Es pot naturalitzar la intencionalitat?

Resum: La intencionalitat és un element central en la nostra comprensió del món. Diàriament atribuïm estats intencionals (com ara creences, desitjos o percepcions) per a poder explicar el comportament d’altres agents, i moltes teories filosòfiques hi apel·len per a entendre altres nocions més complexes. Tanmateix, els estats intencionals són entitats enigmàtiques. Aquest article explica què és la intencionalitat i per què és tan important i problemàtica alhora. En segon lloc, examina diverses teories naturalistes que intenten mostrar que la intencionalitat és compatible amb una visió científica del món. Finalment, com que totes les propostes existents s’enfronten a dificultats significatives, s’exploren les opcions disponibles en cas que cap dels projectes naturalistes pugui reeixir.Abstract: Intentionality is a central feature of our understanding of the world. We daily attribute intentional states (like beliefs, desires or perceptual states) to explain the behavior of other agents, and many theories appeal to them to understand more complex notions. Nonetheless, intentional states are puzzling entities. This article explains what intentionality is and why it is so important and problematic at the same time. Secondly, it examines various naturalistic theories, which seek to show that intentionality is compatible with a scientific worldview. Finally, given that all extant proposals face significant difficulties, it explores the available options in case no naturalistic theory can succeed

Neural Oscillations as Representations

We explore the contribution made by oscillatory, synchronous neural activity to representation in the brain. We closely examine six prominent examples of brain function in which neural oscillations play a central role, and identify two levels of involvement that these oscillations take in the emergence of representations: enabling (when oscillations help to establish a communication channel between sender and receiver, or are causally involved in triggering a representation) and properly representational (when oscillations are a constitutive part of the representation). We show that even an idealized informational sender-receiver account of representation makes the representational status of oscillations a non-trivial matter, which depends on rather minute empirical details

Neural Oscillations as Representations

We explore the contribution made by oscillatory, synchronous neural activity to representation in the brain. We closely examine six prominent examples of brain function in which neural oscillations play a central role, and identify two levels of involvement that these oscillations take in the emergence of representations: enabling (when oscillations help to establish a communication channel between sender and receiver, or are causally involved in triggering a representation) and properly representational (when oscillations are a constitutive part of the representation). We show that even an idealized informational sender-receiver account of representation makes the representational status of oscillations a non-trivial matter, which depends on rather minute empirical details

The Meaning of Biological Signals

We introduce the virtual special issue on content in signalling systems. The issue explores the uses and limits of ideas from evolutionary game theory and information theory for explaining the content of biological signals. We explain the basic idea of the Lewis-Skyrms sender-receiver framework, and we highlight three key themes of the issue: (i) the challenge of accounting for deception, misinformation and false content, (ii) the relevance of partial or total common interest to the evolution of meaningful signals, and (iii) how the sender-receiver framework relates to teleosemantics

Reliable Misrepresentation and Teleosemantics

Mendelovici (forthcoming) has recently argued that (1) tracking theories of mental representation (including teleosemantics) are incompatible with the possibility of reliable misrepresentation and that (2) this is an important difficulty for them. Furthermore, she argues that this problem commits teleosemantics to an unjustified a priori rejection of color eliminativism. In this paper I argue that (1) teleosemantics can accommodate most cases of reliable misrepresentation, (2) those cases the theory fails to account for are not objectionable and (3) teleosemantics is not committed to any problematic view on the color realism-antirealism debat