The Other Side of Representation - Critical Theory and the New Cognitivism

8/3/2019 The Other Side of Representation - Critical Theory and the New Cognitivism

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The Other Side of Representation: Critical Theory and the New CognitivismAuthor(s): Paul MiersReviewed work(s):Source: MLN, Vol. 107, No. 5, Comparative Literature (Dec., 1992), pp. 950-975Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2904826 .

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TheOther ideofRepresentation:CriticalheoryndtheNewCognitivismPaulMiers

It ismanifesthatbehind heso-called ur-tainwhichs supposed o conceal he nnerworld, heresnothingo be seenunlesswegobehindtourselves,smuchn order hatwemay ee,as that heremaybe somethingbehind herewhich an be seen.

Hegel, ThePhenomenologyfSpiritAndwhatwerethou, nd earth, nd stars,and sea,If to thehumanmind'smaginingsSilence nd solitudewerevacancy?

Shelley,MontBlancWhat remainshere and now of Hegel is a stillunansweredques-tion: is a general theory f representation ossible?Hegel himselfassumed both thatsuch a theorywas at hand and that tsappear-ance wouldmarkthebeginning fa shift rom hepicture-thinkingof all priorconsciousnessto the new age of absolute knowledge.The audacious conceitofthePhenomenologyf pirit,fcourse, s itsclaim to be the textwhichboth presentsthe general theory ndtriggers he finalrevolution, he textwhichbringsto an end theveryhistoryt relates.Yet thePhenomenologytselfhas also blockedthe revolution t announces.MLN, 107, (1992): 950-975 ? 1992 byThe Johns Hopkins University ress


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M L N 951The problem for criticaltheoryhas been that in the opening

three sectionsof thePhenomenologyegel succeeds all too well atdeconstructingthe world of appearances and showing that itsstructure s a productof the dialecticplayof consciousness.1Bytheend of the chapter "Understanding,"when Hegel facetiouslyn-vitesus to go behind the veil of appearance, we findonlyanotherscene in the theaterof representation, tableau which s nothingmore or less thanthe whole innerhistory f consciousness s it willbe played out in the rest of the text. The price we pay for thisremarkableembedding of the whole within he part is consider-able. Hegel's self-reflexiveccount of the dialectic representsaradical break withPlato's account of a dialecticascent: instead ofhavinga dialecticwhichcan pass beyondrepresentation o graspthe eternalformson the otherside,we are now givenone whichturns on itselfand, withpost-structuralism,ill eventuallytwistrepresentationnto theparadoxical figure f a mobiusstripwherethe twoaspectsof representation,ignifier nd signified, re boththe same and yetdifferent. fterHegel itseems impossible itherto avoid a dialecticaccount of consciousnessor to insurethatanysuch theorywilldisentangle tself rom heprocessof its own writ-ing.2Hegel's ownresolution o thisparadox,thetropeofthe keno-sis of spirit nto history,ooks ultimately or us, today,to be nomore than the repressionand sublimationof the crisis his workengenders.But theplotof thePhenomenologyoes nonetheless uggestwhatform general theory frepresentationmight ake. In the courseof thetext,we see thattheoppositionbetweenrepresentationvor-stellung)nd notion bild) stablished n thepreface s playedout asa double difference, ne a semioticdifferencebetween kinds ofsignsand the other a temporaldifferencewhichallows one mo-mentof consciousnessto trope another.Along the semioticaxis,representations re like symbolswhichevoke the illusionof thesignified s transcendental ther,whereasnotions are theallegor-ies whichcorrect hesymbolicllusionand showthatotherness ieswithin onsciousness itself.But this semioticdifference s also anillusioncreated bythe temporalunfoldingof spiritfrom tssym-bolizingyouth o itsallegorizingmaturity. he conscioussubject nthePhenomenology,he subject being generatedbythe text, an atfirst nly experience notionsas limitedrepresentations;whereasthe consciousnessof thePhenomenologytself, he one whichframesand narratesthe construction f the subjectand which"we" are


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952 PAULMIERSinvited obecome,knowsthateach representations also a notion.The dialecticmovement fHegel's text, ike the movement fspirititself, urns gainstrepresentationnd sublatesthe semioticdiffer-ence betweenrepresentation nd notion. The distinction etweensymboland allegoryis canceled along the semiotic axis and yetpreservedbythetropeofspirit ntering ime: thesymbolbecomesits ownallegory, t s written verand preservedwithin henotion,a markedexhibit n thegalleryof spirit.In Hegelian terms, hen,whata generaltheory frepresentationmust be is nothing ess than an accountof the illusion of semioticdifferencewhichis at the same timea formula or recipe forthetemporalgenesis of representation, recipe forwriting he alle-gorical abels. If the veilof appearances is read as the bar betweensignifiernd signified, hen a generaltheorymustexplainthe dou-ble sense ofthatbar: both the llusionof theotherside and thefactthat hebar itselfsputinplay by something hatbelongsto neitherside.The lure of such a general theoryhas been held out, now, tocriticaltheoryfornearlytwo centuries,but so farwe have beenunable to find either a space which would stand outside thedialecticor a notional language which was not itselfrepresenta-tional. As a consequence theory ives in the shadow of the Phe-nomenology,roducing endless versions of the opening decon-struction f appearance and thenentangling tself n thedialecticweb of itsown discourse in such a way that the story t tellsap-pears never to end. The heroic subjectof Hegel's Phenomenology,the spirit, s reduced to the playof representation, verybelatedfigure n an endgame alwaysthreatening odissolve ntoperpetualcheck.For a long whilethe one serious alternative o Hegel's story frepresentationwas theanalytic ccountwhich treated mentalrep-resentations s propositionalforms, n accountwhichclaimed toescape the crisisof dialecticthoughtbecause itseparated the sub-ject's act of knowingfromthe representation f what the subjectknows,feels,or believes. In itspure classicalform, nalytic heoryassumed that what is being representedcan be neatlydividedbe-tween semantics nd syntax; ts loganbecame,"take care ofsyntaxand semanticswill follow." In analytictheory,the locus of the"other side" ofrepresentationsunambiguous: it s thedeep struc-ture,the "language of thought"which ies below appearance andframes ts constructions.3 his paradigm,at leastbycontrastwith


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M L N 953theHegelian dialectic,preserves hePlatonicallegoryby nvertingthe figureof ascent; we are here mining anguage itselffor theorigin of representation, rusting hat we will find that deepestlayerwhere the language ofthought nd the languageforthoughtcoincide.But theanalytic ndeavorcomesto suffer omething f the samecrisis s thedialectic, onfirmingnpartthe truth fthecritiqueofUnderstandingHegel givesin the first artof thePhenomenology.As earlyas theTractatus,Wittgenstein ad realized thattheFrege-Russellaccount ofpropositional ttitudes equiredreformulation.4Once the fullconsequences of thatreformulation ecame clear, nthe laterWittgensteinnd then nAustin,Quine, Davidson, et al.,one could wonder,a la Rorty, owhatdegree the revisedclassicalaccount now differedfrom the endless muddle of the dialecticapproach.5Cognitive cience,whichwas foundedon thisparadigm, nitiallysoughtto insulate tself rom he crisisbyfocusing n thepracticalquestionof buildingcomputersimulations f mentalfunctions. tassumed, in the traditionof reductionist cience, that althoughactual minds mightnot be pure analyticmachines,the machinemodel was nonetheless heonlyone whichcould plausibly ccountforthe symbol processingcapabilitiesof the human mind. For awhilethisassumptionworked because cognitivists eptissuing, sthe saying goes, credible promissorynotes, notes which said ineffect soon we willbuild you a symbolprocessingmachine whichworks n some fashion ike the human mind."Unfortunately,s anumberof criticswere vocal in pointingout, thedebentured ma-chines for the most part eitherfailed to work at all, worked bysubtle Clever Hans tricks, r, ironically nough, worked all toopowerfully recisely ecause theywerebred as hyper-muscledn-alytic ymbolcrunchers.6During the 1980s, even as mostcognitivistsontinuedto try odefendclassicaltheory, n alternative chool emergedwithinneu-roscience, one which shifted attentionaway from formalist c-counts and seemed much more compatible with the post-Wittgensteiniantanceof analyticphilosophy.7 his new synthesisof neuroscience and post-analytic hilosophy,which I am callinghere the new cognitivism, opes to offerus an optionwhich suc-cumbs neither to dialectic confusionnor to analytic promissorycollapse. The claimof the new cognitivisms thatwe are now in apositionto write biologicallyplausibleaccount ofhowour minds


