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<a href="https://www.thetransmitter.org/defining-representations/what-are-we-talking-about-clarifying-the-fuzzy-concept-of-representation-in-neuroscience-and-beyond/">What are we talking about? Clarifying the fuzzy concept of representation in neuroscience and beyond</a>



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What do neuroscientists mean when they use the term representation? That's part of what <a href="https://luishfavela.wixsite.com/luishfavela">Luis Favela</a> and <a href="https://www.edouardmachery.com/">Edouard Machery</a> set out to answer a couple years ago by surveying lots of folks in the cognitive sciences, and they concluded that as a field the term is used in a confused and unclear way. Confused and unclear are technical terms here, and Luis and Edouard explain what they mean in the episode. More recently Luis and Edouard wrote a follow-up piece arguing that maybe it's okay for everyone to use the term in slightly different ways, maybe it helps communication across disciplines, perhaps. My three other guests today, <a href="https://frances-egan.org/index.html">Frances Egan</a>, <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/luosha/home/research">Rosa Cao</a>, and <a href="https://www.blam-lab-jhu.org/">John Krakauer</a> wrote responses to that argument, and on today's episode all those folks are here to further discuss that issue and why it matters. Luis is a part philosopher, part cognitive scientists at Indiana University Bloomington, Edouard is a philosopher and Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, Frances is a philosopher from Rutgers University, Rosa is a neuroscientist-turned philosopher at Stanford University, and John is a neuroscientist among other things, and co-runs the Brain, Learning, Animation, and Movement Lab at Johns Hopkins.



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://luishfavela.wixsite.com/luishfavela">Luis Favela</a>.
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Favela's book: <a href="https://amzn.to/3LbSgrI">The Ecological Brain: Unifying the Sciences of Brain, Body, and Environment</a></li>
</ul>
</li>



<li><a href="https://www.edouardmachery.com/">Edouard Machery</a>.
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Machery's book: <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/11923">Doing without Concepts</a></li>
</ul>
</li>



<li><a href="https://frances-egan.org/index.html">Frances Egan</a>.
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Egan's book: <a href="https://amzn.to/4mvsEYs">Deflating Mental Representation</a>.</li>
</ul>
</li>



<li><a href="https://www.blam-lab-jhu.org/">John Krakauer</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://sites.google.com/site/luosha/home/research">Rosa Cao</a>.
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-022-03522-3">Paper mentioned: Putting representations to use</a>.</li>
</ul>
</li>



<li>The exchange, in order, discussed on this episode:
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1165622/full">Investigating the concept of representation in the neural and psychological sciences</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mila.12531">The concept of representation in the brain sciences: The current status and ways forward</a>.</li>



<li>Commentaries:
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mila.12535">Assessing the landscape of representational concepts: Commentary on Favela and Machery</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mila.12527">Comments on Favela and Machery's The concept of representation in the brain sciences: The current status and ways forward</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mila.12534">Where did real representations go? Commentary on: The concept of representation in the brain sciences: The current status and ways forward by Favela and Machery</a>.</li>



<li>Reply to commentaries:
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mila.12533">Contextualizing, eliminating, or glossing: What to do with unclear scientific concepts like representation</a>.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>



0:00 - Intro
3:55 - What is a representation to a neuroscientist?
14:44 - How to deal with the dilemma
21:20 - Opposing views
31:00 - What's at stake?
51:10 - Neural-only representation
1:01:11 - When "representation" is playing a useful role
1:12:56 - The role of a neuroscientist
1:39:35 - The purpose of "representational talk"
1:53:03 - Non-representational mental phenomenon
1:55:53 - Final thoughts

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