PLEASE DO NOT CITE. PRELIMINARY VERSION

Zuzanna Rucinska

Chapter III. The Nature of the Investigation – seminar version

1. Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to clarify the metaphysical commitments behind

taking different methodological routes to explaining pretence. The nature of the

investigation changes depending on whether one appropriates, for example, a

functionalist methodology or an enactivist methodology. In result, the types of

explanations one can provide about pretence will strategically differ.

What this chapter will involve is the following. Firstly, in subsection 2, I point

to a common practice in the present literature on pretence, which is that mental

representations get to enter both as essential make-up of pretence, and as explanatory

posits that partake in the mechanism of pretence. In what follows I look at the

relationship between essences and mechanisms. I challenge the validity of the claim

that mental representations must explain pretence even if it is to be described as

representational. I conclude that the essential make-up of any aspect of cognition

should not influence how it is to be explained.

In subsection 3, I engage in a discussion about different approaches to

explaining mental phenomena, providing brief sketches of two very different

approaches, functionalism and enactivism. Functionalism is discussed because it is

one of the most popular, but at the same least demanding (unlike, for example,

identity theory), approaches, which uses mental representations to both explain and

constitute mental phenomena like pretence. It will be compared with enactivism,

which is the non-representational approach I follow throughout the dissertation.1 This

subsection focuses on how mental representations get introduced in the explanatory

1 While it could be, in principle, possible to argue for functionalism without mental representations (though it has not been practiced), and although some who claim enactivism do make use of a weak notion of mental representations (for example, see Scarinzi’s critique of O’Regan’s enactive sensorimotor approach in Bishop and Martin (2014, p. 71), hereby for simplicity sake I will equate functionalism with a mental representational account and enactivism with non-mental representational one.

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story of a functionalist: as forming the essence of pretence, and as forming their

implementation mechanisms. On the functionalist story, external factors are treated

as causes and are separate to the role-realiser structuring of pretence. A comparison to

enactivism will be made, which has a different approach to explanations: by following

the dynamical systems theory, the distinction between ‘synchronic’ implementation

mechanism and ‘diachronic’ causal factors get blurred in enactivism.

Then, in subsection four, I hone in the question of providing mechanistic

explanations. I discuss the mechanistic nature of the cognitivist (including

functionalist) explanations, and show that, while commonly used to explain various

phenomena from perception (Marr) to empathy (Gallese), they may not always work.

I will also provide examples from enactivism to explaining perception (Varela et al.)

that do not lean on just taking a mechanistic approach to explaining colour

experience. What follows is a discussion on the types of strategy enactivists can take:

either endorsing a ‘no-mechanism’ view that says that proposing an explanatory

mechanism of pretence cannot be appropriated by enactivists, or a ‘wide-mechanism’

view that tries to incorporate social and environmental aspects into the explanatory

mechanism (without changing the explanandum in the relevant sense). I propose that,

ultimately, non-representational explanations of enactivists should not follow a

mechanistic structure.

With subsection five I conclude with possible objections of a cognitivist

interlocutor to the question of whether the enactivist is proposing a genuine

alternative explanation, or whether or not the enactivist changed the target of

investigation. I provide enactivist rebuttals to both worries, engaging in a brief

investigation into the nature of philosophical explanations and the question of what is

the role of an enactivist philosopher.

I will clarify that functionalism and enactivism have different ways of

explaining what seems to be the same target – the phenomenon of pretence. However,

as proponents of representational theories take pretence to be constitutively a mental

representational phenomenon (with features such as imagination or knowledge), they

target enactivism as a theory that is targeted at a different explanandum. In that sense,

both theories are possibly compatible. However, I will argue that the explanandum is,

or at least could be, the same (broadly construed pretence phenomenon that has the

same features like knowing and imagining, but which are described non-

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representationally), and thus, the theories cannot be compatible, and enactivism is a

relevant counter approach to functionalism.

This chapter is an important addendum to the thesis as it clarifies the overall

dialectic of the thesis; it brackets some worries with seeking non-mental

representational explanations of pretence, and clarifies the reason why certain

working assumptions will be taken to provide such explanations. The argument for

non-representational explanation of pretence is not yet settled in this chapter, as this

chapter does not engage with specific aspects of pretence at all. This chapter crucially

sets the stage for these later arguments to have a fighting chance against

representational explanations, it aims to bracket general worries with providing such

alternative explanations. It also has a wider significance: with this chapter the reader

finds out that while in some sense the topic of pretence is small and focused,

considering it will involve some of the deepest and most difficult topics in

philosophy, such as when is the use of mechanistic explanations or the causal-

constitutive divide appropriate in philosophy.

2. Constitutive vs. explanatory role of mental representations

Pretence can be conceived of in different ways; one may ask a constitutive

question about what is the essence of pretence or an explanatory question about what

mechanisms underlie it. It is important to keep these questions distinct. It will become

apparent that many theorists who investigate pretence begin by assuming that

pretence is mental-representational in nature. That leads them to justify using mental

representational explanations for how pretence comes about. I will argue that this is

not a valid justification, and that the questions of constitution and explanation can be

kept separate. What follows is a discussion about the relationship between essences

and mechanisms.

Philosophical work usually aims to address the constitutive question (what is

the essence of X), while cognitive science approaches (and some naturalistic

approaches to philosophy) seek explanations of how it is that X is accomplished.

Applied to pretence, contemporary theorists invoke representations of some sorts in

the answers to both questions. Constitutive question about essences is asked to give an

account of what is the nature of pretence. In the philosophical tradition, pretence is

said to be a representational state of mind. Pretence has been traditionally defined as

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requiring representational capacities, such as i.e. imaginations, symbolism,

belief-/desire-like states, concepts or double knowledge of what is real vs. not real. In

a sense, the explanandum has been construed in representational terms.

There are as many definitions of pretence as there are people who write about

it, but mainly the most important ‘ingredients’ of pretence across the theories are said

to be, in no particular order, possession of conceptual knowledge, having knowledge

of what is real and not real, imagination, intentionality, being in a right mental state,

having mental attitudes that are ‘belief-like’, shifting perspectives, mapping and

following rules, symbolic thinking, and meta-communicating (Piaget, 1945/1962;

Leslie, 1987; Harris and Kavanaugh, 1993; Lillard, 1993a; Mitchell, 1994a, 2002;

Goldman, 1998, Nichols and Stich, 2000, 2003).

Taking collectively from different papers, three common and important

aspects of pretence are:

(i) Double Knowledge (DKN): “The actor must entertain two representations

of a single situation, one literal/veridical/real and the other

nonliteral/distorted/pretend/imaginary, simultaneously, without confusion,

and deliberately (Piaget 1945/1962; Leslie 1987; Harris and Kavanaugh

1993; Lillard 1993a; Mitchell 1994a, 2002)” (Russon in Mitchell (2002),

p. 237).

(ii) Imagination (IMG): “Pretence or make-believe is a mental activity

involving imagination that is intentionally projected onto something

(Goldman 1998, Lillard 1994)” (Mitchell 2002, p. 4); “All authors agree

(…) that pretend play implies some displacement from the reality plane

and thus meaning transformations relative to the meaning that the actions

and the objects involved would have were they considered “literally”

(Veneziano in Mitchell (2002), p. 60).

