| There is a familiar if disputed theory of mental representations which holds that to be a mental representation is to be a structure whose states are supposed to stand in correspondence to states of the world (see Dretske 1988, Millikan 1984). The present work defends this so-called teleosemantic approach to mental representations against Stampian and Fodorian approaches, and develops a novel approach to the normativity underlying mental representation. It is argued that, while appealing to evolutionary functions in attributing normativity to neural structures results in unacceptable theoretical consequences, another source of "natural normativity" may be found in feedback-governed systems. The conclusion is that neural (or other) structures, driven by energetic feedback-governed systems into correspondences with distal states of affairs, are supposed to stand in such correspondences, and hence represent. |
