The paper argues that cognitive states of biological systems are inherently temporal. Three adequacy conditions for neuronal models of representation are vindicated: the compositionality of meaning, the compositionality of content, and the co-variation with content. Classicist and connectionist approaches are discussed and rejected. Based on recent neurobiological data, oscillatory networks are introduced as a third alternative. A mathematical description in a Hilbert space framework is developed. The states of this structure can be regarded as conceptual representations satisfying the three conditions. 1. CONCEPTS, COMPOSITIONALITY AND CO-VARIATION The view that cognition takes place in the cortex constitutes a com- mon ground for most contemporary philosophers and cognitive scientists. Highly controversial, however, is the question how this can be. Cognition is not just any form of information processing. Only processes that are defined over conceptual structures, (i) which have content and (ii) which are expressible by predicate languages, are properly called cognition. The first condition derives from the fact that cognitive processes are essen- tially epistemic: The criterion of truth-conduciveness, which is exclusive to bearers of content, i.e., representations, applies to them. The second condi- tion grounds in the assumption that cognition presupposes categorization. Truth-conducive processes would be practically useless and without any evolutionary benefit if they did not subsume objects under categories. Non- categorial processes would not be about anything. Categories, however, are just what concepts are and predicates express. While the neuronal structure of the cortex, to this day, has been perceived as radically different from conceptual structure, this paper, using the dimension of time, will show how it is nevertheless possible to reduce the latter to the former. Cognition is systematic in the sense that there are systematic correla- tions between representational capacities: If a mind is capable of certain cognitive states, it most probably is also capable of other cognitive states with related contents. The capacity to think that a red square is in a green circle, e.g., is statistically highly correlated with the capacity to think that
['Markus Werning']
THE TEMPORAL DIMENSION OF THOUGHT Cortical Foundations of Predicative Representation