Learning

Another influential answer to the question of what makes something the function of a representation is Dretske’s learning model (Dretske, 1981).

In teaching someone the concept red, we show the pupil variously colored objects at reasonably close range and under normal illumination. That is, we exhibit the colored objects under conditions in which information about their color is transmitted…This is why we cannot teach someone the colors if we put the objects 400 yards away…This is why we do not carry out such training in the dark, or under abnormal illumination…In the learning situation special care is taken to see that the incoming signals have an intensity, a strength, sufficient unto delivering the required piece of information to the learning subject. If the lights are too dim, they are turned up. If the objects…are too far away, they are brought closer. If the subject needs his glasses, they are provided (1981, pp. 194-195).

According to this model, an M thought has the function of indicating Ms because of a learning period wherein the representer is trained to token M- thoughts in M instances. The crucial part here is that during the learning period, a teacher ensures that the causal correlation of M thoughts to Ms in the fledgling representer becomes increasingly robust by ensuring optimal conditions obtain during the learning period.

3.5.1 Normal Conditions Again?

One worry about this account is its seeming reliance on normal conditions. It is the teacher’s job to ensure that e.g. the lighting is good and the relevant objects are not too far way, etc. If these teacher-insured normal conditions do any theoretical lifting, worries similar to the ones raised above (about normal conditions) apply. One worry was that the list of normal conditions would turn out to be rather long, and this would mean a lot of work on the part of the teacher—ensuring all conditions are met during the learning process. Fodor’s concerns (1992, pp. 42 - 44) about finding some principled means of excluding the set of normal conditions from the content of a given representation (sect. 3.3.3 above), and about finding some non-arbitrary means of saying what counts as the normal condition versus the content (sect. 3.3.5 above) apply here too. Moreover, the learning model would need to say something about how we come to have concepts with no worldly extension. For instance, how exactly do we determine the normal conditions for the correct learning of the concept dragon?

3.5.2 A Worry About Naturalism

Relatedly, one might ask how the teacher goes about determining what conditions are optimal for learning a particular concept. That is, why would the teacher think that a particular lighting condition would be most conducive to producing content causes of red thoughts? Presumably, the teacher surveys the conditions under which s/he has red caused red thoughts and duplicates them for the student. The problem here is that this move appears to put things backwards. Rather than getting representations from normal conditions, we are constructing normal conditions from representations. What was sought here was a naturalistic theory of

intentionality/representation—a theory that explained the target phenomenon without appeal to semantic/intentional terms. The hope was that by invoking the notion of the function of a representation, and having this function be determined by a learning period in which a teacher ensures the conditions are conducive to learning a particular concept, we could sort out genuine content causes from misrepresentations. The problem, however, is that the conducive conditions appealed to in our explanation are derived from the representations of the teacher, and so we have not done away with semantic/intentional terms after all.

3.5.3 A Worry About Intentional Smuggling

In a similar vein, Fodor too charges this account with smuggling in intentional items (Fodor, 1992, pp. 41-42). Fodor’s objection runs thus: Assume the learning period is over, and the new graduate tokens a dog thought as a result of encountering a fox. Given that the learning period has established a law-like connection between dogs and dog thoughts, and this instance is one that fails to instantiate the law, we have a case of misrepresentation: the new graduate has mistaken a fox for a dog. So far, so good. However, given that a fox caused a dog thought at time T (where T=the moment after graduation), it seems likely that it would have caused the same thought at time T-1 (i.e. right before graduation). But then what licenses our

classifying this event as a misrepresentation? That is, if a fox would have caused a dog thought during the learning period, why is the content of a dog thought dog rather than (dog or fox)?

One response here, on behalf of the causal teleological theorist, is that had this event occurred during the learning period, the teacher would have corrected the student. But such a response is not open to the naturalist: As

mentioned above, Fodor’s point about invoking the intentions of the teacher as an essential part of the explanation of how representations get their content appears to apply.

3.5.4 Evolution as an Inappropriate Tool

While highly implausible, someone determined on the learning model might argue that rather than relying on his/her own representations in order to glean the conditions most conducive to learning, the teacher actually gets these conditions by appeal to something like design conditions.43 _{On this}

line, the teacher tries to replicate the conditions under which a particular causal-intentional relation was selected for by natural selection.

Or, as in the case with Dretske’s later work (see Dretske, 1997, p. ch.1), we might dispense with the notion of a teacher, allowing that there is a perfectly clear sense in which being designed for (i.e. designed to indicate, represent) does not imply a designer. In other words, perhaps evolution alone can do the job of determining the function of X. Dretske seems to think so, at least with respect to what he calls “natural representation” (1997, pp. 7-8). For Dretske, the senses, for instance “…have information-providing functions, biological functions, they derive from their evolutionary history (1997, p. 7).” Evolution has imbued the senses with the function of carrying information to the organism whose senses they are. Olfaction, for instance, has the function of carrying chemical information about the environment in which an organism finds itself.

The worry here is an extension of those I raised in the context of natural selection theories. Because natural selection can confer a survival advantage

on misrepresenters, it can likewise determine that the design conditions are those under which the misrepresentation takes place. To use our previous example, the design conditions under which our ancestors were caused to have their cougar thoughts may be precisely those conditions under which they were caused to have cougar thoughts by bears on dark nights. So, design conditions may be ill equipped to establish the law-like correlation between cougar thoughts and cougars required. Again, there are probably a whole host of possible responses here, and I cannot hope to address them all. However, abstracting a bit, we might say that evolution, as a system designer, does not carve out the evolutionary history of an organism along semantic lines such as satisfaction, accuracy, or truth; it is blind to failures such as misrepresentation and falsity. Evolution is a process concerned solely with continuation and adaptation. If getting things representationally wrong ensures the continuation of a species, then evolution rewards falsity. I am not saying that we could not construct a theory that takes evolutionary success as the mark of veracity, but such a theory would imply a pseudo- Machiavellian semantics—taking evolutionary success as the only justification for our attributions of truth, falsity, accuracy, etc. And I doubt that any of the theories under discussion would endorse such a move. The point, to repeat, is that evolution seems like a tool better equipped to reward adaptability than veracity.