Knowledge and Representation

Our main purpose in this short draft is to present a systemic-cybernetic model that relates 1) the notions 1 of 'Knowledge' and 'Cognition' 2) their essential conceptual ingredients, and 3) important constituents of their intellectual contexts. Through the identification of these relationships we will try to identify (implicit and/or explicit) cybernetic loops, which might a) support co-regulation (though negative feedback and feedforward) and b) generates synergies and emergent properties through positive feedback.

… Representation in the Cognitive Sciences-Does …

This paper discusses the notion of representation and outlines the ideas and questions which led to the organization of this conference. We argue for a distinction between the classical view of referential representation and the alternative concept of system-relative representation. The latter refers to situated cognitive processes whose dynamics are merely modulated by their environment rather than instructed by it.

Abstract: Taking 'computational neuroscience'to denote theoretical neuroscience, I describe accounts of representation, neural computation, and cognitive function consistent with recent advances in this field. During this discussion I provide an overview of neural coding and survey its possible implications for more traditional theories of the meaning of mental representations.

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 1982

d s represent the world. To have a mind is to possess a capacity for representing states of affairs which actually obtain and others which might be brought about. Minds are internally active, and much of their activity consists in processes or operations on internal representations. Thus any adequate theory of mind must provide an account of what the mind can and does represent and of the representations and processes which underlie its rep* resentational powers. Since the seventeenth century there has been little good reason to deny any of these claims which lie at the core of the representational theory of mind. With the decline of behaviorism, philosophers of mind and cognitive psychologists alike have returned their attention to the representational nature of mind. Despite this emerging consensus, the central notion of mental representation remains far from clear, and a lively interdisciplinary discussion has arisen concerning basic conceptual issues. ' The present essay is offered as a philisophical contribution to that debate. In keeping with the generally functionalist view of mind which has become the new orthodoxy among anlaytic philosophers, I will sketch how one plausible version of functionalism might be used to untangle a few puzzles about mental representation. I will approach the issues from an admittedly phil osophical perspective, but if I can establish some philosophical results, I hope that they may also be of interest to those working in other disciplines concerned with the nature of mind. The term "mental representation" is ambiguous in a theoretically significant way. On one hand, it can be used to refer to the general capacity of minds for representing actual and potential states of affairs. When one has a belief or acquires information through a sensory organ, one represents the world as being in some particular way. In this general sense any organism with a capacity to adapt its behavior to the conditions of its environment would be engaged in mental representation. In other contexts mental representations are clearly to be undcrsUxxi as formal or syntactic structures which function as internal symbols (as " fonnulae in the language of thought"). The distinction can be sharpened by noting that there are two quite distinct classes of psychological items which can be described as having content: con

2005

The conventional philosophical perspective on knowledge and meaning suffers from at least two problems: the proper definition of truth, and the use of propositions as a basic vehicle for knowledge. By contrast, naturalized accounts such as evolutionary epistemology and radical constructivism offer a broader conceptual frame which allows to include the cognition of animals and artifacts as well. The paper explores a possible mechanism, the cognitive psychologist notion of schemata-controlled information pickup against a radical constructivist backdrop. I outline the importance of embodiment and autopoietic systems, which control their input rather than their output. The latter is considered the perspective of the observer-designer of cognitive artifacts. Using insights from philosophy and empirical results, the paper presents the implications of a radical constructivist understanding of knowledge and meaning. These include the rejection of premises evolutionary epistemology is based upon, and point in the direction of how to implement knowledge systems. The paper concludes with a call for closed-loop systems.

Logos & Episteme, 2012

In this paper I will investigate the possibility of defending the concept of 'mental representation' against certain contemporary critiques. Some authors, like Anthony Chemero, argue that it is possible to explain offline actions with dynamic concepts. Hence, the dynamic discourse preempts the representational one. I doubt that this is a recommendable strategy. A form of representation is necessary, though one which is different from the classical one. Instead of eliminating the concept of representation (as radical dynamicists do) or of splitting cognitive explanation in two separate discourses (as the adepts of the hybrid cognition version do), I consider that a dynamic concept of 'representation' is a better option. In my view, the higher level order resulted from the complex brain-body-environment coupling can be interpreted as being representational in nature. The dynamic paradigm involves a significant change concerning the intentional nature of representational states: the basic forms of representations are not maps of reality implemented as such in the brain, but limit conditions, attractors constraining the cognitive system's evolution in its space state to reach its goals. On a certain threshold of complexity, the system develops stable attractors and attractor landscapes which could be interpreted as standing for something outside the system. This conception offers the advantages of avoiding preemption argument, of unifying the cognitive explanation and, by its interscalar account, offers dynamic tools for building more complex artificial intelligent systems.

The notions of information, representation and enaction entertain historical and complex relations with cognition. Historical relations because representational structures belong to the central hypothesis of cognitive sciences. Complex relations because cognitive sciences apply the notion of representation to animals, humans and robots, and also because the enactive approach tends to disregard the GOFAI type of representations. In this wide horizon of relations, we propose to look at a systemic approach that could bring up a common denominator for information and representations in the build up of cognition, and also keep a link with the enactive approach. Our purpose is to show that systems submitted to constraints can generate meaningful information to maintain their natures, and consequently build up meaningful representations that have some compatibility with the enactive approach. Such a systemic approach to the notion of meaningful information could then make available a link between enaction and meaningful representations. The first part of the presentation is about reminding that cognition does not exist per se, but is related to the system that builds it. We look at cognition as constituted by dynamic meaningful representations built up by systems that have constraints to satisfy in their environments. Cognition is considered here at the level of the system that builds it and uses it in order to maintain its nature in its environment. Such a systemic approach fits with evolution. Organisms build representations to cope with survival constraints (frogs build representations of moving black dots in order to satisfy food constraints). Humans build representations and cognition to satisfy constraints that are conscious and unconscious. Artificial systems can use representations and cognition to run activities related to constraints implemented by the designers or coming from the environment (a goal to reach being considered as a constraint to satisfy). In the second part of the presentation we define what are a meaningful information and a representation for a system submitted to a constraint in its environment, and we link these to the enactive approach. We define a meaningful information (a meaning) as an information generated by a system submitted to a constraint when it receives an external information that has a connection with the constraint. The meaning is precisely that connection. The meaning belongs to the interactions that link the system to its environment. The function of the meaning is to participate to the determination of an action that will be implemented in order to satisfy the constraint. (Menant, 2003). The satisfaction of the constraint goes with maintaining the nature of the system in its environment. A Meaning Generator System (MGS) is defined correspondingly. It is a building block for higher level systems. We present some characteristics of the MGS (groundings of a meaning, domain of efficiency and transfer of meanings, networking of meanings, evolutionary usage). The MGS approach is close to a simplified version of the Peircean triadic theory of signs (Menant, 2003, 2005 ). We define the representation of an item for a system as being the dynamic set of meaningful information corresponding to the item for the system in its environments (an elementary representation being made of a single meaningful information). These representations link the system to its environment by their meaningful components related to the nature of the system. These representations are different from the GOFAI ones. The possibilities for linking these notions of meaning and representation with the enactive approach come from the structure of the MGS: the need for an action is the cause of the meaning generation by and for the system. The action on the environment is for the system to maintain its nature (its identity). The MGS links together the generation of meaningful representations, the nature of the system, and the interactions with the environment. This can be considered as close to enacting a world by meaning generation (Di Paolo and all 2007), and to the enactive concept of sense making (De Jaegher, Di Paolo 2007). We propose that basing the definition of a representation on the notion of meaningful information generated by a system submitted to a constraint can open a way for making the notion of representation compatible with the enactive approach. In the third part of the presentation, we consider some cases of meaningful information and representations for organisms and for robots. Regarding organisms, the MGS can be used in an evolutionary context by looking at the evolution of the systems and of the constraints. Purpose is to modelize the generation of meanings and of representations in order to make available a tool usable for different levels of evolution, as evolution has a place in cognitive sciences (Proust, 2007). Constraints for basic life are survival constraints (individual and species). Group life constraints are also to be considered. Reaching the level of humans in evolution brings in new constraints that cannot be clearly identified as they have to take into account human consciousness which is today a mystery (the "hard problem"). On an evolutionary standpoint, human constraints come in addition to the ones existing for non human organisms. We can make some hypothesis on the nature of human constraints (Maslow pyramid based constraints, anxiety limitation…). For robots, the MGS is initially based on the design of the robot. The meaning generated within a robot is initially derived from the constraints implemented by the designer and from the environment. But some non calculable or non predictable evolutions of the robot can introduce meanings that look proper to the robot. This last point can be linked to the notion of autonomy in robots. In such examples, the dynamic management of meanings thru the MGSs in their environments keeps the link with the enactive approach. We finish the presentation by summarising the points addressed and by proposing several continuations. * De Jaegher, H. and Di Paolo E. 2007. “Participatory Sense-Making An Enactive Approach to Social Cognition” To appear in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2007. http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/users/ezequiel/DeJaegher&DiPaolo2007.pdf * Di Paolo, E., Rohde, M., De Jaegher, H. 2007 “Horizons for the Enactive Mind: Values, Social Interaction, and Play”. To appear in Enaction: Towards a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science, J. Stewart, O. Gapenne, and E. A. Di Paolo (Eds), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, forthcoming. http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/users/ezequiel/DiPaoloetal_csrp587.pdf * Menant, C. 2003. "Information and Meaning" Entropy 2003, 5, 193-204. http://www.mdpi.org/entropy/papers/e5020193.pdf * Menant, C. 2005. "Information and Meaning in Life, Humans and Robots" FIS 2005 Paris. http://www.mdpi.org/fis2005/F.45.paper.pdf * Proust, J. 2007. “Why evolution has to matter to cognitive psychology and to philosophy of mind”, Biological Theory, 2007, 2. http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/13/93/30/PDF/Biological_Theory.Proust.pdf

