Roberto Schwarz - The Problems of Representation

"The"
Problems of
/ BY ROBERT
Representation* , / SCHWARTZ
1 N a letter soliciting papers for this volume the editor posed

four questions to the contributors: (1) What is the problem of
representation? (2) Why is it important? (3) What reasons are
there for believing one particular construction of the problem
or proposals for a solution of the problem is preferable? (4)
What constructions and proposed solutions to the problems
are ill-conceived? Clearly, it would be impossible here to cover
all these issues in depth. On the other hand, to say only a little
on each topic increases the risk of saying nothing at all. I
intend to run this risk. My plan is to sketch an answer to the
first question that will provide a framework for getting a
better grip on questions 2, 3, and 4. Put briefly, my thesis is
that there is not one problem of representation but many. A
good number of these problems are well-motivated, theoreti-
cally interesting, and have empirical consequences. Neverthe-
less, some of the more fashionable problems, often the subject
of heated debate, are not. Little of significance hangs on how
they are resolved.1
Perhaps the least controversial claim that can be made on the
topic of representation is that humans can master systems of
1 This paper is an attempt to relate and spell out some of the implications of several
different claims I have argued for in more detail elsewhere. For a defense, rather
than, as here, a mere statement of the claims, I am relying on these earlier papers, in
particular: "Talk to the Animals" (with Margaret Atherton) in H. Wilder and
J. DeLuce, eds., Language in Primates (New York: Springer- Verlag, 1983); "Imagery:
There's More to It than Meets the Eye," in N. Block, ed., Imagery (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1982); and "Review of R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature," Journal of
Philosophy 80 (January 1983).
SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Winter 1984)
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1048 SOCIAL RESEARCH
representation and that these systems play an important role in

thought and communication. It is, after all, hard to see how we
could have very rich or abstract beliefs, desires, plans, and
hopes if we lacked the ability to embody them in symbolic
forms. And it is harder still to see how human life could be what
it is without the use of symbols for enhancing social interaction
and for preserving and transmitting our intellectual heritage.
But if it is obvious that symbol systems and symbolic skills
are important to human life, it is equally obvious that there is
much about them we do not understand. In the study of
natural language, for example, we not only lack satisfactory
syntactic, semantic, and phonological characterizations of indi-
vidual languages, we are not even sure what the phenomena
are that theories of meaning, reference, and communication
should attempt to explain. An endless variety of challenging
questions remain too about the nature of language acquisition,
about the psychological and physiological processes that
underlie speech and comprehension, about the pragmatic
features governing language use, etc., etc. What's more, the
list of interesting problems concerning representation and
representational competence grows tremendously once we
consider symbol systems other than natural languages. Pic-
tures, graphs, gestures, maps, gauges, slide rules, diagrams,
models, and music notation are just a few of the myriad of
symbol systems in widespread use. In all of these cases, we are
a long way from an adequate understanding of their
structure, function, acquisition, and processing. So serious
problems about representation abound, too numerous to
mention, and new ones surely will arise as research pro-
gresses.2 Still, many of the controversies over animal language
use, imagery, and infant development, as well as more global
concerns about the "nature" of mind or the need for and
distinctiveness of "information processing" or "computational"
2 For recent discussions of some of these problems see, for example, E. H. Gom-
brich, The Image and the Eye (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), and
Catherine Elgin, With Reference to Reference (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983).
"THE" PROBLEMS 1049
theories of mental activity, seem to me to get bogged down in

