Original Paper

Adaptive Behavior
21(3) 142–150
Ó The Author(s) 2013
Exorcising action oriented Reprints and permissions:
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representations: ridding cognitive DOI: 10.1177/1059712313482684
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science of its Nazgûl

Daniel Hutto

Abstract
This paper reviews two main strategies for dealing with the threat posed by radically enactive/embodied cognition to tra-
ditional cognitive science. Both strategies invoke action oriented representations (AORs). They differ in emphasizing dif-
ferent features of AORs in their attempt to answer the REC threat – focusing on their contents and vehicles,
respectively. The first two sections review the central motivations and rationales driving the ‘content’ and ‘format’ stra-
tegies in turn and raise initial concerns about the tenability of each. With respect to the ‘content’ strategy, these worries
ought to make us suspicious about the explanatory value of positing AORs. Although the ‘format’ strategy has a way of
answering this concern, it raises a more fundamental worry about the motivation for even believing in AORs in the first
place. Although these worries cast doubt on the feasibility of invoking AORs as a means of dealing with the REC threat,
they do not constitute conclusive reasons for eliminating AORs altogether. There are other, stronger reasons for sup-
posing that we should. The third section provides a sketch of a master argument, developed elsewhere, which makes
that case in full dress fashion. The final section – ‘Resurrection?’ – considers and rejects the possibility that AORs might
be resurrected, even if it is agreed that the master argument cited in the third section succeeds.

Keywords
Radical enactivism, action oriented representations, foundations of cognitive science

1 Introduction: the REC threat
The news is that ‘embodied cognition is sweeping the
planet’ (Adams, 2010, p. 619). It is now recognized that
‘Embodied cognitive science has become an industry’
(Alsmith & de Vignemont, 2012, p. 1). Even those who
most regret the growing popularity of embodied or
enactive cognition (hereafter EC) are prepared to
admit this.
Radicals insist that EC requires nothing short of a
root and branch reform of our thinking about the
nature of basic minds. They contend that basic minds
do not represent conditions that the world might be in.
To think otherwise, as many do, is to ascribe features
and characteristics to basic minds that belong only to
enculturated, scaffolded minds that are built atop them.
This assessment is in tune with the ambition of the
original version of EC. It was offered as an antidote to
those approaches to mind that ‘take representation as
their central notion’ (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch,
1991, p. 172). Pressing for revolutionary reform, defen-
ders of the most radical variants of EC – hereafter REC
– argue that the most basic kinds of activity do not
depend upon individuals retrieving informational con-
tent from the world – content that is then processed and
manipulated – in order to attribute properties to the
world (Hutto, 2011; Hutto & Myin, 2013; Ramsey,
2007; Thompson, 2007). As a result, REC denies that
fundamental forms of cognition, which include some of
its most interesting varieties, require individuals to con-
struct representations of their worlds.
Proponents of REC argue that the standard charac-
terizations of cognition and cognitive processes, in
terms of representation and computation, are mis-
guided. Representation and computation do not lie at
the heart of all cognition and do not form its basis.
Basic cognition – at least – is not content involving.
Dynamic interaction, exploration and engagement
with the environment, as opposed to forming passive
representations of that environment looks best placed
University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK
Corresponding author:
Daniel Hutto, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, AL10
9AB, UK.
Email: d.d.hutto@herts.ac.uk
Hutto
to explain a wide range of findings relating to active
perception and sensory substitution. It has led to
impressive successes in artificial intelligence stemming
from the creation of behaviour-based robots (Beer,
1998, 2000; Brooks, 1991a, 1991b). Citing these sorts
of developments it has been noted by the opposition
that fans of REC ‘claim that embodiment-related
empirical results support sweeping, negative conclu-
sions: that there are no amodal symbols; that there
are no arbitrary symbols; that functionalism is false;
that computationalism is false; and more’ (Rupert,
2011, p. 99).
REC has long been thought to pose a serious threat
to business-as-usual cognitive science (Mandik, 2005,
p. 290). Nor has the threat diminished over time. Quite
the opposite: more and more phenomena now seem to
call out for EC treatment and explanation. Even tradi-
tional opponents of EC now acknowledge that it is
widespread if not ubiquitous – that ‘there is substantial
evidence in support of the pervasive occurrence of
embodied cognition’ (Goldman, 2012, p. 80).
Taking embodied cognition seriously now seems
unavoidable, but many still seek to resist REC’s revolu-
tionary claims. This has led to the latter’s being nega-
tively compared with communism; its spectre is said to
haunt ‘the laboratories of cognitive science’ (Goldman
and de Vignemont, 2009, p. 154). It is not so much the
Red Threat that we need fear but the REC threat.
