Mental Anti-representationalism: Prospects for a Noncognitivist Account of Psychological Discourse

Abstract

In my dissertation, I argue that psychological sentences are not representational. I call this view Mental Anti-Representationalism (MAR). The meaning of a psychological sentence is commonly understood principally or exclusively in terms of the representational relations between the sentence and what it represents (a fact). MAR rejects it. According to MAR, psychological sentences are categorically different from physical sentences that are representational. My main argument is that psychological sentences are, in fact, rationality sentences, and rationality sentences are not representational; therefore, psychological sentences are not representational. Finally, I apply MAR to address some perennial problems faced by simulationists, expressivists, and physicalists.