A Brief Introduction to the Guidance Theory of Representation



Conclusion

The guidance theory is an action-focused theory of
representation according to which content is derived from
the role a representational vehicle plays in guiding a
subject’s actions with respect to other things. What
qualifies an element of experience as a representation is,
strictly speaking, only that the element of experience be
capable of providing a subject with guidance for its
actions with respect to entities. To be capable of
providing guidance an element of experience only needs
to have features useful for exploitation by the subject’s
action-producing mechanisms.

In the full formalization, we show that the guidance
theory can account for various problem cases of
representational content such as abstract, fictional and
non-existent objects (Rosenberg & Anderson,
forthcoming). Twin-Earth and swampman are discussed
in (Anderson,
forthcoming-b). Future work will consider
the evolutionary development of representation in more
detail, and the implications of the guidance theory for the
correspondence theory of truth, for scientific realism, and
for consciousness and phenomenal content (Rosenberg,
2004).

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