• DOI:10.1007/BF01063896
• Corpus ID: 17136030

Doing without representing?

@article{Clark2005DoingWR,
  title={Doing without representing?},
  author={Andy Clark and Josefa Toribio},
  journal={Synthese},
  year={2005},
  volume={101},
  pages={401-431}
}

• A. Clark, Josefa Toribio
• Published 1 December 1994
• Biology
• Synthese

Connectionism and classicism, it generally appears, have at least this much in common: both place some notion of internal representation at the heart of a scientific study of mind. In recent years, however, a much more radical view has gained increasing popularity. This view calls into question the commitment to internal representation itself. More strikingly still, this new wave of anti-representationalism is rooted not in ‘armchair’ theorizing but in practical attempts to model and understand intelligent, adaptive behavior. In this paper we first present, and then critically assess, a variety of recent anti-representationalist treatments. We suggest that so far, at least, the sceptical rhetoric outpaces both evidence and argument. Some probable causes of this premature scepticism are isolated. Nonetheless, the anti-representationalist challenge is shown to be both important and progressive insofar as it forces us to see beyond the bare representational/non-representational dichotomy and to recognize instead a rich continuum of degrees and types of representationality.