Structural Resemblance and the Causal Role of Content

Some proponents of structural representations (henceforth, structuralists) claim that no other theory of representation can legitimatize the explanatory appeals that cognitive science makes to mental content. Because other naturalistic approaches to representation purportedly posit an arbitrary relation between representing vehicles and representational content, these approaches must appeal to the role played by a representation, i.e., how it is used by the system in which it is embedded, to ground its content. This is in supposed contrast to structural representations, in which the relation of resemblance results in a non-arbitrary relationship between vehicles and content. Structuralists argue that, as a result, approaches that posit structural representations can, and alternative approaches cannot, explain how representational content can be causally relevant in the production of behavior. In this paper, I will argue that structural representations are susceptible to the very same critiques that proponents level against what they sometimes refer to as "use" theories. This, I contend, is not surprising given that a theory of structural representations is, in fact, just as much a use-theory as alternative approaches.