Artificial Mental Representation and Creative Pursuit

Abstract

This article first situates the notion of mental representation among the views of Franz Brentano and Daniel Dennett. It then discusses the accounts of creativity of Paul Thagard and Margaret Boden. This is then formally developed with the work of Geraint Wiggins and merged with contemporary work on mental representation in neural networks. Using Paul Smolensky's discussion of symbolic layering, we are then led to the conclusion that artificial neural networks can implement mental representations in creative activities.