Figure 74: Theories of representation

 

content

„Repraesentatio“ in the Middle Ages

Research on orientation plans in the brain

Pictures and plans in the mind of man

1960-2004: confusing use of „representation“

 

see also:

Reflecions on the use of models

 

 

„Repraesentatio“ in the Middle Ages

 

It was in the 1970s when the concept of representation in historical perspective received some attention. First there was in 1970 a big symposium of Mediaevists in Cologne. The Proceedings were edited by Albert Zimmermann (1971). Comprehensive histories of the concept are by Hasso Hofmann (1974), Adalbert Podlech (1984) and Eckart Scheerer (1992, 1993). It did not, however, find a wide audience.

 

A fundamental study was published by the Parisian professor Octave Hamlin in his year of death 1907. A phenomenological study by the American art historian Richard Bernheimer was published posthumously in 1961.

The theory of representation in the Roman literature was analyzed by L. Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1980), in Late Scholastics by M. M. Tweedale (1990), in the French literature of the 12th and 13th century by Katharine G. MacCornack (1996).

 

 

Research on orientation plans in the brain

 

(parts of this research belong also to Chap. IV: pattern, prescription, plan)

 

An important experimental investigation into thinking has been submitted by the American psychologist Edna Heidbreder in 1924. More than twenty years later (1946; 1947) she published her basic research reports on „concept learning."

 

The American psychologist Edward Chace Tolman studied the behavior of rats in the labyrinth and due to his observations he developed a systematic learning theory. He held the view these animals create themselves a picture of the labyrinth in which they move, a kind of internal map (“cognitive„map"; see 1948), an internal representation of the geometrical relations of important points in the animal’s environment.

 

First reports on „higher mentally processes in animals "and „’insight’ in rats” he published already in 1927 and 1930. His huge tome „ Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men "(1932) reached several editions.

 

The English experimental psychologist Frederick Charles Bartlett reported in his book on „remembering" (1932) the influence of social factors on memory. Most of his research he had made already in the First World War (1916; 1921).

Instead of senseless syllables he used „meaningful" material. It showed up that the test subjects not only reproduced them but arranged them in the light of past experiences. That was named by Bartlett „scheme" or „conceptual model".

1934 anthropologist Ruth Bendict published in her study „Patterns of Culture“ similar ideas.

 

Nearly unregared has been the study of the Scotch experimental psychologist Kenneth James William Craik: „The Nature of Explanation“ (1943). Concerning Craik we read in a study on mental models: “The idea that people rely on mental models can be traced back to Kenneth Craik’s suggestion in 1943 that the mind constructs ‘small-scale models’ of reality that it uses to anticipate events.”

 

 

Pictures and plans in the mind of man

 

see in German:

Planvolles Handeln und Arbeiten

 

A milestone was in 1960 the book of George A. Miller, Eugene Galanter and Karl H. Pribram: "Plans and the structure of behavior" (German 1975). The authors relied upon cybernetics, computer science and modern linguistics and tried to desribe „how peceptions, which are constructed by an organism, guide his behavior“. Perceptions constitute the „organized knowledge“ of man, the „picture“ he composes of the world and of himself.

Besides these pictures he has also a great number of plans in his head. A „plan“ is a hierarchical process in the organism guiding the sequence of operations (actions).

 

In the years 1967-1971 Winfried Hacker with collaborators at the Technical University Dresden elaborated a „General Work and Engineering Psychology“ (1973). Relying on the soviet psychology, particularly of Sergej L. Rubinstein (1935/40 und 1957), the ideas of Miller, Galanter and Pribram have been restated and precised. From the „picture“ man composes of himself and the world he segregates „operative „representations“ („operative Abbilder“), which guide the actions of man. Instead of „plans“ Hacker speaks of „action programs“ („Aktionsprogrammen“), which can be conscious or unconscious. They are parts of the system of operative representations and hierarchically interleaved. Additionally there are „generative programs“ containing the constructions rules for the realizing action programs; and they effectuate the building of progressively detailed subprograms.

