A Comment to "Does your Brain Represent the Outside World?. The Rise (and Trouble) of Representationalism in Neuroscience" by Suzi Travis

Psychology is a Humanity not a Science and Uses Hermeneutics instead of Logic.

Psychology is a Humanity not a Science and Uses Hermeneutics instead of Logic, hence it can never have consistent definitions across all contexts. Only Sciences can do that…

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This is a comment to this Post, writing about Brain Representations of the OutsideWorld:

Does your Brain Represent the Outside World?

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If you start from vehicle, target and consumer it makes sense you will question any definition of “representation” not using those words/concepts.

It seems self defeating to me not starting from a consistent definition of Representation such as:

1. The act of representing or the state of being represented.

2. Something that represents, as.

3. An image or likeness of something.

Specially when paired with "When scientists say your brain represents something — let’s say a dog — they don’t mean your brain is literally holding a tiny photograph of a dog.", denying straight on the third definition of Representation I put above.

Definition of [to] Represent:

1. To have as a meaning, suggestion, or association; stand for or symbolize.

2. To indicate or communicate by signs or symbols.

3. To depict in art; portray.

Brain activity does not mean anything, meaning is something assigned to brain activity using symbols, words that are artificial. Only a limited set of them symbolize, represent, concepts existing in Reality: Scientific Words for Scientific Concepts.

The rest of the words as about and content are not Scientific outside of Information Theory.

The "philosophical baggage" seems to omit the predictive and explanatory power of modeling the brain as containing representations, models, of the World, models and representations are not entirely the same thing, models or representations of Reality itself.

Not only Behaviorism could not explain many things, it did not needed to explain many things, modern Psychology lacks explanatory and predictive power too: after all it is a Humanity, not a Science. As such it cannot explain anything Real, only Sciences can:

There is no "Computational Theory of Mind", theories properly defined and understood are based for deductive syllogistic purposes on beyond doubt facts, as the definition of Scientific Theory says. Psychology cannot have any of those beyond doubt facts because the mind is not real, it is a soul claimed to be attached to a brain. And as such, outside Scientific Studies and Applications of its Methods:

"One reason is that the term representation doesn’t have a single, clear meaning." not true, I already provided one above as the "act of representing", explained in the definition of Represent as a verb.

If Psychologists create their own fuzzy definitions it does not deny the fact Representation is already quite clearly and well defined. All Psychologists need to do is pick the definition that in their field of expressive knowledge, not inquiring knowledge, leads to consistency in all cases where the word Representation is used.

• Which is imposible to do, using one single consistent definition of anything in Hermeneutical Fields, and precisely because of at least that Psychology is not a Science: because the meaning of the words used by Psychology have different meanings in different contexts, like in all Humanities.

Those are Hermeneutical Fields of expressive knowledge not Logical Fields where definitions are used consistently, meaning without contradictions, across the whole field of inquiring knowledge. And sometimes even beyond their Fields of Study: Like Physics and Mathematics.

I think, although I can see reasonable disagreement prima facie, that your "Criticisms" section is a form of Homuncular thinking, transcribed below the link I provide, for those who cannot access Substack Notes:

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Transcript of the quoted note:

Federico Soto del Alba

5d

Think of an association cortex, like the prefrontal cortex is, more like a communications/sorting central rather than a little, yes, little homunculus…

More like a Chinese Room Paradox.

The human brain is not a set of homunculi talking among themselves receiving input from the outside world and monitoring the internal state of farty affairs.

Either people had not Read Luria´s Work, or did not understand its significance, importance and transcendence for models of human thinking.

It is a very common fatal misunderstanding for research and knowledge among the neuro oriented, those hoping to explain human thinking through brain analogies and brain metaphors.

Too common… too common.. to…

See it as an example: if you measured the electricity consumption between a speaker, a listener and the communications network, my guess is the communications network, specially a central station, will consume more electricity than the speaker and the listener. There is more sorting to do, like in a Chinese Room Paradox. Specially if that central station is reserved for just two people, or a very small number of them.

Then, an increase or decrease in energy consumption will be quite visible as with fMRI monitoring the central station.

More “activity”/consumption than the sender and the receiver, and yet if one focused on “activity”, one would conclude it is the central station doing the “thinking”, right?.

And that would be wrong!.

That´s what Luria wrote as caveats to his studies of Brain Lesions in Human Brains around a century ago, maybe more…

Same as if one would cut the electricity supply to the central station, leaving the sender and the receiver with electricity: one would conclude the “thinking” was going on there, in the central station.

Those are epistemic issues that need to be known and taken into account before interpreting the results of pretending to be Scientific Researches about the Human Brain.

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One thing I think cannot be easily explained by seeing the brain as a representationalist is the monitoring of those farty internal affairs, like blood pressure, equilibrium, posture, hunger, thirst, hormonal levels, sexual desire and sexual attraction, nutrient levels and the like.

I doubt the brain has a sophisticated biophysical model including all the physical laws explaining blood pressure and blood flow, for example. Not even Science has such models to explain blood pressure and blood flow with enough detail in specific cases.

Just the elasticity, the compliance of blood vessels and the turbulent flow in some circumstanced cannot be explained with current biophysical models of blood flow and blood pressure, as far as I knew. The Navier-Stokes sets of equations are an outstanding problem in Mathematics for which there is a million dollar prize to solve them since more than two decades ago.

The so called internal millieu…

Those things and its monitoring by the brain use The Basic Science of Physiology to be understood, to be explained and to make predictions. They do not use Representation Models from Psychology, let alone when Psychology is passed as a Science turning it into a Pseudo-Science.

Reflexes are still quite good to explain a lot of Neurophysiology, and as such to explain some behaviors like disgust, sexual attraction, appetite, etc.

Thanks.

Federico Soto del Alba.