Abstract
In the present chapter, we investigate the notion that an action is successful if and only if (iff) it is caused by a true representation. We demonstrate that there indeed exist representations which—even though being false—can systematically lead to successful actions, if specific conditions hold, especially, if there is stochastic noise in the generation of representations and the cost of errors is asymmetrically distributed and the success-relevant feature can only be indirectly assessed via indicator features. Finally, we discuss this observation in relation to illusionary perception and evolutionary epistemology.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Capital letters here denote variables. A variable is a set of possible values together with a measurement operation which allows determination of what value currently is the case. For instance, the size of an apple can be considered as a variable S. The possible values of S are within the interval between zero and infinity. The measurement is a ruler, which also determines the quality of the variable, namely [cm] or [m].
- 2.
Here, we consider only first-order representations, the content of which is situated in the observers’ external environment. In principle, representations can also be meta-representations, i.e. about other representations.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
Assuming that a representation invariably causes the same action, in the present case, a representation of x meters always leads to a jump of x meters.
- 6.
The exact numerical values are arbitrary.
- 7.
Costs can be defined in two ways. First, negative entries in the utility matrix can be considered costs. The definition we are using in the subsequent chapter is the following: The incorrect action has less utility than the correct action. We understand as cost the amount of how much less utility an incorrect action has, compared to the correct action. That is, the ‘costly’ action can have a positive entry in the utility matrix, but we would still speak of cost, as utility would be positive but smaller than for the correct action.
- 8.
- 9.
In the following, we keep the indices c for indicator and t for success-relevant representations maintaining continuity with the main example without implying restriction to that specific example.
- 10.
The general conclusions do not depend on the specific numbers used in the simulation.
- 11.
The last point is not shown in the simulation. Increasing the probability of encountering a toxic snake to values greater than 50 % leads to lower overall levels of fitness and to a greater shift of representation. Probabilities smaller than 50 % have the reverse effect.
- 12.
The term ‘evolutionary epistemology’ has been used in at least two different ways (Bradie 1986). Popper and others used the term to describe the growth of human knowledge by the (non-genetic) evolution of ideas and theories (Popper 1972). In this chapter, we use it only in the sense of Lorenz (1973) and Vollmer (1975).
- 13.
Note that an analogue distinction has also been proposed by Bertalanffy: ‘The popular forms of intuition and categories, such as space, time, matter and causality, work well enough in the world of “medium dimensions” to which the human animal is biologically adapted. Here, Newtonian mechanics and classical physics, as based upon these visualizable categories, are perfectly satisfactory.’ (Bertalanffy 1968, p. 241, see also Bertalanffy 1955).
References
Abrams, M. (2012). Measured, modeled, and causal conceptions of fitness. Frontiers in Genetics, 3, 1–12. doi:10.3389/fgene.2012.00196.
Aglioti, S., DeSouza, J. F., & Goodale, M. A. (1995). Size-contrast illusions deceive the eye but not the hand. Current Biology: CB, 5(6), 679–685.
Alais, D., & Burr, D. (2004). The ventriloquist effect results from near-optimal bimodal integration. Current Biology: CB, 14, 257–262. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2004.01.029..
Bazylinski, D. A., & Frankel, R. B. (2004). Magnetosome formation in prokaryotes. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 2(3), 217–230. doi:10.1038/nrmicro842..
Baube, C. L., Rowland, W. J., & Fowler, J. B. (1995). The mechanisms of colour-based mate choice in female threespine sticklebacks: Hue, contrast and configurational cues. Behaviour, 132(13–14), 13–14.
Bertalanffy, L. (1955). An essay on the relativity of categories. Philosophy of Science, 22, 243–263.
Bertalanffy, L. (1968). The relativity of categories. In L. Bertalanffly (Ed.), General system theory (pp. 222–250). New York: George Braziller.
Bischof, N. (1966). Erkenntnistheoretische Grundlagenprobleme der Wahrnehmungspsychologie. In W. Metzger & H. Erke (Eds.), Handbuch der Psychologie in 12 Bdn. Bd. 1/I: Wahrnehmung und Bewusstsein (pp. 21–78). Göttingen: Psychologie.
Bischof, N. (1998). Struktur und Bedeutung. Bern: Hans Huber.
Bischof, N. (2009). Psychologie: Ein Grundkurs für Anspruchsvolle [Psychology: A basic course for the ambitious] (2nd ed.). Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
Blackburn, S. (2005). Success semantics. In H. Lillehammer & D. H. Mellor (Eds.), Ramsey’s legacy (pp. 22–36). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Blakemore, R. P. (1975). Magnetotactic bacteria. Science, 190(4212), 377–379.
Borchers, H.-W., Burghagen, H., & Ewert, J.-P. (1978). Key stimuli of prey for toads (Bufo bufo L.): Configuration and movement patterns. Journal of Comparative Physiology, 128(3), 189–192.
Bradie, M. (1986). Assessing evolutionary epistemology. Biology and Philosophy, 1, 401–459.
Breland, K., & Breland, M. (1961). The misbehaviour of organisms. American Psychologist, 16, 681–684.
Castiello, U. (2005). The neuroscience of grasping. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6(9), 726–736. doi:10.1038/nrn1744.
Dretske, F. (1981). Knowledge and the flow of information. Cambridge: MIT/Bradford Press.
Dretske, F. (1986). Misrepresentation. In R. Bogdan (Ed.), Belief (pp. 17–36). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ernst, M. O., & Banks, M. S. (2002). Humans integrate visual and haptic information in a statistically optimal fashion. Nature, 415, 429–433. doi:10.1038/415429a.
Ewert, J.-P. (1974). The neural basis of visually guided behaviour. Scientific American, 230(3), 34–42.
