3.3.1 The Cognitive Type (CT)
At the close of their first perceptual process, the Aztecs elaborated what we shall call a Cognitive Type (CT) of the horse. If they had lived in a Kantian universe, we should say that this CT was the schema that allowed them to mediate between the concept and the manifold of the intuition. But for an Aztec where was the concept of horse, given that he did not have one before the Spaniards landed? Of course, after having seen some horses, the Aztecs must have constructed a morphological schema not that dissimilar to a 3-D model, and it is on this basis that the coherence of their perceptual acts must have been established.
But by speaking of a CT, I do not mean just a sort of image, a series of morphological or motor characteristics (the animal trots, gallops, rears); they had perceived the characteristic neigh, and perhaps the smell, of horses. Apart from the appearance, the Aztecs must have immediately attributed a characteristic of «animality» to the horse, given that the term maçatl was immediately applied, as well as the capacity to inspire terror and the functional characteristic of being «rideable,» since it was usually seen with human beings on its back. In short, let’s say that the CT of the horse was of a multimedial nature right from the start.
3.3.1.1 The Recognition of Tokens
On the basis of the CT thus elaborated, the Aztecs must have been immediately able to recognize as horses other exemplars that they had never seen before (and this apart from variations in color, size, and vantage point). It is precisely the phenomenon of recognition that induces us to talk of type, in fact, as a parameter for the comparison of tokens. This type has nothing to do with an Aristotelian-Scholastic «essence,» and we have no interest in knowing what the Aztecs grasped of the horse (perhaps wholly superficial features of a kind that left them unable to discriminate between horses and mules or donkeys).
But it is certain that by talking of type in this sense, we conjure up the ghost of a Lockian type of «general ideas,» and some might object that we have no need of these to explain the phenomenon of recognition. All we need say is that the Aztecs applied the same name to diverse individuals because they found them similar to one another. But this notion of similarity between individuals is no less confusing than that of similarity between a token and a type. Even to express a judgment according to which a token X is similar to a token Y requires the elaboration of criteria of similarity (two things are similar in some aspects and dissimilar in others) and therefore the ghost of a type reappears that can be referred to as a parameter.
On the other hand, some contemporary cognitive theories tell us that recognition occurs on the basis of prototypes, whereby an object elected as a paradigm is deposited in the memory and then others are recognized in relation to the prototype. But to say that an eagle is a bird because it is similar to the prototype of the sparrow signifies having chosen some features of the sparrow that are more pertinent than others (at the expense of dimensions, for example). And so, if things were like this, our prototype would have become a type.
If we were to reutilize the Kantian notion of schema here, the CT could be a rule, a procedure for constructing the image of the horse rather than a sort of multimedial image. In any case, whatever this CT may be, it is something that permits recognition. At this point, having postulated the existence (somewhere or other) of this type (schema or multimedial image, as it may be), we have if nothing else cleared the field of a venerable presence, which beyond a doubt still inhabited the Kantian universe: if we postulate a CT, we no longer have any need to bring concepts into play. Especially for our Aztecs, the CT does not mediate between the concept of horse (which they could not have had anywhere, unless we postulate a Platonism that is very transcultural) and the manifold of the intuition. The CT is that which allowed them to unify the manifold of the intuition, and if this was good enough for them, it ought to be good enough for us too.
3.3.1.2 Naming and Felicitous Reference
And should someone come along and say that the concept of horse is far richer than anything the Aztecs knew, this proves nothing. There are plenty of people around who have a CT of the horse that is no more elaborate than the one the Aztecs had, and that does not prevent them from saying they know what horses are, given that they can recognize them. In this phase of our story, there are a great number of things that the Aztecs still do not know about the horse (whence it comes, how it eats, how it reproduces, how it nurtures its young, how many breeds there are in the world, and even whether it is a dumb animal or a rational being). But on the basis of what they know, they manage not only to recognize it but also to agree on a name for it, and in so doing, they realize that each one of them reacts to the name by applying it to the same animals that the others do. Naming is the first social act that convinces them that they all recognize various individuals, at different times, as tokens of the same type.
It was not necessary to name the object-horse to recognize it, just as one day I may become aware of an internal sensation that is unpleasant but indefinable and recognize only that it is the same one I felt the day before. However, «that thing I felt yesterday» is already a name for the feeling I have; it would be even more a name if I were to mention this feeling—an extremely private one, moreover—to others. The passage to a generic term springs from the social need to be able to detach the name from the hie et nunc of the situation, and then to bind it to the type.
But how did the Aztecs know they were applying the name maçatl to the same CT? A Spanish observer (let’s call him José Gavagai) might have wondered whether, when an Aztec indicated a generic point in space-time by saying maçatl, he meant by that name the animal that every Spaniard recognized; or else the still inseparable unit made up of horse-horseman, the animal’s shining trappings, the fact that an unknown thing was coming toward him; or whether he wanted to express the proposition «Behold as out of the sea come those divine beings promised by our prophets and that one day Gulliver will call Houyhnhnms!»
The certainty that everybody shares a common CT, corresponding to the name, comes about only in cases of felicitous reference (i.e., of reference crowned by success). In 5, 1 shall be dealing with how problematic the notion of reference is. But experience tells us that there are cases in which we refer to something and others have shown that they understand very well what we wanted to refer to—for example, when we ask someone to bring us the book that is on the table, and this someone brings us the book and not a pen. Given that the Spaniards rapidly allied themselves with some local populations, if someone had asked a native to bring him a horse, and the native returned bringing a horse (and not a basket, a flower, a bird, or a portion of horse), we would have the proof that with that name both parties identified tokens of the same CT.
On this basis it is possible to suggest the existence of CTs without being obliged to wonder what and where they are. While in times of violent antimentalism it was forbidden even to hypothesize the existence of any mental event whatsoever, in a period in which cognitive studies are flourishing it is legitimate to wonder whether the CT of the horse in the «mind» of the Aztecs was made up of mental images, diagrams, definite descriptions expressed propositionally; or whether it consisted of a set of semantic markers and abstract relations that constituted the innate alphabet of their «mentalese,» and they processed strings of discrete signals in pure Boolean terms. A problem of maximum import in the world of the cognitive sciences, but, in my view, wholly irrelevant from the standpoint I have chosen to adopt: to take into account only the data of a folk psychology or, rather, to revive a venerable philosophical concept that I hold to be still of maximum usefulness, that is, to consider things from a standpoint of common sense. It is on the basis of common sense that we find evidence of the two phenomena of recognition and felicitous reference11
3.3.1.3 The CT and the Black Box
What happens in our «black box» when we perceive something is a problem that cognitive scientists debate by discussing, for example, (i) whether the environment provides us with all the necessary information without a constructive contribution on the part of our mental or neural apparatus, or whether there is a selection, interpretation, and reorganization of the stimulating field; (ii) whether in the black box there is something that may be designated as «mind» or pure neural processes, or whether, as happens in the field of neoconnectivism, we can assert an identity between rule and data; (iii) where cognitive