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representthe world, an account which ties the virtualspace ofrepresentation irectly o the architecture f the brainand derivesthe anguage ofrepresentation rom healgebraof the neural net-work.If theseclaimshold, theconsequences for critical heory houldnot be underestimated.Over thepastquarter century hediscourseofpostmoderndialectic heoryhas become, nthecourse of attack-ing the specterof logocentricmodels,a highly sotericenterprise,one whichappears, especiallyto the general public, to deny thepossibility f meaning.The new cognitivism, ycontrast, fferscritiqueof analyticmodels that claims to pass over to a more nat-ural account ofmeaning.Perhapsunsurprisingly,hereare certainadvocates of the new theorywho wishto seize upon the apparentdirectnessof itsaccount of meaning and ignore the fact thatthetheory lso mandates the deconstruction f the classical account ofrepresentation. hey want to offerus an oxymoron, cognitivismwhich is both anti-analyticnd yetmarks a returnto normativevalues and theclassical statusof the subject.What is now at stake,in otherwords, is nothing ess than the question of who gets toauthor the nextPhenomenology.he new versionwill need to begrounded in cognitive cience,and ifdialectictheoryfailsto un-derstand that science and recastits argumentsaccordingly, hensoftcognitivistswill be leftto build and run the post-Hegelianmachinery f cultural nterpretation.In whatfollows want to examine the core principles f thenewcognitivismnd consider tsreactionary se byMarkTurner in hisrecentbookReadingMinds:TheStudy fEnglish ntheAgeofCogni-tive cience.Turner argues that a cognitive ccount of interpreta-tion can escape deconstruction nd return iterary tudies to its"home base" in language.8Myargumentwillbe thatwhile the newcognitivism oes indeed constitute radical departurefrombothanalytic nd dialectic ccounts ofrepresentation,t does not ead toa renormalization f theory.What it actually nstitutess a choicebetweentwo versionsof deconstruction: ne which remainswithinthe closure of thePhenomenologynd the other whichfinally ndsHegel's dialectic adventure by discoveringthe neural recipe forrepresentation.As we shall see, that recipe, the pharmakon fthought, s distributed hroughoutthe brain; it is not so much asinglespiritualnotion as it s a very rchaicstrategy orengender-inga whole castof psychicfigures, igureswhich ongprecede theoriginof human culture.


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What I am callingthe newcognitivisms actually n amalgamoftheories inkingrecent work n neuroscienceand cognitivephilos-ophy. Although tspractitionersftendisagreeon the exactdetailsof the new paradigm, it is evidentthat there is a profound shiftaway from the classicalaccount of mind as a virtual ystem per-atingat one levelabove the neuralarchitecture. he centraldebatein cognitive heory oday s whether lassical theoriescan be mod-ified to accommodatethe claimsof the newcognitivismr need tobe replaced byan entirely ew paradigm,one shaped much morethan classicaltheory ver was byan understanding r neurophys-iology.It is this new paradigmwhichopens for the first ime thereal possibility f a neurosemiotics.The great strengthof classical theorywas its abilityto link amodel of mental architecture, method of computation,and atheory fmeaning none coherentmodel,a model consistentwiththe rationalisttraditionof philosophy fromDescartes throughFregeand Russell.The need for itherreformulationrrevolutionarisesas each one of thethree inks nthis lassical ccount s calledintoquestion. First, he architecture f mind now looks to reflectmuch more directly he organizationof the brain itself nd to bestructuredn wayswhichdo not correspondto a classicalsystem.Instead of virtualmind as a second-ordersystem nhabiting hebrain,we have now a viewof thebrain as a self-organizingsyche.Second, in thisnewpictureof thebrain,there s little oom for theold notionofa virtualprocessorofsymbolswhichworksby bindingtokensto types.And finally,heform frepresentationppears tobe muchmoreanalogicrather hanpropositional, nd to the extentthat t s propositional t cannotbe parsed accordingto theclassicaldivisionbetweensyntax nd semantics. n fact, s we shallsee, thenew cognitivism o thoroughlydissolvesthe structure f virtualmindthat tsgreatest heoretical hallenge sto account forthefactthat omepartof humanintelligenceworksverymuch ike a virtualmind.The need to change our view of mental architecturebecameevidentin 1977 when Vernon Mountcastleand Gerald Edelmanchallenged classicaltheoryby arguingthatphysiological videnceindicatedtheneocortexoperated inwaysratherdifferent rom hestandardcomputermodel.9 Instead ofhavinga centralprocessor,the cortex s structured ya massivenumberof modulesoperating


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in parallel, all of them,no matterwhat theirfunction, sing thesame strategy. urthermore, hatstrategy oes not look anythinglike the classical notion of token/type ncoding, a method whichwould require a rather elaborate apparatus of separate memorybuffers nd real-timetaggingof signals. Instead, these modulesappear to build up and transformmaps of sensoryfields,mapswhich reflectthe topographyof the body and certain invariantfeaturesof real space and time.These maps, however, re neitherfixednor discrete.They are,rather,dynamicprojectionscontainingoverlappingand degener-ate many-to-one nd one-to-many epresentations. he same sen-soryfieldor range maybe representedbya number of differentmappings intoa topographicaldomain which can in turnbe inte-gratedwithone topographyfora number of different ields. No-where has there been evidence of a meta-map, singlerepresen-tationof theworld,nor of a centralplace where sucha map mightbe displayed. Indeed, one of the consequences of Mountcastle'swork has been to showthatthe cortex s not so much a containerforrepresentationss an organic attice n whichvirtual pace itselfis always being fabricatedon the flyfrom modulated bursts ofneural firings. here is quite literally o actual there there.However revolutionary his new version of mentalarchitecturewas, it was still possible to save the appearance of the classicalaccountbylocatingthesymbolprocessing apabilitiesof thebrainat some level above theneuralmachinery.AlthoughEdelman earlyon argued that the parallel architecture f the brain precluded inprinciplethe existenceof anyformal omputationalprograms,hisalternative electionist heorywas notwidelyunderstoodand didnot appear to be powerful enough to replace the classical para-digm.10A classical ystemwas stillnecessary, heargumentwent, norder tocarry ut the formal perationsneeded toprocessnaturallanguages. This argumentforretaining classical account of rep-resentationwas, however,being weakened both by internal revi-sionsof classicaltheorytself nd byevidencethathumancognitiondid not followclassicalstrategies.Under the influenceof Kripke,Putnam and others,semantictheorywas already shifting rom adescriptivemodel of meaningbased on intensional featuresto acausal account based on contingentdesignations,prototypes, ndexemplars.1 In therevisedtheory bird,forexample,was repre-sentednotbyan entry isting setof invariant eaturesbut ratherby some prototypicalfigurewith some combination of feathers,


