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The Diagram Problem

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Diagrammatic Representation and Inference (Diagrams 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 12169))

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Abstract

The goal of the paper is to argue against the claim that thoughts can be modelled as having a diagram-like structure. The argument has a form of the so-called Diagram Puzzle, according to which the same features make diagrams cognitively reliable (and desirable) and unreliable (and non-desirable). I argue that to solve the Puzzle we have to accept the instrumental interpretation of diagrams, according to which diagrams are instruments of reasoning comparable to calculators. Instrumental view on the nature of diagrams leads to the problem of content determination: the claim that instruments can determine thoughts’ content, entails that, for example, a calculation carried out with fingers has a different content that the same calculation carried out with abacus. If instruments do not determine content, they can be seen as instruments that reveal the content of thoughts, but they do not change the thoughts content. I argue that diagrams are epiphenomenal which means that they cannot influence the thought’s content. Therefore, we can think with the help of diagrams, but it does not follow that thoughts have a diagram-like nature.

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Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the research grant “What is Thinking with Images?”, SONATA 10, granted by the National Science Centre, Poland, on the basis of the decision No. 2015/19/D/HS1/02426.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bialystok, Białystok, Poland

    Piotr Kozak

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  1. Piotr Kozak
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Correspondence to Piotr Kozak .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia

    Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen

  2. Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, UK

    Peter Chapman

  3. University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Leonie Bosveld-de Smet

  4. Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France

    Valeria Giardino

  5. Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    James Corter

  6. University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Sven Linker

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Kozak, P. (2020). The Diagram Problem. In: Pietarinen, AV., Chapman, P., Bosveld-de Smet, L., Giardino, V., Corter, J., Linker, S. (eds) Diagrammatic Representation and Inference. Diagrams 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12169. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54249-8_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54249-8_17

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-54248-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-54249-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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