On the Study of Manifest Images: Perspectives, Concepts, and Misrepresentation in Cognition

A manifest image is a species-specific perspective. To have a manifest image is to be an agent for whom there are entities in the world which are saliently real. All well-designed agents, whether living creatures or otherwise, have manifest images and are therefore appropriately responsive to their environments. In this dissertation, I explore the idea of a manifest image and what the study of an agent’s perspective ought to entail. Inspired by Daniel Dennett, I argue the analysis of a manifest image ought to include the following: a manifest ontology (a specification of the entities which are saliently real for an agent, given in terms which capture the character of the agent’s perspective); a scientific ontology (a specification of the entities to which the agent is responsive in virtue of its manifest ontology, given in terms which are indifferent to agents’ needs and interests); and a multilevel explanation of how entities come to be manifest at all for an agent. In support of this kind of analysis, I claim manifest images often misrepresent the world for practical effect. A manifest image is not designed to represent the world accurately, but rather to yield an interpretation of the world which facilitates the pursuit of an agent’s goals. This idea is an overarching theme of the project. To showcase my recommended form of analysis, and to demonstrate the kind of misrepresentation described above, I provide a sample analysis of an entity which is manifestly real for us: the city of London. In reality, London is a heterogeneous set of disparate entities, and yet we conceptualize London as though it were a discrete object. To explain as much, I appeal to (i) the primacy of spatial concepts in the conceptual system, (ii) the mind’s tendency to conflate entities whose practical consequences are understood to be mutually entailing, and (iii) language as an enabling condition for recursive processes which allow for the development of complex concepts. Following this sample analysis, I discuss the role of misrepresentation in cognition and the extent to which London is a real entity.