Interaction and Representation

Abstract

We now have naturalistic understandings, at least in principle, of many phenomena that were once mysterious, such as of fire and life. Mental processes and properties, however, so far continue to resist naturalism. In part, this is due to the particular difficulty of naturalizing the normativity of mental phenomena, such as that of the truth and falsity of representation. Normativity is a particularly strong challenge to models of naturalistic emergence. There is a form of representation, however, that is naturally emergent in the organization of interactive systems. Interactive representation has claims to be the fundamental form of representation, from which all others are derivative. Interactivism offers a solution to the problem of the naturalistic normative emergence of representation.