Intentionality Flashcards
What are representations?
Entities that
1) Stand in and carry information about something
2) enable systems to direct it’s behaviour in response to that thing
What was Brentano’s thesis that distinguished mental phenomena from physical?
All mental phenomena exhibits directedness, but no physical phenomena does
What is intentionality (with 3 examples)
The ability to represent something:
- A photo of a person represents them
- A noun/verb refers to a thing/its properties
- A belief represents some putative fact
What has happened since Brentano introduced the concept of intentionality?
The connection between the representation of something and what it represents has been mysterious
Especially since the represented thing may not exist at all
What is a common strategy used to help the connection between representation and represented?
Appeal to how representations carry info that’s causally dependent on what they represent. (e.g. a photo of a person is causally dependent on the person themselves)
How does the brain access the world?
Only through representations of the world provided by the senses
What are the assumptions of the traditional view of representation? (3)
1) There is a reliable correlation between what is represented and the representation
2) The structure of the phenomenon represented is preserved in the representations
3) The senses offer servile reports and do not impose their own interpretation
Does the traditional view of representation require that the senses function perfectly?
No, but error should not be widespread
Explain the beach example (3)
- Imagine you’re on the beach and somebody asks you what you think the temperature is. You reply “It’s hot, probably around 30C”,
- Akins traditional view of the senses explains this by saying that our senses are good indicators of temperature but generally less reliable than thermometers, reporting values such as hot, cold etc.
- BUT this may be a bit misleading, our senses tend to report changes in temperature (e.g. if we spend prolonged amounts of time in the heat we get used to it)
What does it mean to have a narcissist sensory system?
A sensory system what interprets everything in terms of significance to oneself
Explain narcissism with respect to thermoreception (3)
- Receptors do not objectively report what’s going on in the world, but rather their own response to it
- Different parts of the body have different concentrations of warm and cold receptors, and so are more sensitive to one or the other
e. g. some parts of the body may respond to extreme heat, whereas others may just detect it as hot
What does the traditional view think of thermoreception?
- It is a poor sensory system if it is supposed to provide accurate information about the temperature
- Due to the fact that it reports the same temperature in diff ways depending on how many receptors are in a given tissue
Explain how the warm spots dynamically respond to changes in temperature (3)
- When temperature first increases, the response first spikes then gradually drops back to new static response
- When temperature decreases, the response first drops, then gradually increases back to new static response
- Size of spike depends on size of change
(Obvz cold is the reverse system)
Explain the 4 types of thermoreceptors
2 for detecting temp: warm spots and cold spots
2 for detecting pain: extreme hot and extreme cold
Explain how thermoreceptors will report same stimulus differently (2)
- They’ll do it is the temperature is changing differently for different parts of the body
- e.g. put one hand in cold water, and one hand in warm water, then put them both in bucket of tepid water, the hand that was initially in warm water will report the tepid water as colder than the hand initially in cold water