an array of issues less worth pursuing.
To begin, I see little to be gained in arguing over what it is
for a system to "really" be a language. Nor do I find plausible
the assumption that frequently underlies these debates - that,
unless a system is languagelike or has propositional structure,
it cannot function in cognition or is not an indication of
"thought" or "mental" processing. Representational systems
come in a wide variety of forms. Some are analog, some
digital, some neither. Some are notational, others are not.
Some have semantically relevant syntactic structure; others
have nothing comparable. Perfectly good systems of repre-
sentation lack features crucial to the function of natural lan-
guages, while displaying properties and principles not found
in natural languages. It is only unhelpful dogma to assume
that the concepts and tools of analysis found fruitful in char-
acterizing natural languages (e.g., an alphabet, distinct discrete
vocabulary units, logical connectives, componential semantic
structure and syntax) must have a place in describing all sys-
tems of representation. Of course, understanding any symbol
system requires mastering the forms of interpretation that
govern its function. Symbols without interpretation are blind.
We must know how to "read" pictures, graphs, models, and
gauges if we are to get anything out of them. But it is again
dogma to insist that mastery of such systems depends on
decoding them into or encoding them from more languagelike
formats.
Translation or encoding into propositional form will, need-

less to say, be necessary if the only way one can think of to test
understanding is to pose questions in a natural language and
await a linguistic response. This in no way entails, however,
that such translation is required in general in order for the
symbol to serve in the aid of deliberation, enhance judgment,
or guide behavior. The police sketch of the suspect functions
in cognition and communication independent of any decom-
position of "what it says" into words, statements, or discrete
bits of information, while the pilot may better display her

understanding of the dials and flashing lights in landing the
plane than in answering true/false questions based on the
readings.
If the existence of representational systems that lack the
structure of ordinary languages is apparent, where one draws
the line between linguistic and other symbol systems is more
elusive. The notion of a "language" is not a presystematically
clear one. Nor is it evident what, if any, empirical facts could
or should constrain its definition.3 It may, nonetheless, be of
interest for certain purposes to group symbol systems accord-
ing to one particular classificatory scheme of syntactic and
semantic properties. Given other needs, it may be important to
group them along a different set of dimensions.4 It may also
turn out that on one of these schemes, a set of features
matches readily with how we ordinarily use the word "lan-
guage" (e.g., digital systems with recursive syntax). But noth-
ing much in the way of claims about minds, the mental, or the
nature of psychological explanation would follow from
adopting such a definition. For whichever way one settles on
using the term "language," there is no denying that the re-
maining "nonlinguistic" representational systems can and do
play a significant role in human activities.
So on any reasonable notion of cognition, a whole range of
systems of representation must be recognized and given their
due - albeit not the major role of natural languages. In turn, I
see no principled basis for identifying or allying thinking and
cognitive ability with linguistic or propositional systems rather
than with any of these other sorts of symbolic forms. A chim-
panzee who could use aerial photographs or maps to plan his
3 See Noam Chomsky, "Human Language and Other Semiotic Systems," in T. A.
Sebeok and J. Umiker-Sebeok, eds., Speaking of Apes (New York: Plenum Press, 1980),
for a discussion of a similar point.
4 For one such classificatory proposal, along with more rigorous specifications of
what makes a system analog, digital, notation al, etc., see Nelson Goodman, Languages
of Art (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976).
"THE" PROBLEMS 1051
next foraging expedition, or vector diagrams to work out the

most efficient way to apply force or build a bridge, would
display impressive representational mental functioning even if
he could not master English syntax. Similarly, a person ad-
justing a continuous temperature control in accordance with
the dial settings of an analog pressure gauge is as much en-
gaged in symbolic or cognitive activity as a person flipping a
discrete on/off switch to the linguistic request "Please turn on
the light."
Although the two issues have often been run together, an-
other aspect of the debate over representational competence
must be separated from the one just canvassed. Roughly, we
think of a mark, sound, gesture, idea, or state of mind as
symbolic when it functions so as to be "about," "stand for,"
"describe," "denote," "refer," or "represent" something.5 All I
have claimed above is that cognitively useful symbol systems
come in many shapes and forms, and they need not be
parasitical on one particular kind of system - the kind we
typically think of as linguistic or propositional. But I have said
nothing about what for many is the most important and vex-
ing problem of all, namely: How do we tell whether we are
dealing with a "true" or bona fide case of representation?
When do we cross over from "purely physical happenings" or
"mere behavior" to "real symbolic acts," so that talk of repre-
sentation becomes legitimate? Echoes of this question rever-
berate all the way from the philosophers' classic mind-body
problem to recent discussions concerning the possible repre-
sentational status of the internal states of paramecia. And in
between these extremes can be found a vast literature meant
to settle definitively such matters as whether the bee's dance,
the pecks of Skinner's pigeon, the computer's printout, the
5 For many people mental states, like belief, are the paradigm and perhaps primary
case of items that bear the representational relation, all others being in some sense
derivative. While I say little in this paper specifically about belief and related mental
states, many of the issues discussed below could have been recast in these terms.
infant's manipulation of toys, or the chimpanzee's placement

of plastic chips are cases of real symbolic doings.6
Fortunately or unfortunately, failure to reach agreement on
these matters would seem to rest more on a lack of consensus
about what makes an activity symbolic than it does on facts
about bees, pigeons, computers, infants, or chimpanzees.
Some, for example, have maintained that consciousness or
self-consciousness is essential for real representation. Others
have seen the need for social norms, a socially characterized
notion of a mistake, or the possibility of misrepresentation as
crucial. Some have attempted to pin the distinction on one or
another thesis of intentionality or intensionality. Others have
claimed that we are justified in ascribing representational
status only when the activity cannot be subsumed under laws
or only when it cannot be explained in terms of "physical"
theory. While still others have maintained that such ascriptions
are appropriate only if we can or are required to talk about
the activity from the standpoint of its fulfilling needs or design
requirements. Noam Chomsky, tracing a line of thought back
to Descartes, has argued that what distinguishes human lan-
guage from animal communication systems is that human use
of language is stimulus-free, creative, and appropriate. What
we say is not dictated by external stimuli or triggered by
internal needs. We continually create new sentences and
create them in ways appropriate to the context of conversa-
tion, the demands of cognition, or whimsy. In a like manner,
our behavior in response to language is not readily cir-
cumscribable. To summarize Chomsky in Rylean terms,
human use of language is typically "intelligent," not merely
mechanical or out of habit.
6 For a new wrinkle in this discussion about representation, see J. A. Fodor, "Why
Paramecia Don't Have Mental Representations," Midwest Studies in Philosophy, forth-
coming. For a look at how this issue has come up in recent debates about the status of
artificial intelligence models and functionalist definitions of mental states, see John
Searle, "Minds, Brains, and Programs" and the comments that follow it in Behavioral
and Brain Sciences 3 (1980).
"THE" PROBLEMS 1053
Notice, though, that these various criteria of "the symbolic"

are features of use and function. And a characterization of the
use and function of a representational system differs from a
characterization of its form or structure. Thus human use of
many nonlinguistic representational systems exhibits the very
same sorts of properties typically cited as definitive of symbolic
status. Meanwhile, sounds or marks in perfect linguistic form,
like the parrot's parrotings or the office computer's printouts,
may reflect processes of formation and patterns of use that
lack most, if not all, of these features.
Where then do we draw the line between symbolic behav-
ior and representational states on the one hand and nonsym-
bolic, nonrepresentational states on the other? As best I can
tell, there is no serious need to resolve the question and no
significant empirical issue at stake in just where the boundary
is drawn. For once we identify a system as innate or spell out
the routes by which it is acquired, indicate the degree of
freedom displayed in producing or responding to its elements,
point out the role societal norms play in shaping use, deter-
mine the extent to which the purported symbols are influ-
enced by such other activities as gathering evidence and
making inferences, and tell how the system serves or fails to
serve in the guidance of behavior, all that can be usefully said
will have been said. This is not to claim that the criteria
traditionally cited as definitive or reflective of our paradigm

case of representation - adult human use of natural
language - do not point to important features of our compe-
tence. In various contexts and for different purposes it may be
both appropriate and insightful to draw contrasts in use along
each of the dimensions mentioned. What I would argue
though is that it is much less crucial to worry about which of
these properties is "essential" to representation, as if this were a
well-defined question with a single answer.
Perhaps my point here can be supplemented and made in a
slightly different way by focusing on the notion of "under-
standing." We are reluctant to claim that an item is function-
ing as a symbol unless we believe that the organism, mech-

