Perspectives on interpretation for cognitive science

William E. Smythe

pp. 185-194

in: Stam, Leendert Mos, Warren Thorngate, Bernie Kaplan (eds), Recent trends in theoretical psychology, Berlin, Springer, 1993

Abstract

Fundamental to the classical program of orthodox cognitive science is a conception of mental representation based on self-contained systems of formal symbols which require separate principles of interpretation to fix their semantics. This paper critically examines some conceptions of semantic interpretation that have come out of this view of representation. These include proposals which construe interpretation as an internal computational process, and alternative perspectives which view interpretation in terms of the extrinsic attribution of meaning to cognitive systems. It is argued that proposals of both types in various ways presuppose rather than genuinely explain the semantics of the mental. An alternative view is then proposed which construes interpretation, not in terms of attaching a meaning to a meaningless form, but in terms of relating meaning as pre-interpretively understood to meaning as more explicitly articulated.