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Metarepresentation
Author(s) -
BraddonMitchell David
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0017.00063
Subject(s) - folk psychology , modularity (biology) , epistemology , task (project management) , psychology , cognitive science , mechanism (biology) , cognitive psychology , philosophy , genetics , management , economics , biology
The paper makes three points about the modularity of folk psychology and the significance of metarepresentation: (1) The hope that metarepresentation may provide a principled divide between intentional and merely representational systems focuses on a divide of mechanism. I suggest that we also look for a divide of task: the difference could be a principled difference in the task performed by the systems, not in how the task is performed. (2) There is no incompatibility between the hypothesis that folk psychology is modular and the observation that we have conscious access to some of the principles of folk psychology on even a slightly moderated understanding of modularity. (3) Much of the debate about the theoretical nature of FP hangs on what counts as a theory. Different conceptions of theory form a continuum, and it is unclear what hangs on the position that FP occupies within it.