anism, or whatever that is using the symbol understands it.
But our grounds for attributing understanding are themselves
rather flexible and relative. In the case of natural language,
for example, the attribution of understanding is not a firmly
fixed matter. We allow that a child uses the word "mother" to
represent, when talking of John's, Jim's, and Jane's mothers,
although the concept itself has no observational criteria of
application and the child lacks knowledge of the definitive
biological implications that do determine its use. With terms
like "chair" or "cat" the situation is different; we require and
demand little else than the ability to apply the words rea-
sonably well on sight. Yet, as Hilary Putnam has stressed, most
of us would be hard put to apply a good deal of the "observa-
tional" vocabulary (e.g., "elm tree" or "aluminum") which we
bandy about on a daily basis. And when it comes to more
theoretical statements, statements say in science, we often
allow that they function as representations for untutored
speakers at a time when their level of understanding may
enable them to do little else than ask for clarification. Stan-
dards for particular cases, moreover, shift from context to
context or according to the contrasts one wishes to highlight.
In our environment you don't understand "dog" unless you
can pick out examples, but we generally require no such ability
when it comes to weasels and otters. The standards would
presumably be different in a forest culture or in the context of
applying for a job as a zoo veterinarian. In addition, what
criteria we choose to apply will depend on such matters as
whether we want to limn out the present skills of the speaker
or whether we are more concerned with how the speaker's
later moves in the language will be guided by societal norms,
and further still on whether we are more interested in as-
similating rather than contrasting the speaker's present usage
with accepted practice. The concept of understanding would
thus seem to be a multipurpose, graded notion with no uni-
form standard of application across the board.
"THE" PROBLEMS 1055
In assigning referential structure to a particular use of a set

of items, we assign it the status of a representational system
and treat the elements as symbols. In so doing we hope to
make sense of the user's employment of these marks, sounds,
gestures, or states. But I see no hard and fast rules for deter-
mining when this strategy is legitimate, other than appealing
to general pragmatic considerations of theory evaluation. How
effectively does the given account enable us to predict, ex-
plain, or comprehend what's going on? Reluctance to adopt
such an easygoing, relativistic approach to what constitutes
"the" symbolic is due largely, I think, to the feeling that a
sharp fixed distinction will serve to sustain metaphysical or
methodological doctrines about minds and the mental, or de-
limit what sorts of theories are appropriate to such special
domains. Perhaps only minds represent, only sensations and
representational states are "mental" or "cognitive" or "psy-
chological." It is, however, just the temptation to take this next
step and try to say something particularly "philosophical" or
"ontological" that I think should be resisted. For it is not at all
likely that a principled line can be drawn around the concept
of a representation that will enable it to bear this metaphysical
or methodological weight.
If practically everyone agrees that external symbol systems,
at least linguistic ones, play a significant role in enhancing our
cognitive lives, there has been no similar unanimity over the
point or need to appeal to internal representations in ac-
counting for our behavior. Indeed, many have denied the very
existence of such systems, let alone their psychological im-
portance. Why is this so, and what is "the" problem of internal
representation? Here again I believe there is no one problem
but many. Some are real, and some are not so real.
A major source of confusion over "internal representation"
results, I think, from the widespread use of the concept in
varied and heterogeneous contexts. For just about any skill,
capacity, ability, knowledge, or psychological state, the ques-
tion of the nature of its internal representation has been
raised and studied. Thus there are works in vision that seek to
explain how our assorted visual abilities are represented; ac-
counts of bicycle riding, knot tying, and chess playing that
purport to tell the way these skills are represented; claims
about the internal representation of our knowledge of such
diverse things as arithmetic, grammar, the facts of history, the
look of our aunt, and the spatial layout of our hometown;
studies in development that aim at finding out how a given
concept is represented in a child at different stages or ages;
experiments on memory that are meant to uncover the means
by which the brain represents past experiences; and theories
of innateness that wish to specify the internal representations
of the capacities that enable us to do all of the above. One
thing that readily emerges from looking at this literature is
that the phrase "internal representation" is not used univocally
throughout. And taking note of a few of these different con-
struais will help relate problems about internal representation
to those raised previously about external representation.
At its blandest, the question "How is a person's skill at W,
knowledge of X, ability to Y, capacity for Z, internally repre-
sented?" has often amounted to no more than a request for an
explanation of the properties or processes that are responsible
for the phenomenon under consideration. The goal is merely
to provide an account of what goes on internally that will
enable us to understand how the person does whatever it is he
or she can do. This bland construal carries with it no presup-
positions as to the type of state or mechanism that will be
found doing the job. In turn, any correct theory of the inter-
nal workings might with equal justice be said to be an account
of the "internal representation" of the phenomenon of inter-
est. Moreover, such internal representation may be specified
in any of a variety of kinds and levels. The theory may be
chemical, physiological, psychological, macro or micro, or at
some abstract level of functional analysis devoid of commit-
ment to any particular sort of concrete realization. On this
minimalist reading, though, the term "representation" is not
"THE" PROBLEMS 1057
tied closely to the symbolic notion of one item standing for or

