Abstract
In order to meet the explanatory challenge levelled against non-representationalist views on cognition, radical enactivists claim that cognition about potentially absent targets (i.e., higher cognition) involves the socioculturally scaffolded capacity to manipulate public symbols. At a developmental scale, this suggests that higher cognition gradually emerges as humans begin to master language use, which takes place around the third year of life. If, however, it is possible to show that pre-linguistic infants represent their surroundings, then the radical enactivists’ explanation for the emergence of higher cognition is defeated. In this paper, I critically assess experiments designed to show that pre-linguistic infants inherit (or develop very early on) representational abilities. I begin by outlining these experiments in Sect. 2. In Sect. 3, I argue that these experiments only succeed in supporting widespread representationalism by committing a particular kind of circular reasoning, which I call conjunctivist reasoning due to its origins in the debates about the nature of perception. I conclude by developing two independent yet congruent enactivist lines of interpretation for the experiments discussed in 2. I explain the infants’ responses to atypical experimental conditions based on agent-environment codetermination (Sect. 4) and then I argue that surprise behavior can be explained in terms of embodied habits and unfulfilled anticipation (Sect. 5).
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Notes
However, not all enactivists endorse the distinction between different levels of cognition (e.g. De Jaegher 2019). If one adheres to a strict continuity between life and mind—as some enactivists do (Di Paolo et al., 2018; Thompson, 2007)—then the same kind of processes that give rise to life also give rise to cognition. Accordingly, a higher-order level of cognition, which is not found in other living beings, may be the wrong way to frame the enactivist approach. REC, however, rejects a strict continuity between life and mind as an ontological thesis. The ontological reading present in some enactivists’ work is due to the influence of Jonasian phenomenology (see De Jesus 2016, for a discussion).
The parenthesis goes with a caveat. As Favela & Chemero (2016) point out in their discussion about the nature of illusion for ecological psychology, one should be wary of bundling illusion and hallucination together simply because they are, in a way, non-perceptual states. Their reasoning is that illusions are stable and replicable, whereas hallucinations are idiosyncratic and potentially irreproducible across different subjects. Accordingly, they define illusions as attempts to perceive in environmentally atypical conditions (such as observing figures that cannot be manipulated or interacted with in experimental settings), whereas hallucinations may be caused by a host of biopsychological factors. The same seems to hold unproblematically for an enactivist approach to illusion. But I put together illusion and hallucination in this instance of CR well aware of Favela and Chemero warnings (and in agreement with their considerations). I only do so because that is the way that argument is typically presented, that is, without the subtlety of distinguishing those two non-perceptual states.
Another empirical instance of CR was denounced by Lewontin (2000) in his discussion of how geneticists have attempted to show that there is an exclusive causal chain from genes to traits. In studies about genetic mutations with fruit flies, it is possible to observe the effects of drastic interventions on the development of an organism, confirming the variation with which interventions generate significant morphological anomalies (see Mark et al., 1997 for an overview). Lewontin correctly points out that these experiments only show that a drastic intervention causes a developmental anomaly. However, it does not follow that typical phenotypes are exclusively determined by the genotype. In fact, the experiments in question only support a linear causal chain from gene to phenotype under the assumption that the organism is not a complex system (see Lewontin 2000, p. 96). That is, if biological systems observe a regime of causal linearity, it follows that an anomaly caused by a drastic intervention confirms that the typical phenotype is caused exclusively by the genes. But this is just to suppose a causal linearity from gene to phenotype, that is, to suppose exactly what the argument is intended to prove.
Interestingly, Austin (1962, p. 47) noted a similar problem for sense data theorists in his comparison of how A. J. Ayer and H. H. Price advance the argument from hallucination. According to Austin, Price takes the question of whether we are always aware of sense data to be settled, his aim therefore being only to prove that sense data are parts of the surfaces of material objects. No circularity here. Ayer, on the other hand, intends that argument to be a proof of indirect perception (hence displaying the first instance of CR discussed above). The analogy here is that sense data theories cannot be proven non-circularly, just like representationalism possibly cannot be empirically supported without circularity, at least based on the experiments discussed in Sect. 2.
