Representation: Psycoloquy Call for Commentators

[Stevan Harnad]

                Markman/Dietrich: Representation/Mediation

    The target article whose abstract appears below has just appeared
    in PSYCOLOQUY, a refereed journal of Open Peer Commentary sponsored
    by the American Psychological Association. Qualified professional
    biobehavioral, neural or cognitive scientists are hereby invited to
    submit Open Peer Commentary on it. Please email for Instructions if
    you are not familiar with format or acceptance criteria for
    PSYCOLOQUY commentaries (all submissions are refereed).

    To submit articles and commentaries or to seek information:

    EMAIL: psyc at pucc.princeton.edu
    URL:   http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/psyc.html
           http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/psyc

    AUTHOR'S RATIONALE FOR SOLICITING COMMENTARY: There has been a
    growing sentiment in cognitive science, particularly among
    advocates of dynamical systems and situated action, that
    traditional approaches to representation should be abandoned. Calls
    for the elimination of representation, as well as previous attempts
    to defend representation, have unfortunately talked past each other
    for a lack of common ground. This target article attempts to
    provide a common ground for the debate over representation. Many
    proponents of representations are searching for a single
    representational system to serve as the basis of all cognitive
    models; this paper argues that multiple approaches to
    representation must coexist in cognitive models. We also hope to
    elicit discussion about what properties of representations are
    critical for cognitive models.

Full text of article available at:

http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/cgi/psyc/newpsy?9.48

or

ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy/1998.volume.9/psyc.98.9.48.representation-mediation.1.markman

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psycoloquy.98.9.48.representation-mediation.1.markman   Mon Oct  5 1998
ISSN 1055-0143               (68 paragraphs, 78 references, 1297 lines)
PSYCOLOQUY is sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA)
                Copyright 1998 Arthur B. Markman & Eric Dietrich

                IN DEFENSE OF REPRESENTATION AS MEDIATION

                Arthur B. Markman
                Department of Psychology
                University of Texas
                Austin, TX 78712
                markman at psy.utexas.edu
        http://www.psy.utexas.edu/psy/FACULTY/Markman/index.html

                Eric Dietrich
                PACCS Program in Philosophy
                Binghamton University
                Binghamton, NY
                dietrich at binghamton.edu
        http://www.binghamton.edu/philosophy/home/faculty/index.htm

    ABSTRACT: Some cognitive scientists have asserted that cognitive
    processing is not well modeled by classical notions of
    representation and process that have dominated psychology and
    artificial intelligence since the cognitive revolution. In response
    to this claim, the concept of a mediating state is developed.
    Mediating states are the class of information-carrying internal
    states used by cognitive systems, and as such are accepted even by
    those researchers who reject representations.  The debate over
    representation, then, is actually one about what additional
    properties of mediating states are necessary for explaining
    cognitive processing. Five properties that can be added to
    mediating states are examined for their importance in cognitive
    models.

    KEYWORDS: compositionality, computation, connectionism, discrete
    states, dynamic Systems, explanation, information, meaning,
    mediating states, representation, rules, semantic Content symbols

Full text of article available at:

http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/cgi/psyc/newpsy?9.48

or

ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy/1998.volume.9/psyc.98.9.48.representation-mediation.1.markman

    To submit articles and commentaries or to seek information:

    EMAIL: psyc at pucc.princeton.edu
    URL:   http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/psyc.html
           http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/psyc