Psychologists Sabrina Golonka and Andrew Wilson have recently
shared a yet to be published paper entitled: “Ecological Representations”. I
noted their work in the summary literature review I posted here a couple of
weeks ago, but from this new paper it would appear that that they have shifted
their position on the question of cognitive representation considerably. They
write: “We will agree that cognition requires representations.” Hopefully they
can be persuaded that this is only true if the required representations are of
the fully public and intentional sort and not the neural and non-intentional sort
that they seem to have embraced.
The influential psychologist J. J. Gibson, is well known for
his rejection of representationalism. His work on perception is foundational to
many of the ideas pursued by Golonka and Wilson. At the core of G&W’s
argument is the conjecture that “Gibson’s ecological information fits the basic
definition of representation.” They observe that most “radical” theories of
embodied cognition are based on Gibson’s ecological approach to perception and
action, and that, despite some successes, these theories have not made significant
headway in explaining higher order cognitive processes such as thinking about
absent objects etc. They claim to have discovered a way to salvage the good
work on all sides of the debate. I aim to show that their proposed solution
comes at an unacceptably high price.
In Chapter 8 of Gibson’s book “The Ecological Approach to
Visual Perception”, (1979) Gibson coins the term “affordances” to describe what
he suggests the environment “offers” animals for their survival. He writes:
[I]f there is information in light for the perception of surfaces, is there information for the perception of what they afford? Perhaps the composition and layout of surfaces constitute what they afford. If so, to perceive them is to perceive what they afford. This is a radical hypothesis, for it implies that the “values” and “meanings” of things in the environment can be directly perceived. Moreover, it would explain the sense in which values and meanings are external to the perceiver.
The hypothesis that values and meaning are external to
perceivers corresponds closely with the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who,
towards the end of his life, developed some carefully nuanced arguments to show
how values and meanings are best understood as socially negotiated and rule
dependent practices rather than inner states of perceivers. However, unlike
Gibson, Wittgenstein almost certainly would not agree that we actually perceive meanings and values, whether
directly or otherwise. To put the point as simply as possible, the value of
money is not a perceptible property of the coin or note in your pocket. Value
is ascribed to things by virtue of practices of exchange that involve the
treatment of things as if they have
properties that they do not in fact possess. Indeed, without the capacity to pretend and to accept acts of pretence, the
skills necessary to ascribe value and meaning to things would be out of the question.
So when Gibson proposes that we perceive the affordances
the “environment…offers… provides or furnishes”, he confuses practices of use attribution
and/or meaning ascription with skills of perception. I think this is a very
serious mistake that Golonka and Wilson only amplify with their new paper. Wittgenstein took the view that the meaning of a word is best determined by looking at the various ways in which it is used. The Scottish Enlightenment Philosopher, Thomas Reid made a very similar point about 300 years ago. On several occasions Wittgenstein also suggested that we should regard words as tools. Do tools have perceptible affordances? According to Martin Heidegger a tool has a "usability" that "belongs to it essentially". Wittgenstein would disagree. Do we perceive the use of a tool we have never seen before? Think of a fork. Would we immediately see its alleged inherent Heideggerian function if we were intelligent animals of a different shape and size? G&W are bound by the force of reason to say that we do not. So then, how can the many different ways of using a stick
— its alleged affordances
— be perceptible in the stick?
Another serious issue that arises in Gibson’s theorisation,
and that G&W further ramify, is his suggestion that light carries
information; that there is information in
it (I will return to this issue of “content” in a moment). The philosophy of
information (as distinct from Information Theory which is an engineering term) was
in its infancy in Gibson’s day (some say that it still is (Floridi 2011)), so
it is unlikely that Gibson would have been aware of the dangers of his use of the
word. “Information” is what Ryle (1954) might have called a “smother word”. For
Ryle, terms like “depiction”, “description” and “illustration” often smother
important conceptual distinctions and create otherwise avoidable philosophical
dilemmas. It is the task of conceptual analysis to tease out these differences
and to dispel conceptual confusion.
