Recent publications
Haselager, W.F.G., de Groot, A.D., & van Rappard, J.F.H. (2003)
Representationalism versus anti-representationalism: A debate for the
sake of appearance.
Philosophical Psychology, 16(1), 5-23.
Abstract
In recent years the cognitive science community has witnessed the rise of a
new, dynamical, approach to cognition. This approach entails a framework
in which cognition and behavior are taken to result from complex dynamical
interactions between brain, body, and environment. The advent of the
dynamical approach is grounded in a dissatisfaction with the classical
computational view on cognition. A particularly strong claim has been
that cognitive systems do not rely on internal representations and
computations.
Focusing on this claim, we take as a starting point a question recently
raised by Cliff & Noble (1997): "... if evolution did produce a design
that used internal representations, how would we recognize it?" We will
argue that cognitive science lacks a proper operationalization of the
notion of representation, and therefore is unable to fruitfully discuss
whether a particular system has representations or not. A basic method
to detect representations in a physical system, grounded in isomorphism,
turns out to be quite unconstrained. We will look at a practical example
of this problem by examining the debate on whether or not Van Gelder's
(1995) controversial example of the Watt Governor is representational.
We will conclude that cognitive science, as of yet, has no empirically
applicable means to answer Cliff & Noble's question unequivocally. This
makes the recent representationalism vs. anti-representationalism debate
a debate for the sake of appearance.