(iii) Presence of mental plans or models (MPMs): “Internal plan recedes and

guides the pretend action”; “The capacity to utilize such internal models of

previous experience is considered to be the foundation of the capacity to

engage in mental representation, and hence pretending” (McCune &

Agayoff in Mitchell (2002), p. 47, 45).2

2 These have been argued by different theorists to be necessary for pretence. As can be noticed, these aspects happen to be ones that are often appropriated to the internal mental capacities of an agent; non-mental or external factors are scarcely mentioned, such as, for example, non-serious emotional tone or involvement of bodily activity. These two features of pretence Lillard considers as ‘additional’ to

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The other question that can be asked about pretence is how pretending gets to

be implemented. Here we will find those who think that mental representations of

some form will figure in our best explanations of how pretending is accomplished.

Most quoted and most elaborate current theories that are said to explain how it is

possible to pretend are Leslie’s (1987) metarepresentational theory, various so-called

‘behaviourist’ theories (Stich and Nichols 2000, 2003; Perner, 1991; Harris, 1994),

and intentionalist theory (Rakoczy et al., 2005). These have been discussed in detail

the previous chapter.

To re-count the relevant part, what the theories propose to do is, inter alia, to

provide answers to variations of these three ‘how’ questions:

(i) How can children hold a distinction between what is real and what is not

real, how they do not get confused by pretence, or how can children use

one object “as if” it is another one without losing track of the reality?

(ii) How do children remain or persist in a pretence role, follow-up on their

pretence, or step outside pretence when convenient?

(iii) How do children choose one pretence act over another, produce context-

appropriate play or play in a structured way?

To answer these questions, pretence theorists invoke mechanisms that involve

mental representations. We can characterize the three functions that mental

representations are supposed to serve as (i) function of discriminating, (ii) function of

transforming, (iii) function of guiding.

The theorists then invoke these exemplar explanatory mechanisms to explain

how the following work: (i) a mechanism of ‘quarantining’ (Leslie, 1987) or

‘flagging’ (Harris, 1999) to discriminate what is real from not real, or the ‘true’ from

‘pretend’ meanings; (ii) a mechanism of ‘decentring’ to transform one thing into

another, which underlies the capacity to ‘imaginatively see as’ (Currie, 2004, 2006);

or (iii) a guiding mechanism that manipulates propositions or forward models and

images to guide one in ‘accurately’ acting the pretence scenario out (Nichols and

Stich, 2001; van Leeuwen, 2009).

By now, it should be apparent that mental representations get to come into the

story through both doors: as essences of pretence, and as part of its supporting

mechanisms. The three questions that aim to explain how pretence works (how agents

discriminate, be transformed and be guided) mirror the constitutive assumptions about

pretence (in Lewis & Mitchell 1994, p. 214).

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the nature of pretence – that it involves the mental states of Double Knowledge (DK),

Imagination (IMG), and being guided by Mental Plans and Models (MPMs).

Often, pretence and mental representation are put on par; pretending is to be

mentally representing, as, for example, the last quote of McCune and Agayoff shows

(“…capacity to engage in mental representations, and hence pretending” (idem,

emphasis added). Pretending is also often seen as a mental representational ‘state of

mind’ or ‘attitude’.

We could ask, are the commitments of these theorists ad hoc? When asking

whether pretending requires representing, are they pre-supposing what they are trying

to explain? While that may be likely, I will not engage in whether the reasons for

believing that pretence is essentially mental representational are valid, as that is

orthogonal to my main point. What is important is what follows from taking such a

stance. Namely, there seems to be a consensus that some form of mentally

representing must be involved in explaining pretence, because pretence is an

essentially mental representational state to begin with. This is a line of thought that

can be discredited, as even if some phenomenon is representational, it need not use

representations in explanations of how the phenomenon arises. It is all too easy to

claim that a child has Double Knowledge because of the quarantining mechanism in

play; a child can has Imagination because of the decentring mechanism in play, etc.

However, this argumentation would be fallacious.

Consider linguistic practice as an example. Language can be said to be a

representational activity, in essence. To use language, in all its forms, is at root to

represent how things are, one way or another. However, that does not necessitate

invoking a mental representational mechanism. Many have argued already that we

need not have mental representations to have representations in the environment

(Dennett, Price, etc.). So the linguistic capability can be explained without invoking

mental representations, such as through socio-cultural, practical accounts (see, for

example, Hutto’s (2008) Narrative Practice Hypothesis). Pretence may be

characterized as a representational activity tout court just as language is, which

means that by its nature pretence represents in a linguistic sense. We see such

characterization plenty in the literature, when pretending is taken on par to be

symbolizing (e.g., Lillard 1994). Pretence can be thus thought of as essentially a

representational phenomenon: in pretence, something stands for or symbolizes

something else, so in that respect it is representing. However, we can separate the

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question of whether one needs to invoke mental representations to implement

pretence, even if seen as a representational activity. The point is simply that even if

when we’re pretending we’re representing, that does not mean that what enables us to

pretend (or represent) involves further (mini-)representations. That would be

analogous to saying that a house has to be made out of little houses; it is simply an

unnecessary move.3

Just as with language, it is logically possible for pretence to be constitutively

representational, while mental representations need not be invoked to explain it. One

can think about pretence as essentially representational (or symbolic) without having

to invoke symbol-swapping on a sub-personal level, which is one of the things

invoking mental representational mechanisms is supposed to achieve (see, for

example, Leslie). Thus, while ‘being representational proper’ could describe the

system as a whole, that is irrespective of whether mental representations are to be

used to describe its implementation or not.

Interestingly, this does not seem to hold other-way around. That is, while

mental representations ‘constituting essence’ need not require invoking mental

representational ‘implementation mechanism’, claiming that implementation

mechanism is mentally representational seems to say something about the constitutive

essence of the phenomenon at hand, specifically, that it is mentally representational

too. This holds for identity theory and some forms of functionalism. So are we

justified in assuming that mental representations invoked in implementing pretence

are not at the same time constitutively essential of pretence after all? Answering that

question lies heavily on what notion of explanation one has in mind. This will be the

topic of the next subsection.

For now, it is enough to accept that, irrespective of whether we buy into the

view that mental representations both constitute and implement mental phenomena or

not, we can accept that mental representations play different functions as explananda

and as explanans, even though cognitivist theories do not draw a sharp divide between

them (Ramsey, 2007).4 It is my aim to dissociate the explananda from the explanans,

and focus solely on the explanans. Thus, to argue for non-mental representational

explanations of pretence, I will not provide arguments on what is the nature of

3 I’d like to thank Sam Coleman for this analogy.4 As Ramsey claims, “the distinction between theories that posit representations and theories that try to explain representation is not as sharp as one might assume. A large number of cognitive models – indeed, perhaps the majority – do a little of both” (p. 36).

