Abstract

PRONO, María Inés. La rehabilitación de la noción de representación en Toulmin (o un intento de reformular a Kant en términos wittgensteInianos). Tópicos [online]. 2004, n.12, pp.173-181. ISSN 1666-485X.

As opposed to the anti-representationalist positions, this work presents Toulmin's analysis. The author considers that the notion of representation is indispensable to understand the nature of cognitive activity. He shares with Kant the idea that our intellectual activities impose a priori forms, but he points out that the use of the German word Vorstellung in Kant's work caused his transcendental goal to get trapped in the webs of mental representations. The notion of representation he handles, mediated by the wittgensteinian pragmatic turn, is too complex to be reduced to a mere linguistic expression, or to any individual mental content. The adoption of this representational strategy does not entail any commitment to the ontological realist claim "to describe reality as it is in itself", neither to the semantic realist thesis of direct reference. Pragmatic considerations about the relations between knowledge, language and action provide an alternative that overcomes reductive positions.

Keywords : Toulmin; Kant; Wittgenstein; representation.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )