A role for representations in inflexible behavior
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A role for representations in inflexible behavior Todd Ganson1 Received: 3 February 2020 / Accepted: 23 June 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Representationalists have routinely expressed skepticism about the idea that inflexible responses to stimuli (e.g. reflexive responses like the pupillary light reflex) are to be explained in representational terms. Representations are supposed to be more than just causal mediators in the chain of events stretching from stimulus to response, and it is difficult to see how the sensory states driving reflexes are doing more than playing the role of causal intermediaries. One popular strategy for distinguishing representations from mere causal mediators is to require that representations are decoupled from specific stimulus conditions. I believe this requirement on representation is mistaken and at odds with explanatory practices in sensory ecology. Even when sensory states have the job of coordinating a specific output with a specific input, we can still find them doing the work of representations, carrying information needed for organisms to respond successfully to environmental conditions. We can uncover information at work by intervening specifically on the information conveyed by sensory states, leaving their causal role undisturbed. Keywords Representation · Information · Dretske · Liberal representationalism · Reflexes · Sensory ecology · Signaling · Teleosemantics
Introduction According to representationalists, behavior is sometimes best explained on the assumption that organisms are guided by internal representations of their environment. Typically the notion of representation is analyzed in information–theoretic terms: representations are said to carry information about the environment.
* Todd Ganson [email protected] 1
Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH 44074, USA
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Information, in turn, is usually analyzed in terms of probability: one thing (the signal or representation) carries information about another (the signified) in virtue of the fact that the former changes the probability of the latter.1 There is widespread agreement that carrying information in the sense of changing probabilities is not sufficient for representation. Two familiar issues have to do with the fact that representations serve as stand-ins for things in the organism’s environment. First, we can assess stand-ins for their faithfulness to the things for which they are serving as stand-ins. They can be assessed as accurate or inaccurate, for example. But information in the sense described is not the sort of thing that can be inaccurate or incorrect.2 Second, serving as a stand-in by carrying information about the environment goes beyond just playing a causal role in the chain of events extending from stimulus to response. In a typical case of animal behavior, every link in the causal chain stretching from stimulus to response will carry information about the environment. Representations are supposed to be more than just causal mediators
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