What are contentful mental states? Dretske's theory of mental content viewed in the light of robot learning and planning algorithms

Paul Cohen; Mary Litch

What are contentful mental states? Dretske's theory of mental content viewed in the light of robot learning and planning algorithms

Paul Cohen, Mary Litch

Sciences Technology and Arts, School of

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

One concern of philosophy of mind is how sensorimotor agents such as human infants can develop contentful mental states. This paper discusses Fred Dretske's theory of mental content in the context of results from our work with mobile robots. We argue that Dretske's theory, while attractive in many ways, relies on a distinction between kinds of representations that cannot be practically maintained when the subject of one's study is robotic agents. In addition, Dretske fails to distinguish classes of representations that carry different kinds of mental content. We conclude with directions for a theory of mental content that maintains the strengths of Dretske's theory.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Publisher	AAAI
Pages	108-113
Number of pages	6
ISBN (Print)	0262511061
State	Published - Jan 1 1999
Event	Proceedings of the 1999 16th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-99), 11th Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference (IAAI-99) - Orlando, FL, USA Duration: Jul 18 1999 → Jul 22 1999

Publication series

Name	Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence

Other

Other	Proceedings of the 1999 16th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-99), 11th Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference (IAAI-99)
City	Orlando, FL, USA
Period	7/18/99 → 7/22/99

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Software
Artificial Intelligence

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What are contentful mental states? Dretske's theory of mental content viewed in the light of robot learning and planning algorithms. / Cohen, Paul; Litch, Mary.

Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence. AAAI, 1999. p. 108-113 (Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Cohen, P & Litch, M 1999, What are contentful mental states? Dretske's theory of mental content viewed in the light of robot learning and planning algorithms. in Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI, pp. 108-113, Proceedings of the 1999 16th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-99), 11th Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference (IAAI-99), Orlando, FL, USA, 7/18/99.

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