Mind, Body, World- Foundations of Cognitive Science, 2013a

Vera and Simon (1993) pointed out that the classical tradition has never disagreed
with the claim that theories of cognition cannot succeed by merely providing
accounts of internal processing. Action and environment are key elements of
pioneering classical accounts (Miller, Galanter, & Pribram, 1960; Simon, 1969). Vera
and Simon stress this by quoting the implications of Simon’s (1969) own parable of
the ant:
The proper study of mankind has been said to be man. But . . . man—or at least the
intellective component of man—may be relatively simple; . . . most of the complexity
of his behavior may be drawn from his environment, from his search for good
designs. (Simon, 1969, p. 83)
Modern critics of the embodied notion of the extended mind (Adams & Aizawa, 2008)
continue to echo this response: “The orthodox view in cognitive science maintains
that minds do interact with their bodies and their environments” (pp. 1–2).
Vera and Simon (1993) emphasized the interactive nature of classical models by
briefly discussing various production systems designed to interact with the world.
These included the Phoenix project, a system that simulates the fighting of forest
fires in Yellowstone National Park (Cohen et al., 1989), as well as the Navlab system
for navigating an autonomous robotic vehicle (Pomerleau, 1991; Thorpe, 1990).
Vera and Simon also described a production system for solving the Towers of Hanoi
problem, but it was highly scaffolded. That is, its memory for intermediate states of
the problem was in the external towers and discs themselves; the production system
had neither an internal representation of the problem nor a goal stack to plan its
solution. Instead, it solved the problem perceptually, with its productions driven by
the changing appearance of the problem over time.
The above examples were used to argue that at least some production systems
are situated action models. Vera and Simon (1993) completed their argument by
making the parallel argument that some notable situated action theories are symbolic
because they are instances of production systems. One embodied theory that
received this treatment was Rodney Brooks’ behaviour-based robotics (Brooks, 1991,
1989, 1999, 2002), which was introduced in Chapter 5. To the extent that they agreed
that Brooks’ robots do not employ representations, Vera and Simon suggested that
this limits their capabilities. “It is consequently unclear whether Brooks and his
Creatures are on the right track towards fully autonomous systems that can function
in a wider variety of environments” (Vera & Simon, 1993, p. 35).
However, Vera and Simon (1993) went on to suggest that even systems such
as Brooks’ robots could be cast in a symbolic mould. If a system has a state that is
in some way indexed to a property or entity in the world, then that state should be
properly called a symbol. As a result, a basic sense-act relationship that was part of
the most simplistic subsumption architecture would be an example of a production
for Vera and Simon.
Marks of the Classical? 321