Representation, Bee Dances, and Daniel Hutto

Dan Hutto, who does great philosophy of psychology work, recently gave an ENSO seminar titled Beyond Content: Explications, Motivations and Implications. 

This is the ENactive Seminars Online (ENSO), put together by Merek McGann and Mathew Egbert. Dan gives a solid overview of the players working today on whether cognition necessarily entails representation - and what on earth that might mean. For those who don't know, after championing a Wittgensteinian view of folk-psychology theories in the beginning of his career,  Dan has spent the last decade or so as one of the heavy hitters in philosophy arguing that cognition need not entail mental representation. Though he thinks representation has a place in the conversation - post language - he does not think "basic cognition" requires it at all.

Tool Use in Fish = Good, Future Planning in Fish = Bad

As I was working on the next embodiment post, my attention was drawn to the recent report of tool use in fish (for example, this). As this report was exactly on topic with the issues Beyond the Brain is dealing with, it didn't seem a bad idea to take a minute to think about.

Basically, researchers found a fish that digs small clams out of sand, then swim around with the clam in their mouths until they find an 'appropriate' rock sticking up out of the sand. Then the fish hurl the clam at the rock to break it open and get to the yummy meat inside. My background is in animal behavior, so this all seemed very plausible and very cool. I had never heard of fish doing something exactly like this, but there are species fish do related things, like gathering stones to make 'nests'. So, the argument that fish 'use tools' seems strong, especially if we are willing to accept a graded notion of tool use, and are merely accepted that fish do something on the low end of that spectrum. However, the authors of the report also seem to believe that they have found evidence that the fish plan ahead. That last part seems problematic.