CHAPTER I

MODELS OF REPRESENTATION AND OBJECTIVITY

In this chapter, I look at the model of representation attacked in the Introduction and at the model of objectivity that this view leads to, along with some alternative views of objectivity. Finally, I sketch the basic elements of a theory of representation that does not attempt to make the representation come alive through its own power.

1.1: The Physical-Visual Model of Representation

The model caricatured in the Introduction is what I call the physical-visual model of representation. I call it this because it takes representation by a physical object, such as a statue, as the paradigmatic case. It then uses this case to interpret visual and mental representation in general. Visual representation is then used as the model for all knowledge or cognitive representation.

Imagine looking at an object and a physical representation of that object. Take, for example, our statue and the woman it was modelled after. In this case both the object and the representation are contained in the same perception. We perceive their similarities, and we can perceive the correspondences between the statue and the women. This allows us to see, for example, how the elbow of ivory maps onto the elbow of flesh. Thus we can take the ivory as representing the flesh; we project the properties of the woman onto the statue guided by the perceived similarities. We see the woman in terms of the statue, giving special emphasis to properties of the woman that correspond to the statue. The statue represents the woman only in virtue of the complete interpretation of the situation by the observer and the access that he has to both the statue and the woman. This is a paradigmatic case of physical representation, but it is one that is bound to be incompletely analyzed. Given the alluring nature of the object, it is natural to leave out the part that the observer plays in this situation and attribute the representative qualities of the statue to its similarity to the woman. After all, it is the similarities that guide the projection of the properties of the woman onto the statue. The fact that this projection is an act of the observer, dependent upon his ability to interact perceptually with both the statue and the woman, is easily overlooked. It is this simplified analysis of physical representation that is taken as the paradigm and applied to visual perception which is then used as the model for all forms of knowledge.

The visual perception, then, is seen as a representation or picture. The characteristics of the situation that made the status of the physical object as representation possible are excluded by the nature of perception. In the case of the statue we had independent access to the real woman. Perception is the only way in which we contact the world. When a perceptual experience is seen according to the paradigm of physical representation, it is seen as an internal object rather than a process of interaction with the external object. It is not possible to perceive both the object and the representation as it was in the case of physical representation. We only have direct access to the representation. There is no way to use the similarities of the visual percept to the object to guide the projection of the properties of the object onto the representation. To do this we would need to experience both our internal representation and the external object and use a comparison of the two to guide the projection of properties. But we do not experience both of these; our internal image is our experience of the external object. It cannot be compared to the external object through some mind's eye that experiences both the image and the external object. There is no way to ascertain the correspondence between internal representation and external object. Thus, there is no way to gain access to the properties of the external object other than those instantiated in the internal image. Since there is no way for the observer to gain independent access to the external object, the representation must be connected to the other properties of the object by itself, through its own intrinsic characteristics. Thus, the physical-visual model of representation is committed to the attempt to make our representations come alive.

Seeing the visual percept as a representation that must represent the object in virtue only of its similarities and not through its connection to the object, nor through the interpretation of an observer with access to both, makes it impossible for the visual percept to represent at all. All of the characteristics of the original situation of physical representation that allow it to represent are abstracted out before it is used as a model for visual perception and cognitive representation in general. Thus, one is left with the problem of attempting to make representations come alive, to make them represent in virtue of their own properties. The history of modern philosophy is the story of the realization that this is impossible.

1.2: Models of Objectivity

Objectivity is the characteristic we aim for in knowledge. In general it is the property of not being determined by a particular subject or point of view, i.e, not being subjective. The most natural model of objectivity, and the one tied to the Representational Model of Epistemology, is what I call the external model of objectivity. This view simply holds that objectivity is a property of representations which they have in virtue of reflecting properties of the object they are meant to represent and not properties of the representing subject or the representing medium.

One can see immediately that the Representative Model of Epistemology will have problems assimilating this natural view of objectivity. This model of knowledge holds that we always know through the mediation of representations. Therefore, it seems as if the intervening medium of the representation will always make it subjective. The representation cannot help incorporating the properties of its medium and the point of view from which it is formed. If knowledge is always through the mediation of representations, then it seems that it will be impossible to have objective knowledge.

