Fabiana Carvalho

In this paper we investigate whether one of the most common uses of the concept of representation is justifiable by suggesting the conditions under which it can be accepted and how it can be related to mental states. We present mental states in terms of private experiences and public events. We argue that a representation is a relation involving three main elements as well as the user of the representation, and defend that the conditions in which we can conceive neural activity as representational are set by the context of observing a correlation between public events and patterns of neural activity. We aim at demonstrating that neural activity can be seen as both representational and non-representational - but rather constitutive - depending upon if we are considering public events under the perspective of the observer, or if we are considering private experiences under the subjective perspective.

Of Jewish-German origin, Jona Oberski was born in Amersterdam. During the Nazi rule that coincided with her childhood she was arrested by the Germans and deported to the Bergen-Belsin concentration camp after having also spent time in the Westerbork camp. While at Belsen her father died at the camp, and her mother later died in 1945, after the liberation. Oberski was adopted by a couple from Amsterdam, and years later dedicated herself to the studying of Physics, the area in which she currently works. Through the lens of a little protagonist, and the “ignorant” lens of the infancy of the atrocious reality in which it lives preserves only some details, impressions, and lived experiences that are narrated as if they had occurred in the present, even though they have passed. This article enters into this dialogic process and tries to establish new beginnings, negating or affirming old standards and models, notions and visions, questioning and answering old and new questions