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pretence.5 What I am interested in is an explanation that does not need to make use of

mental representations. The alternative I suggest comes from enactivism. It is a

different methodological tradition to the cognitivist one. Although I will, for the rest

of this dissertation, focus on the explanans (what mechanisms are in place that explain

pretending), I also point out that with enactivism, it is possible to re-characterize the

explananda. While logically the re-characterization should not be required, doing so

upon occasion makes it easier to see how a non-representational explanation would

work. Thus, based upon the above considerations, I will assume that there is a

difference between essences and mechanisms, in this thesis I will be solely concerned

with how mental representations enter into explanations of pretence, not whether

pretence is essentially mentally representational.

3. Different approaches to explaining cognitive phenomena

There are different approaches one can take to investigate cognition in

philosophy of mind. That applies to investigating pretence as well. As I mentioned

before, on the one hand, one can seek to know what pretence is and focus on its

nature. That is a question of determining its conceptual essence. (This is the question I

will not engage in any more in this chapter.) On the other hand, one can ask how we

explain how pretending comes about. This section deals with looking more carefully

at the explanations, about which another distinction can be made.

One kind of explanation asks for implementation mechanisms of the

explanandum, examples of which were mentioned in the section above. These are

synchronic mechanisms that explain how pretending gets implemented at a time. They

are also constitutive of what they explain; they form what metaphysically suffices for

pretence, or, in other words, how it is realized (they need not, however, be essential,

as there is room for multiple-realizabiliy). Another kind of explanation asks for

external factors to the explanandum. These form causal explanations, which are not

constitutive of the explanandum. They are diachronic mechanisms that aim to explain

how, for example, a particular act of pretence (token explanandum) came about.

5 For example, it could be that pretence does not involve mental representations in its explanatory role even if it is representational in essence, just as it could be that pretence still requires invoking mental representations to explain it, even if we conceive of pretence as a form of behaviour, not a mental state.

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In what follows, I will clarify what kind of explanation functionalism and

enactivism seek. What I will point to is that functionalism only considers

implementation mechanisms, while in enactivism, the distinction between

implementation and causal factors (or synchronic and diachronic explanans) gets

blurred. The issue is complex, and I intend to untangle certain commitments that are

often left untold when investigating the topic of (social) cognition in philosophical

methodologies. In this thesis I will specifically target pretence, and the explanatory

models and mechanisms of pretence offered by various philosophers.

a) Functionalism

While there are many notions of functionalism (Sellars, 1956; Lewis, 1966;

McLaughlin, 2006), the uncontroversial claim made by most functionalists is that the

synchronic mechanisms ultimately explain phenomena, by acting as implementation

mechanisms, or realizers, of functional roles. The mechanism is constitutive of the

essence, but it can only be sufficient and not necessary to it (the mechanism can

change as the role can be multiply realised).

Realizers are constitutive of the phenomenon; they are an integrated part of

what they explain, as if they were its ‘ingredients’. Consider an analogy to a clock,

functionally understood as a device for measuring time. Its ability to measure time is

realized by the internal mechanism of the clock. Its mechanism is the integral part of

the clock, making it a clock (or sufficing for it to be a clock functionally understood as

time-measurer) and at the same time explaining how it works (in the sense of being

how it works). Importantly, the claim is not one of causality, as causal factors lay

‘outside’ of what we are explaining (they explain diachronically), while realizers are

integral parts of what they explain (they explain synchronically). 6 The mechanism

doesn’t cause the clock to be, for it is its clock master who made the clock into

existence. In a token standard clock, its mechanical mechanism is sufficient for the

6 While buying into role-realizer distinction, and proposing existence of realizers in explaining pretence, does not necessarily commit one to functionalism, it is not clear how one could step away from functionalism here, as no other approach to philosophy of mind has used this terminology so far. It is also not helpful to learn that the notion of realization has been used in many different ways. Papineau says of realisation, “There is no agreed analysis of this notion, however: philosophers tend to use it more freely than they explain it” (Papineau 1993a: 24, cf. also Tye 1996: 40-42, Melynk 1997: 390–395). In a bid to redress this, he offers the following definition: “In order for a mental or other special type M to be realized by an instance of some physical type P, M needs to be a second-order property, the property of having some property which satisfies certain requirements R. And M will be realized by P in some individual X if and only if this instance of P satisfies requirements R. In such a case we can say X satisfies M in virtue of satisfying P” (Papineau 1993a: 25, emphases original). 

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clock to tell time. However, it is not a necessary mechanism; we can imagine a digital

clock, whose mechanism is built of completely different parts, sharing nothing of the

original clock’s structure (e.g., projecting numbers instead of moving handles, and so

on), which still realizes the clock’s function to measure time. In that respect clocks

can be multiply realized.

Functional mechanisms give us multiple ways to instantiate the explanandum

through their multiple realizability. As Bickle (2013) explains,

In the philosophy of mind, the multiple realizability thesis contends that a single

mental kind (property, state, event) can be realized by many distinct physical

kinds. A common example is pain. Many philosophers have asserted that a wide

variety of physical properties, states, or events, sharing no features in common at

that level of description, can all realize the same pain. (…) [For example], a given

psychological kind (like pain) can be realized by many distinct physical kinds:

brain states in the case of earthly mammals, electronic states in the case of

properly programmed digital computers, green slime states in the case of

extraterrestrials, and so on.7

How does this analogy to clock pertain to pretence? I will first explain how

speaking of realizers of pretence would look like, after which I will suggest an

alternative.

We can think of pretence in a similar way to a clock. For example, of an

instance of pretence we could say it exemplifies the property, or role, of Imagination,

i.e., just is an episode of Imagination. That property would be realized by a mental

representational mechanism of, for example, ‘decentring’ (Currie 2006). On this story,

Imagination is a property of pretence, which is part of the functional role of pretence

(transforming), and what realizes it is the decentring mechanism. From this

description, it should be clear that when applied to pretence, proposing a mechanism

of ‘decentring’ should be treated as constitutive of and sufficient for ‘Imagination’,

though perhaps not necessary (unless the philosopher at hand buys into identity theory

or claims that his mechanism is the actual, not just possible, explanatory mechanism

of pretence). Nichols and Stich (2001), for example, who propose ‘decentring’,

engage in philosophy of cognitive science. They claim not to be offering constitutive

formats, but whether indeed they do so or not depends on this debate. I believe their

7 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, entry on ‘Multiple Realizability’. Retrieved on 11.02.2015.

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theories do answer the constitutive questions about the nature of pretence, even

though that is not what they aim at, as they offer a substantive mechanism of

pretence.8

We seem to be discovering through scientific investigation what is the essence

of pretence and what its roles are. Under the functionalist model, we often speak of

mental states and their properties, such as the mental attitudes of belief having a

functional role of tracking truth, or the mental attitude of desire having a functional

role of motivating. Following that picture, pretence would have to be considered as a

mental state (like a ‘mental representational state of mind’ or a ‘mental

representational attitude’), with a unique functional role of knowing what is real and

not real (DK), imagining counterfactual scenarios (IMG) and being guided to play in a

specific way (MPM).