Many in the cognitive science community are con-
vinced that the REC threat can be dealt with fairly eas-
ily and that ‘a rather minor revision of the
representational theory will suffice to ward off the
threat’ (Mandik, 2005, p. 290). Others hold that deal-
ing with REC will require more substantial revisions to
current thinking but they hold, nevertheless, that any
such revisions will fall short of a wholesale revolution-
ary rethink. There are two main strategies for dealing
with REC:
A. Reject and defeat REC and EC outright – by
positing representations with special kinds of
contents.
B. Embrace and tame a moderate EC, while rejecting
REC outright – by positing representations with
special kinds of formats or vehicles.
Both of these strategies invoke Action Oriented
Representations (AORs) to do their dirty work. AORs
are unlike ordinary, detached representations in that
they are specially geared to drive specific sorts of
actions. AORs are assumed states or processes, local or
distributed, whose functional role is to indicate the pres-
ence of, and sometimes to ‘stand in’ for, states of affairs
in order to guide and drive certain kinds of action.
Strategies A and B differ in emphasizing different
features of AORs in their attempt to answer the REC
threat – focusing on their contents and vehicles,
143
respectively. The first two sections review the central
motivations and rationales driving the ‘content’ and
‘format’ strategies in turn and raise initial concerns
about the tenability of each. With respect to the ‘con-
tent’ strategy, these worries ought to make us suspicious
about the explanatory value of positing AORs.
Although the ‘format’ strategy has a way of answering
this concern, it raises a more fundamental worry about
the motivation for even believing in AORs in the first
place. Although these worries cast doubt on the feasibil-
ity of invoking AORs as a means of dealing with the
REC threat, they do not constitute conclusive reasons
for eliminating AORs altogether. There are other,
stronger reasons for supposing that we should. The
third section provides a sketch of a master argument,
developed elsewhere, which makes that case in full dress
fashion. The final section – ‘Resurrection?’ – considers
and rejects the possibility that AORs might be resur-
rected, even if it is agreed that the master argument
cited in the third section succeeds.
2 Dealing with the REC threat – the
‘content’ strategy
Sometimes belief in representationalism is sponsored
and made compelling by certain, deeply rooted philoso-
phical assumptions. For example, when Nanay (2013)
argues for the existence of AORs, which he calls prag-
matic representations, he makes a familiar move. He
insists that contentful representations are what make
actions actions. The existence of contentful mental
states as the immediate cause of an action is, he holds,
what distinguishes an action as an action, as opposed
to, say, a mere bodily movement, such as a reflex. More
precisely, it is the representational component of such
states of mind, in particular, that must be present in the
immediate mental antecedents of basic actions if they
are to be actions.1
Accordingly, Nanay (2013) assures from the arm-
chair, that it is true ‘by definition’ that pragmatic repre-
sentations are required if there are to be goal-directed
actions. Pragmatic representations have content in that
they represent the world as being in a certain way – and
their content is what is thought to guide agents in the
performance of actions. Considerations of this sort aim
to justify the idea that representational content of some
kind must lie behind any intelligent activity. There can
be no action without representational content.
When transferred to cognitive science, this philoso-
phical credo usually inspires explanatory proposals in
which motor commands, intentions or plans – content-
ful instructions – are claimed to enable successful
engagement with the environment. For example,
Goldman (2009) tells us that motor plans or intentions
are the sorts of mental states or events that are instan-
tiated in the activity of an agent’s brain when that
144
agent engages in manual actions, such as reaching or
grasping. For him, such mental states are:
propositional attitudes with contents of the form ‘let [my]
effector E perform motor act M with respect to goal-object
G’ . If something like this construal is right then premo-
tor activation in the execution mode has representational
content. (Goldman, 2009, p. 238)
But if representational contents are being posited in
order to meet a philosophical demand about what is
required for any bit of behaviour to count as an action
then there is a serious risk that such invocations will be
explanatorily hollow. Consider Nanay’s (2013) example
of the complexities of trying to kill a mosquito in a
hotel room. He recognizes that whatever representations
guide the agent’s bodily movements they will have to be
very sensitive to the momentary changes in the mosqui-
to’s whereabouts. Moreover, their contents will have to
be updated; a result of a direct feedback loop between
what the agent sees and does. Yet it is clear that if we
posit representational contents in this made-to-order
way, tailored to the specific need of each case solely in
order to satisfy certain philosophical demands then this
will be wholly empty as a means of addressing the
explanatory needs of cognitive scientists.
