To start off this blog I want to explore an important distinction that I seem unable to get away from in my own work on mental representations. While it is often presented in its Heideggerian form, that of
present-to-hand versus
ready-to-hand or his
ontic/
ontological distinction, I want to approach this distinction from a different angle and talk instead about two types of intentionality. The first type of intentionality is the more traditional way of interpreting the work of Brentano, that our thoughts are directed towards something, an object. This is often equated with the idea of our thoughts being about something, so I am thinking about the current Australian cricket captain and his constant back injuries. There is a question of whether
aboutness is really the same thing as being
directed towards something but in both cases the idea is that our thoughts are about objects, abstract or real (for example we can think about the whole Australian cricket team as one thing, yet it clearly is not a singular object). This type of intentionality purposefully relates our thoughts to the attributes or properties of the objects in the world around us, suggesting that our thoughts are about always about objects and their properties. For this reason I will call this the
intentionality of objects. This type of intentionality is generally associated with the computational theory of mind.
This is in contrast to the
intentionality of actions, in this case the focus is not on the objects in the world but rather the task and actions we carry out. Here the suggestion is that we do not fill our minds with objects and their properties, rather, the content is about what we want to get done. This is often related to everyday tasks, for example, when I go to the supermarket and select the food I want to buy, I do not select broccoli due to its properties of greenness or high iron, rather I select it as it goes into the stir fry dishes I like to make. My thoughts are always on the role the item would play in actions I want to perform. This is true even if I consider what broccoli is made of, for example, how it is made of healthy biological substances such as iron. In this case the intentionality of action is to lose weight or to be fit, rather than the pure assessment of properties of objects. This action based approach is associated with the current anti-representationalist camp; those that deny that representations play a part in our mental or cognitive acts.
This discussion is one that I am heavily involved in with my PhD thesis but instead of focussing on the computational versus the task based approaches (which is the common approach in cognitive science studies), I want to examine the topic from within a philosophy of mind framework. Specifically through the the question: can we say that our thoughts are about objects or actions? There are three obvious responses we can have to this question:
1) Thoughts are about objects not actions
2) Thoughts are about actions not objects
3) Thoughts are about both actions and objects
Heidegger is a supporter of 3), he states quite clearly that he thinks that we can switch modes of being, each mode allowing us to think about objects or actions but never both at the same time. Computationalists would disagree, stating that our thoughts always have some object filling them. For example, when I think about myself running I do not think of some pure running-ness, rather I direct my attention to particular objects of thought, such as the footpath I run on or the dog I encountered along the way. This makes them very much in agreement with 1).
What I find interesting is the question of whether there is a case for supporting 2); if you can argue that our thoughts are always about actions. This is against the much more ingrained (in analytic circles at least) approach of 1) or the broader approach of 3). Where I see the potential for an argument for 2) is in our changing attitudes towards perception. The idea that we do not sit back and simply take in the world through our senses is something that is well discussed and generally accepted to be true. Alva Noë, for one, attempts to link this understanding of perception as an action to argue against traditional object based theories of mind (see his book
Action in Perception 2004). When you claim that our acts of perception are not this passive way of revealing the world around us but are instead active, engaged tasks that people carry out it seems that the work for supporting 2) is done. We just need to understand that the objects we see in front of us are not some reproductions of reality but rather constructs we have created in conjunction with external stimulus to make a perceptual scene. However, even though this type of argument is not new and is well known, this idea seems a conceptually difficult one to respond to; we seem reluctant to change our deep held view of us as neutral perceivers of the world.
This leads to the puzzle that I have been trying to solve once I became aware of this approach. Essentially it is trying to come up with a way to understand perception as being an action. The problem here is how do we understand our perception of the world to be an action (or set of actions)? We so easily see our bodily movements as actions due to their observable status yet this is not the case for anything happening in our brains. Also, our brains don’t make these clear precise actions that we associate with bodily movement (a kick, a punch). The act of perceiving appears to be temporally stretched. There is no clear delimitation between making one perception and another. So how is it that we can understand something like perception as being an action?
Oddly enough, the slight insight I have into this problem comes from theories of computation, specifically how computers work. When any a piece of data is brought to the CPU of a computer, there is always some task that is carried out upon it. A binary value is added or compared to another, the data may simply be moved and so on. The
reason for bringing a piece of data to the CPU is so some action to be carried out using it. So how could the act of perception be like this type of computation? The example that I keep returning to is understanding the perception of colour as being founded on the act of comparison. Seeing something as red as opposed to blue helps us mark out two differing things in the world. Two things we may want to engage with in different ways.
This idea that colour perception is an act of comparison is fuelled by the way we see consistency in colour when, technically, there is none. We see a whole wall as being white in colour not because it gives off the same lightwaves at all points, rather, it seems we see it as being one colour as it is we do not want to distinguish it into different parts. There is a holding back of comparison in an effort make some things the same while others different. What makes for an interesting question is that are we as perceivers experiencing colour or experiencing comparison?
This, of course, is not a complete answer for seeing perception as action. However, I think it is a start. As I mentioned this is something that is not particularly intuitive so I am content with small ideas such as these. Hopefully, as a side topic from my main project it is one that I can return to at a later date or hear more about from others.
