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The problem with appealing to history in defining neural representations

  • Paper in the Philosophy of the Sciences of Mind and Brain
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Abstract

Representations seem to play a major role in many neuroscientific explanations. Philosophers have long attempted to properly define what it means for a neural state to be a representation of a specific content. Teleosemantic theories of content which characterize representations, in part, by appealing to a historical notion of function, are often regarded as our best path towards an account of neural representations. This paper points to the anti-representationalist consequences of these accounts. I argue that assuming such teleosemantic views will deprive representations of their explanatory role in computational explanations. My argument rests on the claim that many explanations in cognitive neuroscience are entirely independent of any historical considerations. In making this claim, I will also offer an adapted version of the famous Swampperson thought experiment, which is better suited to discussions of subpersonal neural representations.

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Notes

  1. I will sometimes use the term ‘historical teleosemantics’ to refer to such theories, and there are a few cases where I talk of ‘teleosemantics’, which should also be understood as regarding only historical accounts. In general, most teleosemantic theories, and certainly the most prominent ones, do appeal to history, but there are also non-historical teleosemantic accounts (e.g. Nanay, 2010, 2014).

  2. Perhaps one might wonder whether a simple distinction between mechanistic and etiological explanations will be good enough to make this claim (Craver, 2007, 2013). There are a couple of reasons why I do not take this route. First, it will demand some assumptions on the nature of mechanistic explanations and some commitment to the characterization of the relevant neuroscientific explanations as mechanistic. But more importantly, I do not find it to be trivially true that all mechanistic explanations are entirely independent of any historical considerations. For example, it is possible that Shea’s objection, discussed in section 5, can be construed as the claim that some mechanistic explanations (in particular, those that invoke representations) are indeed dependent on history. The line of argument in this paper is meant to deal with such objections and enable the strongest possible claim regarding the irrelevance of history, without assuming any characterization of neuroscientific explanations.

  3. See short discussion in (Neander, 2012).

  4. It is also worth noting that Porter (2020) has recently offered a different type of Swampperson argument against teleosemantics, which aims to show the existence of real-world cases of Swampperson-like representations. I thank an anonymous reviewer for bringing this to light.

  5. This explanation has already been featured in the philosophical literature numerous times (e.g. Bechtel & Shagrir, 2015; Shagrir, 2018; Hacohen, 2022), in part thanks to its simplicity.

  6. Notably, this (Robinson, 1989) explanation of VOR is consistent with the contemporary textbook explanation (see Leigh & Zee, 2015, chapters 3 and 6).

  7. Such states are consistent with Ramsey’s (2007, chapter 4) ‘receptor notion’ which he claims does not do any explanatory work as a representation.

  8. As Chomsky (1995, p. 55) says of Marr’s (1982) theory of vision: “The theory itself has no place for the [intentional] concepts that enter into the informal presentation, intended for general motivation.”

  9. In the next section I consider an objection from Shea (2018) that claims that the phenomenon of VOR, understood in this manner, is not enough to define the relevant explanandum.

  10. In general, it is highly likely that considering how something came to be, can help us understand how it currently functions. Miłkowski (2016) discusses the ways history can figure into explanations of How-questions. I agree that history can play a role in explaining how-questions, but I think that in many existing computational explanations- it doesn’t. And, as I argue later on, the extent and significance of these non-historical explanations, should give pause to any proponent of historical teleosemantics.

  11. For example, Millikan (1996) makes the claim that Swampperson would not share the same ‘real’ kind as other humans (besides Davidson), and therefore we cannot deduce anything about human intentional states by thinking about Swampperson. But the current swampperson argument doesn’t deduce anything about human intentional states. We only deduce something about the explanation of VOR. And even if Swampperson doesn’t share a real kind with humans, we can still claim that the explanation of VOR applies to Swampperson, since the same explanation can apply to different kinds. Shea (2018, p. 170) also offers some criticism of Millikan’s reply.

  12. Such a scenario was not considered in section 4, but it should not be difficult to imagine. For example, suppose someone were placed in a lab with electrodes that artificially alter the discharge rate of her primary vestibular afferents. The explanation of VOR that was given in section 3 will allow us to successfully predict that this person would not be able to maintain her steady gaze. We can also explain why not. Now, the same would be true if we imagine the physical duplicate of this person in an identical scenario. Just as before, we would be able to predict that this swampperson replica would not maintain steady gaze, and we would offer exactly the same explanation as to why not.

  13. After Swampperson has had some time to interact with its environment, Shea does think a “successful” pattern of behavior could be established, which in turn would allow Swampperson to have representational states.

  14. That is why this reflex is normally suppressed during free-head pursuit (Cullen, 2012; Ackerly & Barnes, 2011).

  15. Historical notions of function have also had to face swampperson type objections (e.g. Boorse, 1976).

  16. As mentioned earlier, there is a wide variety of representational views that are (arguably) non-historical (e.g. Fodor, 1987, 1990; Cummins, 1989, 1996; Egan, 2012, 2014, 2018; Sprevak, 2013; Hacohen, 2022; Nanay, 2010, 2014).

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Acknowledgements

I thank Oron Shagrir, Arnon Levy, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful remarks. I also thank the Edelstein Center for the history and philosophy of science, for supporting this work.

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  1. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Ori Hacohen

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Correspondence to Ori Hacohen.

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Hacohen, O. The problem with appealing to history in defining neural representations. Euro Jnl Phil Sci 12, 45 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-022-00473-x

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