This would amount to providing ‘just so’ stories
about representational contents of just the right kind
and grain – contents that are conveniently postulated,
which have just the right properties to do the explana-
tory work. To insist that cognitive scientists have no
choice but to assume the existence of such representa-
tional contents on purely analytic grounds is to engage
in a sort of ‘jerry-mandering’. Making sport with Jerry
Fodor, Dennett and Steglich-Petersen (2008) define
jerry-mandering as the art of tailoring one’s metaphysics
to produce results convenient for the demands of one’s
philosophy of mind. The only difference, in this case, is
that ‘metaphysics’ is replaced by ‘cognitive science’.
Positing representational contents on the cheap can-
not serve the explanatory needs of cognitive scientists.
This is why ‘there are profound problems . with the
standard ploy invoked by movement physiologists [that
of assuming] ‘calculations’ that the brain (or part of it)
‘does’ . permit customisation of the programmes to
the singularities of the individual action’ (Tallis, 2003,
p. 65). In a nutshell, scientists recognize that:
The problem is to ascertain [A] how the many degrees of
freedom of the human motor system . can be regulated
by an internally represented algorithm . and [B] how the
motor plan copes with the ongoing interaction between
the motor system and [environmental factors]. (Araújo &
Davids, 2011, p. 12)
The cry lately, from many quarters, is not how else –
other than positing representations (e.g., motor plans
and commands) – could we possibly explain human
Adaptive Behavior 21(3)
manual activity? Rather the question is how can such
appeals provide illuminating explanations of basic
manual activity – e.g., reaching and grasping for
objects?
This is hardly surprising given that all that supports
the conviction that there must be mental states with
contents is a philosophical stipulation about what
makes actions actions. This is what Nanay (2013)
thinks provides ‘a clear and conclusive reason’ for attri-
buting pragmatic representations. In line with this rule,
an agent’s behaviour cannot be explained without
assuming such representations guide action. If this is all
that fans of Strategy A have to offer it explains why
‘despite the fact that one can cook up a representa-
tional story once one has the dynamical explanation,
the representational gloss does not predict anything
about the system’s behaviour that could not be pre-
dicted by dynamical explanation alone’ (Chemero,
2009, p. 77).2
In sum, this version of Strategy A acerbates rather
than addresses the worry that ‘talk of representations
[at least in] coupled systems may be too cheap, or too
arbitrary, and thus adds little or nothing to an explana-
tion of how these systems work’ (Shapiro, 2011,
p. 147).
But all is not lost. There is a more substantial and
empirically more credible AOR proposal that avoids
some of the problems that face the version of Strategy
A cited above. It has been posited that online interac-
tions involve emulator mechanisms – devices that use
information about a system’s plans and commands,
combining it with other information – e.g., about posi-
tions and trajectories of limbs – in order to provide pre-
dictions that inform and guide actions. In the standard
versions of emulator theory, the information about a
system’s plans or commands is thought to come in the
form of efference copies of the content of motor com-
mands or plans.
So, on this sort of account, AORs are playing a
much more interesting and empirically credible expla-
natory role. Efference copies are AORs because they
are ‘representations that include in their contents com-
mands for certain behaviours’ (Mandik, 2005, p. 285).
Moreover, ‘Efference copies inherit their representa-
tional contents from the motor commands that they are
copies of’ (Mandik, 2005, p. 293, emphasis added).
Positing AORs as part of forward models in this way
goes some way to address concerns about how repre-
sentational content might play a genuine role in guiding
behaviour as well as putting some meat on the bones in
explaining how the motor system manages its complex
interactions with the environment. Yet, even assuming
that this constitutes progress, there is yet another, much
more fundamental and general problem with Strategy
A. For even if we allow that representations might play
a relevant explanatory role how could such contents
qua contents ‘guide and direct’ motor activity?
Hutto
Strategy A lays stress on the explanatory value of
special AOR contents. This approach takes seriously
the idea that the explanatory work is being done by
descriptive or imperative contents (or some combina-
tion of the two, namely pushmi-pullyu representations –
see Clark, 1997). Such contents are understood to be
analogues of the content of linguistic utterances. This is
to lean on the seemingly unproblematic idea that
‘Information encoded by [sensory systems] can be
relayed to and decoded by motor systems responsible
for steering the creature’ (Mandik, 2005, p. 291).
Crucially, according to this story it is the message not
the medium that matters.