denoting another. To claim that a particular structure or pro-
cess represents our ability to perceive size, balance a bicycle, or
remember Aunt Joyce is not to claim that the assorted internal
states symbolize. All that is maintained is that they are (repre-
sent) how things work.
Given the total lack of constraints that this very bland con-
strual of "internal representation" imposes, there is little rea-
son to debate the legitimacy of its application. If there is any
substantive point to this use of the phrase, perhaps it may best
be understood as a reaction against black-box behaviorist
restrictions - restrictions that attempt to rule out explanations
in terms of internal psychological mechanisms at all. On this
somewhat more substantive reading, the force of the claim
that a skill, bit of knowledge, or capacity is internally repre-
sented is primarily negative. It is meant: (1) to deny that all
talk about underlying psychological states and processes is
unwarranted and (2) to deny that simple dispositional, associ-
ative, or S-R models can themselves do the explanatory job.
There is, for example, more that can be said about bicycle-
riding competence than that those who possess the skill have a
disposition to keep a bicycle upright, or that a study of the
contingencies of reinforcement will disclose the probability
with which a person will try to remain balanced under dif-
ferent stimulus conditions. We can legitimately attribute an
underlying competence to the rider and fruitfully attempt to
explain what it is about the person that is responsible for the
skill. We can seek to determine how the competence is inter-
nally represented. As on the blander reading, this somewhat
stronger use of the phrase "internal representation" may not
carry with it any rich commitment concerning the type of
mechanism one will find; nor does it restrict theories to any
one level or kind of analysis. Again, there need be no assump-
tion that the elements to be discovered should be conceived of
as symbolic items or that the theory must describe what's going
on as the manipulation of symbolic representations. Equally
though, nothing precludes the possibility of accounts that do

appeal to such internal symbolic items. And it is this richer
notion of an internal representation, one that claims symbolic
status for the underlying states or events, that is perhaps the
more controversial.
Clarity on this last issue, however, requires keeping separate
two aspects of the problem. The first concerns the legitimacy
of considering certain internal states or events as real symbols
and so treating them as items that stand for, denote, refer, or
represent. The second issue is whether particular theories that
do so are likely to be correct. I want to say something about
each of these topics, although space will allow only the briefest
comment on the latter.
Is it ever appropriate to claim that internal states or events

are symbols? If so, what are the criteria a set of items must
meet for us to be correct in treating it as a system of representa-
tion? If the views put forward in the first part of this paper
are right, there would seem to be little of an empirical issue at
stake in resolving this matter. Furthermore, since our con-
straints on what makes for representation and represen-
tational competence are so minimal and varied, it is not ap-
parent what could possibly constitute grounds for showing
that one particular answer to this question, and only one, is
correct.
We have already seen that there are no serious restrictions