It is an open question whether other empirical arguments that could (in principle, at least) be presented as independent support for representationalism would exhibit the same circular pattern. Recently, Ramsey (2017) has argued that cognitive scientists must choose between representationalism as a demarcation thesis or as an empirical one. He points out that a demarcation or conceptual view hinders scientific progress, for representational posits cannot figure both as criteria for cognition and as falsifiable (empirical) theoretical constructs. So, when it comes to which view one should adopt, Ramsey defends giving up on the demarcation thesis in favor of an empirical approach. But if the issues highlighted here can be generalized to other kinds of empirical arguments in favor of representationalism, it would follow, contra Ramsey, that representationalism is better thought of as a conceptual framework, one that has been thoroughly challenged by enactivism and like-minded views, rather than being open to empirical confirmation. But notice that, even if that is the case, I am not arguing for the more general view that no conceptual (or philosophical) thesis can be empirically confirmed.
I’m not suggesting enactivists should be disjunctivists (or vice-versa), but it is indeed an interesting combination, for enactivism would be able to provide a unified explanation for two main claims of disjunctivism. Namely: (a) that genuine perceptual experiences do not have the same phenomenal character as atypical ones and (b) that genuine perceptual experiences do not have the same epistemic profile as atypical ones. In support for disjunctivism, enactivists can explain the phenomenal character and the epistemic profile of genuine perceptual experiences as the outcome of autonomous sensorimotor engagements in appropriate environmental settings. Atypical experiences occur when sensorimotor engagements are either incomplete (i.e., lacking environmental feedback or afferent signals), or are exercised in evolutionarily atypical conditions that do not afford engagement. Those experiences would be cases of hallucination and illusion, respectively. But for this match to work, disjunctivists have to give up on the claim that genuine perception is factive, for factivity implies propositional content. Propositional content, in turn, implies representational content, which is precisely the point of contention raised by enactivist. The way out of this would be to think of perception as a successful world-engaging epistemic state, rather than using the stricter notion of factivity (see Rolla & Huffermann 2021, for this suggestion).
Within ecological psychology, a similar view was developed by Heras-Escribano (2020). Heras-Escribano argues for a compatibility between ecological psychology and niche construction theory, thereby showing that affordances are both resources and ecological inheritances. This, I believe, is broadly convergent with the main argument of this section, but for simplicity as well as for brevity I will not compare our views here.
Which obviously is not to say evolution is teleologically driven (in a strong sense), for living beings do not have the end-state of their evolutionary processes in sight when they strive for survival.
Moreover, even though the process of historical codetermination goes way further than the emergence of the Homo sapiens, the most significant changes happened at the outset of behavioral modernity during the Upper Paleolithic. Then, our ways of interacting with our environments were deeply shaped by the introduction of symbol manipulation, and this has greatly affected our evolutionary pathways. That is why the label of ‘pre-linguistic’ might be misleading. Because babies are a product of long evolutionary processes that involve (and evolved) linguistic practices, newborns normally come equipped with the toolkit to develop the typical cognitive abilities of modern humans, which distinctively includes symbol manipulation. So, they are pre-linguistic in the sense that they usually go on—given appropriate environmental, cultural and biological conditions—to develop full-blown linguistic capacities. But this should not be taken to imply that they fundamentally lack something that appears latter on out of nowhere.
This provides another parallel with ecological psychology. Not only Gibson agrees with the claim that perceptual events are temporally structured (Gibson, 1966b, 2015), he also blurs the distinction between perception and memory (Gibson, 1966a). Recently, Stepp & Turvey (2015) argued for the prospective character of current perceptual experiences, developing a law-like ecological account of anticipation as well. All of this further approximates ecological psychology with the idea of anticipation discussed here. Noticeably, Gallagher is also aware of this proximity and frequently relates the Husserlian ‘I can’ with affordance selection as possibilities for action (e.g. Gallagher 2016, 2017b; Gallagher & Rucińska, 2021). I believe these are all valid and potentially productive approximations—as I believe combining enactivism and ecological psychology generally is—but I refrain from discussing them in further details here due to my focus being on enactivism.
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Acknowledgements
I am profoundly grateful for two anonymous reviewers who made many acute criticisms and insightful suggestions for the improvement of this paper. Addressing them caused substantial and pervasive changes in this manuscript. I also thank my colleagues Nara Figueiredo, Sofia Stein, Raquel Krempel, Felipe Carvalho, Bernardo Alonso and Marco Aurélio Alves for discussing previous versions of this paper with me.
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Rolla, G. Do babies represent? On a failed argument for representationalism. Synthese 200, 278 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03728-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03728-5