Metarepresentation in Philososphy and Psychology - eScholarship

Metarepresentation in Philosophy and Psychology Sam Scott (sscott@ccs.carleton.ca) Department of Cognitive Science Carleton University, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6 Abstract This paper brings together two definitions of metarepresentation: Dennett's notion of metarepresentation as second-order representation, and an alternative definition of metarepresentation found in the work of Leslie, Frith, and Baron-Cohen on autistic children. I show that the two definitions are not in any way compatible with one another, and that the assumption that they are compatible can lead to confusion about the nature of higher cognition. I illustrate this potential for confusion through the analysis of some claims made in a paper by Whiten and Byrne on primate cognition. Representation I will use the term “representation” to mean mental representation as defined in Von Eckardt's (1999) MITECS entry. Her definition of mental representation is (I hope) sufficiently broad and uncontroversial to be acceptable to most of the various competing currents in cognitive science. According to Von Eckardt, a (mental) representation has four important aspects: “(1) it is realized by a representation bearer; (2) it has content or represents one or more objects; (3) its representation relations are somehow ‘grounded’; (4) it can be interpreted by (will serve as a representation for) some interpreter.” (p. 527) Points (1) and (4) in the above establish that a (mental) representation requires a subject that both bears and can interpret the representation. Point (2) establishes what the representation can be about. The point about representing one or more objects is fairly clear, but the point about “having content” needs some unpacking. Fortunately, Von Eckardt does that unpacking for us. A (mental) representation is something that can stand for “concrete objects, sets, properties, events, and states of affairs in this world, in possible worlds, and in fictional worlds as well as abstract objects such as universals and numbers; that can represent both an object (in and of itself) and an aspect of that object (or both extension and intension); and that can represent both correctly and incorrectly.” (p. 527) Von Eckardt's list is probably not exhaustive, but it does cover the ability of cognitive systems to “think about” objects in the world, counterfactual situations, and propositions and predicates, all under the umbrella term representation. The only point that remains undeveloped in Von Eckardt is point (3), which states that relations must be “grounded”. I take that to mean simply that there must be an external referent of some kind for any representation, although this “external” referent may only exist in a possible or fictional world. Metarepresentation The prefix “meta” can mean a number of different things in different contexts (e.g. “metaphysics”, “metaphilosophy”, “metamorphosis” to name but a few) but the usual sense attributed by philosophers is that a metarepresentation is a higher-order representation of some kind. That is, a metarepresentation is a representation of a representation. Following Dennett (1998), it stands to reason that if a representation exists as an object in the world, then it too can be represented. Dennett's examples of metarepresentation tend to be of a hybrid nature. For instance a drawing on a piece of paper is a type of non-mental representation, which is represented in the mind of the person viewing it. The mental representation is of the drawing, but since the drawing is itself a representation, the viewer has a (mental) metarepresentation of whatever it is that the drawing represents. Despite the drawing being an “external” rather than a mental representation it does share many of the properties of the latter. Following Von Eckardt as quoted above, the drawing: (1) has a representation bearer (the paper); (2) has content (whatever the drawing represents); (3) has a referent; and (4) can be interpreted by some interpreter. Most of Dennett's examples are to do with hybrid metarepresentation – mental representations of external representations. An interesting question is whether hybrid metarepresentation is the same sort of thing as purely mental metarepresentation. Some would say no, arguing that in the hybrid case, there is a difference of content – the external and the mental represent in different ways, therefore a representation of an external representation has a different type of content from a representation of a mental representation. Dennett would not want to take this approach, opting for an intentional stance in which he could avoid discussing matters such as internal content – things represent if we can sensibly treat them as representing, regardless of whether the representation has any further degree of reality. For the

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