Representations One of the most important notions in cognitive science and philosophy of mind is representation.

Other notions strong interrelated to this one are levels of analysis, processes, structures, threshold, self-organization, bidirectionality, emergence, habituation, tasks, the interaction between levels and also the interactions between elements of the cognitive system and the environment. ( e tried to grasp the relationship between these key elements and some philosophical distinctions continuously-discontinuously, static-in motion, stability-variability in !acariu et al. "##$% (&e't week eek $# - (evels and emergence%

) introduce the psychological dichotomies concerning the notion of representation elaborated by *andler ($++,% that are essential notions in cognitive psychology as part of cognitive science. -he synthesizes these dichotomies in pair-notions. declarative-procedural, accessible-inaccessible, conscious-unconscious, conceptualsensorimotor, symbolic-subsymbolic, and e'plicit-implicit. (*andler $++,, p. "/0% 1hese dichotomies are interconnected and partially overlap without being identical. (*andler $++,, p. "/0% 1he difference between declarative-procedural knowledge (controversial 2 on one reading, it is the same as 3iaget4s distinction between conceptual and sensorimotor 2 *andler, p. "/5% refers to either different kinds of representation or processing. )n fact, it is based on whether or not the knowledge in 6uestion is accessible or inaccessible to consciousness. 3rocedural knowledge remains inaccessible to consciousness, since we have access only to the effects of procedures, not to procedures themselves. (7nowing that vs. knowing how 2 e can4t conceptualize very well what we know in the procedural cases, but we know how to do it. 1his is true for perceptual recognition as much as for motor skill. p. "/0% 1he fact that we use declarative knowledge for gaining procedural knowledge does not entail our having accessibility to procedural knowledge. e are never aware of the details of procedural knowledge by means of which our habituation can increase the performance of our body for some actions. e can only observe the products of our procedures, not the procedures themselves. (p. "/0% *andler maintains that we cannot conceptualize and think e'plicitly about sensorimotor information 2 that is

procedural knowledge.$ -ensorimotor schemas are structures controlling perception and action, not meanings to be used to interpret words. (*andler p. "+8% 1his, of course, does not mean that a person is not aware of sensations (6ualia% involved in perceptual and motor learning. 9ou see that a tree is green, you e'perience greenness, but this is not the same as thinking. (*andler $++,, p. "//% 1his shows the difference between the conceptual and sensorimotor. :ccording to *andler, while the declarative-procedural distinction is a distinction in representational format (p. "/;%, the implicit-e'plicit distinction is a processing distinction and has to do with the
presence or absence of attention and elaboration. !erbal material that is consciously attended to and semantically analysed, is called e'plicit, whereas verbal material that is unattended or at any rate not consciously elaborated (<orfman and *andler $++5= -chater $++"% is called implicit.

(*andler

$++,, p. "/;% >sually, declarative knowledge involves certain static and discrete representations, whereas procedural knowledge involves not statically and discrete primitives, but only certain continuous processes. )n this sense, let us take as an e'ample of declarative knowledge a sub?ect learning a foreign language or logic. :s a novice, he starts with a set of general instructions and relies e'plicitly on declarative knowledge, not on implicit or procedural knowledge. )n order to reach the e'pert level, through training (solving problems and e'ercises, constructing several statements using various new words and rules, etc% part of the e'plicit processing becomes implicit. 1he e'plicit becomes implicit because of habituation, but here again we focus on the notion of a threshold. 1his notion of a threshold, a habituation threshold, is different to organizational and epistemological thresholds. 1he knowledge of logic is declarative knowledge, but according to *andler the process involved in declarative knowledge is either implicit or e'plicit,
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)n philosophy and psychology, there are of course various definitions of *andler4s pairs of knowledge, but ) think her definitions are 6uite close to those of others. @or instance, mentioning 1ulving, Aohen and Bichenbaum, 3arkin, and -chater, 7lein talks about the procedural memory (ac6uisition and retention of motor perceptual and cognitive skills% and declarative memory (facts and beliefs about the world%. (7lein "##5, p. $#;,% Ce emphasizes that this pair reflects Dyles4 classic distinction ($+5+% between knowing how and knowing that. Cowever, he mentions 1ulving4s classification of declarative memory. semantic memory (generic, free-conte't knowledge% and episodic memory (the records e'perienced by the self at a particular point in space and time. (7lein "##5, p. $#;,%

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while the process necessary for procedural knowledge can be only implicit. (*andler $++,, p. "/;% hat happens within the brain when a sub?ect passes from novice to e'pertE :t the beginning, for a novice the surface of activation patterns that corresponds to that task is very large. :fter training in that task, the surface of activation patterns becomes smaller. (Faars $+,,% :s mentioned above, the indivisibility of the ) is a stability which implies conceptual constancy. 1his means that this stability is maintained, even though through habituation the corresponding surface of activation patterns of that task is reduced. 3rocedural knowledge (perceptual and sensorimotor%. inaccessible to conscious awareness difficult to be describe in language slow to learn conte't-bound sensitive to fre6uency not represented in rule-like form