on the form that a system must take for it to serve as a
representational scheme. Perfectly good systems lack semanti-
cally relevant syntax, finite vocabularies, logical connectives,
rules for semantic combination, and even the notion of a
repeatable alphabet or character type. Systems may be digital,
analog, or neither, continuous or discrete, notational or non-
notational. Few, if any, structural properties can be said to be
necessary for representational status. Just about anything
goes. So appeals to form will provide no basis for declaring
that the outputs from retinas, balance sensors, reasoning cen-
ters, grammatical parsers, or for that matter kidneys, hearts,
"THE" PROBLEMS 1059
and knees are or are not "real" symbols. Accordingly, I know

of no good reason to insist on identifying cognitive operations,
computations, or "information" processing more with the ma-
nipulation of one particular kind of symbol than with any
other - with digital as opposed to analog, with syntactic as
opposed to nonsyntactic. The fact that the devices that handle
spatial perception or balance or linguistic comprehension
might work like a slide rule rather than a digital calculator
should not cut any ice about whether it is mental, psychologi-
cal, computational, or an appropriate subject for cognitive
modeling.
But if questions of form and structure do not loom large in
delimiting a notion of "internal symbol," perhaps criteria of
use are more important. Just because a system of items can be
given a symbolic reading does not entail that the items func-
tion as symbols/or the organism or mechanism. For an item to
function as a symbol for S, S must understand what it says; it
must play a role as a representation for S. The clock tells us
the time, but its dials do not represent the time to the clock.
Similarly, the fact that some internal state reflects a feature of
the world or conveys the output of a neural summation pro-
cess is not enough to make us want to call its use "symbolic."
Maybe so, but then where do we draw the line?
The question once raised has much the same sound and
aura as the one encountered when dealing with external sys-
tems. And the prospects for getting a unique convincing an-
swer are no more encouraging here than there. Of course, if
someone assumes, for instance, that only conscious states can
be symbolic, it follows trivially that none of these internal
systems will constitute real representations. The problem is
that it is not at all obvious why one should opt for this Carte-
sian criterion. The same goes for the other purported "marks"
of the symbolic.
Surely there is less to be gained in fighting over just where
to fix such a boundary than there is in pointing out the
differences in use that do exist. For significant differences
there are. Most often the postulated systems of internal repre-

sentation do not display many of the features found charac-
teristic, and perhaps distinctive, of human use of symbols. For
example, not only is use not conscious, but there are no social
norms that can be seen to guide use, and the notion of a
mistake may at best be otiose. Typically too, use of these
internal symbols is not stimulus-free and creative; the symbols
are triggered by the immediate environment. This close link
between stimulus and response or input and output makes it
all the easier to give a causal account in terms of simple
physical correlations. Also the mechanism's "understanding" of
its symbols may amount to very little. The symbols may lack
both the richness of meaning associated with bringing one's
use into line with social practices and standards, as well as the
meaning that results from the integration of a symbol into
broader schemes of action, inference, and evidence gathering.
The use of internal symbols will tend to be mechanical rather
than intelligent, and the less intelligent the use, the less in-
clined are we to grant it symbolic status at all.
After these various differences in function are noted
though, I do not know what more needs to be said, nor why
we need worry about the legitimacy of talking in terms of
internal representations, nor what is particularly new or dis-
tinctive in doing so. We have, after all, gotten along quite well
explaining that the thermostat receives "information" about
room temperature, "determines" if it falls within a specified
range, and sends a "message" to the furnace to start up. We
have found it helpful too to describe the workings of our
kidney, heart, and pituitary systems in such representational
idiom. So once one gets over strict behaviorist prohibitions
against specifying internal processes, it is hard to see why
psychological explanation, in particular, should be excluded
from representational talk.
We can expect then that studies of the mechanisms under-
lying language comprehension, arithmetic skill, bicycle
"THE" PROBLEMS 1061
balancing, and distance perception will proceed like those in

