causal

Causal Theories of Mental Content

Introduction
Contemporary causal theories of mental content have predecessors dating back to John Locke (Cummins 1989), Aristotle's De Anima, or even to Plato's Theatetus. All such theories develop in the context of some or other representational theory of mind (RTM). Contemporary causal theories of mental representation have developed in the theoretical on context of explanation in Cognitive Science. To better understand these theories it is helpful to view their intended role as a explanatory primitive in computation explanations in Cognitive Science.

Cognitive Science seeks to explain the cognitive capacities of humans, animals, and possibly machines. However, the primary thrust of research in Cognitive Science is directed towards explaining human cognitive abilities. More recently theorists have devoted attention to consciousness and emotion.

The classic approach to explaining cognitive capacities within cognitive science has two foundational theses; The "Computational Theory of Cognition" (CTC) and the "Representational Theory of Intentionality" (RTI). Together these theses dictate the explanatory structure off Cognitive Science. The CTC characterizes cognition as the computation of complex functions on representational states, where computation consists in performing operations defined over the syntactic structures (kinds) of representational states. The RTI asserts that mental states have intentionality (are about the world/have content) in virtue of a representation relation holding between the world and those states. There are three conceptually distinct (though not necessarily temporally distinct) stages. CTC/RTI portrays cognizers as receiving input through sensory organs and/or memory and generating outputs in the form of memories, inputs to other processes, and/or motor response commands.

Cognitive Scientists hotly debate the exact nature of the computational processes involved in cognition. On the one hand, many theorists favor Turing-compatible computation and its development in contemporary computer science and mathematics On the other hand, many theorists favor dynamically described state transitions (ex. Connectionism). A similar theoretical dichotomy fosters debate in the literature on representation. The two general theoretical approaches towards a theory of representation are "Nomic (law-like) Covariation" and "Functional Role Semantics". Neither theoretical approach regarding the representation relation presupposed by the RTI has gained general acceptance. However, there are several agreed-upon constraints for a theory of representation. First, the representation relation must be consistent with the physicalistic nature of Cognitive Science. Second, the relation must be present and explanatory in accepted explanations within Cognitive Science. (an appropriate characterization of "accepted" explanations is somewhat controversial). Philosophers particularly would also like to see the accepted theory of representation explain many of the widely accepted properties of belief. Block (1986) and Fodor (1988) provide excellent discussions of the potential problems, the solutions to which many Philosophers hope to find in a theory of mental representation.

Theories
One theoretic approach to articulating the representation relation, Nomic Covariation, postulates a simple causal relationship between the object or property and the state that represents the object or property. The other approach, Functional Role Semantics, hypothesizes that a state has content in virtue of the state's occupying a particular position in a complex web of causal relationships characterizing the cognizer's functioning (a theory of its psychology). Candidate content-fixing causal relationships include causal relationships within the cognizer (i.e., relations between brain states) and/or without (i.e., relations to the distal environment). Both functional role and Nomic Covariation theories satisfy the (above) first, physicalistic constraint by hypothesizing that a cognizer's states represent the distal environment solely as a result of the specific sorts of causal connections had by those states. The theories diverge in terms of the specific causal relationships each emphasizes.

Nomic Covariation
Nomic covariation theories hypothesize a causal connection between an object or property in the world and the state that represents that object or property within the cognizer. Information theory as well as work within a sub-field of psychology called psychophysics inspire contemporary Nomic Covariance theorists. Covariation theories, as a result, seem to satisfy the second constraint upon theories of representation, i.e., that the relation must be present and explanatory in accepted explanations within Cognitive Science. For example, Hubel and Wiesel (1977) investigate the representational content of cells in the striate (visual) cortex by monitoring the activity of those cells looking for nomic preferential relationships between the activity of these cells and the presence of properties in the visual field. A system's states represent those objects and/or properties of the distal world with which they covary according to Nomic Covariation theories. Specifically, Nomic covariation theories assign contents to states via some version of the following definition (Cummins 1989, Fodor 1988):

State, Sb, represents B iff the system tokens Sb when, only when, and because of B.

The intuitive appeal of Nomic Covariation stems from the idea that a cognizer represents an object or property by being causally "in tune" with that object or property. Further, Nomic Covariationists such as Jerold Fodor advocate this approach because it assigns content to individual states, Sb independent of how the cognizer operates upon those states (inferences it can make) and/or the content of other states with which Sb might interact. Fodor refers to this assignment of content as "Punctate Content, or "atomic content." Among the advantages claimed by Fodor for punctate content is that it allows for content identity across individuals who have quite different theories regarding some object or property. Similarly, punctate content provides the only theory whereby people can refer to real objects even when they have great numbers of false beliefs about them. For instance, Fodor claims (1992) that Aristotle thought about and talked about the same things we refer to by "stars" even though he falsely believed stars to be relatively close and rotating around the Earth on glassy spheres. A final perceived advantage for Nomic Covariation approaches lies in that they provide a clear-cut mechanism through which a cognizer can come to know about an object or property in the world in virtue of its representational capacities. A cognizer that represents an object or property in the environment does so insofar as it can reliably detect its presence.

