Representación y causalidad en las discusiones actuales sobre cognición: el caso Watt Governor

FEDERICO CASTELLANO

Córdoba

Jornada; XXIV Jornadas de Epistemología e Historia de la Ciencia; 2013

Área lógico-epistemológica de la Esc. de Filosofía, FFyh-UNC

In recent years cognitive sciences have been involved in a debate between representationalists and anti-representationalists as regards the representational status of the Watt Governor. Tim van Gelder has argued that the Watt Governor is a paradigmatic example of an intelligent system which is not in need of internal representations to carry out its cognitive activity. In response, William Bechtel has argued that, given the ?stand-in? definition of representation, the Watt Governor should be interpreted in representational terms. My aim in this paper is to give a negative answer to the question whether the Watt Governor represents. To support this, I argue that it is essential to representations to be normative, which means that they are only attributable to those who have the capacity to correct their behavior, and that the Watt Governor should not be located within the set of representational systems because it is not possible to find in its behaviors manifestations of this normative capacity.