G not symbolic forms of representation but better subsymbolic format. <eclarative (conceptual% knowledge. accessible to consciousness describable in language re6uires attention to be encoded in this format potentially learnable in a single trial static character symbolic representation (*andler, p. "/,%

(et us take an e'ample concerning procedural knowledge given by *andler. to tie a shoe. Cow do we carry out this actionE hat elements are involved when we repeat this processE Of course, we appeal to memory (that is the )%, but it is not clear what kind of information is stored in our memory. @ollowing 3iaget, *andler considers that we conceptualize a continuous procedure in different steps, way stations in consciousness. (*andler $++" in *andler $++,, p. "//% 1here are two solutions. either we memorize discrete representations or we memorize certain processes. 1he brain sends a command to the muscle using discrete 8

representations and in a very short time it receives feedback from the body on what is happening there. 1he process is repeated many times so that it appears to us to be a continuous process. Or, the brain memorizes certain processes, i.e., the representations involved are a kind of representation in motion. 1his analysis is also available for perceptual procedures when we cannot access most of perceptual knowledge because of the procedural form. *andler emphasizes that we are aware about perceptual knowledge (or sensorimotor knowledge% but most of this knowledge is not accessible to consciousness because of its procedural form of storage in memory. (B'.. @ace recognition% H it can only be run. (p. "//% On the contrary, verbal information is formed in conceptual form or declarative. recall, planning or reasoning. Aonceptual knowledge refers to symbolic knowledge (vs. subsymbolic knowledge 2 -molensky 2 that usually refers to procedural knowledge%. ) mention that the implicit knowledge is the result of the development and learning processes through the life of each individual. 1his knowledge corresponds to biological mechanisms that are the results of the evolution of our species and the development of each organism in the continuous reciprocal interactions between brain, body and environment. <ue to the evolution of species and development of each individual the ) is feelings, desires, etc. ) consider the feelings and desires to be knowledge as well. )n order to grasp the relationship between visiomotor action and visual reasoning, ) will briefly analyse *ilner and Ioodale4s famous but controversial supposition about two visual systems, vision for action versus vision for perception. (*ilner and Ioodale $++0% )n Alark4s words, *ilner and Ioodale consider that there are two different visual systems, one being for on-line visuomotor action (the dorsal stream% and one for off-line visual reasoning and visually based categorization and verbal reports (the ventral stream%. (Alark "##$, p. $8/% Alark4s suggestion that it is difficult to draw a line between the neural mechanisms that implement off-line and on-line processes is important for my approach. Bven the binding problem J i.e. what neural processes correspond to elementary mental states, for instance, the perception of a cup of coffee J cannot be solved as yetK e already know that there are various patterns of neural cells that are responsible for various colors, shapes, etc. 1he 6uestion is where does the unification of all these characteristics that corresponds to 5

the formation of a unitary mental representation for the ) take placeE ) recall <amasio4s convergence zone that would be one alternative for solving such problems. Fut we must ask for whom is the convergence zone convergentE 1he notion of representation has been an essential notion for computationalism (see eek 5% but has become a problematic one in cognitive science and philosophy of mind, especially regarding its content (for instance, image representation vs. propositional vs. analogous representation% or even its e'istence. (-ee dynamical system approach 2 eek /%.

>sually, a representation is stored information which stands-in for something and whose function carries specific information. (Fechtel $++,= Alark $++;b% 1he systems that use representations accomplish a special kind of coordination with features from the environment. they correlate signals received from the environment with certain inner states that guide behaviour. Cowever, the e'istence of such correlations is not enough to establish the representational status of that inner state= the nature and comple'ity of that correlation being more important. (Alark $++;a% )n order to speak about representation as standing-in for something, we need to mention the process in which a representation is used. )f a process uses a certain representation, then the process must be correlated with a representational format which is a system of conventions for e'pressing the content of representation. (Fechtel $++,% )t was considered that each level has certain primitives. :t the conceptual level, primitives are symbolical representations which are static and discrete. 1he counterparts of symbolic representations at the neural level are neuronal patterns of activation. @odor and 3ylyshyn insist on saying that the correspondence between the primitives of the conceptual level and those of the neural level is not univocal. LtMhe structure of Nhigher levels4 of system are rarely isomorphic or even similar to the structures of Nlower levels4 of a system (@odor and 3ylyshyn $+,,, p. /8%. 1hese patterns of activation are permanently moving and changing. >sually, the debates concerning the notion of representation have focused on the format or nature of representation. @odor and 3ylyshyn argue in favor of the propositional format of representation. Depresentations must have concatenative 0

