Marc Artiga 

Marc addressed the relation between non-human communication and mental representation. While there is some literature on specific kinds of communication (ostensive-inferential communication or deceptive communication) there is not much on whether the capacity to communicate in general requires organisms to have mental representations. Marc defends the view that "signals between organisms implies signals within organisms". More precisely, he relies on the functional distinction between signal transmission and signal processing to suggest that signal transmission in communication requires sharing some properties of vehicles.

With roots in Lewis’s developments, the sender-receiver model is widely used in computational theory and animal cognition studies. The model is easily applied to animal communication, but also in the analysis of cognitive systems within organisms. What is the relationship between these? The relevant literature rests on a minimal conception of “senders” and “receivers” to achieve generality at the price of leaving that connection unaddressed.

Recent work by Suzuki and colleagues have shown that snake-specific calls elicit the visual image of a snake in Japanese tits. This supports what Marc calls the Mirror Hypothesis, according to which a function of signals between organisms is to produce an internal signal within the receivers that is a reproduction of the previous signal. Marc suggests this shapes animal communication generally and presents three arguments in favour of this. 

The extensional argument points to the fact that it is hard to find counterexamples across a wide range of cases, including insect and plant cognition. The metasemantic argument focuses on the content properties in the model responsible for the receiver’s behaviour, which shows that external and internal signals have largely overlapping contents. Finally, the empirical argument highlights the methodological assumptions of current research which rest on the information underpinning receivers’ behaviour, their selection of appropriate responses, and the notion of functional deception. Actual scientific research on, for instance, use of proper names in animals using machine learning include as a requirement recognition that a signal or “label” applies to individuals.

In the light of these considerations, Marc reflected on two different functions of signals: transmission and processing. Transmission requires the production of another signal with the same content. Processing produces a signal that bears a different relation or maybe no signal at all, as in the case of behaviour. The former is characteristic of signalling between organisms, the latter of signalling within a single organism. Marc argued this conclusion by citing other approaches from Planer and Godfrey-Smith and suggested that this distinction is key to properly respond to criticisms of the sender-receiver model. Finally, Marc also drew a distinction between coordination of signals and content in the context of signal transmission. Bees colour, for instance, signal danger but they need not have any internal signals to transmit this content. This indicates that the primary function of communication is not exactly sharing thoughts between sender and receiver, but sharing contents between signal and receiver. The picture would need to be completed with considerations regarding the role of indexicality and syntax in transmission.

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Catherine Hochman 

Catherine focused on conceptual thought, and in particular, de se thought, thoughts that concern the subject and involve some kind of first-personal or indexical mode of presentation. There is a wide range of conceptual de se thoughts so conceived as illustrated by “I am hungry”, but also “My legs are crossed” based on proprioceptive information, “I went to the park yesterday” based on epistemic memory, “That’s me in the mirror” where you are identified as an object among many, or the metarepresentational “Jo thinks I am hungry” where the de se is embedded. The de se element can be represented implicitly or explicitly depending on whether there is a constituent of the thought referring to oneself. These can be divided into individual implicit de se thoughts which are simpler than individual explicit de se thoughts. Catherine addressed when and why there is de se content explicitly represented.

Catherine argued that explicit de se thought has social origins. Specifically, it is needed to represent what others think about ourselves. This doesn’t mean that explicit de se thought is limited to a social context. The argument centres on susceptibility to variation as a means of distinguishing cases of implicit and explicit de se content; and on a parallel with conceptual thought and spatial representation.

As Perry’s Z-landers illustrate, there is no need to postulate an explicit representation in case of invariant spatial contents. When is the role of the self in conceptual thought fixed? The simplest case is to imagine a creature that is only and always the subject of its thoughts. But the role of the self in conceptual thought can be also fixed by certain privileged information channels: visual perception, belief, feelings of hunger, or episodic memory. By contrast, the self in conceptual thought is presumably variable in first-order self-as-object representations, i.e., representations in which the self is treated as one object among many. When there is a risk of misidentification (e.g. when looking in a mirror),  explicit self-representation is necessary. Another case is that of social meta-representations or representations of what other people think about you (e.g. ‘Jo thinks that I feel hungry’). The self plays a variable role in social meta-representations: these are second-order self-as-object representations. De se content is fixed when the representation reflects one’s own point of view, whereas variable de se content reflects another person’s point of view. 

Catherine spelled out the analogy with spatial representations: in egocentric representations one specifies the location of objects relative to oneself, and de se content is implicitly represented; by contrast, in allocentric representations one specifies location from the perspective other than your own and de se content is explicitly represented. 

The origins of explicit de se representation are social, Catherine suggests, given that social meta-representations are the primary case of explicit de se representation in thought. Meta-representations seem to be necessarily conceptual because they fully conform to the generality constraint and because key constituents are themselves conceptual; moreover, social meta-representations are of frequent use during, before and after social contexts; and they seem to fulfill a crucial social function to adjust your behaviour in terms of social standing, social relationships, and joint action. These aspects draw a contrast with respect to first-order self-as-object representation. Finally, Catherine pointed out some interesting implications of the picture concerning the social function of explicit de se representation as well as the connection to the representation of others and relevant empirical work.

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Discussion

Issues raised in the Q&A included the proper demarcation of contents that are shared or not within the sender-receiver model along the broad/narrow, literal meaning/speaker meaning spectrum; different combinations in the order of processing and transmission compatible with the Mirror Hypothesis; the empirical testability of the hypothesis given a liberal conception of reproduction or transmission or signals in the context of scientific explanation; the exact conception of “signal” at stake; the exact connection between communication and signalling.

Moreover, the following were discussed: the non-conceptual social meta-representations and explicit non-conceptual de se representation in line with empirical research and an evolutionary perspective; the distinction between de se thought and thought about oneself, as well as its spatial and metarepresentational nature; the different aspects of the study of explicit de se representation (including genealogy; information channels underlying it; and its role in semantics or communication); and different levels of first order self as object representation, mirror-based representation (which can be non-conceptual), and the self-as-object salience in a social context. The empirical literature suggests that metarepresentational and conceptually explicit de se thought is a sophisticated form of explicit de se thought; the possibility of implicit de se social representation, as well as the connection between explicit de se and (linguistic) communication were also considered.

Projecte realitzat amb una Beca Leonardo d'Investigació Científica i Creació Cultural 2025 de la Fundació BBVA. La Fundació BBVA no es responsabilitza de les opinions, comentaris i continguts inclosos en el projecte, els quals són total i absoluta responsabilitat dels seus autors.