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wings,two legs, and a song. In the most radical versionof thisrevision, ne argued mostnotablybyPutnam,thegroundof truthvalue semanticsas derived fromFrege was whollyrejected: thetoken"bird"could have the same meaningeven if the truthvalueof itscomponentpartswere changed.12Psychologicalevidence began to suggest that people actuallyused strategiesmuchmorelikeprototype heory han classicalthe-oryto categorizeand recallsensory nformation.13here was alsoevidencesuggesting hatsome mentalrepresentationuch as rota-tions of abstract hapes was analogical and relatively irect.14 heformal structure f language looked more and more like the ex-ceptionrather han therule. What ensued was the drivetodevelopa new computationaltheorywhich would explain how the non-classicalarchitecture f the brain could generatethe formal truc-ture of mentalrepresentations.An earlyversionof such a theoryhad been proposed inthe 60s byRosenblatt, uthisperceptrons, stheywerecalled,werethen believedto be notpowerful nough tolearnor recognizecomplex patterns.'5Bythe mid 1980s, however,refinementsn the theory ed to a whole new class of algorithms;these were embracedbya researchgroup at theUniversity fCal-ifornia at San Diego and published in a widelyinfluential wo-volumework n 1986.16The new approach, mostoften called connectionism r paralleldistributedprocessing PDP), looks, by comparisonwith classicaltheory, ather impleand reductive.Connectionistmodels are builtbyinterconnectinghe nodes of a network nd allowingthe func-tions whichgovern the strength f the connectionsto change inways that reflectdifferencesbetween input and output. In thisfashion,one can train a networkto respond to an input with aresponse whichmeasures the goodness of fitbetween thatinputand some optimal condition set by the adjusted strength f theconnections.Under repetition f any stereotypictimulus, he net-workwillreorganize tself nd learn torecognizea rangeof stimulimatchingthe stereotype.Furthermore, hese networkswill per-form these tasks even in the presence of backgroundnoise andwithhighly ncomplete nputdata, thereby liminating woprob-lemswhich oftenplagued earliercognitivemodels.The differences etweena pure connectionist nd a classicalsys-tem are fundamental.A classicalsystemmust call up a set of pre-viouslystoredrules to matchan inputtokenagainsta listof fea-turesfor a specific ype. t willcarryout this task n a discrete et


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of stepsand the executionof thesesteps s not itself n interpret-able partoftheprocesses:iftheprogram s stoppedin themiddle,there s no intermediate epresentation.Moreover,thesystemhasto be givenatthestart completeand consistent et ofdescriptionsof the featuresbeing represented; it cannot learn or constructthesefeatures s itgoes along,and thehistoryf tspriorresponsesdoes not alterthe nternal epresentation f the features.The con-nectionistnetworkon the other hand is continually ltering tsfunctionalweights n response to input,and it actively eeks outand locks ontominimal nd maximaldifferencess it settles ntoabestfit tate. ftheprocess sstoppedatanypoint, hesystem ieldsa provisionalrepresentation.And the same holds ifany partof thenetwork s damaged or ifthe inputis degraded.But what is perhaps most radical about the connectionistnet-work s that t is reallynot a representational ystem t all. A clas-sicalsystemssymbolicn the sense that t stores ypes nd matchesthemagainsttokens ccordingtofixedrules;boththetype nd therules are addressable independent of the representation. n theconnectionist ystem, here is no locus of the type because the"type" s not assigned to any particularunit in the network. t is,rather,evoked by the strength f the connections.As Paul Smo-lensky, ne of the leading connectionistheorists, utsit, n a clas-sical system the entitieswhichare capable of being semanticallyinterpreted re also the entitiesgovernedbythe formal aws thatdefinethe system,"whereas in a connectionistystem theseman-tically nterpreted ntities re patternsof activationover a largenumberof units in the system" nd the activationrules are of a"essentially ifferentharacterfrom ymbolmanipulationrules."'7The peculiar distributed ogic of connectionist ystem s whatmakes it appear to function o naturally, ut that logic entails aspecial difficulty. s critics ikeJerryFodor and Zenon Pylyshynhave repeatedlypointed out, many connectionistmodels fail todisplayone critical apability f symbolistystems, amelywhat softencalled systematicityr the ability o carryout syntactic per-ations on constituent eatures.'8In a classicalsystem he concept"cup of coffee"can be brokendown into twoconcepts,"cup" and"coffee",whichcan be combinedatomically y syntactic perationsand semantic nterpretations;.e., "cup of coffee"entails that cof-fee is a liquidwhich can be poured into,contained,or poured outof a cup whichmaybe filledwithwater, ea, coffee, odka,sand,ormaybe empty. n a connectionistystem, owever, ince there s no


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M L N 959discreteassignmentof component features for "cup of coffee,"there s no simple wayto break down and operate on theconcept.To have the representation cup of coffee" s not necessarily ohave the separate representation f a cup as somethingwhich canbe manipulated.To have therepresentation myuncle" is notnec-essarily o have access to the semantic istwhich ncludes"mymoth-er's brother,"nor does "newly ppointed Supreme CourtJustice"automaticallycall up "man who sexually harrassed female em-ployee."To classical cognitivistsike Fodor the systematicityssue onlyevokes echoes of the old debate betweenempiricistsnd nativists,where the empiricists laimed that the structureof experiencecould be reduced to an accountof the associationof deas. Nativiststhought heyhad won thatargumentonce at the turn of the 18thcentury nd again in thiscenturywithChomsky's refutation" fSkinner.They tend to see connectionism s a new versionof asso-ciationism till ackingthe formalpowertoexplainmental ife. Butframing he debate in thiswayobscures the more significantssuein dispute,which s not the Kantianquestionofwhether he con-tentofrepresentations given byexperienceor actively reatedbythemind,nor even thequestionof systematicityn itself.Connec-tionist ystems re not primitive ssociationistnetworks; heyareextremely ophisticated econd-order differentialmachines pow-erfulenough to have alreadybeen puttopracticaluse.19They canbe endowed withas much nativist tructure s one wants, nd re-cent workhas indicated thattheycan generate systematic truc-turesunder biologicallyplausibleconstraints.20So what s really t stakehere is not a battlebetweenrationalismand behaviorism, ut rather choice betweentwodifferent aystoexplainthe structure f reason and put together hearchitecturefthe mind. Fodor iscertainly orrect nwanting o claim that he olddebate at least demonstrated the need fornative structures ndformalcapabilities:a theoryof representation ackingthese char-acteristicss no theory t all. The classicaltradition, owever, ouldonly magineone wayto explain theoriginsof rationality, amelyby assumingthatrationalitywas somehowself-engenderedby itsown logic.Connectionism epresents directchallengeto thismy-thos because it demonstratesfor the first ime the possibility f anon-classicalpathwayto formalstructures. he essentialquestionto ask now is no longer Cartesianbut Darwinian: whichpathwaydid nature follow?