any other area of scientific investigation. Concepts will be
invented, applied, and tested to see if they are useful in ex-
plaining how things work. This will be done at multiple levels
of specificity and from varying perspectives - chemical, physi-
ological, psychological, etc. Constructs found fruitful in one
theory of the phenomenon may not appear in others, and it
may not be possible to reduce the concepts in one theory to
those in the other without loss or ad hoc supplementation. As
work proceeds, some of the ways the mechanisms are de-
scribed undoubtedly will (and in many areas already do) em-
ploy terminology analogous to the informational idioms used
in talking about more standard cases of representation. Play-
ing up these analogies may be helpful. In some instances, it
may be easy to see how this informational talk can, neverthe-
less, be eliminated. Instead of saying "C sends the message
that the ratio of light intensities of A and B is greater than Ve,"
we can merely say "C fires if A and B are stimulated thus and
so." In other cases, where the informational description is at a
more abstract level, perhaps in terms of functions, or where
the output is integrated from an open-ended number of data
sources and no fixed list of such conditions is necessary for
that message, replacement in more physical terms may be
precluded and certainly is not to the point. We may, though,
go on to note in each case the extent to which the purported
representations have or lack the various features associated
with intelligent symbol use. And we can rest assured that
treating the thermostat or office computer as a symbol user
will have no implications as to the morality of pulling their
plugs.
Still, to claim that nothing precludes "representational talk"
is not to say that explanations of particular phenomena that
postulate internal representations of a symbolic sort are cor-
rect or even on the right track. Ryle's challenge to the "In-
tellectualist's Legend" and his warnings against attempts to
reduce "knowing how" to "knowing that" still have their

force.7 For a wide range of abilities, capacities, cognitive states,
and competences, postulating certain types of corresponding
symbolic representations will be nonstarters as explanations. It
should be apparent, for example, that knowing the laws of
gravity and balance or being able to state a grammar for
French are neither necessary nor sufficient to confer bicycle or
linguistic skills on their possessors. Nor is the gap between
ability and representation lessened by claiming that the knowl-
edge is not conscious but instead is "written" in an internal
symbolic code or language. Possessing a description of a com-
petence, in either external or internal symbols, is not the same
as possessing the competence. Conversely, acting in accord-
ance with a law or rule does not entail that the activity is
"guided" by it. The law or rule may describe what we do
without having any implication about how we do it. So if an
appeal to a symbolic representation is to have explanatory
power, we will need an account of how the representation is
put to work. The problem is that in many instances it is not
clear what work there is for the supported representation to
do.
Consider, for example, models of word acquisition that seek
to explain the semantic properties of our vocabulary in terms
of corresponding internal representations. On the one hand,
postulating a single mental symbol with all the properties of
the natural language word, by itself, doesn't illuminate any-
thing. It just pushes the original problems one step in. On the
other hand, to claim that each word is represented by an
articulated internal definition has its own difficulties. It's
commonplace that word use is not generally determined by a
fixed set of necessary and sufficient conditions. In addition,
we would still need an account of what enables us to use and
understand the internal symbols that occur in the definitions.8
7 See Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (New York: Barnes 8c Noble, 1949), ch. 2.
* I his latter problem remains even it we eschew strict detimtions in tavor ot partial
specifications of meaning, lists of salient features, or explicit prototype represen-
tations.
"THE" PROBLEMS 1063
Explaining these by further definitions and those definitions

by yet further definitions only leads to a regress. In the end,
some symbols must be given a different sort of an account - a
nonsymbolic one. But then it may begin to seem more reason-
able to offer that type of account straight off, at the start, with
the original vocabulary item itself. Such a move would also
relieve us of the burden of explaining how internal symbols
could possibly acquire the requisite features of meaning and
reference that seem to accrue to our vocabulary as a result of
shared sociohistorical use.
Similarly, although some conglomeration of internal states

