Blackwell Reference Online

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Although theories of cognitive architecture are concerned with the nature of the basic structures and processes involved in cognition, philosophical interest in this area has largely focused on the structure of hypothetical cognitive representations. The classical theory of cognitive architecture, for example, maintains that 1  There exist syntactically and semantically combinatorial mental representations, i.e., there is a distinction to be made between syntactically and semantically atomic and syntactically and semantically molecular representations. 2  Each token of a molecular representation literally contains a token of each of the representations of which it is constructed. 3  The meaning of a molecular representation is a function of the meanings of its parts and the way in which those parts are put together. 4  Each of the syntactic parts of a molecular representation has the same content in whatever context it occurs. 5  There exist computational mechanisms that are sensitive to the structure of the mental representations. One alternative to classicism is atomic representationalism (AR). AR maintains that cognitive representations are one and all syntactically and semantically atomic, hence it rejects (1)–(5). Another rival, with a considerable following in some quarters, is functional combinatorialism (FC). FC maintains that, while there are combinatorial representations, ... log in or subscribe to read full text