Can a bad mood be about anything? A theory of mind hinges on it
Most cognitive scientists think the mind works by shuffling internal symbols that stand for things in the world, even things that never existed. The theory faces an awkward test case: gloom that seems directed at nothing. If some feelings are about nothing at all, one ambitious version of the idea collapses.
A mental representation is a hypothesised inner symbol standing for outside reality or an abstraction of it. Such symbols let us picture absent objects, impossible scenes and events that never happened, not just visually but through imagined sounds, smells and tastes. Stephen Kosslyn suggests we use mental images to solve certain problems by visualising the objects involved. Paul Thagard summed up the field's consensus: human knowledge consists of representations that mental procedures operate on.
The classical version, probably traceable to Thomas Hobbes and common among empiricists, treated representations as images or ideas of things. Modern defenders such as Jerry Fodor and Steven Pinker instead posit mentalese, an abstract inner language with its own grammar and meaning. Luis Augusto illustrates the grammar point: eight times nine is a sensible combination, whereas multiplying the word cat by a section mark is not. Rival direct realists deny that such intermediaries sit between us and the world.
Strong representationalism tries to explain what experience feels like entirely in terms of what it is about, hoping thereby to crack the hard problem of consciousness. Moods are the sticking point. Unlike an emotion aimed at a rival or a gift, a low mood seems directed at nothing, and so appears to lack content to which its feel could be reduced. Music can stir emotions that likewise seem to concern nothing, not even the music. Defenders reply that moods point outward at the world as a whole, inward at the body, or both. Amy Kind argues none of these options captures how a mood actually feels.
Philosophers also sort representations by type. Alex Morgan holds that structural representations, map-like correspondences, need not be mental at all; plants can have them. Gualtiero Piccinini, following Grice's 1957 distinction, contrasts natural signs, where spots mean measles and the patient really has it, with arbitrary ones, like three rings of a bus bell meaning the bus is full.
Source: Mental representation
