2019/05/23 by Carlotta Pavese
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Action Observation and Synchronization #Embodied and Extended Cognition #Philosophy and Theoretical Science
paper · doi:10.1080/09515089.2019.1612214
openalex publication_date 2019/05/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
We represent the world in a variety of ways: through percepts, concepts, propositional attitudes, words, numerals, recordings, musical scores, photographs, diagrams, mimetic paintings, etc. Some of these representations are mental. It is customary for philosophers to distinguish two main kinds of mental representations: perceptual representation (e.g., vision, auditory, tactile) and conceptual representation. This essay presupposes a version of this dichotomy and explores the way in which a further kind of representation – procedural representation – represents. It is argued that, in some important respects, procedural representations represent differently from both purely conceptual representations and purely perceptual representations. Although procedural representations, just like conceptual and perceptual representations, involve modes of presentation, their modes of presentation are distinctively practical, in a sense which I will clarify. It is argued that an understanding of this sort of practical representation has important consequences for the debate on the nature of know-how.