Why does cognitivism insist on representations and enactivism insist on non-representations? Is there something subtle going on that isn't obvious?
I'm reading 'Catching Ourselves in the Act' and it sure as hell adamant that there are no-representations in cognition. amazon.com/Catching-Ourse…
We all have the intuitive notion that a simulation is not the same as the real thing. Why? Because our intuition tells us that something that emulates how something looks (i.e. representation) is not the same as the real thing.
Representations are descriptions of things. They are facsimiles of things. Mental representations are facsimiles of things. But when we turn a knob to open a door, we don't create mental representations of the knob and the door.
We only have models of expectations of how a knob or a door should behave. We anticipate behavior out of habit. We might say that we have a model of the knob and the door to explain this, but this is purely a speculative explanation.
Now we can imagine on our own how to turn a door knob to open a door. But that's not the same mental effort as actually opening a door by turning its knob. This imagination is reflective cognition. Essentially, mental simulation and not actual doing.
Representations are useful for explaining things to ourselves as well as others. But we do not use representations when doing things.
Ask yourself, what is the representation of the act of imagining turning a door knob to open a door. Do we not just have an infinite regress problem? That is imagining oneself by imagining oneself?
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