British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
BA PDF Symposium 200626 April 2006 AbstractsDr Nicholas SheaRepresentation in psychology and biologyThought, according to scientific psychology, consists in the internal processing of mental representations. This idea is also central to our everyday 'folk' psychological understanding of one another. Many aspects of human behaviour are explained by reference to such internal representations. But what is it to be a mental representation – for example, to be a representation that apples are tasty? And how are thoughts related to the things they represent -- why is that thought about apples and appetite? For some types of representation, at least, the answer requires us to look both at the reasons for which they were formed and the uses to which they are put. Dr Nicholas Shea is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Somerville College & the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. He received an MA in philosophy from Birkbeck College and completed a PhD in philosophy at King’s College London. |