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In one sense the revolutionhas already happened: biologyhasforcedphilosophy o surrender ts exclusiveclaim on thedesignofmentalarchitecture. f we startfromthe evidence indicating hatthe neural architecturetself s non-classical, hen our twowaysofputtingtogethera solution to the mind/brain uzzle are highlyconstrained.We can eitherupdate the old symbolistccount andfind a plausiblewayto attach t to a non-classicalnfrastructure,rwe can explain how a non-classical nfrastructurean produce sys-tematicformswithout esorting o classicalmeans. And while eachof these models may in principleworkequally well, the logic ofevolution suggeststhat nature chooses only one of several engi-neering options, though,of course, not alwaysthe one which isfromour perspective he mostelegantor parsimonious.Building hybridversionsof these two models, versions whichgraft lassical nd non-classicalogics,might ook like a wayaroundthe extreme either/orchoice of a neo-symbolistor pan-con-nectionist ccount, but at some point everyhybridwill face thesame choice betweenprocessing trategies.21ymbolicitymerges,whethergloballyacross the brain or locally n some area of thebrain, either because evolution switchesfrom a non-classicaltoa classical strategyor because evolution adapts non-classicalstrategiesto produce the formalstructure f representation. none case, thebirth fsymbolicitysa relativelyecenthumanevent;in the other, symbolicitys a strategywhichemerges in animalslong before its formal articulation n second-ordercultural sys-tems.The problemforneo-symbolists,nce theyconcede theconnec-tionist nfrastructuref thecortex, s to discoversome locus for aclassicalprocessorand thenexplain how thatprocessorcodes neu-ral signalsso thatthey ake on the double roleoftoken and typeorsignifer nd signified.Advanced symbolprocessorsmightwellex-ist in relativelyunexplored parts of the cortex that control lan-guage or associative nference, nd theymayin partbe, as DanielDennett has recently rgued, residentpieces of "software"whichare "loaded" in the human brain afterbirth.22 hese speculations,however,do not address the second partof theneo-symbolist rob-lem: explainingthe double logicofthought n a waythatkeeps theconnectionist ogic of the infrastructure romcontaminating hesymbolic ogic of the virtualsystem. f a boundary is not main-


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M L N 961tainedbetweenthe twosystems,henneo-symbolisman no longerclaim that a theoryof propositionalattitudes s sufficient o de-scribe mental representations. he fact that the mind's ability omaintain thisboundary is disruptedby stress,drugs,and mentaldisorders s forneo-symbolismll themore evidence of tspresenceduringnormalcognition. ndeed theverynotion ofhavinga sym-bolicorderdepends upon introducing primordialdivide withinpreviously ndifferentiatedystem.Without hisdivide all distinc-tions betweenrationaland irrational,normal and abnormal,sur-face and depth, conscious and unconscious dissolve. While thisapproach mayappear to save the classicalsystem,we should notethepriceand consequence. In thefirst lace, classicaltheorymustnowgiveup its once cherishednotion that tsorderextends n anysense below the boundarybetweeninfrastructurend virtual ys-tem. As Dennett correctly ees, this constriction f the classicaldomain means abandoningthe notionof a Cartesian theater nd asingleself,but Dennettis willing o pay thispricein order to pre-serve symbolicitys a capabilitypeculiar to human intelligence.The other consequence of neo-symbolisms one whichDennettlargely gnores. If the virtualspace of classical representation sstripped, o to speak, of itsmooringsand orphaned in a connec-tionistsea, then the coding problem is enormous: how are theassociativestructures f informationn the connectionist etworkbound to the classical symbol?Dennett seems quite happy to livewiththe idea that mentalrepresentations ome in multipledraftsand somehowgetedited,but he doesn'twant to focusvery learlyon exactlywhat kindofcommonediting anguage is beingused totranslate he babel of all this redaction. n the old system ne as-sumed there ust was one language of thought; n the new orderitis not even clearwhether ll the editors are literate.Pan-connectionism,he alternative oneo-symbolism,acesa dif-ferentpuzzle problem.Because itputsthepieces togetherby eav-ingout the need for a virtual ymbolizer,t mustshow that a non-classical solutionto theproblemof representationwas already m-plicit n the cortical rchitecture,hedesignofwhich was selectedbyevolution ong beforetheemergenceof homo apiens.The rep-resentationalstrategy hould be suggestedby the neural designmuchin the samewaythatthe structure f the double helixpointstothesolutionof thegenetic oding problem.Whileconnectionismmaynotyet iterally ave thedouble helix of neuralrepresentation,a case could be made for sayingthatwe are now at a position


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962 PAULMIERSsimilar o wherebiologywas whenSchrodingerfirstuggestedthattheprincipleof life was to be found in a "aperiodic crystal."23Two important nsightsntothis trategy ereoffered yMount-castle and Edelman in The MindfulBrain a decade before thespread of connectionist heory.Mountcastledemonstrated hatthedistributedmodules of the neo-cortexwere apparently xtractingtwo-dimensionalnformation romperipheral nputand reconsti-tuting hat nformationn three-dimensional orm.Moreover,hisexperiments ndicatedthat this extraction nd reconstitution ro-cesswas mediatedbyneural entrainment r phase locking, phe-nomenon in which the firingfrequencyof one cell causes othercells to lock in on thatfrequency nd on its harmonics.Since theharmonicsofa signaltrailbehind thesignal norderedwavefronts,thisphenomenon effectivelymeans that thefirings f setsof cellsare being timedby a harmonic code generatedfrom the originalperipheral signal. Edelman's contributionwas to suggestthatthegeneral problem of neural coding mightbest be understood byanalogywiththeresponse of the immunesystem o alien input: arelatively mall number of variablebindingsites on host cells usethe nvading antigenas a template o createspecific ntibodies;thecells are rapidlycloned to supplymore antibodyto ward off theattacker.This trick,which first volves n vertebrates,bviates theneed for the immunesystem o storethewhole repertory f anti-bodies forall possible antigens.The requisite ntibody s manufac-tured locallyfrom set of standardpatternsdistributed hrough-out the system.Taken incombination, heseprinciples f harmonic ntrainmentand partialtemplating iveus a fairly lear pictureof what a non-classical trategy orrepresentationwould be. Information ntersneural network s a dynamicpatternof neural signals,and somepart of thispatternacts as a templateto entrain othernetworks;theseothernetworks, rimed bytheoriginal ignal,then nterpretsubsequent nput,directingtspropagationthroughout he cortex.There is no pointwhere a signalis suddenlytransformed,mutatismutandis,ntoa symbolmarked with formal ode separatingthecontent fwhat trepresents rom ts tatus s symbol.Rather,partof the informationn thesignalis used as a set of instructions;s,in effect, n allegoryforreading out the rest of the signal. Thestructural istinction etween token and typeor signifier nd sig-nified s an artefact f harmonic ntrainment nd local templating.It is, in otherwords,a temporal llusion.


