Abstract
The pushmi-pullyu representation (“PPR”) is a non-conjunctive representation with both descriptive and directive contents. Introduced by Millikan, the PPR is supposed to aid in explaining how organisms adapt behavior to environmental variance in the absence of intermediate inference. Until recently, it has led an uncontroversial theoretical life. However, Artiga has suggested that the PPR postulate conflicts with Millikan-style teleosemantics and, as a consequence, the PPR postulate should probably be set aside. I suggest here that the theoretical motivations for the PPR are independent of any specific theory of naturalized content. If Artiga is right about the PPR’s incompatibility with Millikan-style teleosemantics, then that only reveals the inadequacy of Millikan-style teleosemantics. The PPR has a clear role to play in explaining the primitive systems that dominate the biosphere. However, Millikan did not want to limit the explanatory utility of the PPR to primitive systems but suggested that it has explanatory work to play in the animal signaling of complex organisms, Gibsonian affordances, as well as with distinctively human mental life and language. Contra Millikan, I suggest that the PPR has no or at best a very limited explanatory role to play in such cases. Further, the non-inferential feature of the PPR suggests that it should be understood at best as a marginal or borderline representation.
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Notes
Understand “inference” broadly along Sellarsian (1963) lines as a process functionally analogous to language moves.
The inclusion of ‘prima facie’ here is to recognize that at times a conflict between phenomenon and theory can lead to the realization that the original putative phenomenon is not one or is at least inaccurately described, thereby resulting in a revised characterization of the phenomenon.
Notice that this condition does not exclude PPR’s from all inferential operations. The theoretical motivation for the PPR is not to propose a representational type immune to inferential operations but to provide a representational type that can make certain inferences unnecessary, namely the coupling of independent descriptive and directive representations in inference to produce practical action. More advanced, inferentially capable organisms may be capable of mobilizing the PPR in inference. The only restriction on inference is that the PPR cannot be subject to simplification or formed through addition. Both simplification and addition are conjunctive operations, and the PPR is by stipulation not a conjunctive representation.
Isolating a content component of a complex representation and utilizing that content component in subsequent cognitive activity is the functional analogue of overt simplification in language moves. For example, an organism capable of isolating “A” from the representation “A/B” and then capable of utilizing “A” to extract the consequent of “A→C” is using “A” as a free-standing and independent premise. The organism has in effect generated a novel simple representation “A” from the complex “A/B”. That is the functional analogue of simplification in language moves. Isolation and utilization of the component “A” indicates then that “A/B” is a conjunctive representation and cannot be, by Millikan’s stipulative definition, a PPR.
Similarly, Millikan writes, “Representations that tell only what the case is have no ultimate utility unless they combine with representations of goals, and, of course, representations that tell what to do have no utility unless they combine with representations of facts. It follows that a capacity to make mediate inferences, at least practical inferences, must already be in place if an animal is to use purely descriptive or purely directive representations.” (1995, 152).
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Thanks to Candice Shelby for all the discussions during the development of this paper.
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Bauer, M. The explanatory breadth of pushmi-pullyu representations. Biol Philos 35, 35 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-020-09751-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-020-09751-5