I will call views of objectivity that take this difficulty seriously perspectivist models of objectivity. I call them this because taking this difficulty seriously seems to involve accepting a form of argument I call the perspectivist fallacy. The perspectivist fallacy is the argument that if a representation has properties that are due to the medium of representation or the point of view of the representing subject, then it cannot be objective or reflect the object and not the subject.[1] It argues that representation necessarily introduces subjective distortion because of the influence of the medium of the representation and the perspective of the perceiver. It is easy to see how this type of reasoning would be attractive to someone who held the physical-visual model of representation. If mental representations are seen on the model of physical objects, they become barriers standing in the way of our knowledge of external objects rather than ways of getting at these objects. If we perceive only representations, then any properties of the representation that do not exactly correspond to the external object make it impossible for us to know the object at all. As we saw, when the representation must do its job itself, it cannot call up any of the properties of its object other than those it possesses. Therefore, if because of perspective or medium the representation does not completely correspond[2] to the object it cannot represent it at all. (See the argument on pages 4-5.) The elements introduced by the perspective and medium pollute the entire representation. If all we perceive is our own representations, then any distortion at all ruins the entire representation since we can never check the representation against the object to see which features correspond and which do not. On the physical-visual model, anything less than complete correspondence makes the representation subjective and unable to represent the object. What is needed is a representation that shows no effects of the perspective from which it is formed and whose content is unaffected by its medium. The perspectivist model of objectivity aims at the God's eye view, a perspective or medium of representation that contributes nothing to the content of the representation, one that guarantees that it will be objective.

There are two ways of trying to achieve this special type of representation: The first of these I call the dialectical method. This is the method favored by Plato and Aristotle, at least on the standard reading of them. This view attempts to reach an objective representation gradually through the examination, comparison, and synthesis of many perspectives. If we look at many perspectives and try to synthesize representations with various different types of medium, the result will be a representation whose dependence on any one perspective is minimal and the dependence of the representation on the object increases. At the limit of this process is the perfect representation or the God's eye view.

This method is comparable to the building of a certain type of platform. In order to reduce the load carried by any particular beam upon which the platform rests, the number of beams is increased. Imagine also that each beam that is added is somewhat thinner than the previous beams, and as each beam is added all the existing beams are replaced with beams of the same size. As more beams are added the strength of each beam is decreased. This lessens the load on each beam and decreases the degree to which the platform depends on each beam. The hope is that by adding more and more beams the weight supported by each beam will approach zero, and you will have a platform not being held up by anything. This analogy makes the dialectical method intuitively clear, and it also shows the fundamental incoherence involved in the attempt to get a representation that does not reflect any perspective or medium, a God's eye view. It is the attempt to get a non-perspectival perspective, a representation that isn't a representation.

The second way to attempt to achieve the God's eye view is to try to get it right away and then build the rest of your body of knowledge upon these special representations. This is what I call the foundational method. This is the method favored in Modern philosophy before Kant and in early analytic philosophy. Here the attempt is to find a set of representations that reflect the object exactly and which cannot be distorted by perspective. This can be attempted either through arriving at the special representations through a special method which ensures the objectivity of representations or by taking representations which have a special causal relationship to their objects which, again, ensures their versimilitude. An objective system of representation is then built through logical deduction and/or induction from these foundational representations. Of course, the problem with this method is explaining how we arrive at the foundational representations. I will discuss some of the historical manifestations of these two methods further in Chapter Two.

The result of seeing the failure of these two methods by someone who accepts the perspectivist fallacy is usually the abandonment of the external model of objectivity. As in Kant, objectivity is redefined in terms of the internal properties of the system of representations. Here objectivity no longer involves accurately representing an external object. Knowledge becomes a relation between elements internal to our system of representations. Objectivity becomes a stability or intersubjectivity of this system. Given the perspectivist fallacy, any representation reflects some perspective and some medium so it cannot reach outside of itself to something beyond representations. The only way that the representation can be objective, or not merely caused by the peculiarities of our constitution, is if the representation constructs its object in accordance with certain constraints that are not just due to the peculiarities of my particular representation, but are common to all rational creatures as such (or to all members of a cultural or scientific community).

Objectivity, on this view, still consists in not being caused by peculiarities of a particular perspective or representative medium. The objectivity of our representations, however, is not a causal result of their being caused by the object and not the subject. It is a result of our representations constructing their objects in accordance with constraints that are shared by some set of knowers, and hence not merely subjective.