compositionality in order to instantiate the productivity and the systematicity of thought. (@odor and 3ylyshyn $+,,% -molensky argues in favor of an implicit functional compositionality (not e'plicit like the one proposed by @odor and 3ylyshyn%, enough, by itself, to assure the advantages of a compositional structure to the brain. (-molensky $+,,% Other people from various domains have thought about the relationship between levels in different ways. @or instance, Alark underlines the co-evolution of representations with processing dynamics (Alark $++;a%. )n connectionism, Blman et al. stress that we cannot speak any longer of a clear distinction between data and processing (Blman et al. $++0%. Alark showed in detail that te't (knowledge% and process (the use and alteration of knowledge% are ine'tricably intertwined. (Alark $++;, p. $,5% Alark seems to accept a form of weak representation that belongs to dynamic organizational systems. )n connectionism, where data and processing are not distinctive elements, we can say the same thing about the brain, that there is no clear distinction between data and processing. Cowever, we cannot maintain the same thing about the mind. 1o observe a mental representation it is necessary to have different conditions of observation then those that we use to observe a neural pattern of activation. Alark takes into consideration hungry representations problems (decision making, counterfactual reasoning, etc.%. 1hese involve a potential decoupling between the representational system and the environment that is a kind of off-line cognition rather than on-line as the dynamicists suggest. Ce considers that in such cases the cognitive system has to create a certain kind of item, pattern or inner process that stands for a certain state of affairs, in short, a representation. (Alark $++;a% hat are the mechanisms that produce mental representations and their propertiesE @or instance, language ac6uisition re6uires different psychological mechanisms such as short and long-term memory or native mechanisms of learning ac6uisition that are essential during the critical period of development. Cowever, always in such cases it is not only these mechanisms (mental representations and some cognitive processes% that are involved but also implicit knowledge and human sub?ectivity, i.e., the ). )t means that not only are e'plicit or conscious processes necessary for cognition but /

also implicit or unconscious (automatic and controlled, etc.% knowledge and computationOprocesses that are involved for producing these e'plicit or conscious mental states. )n cognitive scienceO philosophy of mind, people have been working using the notion of different levels. (&e't week eek $#% *erzenich and deAharms maintain that there is a representational perceptual constancy even though, at the neural level, the pattern of activity of ensemble of neurons J from which perceptual representations emerge J is permanently changing and moving. )n addition, *erzenich and deAharms take the relations between neurons to be more important than neurons themselves. 1his offers a better e'planation of the construction of novel comple' representational combinations (*erzenich and deAharms $++/, p. //%, which are not directly e'perienced. 7armiloff--mith proposed the concept of representational redescription that is similar to perceptual or conceptual constancy. (7armiloff--mith $++5% ) want to stress that the psychological primitives correspond to certain primitives and processes from the brain-body. 1he constitutive entities from the mind, i.e. mental states, play an essential role (we mentioned above @odor and 3ylyshyn4s position concerning this idea%. 1heir importance is comparable to that of Fohr4s primitive concepts, concepts referring to the macro level. every image of the world has to be compatible with their e'istence. (Fohr $+5, in 3rigo?ine $+;,, pp. $$2$"% 1he dispute between propositional representations (3hylyshyn and @odor% and image representations (*etzler, -hepard, and 7ossylyn% is well known. )n the last few years, using f*D), 7ossylyn has attempted to prove his theory. Others argue for the concept of analogical representations (*andler, (akoff, and @auconnier%. :ccording to raga and 7ossylyn ("##8%, mental imagery has two meanings.

seeing with the mind eyes and an internal representation G perception without sensory input. (p. 5//% -uch mental imageries are used for predicting the outcome of actions, creating mental models, visualizing and retrieving models, and learning. >sing mental imageries involve transformation or manipulation of images. scanning (e'ample of sub?ects memorizing landmarks from a map. the faster away targets from the initial landmark, the longer took sub?ects to locate them G the images are ;

depictive P they preserve spatial e'tend%= zooming (to see fine detail from an imaged ob?ect the sub?ect can zoom it- the farther away the ob?ect appears in the image the longer it takes to report the correct answer%= rotation (-hepard et all- two multiarmed ob?ects, the task being if those ob?ects are the same or not G 1he sub?ects mentally rotated one ob?ect into alignment with the other%. (p. 5/,% 1he conclusion from these e'periments is that internal processes are analogous to the corresponding physical processes. :nother argument is that e'amining mental images Npro?ected4 onto perceived scenes e'hibited many properties associated with vision. -uch images could lead to interference with perceptual tasks, to visual-motor adaptation, and even to visual illusions of the sort that might be e'pected if the imagined forms were actually part of the stimulus. (3ylyshyn "##/% 1hus many people believed that mental images have metrical spatial properties (size and inter-ob?ect distances%.

1he relationship between visual and imagery mechanisms 3rimary visual corte' (first part that receives inputs from the eyes% is activated during mental imagery even if the eyes are closed. ( raga and 7ossylyn "##8, p. 5;#% 3ylyshyn 2 3ropositional representation 1acit knowledge of physical laws and ob?ects (<ue to previous e'perience, the sub?ects consider that it takes less time to rotate a longer distance than a shorter one. 1his knowledge is stored in mind as abstract or languagelike form.% 1oday, in general accepted that there are two forms of representations. (-ince 3avio et all )magery and verbal processes, $+;$% References raga and 7ossylyn ("##8%, )magery in Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, &ature 3ublishing Iroup 3ylyshyn ("##/%, *ental imagery in The Oxford Companion to the Mind, Second Edition ,