Naturalistic Account of Mental Representation

Fred Dretskie has a longstanding interest in natural systems of representation. In “Representational Systems” he attempts to show how natural systems can come to have intrinsic intentionality. He describes three types of representational system. Systems of the first and second type do not represent anything in their own but are given their representational functions by something external to them. Systems of the third type are natural systems of representation that represent on their own.
In a Type-III system the representational role of an indicator is assigned by the organism of which the indicator is the part. For example a mental state A of an animal represents something in the world, for instance beer in a refrigerator, because it was a natural indicator of beer and this fact about C caused C to have the job of indicating beer. The organism comes to use C as an indicator of beer even when it may turn out that the beer is all gone.
Dretskie take seriously the environment in which a cognitive system is embedded. For Dretskie the function and content of a mindful system is in part determined by its evolutionary history and the environment to which the cognitive system had to adapt. On dynamical approaches, the evolution of the system from moment to moment will include the system’s interaction with the environment. Dynamical cognitive systems are continually evolving and mutually influencing complexes that include the nervous system, body and environment. Whether or not the environment and our interaction with it must play an essential role in determining the nature of mind.…