This is to take for granted that contents can play a
causal part in informing and guiding action. But the
contents of representations do not make a causal differ-
ence, only formal or vehicular properties do. Let us
assume, for the sake of argument, that representation-
alism and computationalism are true. Even so, this ver-
sion of the AOR story runs into deep trouble because:
‘Computers are formal machines, in the sense that they
operate on symbols in virtue of the form of the symbol,
not in virtue of how the symbol may be interpreted’
(Churchland & Churchland, 1990, p. 303). Content
does not matter since ‘the machine goes from one state
to another because it is caused to do so . without ref-
erence to whatever semantic properties our cognitive
states may or may not have’ (Churchland &
Churchland, 1990, p. 303). Thus, as noted long ago, it
seems that ‘the honest answer is the one Stich gives:
[Content] doesn’t do any work, so forget it’ (Cummins,
1991, p. 124). The same verdict will apply, mutatis
mutandis, even if one assumes non-computational vehi-
cles and processes. If this is correct, then information-
ally sensitive but contentless interactions will turn out
to be both necessary and sufficient to explain how
behaviour is guided. No ghostly contents need apply.
3 Dealing with the REC threat – the
‘format’ strategy
Again, all is not lost. Strategy B also posits AORs. The
difference is that Strategy B focuses on the special vehi-
cular properties of AORs in order to acknowledge ‘the
profound contributions that embodiment and embed-
ding make’ (Clark, 2008a, p. 45). This avoids the prob-
lem of mental causation – that of having to explain
how content could play a causal role – which cripples
all Strategy A approaches. Doing so is, however, con-
sistent with acceptance of the general idea that inner
states bear contents.
So, it turns out that AORs are not easy to kill off.
Indeed, like the Nazgûl – the undead monsters of
Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – they (and their con-
tents) are able to survive by finding new shapes to wear
145
and new vehicles to ride. EC would cease to be a threat
if it involves special representational or information-
carrying or content-generating vehicles or formats. Such
vehicles may be thought to reach across brain, body and
environment (Clark, 1997, 2008a, 2008b; Wheeler, 2005,
2008). Or they might be wholly neural. Taking up the
latter idea, a number of theorists now posit body-
formatted representations (Gallese & Sinigaglia, 2011;
Goldman, 2012). Either way, this is an attempt to pro-
vide a moderate EC – a conservative enactive/embodied
cognition (CEC). For example, as its proponents see it,
to accommodate EC important adjustments must be
made to current thinking about the nature of representa-
tional vehicles (and not just contents), hence this requires
developing a new set of theoretical tools. Proponents of
CEC are motivated to posit AORs with special vehicular
properties as a way of addressing the ‘real danger’ that
‘the explanatory utility of representation talk may eva-
porate altogether’ (Wheeler, 2005, p. 200).
Although the worries raised in what follows applies
to all Strategy B AORs across the board, I focus on
B-formatted representations as the representative case.
This is because Goldman (2012) claims that not only
can AORs of this sort make EC safe from the REC
threat, he also believes that they hold the promise of
unifying EC. By his lights ‘it is time to converge on a
single approach – the B-format approach – as a unify-
ing and comprehensive one, rather than persist with the
dispiriting balkanisation of embodiment theory’
(Goldman, 2012, p. 85). Goldman assumes B-formatted
representations operate with a special code, yet he
admits that ‘There is no generally accepted treatment
of what it is to be such a mental code, and little if any-
thing has been written about the criteria of sameness or
difference for such codes. Nonetheless, it’s a very
appealing idea, to which many cognitive scientists sub-
scribe’ (Goldman, 2012, p. 73).
Gallese and Sinigaglia adopt a similar view. Laying
stress on the way bodily formatted representations are
encoded they tell us that ‘a representational format is
typically associated with characteristic processing pro-
files. These profiles (motor, viscero-motor and somato-
sensory) characterize a bodily formatted representation,
distinguishing it from, say, a propositional representa-
tion, even in the presence of (partially) overlapping con-
tent’ (Gallese & Sinigaglia, 2011, p. 100).
Goldman (2012) restricts the notion of a B-for-
matted representation further. For him, not only do
they have special formats, they have a particular sub-
ject matter too.
Many codes in the mind/brain represent states of the sub-
ject’s own body, indeed, represent them from an internal
perspective. Proprioception and kinesthesis give the brain
information – couched, presumably, in distinctive formats –
about states of one’s own muscles, joints, and limb posi-
tions. These interoceptive senses are the basis for B-formats
146
of representation. One’s own body, or selected parts
thereof, is what they primarily, or fundamentally, represent.
