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Bartosz Broz775;ek
Imagination and Rule-following
(doi: 10.1436/92958)

Materiali per una storia della cultura giuridica (ISSN 1120-9607)

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 IMAGINATION AND RULE-FOLLOWING

by Bartosz Brożek

My goal in this paper is to describe the role of imagination (mental simulation) in

the practice of rule-following. I begin by outlining the importance of the human
ability to learn through imitation for the rule-following practices. Then I proceed
to distinguish between two types of rule-following: rudimentary and abstract. The
former is an unconscious, intuitive, and emotion-driven process, while the latter is
conscious, reason-based and requires language. I claim further that the full picture
of the human rule-following practices can dispense with neither rudimentary nor
abstract rules: it is the interplay between them that shapes human societies. Finally,
I try to substantiate the thesis that the interplay in question requires an additional
cognitive capacity, linking the unconscious rudimentary rule-following with its con-
scious and abstract counterpart. I believe that this capacity is mental simulation.

Keywords: Rule-following, Imagination, Imitation, Normativity.

1. The Foundation: Imitation and its Uses1

At the beginning of his Cultural Origins of Human Cognition,

Michael Tomasello poses the following problem:
the 6 million years that separates human beings from other great apes is a very
short time evolutionarily, with modern humans and chimpanzees sharing something
on the order of 99 percent of their genetic material – the same degree of rela-
tedness as that of other sister genera such as lions and tigers, horses and zebras,
and rats and mice. Our problem is thus one of time. The fact is, there simply has
not been enough time for normal processes of biological evolution involving genetic
variation and natural selection to have created, one by one, each of the cognitive

Bartosz Brożek, Jagellonian University, Kraków, Department of Philosophy of Law and Le-
gal Ethics, 12 Bracka Str., 31-005 Kraków, Poland, bartosz.brozek@uj.edu.pl

This paper has been written within the research grant Law & Neuroscience: A New Para-
digm in the Philosophy of Law sponsored by the Foundation for Polish Science within their
Mistrz programme.
1
This part of the essay is partly based on my article Imitation and the Emergence of Nor-
mative Orders, in J. Stelmach, B. Brożek, Ł. Kurek (eds.), The Emergence of Normative Or-
ders, Kraków, Copernicus Center Press, 2016, pp. 45-61.
MATERIALI PER UNA STORIA DELLA CULTURA GIURIDICA
a. XLIX, n. 1, giugno 2019 69
skills necessary for modern humans to invent and maintain complex tool-use indu-
stries and technologies, complex forms of symbolic communication and representa-
tion, and complex social organisations and institutions2.

Tomasello claims that «there is only one possible solution to this

puzzle. That is, there is only one known biological mechanism that
could bring about these kinds of changes in behaviour and cogni-
tion in so short a time […]. This biological mechanism is social or
cultural transmission, which works on time scales many orders of
magnitude faster than those of organic evolution»3. But what is cul-
tural transmission? According to Tomasello, it is a process in which
our various achievements are passed on from generation to genera-
tion; if something has already been discovered, it does not have to
be “rediscovered” by the following generations. This mechanism,
which Tomasello calls “the ratchet effect”, is made possible by imi-
tative, instructed and collaborative learning. Such forms of learning,
in turn, are conditioned by the human ability and tendency to imi-
tate others.
Our ability to imitate – when compared with other primates –
is quite special as it involves copying both the means and the end
of an action. For example, in an experiment conducted by Toma-
sello, Nagel and Olguin, two groups of chimpanzees and two groups
of two-year-old children were shown two ways of using a rake-like
tool to reach food, of which one was more efficient than the other.
Each group saw one method only. It turned out that the chimpan-
zees from both groups did not mimic the instructors’ behaviour ex-
actly, but used the rake in various ways. According to Tomasello, it
can be interpreted as showing that chimpanzees learn by emulation:
the way of using the tool is not important, whereas the change in
the environment – reaching for the food – is. Meanwhile, children
participating in the experiment repeated the actions of the instruc-
tor, even if they followed the less-efficient method of using the rake.
Tomasello believes that this is evidence that humans – in contrast to
great apes – do not learn through emulation but through imitation
sensu stricto. He adds that learning through emulation may under
some circumstances prove more efficient than imitation sensu stricto;
however, the latter has significant social potential, as imitating re-
quires paying attention not only to the changes in the external envi-
ronment, but also to the behaviour of others4.

2
M. Tomasello, Cultural Origins of Human Cognition, London, Harvard University Press,
1999, p. 2.
3
Ibid., p. 4.
4
Ibid., p. 15.

