Shannon + Friston = Content: Intentionality in predictive signaling systems
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Shannon + Friston Content: Intentionality in predictive signaling systems Carrie Figdor1 Received: 23 March 2020 / Accepted: 10 October 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract What is the content of a mental state? This question poses the problem of intentionality: to explain how mental states can be about other things, where being about them is understood as representing them. A framework that integrates predictive coding and signaling systems theories of cognitive processing offers a new perspective on intentionality. On this view, at least some mental states are evaluations, which differ in function, operation, and normativity from representations. A complete naturalistic theory of intentionality must account for both types of intentional state. Keywords Intentionality · Predictive coding · Signaling systems · Mental content · Mental representation · Naturalizing content
1 Introduction What is the content of a mental state? This question expresses the problem of intentionality, or that of explaining the fact that mental states are about other things—for example, that a thought is about rain, or a visual percept is of a face. Aboutness in turn is identified with representation: the thought represents raining, the percept represents a face. Following this philosophical tradition, the corresponding problem in cognitive science is to explain mental representation within some type of physicalist framework. This paper argues that contemporary theories of cognitive processing motivate reconsideration of this received understanding of intentionality and thus of the problem to be solved. They show that at least some intentional mental states are evaluations, not representations, and that identifying intentionality with representation leaves out an essential type of mental content. A complete naturalistic theory of intentionality must explain both types.
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Carrie Figdor [email protected] Department of Philosophy and Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
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Synthese
To support this conclusion, I draw on aspects of two leading research programmes in cognitive science: signaling systems theory, based in Shannon’s (1948) mathematical theory of communication, and predictive coding theory, based in Friston’s (2005, 2010) account of how brains process information. To date, these programmes have been conceptually elaborated and critically discussed largely in isolation from one another, even though they offer complementary perspectives on the processing of intentional states in adaptive biological systems. To a first approximation, signaling systems theory provides an account of the basic structure of efficient signaling systems, while predictive coding is an account of how signaling efficiency is realized in specific kinds of these systems. Their explicit conceptual integration makes vivid the dual nature of aboutness in contemporary cognitive science and its departure from philosophical tradition. This broader issue has not been raised within either programme
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