Thus, what we gain from taking a functionalist approach is the following

picture is the following. Knowing real from not real, imagining and being guided can

be treated as aspects of the functional roles of pretence, both constitutive and essential

to pretence. (Mental states like DK, IMG and MPMs embody these roles into

properties of pretence.) Pretence mechanisms, like decentring, quarantining, etc.,

implement these roles of pretence; as realizers, they are also constitutive but not

essential to pretence.

However, there is a worry with taking the functionalist approach when

studying cognitive phenomena. With regard to considering pretence, do we have

reasons to think it is anything like clocks? Is it something that can have synchronic

realizers, or can be broken down to constitutive subpart(s)? Can pretence be explained

without taking under consideration, for example, the context in which it occurs? I

would tend to say ‘not necessarily’ to all of these questions, but that leans heavily on

what notion of explanation one has in mind. That will be engaged in below in

subsection 4, but before that, I will put another approach to studying cognition on the

table – enactivism. It is crucially different from the other two, and it is highly relevant

to this thesis as it is the approach that promotes non-representationalism.

8 There is an ongoing debate about what is supposed to be the job of the philosopher. Some say that it is to answer constitutive questions about the nature of things (e.g., what is the nature, or essence, of cognition). These are the ‘traditional’ philosophers. However, we have also less orthodox philosophers, ones engaging in cognitive science. According to Barry Smith, philosophers play part in larger scientific enterprise and make interdisciplinary contributions (in Haug (ed.) 2013, p. 295). To take another example, David Papineau is interested in the actualities, not necessities (idem, p. 192). Thus, there are different ways in which philosophers are interested in the constitutive question.

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b) Enactivism

There are many variations of enactivism, the spectrum varying from biological

enactivism that stresses autopoietic structuring of a living organism like a cell (Varela

et al., 1991), to radical enactivism that stresses lack of mental, semantic contents in

early forms of cognition (Hutto and Myin, 2013). However, there are some aspects of

enactivism shared by all (or most) parties.

The first is that enactivism is (or should be seen as) a non-representational

account of cognition. Enactivism questions most commitments of cognitivists (and

connectionists), against which it has been proposed. As Varela et al. (1991) claim,

It questions the centrality of the notion that cognition is fundamentally

representation. Behind this notion stand three fundamental assumptions. The first

is that we inhabit a world with particular properties, such as length, color,

movement, sound, etc. The second is that we pick up or recover these properties

by internally representing them. The third is that there is a separate subjective

“we” who does these things. (…) We propose as a name the term enactive to

emphasize the growing conviction that cognition is not the representation of a

pregiven world by a pregiven mind but is rather the enactment of a world and a

mind on the basis of a history of the variety of actions that a being in the world

performs (p. 9).

The second is that enactivism is modeled on ecology, not computation:

Ecological approach stresses the dynamic relation between the organism and its

environment, whereas computational approach focuses on manipulation of symbols or

representational mapping. Enactivism, thus, proposes the study of living organisms,

and describes autopoietic systems in their environments. What is interesting is Varela

at al.’s (1991) comparison of such autonomous systems from mechanistic systems.

They write:

Such autonomous systems stand in sharp contrast to systems whose coupling with

the environment is specified through input/output relations. The digital computer

is the most familiar example of this latter kind of system. Here the meaning of a

given keyboard sequence is always assigned by a designer. Living systems,

however, are far from being in this category. Under very restricted circumstances

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can we speak as if we could specify the operation of a cell or an organism through

input/output relations. In general, though, the meaning of this or that interaction

for a living system is not prescribed form outside but is the result of the

organization and history of the system itself (idem, p.157).

The benefit of enactivism is that it considers the individual in the

intersubjective context. What that means is that it takes under account the role of

objects and others in shaping cognition. The outcome of taking an enactive approach

to cognition is that it finds mentality in the interactions, not in encapsulated mental

representations.

The third aspect of enactivism is that it stresses the constitutive role of the

body and environment in shaping the mind. That is, whatever pertains to mind is

going to be necessarily involving the body of the organism and its world.

What is important for our discussion is that on enactivist picture, the causal-

constitutive divide falls apart. Enactivism talks about the holistic explanations, taking

under account the organism’s biological set-up, history of interactions, social and

culture niches, etc., and so there is no clear divide between what is the synchronic or

diachronic explanation. For example, the history of interactions is both necessary to

explain how a mental act came about now and it can be used to explain how it got to

come about yesterday.

Though there is no clear application of enactivism to pretence yet – as

establishing this possibility is the aim of this thesis – we can already imagine that

enactivists would claim that there is nothing ‘extra’ to the practices that enactivism

explains that realizes them ‘from within’, as there is no internal-external divide to be

made. Pretence would be necessarily embodied and situated in a particular context.

There may be nothing extra to realize ‘pretence’ or its aspects (roles) like DK and

IMG (non-representationally construed). Rather, it may be the history of interactions

that shape relevant know-how, or sensorimotor and perceptual capacities that allow

imaginative ‘seeing-as’, which are enough to explain pretence.

What happens to the explanatory notion of enactivists that serves as an

alternative to mental representations? While in the functionalist framework, we could

speak of them as ‘realizers’ of pretence as they take on explaining the role of, e.g.,

‘imagining’ or ‘guiding’; in the enactivist framework, they should not be seen as

realizers of pretence, because affordances cannot be seen as constitutive subparts of

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pretence as mental representations are; affordances are to be thought of as either

relations between environment and animal (Chemero 2009) or relational properties of

the environment relative to the animal (Gibson 1979, Noe 2001, Withagen et al.

2012), and as either of the two, they are prone to dynamical interactions.

To summarise, in this section I have explained that the investigation of a

cognitive concept can take three forms: investigating its conceptual essence

(answering the question: what is it?), investigating implementation mechanism (how

is it realized?) and investigating its external factors (how does it causally come

about?). I have explained that on the functionalist picture, the first two are interlinked,

and contrast the third: findings about the implementation mechanisms (constitutive

realizers) can tell us something important about the essential make-up of what we

investigate. However, on the enactivist picture, the first stands separate to the second

and the third, which are, in turn, tightly linked; so tightly that it may not make sense

to separate them. Taking this under consideration, how does enactivism propose

alternative explanations to mental representational explanations of pretence? Are the

alternatives to be considered as mechanisms at all? Whether a mechanistic

explanation needs to be posited will be clarified upon discussion of the nature and

success of mechanistic explanations, in the subchapter below.

4. The validity of mechanistic explanations

To show how pretence can be understood without mental representations, we

must understand how pretence is usually explained in the first place. It is usually

explained though a cognitive mechanism. These mechanisms showed which aspects

(‘roles’) of pretence needed explaining, out of which I have chosen three (knowing,

imagining, guiding) to explain with a non-representational alternative. But what

would a non-representational mechanism look like? Can we even have non-

mechanistic explanations? These questions need to be at least raised (if not answered)

before developing the positive proposals in order to clarify what exactly it is that the

non-representational alternative provides.

