594 © Institute for Research in Social Communication, Slovak Academy of Sciences AGAINST REPRESENTATION: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL AFFORDANCES TIBOR SOLYMOSI Abstract: Cognitive science and its philosophy have been far too long consumed with representation. This concern is indicative of a creeping Cartesianism that many scientists and philosophers wish to evade. However, their naturalism is often insufficiently evolutionary to fully appreciate the lessons of pragmatism. If cognitive neuroscience and pragmatism are to be mutually beneficial, the representational-friendly scientists and the anti-representational pragmatists need an alternative to representation that still accounts for what many find so attractive about representation, namely intentionality. I propose that instead of representations we philosophers and scientists begin thinking in terms of cultural affordances. Like Gibsonian affordances, cultural affordances are opportunities for action. However, unlike Gibsonian affordances, which are merely biological and available for immediate action in the immediately present environment, cultural affordances also present opportunities for thinking about the past and acting into the future—tasks typically attributed to representations. Key words: cognitive science; neuroscience; pragmatism; neuropragmatism; representation; affordances. Cognitive scientists are often fond of talking about how the brain represents the world. Philosophers of mind and neurophilosophers are similarly keen to promote a representational theory of mind. This perspective is due to the influence of underlying and often unrecognized Cartesian assumptions about the nature of mentality. Despite claims from most of these thinkers that Cartesianism is the enemy, that substance dualism is no longer taken seriously, etc., there remains a creeping Cartesianism in the form of representation. Pragmatism, from its very start in the thought of Charles Sanders Peirce through its many varieties from William James and John Dewey to Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam, has been adamantly anti-Cartesian and anti-representational. 1 A recent variety of pragmatism, neuropragmatism, contends that the current advances in the neurosciences come remarkably close to many of the insights of early pragmatism (especially Dewey’s) and believes that areas of current debate are well-addressed by the tools of pragmatism and that pragmatism benefits from the HUMAN AFFAIRS 23, 594–605, 2013 DOI: 10.2478/s13374-013-0151-3 1 More recently, there have been attempts to bridge pragmatism and representationalism (see Schneider 2011 and Madzia 2013). Beyond cognitive science and philosophy of mind, Huw Price’s work (2011 and 2013) on philosophy of language and naturalism is worth considering as sympathetic to my position here.