The internal model of objectivity gives a strange twist to the perspectivist tendency to redefine the object of knowledge. Plato redefined the object of knowledge as an abstract entity, Aristotle as a universal, formal aspect of objects. The internal model, by recognizing that representations are active in cognition, redefines the object of knowldege as a construct produced by the cognitive process itself. There is no longer any problem in comparing our representations to their objects, since the objects become internal to the system of representations. But objectivity can no longer be determination by a mind independent reality; the mind determines reality. Objectivity, then, must be the determination of objects according to conceptual constraints that are not simply individual, private, and subjective, but which are common to a community and define a common reality for them. Our representations are objective, then, if they merely reflect other perspectives and other representations rather than external objects. It is this view that I call the internal model of objectivity. I will be attempting to show that this implication of the failure of the attempt to make representations come alive that does not follow. The vital step in the move from the failure of the physical-visual model of representation to the internal model of objectivity is, of course, the perspectivist fallacy.

Of course, calling the perspectivist line of argument a fallacy does not make it one. I use this term simply to remind us that this argument scheme, which is so pervasive in discussions of foundational epistemology, is suspect. The best proof of this will be to provide an alternative to the physical-visual model of representation and to show that on this alternative the influences of perspective or medium of representation do not make it impossible to objectively represent the object. Part two of this work, especially Chapters Four and Six on reference and agency, attempt to do this and add some sticks and stones to the name calling.

We can, however, get some idea of what might be wrong with the perspectivist fallacy by considering a simple analogy. Consider how an artist represents things using a paint and canvas. Her medium and the perspective from which she views the object place certain constraints on her representations. Yet her medium is neutral with respect to the representation of certain properties of the object. While the type of canvas and paint determine the texture of the representation and that it will be two dimensional, they impose no important constraints on the two dimensional geometric shape placed upon the canvas. In particular, it is just as easy to paint a circle on the canvas as it is to paint a square. The medium is neutral with respect to these properties. Therefore, the geometrical shape of the representation, whether it is square or round, reflects the object and not the medium of representation. It is objective. Even though the representation is in a certain medium and from a certain perspective, all of its properties need not be determined by that perspective or medium. Some of them may be objective and really reflect the object.

This simple example shows at least that it is possible that the perspectivist fallacy is a fallacy. It shows that it is possible for a representation to reflect the object even though it is in a medium and from a perspective that introduce distortions into the representation. It needs to be shown further how one can distinguish the objective properties of the representation from those that are distorted by perspective. While a full explanation of this will have to wait till Chapter Six, the next section outlines the elements of view of representation that makes such an explanation possible.

1.3: The Elements of an Alternative Model of Representation

If the argument of the Introduction is sound, then the attempt to make representations come alive is without hope. An object, idea, or piece of language cannot represent in virtue of its own properties or their similarities to other objects. Representation always involves the activity of an interpreter.

If representing is always an act, then we need to analyze the act and find out what elements are involved and how they function. Such an analysis can form the outline of a theory of representation that takes seriously the realization that representing is something done by an agent, not something done by the representation itself.

The act of representing is the basic unit of the analysis. The other elements may be analyzed out of this act, but they only have their representative qualities in virtue of their situation in an act of representing. The mistake of the physical-visual model was to abstract the representation from the act of representing while still thinking that it maintained the properties that it had only as part of that act. What we are calling the representation is the finished product of the act of representing. As we saw it can be a physical object, an image, a perceptual experience, or a piece of language. Once we see that representing does not depend on similarity, we can realize that other things such as actions, that are not normally regarded as representations, can play the same role in the representing act. It is not these things by themselves that are representations, but only these things as interpreted, as the end product of the representing act.

As we saw in the earlier example of physical representation access or interaction with both the object and the representation is required. We saw that representation involved the projection of properties of the object onto the representation. In the example of the statue, this projection was made on the basis of similarities. The flesh figure is mapped onto the ivory figure according to the correspondences that obtain between them. It should be noted that the similarity is neither responsible for, nor necessary for, the projection of properties. It is the agent that performs this projection. In this example, he does it in virtue of either some knowledge about the other properties of women and a tendency to associate them with the properties present in the statue or through the joint presence of the woman and the statue in his perceptual experience. Often no similarity at all is involved in the projection; it is sometimes just a matter of the decision of the agent or convention, as when we let x's represent defensive players and o's offensive players.