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M L N 963No matterhowpersistent he llusionofdouble structure,wher-ever we look there is only a single order of things. But pan-connectionism sksus to accept something ven moredisquieting:thetotaldissolution f thesymbol s a unitary henomenonand itsdecomposition nto something kin to whatSmolenskyhas called"subsymbolic" lements. The term"subsymbolic" an be mislead-ingif t s taken, s some ofSmolensky's ritics ave done, to implyprocessesoperatingat a functional evel below thesymbol, herebyreintroducing he neo-symbolist otion of a dual architecture.24The domain of the subsymbolic,however,is not a place but a

period of time,the durationof which s shorterthan perceptioncan grasp, a temporaldifference hat falls within ach "point"ofexperiencedtime.On thescale ofperceivedtime, hesymbol ookslike a set of features bound into a single entity.At the scale ofneural time,however,there is no discretesymbolnor even a re-gress of subunitswithin a symbol,only a complex waveformofsignalsmovingthrough network.The drama of thesubsymbolicthen s thesequencingof themodulationsor transforms hichthiswaveformundergoes inside the thresholdof experienced time.These "subsymbolic"events unfold like a neural chorus wheregroupsof cellsfollowing he harmonic emplate akeup, elaborate,and even trope the themes n thewaveform.Semiosis s not an externalprocessthathappens to a symbol; t sa series of processes being repeated in cycles,one afteranotherover the life of a waveform.At any point in experienced timeitmay ook as if a symbol xisted na definite emiotic onfiguration,but thatconfigurations a perceptual llusioncomposed bya seriesof figuralstates,any one of whichis available as a templateforcreatingother waveforms. f one could "see" thisprocess, tmightbe something ikethequantumpicture f an excitedatomwhich, sits energylevels shift, hanges the shape of its electron orbitals.The inner ogicofthese orbital hiftssnon-classical,umping fromspherical to various clusters of ellipsoidal shapes and therebychangingthe atom's capabilitiesto bind withotheratoms. In thesameway, symbol ver thecourseof itsproduction perhaps 300msec.) undergoes innerphase changes and can present anynum-ber of semiotic emplates-iconic, indexical, tc.-for further lab-oration.In this accountthen,theneo-symbolistbarrier" urnsout to bea temporal threshold whichvaries according to age, mood, andrecentconsumptionhabits.At scales of time above that limit, t


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looksas if thesymbol beysclassicalrules,butwhen thatthresholdis crossed the unityof the symboldecomposes and thereare onlyfigural hains. The threshold s not a barriermarking hesemioticdifferencebetween two sides of representation; t is the delaywhich modulates the waveforms.The subjectcannot directlyde-scribewhatgoes on duringthisdelay,but thefiguralmoments, heghosts,if you will, "inside" the symbol,are unfettered,free tohaunt other representations.The self will tend to think that thestructure f itsthought xactlymatchesthe cut and grainof somefixed semanticspace, when in actuality his space is continuallybeing reconfiguredby the unbound figureswhich bear meaning"outside" the parametersof the symbol.The differences between the neo-symbolist nd pan-connec-tionistaccounts are not going to be immediately esolved. Howthencan we choose betweenthemand whatare theconsequencesforcritical heory fthatchoice?Ultimatelyhe choice itselfwillbemandated byneurologicalevidence,the same evidencewhich ni-tiallyforced the reconfiguration f the classical paradigm. Andgiventhatevidence, I would predictthat there s a certain nexo-rablewayin which the pan-connectionistccountwill absorb neo-symbolism. ifteenyearsof researchhave onlyconfirmedMount-castle'soriginalhypothesis:

[the]neocortex s everywhereunctionallyuchmoreuniform hanhithertoupposed nd .. its valanchingnlargementn mammalsndparticularlynprimates as beenaccomplishedyreplicationfa basicneuralmodule,withouthe ppearance fwholly ewneuron ypes rofqualitiativelyifferent odesof ntrinsicrganization.25If this confirmation ontinues, hen,there will be no symbolicallyprivilegedplace or process leftopen, and neo-symbolismwill sim-plybecome a special case of connectionism, convenient llegoryfordescribingrepresentation t the scale of perceptionbut not ageneral theory n itsown right.As far as critical heorygoes, there are reasons forwanting hisabsorptionof neo-symbolismnto pan-connectionism:without ttheorywillremain n the crisisdescribed n theopening sectionofthisessay. Consider the two core problemsI suggesteda generaltheoryof representationmustresolve: the illusion of a two-sidedlogic and the recipe forthe temporal genesisof the symbol.Theneo-symbolistccount, I would argue, is going to fail to clear upeither of these problemsand would suggest, n fact,that the two


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problemsare unresolvable.The pan-connectionistmodel, on theotherhand, offers n explanationfor both of thesemysteries.In theneo-symbolistccount,the double logicofrepresentationremains a paradox because of theboundarybeingmaintainedbe-tweenthe nfrastructurend thesymbolizer.We can see the formalstructure f the paradox, butwe have no wayto explain itexceptas a mysteryn thestructure f classicalspace. Whetherone reifiesthismysterys a transcendental igure r treats tas a precessionalirony, t remains permanently mbedded in the very design ofvirtual pace. Likewise,as long as neo-symbolism olds to the no-tion of the discrete nd stablesymbol,t willbe limited oa classicalaccount of symbolproductionand will continue to have troubleexplainingthe diverse typologiesof the sign,the problemof ac-countingfor the differencebetween indices, icons, and symbolswhich so bedeviled Peirce. In a classicalaccount one must assumethat differencen typehas to showup as an intrinsic ifferencenthe semioticfunction tself. ymbolsand allegories,to use a stan-dard example from iterary heory, re said to differ n kind be-cause theyare encoded in twofundamentally ifferentways.Butthis need to make function match type only drives the neo-symbolistccount back into anotherparadox, namelytheparadoxof the discrete,stable tokenwhichkeeps transmutingtself ntomultipletypologies.This transmutationf the token will tself e-main a mystery pen to the same reification/ironizations thepar-adox of double logic.As we have seen, thepan-connectionistccountoffers unifiedexplanationforboth the llusionof double logicand the nstabilityof semiotictypes: the subperceptual phases of the neural wave-form.Moreover,pan-connectionismuggests hatthesephases fol-low a timesequence dictatedbythephysics f entrainment.Whatwe have been readingall along as atomic differencesn signtypesare, in fact,differentmanifestationsf thesame semiotic cript. ntheory t least,each perceiveddifferencen signtypeshould cor-respond to a figuralmomentin the subsymbolic equence. Fur-thermore, he traceof each figuralmoment should be present ntheperceivedrepresentation.f,forexample,we use the six semi-otictypeschartedbyRoland Barthes-signal, index, icon,symbol,sign,and allegory-then we must treatthe whole set both as anordered sequence in thesubsymbolic rocessand as potential em-plates,all ofwhich are available in theperceivedrepresentation.26An iconic signwill still arrywith t theallegoricaltemplatewhich


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triggers ts interpretation s an element in a system, templatewhich s nothingmore thanpartof the contentof therepresenta-tion. Whethernature will followtheory o closelyremains to beseen, but it is worthnotingthattheunderlying ogic of thequan-tum model of the atom and the connectionistnetwork are thesame: the awsof matrix lgebra.The beautyofquantum physics sthat nature appears to pick out ratherprecise pathwaysthroughthe pure structure f matrixalgebra. One wonders whether thesame pathwayswere followedin developing a cortex capable offiguralthought.