I have mentioned before on this blog how even the early Wittgenstein misleadingly described language as a "picture"
of the world. I have also discussed how C.S
Peirce regarded the whole universe as being perfused with meaningful signs. Grice (1957) too, saw no
confusion is assuming that nature creates “natural
meanings” in addition to the “non-natural” ones that we humans generate. More recently, Fred Adams
published a paper (2003) attempting to “naturalise meaning” and to suggest a
way to account for the meaningful content
that he believes is realised in the
mind/brain. He writes: “To be of value to a would-be knower, or to someone
interested in naturalizing the mind, information must be an objective,
mind-independent commodity.” He provides the following two examples as evidence
of this supposed natural commodity
(if that isn’t already a careless oxymoron):
Waves of radiation traveling
through space may contain information about the Big Bang before anyone detects
it. Fingerprints on the gun may contain information about who pulled the
trigger before anyone lifts the prints. Thus, information appears to be
mind-independent (and, thereby, language independent too).
According to a recent comment from Golonka on their blog,
they “agree with content critiques regarding mental reps”, so they would
probably reject at least some of Adams’ radical representationalism.
Nonetheless, since they take Gibson’s ecological information to fit with
ecological representations they have a job on their hands to reconcile their
agreement with say Hutto and Myin (2013) on the question of content and their
own representational “vehicles”. If, as I contend, the influence is merely
causal, then no representation, no vehicles and no content need be imputed.
G&W are clearly aware that perhaps the greatest
explanatory challenge for a theory of cognition is to give a coherent account
of intentionality. In philosophy "intentionality" has a technical sense that I assume is the sense in which G&W are using it. Nonetheless, both senses are applicable here. They state that: “The need for
intentionality therefore provided the first and primary motivation for treating
cognition as necessarily representational.” What should be pointed out here is
that this assumption is questionable on grounds of logical incoherence. In
order for cognition to be intentional (in either sense), it must be intended, but if it
is intended this intention must (according to the logic of the argument) be supplied by representations, then these must also be intended and must
therefore be motivated by further intentionally generated representations. This is a logical
regress of the most vicious kind that is widely overlooked in much of the relevant literature. Perhaps it is this general lack of recognition that has led to G&W's oversight of this serious logical obstacle.
G&W do acknowledge the “symbol grounding problem” though.
This is characterised as the challenge of explaining how symbols gain their
meaning (their representational content
in fact) outwith a system of mutually agreed rules. This is another serious
challenge to representationalism that, for example, Adams fails to mention at
all. He evidently takes it as unchallenging that fingerprints “contain”
information.
Words like “contain” and “content” are a common cause of conceptual confusion. When we talk of the “content” of a painting, we do not mean that the content is a property analogous to the size and shape of the painting. Content is not a special characteristic of objects. It is not perceptible. If anything, content is a special characteristic of us; of the things we can do, not something that inheres in things ready to be extracted like some kind of magical inform-essence. Fingerprints are part of a forensic system. They are meaningless outwith this system. Our knowledge imbues nature with meaning but in the process it leaves nature entirely untouched, in respect of its content that is.
Words like “contain” and “content” are a common cause of conceptual confusion. When we talk of the “content” of a painting, we do not mean that the content is a property analogous to the size and shape of the painting. Content is not a special characteristic of objects. It is not perceptible. If anything, content is a special characteristic of us; of the things we can do, not something that inheres in things ready to be extracted like some kind of magical inform-essence. Fingerprints are part of a forensic system. They are meaningless outwith this system. Our knowledge imbues nature with meaning but in the process it leaves nature entirely untouched, in respect of its content that is.
G&W also wisely acknowledge the “system-detectable error
problem” (Bickhard, 2009). Within any notionally intelligent system there has
to be a way for the system to detect and avoid errors. Once again, within a
social system this process depends on the observance of various socially negotiated
rules. But without such rules it is challenging to say the least, to know how
errors could even qualify as errors, let alone be avoided. Like most of the obstacles
to representationalism, the issue here comes down once again to intentionality.
In order to detect errors you need a system that can represent and compare errors
with successes and in order for the system to represent the difference between
error and success, evaluative criteria or some form of metric is needed by
which such comparisons can be made.
In their definition of representation, G&W begin,
rightly, by stating that representations are stand-ins. However they then rely
heavily on Newell (1980) who was principally concerned with symbol systems
and “designation”. Newell defines representation/designation thus:
An entity X designates an entity Y relative to
a process P, if, when P takes X as input, its behavior depends on Y.
