Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

In virtue of which something successfully represents something else? For inherentist accounts it is in virtue of “structural” relations between internal components of representans and representandum. For functionalist accounts, it is in virtue of a function that the representans enhances with respect to the representandum.  Here we argue that both accounts fail and that only a syncretic account may succeed, and sketch a specific syncretic account with some, essential Tractarian components.