IIIThe connectionist nd neo-symbolistmodelssupportcompetingresearch programsfor answeringa fundamentalquestion aboutmentalstates. However the scientific ebate turnsout, itis impor-tant to rememberthat theseparadigmsare also rhetorical ystemswhich define two ratherdifferent llegories for the mind. Thefunctional ifference etweenanytwoscientificmodels is in partatheoretical iction,n artefact f our need todelineatemodels,butthe rhetorical spect of models involvesnot onlyexternal differ-ence but also an internaldrama of conflict nd resolution,discov-eryand self-justification.heorists,of course, oftenmisread andswerve fromthe consequences of theirmodels.The most characteristicmisreading and swerve of the neo-symbolistss themove to recoup the lost nfrastructuref classical

space by forgetting,gnoringor misinterpretinghe connectionistmachinery f mind. Far more seductivethough, suspect,willbethe misreadingwhich first onscripts onnectionism o the over-throwof the classicalsystem nd thentreatswhat remains as if itwerea prelapsarianspace wheresymbols, owunleashed from hehegemonyof rationalism, an directlymanifest heirholistic,un-mediated truth.And thisnew-age-of-meaninghetoric s exactlywhat we find n MarkTurner'sReadingMinds. WhatTurner givesus is a fablebelongingto no paradigmbecause he neverbotherstoexplain to the reader the complexity f the debates going on incognitive cience. Instead of providing heuristic ntroduction othe technicaldebate,Turner starts eadingMindswith polemiconthestateofthe"profession," polemicwhich s largely n attack npoststructuralism, arxism, nd women's studiesas corruptingn-


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M L N 967fluences. Turner believes that "cognitivescience" can end thisplague and restore to the professionthe ideals and methods ofR. S. Crane.For anyone unfamiliarwith Turner's earlierwritings nd theirsource in the work of the linguistGeorge Lakoff,the theoreticalcontextfortheclaims nReadingMindswillbe unclear (thoughofcourse the politicalsubtext s all too clear). Once that context sunderstood,however, t s evidentthatTurner'smisreading f thenewcognitivismsnotoriginalto him. tbelongs,rather, oLakoff,whosemagnumopus, Women,ire, ndDangerousThings,s a pow-erful, ggressively artisan, nd ultimatelymistaken ext.27Muchof thatbook is a complexand thoroughly rgued attack n classicalsemantics; he mistake riseswhen Lakoff dvocatesreplacingthatsystemwith n accountofmeaning grounded in embodiment ndproceeds to read thepresentation f embodiment s if t werenotalreadya re-presentation.The linkbetweenTurner, as literary ritic, nd Lakoff, s theo-retical inguist, s the account of metaphorwhich Lakoff first e-veloped withthe philosopher MarkJohnson in their influentialMetaphorsWeLiveBy.28 n Women, ire,andDangerousThings, a-koffplaces that ccountat thevery enterof his own versionof thenewcognitivism.His claimis thatmeaninggets nto our represen-tationsbecause theyare preconceputally tructuredbybasic pat-ternsderived frommotor ctivityagencyand action),thetopologyof the body (up/down;whole/part; nside/outside), nd primarysensations full/empty;ot/cold). he role ofmetaphor n thispro-cess is crucial because, in Lakoff'swords,"metaphor provides uswith a means forcomprehendingdomains of experience that donothave a preconceptual tructure ftheir wn."29The claimthenis that the mind maps meaning fromthe preconceptually truc-tureddomains to an unstructured argetrange and that thispro-cess showsup in language as a canonical set of metaphorswhichincludes such ascriptions s "lifeis a journey" or "the mind is abody moving n space."30The appeal of thisargumentfor iterary riticsikeTurner whoare weary of poststructuralisms obvious: it makes metaphor aform fthought n itsownright,tpromises natural inkbetweenlanguage and the body, and it establishes n allegoryof readingwhichtellsus that iteraryanguage ultimately efersnot toesotericconcepts but rather to our most common, everydayencountersand expressions.There are, however,tworather ignificant rob-


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lems withthis deal. One is withLakoffs theory tself; he other sa consequence of Turner's persistentfailure to get the scienceright.Ifwe grantLakoffhispreconceputally tructured omains,thenwe have alreadygivenhimall thathe needs toargue thatmetaphorcan, in effect, nalogize itself cross domains withoutdistortionand withoutbearing the trace of its original metaphoricstatuswithina differential conomy. Lakoff claims that "meaningfulthoughtand reason make use of symbolic tructureswhich aremeaningfulobeginwith."31ven in thisone sentencewe can detectthe key symptom f logocentric ecoupage, the desire to preservewithin second order-systemn already nscribed rginarymean-ing.The problemhereis thatLakoff quivocateson the distinctionbetween the meaning in a symboland the meaning of the roleplayedbythesymbol. f thesetwoare thesame,thenthoughtdoesnotrequirethe mediationofsymbolbecause themeaning s simplygiven; if theyare different, hen a space is opened between theoriginal and its representation nd thoughtcan only know theoriginal by way of the representation.What we are offered, notherwords, s a symbolwhichredeems the fall ntosymbolization,themetaphorwhich s both at one with tself nd gloriouslymet-aphorized to span and heal thepoles of theverydifferencewhicharticulates t. Furthermore,we can also sense the whole shadowapparatus of the classicalsystem perating n Lakoff'svalorizationof the preconceputal over the conceptual, as if pre-conceputalstructureswere somehowdifferentn kind fromwhat comes afterthem.Lakoff lmost earns theright othismisreadingbecause he isbyand large carefulto layout and articulate heimplications f com-petingmodels in a waywhich shows an acute grasp of bothphilo-sophyand thephilosophy fscience.Lakoff s also overtlyiberal nhisdesiretounderstandhowdifferentultures re linkedbycom-monpatterns fthought.But thisprojective iberalism an be seenin part as a compensationfor Lakoff'smisreadingof the internalstructures. dealizing exterior differencedistractsfromthe factthatwe still annot tolerate he nternal ceneofdifference nd theopacityof thebody to itself.Whenwe read Mark Turner afterLakoff, hephilosophical cu-ityand Emersonian psychodrama evaporate. In the firstplaceTurner is so anxious to push througha single-minded onceptofcognitivism hat he not onlyfails to tell us about the history nd


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M L N 969current statusof the various paradigms,but he espouses an ex-traordinarymisconstrual ftheroleoftheorynscience,one whichnot even the most ecumenical philosopherwould pass him on.Referring o the "general cognitiveknowledge"which he claimscan now ground critical nterpretation,urner argues:

Thisgeneralknowledges a posteriorinthe ensethat tbegins romand rests pona greatwealth fdata,farmore han s usual ncriticaltheory.he linguisticata serve s thebody romwhich eneralizationsaredrawn nd towhichhe laimsmust trictlyubmit.hisallows s tobe committedo data rather han oa criticalheory. o a priori om-mitmentoa theoryhatwoulddetermineeneralizationss needed nthe ttempto make enseof data n a way hat sconsistent ithwhatis know bouthuman ognition.32

It is difficulto know evenwheretobeginto address theproblemshere. Lakoff,at least, invitesus to attendto a battleof theories;Turner on the other hand disingenuously cts as if cognitivismwere both simpleand monolithic, s ifthewhole of cognitive ci-ence were notratherproudlytheoretical, nd as if therecould beanysuch thing s theoryless ata. Moreoverthispassage illustratesanother of Turner's sleightsof hand, constantreferenceto datawhich s nevercriticallyeviewedand is only selectivelyited n hisreferences.Readers whomanage togetpastthepolemicand Turner's theo-retical onfusionsmaybe disappointedwhenthey urntotheread-ings of specificpoems in hope of learninghow the tracesof theinnerstructure f mind are played out in poetry.Turner appliesthe theoryof metaphoras preconceptualmeaningin such a con-servativewaythat he offers ittle eyondthe bland interpretationsmanymembersof the "profession"have been publishingforthepast fifty earswithout he benefitof cognitivism. he returnofontotheologyn Lakoff srather omplexand occasionally ompel-ling. In Turner it is both overblown nd flaccid:

In language, he macrocosms revealed n themicrocosmnd con-verselyimplyecause ll levels f anguage mbodyhe ameconcep-tualfiguresfthought.rue,conceptualonnectionsre manifestednindividualocalphrases, utthey o notreside here rdo notprinci-pallyor exclusively esidethere.They are equivalentlyxpressedthroughwholeworks,ndeedexpressed hrough atternsfmeaningthat ranscend holeworks.33


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970 PAULMIERSTurner seems to think hat the new cognitivismwillreveal a logoswhich s the textand is withthetext.But, as I have tried to show,neitherversionofcognitivismwill sanction uch a move. Bothver-sionsof thenew cognitivismead one rightbackdown the road tothe Derridean carnivalTurner so adamantly oathes. Instead oftrying o raise the ghostof R. S. Crane, Turner should considerFreud, Lacan, and Merleau-Ponty, ll ofwhom triedtorethink heinfrastructuref mind and body-and none of whom are men-tionedbyTurner. One can only hope thaton theroad tohis homein language, Turner will meethis ownCrazyJane,who willat lastmake himunderstand thatmetaphoricitys not about purity, hat"Nothingcan be sole or whole/Thathas notbeen rent."

