creators_name: Rosenberg, Gregg creators_name: Anderson, Michael L. type: confpaper datestamp: 2004-11-20 lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:55:44 metadata_visibility: show title: A brief introduction to the guidance theory of representation ispublished: pub subjects: phil-lang subjects: bio-ani-cog subjects: phil-mind subjects: comp-sci-art-intel full_text_status: public keywords: reference, mental content, action abstract: Recent trends in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science can be fruitfully characterized as part of the ongoing attempt to come to grips with the very idea of homo sapiens--an intelligent, evolved, biological agent--and its signature contribution is the emergence of a philosophical anthropology which, contra Descartes and his thinking thing, instead puts doing at the center of human being. Applying this agency-oriented line of thinking to the problem of representation, this paper introduces the Guidance Theory, according to which the content and intentionality of representations can be accounted for in terms of the way they provide guidance for action. We offer a brief account of the motivation for the theory, and a formal characterization. date: 2004 date_type: published refereed: TRUE referencetext: Aloimonos, Y. E. (1992). Purposive active vision. CVGIP: Image Understanding, 56, 840-50. Anderson, M. L. (2003). Embodied cognition: A field guide. Artificial Intelligence, 149(1), 91-130. Anderson, M. L. (forthcoming-a). Cognitive science and epistemic openness. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. Anderson, M. L. (forthcoming-b). Representation, evolution and embodiment. In: D. Smith (Ed.), Evolutionary Biology and the Central Problems of Cognitive Science, special issue of Theoria et Historia Scientarum, 9 (2005/1). Ballard, D. H., Hayhoe, M. M., Pook, P. 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