(p. 73)
According to Goldman B-formatted representations
have a specific kind of content and a distinctive format
for interfacing directly with certain machinery of mind.
His idea is that special vehicles – namely vehicles that
can only be used by particular kinds of mental machin-
ery – carry special contents. But this avoids the worry
raised at the end of the previous section because it is the
vehicular properties that do the explanatory heavy lift-
ing. B-formatted representations stand out precisely
because they cannot be used by just any cognitive sys-
tems. Apparently, this explains why there is such a per-
vasive phenomenon of neural re-use; recruiting neural
circuits to new types of uses. Cases of this include the
family of mirroring phenomena (motor mirroring, mir-
roring of emotions and sensations) in which motoric
formats are redeployed for social cognition tasks. But
there is also the re-use of circuits associated with motor
control functions in higher-level tasks of language com-
prehension (Pulvermuller, 2005; Glenberg & Kaschak,
2002) and, also, the re-use of motor control circuits for
memory tasks (Hubbard et al., 2005). Neural redeploy-
ment or re-use occurs because it is the only way that
certain representational contents can be effective in cog-
nition. This is because those contents cannot be sepa-
rated from their special kinds of vehicles or formats.
Despite it being impossible to separate these special
contents from their special vehicles, this proposal nev-
ertheless retains the idea that there is a logical distinc-
tion between B-formatted contents and vehicles.
Presumably, B-formatted contents could be decoded
and re-formatted, in principle if not in practice. Yet if
we accept that contents cannot, as a matter of fact, ever
be separated from their special formats or vehicles,
what motivates drawing the vehicle/content distinction
any longer? After all, it was originally motivated by the
capacity to samesay in language – expressing the same
content – using different linguistic vehicles. The claim
that contents exist is traditionally motivated by noting
that when one says ‘It is snowing’ in English and ‘Il
neige’ in French, one says the same thing. Making an
ontological head count, based on this simple observa-
tion, it looks as if we have three things here: two well-
formed, complex linguistic utterances – each hailing
from different natural languages – and one meaningful
propositional content that is expressed by both.
Imagining the vehicles of mental content to be some
sort of sentence preserves the idea of samesaying, but
positing B-formatted representations brings it into
question. In doing so, it questions what could motivate
us to continue assuming that these special formats or
vehicles bear contents at all? Although it is logically
possible to insist that they do, there is no compelling
reason to imagine this to be the case any longer. Of
Adaptive Behavior 21(3)
course, not doing so has consequences. For if we aban-
don the idea that such vehicles carry content then the
vehicle/content distinction collapses and we are led into
the arms of REC. Can we force this result?
4 The master argument
In light of the analyses of the previous sections it
appears that the only plausible way to resist REC on
today’s market is to adopt some version of the AOR
‘format’ strategy. Although that strategy renders con-
tents explanatorily hollow and superfluous, it does not
surrender the idea that there are contents. But what jus-
tifies and motivates retention of the general idea of
representational vehicles that bear contents? Apparently
the anodyne assumption that ‘minds are basically pro-
cessors of information; cognitive devices [for] receiving,
storing, retrieving, modifying and transmitting informa-
tion of various kinds’ (Branquinho, 2001, p. xii–xiii).
Call this the Informational Assumption.
Not only does the Informational Assumption pro-
vide a rationale for retaining a notion of content it
appears to provide the basis for raising a formidable
problem for REC. Some have held that REC’s rejection
of the idea that basic minds are contentful commits the
cardinal sin of leaving it without a tenable ‘mark of the
cognitive’. REC fails, so it is claimed, to recognize that
cognition is, essentially, ‘grounded in processes of infor-
mation extraction, transformation and use’ (Clark,
2008b, p. 19). Call this the Information-Processing
Challenge. Note that it turns, crucially, on the further
assumption that information entails content.
The only way for REC to avoid this counter threat
and rid cognitive science of its Nazgûl, once and for all,
is to make the ultimate move; to undermine any justifi-
cation for believing in informational content of the sort
needed by REC’s opponents. This is the equivalent of
throwing the one ring into the fires of Mount Doom. If
successful, this move changes everything. Hutto and
Myin (2013) attempt just such a masterstroke, offering
an argument – which goes beyond establishing that we
‘don’t need’ content to explain many forms of basic
cognitive activity.