70
 More recent studies have led to less categorical claims. The ex-
periments and observations of Whiten and his colleagues indicate
that the apes’ ability to imitate is much more complex than assumed
earlier. For example, they report cases of spontaneous imitation,
such as a situation in which a group of juvenile chimpanzees mim-
icked the behaviour of an older chimpanzee who was pounding a
nut with a stone5. There is also considerable evidence that chimpan-
zee and even orangutan communities possess behavioural traditions
which are passed from generation to generation. Hopper et al. sum-
marise this point as follows:
Phenomena [humans and chimpanzees] share, indicating their cultural nature
of our last common ancestor, include the existence of cultures constituted of mul-
tiple traditions of diverse kinds, including such behaviours as tool use and social
customs; likely underwriting these, capacities for bodily imitation and real-time
action mirroring; selective imitation according to intent and rationality in others,
and perceptible causal connections in the physical world; context-dependent po-
tency of social over individual learning; end emulation in elementary physical ta-
sks […]. Among these capacities, both species show remarkable degrees of inter-
connectedness with the actions and even psychology of others. Principal ways in
which in childhood we already see cognitive correlates of the enormous cultural
gulf between our own species and chimpanzees include a greater capacity for high-
fidelity imitation and even “over-imitation” […]; a greater capacity for emulation in
respect of more-complex artifacts, and receptivity to informal pedagogy. In these re-
spects children connect culturally even more closely with others’ actions and minds.
However, the evolution of these extraordinary abilities now appears less mysterious
than in the past, given the shared ancestral precursors we can now infer6.

Thus, the difference in human and ape ability to imitate does not
seem to be qualitative, but is rather a matter of degree: humans are
more precise in their imitative activities and more prone to imitate.
Given such similarities in biological hardware for imitation, where
exactly does the difference between humans and apes come from?
The natural answer is that while the apes’ ability to imitate is not so
much poorer than ours, their tendency to imitate is limited in com-
parison to the human eagerness to copy others. We do indeed ‘out-
ape’ the apes, but not because they have no skill for aping – they
lack the tendency.

5
Cf. S. Marshall-Pescini, A. Whiten, Social learning of nut-cracking behavior in East African
sanctuary-living chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii), in «Journal of Comparative Psy-
chology», 122, 2, 2008, pp. 186-94.
6
L.M. Hopper, S. Marshall-Pescari, A. Whiten, Social Learning and Culture in Child and
Chimpanzee, in F. de Waal, P.F. Ferrari, eds., The Primate Mind, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard
University Press, 2012, pp. 117-118.

71
 The human tendency to imitate is conditioned by our cooperative
motivations. Such motivations are generated by a set of emotions –
what Jonathan Haidt calls the “other-condemning” emotions (con-
tempt, anger, disgust), the “self-conscious” emotions (shame, embar-
rassment, guilt), the “other-suffering” emotions (compassion), and
the “other-praising” emotions (gratitude, elevation).7 However, given
that primitive forms of those emotions are present in other animals,
the human tendency to learn by imitation must have some addition-
al base. In this context, Tomasello singles out human cognitive abil-
ity to take other’s perspective, and – in consequence – the capacity
for “shared intentionality”: forming joint goals and acting together
in an orchestrated way to realise them.8
In sum, the phylogenetic perspective underscores that the bio-
logical evolution has not equipped us with a set of independently
evolved cognitive abilities (e.g., to use language, to construct math-
ematics, to follow moral precepts), but rather with a “smaller” adap-
tation for acting together; that this adaptation emerged in the con-
text of collaborative actions; and that it enabled coordinating action
largely – although, certainly, not exclusively – by imitating others.
It is has also been shown that learning through imitation is ben-
eficial from an evolutionary point of view. In their seminal paper of
1995, Why Does Culture Increase Human Adaptability9, Boyd and
Richerson underscore two aspects of this problem: that imitation is
cost minimising (especially in relation to individual learning), and
that it leads to the accumulation of behavioural improvements over
many generations. The accumulation of knowledge also enables easy
modifications of the existing patterns of conduct. Actual environ-
ments are quite complex and usually do not change drastically in a
short period of time; and actual types of behaviour never come pre-
packaged into sharply distinguishable units – they differ between
each other in a more gradual way. Thus, the availability of a set of
behavioural patterns accumulated during the lives of tenths or hun-
dreds of generations makes it possible to devise a new tool for act-
ing in the world by slightly modifying some existing tool. Imitation
– by accumulating knowledge – not only saves us from reinventing
the wheel, but it also provides an opportunity to improve the exist-
ing wheels (e.g., by adding a tire).

7
Cf. J. Haidt, The Moral Emotions, in R.J. Davidson, K.R. Scherer, H.H. Goldsmith, eds.,
Handbook of Affective Sciences, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 852-870.
8
Cf. M. Tomasello, Why We Cooperate, Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press, 2009.
9
R. Boyd, P.J. Richerson, Why Does Culture Increase Human Adaptability?, in «Ethology
and Sociobiology», 16, 1995, p. 127.

