Abstract:
The main aim of this article is to present and defend a thesis
according to which conceptual representations of some types of mental
states are encoded in the same neural structures that underlie the
first-personal experience of those states. To support this proposal
here, I will put forth a novel account of the cognitive function played
by ‘shared representations’ of emotions and bodily sensations, i.e.
neural structures that are active when one experiences a mental state
of a certain type as well as when one observes someone else experiencing
a state of the same type. I will argue that shared representations
in fact constitute vehicles of certain mental state concepts (more
precisely, concepts of specific types of emotions and somatosensory
states). The main line of arguing for this will consist in showing that
shared representations exhibit specific, ‘conceptual’ functional properties:
(1) causal effect on forming metacognitive judgments, (2) cognitive
penetrability, (3) diversity of input types.
