What People Believe When They Say That People Believe by Jones Todd;

Author:Jones, Todd;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2010-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Notes

1. I am talking about an agent’s internal “mental” representations here. But, of course, these sorts of things aren’t the only kinds of things called “representations.” Words, pictures, paintings, things “designated” to stand for other things (e.g., “let this penny be the goalie, imagine this nickel is the forward”) are all called representations. Finding a definition that encompasses both internal mental representations (in all their variety) and other things called representations (in their even greater variety) is a tough job. Perhaps there is no general definition to be had. But let me try my hand at coming up with one.

In my view, a representation of an X, for an agent is either a) the agent’s internal representation of X (as defined in the text), or b) a cluster of features (that is not, itself an X) that, together, in one place, have a robust disposition to cause an internal representation of X to be activated in a certain group of people. Both internal and external representations of X cause dispositions to appropriately interact with X in goal-achieving ways. The internal representations are more proximate to actual interactions and the external ones are more distant.

The requirement that the feature cluster that is the representation of X not itself be an X is needed, or else any actual duck would count as a representation of a duck. The requirement that a cluster of features, together, must cause the internal representation is needed to avoid counting separated distal parts of a causal network that lead to the activation of the inner representation from counting as the cause of the inner representation, and thereby being an external representation.

How robust the disposition to cause internal representations has to be before itself counting as a representation is a judgment call. Suppose a particular backyard fence post tends to cause Tom to activate an internal representation of his mother. Is the post a representation of his mother to him? Well, we probably would say it was if he had had the post mounted in his room as part of a shrine he erected to think about his mother. But if he has fleeting thoughts of her every time he passes it, we probably wouldn’t call it a representation of his mother. (Although we might well say that that post represents his mother, or his mother’s love of yard work.) On the other hand, a picture of his mother or the words “Anna Mae Brown” so robustly activates an internal representation of his mother that we would almost always call them representations of her.

2. How many steering signals directing an agent’s potential interactions with X are required before one really has a representation of X? Well, first, below a certain threshold (e.g., when movements don’t usually successfully lead to any goal or subgoal), one would not call it a representation at all. Above that threshold, representations can be more or less thorough. The more goals and subgoals having to do with X that can be achieved vis-à-vis one’s stored if-then repertoire of moves regarding it, the more thorough a representation it is.

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