Hutto and Myin (2013) identify a crippling problem,
the Hard Problem of Content, that confronts anyone
hoping that the mainstream naturalized theories of con-
tent might justify believing in non-linguistic mental con-
tent. Explanatory naturalists with this ambition seek to
explain how it is that mental representations possess
their contentful properties by appeal to nothing but
undisputed natural phenomena, e.g., causation, nomic
dependencies or biological functions.
Understanding the challenge the Hard Problem of
Content presents requires getting clear about what
drives the naturalist’s project of explaining content and
the conditions imposed on it. That enterprise requires
Hutto
that mental content be explained without making any
appeal to features of our linguistic activities and prac-
tices. This is because the major philosophical motiva-
tion for seeking to naturalize content is the assumption
that linguistic contents derive wholly from and are
explained by properties of the mental representations
that underwrite them. In this light, the naturalistic task
becomes the restricted one of explaining how, and not
merely presupposing that, mental representations pos-
sess their contents. For the reason just given, this must
be done by appeal to wholly non-linguistic factors.
Most mainstream naturalized theories of representa-
tional content assume the existence of informational
content as a starting point (Dretske, 1988; Fodor,
2008). Proponents of these theories acknowledge that
informational content does not suffice to explain full-
fledged representational content. Nevertheless, the exis-
tence of such content plays an important part in these
theories, serving as a platform for their representational
accounts to build upon.
So as not to violate naturalism the hypothesized infor-
mational content is conceived in terms of covariance.
Setting aside complications about scope and context, the
notion of information relied upon is understood strictly
by appeal to the following bi-conditional: s’s being F
‘carries information about’ t’s being H iff the occurrence
of these states of affairs lawfully covary.
This notion of information is assumed wholly inno-
cent because it is accepted ‘in many areas of scientific
investigation as when it is said that a footprint or a fin-
gerprint carries information about the individual whose
footprint or fingerprint it is. In this sense, it may also
be said that a fossil carries information about a past
organism. The number of tree rings in a tree trunk car-
ries information about the age of the tree’ (Jacob, 1997,
p. 45). The following quotation from Dretske makes
clear the foundational role that information is meant to
play in such theories:
In the beginning there was information. The word came
later . information (though not meaning) [is] an objective
commodity, something whose generation, transmission
and reception do not require or in any way presuppose
interpretative processes. One is therefore given a frame-
work for understanding how meaning can evolve, how
genuine cognitive systems – those with the resources for
interpreting signals, holding beliefs, acquiring knowledge –
can develop out of lower-order, purely physical,
information-processing mechanisms . Meaning, and the
constellation of mental attitudes that exhibit it, are manu-
factured products. The raw material is information.
(Dretske, 1988, p. vii)
The Hard Problem exposes that presupposing the exis-
tence of informational content is at odds with explana-
tory naturalism. The root trouble is that, by itself,
covariance does not constitute, entail or suffice for the
existence of content. Content has special features – for
147
there to be content there must be specified conditions of
satisfaction such that there is true or accurate content
wherever the conditions specified are, in fact, instan-
tiated. If this is correct, and covariance is the only scien-
tifically respectable notion of information that can do
the work required by explanatory naturalists, then it
follows that we have no explanation of how informa-
tional content exists in nature (or how it could do so
independently from and prior to the existence of certain
linguistic practices). Thus to the extent that explanatory
naturalists rely on the notion of informational content
as a platform for their theories, their project is doomed
from the start. For without a naturalistic theory of
informational content such accounts have no basis upon
which to build, supplementary, naturalized theories of
representational content.
By challenging the idea that covariance is any kind
of informational content, the Hard Problem of Content
shows that because they conflate information-as-
covariance with informational-content many explana-
tory naturalists in fact lack the basic resources even to
begin explaining non-linguistic mental content.
Moreover, it can be shown that abandoning the idea
that such content is needed as a platform and sticking
to accounts that appeal only to the existence of devices
that have the biological function of responding to non-
contentful covariances supports non-representational-
ism, not representational theories of mind (for full
details, see Hutto & Myin, 2013, ch. 4).
There are, of course, various ways of responding to
the dilemma posed by the Hard Problem of Content.
One move is to try to avoid the dilemma’s horns by
demonstrating that covariance does – in fact – consti-
tute content. This would justify assuming the existence
of informational content that comes before and below
the existence of systems that use it in a way that is con-
sistent with explanatory naturalism after all. Failing
that one might hope to defuse the threat posed by the
Hard Problem by locating another, equally credible sci-
entific candidate for understanding informational con-
tent – a notion other than covariance – in order to show
the idea of such content is in good naturalistic standing.