72
 Arguably, however, there are some features of imitation, which
are not accounted for by Boyd and Richerson. Firstly, imitation – in
contrast to emulation – is the copying of both the way of acting as
well as its goal. This enables recombination: using the same way of
acting to achieve different goals, or achieve the same goal with dif-
ferent ways of conduct.10 Let us consider language: it is often the
case that we use some expression to convey different meanings, as
it is common that the same message can be communicated with dif-
ferent linguistic means. Secondly, only imitation brings about what I
call fine-graindness of the patterns of conduct. While imitating, one
pays much attention to the exact form of the actions of others, and
hence is capable to detect small – but meaningful – differences in
those actions. This, in turn, makes it possible for complex networks
of quite similar, but nevertheless distinct behavioural patterns to
emerge. Again, let us consider language: such words as “accept” and
“except”, “chord” and “cord”, “dessert” and “desert”, or “sceptic”
and “septic” sound almost identical, but have diametrically differ-
ent meanings. If not for the mechanism of imitation, and the “fine-
grained” recognition of behavioural patterns, language – or, at least,
such a complex communication system as the ones we use every day
– would not exist.
The lesson to be learnt from the above considerations is that imi-
tation constitutes a social learning strategy that – under some realis-
tic assumptions – is evolutionarily beneficial. Of course, it can never
be the only social learning mechanism at play – a population which
would consist of “pure imitators” would not survive long. However,
when imitating becomes the basic way a species learns, it significant-
ly increases that species’ evolutionary fitness. Most importantly, imi-
tation is a culture-creating mechanism – it enables the transmission
of behavioural patterns from generation to generation, thus enabling
the accumulation of knowledge, easy adaptation of the existing cul-
tural tools, recombination of means and ends, as well the emergence
of fine-grained ways of conduct. In consequence, it yields a highly
convergent, stable, communally shared patterns of behaviour.

10
Cf. G. Rizolatti, The Mirror Neuron System and Imitation, in S. Hurley, N. Chater (eds.),
Perspectives on Imitation. Vol. 1: Mechanisms of Imitation and Imitation in Animals, Cam-
bridge (Mass.), MIT Press, 2005, pp. 55-76.

73
2. The Construction: Rule-following

The human ability and tendency to imitate leads to the emer-

gence of a complex network of socially shared patterns of conduct.
Of course, those patterns are not proper rules. On the one hand,
the mechanism of imitation does not enable to learn general legal
or linguistic rules such as “Whoever causes damage to someone is
obliged to redress it” or “One should use the future perfect con-
tinuous tense for activities that will continue until a point of time
in the future and will not be completed.” What we learn to repeat
is what may count as some particular instances of following those
rules. On the other hand, the communal patterns of conduct which
emerge through the practice of imitation are not normative in the
full sense of the word: the fact that in some community there are
things usually done in one particular way cannot serve as justifica-
tion that this is the morally good or correct way to act. However, I
submit that the spontaneous emergence of communally shared pat-
terns of conduct does constitute an essential evolutionary step to-
wards the creation of normative orders. I believe that this step is
best described as the practice of following rudimentary rules.11
The idea of rudimentary rules is inspired by some remarks from
Philosophical Investigations, where Wittgenstein puts forward a nov-
el account of the nature of language: it is no longer considered as a
means for describing the world, but rather as a tool for acting in the
world. In such a setting, the dichotomy “language – world” loses its
importance and, as a consequence, the distinction between linguistic
and other kinds of rules is no longer a sharp one. In connection to
this, Wittgenstein speaks of the so-called language games, i.e. differ-
ent patterns of acting in particular social interactions. Although such
games involve uttering linguistic expressions, it is difficult to assume
that they are played by the kind of language rules one finds in dic-
tionaries and grammar textbooks. At their foundations, language
games have very simple, elementary rules, which are followed “blind-
ly” and which cannot be characterised as linguistic, moral or math-
ematical. These simple instances of rule-following are a necessary con-
dition for the emergence of more complex rule-following practices.
In order to better grasp this Wittgensteinian insight, let us con-
sider the following passage from Lectures on the Foundations of
Mathematics:

11
The theory of rudimentary rules, only outlined here, is described in details in B. Brożek,
Rule-Following. From Imitation to the Normative Mind, Kraków, Copernicus Center Press,
2013.

74
 Suppose a people who learn to multiply solely in order to predict weights. They
put measuring rods against the sides of parallelepipeds, read off the lengths on the
measuring rod, and multiply – and say that that is the number of grams which will
balance the object when put on the scales. They use multiplication only for this
purpose and are in other respects so ignorant they cannot add, divide, or perform
any other mathematical calculation; suppose they cannot even count. In what we do
we are always isolating calculuses12.

