REPRESENTATION WITHOUT RE-PRESENTATION: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Whole Picture

(Alternate Title)‏ CALLING ALL YOU CLOSET REPRESENTATIONALISTS: Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are!

Motivations I find myself agreeing with 99.9%+ of what the autopoeisis enthusiasts say. Then I mention the word “symbol” or “representation”. Bang! I get an almost visceral response.

Definitions “Complex structured concepts”. “Complex and reusable constructions of themselves reusable symbols”. Goodman: “The most naïve view of representation might perhaps be put something like this: ' A represents B if and only if A appreciably resembles B...'.”

Representations vs. symbols Representations generally expected (in common speech) to bear some “resemblance” to their representeds. Whole point of symbols is that they might but need not do so! Wait: Doesn't a symbol represent what it's a symbol of?

By any definition... Humans represent things. Things get represented. Maybe talk of representations is unavoidable!

Mike “So now, if we are going to be a clean representationalist (i.e. Being clear that the distinctions we use in such talk are ours, not the system's) then what is still to be gained by refusing to use this talk? Don't we make ourselves literally unable to answer the questions we want to answer...?”

Discussions I find unuseful Internal vs. external. Real vs. imaginary (or actual vs. appearances). GOFAI (read: representationalist ) vs. NewFAI (read: anti-representationalist. Who's ultimately right or wrong.

Representation as perturbation When an organism is acted upon by its environment, there is a perturbation created “inside” the (operationally and informationally closed) system. Though the original content of what caused the perturbation is lost (think: catalysts) the perturbation will “echo” inside the system, possibly all the way up to the highest levels of consciousness. Those “echoes” would, by my definition, qualify as representations of the something that caused the original perturbation.

Marek “Whatever it is that's happening between the smell hitting the nose and the brain responding to the smell is not simply the brain being pushed into one representational state or another by the chemicals hitting the nose. Freeman... argues through his work that the olfactory bulb is a closed system....”

Ezekiel “...A relational concept such as a representation... cannot be part of the operation of an operationally closed system. It if were, we would have a system that is not closed.” Yes – when we are considering an operationally closed system as an operationally closed system! Also: what is the operationally closed system in question is key!

Tom “...The notion of operational closure appears more of a particular kind of non- representationalist epistemological stance which an observer can choose to adopt when studying a system's behavior. Of course, this is not to say that we cannot also study such a system in representationalist terms....”

Human Cognition as Perspective Toggling A subject's perspective and an observer-of-that- subject's perspective. An aware perspective and a self-aware perspective. A continuous-with-the-environment perspective and a separate-from-the-environment perspective. A “here” perspective and a “there” perspective. “Life is both form and matter. Or rather, it transcends that distinction.” -- exactly!

Ron “Typically representational theories of consciousness, especially computational ones, attempt to map a particular experiential content to a current computational or neural state by looking at what caused that state. So if the subject is in a particular state that is caused by a railing, that's what it is to have an experience of a railing. If the subject is in a state that is caused by the absence of a railing, that's what it is to have an experience of a railing's absence. We think that simple story is wrong and you can have a computationalist explanation of visual experience, but only if you don't just look at the current input you're getting from the world.”

Me “That latter idea fits very well with ideas I've been working on in my one “resemblance” paper last year and my AIBO work with Ron: much of the time we see (or smell, or hear) what we expect to see. Expectations drive a lot of current experience.”

Conclusions On the one hand, representations and representeds; on the other, a continuum from more “concrete” (closer to the original source) to more “abstract” (further away) – that's fine! On the one hand, operationally closed systems as operationally closed systems; on the other, operationally closed systems as appearing to be open – that's also fine! Representations are here to stay!