There is reason to suspect neither move will be success-
ful (for further discussion of this point, see Hutto &
Myin, 2013, ch. 4).
In the face of this, one might bite the bullet and sim-
ply posit the existence of informational content while
foregoing the explanatorily naturalistic project. This
might take the form of assuming, without explanation,
that facts (including correspondences between facts) just
are informational contents. Thus it might be assumed
that contents are somehow identical with their own con-
ditions of satisfaction. Perhaps they somehow both spe-
cify and realize their conditions of satisfaction in the
absence of thinkers. Accordingly, informational con-
tents might be assumed primitive, unexplained features
of reality itself. However, there is a price to pay for
148
taking this sort of line. It is not obvious that this pro-
posal is compatible with physicalism. Still, it might be
compatible with some kind of unexplanatory natural-
ism. For example, informational content might be an
irreducible property of fundamental reality, having a
status similar to that of qualia in Chalmers’ system.
While logically possible, there is a high price for making
this move.
Yet another option – the least costly one – is simply
to acknowledge that states of affairs that lawfully co-
vary are not, by themselves, informational contents
and to accept that such covariance does not suffice for,
or otherwise entail the existence of, informational con-
tents. This is entirely consistent with accepting that the
only scientifically respectable notion of information is
the notion of information-as-covariance. If this is
accepted then it follows that sensitivity to information,
understood in terms of covariance alone, is not sensitiv-
ity to informational contents. Accordingly, basic cogni-
tion need not be content-involving.
Adopting this last option does not mean giving up
on the idea that basic cognition takes the form of sys-
tems engaging in informationally sensitive interactions
with environmental offerings. Rather it is to understand
such engagements in terms of systems being sensitive to
covariant information that is not itself contentful. Nor
does basic cognition involve picking up and processing
informational contents. Cognitive systems cannot ‘pick
up’ or ‘take in’ any informational contents if there are
no informational contents there in the world, indepen-
dent of systems, to take in.
In all, it seems there is no scientific justification for
thinking that informational or representational con-
tents exist in nature – or rather there is no justification
for thinking that they exist in nature independently
from, and prior to, the existence of certain social prac-
tices. If there is no scientific justification for thinking
that informational content exists in nature (in the
qualified sense), then there are no compelling grounds
for thinking that cognitive systems literally traffic in
informational contents or are otherwise content-
involving.
Thus the Hard Problem of Content at once defuses
the counter threat to REC and presents its opponents
with a serious challenge. If the master argument, only
presented here in the most basic sketch, works then it
should encourage us to set cognitive science free of
monsters of its own making.
5 Resurrection?
As with all good horror stories, the apparent end of the
tale is never usually the actual end. So isn’t there a
chance that mental representations might still return –
even if the master argument described above is assumed
to work?
Adaptive Behavior 21(3)
Consider the emulator theory version of the AOR
proposal once more. Its fans have argued against REC
that ‘physical actions are often guided by representa-
tion of feedback . so even simple actions cannot be
explained without positing representations’ (Machery,
2009, p. 222). Indeed, its originators make a direct criti-
cism of REC in recent writings, insisting that ‘the enac-
tive approach . is unworkable unless it makes appeal
to representations’ (Foglia & Grush, 2011, p. 36). The
key to this objection is the idea that according to emu-
lation theory agents must be making use of internal
models of some sort, where a model is ‘something, M,
is a model of X (for some agent A) if A can use M as a
stand-in for X’ (Foglia & Grush, p. 42). On this view,
it is the manipulation of models that, at least in part,
enables off-line cognition.
Suppose this turns out to be right, as looks likely;
there is strong empirical support for the existence of feed
forward models in human cognition (e.g., Chemero,
2009; Mandik, 2005). Yet even if some version of emula-
tor theory turns out to be true this would not be an
unqualified problem for REC. For on close inspection
this would only license the conclusion that ‘the enactive
approach . is unworkable unless it makes appeal to
representations, understood in a particular way. Not
understood as pictures, to be sure. Or sentences for that
matter. But those aren’t the only options’ (Foglia &
Grush, 2011, p. 36, emphasis added).
The need to expand beyond the standard analogies
has been stressed by other fans of model theory too.
