On representation hungry cognition (and why we should stop feeding it)

Abstract

Despite the gaining popularity of non-representationalist approaches to cognition, it is still a widespread assumption in contemporary cognitive science that the explanatory reach of representation-eschewing approaches is substantially limited. Nowadays, many working in the field accept that we do not need to invoke internal representations for the explanation of online forms of cognition. However, when it comes to explaining higher, offline forms of cognition, it is widely believed that we must fall back on internal-representation-invoking theories. In this paper, I want to argue that, contrary to popular belief, we don't yet have any compelling reason for assuming that non-representationalist theories are, as a matter of necessity, limited in scope. I will show that Clark and Toribio's influential argument in terms of 'representation-hungry' cognition can, for various reasons, hardly be considered an argument at all. On closer inspection, we'll see that the claim from representation-hunger is, on the one hand, built on the fallacious principle that 'representational phenomena require representational explanations', and on the other hand, on a conflation of the level of description with the level of explanation. As we'll also see, this conflation is remarkably common and also undergirds the misguided idea that Husserlian phenomenology can be recuperated within the framework of mainstream representationalist cognitive science.

From Something Old to Something New: Functionalist Lessons for the Cognitive Science of Scientific Creativity

“…These references to the conceptual and symbolic might strike some readers as a case of smuggling in representational thinking through the back door. On the contrary, however, I see the present paper as contributing to the larger project many of us in embodied cognitive science are already engaged in of not simply responding to the ‘scaling up challenge' but in fact questioning the representation-hunger often ascribed to some cognitive phenomena (refer to, e.g., Zahnoun, 2021 ). Along these lines, it is useful to point out how the perspective on creativity being sketched here resonates with recent work approaching concepts and conceptual thought in ways that challenge more traditional internalist, representational accounts.…”

Autism as Gradual Sensorimotor Difference: From Enactivism to Ethical Inclusion

“…As is clear from the above, the overcoming of differences in degree (whether in visual acuity, height, culture, …) is something we do daily among people. We recognize just societies by their capacity to overcome the superficial tensions that may arise from such differences, i.e., their tendency to embrace cosmopolitanism, per Wallace (2019). What we argued for is that the enactive construal of autism as an atypical embodiment leading to a specific skewing of sensorimotor preferences leads to recognizing it as one such difference in degree.…”

“…15 Crucial in this leading ethical framework is negotiation of ethical interaction across individuals characterized by individual differences. Indeed, Wallace (2019) develops a call to cosmopolitanism using reactive attitudes where we should maximally broaden our ethical community irrespective of contingent social and cultural practices and merely based on the possibility of entering into a mutuality of reactive attitudes.…”

The socio-normative nature of representation

“…They already bypass the more rudimentary issue of what the fundamental metaphysical nature of representation is, to devote full attention to issues that only arise when it is already assumed that representations are some kind of physical object . For although authors like Ramsey are fully justified in adopting a skeptical attitude, the metaphysical mold in which their critical reflections are cast is one that already reifies representations (see Zahnoun, 2020, for a more elaborated discussion; see also Zahnoun, 2019). This becomes quite clear in the following example.…”