Nick Baker

The aim of this chapter is to provide a primer on structured mental representations and their place in philosophical and scientific theorizing. We discuss four questions: 1. What does it mean to say that a psychological representation is structured? 2. Why does a representation’s structure matter? 3. What are examples of possible representational structures? 4. How can such representational structures be discovered empirically? We encourage several pluralist perspectives concerning structured mental representation. The first is pluralism about which mental capacities make use of structured representations. Structured representations are not exclusive to evolutionarily and cognitively advanced faculties of language, thought, and reasoning; they underwrite a wide variety of mental capacities. The second perspective is pluralism about the neural underpinnings of representational structures. There are many ways a structured representation might be realized in populations of cells. The third perspective concerns pluralism about types of representational structure. Structured representations are not restricted to sentences and formulas; they can take a wide variety of forms.