Journal of Pragmatics, 1999

Benny Shanon's The representational and the presentational is an important contribution to the complex of disciplines that converge on the question of the nature of mind. While it is a work within psychology, it goes beyond disciplinary boundaries; it is suffused with a sensitive reading of phenomenology, existential philosophy, and Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, on the one hand, and a concern for empirical psychology and modeling cognitive systems, on the other. Shanon brings together the key concerns of different disciplines so as to investigate two competing ways of conceptualizing mind. His work is not a disinterested exposition of different perspectives; Shanon argues forcefully, and convincingly, against a representational view of cognitive processes. His argument may be characterized as a rebuttal of Josef Perner's idea that '"mind' was a word in ill repute for many years within scientific psychology of the behaviorist eras until 'representation' came to its rescue" (1991: 1). Shanon opposes this idea in a sustained critique of what he calls the 'representational-computational view of mind' (which he abbreviates 'RCVM'). He defends a more dynamic and context-sensitive conception, an alternative he refers to as the 'presentational' understanding of cognition and mental life. The contrast Shanon highlights reflects the oppositions that shape current debates about mind. One view, based on analogies with computer functions, maintains that cognition manifests the existence of an underlying 'code'. This code is ostensibly composed of fixed representations that ultimately might be formally specified. Another view, rooted in phenomenology and ordinary-language philosophy, ties the nature of mind to action, body, and culture, rejecting the pursuit of formal models of representational codes as reductionist and conceptually misguided. In 250 wellcodumented pages, the author lends support to the later perspective, arguing that RCVM or 'representationalism' (used interchangeably throughout this review) cannot handle the complexity and heterogeneity of mental phenomena and behavior. Shanon's starting point is the appreciation that representations cannot encompass the knowledge manifest in behavior. Human behavior, he argues, "defies any universal code fixed prior to cognitive activity and independently of it" (p.

Computer-Based Diagnostics and Systematic Analysis of Knowledge, 2009

2006

The notion of representation is at the foundation of cognitive sciences and is used in theories of mind and consciousness. Other notions like ‘embodiment’, 'intentionality‘, 'guidance theory' or ‘biosemantics’ have been associated to the notion of representation to introduce its functional aspect. We would like to propose here that a conception of 'usage related' representation eases its positioning in an evolutionary context, and opens new areas of investigation toward self-representation and self-consciousness. The subject is presented in five parts:Following an overall presentation, the first part introduces a usage related representation as being an information managed by a system submitted to a constraint that has to be satisfied. We consider that such a system can generate a meaningful information by comparing its constraint to a received information (Menant 2003). We define a representation as being made of the received information and of the meaningful information. Such approach allows groundings in and out for the representation relatively to the system. The second part introduces the two types of representations we want to focus on for living organisms: representations of conspecifics and auto-representation, the latter being defined without using a notion of self-representation. Both types of representations have existed for our pre-human ancestors which can be compared to today great apes.In the third part, we use the performance of intersubjectivity as identified in group life with the presence of mirror neurons in the organisms. Mirror neurons have been discovered in the 90‘s (Rizzolatti & al.1996, Gallese & al.1996). The level of intersubjectivity that can be attributed to non human primates as related to mirror neurons is currently a subject of debate (Decety 2003). We consider that a limited intersubjectivity between pre-human primates made possible a merger of both types of representations. The fourth part proposes that such a merger of representations feeds the auto-representation with the meanings associated to the representations of conspecifics, namely the meanings associated to an entity perceived as existing in the environment. We propose that auto-representation carrying these new meanings makes up the first elements of self-representation. Intersubjectivity has allowed auto-representation to evolve into self-representation, avoiding the homunculus risk. The fifth part is a continuation to other presentations (Menant 2004, 2005) about possible evolution of self-representation into self-consciousness. We propose that identification with suffering or endangered conspecifics has increased anxiety, and that the tools used to limit this anxiety (development of empathy, imitation, language and group life) have provided a positive feedback on intersubjectivity and created an evolutionary engine for the organism. Other outcomes have also been possible. Such approach roots consciousness in emotions. The evolutionary scenario proposed here does not introduce explicitly the question of phenomenal consciousness (Block 1995). This question is to be addressed later with the help of this scenario.The conclusion lists the points introduced here with their possible continuations.