The types of explanations present in philosophy of mind have mainly been

mechanistic. As Withagen et al. (2012) claim, “Ever since the mechanization of the

worldview (…), philosophers and later psychologists have generally tried to

understand mind and behavior in mechanistic terms” (p. 250). Descartes (1641/2007)

14

was a famous promoter of such methodology, but more recently, the method of

breaking the phenomenon into smaller ‘component’ mechanisms that are ‘stupid’, and

therefore, have lesser functions, has been discussed most famously by Dennett (1993).

While there is no one accepted definition of a mechanistic explanation, Ramsey

(2007) suggests the following:

A mechanistic explanation accounts for some capacity or aspect of the mind by

showing how it comes about through (or is realized by) its structures, states and

operations that could be implemented in physical process (p. 25).

As it can be seen, treating aspects of pretence as roles that have realizers

(decentring, quarantining, etc.) fits with the mechanistic view. 9 These aspects are

something into which we can ‘break down’ the phenomenon in order to explain its

smaller component parts. Why scientists and philosophers want to introduce

mechanistic explanations is to break the investigated phenomenon down into a

smaller set of components, so that they are easier to interpret and can be put back

together to allow making predictions about when the phenomenon would emerge. For

example, knowing what is required of pretence in terms of components would give us

an idea of what parts we would need to ‘collect’ so that when we put them together,

pretence would emerge. However, such mechanistic explanations do not seem to go in

pair with enactivist framework, the reasons why will be clarified after I introduce

some examples of mechanistic and non-mechanistic approaches to cognitive

phenomena.

Marr and Poggio’s (1976) paper is famous for introducing a differentiation

between levels of description; it was applied to understanding perception. They

approached perception from a computational theory approach, threating is as an

information processing system. As such, they distinguished three levels of abstraction

in analyzing perception (in Dawson, 1998):

1. Physical level: How the system is physically realized (neuronal structures),

2. Algorithmic/representational level: How does the system do what it does,

3. Computational level: What does the system do and why it does these things.

9 Interestingly, Ramsey himself does not see how a properly mechanistic framework of a cognitive theory would include roles such as ‘informing’, ‘denoting’ or ‘standing in for something else’ that mental representations are supposed to play (2007, p. 25).

15

With Marr’s consequent paper (1982), the three levels of explanation have

become popularized. In reversed order, Stich and Nichols (2003, p. 10) explain these

levels in the following way:

Marr’s highest level, which he perhaps misleadingly called the computational

level, presents an analysis of the cognitive capacity to be explained. The analysis

given an explicit account of what the system underlying the capacity does and

decomposes the system into a set of simpler subsystems. (…) At Marr’s second

level, which he calls the algorithmic level, the theory provides formal procedures

or algorithms for accomplishing each of the tasks into which the initial target task

or capacity has been decomposed. The third, or physical implementation, level

explains how the algorithms are actually executed by some real physical system –

typically some part if he brain. On Marr’s view, the three levels are largely

independent of one another.

While it hasn’t been explicitly proposed, pretence could be re-described also

in the following way:

1. Physics: what is happening at the neuronal level,

2. Functional Mechanisms: How does the system do it? (One possibility: mental

representational models)

3. Action: What does the system do? (Pretending, could be understood as

representing proper)

As the first domain clearly belongs to physics or neuroscience, not philosophy,

it will not be discussed further. Interestingly, philosophers do take on themselves to

explain the second level by providing explanatory models. This level is about asking

the question: how does the system get to do what it is doing? Applied to pretence, it

can be asked what structures or capacities need to be in place for an agent to pretend

that a banana is a phone? Here, mental representations are brought in in forms of

(often modular) mechanisms to explain what enables pretending to take place. At the

third level, we may ask, what is the child doing when she is pretending that a banana

is a phone? One answer might be that the child is representing the banana as a phone.

That notion of ‘representation’ should be understood as ‘thinks of’ or ‘takes one to be

another’, a kind of a symbolic thought. This is the level of description that many

16

target when they defend the idea that pretence involves representing proper. For the

purposes of focusing on explanatory mechanisms, how we describe pretending at the

highest level will also be bracketed.

Nichols and Stich target the ‘top’ (computational) level when proposing their

account of mindreading, of which pretending is an example. They propose a modular

mechanism to play a role at the second level. They write:

The account of mindreading we propose in this book can be viewed as a theory at

Marr’s highest [a.k.a., computational] level of analysis or, what amounts to much

the same thing, as the first level of a homuncular functionalist theory of

mindreading. Our aim is to characterize the complex and variegated skills that

constitute our mindreading capacity and begin the job of explaining how these

skills are accomplished by positing a cluster of mental mechanisms that interact

with one another… (2003, p. 10-11).

They further claim that

Most of the competing accounts of mindreading that have appeared in recent

years (along with many cognitive theories aimed at explaining other complex

cognitive capacities) are best viewed as having the same goals as our theory.

They try to explain mindreading (or some other complex cognitive capacity) by

positing functionally characterized underlying mechanisms with capacities that

are simpler than the capacity they are trying to explain. (idem, p. 11)

Thus, when following Marr’s methodology, phenomena like ‘mindreading’ are

broken down to simpler mechanisms in need of further explanation.

Interestingly, Marr himself made clear that his levels of classification are to be

treated as independent of one another. What should follow is that the

algorithmic/representational level should not in any way affect (whether strengthen or

weaken) the computational level; these can and should be considered separately from

each other. That is why logically, the structure of the mechanism of the middle level

should not make a difference to the structure of its highest level.10

10 This resembles the enactivists’ divide between mechanisms and essences, but not one of functionalists, who take the realizer mechanisms to be telling of the essential make-up and roles of their explananda.

17

Interestingly, this is the one key point that Nichols and Stich decide not to

follow Marr on. They admit to one major change in their analysis after appropriating

Marr’s distinctions:

Though it may be helpful to think of our account of mindreading as a theory at

Marr’s ‘computational’ level of analysis, there is one important issue on which

we differ from Marr. On Marr’s view, each level of analysis is largely

independent of the level below. On our view, by contrast, findings about the

structure and functioning of the brain can, and ultimately will, impose strong

constraints on theories of mindreading of the sort we will be offering (idem, p.

11).

Nichols and Stich are thinking of the lowest (physical) level affecting the

algorithmic level, and find that not worrisome due to lack of sufficient findings about

the brain to make any changes on the next explanatory level. My attention is drawn to

a different connection: if the levels are not independent of each other, then the

computational level is to be supported by what is broken down to an algorithmic

level. Their picture is of homuncular mechanisms that entail each other, rather than

three separate levels of analysis of the same phenomenon. The reference to the

scientific approach of Marr is tainted.

Unfortunately, this entailment relation is also endorsed in different fields.

Other authors (Iacoboni, 2006; Gallese et al. 2004) used a similar distinction to speak

about empathy and social cognition. For example, Gallese et al. (2004) distinguished

these thee levels underlying understanding of social cognition:

1. Physics: Firing of mirror neurons in the brain

2. Syntax: The functional model of simulation (simulation theory)

3. Semantics: Conscious experience, phenomenology of empathy.

As Gallese and his colleagues are, first and foremost, neuroscientists, they

mainly focus on explicating the neuronal mechanisms underlying empathy at the

physical level. However, they also claim that the neuronal mirroring activity is the

physical basis of our action-simulation capacity, which seems to be positing

explanatory modules on the second level. That mechanism of simulation further

explains how it is that humans feel empathy (third level).

