Is Cognition an Autonomous Subsystem?
Mark H. Bickhard · Advances in consciousness research · 1997
this paper on these three: representation, action, and motivation. In particular, I will argue that the standard view of representation as some kind of correspondence, as an encoding, is wrong. I outline an alternative model of representation that emerges naturally in agents, biological or designed, that actually engage the world (Beer, 1990, 1995, in press; Beer, Chiel, Stirling, 1990; Bickhard, 1980, 1993; Bickhard & Terveen, 1995; Brooks, 1991a, 1991b, 1991c; Cherian & Troxell, in press; Malcolm, Smithers, Hallam, 1989; Smithers, 1994). One primary consequence of this alternative model of representation --- called interactivism --- is that functions that are standardly taken to reside in separate modules, such as representation, action, and motivation, are inherently integrated as separate functional aspects of one single underlying ontology. They are not inherently distinct modules. If standard models that permit such modularization are in error, then so are such modularizations per se. 2 Encoding Models of Representation.