This projection of properties is the essential element of representation. Representing always involves at least two separate modes of interaction or presentation of an object one of which is projected onto the other.[3] The mode which is to be represented by being projected onto the other mode will be called the source. The mode of interaction or presentation through which the source is to be represented will be called the destination. In our example using the statue, a great many modes of interaction with women (e.g. the visual, the tactile, the emotional, and the sexual to name just a few) are projected onto the single destination mode of presentation, which in this case happens to be the ivory shape. The projection of properties here is not any real transfer of properties. It is simply the application of modes of perception of women which involve the ascription of various types of properties to the ivory figure. The ivory figure is perceived as a woman.

The projection of the properties is not determined by the ivory figure, although the destination does impose constraints upon the projection.[4] It is determined by the set of abilities, associations, and beliefs of the agent. These cognitive structures of the agent do the representing. It is these representing structures that are most often referred to in our normal use of the word "concept". We will have to wait until Chapter Six for a satisfactory account of concepts, but we can give an introductory exposition here.

Concepts are the actual cognitive structures that do the representing. They are complexes of dispositions to represent in certain ways. For example, a concept of a particular woman consists of a number of structures for representing her in various ways: ascribing certain properties to her, acting towards her in certain ways, and feeling toward her in certain ways.

Concepts are not representations, that is, they are not acts of representing. They are the mental potentials for such acts. To call them complexes of dispositions is simply a way of saying they are sets of embodied potentials for entering into certain acts of representing, and to identify them with certain neural and bodily structures is simply to point out that our ability to represent is somehow embodied.

We are not directly aware of our concepts, we know them only through what they do. This is true of all the things we characterize as dispositions. Although we must characterize concepts in terms of how they cause us to represent, they are not themselves representations. They are neither modes of interaction nor modes of presentation of objects. We never have access to our concepts directly. We know them only by what they do and how they cause us to represent. They are the active structures that lie behind acts of representing. Since they are never present to us themselves, they cannot re-present anything to us. Rather, they determine how we will use other things to represent objects.

The consideration of a simple analogy will help show why this is so. Imagine that you have bought the dime store plastic model kit for Pygmalion's statue. It comes complete with plastic cement and a twelve page set of instructions. These instructions provide the directions for representing a woman in terms of the plastic pieces the kit provides. They are not themselves a representation of a woman. Let us change the example slightly in order to make it more similar to our concepts. Imagine that the kit comes with a black box automaton that puts the model together for us. We never actually get to see the instructions. The automaton is the active agent that performs the representation of the woman. It is not a representation itself. This is exactly how concepts work. They are the active structures, physically and neurologically embodied, that do the representing. In a sense they must contain instructions or procedures for representing just as the automaton does. We have no more access to these instructions in the case of concepts, however, than we do in the case of the black box automaton. There may be information encoded in concepts, in some sense, but we never have access to it. The concepts and the instructions in the automaton are never present to us; they cannot represent anything for us. They do the representing; they are not representations themselves.

Of course we are able to trace out the structure of our concepts quite well by exercising them and seeing how they cause us to act, just as we could characterize the dispositions in the black box by seeing what they do. This is what we do in conceptual analysis. (This is why language is so useful in conceptual analysis, for, as we shall see, it is more appropriate to say it mirrors the structure of our concepts than that it represents the world.) The point here is simply that we are never directly aware of our concepts, or our embodied potentials to represent, in the way we are of their expressions such as images, perceptions, and thoughts. Hence our concepts cannot re-present things for us in the way these things do. We are aware of our concepts only as represented through their activities.

We were able to analyze out four basic elements necessary to representation: (1) the source; (2) the destination. These are modes of interacting with or presenting an object. Representing involves projection of the source onto the destination. (3) The concept or representing structure; and (4) The finished product of the act, the representation. This is the destination interpreted by concept in terms of the source. All of these require situation in an act of representing in order to function. None of them can represent in isolation.

There are two major types of representations. The first of these is exemplified best by the coordination of sensory modalities and is most important for knowledge. In this type, both the source and the destination mode are modes of interaction actively engaged in interaction with the object.

What I have been calling a mode of interaction can be seen as a neurologically embodied structure defined by its connections to sensory and motor neurons that define ways in which we can cognitively interact with the world. I shall use the term 'mode of interaction' fairly loosely in this work to cover four different, but closely related, types of things: (1) neural structures defined in terms of their connections to efferent and afferent neurons as described above. This is the primary meaning. (2) The felt character of the activation of these structures. These are properties such as redness. (3) An entire path of activation for one of these structures, for example one of the sensory modalities such as sight or touch. (4) An actual interaction or type of interaction leading to the activation of one of these structures. Hopefully, using a single term for these related things will save the confusion of introcucing four new technical terms. (Although I concentrate here on modes of interaction that are neurologically processed, this should not be taken to indicate that there is not a tremendous amount of processing, essential to our well-being and efficient perception, that is done within the sense organs and elsewhere outside of our nervous system.)