In my view
this is too narrow a definition of representation. Onomatopoeia does not
designate the thing it represents and nor does a photograph, an enactment or a
model. Designation is more akin to delegation, nomination or stipulation than
it is to depiction or imitation. So, at best, Newell’s definition applies to symbolic
representations only. However, to be fair to G&W they do a quite good job
of translating Newell’s formulation into a more palatable version:
X, is a thing that is not Y but can close the
gap and that P can access and use as if it were Y; when it does, P works as if
it had access to Y.
This can be
tidied up as:
X is a thing that P can use as if
it were Y. When it does, P works as if it had access to Y.
So, on this basis:
A wind turbine is a thing that a
lightbulb can use as if it were a battery. When it does, the lightbulb works as
if it had access to a battery.
Or, better still:
Sugar syrup is a thing that a
honeybee can use as if it were honey. When it does, the honeybee works as if it
had access to honey.
I may be missing something important, but I fail to see how
this qualifies the wind turbine as a representation of a battery or sugar syrup
as a representation of honey. All of the paradigmatic cases of representation
of which I am aware involve substitution for
the purposes of communication between agents, not simple replacement of
functional component A with alternative functional component B. The radioactive
isotope of strontium substitutes for calcium in bone formation but it certainly
isn’t a representation of calcium. Something is awry in Newell’s formulation.
Leaving this objection aside for the moment, G&W focus their
attention on what they see as “the gap” which X can “close” between P and Y
(the bee and its honey). But this is merely an anomalous consequence of their turn
of phrase (which I edited out of my reformulation). Sugar syrup does not close
a gap between the bee and its honey; it simply replaces honey. Nonetheless G&W
spend several sentences fleshing out the significance of this supposed “action
at a distance”.
G&W turn next to a consideration of “ecological information
[as] a representation”. They define ecological information as energy patterns of
“lawful interaction of the energy with
the dynamics of the world [that] are used
by organisms to perceive that world.” [My emphasis]. If organisms use energy patterns to perceive the
world, then this form of usage needs
to be sharply distinguished from intentional use, otherwise we have no means of distinguishing tool using creatures (humans mostly) from all
the other creatures in the world who do not use
tools. Moreover, we also need this important distinction to distinguish between
the intentional actions of purposeful creatures and the efficacious (but not
intentionally directed) behaviours of their internal processes. My bone forming
processes do not intend to use strontium as a replacement for calcium, but my
dentist did intend to use gold as a crown for one of my teeth. This is why my
crown is plausibly a representation—indeed it is a cast—of parts of the tooth
it replaced. The reason such actions, as the replacement of a tooth, are
intentional is because they are performed in pursuit of a goal that can be
represented on demand. The fact that my dentist could explain his behaviour is
not because a representation of my tooth was contained in his neural fibres but because the capacity to
represent the aims of his activity was something he could do; something he could perform
as a competent agent embedded in a culture where such actions are understood.
If I might be allowed to go into a little technical detail,
theorists often distinguish between teleological and teleonomic descriptions of
behaviour. A telos is a goal, an aim or an envisaged end that an action is
intentionally directed towards. Teleological behaviours are thus genuinely
purposeful actions. Teleonomic behaviours,
on the other hand, often have the appearance of purposefulness but are actually
merely efficacious (some theorists use the word “purposive” here, as contrasted
with genuinely purposeful activity), having been shaped by millions of years of
evolution. When we say that a plant uses
varying light intensities to find its way towards the sun, we do not mean to
suggest that the plant is an intentionally directed agent: a perceiver. We are
simply using a teleonomic description. Unfortunately I think both Gibson and
G&W conflate teleonomic descriptions in which organisms and their inner
processes “use” energy and genuinely teleological descriptions in which we human
agents use energy—to illuminate a light bulb for instance.
I do not believe that perceivers use energy in the way that
both Gibson and G&W suggest. I might use
my desk light in order to read a book at night, but the inner processes that in
large part bring about my perception of the book do not use either the desk light or the energy patterns that emanate from
it in this intentionally directed way at all. I can choose to turn out the
light, but my inner processes have no choice in the matter. Choices are
exercised by whole agents, not by their parts (Hacker and Bennett 2007).
A lot of confusion can be cleared up in discussions of
representation if we distinguish sharply between processes in which X is taken as Y and actions in which X is treated as Y. My bones will take
strontium as calcium but only a performer of actions can treat an act of mock aggression as
if it is merely playful as opposed to genuinely threatening. This is why I
argue that pretending is the most fundamental and important skill in intelligent behaviour because
it is the basis of the higher forms of cognition that G&W are so keen to account
for.