may be those that underlie (or in a bland sense internally
represent) what we call a person's knowledge, belief, or mem-
ory that P, it does not follow that there is an articulated stored
sentence in "mentalese" or "the language of thought" corre-
sponding to each P we so attribute. Gilbert Harman, for
example, in questioning the need to postulate mental repre-
sentations in a language different from our external ones,
notes that we usually allow that people believe 104 + 3 = 107,
although they may have never explicitly computed this sum.
Rather a person's willingness to affirm or use this equation is
at most implicit in the organization of his or her brain. Har-
man goes on to question whether it may be best to think of all
our beliefs in this way, as implicitly represented rather than
explicitly stored.0 In any case, even if there were some "men-
talese" sentence stored, it is not especially plausible to assume
that such an internal symbolization is the belief or that ap-
peals to such items could serve to underwrite an explanation
of how beliefs might function in the economy of action and
cognition. To play this role we need something more and
different than internal sentence tokens.10
9 Gilbert Harman, "Is There Mental Representation?" in C. Wade Savage, ed.,

Perception and Cognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978).
10 For a more detailed discussion of some of these matters, see Daniel Dennett, "A
Cure for the Common Code?" in his collection of essays Brainstorms (Cambridge:
Bradford Books, 1978), and "Three Kinds of Intentional Psychology," in R. Healey,
ed., Reduction Time and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
Or consider the case of grammatical competence. It is one

thing to postulate various internal mechanisms for hearing
and deriving the content of sentences. And it shouldn't be
surprising if some of the descriptions of these processes were
to use representational talk in their elucidation. It is still an-
other to claim that somewhere in the mechanisms that process
sentence production and comprehension there is stored an
explicit version of a formal grammar in internal code, or that
in dealing with sentences the mind "writes out" a structural
description of the type a linguist could. Our linguistic compe-
tence may be internally represented in some blander way -
richer than a mere disposition to behave but not in a way that
involves explicit symbolic representations like those just men-
tioned. Perhaps the link between formal grammars and lin-
guistic competence is no closer than that between people's
reasoning skill and any particular formulation of the rules of
the predicate calculus.11
But this is not the place to go into the adequacy of the
models proposed to explain our various competencies and
capacities. My goal in this paper has been to spell out why
there is not one serious problem about representation but
many. At the same time, I have tried to make the case that a
number of "the" problems of representation may not be as
problematic or as important to resolve as they are often made
out to be.
11 I have taken up this issue more fully in "Linguistics as Psychology" in J.

Moravasik, ed., Logic and Philosopny for Linguists (Atlantic Heights, N.J.: Humanities
Press, 1974). For a recent discussion of this problem, embedded in a debate over what
counts as an explicit representation of a grammar and whether there is evidence that
such a representation plays a causal role, see Edward Stabler, Jr., "How Are
Grammars Represented?" and the accompanying commentary in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences 6 (1983).
* I wish to thank Margaret Atherton and Sidney Morgenbesser for discussing these
matters with me.

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"The"

1 N a letter soliciting papers for this volume the editor posed

SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Winter 1984)

representation and that these systems play an important role in

theories of mental activity, seem to me to get bogged down in

Translation or encoding into propositional form will, need-

bits of information, while the pilot may better display her

next foraging expedition, or vector diagrams to work out the

infant's manipulation of toys, or the chimpanzee's placement

Notice, though, that these various criteria of "the symbolic"

traditionally cited as definitive or reflective of our paradigm

ing as a symbol unless we believe that the organism, mech-

In assigning referential structure to a particular use of a set

tied closely to the symbolic notion of one item standing for or

though, nothing precludes the possibility of accounts that do

Is it ever appropriate to claim that internal states or events

We have already seen that there are no serious restrictions

and knees are or are not "real" symbols. Accordingly, I know

there are. Most often the postulated systems of internal repre-

balancing, and distance perception will proceed like those in

reduce "knowing how" to "knowing that" still have their

Explaining these by further definitions and those definitions

Similarly, although some conglomeration of internal states

9 Gilbert Harman, "Is There Mental Representation?" in C. Wade Savage, ed.,

Or consider the case of grammatical competence. It is one

11 I have taken up this issue more fully in "Linguistics as Psychology" in J.

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