PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Sabrina Golonka
AU  - Andrew D Wilson
TI  - Ecological Representations
AID  - 10.1101/058925
DP  - 2016 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 058925
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/06/15/058925.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/06/15/058925.full
AB  - Cognitive science has three main motivations for assuming that cognition requires representation. These are the need for intentional (meaningful) access to the world, poverty of perceptual access to that world, and the need to support ‘higher-order’ cognition (e.g. thinking about things in their absence). All representational systems must also address two major problems (symbol grounding and the need for system-detectable error). Mental representations attempt to address the three motivations but stumble over the two problems. Here we argue that James J Gibson’s ecological information fits the basic definition of a representation, solves both problems and immediately addresses the first two motivations. We then develop an argument (begun in Golonka, 2015) that informational representations and the resulting neural representations can also support ‘higher-order’ cognition.