Thus Ryder (2006) writes: ‘Rather than taking indica-
tors (Dretske, 1988, 1995), or pictures, or words to be
the analogue of mental representation, I believe that
neuroscience and psychology recommend that we adopt
the representational paradigm of models’ (p. 121). But
what might this involve? Ryder explicates:
. representation in models is a functional property –
mere isomorphism is insufficient. A rocky outcrop that
happens to be isomorphic to the Spirit of St. Louis does
not represent the Spirit of St. Louis because the isomorph-
ism in question is not a normative one – the rock is not
supposed to be isomorphic to the Spirit of St. Louis. A
model represents because it has the function of mirroring
or being isomorphic to some other structure. (Ryder,
2006, p. 122)
This looks plausible enough but it raises crucial ques-
tions: Do these so-called model ‘representations’ have
content? What would it mean to say they do? Do the
elements of the model ‘stand for’ something, or do they
only ‘stand in for’ something, or ‘stand in relation to’
something? Do they exhibit ‘reference’, ‘aboutness’ or
merely ‘ofness’? Can the relational properties of such
models, should there be any, be explained by covaria-
tional properties playing a special kind of teleologically
defined functional role? If so, REC can easily
Hutto
accommodate models under its auspices as being offi-
cially contentlesss in the relevant sense of that notion.
Wouldn’t such models – even if contentless in the
relevant sense – still count as representations? Rupert
(2011) thinks so. He proposes that:
One might best treat a mental representation as an element
in a psychological model that can be paired with another
element in the model, such that (1) the former is mapped
onto a state internal to the target cognitive system, (2) the
former bears, according to the model, some kind of privi-
leged relation to the latter (e.g., the latter reliably causes the
activation of the former or the former tracks the presence
of the latter), and (3) the relation referred to in (2) plays a
role in successful applications of the model to target (psy-
chological) systems (that is, in the explanation of the intel-
ligent behavior of the target system). (p. 101, emphasis
added).
Why not simply accept this diluted notion of represen-
tation? Couldn’t we just go along with Rupert and call
anything that meets the minimal criteria he cites a rep-
resentation? Well, we could. We could just say that
representations are a label for whatever best charac-
terizes and explains cognition – just as we might say
that ‘perceptual representations are whatever psycholo-
gists of perception say perception involves’ (Machery,
2009, p. 110). But, we should beware vacuous
scholasticism.
To adopt some kind of teleofunctional account is
probably the way of explicating much basic online cog-
nition, even where this involves emulation processes.
But making this move is too weak to yield a robust
account of contentful representation (Hutto, 2011;
Hutto & Myin, 2013). Defending representationalism
by diluting it and abandoning its stronger commitment
to semantic content risks making the debate between
representationalists and their opponents insubstantial
and scientifically uninteresting. So it looks like even if
we accept that cognition involves some kind of model
making this is not enough to resurrect or bring back
representational contents, and cognitive science remains
safe from such monsters. At least, that seems the right
conclusion for now.
Notes
1. Adding a specific proposal about the source of such con-
tent, Mandik (2005) makes a similar proposal defining
action oriented representations as ‘any representation
whose content is determined, in whole or in part, by
involving states whose teleofunction is to be the causal
antecedents of actions’ (Mandik, 2005, p. 293).
2. It would also go some distance in explaining why ‘there is
wide-spread invoking of so-called representational states
by theorists who, in reality, neither need nor use actual
representational states in their explanatory frameworks’
(Ramsey, 2007, p. 222).
149
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the audience of the Philosophy and Cognitive
Science Graduate Workshop, held at Macquarie University’s
Centre for Cognition and its Disorders, Sydney, for their use-
ful feedback on this paper.
Funding
This work was supported by the Australian Research Council
Discovery Project, ‘Embodied Virtues and Expertise’ (DP:
1095109); the Marie-Curie Initial Training Network, ‘TESIS:
Towards an Embodied Science of InterSubjectivity’ (FP7-
PEOPLE-2010-ITN, 264828); and the (Ministerio de
Economı́a e innovación) Spanish Department of Economy
and Innovation: ‘Agency, Normativity and Identity: the
Presence of the Subject in Actions’ (FFI-2011-25131).
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About the Author

Daniel D Hutto is professor of philosophical psychology at the University of Hertfordshire.
He is the editor and author of many books including Folk Psychological Narratives (2008)
and co-author of Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds without Content (2013). A special
yearbook entitled Radical Enactivism, which focuses on his philosophy of intentionality, phe-
nomenology and narrative, was published in 2006. He is a chief co-investigator for the
Australian Research Council ‘Embodied Virtues and Expertise’ project (2010–2013) and col-
laborator in the Marie Curie Action ‘Towards an Embodied Science of Intersubjectivity’ ini-
tial training network (2011–2015) and the ‘Agency, Normativity and Identity’ project (2012–
2015) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Innovation and Research.