Mark H. Bickhard

Representational content in humans and machines

Abstract This article focuses on the problem of representational content. Accounting for representational content is the central issue in contemporary naturalism: it is the major remaining task facing a naturalistic conception of the world. Representational content is also the central barrier to contemporary cognitive science and artificial intelligence: it is not possible to understand representation in animals nor to construct machines with genuine representation given current (lack of) understanding of what representation is. An elaborated critique is offered to current approaches to representation, arguing that the basic underlying approach is, at root, logically incoherent, and, thus, that standard approaches are doomed to failure. An alternative model of representation— interactivism is presented that avoids or solves the problems facing standard approaches. Interactivism is framed by a version of functionalism, and a naturalization of that functionalism completes an outline of a naturalization of r...

The Nature of Developmental Stages.

A theoretical analysis of the nature of developmental stages is presented. A formal model of the relationship of knowing is outlined from which developmental stages, egocentrism, and vertical decalage can be derived as logically necessary consequences. A number of implications of the model for the nature of developmental stages are discussed, and it is noted that these implications show several important divergences from Piaget. The underlying model of knowing is illustrated, primarily with respect to imagery.

Types of constraints on development: An interactivist approach☆

Abstract The interactivist approach to development generates a framework of types of constraints on what can be constructed. The four constraint types are based on: (1) what the constructed systems are about; (2) the representational relationship itself; (3) the nature of the systems being constructed; and (4) the process of construction itself. We give illustrations of each constraint type. Any developmental theory needs to acknowledge all four types of constraint; however, some current theories conflate different types of constraint or rely on a single constraint type to explicate development. Such theories will be inherently unable to explain important aspects of development.

Some foundational questions concerning language studies: With a focus on categorial grammars and model-theoretic possible worlds semantics

Abstract There are four major goals for this paper. First, we demonstrate that the logical foundations of standard approaches to language studies involve an incoherence in their presuppositions. Second, we present an alternative approach that resolves this incoherence. Third, we discuss how this error manifests itself in categorial grammars and model-theoretic possible worlds semantics. Fourth, we suggest some possible revisions in standard approaches to accommodate them to the alternative that we suggest. We arrive at a fundamentally functional, or pragmatic, conceprion — an interactive conception — of the nature of language and meaning. In a paper, such claims and programmatic suggestions can at best be adumbrated, but we aim to show that there are some issues of fundamental importance that need to be pursued.

A Deconstruction of Fodor’s Anticonstructivism

Fodor has argued against developmental psychology. He contends that most concepts are innate, that little of importance can be learned, and that stage development cannot occur. Fodor considers mental

The interactivist model

A shift from a metaphysical framework of substance to one of process enables an integrated account of the emergence of normative phenomena. I show how substance assumptions block genuine ontological emergence, especially the emergence of normativity, and how a process framework permits a thermodynamic-based account of normative emergence. The focus is on two foundational forms of normativity, that of normative function and of representation as emergent in a particular kind of function. This process model of representation, called interactivism, compels changes in many related domains. The discussion ends with brief attention to three domains in which changes are induced by the representational model: perception, learning, and language.

Piaget on Variation and Selection Models: Structuralism, Logical Necessity, and Interactivism

Throughout his career, Piaget rejected the adequacy of random trial and error, or variation and selection models. Instead, he argued that teleonomic autoregulations were necessary to account for the facts of evolution and development. This purported necessity of teleonomy has been a controversial and generally rejected aspect of his model – especially in its evolutionary version. Necessary teleonomy, however, is not an isolated part of Piaget’s thinking, but is instead deeply motivated by two central forces throughout Piaget’s oeuvre: a complex of assumptions organized around his structuralist assumption concerning the nature of knowledge, and the centrally important epistemological problem of logical necessity. Structuralism, however, is shown to be a seriously flawed foundation for Piaget’s epistemology, and to be at the center of a number of inadequate and erroneous positions within Piaget’s writings – positions concerning epistemology, evolution, and even necessity itself. An alternative conception of knowledge is outlined – interactivism – that offers a corresponding alternative approach to necessity.

Topologies of learning and development

Abstract How systems can represent and how systems can learn are two central problems in the study of cognition. Conventional contemporary approaches to these problems are vitiated by a shared error in their presuppositions about representation. Consequently, such approaches share further errors about the sorts of architectures that are required to support either representation or learning. We argue that the architectural requirements for genuine representing systems lead to architectural characteristics that are necessary (though not sufficient) for heuristic learning and development. These architectural constraints, in turn, explain properties of the functioning of the central nervous system that remain inexplicable for standard approaches.

Levels of representationality

Abstract. The dominant assumptions throughout contemporary philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence about the ontology underlying intentionality, and its core of representationality, are those of encodings-some sort of informational or correspondence or covariation relationship between the represented and its representation that constitutes that representational relationship. There are many disagreements concerning details and implementations, and even some suggestions about claimed alternative ontologies, such as connectionism (though none that escape what is argued is the fundamentalflaw in these dominant approaches). One assumption that seems to be held by all, however, usually without explication or defence, is that there is one singular underlying ontology to representationality. In this paper, it is argued that there are in fact quite a number of ontologies that manifest representationality-levels of representationality-and that none of them are the standard ‘manipulati...

Process and Emergence: Normative Function and Representation

Kim’s argument appears to render causally efficacious emergence impossible: Hume’s argument appears to render normative emergence impossible, and, in its general form, it precludes any emergence at all. I argue that both of these barriers can be overcome, and, in fact, that they each constitute reductions of their respective underlying presuppositions. In particular, causally efficacious ontological emergence can be modeled, but only within a process metaphysics, thus avoiding Kim’s argument, and making use of non-abbreviatory forms of definition, thus avoiding Hume’s argument. I illustrate these points with models of the emergent nature of normative function and of representation.