Faumont, S., Lindsay, T. H., & Lockery, S. R. (2012). Neuronal microcircuits for decision making in C. elegans. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 22(4), 580–591. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2012.05.005.
Fodor, J. A. (1990). A theory of content and other essays. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Fox, C. W., & Westneat, D. F. (2010). Adaptation. In D. F. Westneat & C. W. Fox (Eds.), Evolutionary behavioral ecology (pp. 16–32). New York: Oxford University Press.
Franz, V. H. (2001). Action does not resist visual illusions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5(11), 457–459.
Franz, V. H., Gegenfurtner, K. R., Bülthoff, H. H., & Fahle, M. (2000). Grasping visual illusions: No evidence for a dissociation between perception and action. Psychological Science, 11, 20–25.
Godfrey-Smith, P. (1991). Signal, decision, action. The Journal of Philosophy, 88(12), 709–722.
Gold, J. I., & Shadlen, M. N. (2007). The Neural Basis of Decision Making. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 30(1), 535–574. doi:10.1146/annurev.neuro.29.051605.113038.
Green, D. M., & Swets, J. A. (1966). Signal detection theory and psychophysics. New York: Wiley.
Hoff, W. D., van der Horst, M. A., Nudel, C. B., & Hellingwerf, K. J. (2009). Prokaryotic phototaxis. Methods in Molecular Biology, 571, 25–49. doi:10.1007/978-1-60761-198-1_2.
Hubel, D. H., & Wiesel, T. N. (1974). Sequence regularity and geometry of orientation columns in monkey striate cortex. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 158(3), 267–294.
Jékely, G. (2009). Evolution of phototaxis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1531), 2795–2808. doi:10.1098/rstb.2009.0072.
Lettvin, J. Y., Maturana, H. R., McCulloch, W. S., & Pitts, W. H. (1968). What the frog’s eye tells the frog’s brain. In W. C. Cunning & M. Balaban (Eds.), The mind: Biological approaches to its functions (pp. 233–258). New York: Wiley.
Lorenz, K. (1937). Über die Bildung des Instinktbegriffes. Die Naturwissenschaften, 25(19), 289–300. doi:10.1007/BF01492648.
Lorenz, K. (1973). Die Rückseite des Spiegels: Versuch einer Naturgeschichte menschlichen Erkennens. Munich: Piper.
Millikan, R. G. (1989). Biosemantics. The Journal of Philosophy, 86(6), 281–297.
Nanay, B. (2013). Success semantics: the sequel. Philosophical Studies, 165(1), 151–165. doi:10.1007/s11098-012-9922-7.
Neumann, J., & Morgenstern, O. (1947). Theory of games and economic behavior. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Papineau, D. (1984). Representation and explanation. Philosophy of Science, 51, 550–572.
Papineau, D. (2003). Is representation rife? Ratio, 16(2), 107–123.
Pavlov, I. P. (1927/2010). Conditioned reflexes: An investigation of the physiological activity of the cerebral cortex. Annals of Neurosciences, 17(3), 136–141. doi:10.5214/246.
Pick, H. L., Warren, D. H., & Hay, J. C. (1969). Sensory conflict in judgments of spatial direction. Perception and Psychophysics, 6(4), 203–205. doi:10.3758/BF03207017..
Popper, K. R. (1972). Objective knowledge: An evolutionary approach. Oxford: Clarendon.
Ramsey, F. P., & Moore, G. E. (1927). Symposium: Facts and Propositions. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, 7, 153–206.
Reeve, H. K., & Sherman, P. W. (1993). Adaptation and the goals of evolutionary research. Quarterly Review of Biology, 68, 1–32.
Schleidt, W. M. (1962). Die historische Entwicklung der Begriffe “Angeborenes auslösendes Schema”, und “Angeborener Auslösemechanismus” in der Ethologie. Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 19, 697–722.
Seyfarth, R., Cheney, D., & Marler, P. (1980). Monkey responses to three different alarm calls: Evidence of predator classification and semantic communication. Science, 210(4471), 801–803. doi:10.1126/science.7433999.
Shea, N. (2007). Consumers need information: Supplementing teleosemantics with an input condition. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 75(2), 404–435.
Stephens, D. W., & Krebs, J. R. (1987). Foraging Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Tinbergen, N. (1951). The study of instinct. Oxford: Clarendon.
Usher, M. (2001). A statistical referential theory of content: Using information theory to account for misrepresentation. Mind & Language, 16(3), 311–334.
Vollmer, G. (1975). Evolutionäre Erkenntnistheorie [Evolutionary epistemology]. Stuttgart: Hirzel.
Vollmer, G. (2010). Invariance and objectivity. Foundations of Physics, 40, 1651–1667. doi:10.1007/s10701-010-9471-x.
Warren, D. H., Welch, R. B., & McCarthy, T. J. (1981). The role of visual-auditory “compellingness” in the ventriloquism effect: Implications for transitivity among the spatial senses. Perception & Psychophysics, 30(6), 557–564. doi:10.3758/BF03202010.
Whyte, J. T. (1990). Success semantics. Analysis, 50(3), 149–157.
Acknowledgments
We thank W. Schleidt for valuable comments on previous versions of the manuscript and E. Ratko-Dehnert, A. Hetmanek, J. Jarecki, M. Rausch, B. Schlagbauer, and B. Ruf for fruitful discussions on the topic.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Zehetleitner, M., Schönbrodt, F. (2015). When Misrepresentation is Successful. In: Breyer, T. (eds) Epistemological Dimensions of Evolutionary Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1387-9_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1387-9_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-1386-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-1387-9
eBook Packages: Behavioral ScienceBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)