very large but) finite set of circumstances capable of
triggering the initiation of the action. We can call this set
of triggering circumstances Acirc. The number of triples
<A ∈Asupp, C ∈ Acirc, Focus> representing supported
actions A initiated in circumstances C with focus Focus
provides a class of counterfactual action scenarios, Ascene,
in which the token T provides guidance for a subject.
These are the action scenarios in which T participates.
Most actions are complex, both in the sense that they
have many different specific features that must be
managed (e.g., the trajectory and velocity of a running
motion), and in the sense that they almost always require
initiating smaller or tangential actions involving entities
besides its focus if they are to succeed in affecting their
intended change or control (e.g., jumping over the branch
on the ground while running from the bear). Because of
the complexity of action, subjects needing to execute an
action will almost always use representations other than
the tokens representing the focus of the action. In fact,
activation of these further tokens is necessary to fill out
the circumstances in which all the tokens are used.
These other active representations will fall into several
categories: conscious representations with foci of their
own serving the larger action program; unconscious but
potentially conscious representations supporting the
interpretation of the circumstances and manner in which
the action is executed; and sub-conscious representations
that can never be conscious but that provide support for
basic perception, adjusting bodily movements, and
triggering emotion. We should construe the entities
towards which the supporting tokens provide guidance as
sub-foci in sub-actions lying under the umbrella of the
main action. Therefore, these further tokens, the ones that
support the guidance for the main action within a given
Ascene, have functional roles determined by their potential
relationships to their own foci within the circumstances C
of Ascene.
Relative to these action scenarios, the guidance theory
supposes that in each Ascene where an active token
succeeds in having reference2 the token can be mapped to
an entity through its functional role under the rational
constraints associated with assigning motivating reasons
to their sub-actions. This supposition is justified because,
in providing guidance, a token will make features of itself
available to the subject, which the subject can use to
differentially control its actions with respect to an entity
which is a focus or sub-focus of a given action.
The know-how involved in an assumption of
information, then, is a question of the way that the
subject’s decoders and action mechanisms process and/or
respond to representations (i.e., how it accesses
representations, in what circumstances it accesses them,
how it reads and interprets their structure, what actions it
initiates and monitors upon accessing them, how those
actions cause it to interact with the world, and so forth)
given the subject’s capabilities, needs, environment, and
cognitive architecture. The general idea is that
2 The concept of error will be defined formally in the next
section.
assumptions of information consist in non-
representational facts about how the subject works, not in
further representational facts about, or representations
used by, the subject. Although this account is clearly
preliminary, it does at least show how the idea of an
assumption of information can be interpreted, and used as
part of the machinery involved in determining the content
of a representation, without initiating a vicious regress or
involving circular appeals to representational content.
This brings us, finally, to the cumulative definition of
representation. On the guidance theory, representation is
simply tracking in the sense defined below:
(9) A token T tracks an entity E for a subject S in token
circumstances C if, and only if, T is standardly used to
provide guidance to S for taking action with respect to E
in C.
(10) A token T represents an entity E for a subject S in
token circumstances C if, and only if, T tracks E for S in
C.
By linking representation to guidance in this way, the
guidance theory distributes responsibility for the existence
of representational content across a representational token
(the representation) and an interpretative decoding
mechanism (the decoder) integrated with a subject’s
action-determining processes. The effect of distributing
responsibility is to introduce new degrees of freedom
regarding the exact physical or informational
requirements for something to be a representation, as the
requirements on the representation will depend on the
capabilities of the decoder and the circumstances in which
it is used. In general, the demands on each part of the
coupled system vary inversely with the demands on the
other. A representation that is highly structured and
closely coupled with what it represents needs a less
sophisticated decoding mechanism, while a very
sophisticated (or very rigid and simple) decoding
mechanism may embody (or presume) so much implicit
domain knowledge that it can get by with very sparse
representations.
Representation and Misrepresentation
One of the most important problems that any theory of
representation must solve is the problem of normativity:
representations are assessable for accuracy, and therefore
they can be in error. To be complete, the guidance theory
must account for this feature of representations. Because
the guidance theory is an action-based theory of
representation, the natural thing to do is to base error on
the failure of action and the way that a representation’s
guidance contributes to that failure. The intuitive idea,
then, is that a representation is in error if it provided
guidance to an action that failed in its intent, and it failed
partly or wholly because of the guidance provided by that
representation. This intuitive idea can be formalized as
follows:
(11) An action fails in its intent if, and only if,
(11.1) It is a motor action and the intended change is
not achieved or the intended process is not brought
under control; or