What is Misrepresentation?

This book aims to justify and systematize the desiderata that a satisfying philosophical account of mental representations should meet, which is consistent with common-sense practice and scientific research. According to the author, the most important aspect of any satisfactory account of mental representation is the ability to determine that a given representation is incorrect and to identify the nature of the error. The book analyzes selected contemporary theories of mental representations with respect to major desiderata as well as the minor desiderata that they subsume, discussing the requirements for the philosophical accounts of particular types of mental representations. Since none of the previously proposed concepts meet this requirement satisfactorily, the author proposes an alternative theory of misrepresentation, which is based on the idea that epistemic accuracy is what minds care about. According to the author’s findings, cognitive systems rely on complex devices to check for coherence between these representations. In turn, the ideas presented here support the active role of mental representation in practice as an error-checking device in agreement with previous teleosemantics accounts.