"Structural Representation and Surrogative Reasoning," Synthese, 87 1991; 449-508

In this paper I argue that a number of important, and seemingly disparate, types of representation are species of a single relation, here called structural representation, that can be described in detail and studied in a way that is of considerable philosophical interest. A structural representation depends on the existence of a common structure between a representation and what it represents, and it is important because it allows us to reason directly about the representation in order to draw conclusions about the phenomenon that it depicts. The present goal is to give a general and precise account of structural representation, then to use that account to illuminate several problems of current philosophical interest--including some that do not initially seem to involve representation at all. In particular, it is argued that ontological reductions (like those of the natural numbers to sets), compositional accounts of semantics, several important kinds of mental representation, and (here things get more speculative) possible-worlds semantics for intensional logics are all species of structural representation and are fruitfully studied in the framework developed here.

Click here for a very partial table of contents of a book manuscript on structural representation and surrogative cognition.

I discuss related matters in "The Metaphysics of Measurement," in Measurement, Realism and Objectivity, D. Reidel, 1987; 235-290. [Abstract]

        Leibniz, not surprisingly, was onto all of this (he was onto everything) centuries ago:

"Leibnizian Expression," Journal of the History of Philosophy, 33 (1995); 65-99. Abstract: Leibniz's notion of expression figures prominently in his accounts of a number of phenomena, including perspectival projections, sensory ideas, linguistic representation, and the pre-established harmony of the monads. He views it as a very special sort of representation, but its exact nature is not clear. I first provide an account of expression in Leibniz's most frequent illustration of the notion, the perspectival projection of a geometrical figure onto a plane, then generalize it slightly to fit his general account. This interpretation also helps explain Leibniz's views about the role of expression in human reasoning. I conclude by showing how my account fits each of Leibniz's central examples of expression.

I discuss related work by Leibniz in:


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