G&W return to the notion of “a gap” when they state: “Most
of the behaviorally relevant dynamics in the world are ‘over there’ and not in
mechanical contact with the organism. They must therefore be perceived.” The
fact that the keys of my keyboard are “over there” and not in “mechanical
contact” with my fingers does not mean that they are not causally influential
upon me by virtue of the light reflected from them. My perception certainly
depends upon light but my perception is not
of the light as information, it is of the keys as keys. Light is something
we know about, not something we see.
So, whilst it is true that we pretenders can act as if light is perceptible, the light reflected from my keyboard is
simply taken by my sensory system not as
information but as causal influence. When
G&W say that: “Perception relies on information about dynamics” this is not
true. Only knowledge (propositional
knowledge that is) relies on information about
dynamics.
According to G&W:
Gibsonian ecological information is only a kinematic projection of those dynamics into an energy array. […] This
means that kinematic information cannot be identical to the dynamical world,
and this fact is effectively a poverty of stimulus.
Kinematic information is quite clearly a culturally enabled
ascription—indeed a “description”—of “units” of measure to the “dynamical world”.
There is no possibility that such sophisticated cultural contrivances as units are to be found in nature.
Their worries about “a gap”, “action at a distance” and “a
poverty of stimulus” continue when they write:
Other lines of neuroscientific enquiry do suggest that at least some of the
structure of energy impinging on perceptual receptors is preserved as it travels
through the nervous system.
According to G&W’s theory of representation it is
important that structure is
carried through the nervous system because this qualifies the structure as a neural
representation of the ecological information that caused it (recall that they
take all forms of replacement to be representational). At the risk of repeating
myself, the fact that some pattern corresponds with an antecedent state of
affairs does not mean that the pattern is a representation. Effects are not
representations of their causes. If they were, then the universe would be nothing
but representations. I therefore think we have good reason to reject G&W’s proposal that “at
least some of the neural activity caused by informational representations will
qualify as a neural representation of that information.”
To be fair to G&W, they observe that: “These neural
representations are… not implementing the mental representations of the
standard cognitive approach.” because they do not “enrich, model or predict
anything about that information.” If this is true, then it leaves these
representations as representations in name only.
Later in their paper G&W attempt to tackle the issue of
higher order cognition. They remark: “To be clear, the stipulation that
knowledge systems must be conceptual and componential is so that knowledge
systems can support counterfactual thinking, etc.” This is mistaken. Pretending
that I am rocking a baby in my arms is a gesture that would be understood by
humans the world over but, even though it is counterfactual (there is no baby
after all) it is not a conceptual representation. Conceptualisation relies on
the ability to manipulate abstractions and there is no other species on the
planet that has the capacity to manipulate abstractions with anything more the
most rudimentary competence.
Washoe, the first of the signing apes, had been regularly bathed. Sometimes between the ages of one and a half and two years, she picked up her doll, filled the bathtub with water, dumped the doll in the tub, took it out and dried it with a towel. In later repetitions she even soaped the doll. This is imitation, but it also must be a form of representation—indeed, of pretence. (Jolly 2000, 291)
On page 18 G&W write: “From the first person perspective
of the organism, it is just interacting with information.” We commonly interact
with others by means of information
but it is somewhat confused to suggest without qualification that we interact
with information. Our use of
information forms part of our
interactions with other intelligent agents: people usually. When we use so
called “interactive technologies” we do so in a sense that is derivative of
these interactions with other agents. Information is simply not responsive in
the way that that other intelligent agents are. It helps to regard information as a tool. We use our tools but it is somewhat strained to say that we interact with them.
In conclusion, G&W are right to regard representation as
important in the explanation of higher order capacities but only if we regard representation
as a thoroughly public activity of intelligent agents. G&W are also right
to focus on behaviour that treats X as if it is Y. Nonetheless their Newell-derived
definition of representation is inadequate to the task of distinguishing between
behaviours in which X is taken for Y
and actions in which X is treated as
Y. If they were to thoroughly examine this important distinction, they would
probably recognise that representation is the point of demarcation between evolved
efficacious processes and behaviours and de
facto teleological actions; between nature and culture. Information cannot
be naturalised because information is a cultural contrivance.