 

In Western Germany it was Walter Volpert woh picked up Hacker’s aproach in his "Handlungsstrukturanalyse" (1974). Herbert Stachowiak dealt in his „General Model Theory“ (1973) with „internal models of the external world“ („interne Aussenweltmodelle“).

 

 

1960-2004: confusing use of „representation“

 

There is a lot of confusion on the use and meaning of the word “representation“ since 1960, e. g. by William Heriot Watson (1960), Bernard Kaplan (1961) and Hanna Fenichel Pitkin (1967), later by Peter Caws (1974), William A. Mason (1976), S. E. Palmer (1978) and Jerry Alan Fodor (1979, 1981).

 

Two of the few to critizise the mindless use of „representation“ have been Wilfried Neugebauer (1977) und Wolfgang Brezinka (1984, 837-838).

 

In the 1980s scholars liked to speak of

·        „mental representation“: Joan W. Bresnan (1982), Jacques Mehler et al. (1982), Alan Paivio (1986), Ruth M. Kempson (1988), Hilary Putnam (1988) and Patrick Suppes (1988) as well as Robert A. Cummins (1989; see also 1996), Stuart Silvers (1989) as well as John Dinsmore (1991) and Eduard Marbach (1993)

·        “mental models”: Dedre Gentner and Albert J. Stevens (1983), Philip Johnson-Laird (1983), Alan Garnham (1987) and K. J. Gilhooly (1987), Colin McGinn (1989), D. Ackermann, M. J. Tauber (1990), Michael E. Gorman (1992) and Nancy J. Nersessian (1993) as well as Clark A. Chinn, William F. Brewer (1996) – in 1996 Jane Oakhill and Alan Garnham published an omnibus in honor of Philip N. Johnson-Laird: “Mental models in cognitive science”

·        „knowledge representation”: Jay L. Garfield (1987), Eileen Cornell Way (1991), Ellen Hisdal (1998) and John F. Sowa (2000) – in 1993 Kenneth M. Ford and Jeffrey M Bradshaw published an omnibus on: „Knowledge Acquisition as Modeling”.

 

Important contributions to the topic of representation in the 1980s are by Ian Hacking (1983), Donald Davidson (1984), Hilary Putnam (1988) and Patrick Suppes (1988, 1994), W. G. Lycan (1989), and in the 1990s by Kenneth J. Gilhooly (1990), T. Goschke, D. Koppelberg (1991), Rebecca Kukla (1992), W. J. Thomas Mitchell (1994) und R. I. G. Hughes (1997).

 

Omnibuses were published by Daniel Guresako Bobrow, Allan Collins (1975), Jacques Mehler et al. (1982), Stuart Silvers (1989), Michael Lynch, Steve Woolgar (1990), Stephen P. Stich, Ted A. Warfield (1994) and Yosef Grodzinsky, Lewis P. Shapiro, David Swinney (2000).

 

Proceedings of important lecture series on the topics of reality, representation and model at the University of Bremen were edited by Hans Jörg Sandkühler from 1993 till 2003.

 

At the meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA) in 2002 in Milwaukee at the session on „Pragmatics of Scientific Representation“ spoke Ronald N. Giere, Mary S. Morgan, Mauricio Suárez, Andrea I. Woody and Bas C. van Fraassen (Sandra D. Mitchell 2004).

 

Of historical knowledge not very impressed are the very different uses of „representation“ e. g. by Stephen Michael Kosslyn, James R. Pomerantz (1977), John Robert Anderson (1978), Max Wartofsky (1979), Cesare Cornoldi et al. (1996), Michael A. Forrester (2000) and Elisabeth Cathérine Brouwer (2003).

 

For the „crisis of representation“ arising in the 1990 see:

Chap. 01: introduction – paragraph: „Model muddle“ and „crisis of representation“.

 

 

Bibliography

representation/ mental representation