18

Thus, while providing a hierarchical, mechanistic decomposition of

phenomena is a common scientific practice, that traditional approach of looking for

underlying mechanisms of phenomena may not be best applicable to complex social

and mental phenomena; it even results in contradictions.11

Explanations of cognitive phenomena perhaps should not resort to looking for

simple mechanistic explanations. Two alternatives can be thus proposed. The first is

to get rid of the mechanistic explanation altogether. The second is to embrace that the

explanation can be considered as a ‘wide-‘ or ‘extended mechanism’ that expands our

notion of mechanism to include social structures and the environment. I will now

discuss both options.

On the one hand, speaking of mechanisms may be problematic for

enactivists, and many would take a ‘no mechanism’ view to providing explanations.

One reason is that the idea of mechanistic explanations is that they just have to be

general – this is part of what it means to explain something. To apply this thought to

pretence, to explain types of pretence phenomena would be to looking for

mechanisms that instantiate pretence. But perhaps there is no unique phenomenon of

pretending that would have such a general mechanism. That is because often there is

no one accepted definition of such concepts, or a unitary account of what can be

covered by such concepts, and without such information, it is difficult to establish

whether what we are trying to explain even is a kind of a thing that can be broken

down to smaller mechanisms. Consider Hutto’s opening lines to “What is

Consciousness?” (2014):

There is no utterly clean, clear and neutral account of what exactly is covered by

the concept of consciousness. The situation reflects, and is exacerbated by, the

fact that we speak of consciousness in many different ways in ordinary parlance.

A consequence of our multifacious uses of the concept is that is has impossible to

define its essential characteristics through conceptual analysis. We have nothing

approaching a descriptively adequate philosophical consensus of what lies at the

core of all and every form of consciousness in terms of necessary and sufficient

conditions that would be accepted by all interested parties. (…) Recognizing that

attempts to provide a philosophically robust definition of consciousness are likely

11 See Rucinska (2015) on Fuchs

19

forlorn, a standard tactic for isolating core features of consciousness is to provide

clear-cut exemplars as specimens.

While Hutto speaks of consciousness (not pretence), and the inability to agree

on one definition of consciousness (not account), his words speak to pretence and its

available accounts as well. What follows is that it might be a daunting task to look for

a mechanism of pretence, one that would unitarily underlie any pretence act. For aside

no agreed definition of pretence or its account, there is no one kind of pretending

either. As was mentioned in Chapter I, pretence formulates itself in various ways,

from object-substitution play, to role-play, to full on acting and deception. It is

difficult enough to support the idea of a set of ‘components’ of pretence that would be

entailed by all these forms of pretence, let alone to propose a general mechanism that

specifies how those components interact with each other to enable pretence.

Moreover, mechanistic explanations do not seem to go with enactivism, as

aside assuming that the phenomenon can be broken down to smaller components, it

assumes that we can posit general rules that represent how things should happen.

However, giving rules of ‘pretence’ would be to de-contextualize it, so that the

component parts of a functioning ‘mechanism’ would always hold for any pretence

case. The worry is that maybe we cannot speak of a decontextualized mechanism of

an activity like ‘pretence’ to start with. Consider Withagen et al.’s (2012) explanation

of why Gibson’s ecological psychology tried to do without mechanisms:

Gibson’s (1966,1979/1986) ecological psychology can be understood as a critique

on mechanistic metaphors that dominate thinking in psychology since the 17th

century (Reed, 1988a, 1996a; Withagen & Michaels, 2005). (…) In the beginning

of the 20th century, Holt (1914/1973), Gibson’s graduate school mentor, claimed

that “psychology is at the present moment addicted to the bead theory” (p. 160) –

it tried to understand behavior in terms of a chain of causes and effects.

Following his mentor, Gibson (1966, 1979/1986) took aim at the mechanistic

conceptions of perception and action. He argued that animals should not be

conceived of as machines, the responses of which are caused by stimuli from the

environment. In addition, he claimed that the mechanistic conception of the

environment as matter in motion is inappropriate to understand animal behavior.

In Gibson’s view, the animal’s environment consists of action possibilities, which

he termed affordances. For instance, in the human environment, a floor affords

20

walking upon, a cup affords grasping, water affords drinking, and so on. With this

new conception of the environment, Gibson put agency back on the agenda and

thereby overturned the mechanistic framework that underlies many psychological

approaches. After all, if the environment consists of opportunities for action that

do not cause behavior but simply make it possible, animals appear as being

autonomous, making their way in the world. They are not mere puppets pushed

by the environment like machines; rather, animals have agency (p. 250).

On the other hand, perhaps mechanisms can be appropriated by enactivists,

and the ‘extensive mechanism’ view could be endorsed. The ‘extensive mechanism’

view would be one answer to the worry of decontextualization. Carlos Zednik (2011)

argues that we can appropriate a dynamical explanation to explain complex and

distributed mechanisms. He claims:

The theoretical frameworks of computationalism and connectionism are often

construed as a search for cognitive mechanisms, the specific structures and

processes from which cognitive phenomena arise. In contrast, the framework of

dynamicism is generally understood to be a search for principles or laws —

mathematical regularities that govern the way cognitive phenomena unfold over

time. (…) I argue that dynamical explanations may be uniquely able to describe

mechanisms whose components are engaged in complex relationships of

continuous reciprocal causation (p. 238-239).

One example how a wide, dynamic type of explanation is how Varela at al.

(1991) explain colour experience. In “The Embodied Mind”, Varela et al. discuss how

colour experience comes about. To understand colour experience, they claim that we

need to understand factors that simultaneously shape the experience, such as

appearance of the object (structured by basic colours and dimensions of hue,

saturation and brightness), illumination, retinal structures, neuronal structures

(structures of visual pathways that participate in the perception of colour), relationship

between colour and motion, and other sensory modalities. They claim that “Our

coloured world is brought forth by complex processes of structural coupling” (164),

and they demonstrated that “colour as an attribute is intimately involved with other

attributes of our perceived world” (165). They conclude with: “Our examination so

far shows that we will not be able to explain colour if we seek to locate it in a world

21

independent of our perceptual capacities. Instead, we must locate colour in the

perceived or experiential world that is brought forth from our history of structural

coupling.” (165). According to them, colours belong to shared biological and cultural

world.

This is in line with their understanding of enactivism, which, according to

them, merges realism, idealism and non-representationalism. They claim:

Our discussion of colour suggests a middle way between these two (…) extremes

[realism and idealism]. We have seen that colours are not ‘out there’ independent

of our perceptual and cognitive capacities. We have also seen that they are not “in

here” independent of our surrounding biological and cultural world. (…) These two

extremes both take representation as their central notion: in the first case

representation is used to recover what is outer; in the second case it is used to

project what is inner. Our intention is to bypass entirely this logical geography of

inner versus outer by studying cognition not as recovery or projection but as

embodied action” (172).