IVAnd finallywhatof the deconstructedHegel and thestatusof ageneral theory? n theneo-symbolistccount the answer s unam-biguous and alreadyevident.However much post-analyticinker-

ing one does on the symbolic system, t remains through andthrougha model of virtualspace structuredby the logic of theatomic sign,the very ogic which deconstructionhas shown is al-readyinfectedwithdifferancend markedbythe trace.Thus neo-symbolism, reciselybecause itsaves the appearance of that ogic,preserveswithin tself differencet can never rise above. We areforcedto admit that thefailureof the dialectic urn s definitive,limitwhichprecludes anygeneral theory f representation.Withpan-connectionism,he question is more complex,in partbecause a non-classical ccount of rationalitys a new and strangenotion. On theone hand, such an account would appear to vindi-catethe wholecritique fthesignwhich merged npost-structuraltheory.On the otherhand, pan-connectionism oes beyond thatcritiqueand seeks to replace itwitha positive ccountof subsym-bolic figuration, lbeit an account which introducesdirectly ntosymbolization a highly alien logic. In addition, if the pan-connectionist ccount holds true,we mustalso reconsider the his-tory fconsciousnesswe have been telling ince thePhenomenology,especiallythe entrance of deconstruction t the end of thatstory.To understandthe connectionistmove fromcritiqueto positiveaccount,we should briefly onsiderthatrevisedhistorynd how itrefocusesour viewof deconstruction.A neo-symbolistllegoryof


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M L N 971mind is not,afterall, a recent nvention; thas surfacedtodayinmoderncognitive ciencebecause thatdiscipline s onlynow con-fronting he crisisof Enlightenmentwhichmotivates nd so dom-inatesHegel's Phenomenology-aextwhich,we should recall,alsopromisesus a science of cognition.One could argue thatthe un-doingofthe classical nfrastructuretartswithHegel and continuesthrough Freud, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, an argumentwhichputssomething f a differentightor Derrida'swriting. he overtobjectofdeconstructions the ogocentricismf thewest, he ogo-centricismwhichhas its nfrastructuretripped wayat the end oftheEnlightenment. ut the real focus s therelationbetween thatlogocentricismnd the new infrastructure:.e. Nietzsche'sWill toPower, Freud's Unconscious, and Heidegger's Being of beings.Derrida's claim is that n each case, the new root structure s stillhaunted bya nostalgiafortheold order and thisold order inevi-tably reappears in the overt logic of representation. Post-structuralismhen,havingbecome an ironicneo-symbolistystem,ends up with heworst fthe old and the new: the surfaceparadoxof signifer nd signifiedbeingrunbyan infrastructure evoid ofany logicwhatsoever.Post-structuralismimplygivesup thegameand reads its deracinated surface ccountof semiosisback intothedesign of the infrastructure.There is,however, nDerrida's work notherproject, heprojectwhich uses deconstruction s a way to thinkout the logic of theinfrastructure, projectwhich takes seriously he possibility f anon-classical ccount of Being, a projectwhichassumes that thedisjunctionsn thetexts fHusserlor Heidegger are, infact, pen-ings throughwhichthe playof that ogic can be seen. As Derridasays,grammatologys both writtenwithin he closure of classicalspace and is also the end of thatspace, it is both the end of thescienceof signsand the promiseof a new science.34Clearly pan-connectionism s a theorywhichhopes tomakegood on thatprom-ise bybreakingthetwohundredyeardeadlock of neo-symbolism.In takingup thispromise,however,we mustbe carefulto under-stand the trulyradical nature of the new logic, otherwise, ikeTurner and Lakoff,we willbe doingnothingmorethanreanimat-ingthe classical ogos. In one sense,the end ofneo-symbolismndthebeginning fpan-connectionismookmuchthe same sincebothdeconstruct he ogicofclassicalspace. The difference, owever, sthatso much ofdeconstruction iveson in the ruinsof theclassicalspace attempting o decipher the underworld,whereas the new


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connectionismbeginswith the recipe for an alternative ogic andthendecomposes the illusionof the atomicsign.Instead of two logics forrepresentation ach workingat oddswiththeother,one flawedand the otheronlyhalf-imagined,on-nectionismoffersus one ratheruncannyand utterly rchaic se-quence of figureswhichmake up the life of the sign.These figu-rae, thesemoments nthecomposition fthesign, re notartefactsor structuralfictions; heyare configurations f livingcells,realghosts n the neural network.Our brains are designed so thatweknow thesefigures nly ndirectlynthe second-order llegoriesweconstruct orthesign, llegorieswhichbyand largenormalize heiralien logic. It is difficult o get at thesefiguresbyturning nwardand observingtheflowofrepresentation,o do what Derrida firstcritiques n Husserl and thenappropriates n his owngnosticmed-itationon the role of differance.n Speech nd Phenomena erridaundercutsHusserl's assumptionof the"punctuality fthe nstant"by playingon the implicit uration of time n themetaphorof theAugenblick.e claims thatpresence severywhere illedwith non-presence and nonidentitynd that a meditation n thisnonpres-ence is not the same as a theoryof "negativeabsence."35 f pan-connectionismproves true, then it will have validated Derrida'sdistinction nd shownthat there s a logic at play in nonpresencewithin he punctuality f the instant.Hegel thoughtthe emptying f Spirit ntohistorywould culmi-nate in a moment when consciousness stood in a gallery andwatched the images being reanimatedas notional illustrations ftheSpirit's ranscendence.The unleashingof the connectionist ig-urae breaks thistrope of transcendentaldestiny nd it shifts hescene of recognition,drivingus out of the galleryto meditateonthe possibility f derepresentation.Only thenwill we understandthatour veryperceptionof thephenomenalworld has alwaysbeenintermingledwithpsychic llegories,that each thing s markedbytheghostly emarcations f ts ubsymbolic rigins.Perhapswewillalso realize thevanity fprivilegingymbolic hought nd claimingit as our greatest nvention.Our scene of recognition s not themuseumbut the"tangledbank" Darwindescribes t theend oftheOrigin f heSpecies.Here wemaydiscoverthat hepsychebegins nthebloodstreamof animals and first akesroot n the archaic ogicof the thymus.Towson tateUniversity


