Representation without symbol systems

A different approach to understanding psychological processes is explored, one that retains a commitment to the idea that the brain uses symbols to store and use information.

Abstract

A he concept of representation has become almost inextricably bound to the concept of symbol systems. This conflation of the concepts is nowhere more prevalent than in descriptions of representations. These representations typically are thought to occur in an internal symbol system that allows the brain to store and use information.1 Part of the appeal of positing such internal symbol systems arises from the analogy between human cognitive processes and electronic information-handling systems: the latter provide an impressive example of the use of symbols to represent and process information in ways that seem to approach human information-handling abilities. We understand how computers work, and in the hope of bringing similar understanding to human psychology, psychological processes such as perception, concept formation, problem solving, and imagery have been modeled as computations in an internal symbol system. However, this source of appeal is also a cause for skepticism. The fact that it is convenient to view psychological processes by analogy to computers may have seduced us away from other, perhaps more valid, conceptions. In this paper we explore a different approach to understanding psychological processes, one that retains a commit-