Redundancy and Reducibility in the Formats of Spatial Representations

Abstract

Mental representations are the essence of cognition. Yet to understand how the mind works, one must understand not just the content of mental representations (i.e., what information is stored) but also the format of those representations (i.e., how that information is stored). But what does it mean for representations to be formatted? How many formats are there? Is it possible that the mind represents some pieces of information in multiple formats at once? To address these questions, I discuss a “case study” of representational format: the representation of spatial location. I review work (a) across species and across development, (b) across spatial scales, and (c) across levels of analysis (e.g., high-level cognitive format vs. low-level neural format). Along the way, I discuss the possibility that the same information may be organized in multiple formats simultaneously (e.g., that locations may be represented in both Cartesian and polar coordinates). Ultimately, I argue that seemingly “redundant” formats may support the flexible spatial behavior observed in humans and that researchers should approach the study of all mental representations with this possibility in mind.

Representationalism and rationality: why mental representation is real

“…We adopt attributes associated with mental representation by anti-realists without endorsing any specific conception of mental representation beyond a fairly bland assumption that they have teleofunctional characteristics. Thus, we don't commit to any particular formats of vehicles of mental representation, an issue recently debated by Mollo and Vernazzani (2023) and Yousif (2022), leaving this issue open. Instead, our focus is on the semantic features of representation, which requires that vehicles exist and are operational but does not decide their specific formats.…”

Intuitive network topology

“…The present work may then serve as a blueprint, of sorts, to investigate topological representations on larger scales. Of particular interest may be how topological forms of representation are related to other forms of representation, like coordinate-based formats (see, e.g., Yousif, 2022;Yousif & McDougle, 2023;Yousif & Keil, 2021).…”

Compositionality in visual perception

“…Because perception and thought confront multifarious tasks with different computational demands, we contend that they comprise a multiplicity of formats (Marr, 1982;Yousif, 2022), each optimized for different computations, and some more LoT-like than others. Thus, any theory positing a single privileged format for perception or thought should be met with suspicion.…”