The Trouble of Misrepresentation in Dretske’s Information-Theoretic Account

The 20th century has been the era for the rise and development of naturalist theories. With the combination of the linguistic turn and side-effects of the positivist approach, philosophers began to rethink and offer naturalist solutions to some of the chronic debates about the nature of language and mind. In Knowledge and The Flow of Information, Fred Dretske proposed a naturalist account for knowledge and representation. According to him, the information-theoretic account satisfies the requirements of naturalism in both epistemology and the philosophy of mind. Not only it does bring forth a new perspective, he believes that it also presents a new way of dealing with the problem of misrepresentation in the contemporary literature. In this work, first I will provide a brief presentation of Dretske’s account of information and representation. Afterwards, I will present how he deals with the issue of misrepresentation. In the end, I will explain the reasons for the failures in his solution. In particular, I will argue for the claim that (i) not only his account fails to solve the problem of misrepresentation, (ii) but it also fails in one of the requirements of naturalism