Institut für Philosophie, 23.21.00.46B, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Universitätsstr. 1, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany.
Conscious Cogn. 2010 Sep;19(3):838-46. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2010.06.021. Epub 2010 Aug 23.
The paper argues that any theory of content has to adopt a "functionalistic core" to concord with the cognitive sciences. This functionalistic core requires that representations are defined as substitutes in functions that describe the flexible behavior to be explained by the representation. The content of a representation can thus only be determined if the representation is "in use", i.e. if it is an argument in such a function. The stored entities in memory are not in use while they are stored, and hence cannot be assigned a specific content. The term "template" is introduced to describe stored entities in memory. The discussion of some implications of this result show that some deep philosophical problems follow from this argument as well as consequences for empirical research on memory.
本文认为，任何内容理论都必须采用“功能主义核心”才能与认知科学相协调。这个功能主义核心要求将表示定义为描述要解释的表示灵活行为的函数中的替代物。只有当表示是“在使用中”时，即它是这样一个函数的参数时，才能确定表示的内容。存储在记忆中的实体在存储时未被使用，因此不能为其分配特定的内容。引入“模板”一词来描述存储在记忆中的实体。对这一结果的一些含义的讨论表明，从这个论点以及对记忆的实证研究的后果中，也产生了一些深刻的哲学问题。
