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H ume's Unified Theory of Mental Representation
Author(s) -
Schafer Karl
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
european journal of philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.42
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1468-0378
pISSN - 0966-8373
DOI - 10.1111/ejop.12022
Subject(s) - copying , representation (politics) , interpretation (philosophy) , mental representation , epistemology , reading (process) , mental image , sort , focus (optics) , psychology , cognitive science , philosophy , mathematics , linguistics , cognition , arithmetic , politics , physics , optics , neuroscience , political science , law
On its face, H ume's account of mental representation involves at least two elements. On the one hand, H ume often seems to write as though the representational properties of an idea are fixed solely by what it is a copy or image of. But, on the other, H ume's treatment of abstract ideas (and other similar cases) makes it clear that the representational properties of a H umean idea sometimes depend, not just on what it is copied from, but also on the manner in which the mind associates it with other ideas. Past interpretations of H ume have tended to focus on one of these elements of his account to the neglect of the other. But no interpretation of this sort is likely to capture the role that both copying and association play within H ume's discussion. In what follows, I argue that the most plausible way of understanding H ume's discussion involves attributing to him a unified account of mental representation in which both of these elements play a central role. I close by discussing the manner in which reading H ume in this way would alter our understanding of the relationship between H ume's thought and contemporary philosophy of mind.