Context: We are presently witnessing a revival of introspective methods, which implicitly challenges an impressive list of in-principle objections that were addressed to introspection by various philosophers and by behaviorists. Problem: How can one overcome those objections and provide introspection with a secure basis? Results: A renewed definition of introspection as “enlargement of the field of attention and contact with re-enacted experience,” rather than “looking-within,” is formulated. This entails (i) an alternative status of introspective phenomena, which are no longer taken as revelations of some an sich slice of experience, but as full-fledged experiences; and (ii) an alternative view of the validity of first-person reports as “performative coherence” rather than correspondence. A preliminary empirical study of the self-assessed reliability of introspective data using the elicitation interview method is then carried out. It turns out that subjects make use of reproducible processual criteria in order to probe into the authenticity and completeness of their own introspective reports. Implications: Introspective inquiry is likely to have enough resources to “take care of itself.” Constructivist content: It is argued that the failure of the introspectionist wave of the turn of the 19th/20th centuries is mostly due to its unconditional acceptance of the representationalist theory of knowledge, and that alternative non-representationalist criteria of validity give new credibility to introspective knowledge.
Open peer commentary on the article “Missing Colors: The Enactivist Approach to Perception” by Adrián G. Palacios, María-José Escobar & Esteban Céspedes. Upshot: Palacios, Escobar and Céspedes consider misrepresentation and comparability in the context of the enactivist approach of colour perception. This consideration leads them to propose the introduction of a weak form of representationalism to account for internal representation of “reality” and “shared experience” and to accommodate the Bayesian principle of prior information used in machine vision. The weak representationalism is not limited to brain states but may include embodied factors to be compatible with the enactivist framework. My commentary will essentially consider the misrepresentation and comparability arguments used by the authors to introduce the notion of representation.
Clark A. & Toribio J. (1994) Doing without representing? Synthese 101(3): 401–431. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/4897
Connectionism and classicism, it generally appears, have at least this much in common: both place some notion of internal representation at the heart of a scientific study of mind. In recent years, however, a much more radical view has gained increasing popularity. This view calls into question the commitment to internal representation itself. More strikingly still, this new wave of anti-representationalism is rooted not in ‘armchair’ theorizing but in practical attempts to model and understand intelligent, adaptive be-havior. In this paper we first present, and then critically assess, a variety of recent antirepresentationalist treatments. We suggest that so far, at least, the sceptical rhetoric outpaces both evidence and argument. Some probable causes of this premature scepticism are isolated. Nonetheless, the anti-representationalist challenge is shown to be both important and progressive insofar as it forces us to see beyond the bare representa-tional/non-representational dichotomy and to recognize instead a rich continuum of degrees and types of representationality.
Clowes R. W. & Chrisley R. (2012) Virtualist representation. International Journal of Machine Consciousness 4(2): 503–522. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/5069
This paper seeks to identify, clarify, and perhaps rehabilitate the virtual reality metaphor as applied to the goal of understanding consciousness. Some proponents of the metaphor apply it in a way that implies a representational view of experience of a particular, extreme form that is indirect, internal and inactive (what we call “presentational virtualism”). In opposition to this is an application of the metaphor that eschews representation, instead preferring to view experience as direct, external and enactive (“enactive virtualism”). This paper seeks to examine some of the strengths and weaknesses of these virtuality-based positions in order to assist the development of a related, but independent view of experience: virtualist representationalism. Like presentational virtualism, this third view is representational, but like enactive virtualism, it places action centre stage, and does not require, in accounting for the richness of visual experience, global representational “snapshots” corresponding to the entire visual field to be tokened at any one time.
