 The notion of representation is central to a good deal of cognitive science and is a topic that has preoccupied many philosophers of mind and language who share Chomsky’s naturalistic bent. Many of the latter have been surprised and puzzled by his rejection of both the relational notion of representation (where the relation is between vehicles of representation in the mind/brain, and the things they represent) and attempts to define this relation in naturalistic language (see  causal theories of mental content,  intentionality, and  mental representation).  Georges Rey, for example, sees the intentionality, the “aboutness”, implicit in the notion of representation as essential to the computational-representational theory of mind—precisely the theory that he and others think Chomsky’s work has helped to inspire and shape (Rey 2003a,b &amp; 2005). Rey concludes that Chomsky is mistaken about the status his own theory, and offers instead what he thinks is a more charitable interpretation: that the representations are of something, but typically inaccurate and harmlessly so.