Representational Content in Humans and Machines

Mark H. Bickhard

This article focuses on the problem of representational content. Accounting for representational content is the central issue in contemporary naturalism: it is the major remaining task facing a naturalistic conception of the world. Representational content is also the central barrier to contemporary cognitive science and artificial intelligence: it is not possible to understand representation in animals nor to construct machines with genuine representation given current (lack of) understanding of what representation is. An elaborated critique is offered to current approaches to representation, arguing that the basic underlying approach is, at root, logically incoherent, and, thus, that standard approaches are doomed to failure. An alternative model of representation - interactivism - is presented that avoids or solves the problems facing standard approaches. Interactivism is framed by a version of functionalism, and a naturalization of that functionalism completes an outline of a naturalization of representation and representational content.


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    Previously published as:

    Bickhard, M. H. (1993). Representational Content in Humans and Machines. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 5, 285-333.

    Thanks are due to Taylor and Francis and to Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence for permission to make this paper available.