct microphysical realizations, why experiential continuity persists despite molecular turnover and neural noise, and how experiential differentiation can occur without requiring unique neural codes. Hierarchical organization across spatial and temporal scales is shown to be necessary for fingerprint stability, while embodiment and world-coupling are treated as constraint-transduction processes that stabilize resonance geometry rather than supply representational content. -/- Neural fingerprints are further shown to evolve over developmental and learning timescales through plastic deformation of resonance landscapes, producing path dependence, sensitive periods, and both adaptive and maladaptive stabilization. The paper delineates principled limits on empirical observability, arguing that neural fingerprints are accessible only through structurally appropriate measurements that preserve temporal extension, cross-scale coupling, and transition dynamics. Explicit falsification conditions are specified, including the prediction that experiential character cannot be fully determined by instantaneous neural states or single-scale measures. -/- Finger II integrates directly with the block-based temporal structure of experience developed in Finger I and the ontological commitments of the SRT Palm, providing a non-representational, substrate-neutral account of how experience is physically instantiated without collapsing into reductionism or instrumentalism. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to critically examine what I call Action-Centric Theories of Representation (ACToRs). I include in this category theories of representation that (1) reject construing representation in terms of a relation that holds between representation itself (the representational vehicle) and what is represented, and instead (2) try to bring the function that representations play for cognitive systems to the center stage. Roughly speaking, according to proponents of ACToRs, what makes a representation (that is, what is (...) constitutive of it being a representation) is its being functionally involved in preselecting or guiding the actions of cognitive systems. I intend to argue that while definitely valuable, ACToRs are underconstrained and thus not entirely satisfying, since there exist structures that would count as representations according to ACToRs, but which do not play functional roles that could be nontrivially or in an explanatorily valuable way classified as representing something for a cognitive system. I outline a remedy for this theoretical situation by postulating that a fully satisfying theory of representation in cognitive science should have two factors; i.e., it should combine the pragmatic, action-oriented aspect present in ACToRs with an element that emphasizes the importance of the relation holding between a representational vehicle and what is represented. (shrink)

The main aim of this article is to present and defend a thesis according to which conceptual representations of some types of mental states are encoded in the same neural structures that underlie the first-personal experience of those states. To support this proposal here, I will put forth a novel account of the cognitive function played by ‘shared representations’ of emotions and bodily sensations, i.e. neural structures that are active when one experiences a mental state of a certain (...) type as well as when one observes someone else experiencing a state of the same type. I will argue that shared representations in fact constitute vehicles of certain mental state concepts (more precisely, concepts of specific types of emotions and somatosensory states). The main line of arguing for this will consist in showing that shared representations exhibit specific, ‘conceptual’ functional properties:(1) causal effect on forming metacognitive judgments, (2) cognitive penetrability, (3) diversity of input types. (shrink)

This paper develops a critical experiment that recasts ontological existence schemata in categorical terms. We ask when a functorial “index of ways of being” comes not from many unrelated lists but from a single universal source (with strict or weakened representability). This yields a two–layer reading: a cataphatic layer, where attributes are the natural, lawlike manifestations of the source across contexts; and an immanent–apophatic layer, where the source’s reflexive self–structure modulates every manifestation yet resists total capture. We add a disciplined (...) treatment of omniscience. Modeled as a modality, it collapses knowledge extensionally at a stage (everything true there is “known” and known to be known) but neither produces a single internal statement of global collapse nor an algorithmic method for extracting witnesses to truth. From this, we obtain a price tag for constitutive realist self–communication claims (e.g., "Jesus is God" read in–language as an identification of a designated locus with the universal source): internally, such claims require strength beyond purely finitary reasoning, or else call for strong structural assumptions or a richer ambient in which the identification holds by design. The stance is exploratory rather than doctrinal. We do not settle metaphysics; we map formal feasibility, mark theorem–backed limits, and make explicit the extra commitments—computational or structural—by which a regulative horizon is upgraded to constitutive realism. (shrink)