Abstract
The current orthodoxy in cognitive science, what I describe as
a commitment to deep representationalism, faces intractable
problems. If we take these objections seriously, and I will
argue that we should, there are two possible responses: 1. We
are mistaken that representation is the locus of our cognitive
capacities — we manage to be the successful cognitive agents
in some other, non-representational, way; or, 2. Our
representational capacities do give us critical cognitive
advantages, but they are not fundamental to us qua human
beings. As Andy Clark has convincingly argued, antirepresentationalism, option one, is explanatorily weak. Consequently, I will argue, we need to take the second option
seriously. In the first half of the paper I rehearse the problems
with the current representational view and in the second half of
the paper I defend and give a positive sketch of a two-systems
view of cognition – a non-representational perceptual system
coupled with a representational language-dependent one – and
look at some consequences of the view.