Problems for Nomic Covariation

Semantic Reduction
Within Philosophy particularly, but throughout Cognitive Science, theorists raise three standard objections to Nomic Covariation theories. The first objection challenges the ability of covariation theories to explain the representational capacities of states with regard to objects/properties beyond low-level perceptual properties (e.x. color), especially very abstract, high-level objects and properties like justice or electron. Nomic covariationists suppose that law-like covariation determines the content of states representing properties ranging from low-level properties like red or zero-crossing, to ordinary, medium sized objects and properties like table or cow. States represent properties and objects of a higher level of abstraction, like electron, in virtue of their being defined in terms of the representational properties of lower level states. (Fodor 1988)

Robert Cummins (1989) objects to this strategy, claiming that covariation of states with objects/properties requires either implicitly or explicitly represented heuristic information in the system. Thus, nomic covariation will not explain the representational properties of any states but the primitive representational states. All higher level concepts from dog to democracy must get meaning through definition. At first glance, it seems plausible to suppose that states that represent high-level theoretical properties like electron get their meaning through definition in terms of lower level properties. After all, such properties and objects often have theoretical definitions. However, the failure of such semantic reductions has shaped the history of Western Philosophy and Mathematics (Quine 1952). Worse still, the lower the level of abstraction, the more ordinary the concept, the less readily one accepts that one knows its meaning because one has an explicit definition for it. For example, covariation’s critics ask why, if the state one uses to represent crow gets its meaning from being defined in terms of lower level properties, why do one have difficulty in articulating that definition in any but the most superficial sense? Psychological research also appears to run contrary to semantic reductionism in that it indicates that object recognition and categorization are strongly influenced by perceptual features, the exact make-up of which is somewhat fluid.

According to Cummins, mental states achieve covariation with cats because we already have explicitly represented or implicit knowledge about cats (ex. they are domesticated felines). Further, the insight that covariation is not the simple, unmediated causal relationship between the property/object and the state, but rather the result of often complex causal interactions within the system, suggests that Nomic Covariation is really just another instance of its competitor, Functional Role Semantics.

The Disjunction Problem
The second, and most widely discussed problem for Nomic Covariation theories is called the "Disjunction Problem". According to covariationists, a state represents an object or property if the system tokens (enters into) that state when confronted with the object or property and ONLY WHEN confronted with that property. However, suppose that cognizer tokens a state, S_c, in all of it’s cat interactions. According to the WHEN clause of the covariationsist definition, the cognizer’s state appears to represent cathood. Unfortunately, one night the cognizer tokens an S_c when seeing a ferret in the darkness. The ONLY WHEN clause of the definition prima facie dictates that S_c never really represented cat. Rather, the cognizer has always represented a property that we can only describe using the disjunction, "cat or ferret".

The disjunction problem poses difficulties for Nomic Covariation theories in two ways: First, the theory seems to dictate counterintuitive representational contents for states. If one has beliefs about cats, (e.x. cats are domesticated felines that have a number of distinct breeds), then Nomic Covariation seems to dictate that those beliefs have always been about things having the property of being either a cat or a ferret. Second, the disjunction problem seems to demonstrate that Nomic Covariation cannot account for misrepresentation, since any seeming case of misrepresentation by a cognizer becomes a correct representation of a disjunctive property under Nomic Covariation. In other words, one never mistakenly believes that one sees one’s mother at the corner, one always correctly believes that "mother/other" is at the corner.

Theorists have explored a number of solutions to the disjunction problem. All of these solutions rely upon some form of the idealization strategy: A given solution will separate cases of the tokening (occurrence) of a state into two groups, one in which content is already fixed and representational error can occur (normal conditions), and the second class (ideal circumstances) in which content is fixed by perfect covariation. There are several important versions of this solution:

Ideal Conditions
Advocates of the ideal conditions solution to the disjunction problem suggest one represents "mother" and not "mother/other" despite occasionally mistaking others for mothers because under ideal perceptual conditions (i.e., in good light, at close distance, etc.) one can distinguish mothers from others. Difficulties arise for the ideal conditions solution when one tries to specify what would count as ideal conditions for a given case in a precise, and non-question-begging manner. For example, in the movie "The Crying Game" an Irish man trying to escape from the IRA becomes romantically involved with a woman. However, much to the surprise of the Irish man (and the audience) this woman is actually a man. The reaction of the Irish man clearly shows he misrepresented the gender of his romantic partner. Yet, the Irish man did see his partner in good light, at close distance, etc.. The natural solution to this difficulty attempts to take advantage of the idea that there are conditions under which such a sex difference would not escape notice. However, in specifying such conditions as ideal conditions for this case, one must be guided in a circular manner by one’s knowledge of the property that the state actually represents.

Additionally, critics (Wallis 1994 and 1994a) also argue that appealing to idealization to defeat the disjunction problem is strongly and negatively disanalogous with successful uses of idealization is science.

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