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Internal models

I recently heard someone talk of our minds as using internal models (of items in the world) when we perceive. Obviously, there is a way in which this must be at least half-true. For each time we approach an individual,say, for the first time, our expectations are guided by what we have perceived in similar individuals in the past. Certainly, these expectations go beyond what is given through the external senses. And since, they in some sense provide clues as to what things in the world are like, some would call them "models," but I wouldn't. For such a characterization seems to amount saying that one is primarily aware only of internal objects, which serve as representations of things outside oneself.

Consider what we mean by "model" when we use this word in everyday life. If it is large, I can walk around it, or if is small enough, I can turn it in my hand. I can compare it side-by-side with the thing it represents. I can look only the thing that has been modeled while turning away from the model, or I can do vice-versa .

Whatever it is that's in our mind when we perceive, it can't be walked around, manipulated, or be compared with the extra mental (at least not as one two things, placed side-by-side would be compared). Hence the name "model" hardly seems to fit whatever it is in our mind that enables us to perceive.

One objection to belief that we have internal models or reality is to point out how it ends up undercutting the very notion of a self. If we are primarily aware of representations of the external world, then we are likewise primarily aware only of representations of own bodies. Our awareness of our bodily selves is not privileged over our awareness of our environment.

If we don't really perceive either our bodies or other extra mental reality, then on what basis do we say anything that we perceive is a model? For in our everyday speech, we call something a model (according to our everyday understanding of the term) because we are able to contrast the model with the modeled. But we can't do it in this case: we can't contrast the internal, real object with the external object.

On the other hand, if one grants that we perceive our bodies rather than mere representations of them, then why not grant that we perceive (rather than merely represent) things outside our bodies as well? The same causal account that makes way for a non-representational account of human bodily self-awareness would also make it possible for us to perceive those things acting upon our body. After all, aren't we primarily aware of our bodies as interacting with our environment? Doesn't the interaction include both our own body and the body of that with which we interact?

An afterthought: to use the term "model" in the manner just discussed seems to be an example of committing the homunculus fallacy. For one commits this fallacy by imagining that a little man as it were is responsible for our cognition. In this case, the homunculus would perceive one's mental and bodily states but only represent the external environment.

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