It is important to focus on what it is that Varela et al. are claiming to be

explaining. It could be said that they explain what colour experience is. According to

them,

(…) the overall concern of the enactive approach to perception is not to determine

how some perceiver-independent world is to be recovered; it is, rather, to

determine the common principles or lawful linkages between sensory and motor

systems that explain how action can be perceptually guided in a perceiver-

dependent world (idem, p. 173).

Varela et al.’s example shows that it is possible to provide something more

than a simple mechanistic explanation of a cognitive action. They do seem to endorse

looking for ‘common principles’ or ‘lawful linkages’ (that belong to providing a

mechanistic explanation) that can be generalized to all perception, but they look also at

the relation of the sensory-motor systems to the external world, one that is perceiver-

dependent. It could be said that they have opened up their notion of a ‘mechanism’ to

include social and cultural structures. It would be a type of an ‘interactive’, dynamical

mechanism, one very much in line with Zednik’s proposal.

22

There are worries to be found with depleting the ‘wide mechanism’ view. One

worry is, how could social context be appropriated to anything like a ‘mechanism’ of

pretence? How can such mechanism be studied or implemented? While it is promising

that further research can be done to make use of the enactive framework in, for

example, an empirical study (which is what an ‘enactive mechanism’ would promise),

it has to be carefully considered whether we are speaking of anything like a

mechanism at all, let alone whether we are speaking of it consistently. In his review of

a book “Analytical Sociology and Social Mechanisms”, Bert Leuridan (2011) neatly

raises the worry with applying the talk of mechanisms to concepts of social nature. He

explains:

Whenever we start explaining ‘why’ something happens, beyond mere

description, we are necessarily led to introduce some type of causal linkage of

elements that in turn raises the question of mechanism. (…) Emphasis on the

notion of mechanism corresponds to an evaluation of the proper role of causal

linkages in the social sciences. Yet there is no consensus on the notion of ‘social

mechanism’ in analytical sociology. (…) In Analytical Sociology and Social

Mechanisms, one hardly finds explicit definitions of ‘mechanism’, while the

concept is used implicitly in many divergent ways.

As this is a big discussion, one that is beyond the scope of this research,

perhaps I can remain neutral on whether the type of explanation I will be providing is

a mechanical explanation. It may be wise to follow the steps of Tad Zawidzki (2013),

who at the introduction to his account of mindshaping (importantly, a counter view to

mindreading proposals present in the literature), says the following:

(The) view I defend is entirely neutral on the question of mechanisms. The

competencies I describe are not implemented by innate, special-purpose symbolic

modules, or by general-purpose, experience-driven neural networks, or by some

hybrid of the two, or by some other alternative” (2013, p. xiv).

If these are the options of how to interpret what mechanisms are – either taking

the form of innate symbolic modules, or neural networks – then my alternative will

definitely not propose mechanisms per se. Rather, what I will propose are, to put most

neutrally, factors (non-representational factors) that play a role in making pretence

23

happen. Taking this approach may not require taking a stance on whether the

explanation is a ‘no mechanism’ or ‘wide mechanism’ explanation.

However, should a stance be taken, for the purposes of this particular thesis, I

do lean towards a ‘no mechanism’ view. That is mainly due to the description of

mechanism that Ramsey proposes, which is that mechanisms are by nature

representational:

… (Try) to imagine what a non-representational account of some cognitive

capacity or process might look like. Such a thing should be possible, even if you

regard a non-representational account as implausible. Presumably, at the very

least, it would need to propose some sort of internal processing architecture that

gives rise to the capacity in question. The account would perhaps invoke purely

mechanical operations that, like most mechanical processes, require internal

states or devices that in their proper functioning go into particular states when the

system is presented with specific sorts of input. But now notice that in the current

climate, such an account would turn out to be a representational theory after all. If

it proposes particular internal states that are responses to particular inputs, then,

given one popular conception of representation, these would qualify as

representing those inputs (2007, p. 3)

As my proposal is to provide the possibility of non-representational pretence, I

will cautiously accept Ramsey’s premise, even if it could be defended – even if

mechanisms are not by nature representational. There is, however, no compelling

argument for that option; in fact, even Zednik accepts that dynamical explanations are

“reductive explanations (…) and may be amenable to representation hunting” (p. 239).

That is why the non-representational factors that I will propose in explaining pretence

can be, for present purposes, best conceived of as non-mechanistic explanations.

5. Interlocutor’s objections and enactivist responses

This is where a cognitivist interlocutor may raise an objection. Can we have

non-mechanistic explanations that serve as explanations tout court? Are these to be

counted as ‘explanations’ at all? Consider the concept of ‘affordances’ that was

mentioned in Gibson’s quote, which will be a prominent non-representational

explanatory notion I will use throughout the thesis: does invoking affordances provide

24

a genuine alternative explanation, or are they just re-descriptions? The cognitivist may

worry that with introducing such notions, I have not engaged in an explanatory work,

but engaged in doing something else entirely.

This is not an unjustified worry. Without structuring the explanations into

mechanisms, I could be accused of not providing an explanation. I could also be

accused of changing the topic to conceptual analysis. I will presently discuss these

two objections, and propose rebuttals. The responses will also serve as summaries of

main points made in the above sections.

To begin to answer the cognitivists’ worries, and to set the stage for rebuttals,

it must be mentioned that in the nature of what we are explaining, it is difficult to

establish up front what kind of explanation would satisfy us. It is important to

remember that there are at least two types of philosophical investigation. One equates

explanations with saying something about the constitutive nature of what is explained;

other does not. How constitutive questions about a notion X are answered could, in

turn, be derived from pragmatic use of “X”, or from analysing the concept X. The role

of X is hard to determine; often it is assumed.

Take the concept ‘thinking’ as an example. Philosophers like Peter Hacker and

Jason Stanley (2011) think that we first have to find out what ‘thinking’ is, by seeing

how we use the term ‘thinking’ in our practice (Hacker prefers good old fashioned

ordinary language philosophy for this task, and Stanley linguistic analysis). In the

second step, they say, neuroscience can find out about the (actually boring)

mechanisms, which realize ‘thinking’.12 For example, in functionalism, realizers serve

as explanations of the roles. Then what realizes X can be mechanisms; not just

physical mechanisms are used as explanations, but also theorists posit symbolic

modules (see Leslie 1987, Nichols and Stich 2000, 2003).

But the second type of investigation does not make that distinction. In asking

about the phenomenon X, enactivists want to understand how it comes about. There is

no constitutive nature of X on that picture. Consider again the explanation of how

colour experience comes about by Varela at al., which includes the description of the

physiognomy of the human eye, the influence of the colour concepts of our culture on

perception, and so on. It could be said that they holistically explain how it is that we

get colour experience. Now, is there something else, the constitutive nature of colour

12 It is not always the case that neuroscience or cognitive science plays that role; arguably it is a philosopher’s task.

25

experience on top of that? It is likely that they would say no; there just is the

phenomenon of colour experience, and Varela et al. explain how it works (how it

came about and persists at the time).13 That must serve as explanation on their

account.