Cowley S. (2014) The Integration Problem: Interlacing Language, Action and Perception. Cybernetics & Human Knowing 21(1–2): 53–65. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/3415
Human thinking uses other peoples’ experience. While often pictured as computation or based on the workings of a language-system in the mind or brain, the evidence suggests alternatives to representationalism. In terms proposed here, embodiment is interlaced with wordings as people tackle the integration problem. Using a case study, the paper shows how a young man uses external resources in an experimental task. He grasps a well-defined problem by using material resources, talking about his doings and switching roles and procedures. Attentional skills enable him to act as an air cadet who, among other things, connects action, leadership and logic. Airforce practices prompt him to draw timeously on non-local resources as, using impersonal experience, he interlaces language, action and perception. He connects the cultural and the metabolic in cognitive work as he finds a way to completion of the task.
Open peer commentary on the article “Coordination Produces Cognitive Niches, not just Experiences: A Semi-Formal Constructivist Ontology Based on von Foerster” by Konrad Werner. Upshot: I will aim to show that a cognitive niche, as introduced by Werner, although a theoretically rich and insightful concept, ultimately falls short of its intended aims. Here I will draw attention to three distinct reasons for this: (a) it does not adequately deal with the issue of Cartesian subjectivism, (b) it conflates the ontological domain with the epistemic and as a consequence (c) introduces a counterproductive type of representationalism. The commentary finishes with a few words on an alternative proposal for solving the problem of presentation.
De Jesus P. (2018) Thinking through enactive agency: Sense-making, bio-semiosis and the ontologies of organismic worlds. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 17(5): 861–887. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/5701
According to enactivism all living systems, from single cell organisms to human beings, are ontologically endowed with some form of teleological and sense-making agency. Furthermore, enactivists maintain that: (i) there is no fixed pregiven world and as a consequence (ii) all organisms “bring forth” their own unique “worlds” through processes of sense-making. The first half of the paper takes these two ontological claims as its central focus and aims to clarify and make explicit the arguments and motivations underlying them. Our analysis here highlights three distinct but connected problems for enactivism: (i) these arguments do not and cannot guarantee that there is no pregiven world, instead, they (ii) end up generating a contradiction whereby a pregiven world seems to in fact be tacitly presupposed by virtue of (iii) a reliance on a tacit epistemic perspectivalism which is also inherently representationalist and as a consequence makes it difficult to satisfactorily account for the ontological plurality of worlds. Taking these considerations on board, the second half of the paper then aims to develop a more robust ontologically grounded enactivism. Drawing from biosemiotic enactivism, science and technology studies and anthropology, the paper aims to present an account which both rejects a pregiven world and coherently accounts for how organisms bring forth ontologically multiple worlds.
According to a standard representationalist view cognitive capacities depend on internal content-carrying states. Recent alternatives to this view have been met with the reaction that they have, at best, limited scope, because a large range of cognitive phenomena – those involving absent and abstract features – require representational explanations. Here we challenge the idea that the consideration of cognition regarding the absent and the abstract can move the debate about representationalism along. Whether or not cognition involving the absent and the abstract requires the positing of representations depends upon whether more basic forms of cognition require the positing of representations.
Domínguez Rojas A. L. (2019) Perception and hallucination: From an analytical approach to an enactive approach. Adaptive Behavior 27(1): 105–108. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/5967
In this opinion, I examine the benefits of the enactivist approach in the study of perception and hallucination, which have traditionally been studied in the context of analytic philosophy. I consider some arguments that rescue the role of objects and the body in the perceptual experience, which allow certain clarities regarding the case of hallucination.
Dreyfus H. L. (2002) Refocusing the question: Can there be skillful coping without propositional representation? Phenomenology and the Cognitive Science 1: 413–425.
Excerpt: I’m grateful for all the careful critical responses my paper has received. I’m especially indebted to Andy Clark, whose hard questions have forced me to refine my views, and to Georges Rey, who has had the courage and skill to defend representationalism in its most extreme form. Before taking on their serious criticisms, however, I would like to clear up some misunderstandings. The polemical way I posed my thesis as a defense of “intelligence without representations” seems to have misled some readers into thinking I was against appealing to mental representations to explain any form of intelligent behavior. So I’ll begin by reminding everyone, including myself, what is at stake.