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Mental Maps 1
Author(s) -
BLUMSON BEN
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
philosophy and phenomenological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1933-1592
pISSN - 0031-8205
DOI - 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2011.00499.x
Subject(s) - argument (complex analysis) , counterexample , analogy , representation (politics) , mental representation , linguistics , mathematics , epistemology , philosophy , psychology , discrete mathematics , cognition , biochemistry , chemistry , neuroscience , politics , political science , law
It’s often hypothesized that the structure of mental representation is map‐like rather than language‐like. The possibility arises as a counterexample to the argument from the best explanation of productivity and systematicity to the language of thought hypothesis—the hypothesis that mental structure is compositional and recursive. In this paper, I argue that the analogy with maps does not undermine the argument, because maps and language have the same kind of compositional and recursive structure.