At this point a cognitivist interlocutor may pose the following, first challenge:

the enactivist is not providing an explanation at all. That is because cognitivists are

interested in the synchronic nature of the explanation, looking at the types of

cognitive mechanisms that are at work at the very moment one is, e.g., pretending.

Cognitivists insist that to provide an explanation is to provide an answer to a

synchronic question - what makes a specific behaviour a ‘pretence’ behaviour at the

moment we are engaging in it - as opposed to a diachronic question, which would

entail some sort of a historical perspective. As the enactivist is not just after the causal

antecedents of pretence, what is left is narrowing the target down to what

synchronously (or at a particular given time) suffices for a pretence act. Realisation is

a natural way of describing this relation. The objection would be that if one is not

speaking about synchronic realization, or diachronic causal antecedents, then one is

not providing a genuine alternative explanation to mental representational

explanations of pretence. Hence, the working concepts ‘affordances’ cannot play the

alternative explanatory role as they do not fit these explanatory roles to begin with.

However, enactivists could argue that it is a genuine explanation, just one that

does not fit with the cognitivist requirements. Consider an analogy: A policeman pulls

over an intoxicated woman for drunk-driving and asks her: “When did you start

drinking?”, to which she replies: “When I was about 12 years old”. This joke of an

answer suggests something important: both this answer and one that would specify the

hour of the day (ultimately what the policeman was asking for) are acceptable

answers; they do answer the same question, and explain how the woman got to be

drunk-driving, in a sense.

Enactivists negate that synchronic explanations can be cleanly divided from

the diachronic ones. They use 'history of past interactions’ as an explanation for why

we act the way we do presently. Thus, the answer to the cognitivist interlocutor might

be to argue that the enactivist explanation is a genuine explanation after all.

‘Affordances’ enter as explanations under a different methodology. They still clarify

how pretence works, but the divide between synchronic and dialogical explanations 13 Thanks to Martin Weichof for his helpful commentaries on the topic.

26

gets lost. It is conceivable, thus, that one can provide a genuine alternative, as long as

one is not playing by the same rules. Whether they are going to form aspects of a

‘wide-mechanism’ or form a ‘no-mechanism’ explanation is beyond the scope of this

paper, though as argued in subsection 4, the ‘no-mechanism view’ may be the safer

option. Thus, the alternative may not form an alternative mechanism, but should be

counted as an alternative non the less. Speaking of realizers of pretence would stop

making sense on that account; there would be no independent mental state of

‘pretence’ outside the practice of pretending; that would just be one and the same

thing.14

The second challenge of the cognitivist interlocutor may be that the enactivists

have changed the topic. Again, it is a valid point. Another option to not providing

explanations of general phenomena is to speak of token phenomena, understanding

that we cannot decontextualize them or give any golden rules. As mentioned earlier,

there may not be, after all, a single coherent ‘pretence’ phenomenon. However, that

point will always be ad hoc, unless one provides a working definition of ‘pretence’.

Providing a definition, in turn, is engaging in a conceptual analysis, which is not what

enactivism should approach if it is to provide alternative explanatory story.

A possible response of an enactivist, then, could be to bite the bullet and

accept that the explanation is not of the same kind, and indeed perhaps enactivism has

changed the explanandum, but that it is a change for the better none the less, because

explaining pretence by mechanistic explanation fails by its own standard (as proposed

by Ramsey).

However, importantly, the enactivist should be aware that his/her task is not to

be engaging in philosophy of language, and what follows, conceptual re-

characterizations. I will not provide an explanation of what makes one behaviour

count as pretence behaviour. One doesn’t need enactivism to answer the question

what counts as what. Ordinary Language Philosophy provides better answers to “what

counts as what within our linguistic practice” questions. The nature of the enactivists’

job is to discuss mental phenomena like pretence in the domain of philosophy of

mind, in particular by focusing on alternative explanations of pretence, not on how the

14 The enactivist would say that we cannot know in advance what the roles and realizers of pretence are, and assuming them is making a mistake, because we're then looking for some 'universal principles' of, e.g., pretence, and those would have to be decontextualized from the actual practices and the varieties they bring. If the practice of pretending is always contextualized, then we cannot presuppose roles (and realizers) of the pretence, and so the functions and the mechanisms these functions are supposed to play.

27

word ‘pretence’ is being used in a linguistic practice. There may be just the pragmatic

practice of using “X” (‘pretends’) in different contexts, and the phenomena of X

(pretence). But these things can come completely apart, because our ordinary

language is not made for describing phenomena, but for pragmatic purposes (e.g.,

‘thinking’ and saying things like “think harder!”).

So there could be the real phenomena of pretending on the one hand, and the

practice of using “pretence”, “pretends”, etc. on the other hand. That second analysis I

have to bracket, and for the argument sake assume that ordinary language does a fine

job in defining the boundaries of pretence. Even if that is not the case, this is not a job

of an enactivist looking at explaining non-representationally how pretence comes

about, even though on the enactivist picture, language games and cultural descriptions

could come in as part of the wide, cultural explanations.

6. Conclusion: Working assumptions and strategy

Does all this matter in finding non-representational alternatives to

explanations of pretence? Yes, as it is necessary to clarify upfront what kinds of

explanations I will be offering, and bracket any confusion of whether I am providing

an explanation. Considering the nature of the explanation is important as it shows the

possibility of interpreting my positive proposal (non-mental representational

explanations) in subsequent chapters as genuine explanations of pretence. It is also

crucial for getting clear on the working assumptions and the strategy appropriated for

the rest of the thesis.

For the purposes of this thesis, I will accept that some form of knowing,

imagining, or guiding is involved in pretending, in order to discriminate genuine

pretence acts from similar but not genuine acts of pretence. These form ‘roles’ on the

functionalist accounts, but should not be thought of as such by the enactivists (as they

do no not propose realizers of such roles). For example, I accept that some kind of

knowledge of what is going on is present (and some kind of understanding of what

one is doing) – but whether a Double Knowledge state of mind is present is not to be

taken for granted, and whether it requires a mental representational mechanism of

‘quarantining’ or ‘flagging’ will be put to question, etc.

I will also re-describe each and every one of the aspects. To be clear, engaging

in such re-description them may not be necessary, as it is possible to endorse mental

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representational aspects of pretence (on one level of description) and endorse their

mechanisms as non-mental representational (on another level of description). That

only follows if we accept that mechanisms do not constitute their essences. But in

case mechanisms do constitute their essences, it is useful for clarification purposes to

show that the ‘essences’ of pretence can also be characterized non-mentally

representationally. While it is not strictly necessary, it will be easier to see how

securing the possibility of non-representational explanans (the goal of this thesis) can

get cashed out in explaining how pretence works when I show that pretence need not

be necessarily seen as intrinsically mental representational to begin with. Thus, I will

target the constitutive commitments to show that they are not necessary or even the

only way to think about pretence. What follows is that explanatory needs will change,

and a logical space is opened where such questions of explanation can be answered in

a different way.

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