Abstract
Since Tolman’s paper in 1948, psychologists and neuroscientists have argued that cartographic representations play an important role in cognition. These empirical findings align with some theoretical works developed by philosophers who promote a pluralist view of representational vehicles, stating that cognitive processes involve representations with different formats. However, the inferential relations between maps and representations with different formats have not been sufficiently explored. Thus, this paper is focused on the inferential relations between cartographic and linguistic representations. To that effect, we appeal to heterogeneous inference with ordinary maps and sentences. In doing so, we aim to build a model to bridge the gap between cartographic and linguistic thought.
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Notes
Although neo-fregeans who do not endorse the LOTH establish a differentiation at the level of content between cognitive maps and propositional thought, they need to explain the rational relations between them.
See, however, (Johnson 2015).
Casati and Varzi (1999) argue for a predicative propositional semantics for maps. However, they differentiate maps from sentences by pointing that maps elicit the absence intuition. I will say more about this later.
In particular, Rescorla (2009a) argues for the case of inductive inferences with maps.
See, however, Aguilera and Castellano (forthcoming).
As I said before, I do not want to get into an in-depth metaphysical debate here. Doing so would require changing the goal of this paper: namely, to figure out how different representational formats interacts.
I want to thank one of the anonymous referees for suggesting this distinction.
The notion of propositional structure or propositional form has been widely scrutinized in contemporary debates (Grzankowski and Montague 2018). In particular, in some theories, the notion of propositional and logical form collapse (Heck 2007; King 1996). For the sake of argument, I will not question Sellars's notion here.
It is crucial to distinguish the case of predicates—where different tokens of a symbol type do not co-refer—from homonymous—where different individuals have the same name.
Strictly speaking, Burge (2010a, b) distinguish attributive representations from pure predicates. According to Burge, in predication, the attribution is inhibited; that is, it is not veridical of any particular entity. However, since they play the attributive function we are looking for, i. e. they are bounded to referential context, I will refer to this attributive as “Burgean predications”.
Burge says something similar about pictures: “It is a mistake to identify a specific part of the picture that serves as a representational constituent that represents any relation that a picture depicts. If one object is depicted as to the left of another object, with some distance between them, there is no answer as to what part of the picture specifically represents the relation to the left of. The spatial relation is depicted, but no part of the picture corresponds specifically and proprietarily to the space between the entities” (Burge 2018, p. 95).
In other words, the reference of quantificational structures is indeterminate and includes all the objects in a domain (deVries 2005, p. 69).
Remember that the Tube Map divides the topological space into many different zones, circles represent the property of being an interchange station, colored lines represent single subway lines, and labels refer to particular subway stations.
Here, I am analyzing a case of reasoning using a paper or e-map. As one anonymous referee stated, it is an empirical question of whether subjects do translate cartographic representations to linguistic representations. As such, it requires further empirical research. However, ex hypothesi, we manipulate cartographic and linguistic mental representations. Thus, the question is whether it is necessary to translate the content of cartographic representations into linguistic representations. Moreover, I justify a negative answer by providing a model based on the notion of heterogeneous inference.
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Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Federico Castellano for encouraging me to this Sellarsian approach. His contributions were outstanding at the initial stages of this research. Further versions of this paper were presented at the 2018-SPP, Ann Arbor, also at the Mental maps, paper maps, and e-maps Seminar (EHSSE-ESS), at the 2019-Workshop on Context, Language and Cognition, and at the Santiago Mind and Cognition 2020-Webinar. I want to thank the audiences for their feedback, especially to Roberto Casati, Philip Robbins, and Abel Wajnerman Paz. I am also indebted to the members of the Concepts and Perception Research Group for their discussion and suggestions during the quarantine: Nahuel Recabarren, José Giromini, Laura Danón, and especially to Nicolás Sánchez for his insightful comments and Daniel Kalpokas, for his enormous support. I am also grateful to the anonymous referees; the paper would be somewhat different without their comments.
Funding
Funding was provides by Secretaria de Ciencia y Tecnología - Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Grant No. Res. 472/18) FONCYT (AR) (Grant No. PICT-2015-2572).
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Aguilera, M. Heterogeneous inferences with maps. Synthese 199, 3805–3824 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02957-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02957-w