As we shall see in Chapter Six, these structures can be activated by actual interaction with the world or they can be activated by our concepts. In this first type of representing the modes of interaction are activated by engagement in interaction with the world. So, in this case the same object is usually interacted with in both the source and destination modes. This is not always the case, however, as was shown in the example of interpreting or creating the statue with the woman model present and mapping the perceived properties of the woman onto the ivory. In most cases, however, the object interacted with is the same in both the source modes and the destination modes. The prime example of this type is sensory-motor coordination or coordination of any two of our sensory modalities. In reaching out to grasp something that we see we are projecting our motor abilities onto our sensory interaction with the world. The object as seen is represented to us through our act of touching the same object. This type of representation is integrative. It connects our interactions with the world and allows them to isolate out domains of interest that can be referred to. This type of representing is what is called direct referring in Chapter Four. It forms the basis of our ability to refer, and, hence, of our ability to objectively know. This type of representing, however, rarely occurs in isolation, and even if it did we would hardly be conscious of it. Most often this type of representing plays its role within the context of more complex acts of representing that involve the application of concepts as one of the modes of interaction involved in the act of representing.

The second type of representation is a kind of conceptualization of the destination in terms of the source. It involves the application of a concept, which includes dispositions to represent a domain in certain ways, to the destination which is a mode of interaction actively engaged with some domain. What is common to all instances of this type of representation is that they involve the application of modes of representing in the source to the destination. That is, they take concepts or representing structures as their source modes. This allows them to take properties that are presented by interaction with an object as re-presenting other properties that are not present by applying the dispositions to connect these properties that are included in the concept.

When we interpret a statue as a woman, we usually do not do this in virtue of an interaction with a real woman at the same time we are looking at the statue. We have interacted with many women in the past and have formed a concept of them. This concept is a set of abilities to connect various properties or modes of interaction with women. It includes abilities to connect the properties of women that the statue does not possess with those that it does. For example, most of us have a concept of women that includes a disposition to connect the color, shape, and visually perceived texture of human hair with its softness and felt texture. We apply our concept of the woman, with all its representing structures, to the statue. We attempt to represent the statue in terms of the instructions for representing given in the concept. This would allow us to see the statue not just as a piece of stone with the shape of a woman's hair, but as re-presenting a woman's hair and its softness and felt properties. These other properties are often represented with a vividness that leads to responses such as Pygmalion's, where the representation is mistaken for interaction with the real thing.

This second type of representation is exemplified by perception. In perceiving, the circular shape we see is the same circular shape we feel, we project our tactile mode of interaction with the world onto our visual mode. All perception involves this type of representation, for, as Hegel saw in his arguments against Sense Certainty in The Phenomenology of Mind, a sensation of only one sensory modality, such as a bare patch of red, is not a perception at all. Perception involves connecting the various sensory properties into an object and seeing the object as the causal nexus of those properties. Look around you. You do not see patches of color. You see objects, and you see these objects in virtue of the projection of the tactile, kinesthetic, and other properties of the objects onto your visual interaction with the world. It is our application of our perceptual concepts that allows us to do this.

This type of representation is especially important for communication. Since representations cannot serve as vessels in which we can encode information about the world and transfer it apart from our interpretive processes, representations cannot serve in communication by maintaining their representative powers during a transfer between people. We cannot impart our act of representation onto the object itself and pass it along to someone else. We can, however, exploit the concepts that we share with other people by imparting to objects characteristics that we know will activate those specific concepts or representing structures that caused us to have the representation that we did. Thus, we communicate by getting people to represent the same way we did, not by passing our representations along to them.

This basic sketch of the elements and types of representation gives an idea of how we represent things without requiring that the representations do it themselves in virtue of their intrinsic similarity to external objects. This view will be developed further in Part Two, and it will be used to explain how the failure of the perspectivist model of objectivity does not lead to an internal model of objectivity in Part Three. The remainder of Part One considers more fully the historical manifestations of the view under attack here and the standard objections to it.