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M L N 973NOTES1 I relyhere in parton HenrySussman's extended analysis n TheHegelianAfter-math:Readings nHegel, Kierkegaard,reud,Proust, ndJamesBaltimore:JohnsHopkins UP, 1982), 1-62. For discussionof the pervasive nfluenceof the Phe-nomenologyeeJurgenHabermas,ThePhilosophicaliscoursefModernity:welveLectures,r. FrederickG. Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987) and JudithButler,Subjects fDesire:HegelianReflectionsn Twentiethenturyrance (NewYork: Columbia UP, 1987).2 See Jacques Derrida, "The Pit and the Pyramid: ntroduction o Hegel's Semi-ology,"Marginsof Philosophy,r. Alan Bass (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982),69-108.3 The clearest,most accessibleessayson the classicalparadigmcan be found inJohn Haugeland, ed., Mind Design: Philosophy,sychology,rtificialntelligence(Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1982). See also JerryFodor, TheLanguage ofThoughtNew York: Thomas Y. Crowell,1975).4 See Ray Monk,LudwigWittgenstein:heDutyofGenius New York: Macmillan,1990) 137-166,for an account ofWittgenstein'sorrespondencewithFregeandRussellconcerningthe Tractatus.5 See RichardRorty, hilosophynd theMirror fNature Princeton:PrincetonUP,1979).6 The earliest nd most hostile ritique f theseprojects ame fromHubertDrey-fus n WhatComputersan'tDo (New York: Harper and Row, 1972). See also hislaterMindoverMachine:ThePower fHuman ntuitionndExpertisen the ra of heComputerNew York: Macmillan,1986).JohnSearle'snow classicessay,"Minds,Brains and Programs"The Behavioral ndBrainSciences (1980): 417-424, wasalso enormouslynfluentialn establishing herespectabilityfanti-cognitivism.7 The best criticalntroductiono the newparadigmcan be found nAndyClark'sMicrocognition:hilosophy, ognitive cience, nd Parallel Distributedrocessing(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989.)8 MarkTurner,ReadingMinds:TheStudy fEnglish n theAge of Cognitivecience(Princeton:PrincetonUP, 1991), 6.9 The Mountcastle-Edelmanmodel was first resented n two ong papers at the1977 Neuroscience ResearchProgrammeeting.They were published togetheras Vernon Mountcastle nd Gerald Edelman, TheMindful rain: Cortical rga-

nization ndtheGroup-SelectiveheoryfHigher rain FunctionCambridge,Mass:MIT Press, 1978).10 The mostcomprehensive ccountof Gerald Edelman's own selectionist heorycanbe found n his NeuralDarwinism: heTheoryfNeuronalGroup electionNewYork: Basic Books, 1987). Edelman's work has been popularized by IsraelRosenfield n The nventionfMemory: New View fthe rain New York: BasicBooks, 1988) and mostrecently yEdelman himself nBright ir,Brilliant ire:On theMatter ftheMind (New York: Basic Books, 1991).11 For themajorarticles lucidating hisrevolutionn semantic heory ee StephenP. Schwartz, d.,Naming,Necessity,nd NaturalKinds Ithaca: CornellUP, 1977).For a good critical iscussionofthe shift romdescriptive o causal semantics eeMichael Devitt and Kim Sterelny, anguage and Reality:An Introductiono thePhilosophyfLanguage Cambridge: MIT Press,1987).12 Hilary Putnam, Reason,Truth, nd HistoryCambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981)217-218.13 The earlyclassicarticleon prototype heory s Eleanor Rosch's "Natural Cate-gories,"Cognitive sychology(1973): 328-50. See also StevanHarnad, ed., Cat-egorical erceptionCambridge: CambridgeUP, 1987).


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974 PAULMIERS14 StephenM. Kosslyn,Ghostsn theMind'sMachine:CreatingndUsing mages n theBrain (New York: W. W. Norton,1983)15 See MarvinMinsky nd Seymour Papert, Perceptrons:n IntroductionoCompu-tationalGeometryCambridge: MIT Press, 1969).16 David Rumelhart,James McClelland, and the PDP Research Group, ParallelDistributedrocessing:xplorationsn theMicrostructurefCognition2 vols.,Cam-bridge: MIT Press, 1986).17 Paul Smolensky, ConnectionistAI, and theBrain,"Artificialntelligenceeview1 (1987): 100.18 The debate between Paul Smolensky nd JerryFodor, fromwhich the cup ofcoffee example used below is taken,unfolded throughthe course of severalarticles: molensky'smajortheoretical iece,"On theProperTreatmentofCon-nectionism,"Behaviorial nd Brain Sciences11 (1988): 1-74; Fodor and ZenonPylyshlyn's ritique, "Connectionism and CognitiveArchitecture:A CriticalAnalysis,"Cognition8 (1988): 3-71; Smolensky's eply, The Constituent truc-ture of Mental States: A Reply to Fodor and Pylyshlyn,"outhern ournalofPhilosophy6 (1988): 137-60; and Fodor and BrianMcLaughlin'scounter, Con-nectionismnd the Problem ofSystematicity: hySmolensky's olutionDoesn'tWork", Cognition 5 (1990): 183-204. See also Steven Pinker and JacquesMehler, eds., Connectionsnd SymbolsCambridge:MIT Press, 1988).19 See forexample, RobertHecht-Nielsen,NeurocomputingReading,Mass.: Add-ison-Wesley, 990).20 See JohnA. Barnden andJordanB. Pollack, ds.,HighLevelConnectionistodels,Advances in Connectionist nd Neural Computation Theory,vol. 1 (Norwood,N.J.: Ablex Pub Corp, 1991). See also Lokendra Shastri and Venkat Ajjana-gadde, "FromSimpleAssociations oSystematic easoning"Behavioral ndBrainSciences,forthcoming-availablethrough NTERNET and BITNET byanon-ymous ftpfromprinceton.edu:pub/harnad).21 JamesA. Anderson offers rationale forhybridmodels in his "HybridCom-putation nCognitive ciences: Neural Networks nd Symbols,"Applied ognitivePsychology(1990): 337-347.22 Daniel C. Dennett,ConsciousnessxplainedBoston: Little,Brown and Co., 1991)171-226.23 ErwinSchrodinger,What sLife Cambridge:CambridgeUP, 1967) 65.24 See "ProperTreatment," ited above. Critical eactions oSmolensky's se oftheterm"subsymbolic" re printedwiththe essay. As several of the respondentsnote,Smolenskyhimself oes notseemaltogether ertainwhat he meansbytheconcept, nd he appears at times oindulgea neo-symbolist edge by saying hatconnectionistnetworks describe what is happening one level above neuralevents. What I offer here is the strong reading of the "subsymbolic"whichassumes thatthenetwork an be tieddirectly o neural events.25 Mindful rain, 1526 Roland Barthes,ElementsfSemiology,r. AnnetteLavers and Colin Smith Bos-ton: Beacon Press, 1970) 35-38.27 George Lakoff,Women, ire,andDangerousThings:WhatCategories eveal abouttheMind (Chicago: U of Chicago, 1987).28 George Lakoff nd MarkJohnson,MetaphorsWeLiveBy Chicago: U ofChicagoP, 1980). See also George Lakoff and MarkTurner,More Than Cool Reason: AFieldGuidetoPoeticMetaphor Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989); Mark Turner,Death s theMother fBeauty:Mind,Metaphor, riticismChicago: U ofChicago P,1987); MarkJohnson,TheBody n theMind (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989).


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M L N 97529 Lakoff,DangerousThings, 03.30 Lakoff and Turner,More Than Cool Reason.31 DangerousThings, 72.32 ReadingMinds,23.33 ReadingMinds,240.34 JacquesDerrida,OfGrammatology,r.Gayatri pivak Baltimore:JohnsHopkinsUP, 1976) 74-93.35 JacquesDerrida,Speech ndPhenomena,r. David Allison Evanston:Northwest-ern UP, 1973) 60-69.

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The Other Side of Representation - Critical Theory and the New Cognitivism