86 - Frances Egan: Mental Representation and Psychological Explanation

Frances Egan is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers, where she works on the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of psychology, and the foundations of cognitive science. Recently she has been researching computational models of cognition and how they relate to representation. Robinson and Frankie talk about the foundations of cognitive science and the nature of mental representations before discussing psychological explanation, different ways of conceiving the mind’s boundaries, and how it interfaces with the rest of the body and environment. Frankie’s Website: https://frances-egan.org/index.html Mental Representation: https://plato.stanford.edu/ENTRIES/mental-representation/ OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 01:21 Introduction 07:10 Frankie and the Philosophy of Mind 11:04 The Foundations of Cognitive Science 13:20 What are Mental Representations? 26:49 Eliminativism and Representations 32:33 A Deflationary Account 40:51 Naturalism and Cognitive Science 55:39 Psychological Explanation 01:03:02 The Extended Mind and Embodied Cognition  01:21:14 The New Mechanists Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.