The only non-representational cognitive psychologist in the village
Hi. I’m a cognitive psychologist, but I’m not that kind of cognitive psychologist. Specifically, I don’t believe in representations, and I reject the computational model of cognition. Yes, this makes me very unpopular. I this post I want to quickly review the dominant cognitive approach and then briefly raise several potential problems with this framework. I will go through these issues in detail in later posts, but I want to go ahead and present the big picture here.
Cognitive scientists tend to view cognition as computation. In this model, representations are data structures and cognitive processes are algorithms acting on these data structures. Input => transformation of input via manipulation of discrete symbols (representations) => output. The clear analogy is to information processing in a computer. Another way to think about representations is as internal mediating states (cf. Dietrich & Markman, 2003). For instance, when I see a cup, the stuff happening in the visual system will probably be a better match to my “cup” representation than to my “glass” representation. So, I correctly identify the object as a cup. In other words, my ability to identify an object depends on consulting a discrete, internal representation of that object.
There are a number of unresolved issues with this representational stance: First, there is no theory of what representations actually are or of what information they contain. Second, many cognitive phenomena seem to defy a computational explanation. For instance, attempts to use a computational framework to model cognitive behaviours have often failed to produce anything as flexible or interesting as what we humans get up to. Third, alternative stances (e.g., that there are no discrete representations or that they are not processed algorithmically) have not been thoroughly explored. Cognitive psychologists usually take representations for granted; their existence is assumed, rarely defined or tested. This just isn’t good science. I’m just raising these points here; in future posts I’ll lay out the evidence.
My goal is to spend some time discussing these issues and to think about alternatives to representation. As a cognitive psychologist, I could get away with not understanding or caring about perception. Honestly, it just doesn’t come up much. When it does come up (e.g., Barsalou) it’s in terms of the “sensation based theory of perception” (see previous post), which we know is outdated. In the long run, I want to discuss how it might be possible to ground the study of cognition in Gibsonian perception/action. This is risky since, at the moment, I have no idea what such a framework would look like. But, cognitive psychology needs to evolve, and this is currently my best bet on how that might happen.
- A Selection Of Problems With Representation
As Andrew alluded to in the comments to his last post, I'm cooking up some replies to various questions that have been raised. Being relatively time poor at the moment, I'm going to take these in small bits, rather than attempt a more comprehensive...
- Chemero (2009), Chapter 4: The Dynamical Stance
The problem with the theory of representation Chemero settles on in the previous chapter, as we shall see, is that it makes representation unavoidable. If there are representations, then RECS fails to get off the ground (remember, the radical bit is anti-representationalism)....
- Chemero (2009), Chapter 3: Theories Of Representation
The radical part of 'radical embodied cognitive science' is anti-representationalism. Simply put, the claim is that the brain does not internally represent states of the world in any way, nor are these the basis for our experience. It's radical...
- What Else Could It Be? The Case Of The Centrifugal Govenor.
Previously, I’ve dismissed the idea of mental representation because 1) no one knows what a representation is and 2) the arguments for representation tend to be pretty weak. Now, I’d like to spend a bit of time discussing a possible alternative –...
- In Which I Finish Talking About Discrete Computational Representations
In a previous post, I summarised Dietrich & Markman’s definition of representations and ideas about how representations get their content. While there are many flavours of representation, D&M subscribe to the discrete computational (DC) variety....