The Skill of Translating Thought into Action: Framing The Problem
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The Skill of Translating Thought into Action: Framing The Problem Wayne Christensen 1 Accepted: 5 November 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The nature of the cognition-motor interface has been brought to prominence by Butterfill & Sinigaglia (2014), who argue that the representations employed by the cognitive and motor systems should not be able to interact with each other. Here I argue that recent empirical evidence concerning the interface contradicts several of the assumptions incorporated in Butterfill & Sinigaglia’s account, and I seek to develop a theoretical picture that will allow us to explain the structure of the interface presented by this evidence. The central idea is that neural plasticity incorporates metarepresentational rules for constructing representational systems and linking them. The structure of the cognition-motor interface is constructed flexibly during development and skill learning based on information processing demands.
1 Introduction The way that cognitive intentions interface with the mechanisms of motor control has been brought into focus by Butterfill and Sinigaglia (2014), who describe a puzzle that they say confronts efforts to understand this interface. This is, in essence, that the representations employed by the cognitive and motor systems should not be able to interact with each other, since they have different formats, and translation is dismissed as a basis for interaction. The problem is then to explain how they do interact. Several solutions to this problem have now been proposed, including those of Sinigaglia and Butterfill (2015), Mylopoulos and Pacherie (2017), Shepherd (2017, 2018), and Ferretti and Caiani (2019). All arguably contribute valuable insights, but also suffer from problems that partly stem from adhering too closely to Butterfill & Sinigaglia’s formulation of the interface problem. This characterisation reflects a widespread ‘broad brushstrokes’ conception of the interface, but adds some fairly specific theoretical assumptions concerning representational format and translation. Some of these assumptions are common (e.g., representations must be in the same format to directly interact), * Wayne Christensen [email protected]
1
Philosophy, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Christensen W.
while others are not (the ban on translation). But as I argue here, recent evidence indicates that the ‘broad brushstrokes’ view of the interface is not correct, and this evidence also contradicts several of Butterfill & Sinigaglia’s assumptions. This requires us to reformulate the problem and raises questions about existing solutions. Mylopoulos and Pacherie (2017) adhere most closely to the terms of the problem according to Butterfill & Sinigaglia, suggesting that intentions and motor representations are linked by associations rather than translation. Such associations are likely to be part of the overall solution, but this account is too limited. The evidence strongly suggests that a much richer set of representational interactions is invol
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