The hard problem of content and why we should solve it
Saskia Janina Neumann
Romanian Journal of Analytic Philosophy, 2023, Vol XVII, Issue 1, pp. 30-48, DOI: https://10.62229/rrfaxvii-1/2
Published: 11 May, 2026 Download Pdf
Cite as: Neumann, Saskia Janina: The hard problem of content and why we should solve it. In: Romanian Journal of Analytic Philosophy, vol. 17, iss. 1, pp. pp. 30-48, 2023, ISSN: 1843-9969.
Abstract: The world is its own best model (Brooks, 1989)! Or at least it is for Brooks’ behavior-based robots. Robots such as Herbert, whose task consisted in stealing empty soda cans from offices and Baxter, whose task was to interact with human beings in a factory environment, prove that complex behavior can be achieved without any inner representation of the world. If we believe Hutto and Myin (2013), we human beings are not too different from Herbert or Baxter. Our behavior can be explained without assuming that we mentally represent our world. In this paper, I want to show evidence against this claim based on empirical data. Although certain aspects of our behavior can be understood without assuming internal representation of the world, most of our actions and how we store interactions with the world strongly suggest internal representation. This claim will be based on the following empirical evidence: non-linguistically based spreading activation (Barr et al., 2014), object recognition (Banich & Compton, 2018), agnosia (Banich & Compton, 2018) and visual reconstruction (UC Berkeley, 2011). I will, furthermore, extend this theory and argue for human beings being different in knowledge acquisition to behavior-based robots due to the nature of our memory. While behavior-based robots do not need to represent the world, we human beings have to represent the world in a specific manner to be able to interact with the world. The knowledge we acquire is mainly based on our inner representation of the world.
Keywords: AI, Epistemology, Epistemology of Memory, Technology, Philosophy of Technology, Hard problem of content, Radical Enactivism, Enactivism.
Bibliography
Banich M. T. & Compton, R. J. (2018). Cognitive Neuroscience, Cambridge University Press.
Barr, R., Vieira, A., & Rovee-Collier, C. (2001). Mediated imitation in 6-month-olds: Remembering by association, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 79, 229–252.
Barr, R., Vieira, A., & Rovee-Collier, C. (2002). Bidirectional priming in infants, Memory & Cognition, 30, 246–255.
Barr, R., Rovee-Collier, C., & Learmonth, A. E. (2011). Potentiation in young infants: The origin of the prior knowledge effect?, Memory and Cognition, 39, 625–636.
Barr, R., Walker. J. Gross, J. & Hayne, H. (2014). Age-related changes in spreading activation during infancy, Child Development 85(2), 549-563.
Brooks, R.A. (1990). Elephants don’t play chess, Robotics and Autonomous Systems 6, 3-15.
Brooks, R.A., Breazeal, C.,Marjanovic, M., Scassellati, B., Williamson, M. (1999). The Cog Project: Building a Humanoid Robot, Computation for Metaphors, Analogy, and Agents. C. Nehaniv (ed), Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 1562, Springer, 52–87.
CNBC International TV (2015). Baxter, the bionic robot, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWBqXLHlqjE, last access: 15.07.2023.
Collins, A.M. & Loftus, E. F. (1975). A Spreading-Activation Theory of Semantic Processing, Psychological Review 82(6), 407-428.
Copeland, B.J. (2014). Nouvelle artificial Intelligence, Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/technology/nouvelle-artificial-intelligence, last access: 15.07.2023.
Create (2018). Rethink Robotics revisited: A look back at the collaborative robots pioneer, https://createdigital.org.au/rethink-robotics-collaborative-robots-pioneer/, last accessed: 15.07.2023.
‘Deedlydeedee’ (2011). Rodney Brooks and Bottom-Up Robots, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u0CIQ8P_qk (last accessed 14.07.2023).
Defense update (2007). PackBot Tactical Robot, https://defense-update.com/20070120_packbot.html, last access: 15.07.2023, Figure 3.
Foster, P. S., Wakefield, C., Pryjmak, S., Roosa, K. M., Branch, K. K., Drago, V., Harrison, D. W. & Ruff, R. (2017), Spreading activation in nonverbal memory networks, Brain Informatics 4, 187-199.
Geo (2023). What are Social Robots? https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~athomaz/classes/CS8803-HRISpr08/Geo/pv_social_robots.html, last access: 15.07.2023. (Figure 2)
Greco, C., Hayne, H., & Rovee-Collier, C. (1990). Roles of function, reminding, and variability in categorization by 3-month-old infants, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 16, 617–633.
Hayne, H., Greco-Vigorito, C., & Rovee-Collier, C. (1993). Forming contextual categories in infancy, Cognitive Development, 8, 63–82.
Hutto, D. D. (2023). Remembering without a trace? Moving beyond trace minimalism, in: Current controversies in Philosophy of Memory, ed: Sant’Anna, A., McCarroll, C. J., Michaelian, K., 59-82.
Hutto, D. D. & Myin, E. (2013). Radicalizing enactivism, Basic minds without content, MIT Press.
Hutto, D. D. (2005). Knowing what? Radical vs conservative enactivism, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4, 389–405.
Meade, M. L., Watson, J. M., Balota D. A. & Roediger, H.L. (2007). The roles of spreading activation and retrieval mode in producing false recognition in the DRM paradigm, Journal of Memory and Language 56, 305-320.
Roediger, H., Balota, D. A., Watson, J. M. (2001). Spreading activation and the arousal of false memories, The nature of remembering: Essays in honor of Robert G. Crowder, (ed) Roediger, H.L., Nairne, J.S., Surprenant, N. A. M., American Psychological Press, 95-115.
TED (2009). Rodney Brooks: How robots will invade our lives, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdyRmdv-KiY (00:05:01-00:07:23), last access: 15.07.2023.
Temple C.M. (1995). The kangaroo’s a fox, Broken Memories Case Studies in Memory Impairment, (ed) Campbell R. & Conway M.A., 383-397.
Timmons, C. R. (1994). Associative links between discrete memories in early infancy, Infant Behavior and Development, 17, 431–455.
UC Berkeley (2011). Vision reconstruction, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FsH7RK1S2E, last access: 14.05.2023.