According to my reading, Wittgenstein tries to show that our

mathematical practices are rooted in social interactions. Phyloge-
netically speaking, we have learned to use various techniques, such
as predicting weights, in order to deal with the challenges we have
encountered. The techniques were not mathematical, in the sense
that we have not invented calculus only to apply it later to particu-
lar problems. The reverse order is correct: faced with the challenges
of everyday life, we developed ways of dealing with them – often
involving what from today’s perspective may be seen as mathemati-
cal reasoning; the calculi came later, when we abstracted from some
(non-mathematical) aspects of our behavioural patterns and isolated
them into the body of mathematical knowledge.
How to characterise rudimentary rules? First, they are independ-
ent of language in the sense that language is not needed for the ru-
dimentary rules to emerge, and, moreover, the existence of rudimen-
tary rules is an evolutionary precondition for language to come into
being. Second, rudimentary rules are simple and concrete. In order
to enable our elaborate rule-following practices, we need first to
be trained in simple, non-complex pattern recognition and pattern-
repetition practices. Such simple rules as those pertaining to colour
predication form a stable reference framework, which makes the
idea of rule-following comprehensible. Moreover, rudimentary rules
are also concrete, as opposed to general (“not taking my colleague’s
smart-phone” is quite concrete, while “not stealing somebody else’s
movable property” is general), since through imitation one can learn
only concrete patterns of conduct. Third, rudimentary rules are nor-
matively unified: they are multi-aspect (they pertain to an entire ac-
tion, and not just an aspect of it) and non-modal (they pertain only
to how things “are done”, but do not involve well-developed de-
ontic modalities such as obligation, prohibition or permission). Let
us recall the Wittgensteinian thought experiment about people who
learn to multiply solely in order to predict weights. We would nev-
er say that the people from the story know mathematics; however,

12
L. Wittgenstein, Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Chicago, University of Chi-
cago Press, 1975, p. 40.

75
they do follow some rules, which – from a perspective of someone
who is trained in mathematics – look like or may be deemed math-
ematical. In other words: the people follow some rudimentary rules
which involve putting measuring rods against the sides of parallel-
epipeds, reading off the lengths, uttering some words during the
procedure, etc., but by doing so they do not practice mathematics,
just re-enacting what is usually done in the given circumstances in
their community. The rules they use are many-aspect (presumably,
they always repeat the same procedure of measurement, and are in-
capable of saying that a different measurement action may give the
same result); and non-modal (they do, what is usually done, but one
cannot say that they consider the action as obligatory or permitted).
Finally, rudimentary rules are characterised by an impoverished, ru-
dimentary form of normativity. Arguably, we will say that a rule of
behaviour is normative (in the full sense of the word), when it can
be cited to justify action. Rudimentary rules do not possess justifi-
catory force; however, they constitute objective patterns of conduct
and may serve as criteria for correcting one’s behaviour. For exam-
ple: assume that in a certain community there is a rudimentary rule
involving running after rabbits and calling them “quine”. If some-
one fails to do so, as when she calls a rabbit “gavagai”, an objective
standard has been violated; this may serve as the basis for a negative
communal reaction and, in consequence, for correcting her behav-
iour the next time she chases a rabbit. However, it would be dif-
ficult to claim that the rule justifies running after rabbits and calling
them “quine”. Nevertheless, our rudimentary rule does possess some
features which are characteristic of the justification-generating rules,
since there is no justification without communally shared patterns of
conduct.
My next claim is that the practice of rudimentary rule-following
(or something akin to it) constitutes an evolutionary scaffolding for
the emergence of full-blooded, or – as I like to call them – abstract
rules. Without the rudimentary form of rule-following it would be
difficult to imagine how our complex systems came into being; our
sophisticated rule-following practices would be a kind of miracle –
language, morality, and law would be an evolutionary enigma, an
achievement so unique and qualitatively different from the “culture”
of other primates that any attempt to explain their roots would be
destined to fail. On the other hand, given the existence of rudimen-
tary rules, it becomes much easier to account for the emergence of
abstract rules. The latter are an outcome of isolating some selected
aspects of the former. Abstract rules, as I understand them here, are
always expressible in language. Further, they may be complex (i.e.

76
pertain to entire compounds of behavioural patterns) and general
(i.e., pertain to generally specified actions such as in “taking some-
body else’s movable property” vs. “taking one’s colleague’s smart-
phone”). Still, abstract rules are normatively differentiated, i.e. they
may be divided into types, as well as express various kinds of deon-
tic modalities. It is connected to the fact that language, which serves
to establish abstract rules, enables aspectualisation and modalisation
of behavioural patterns. In other words, language makes it possi-
ble to isolate some aspects of behaviour (e.g., mathematical, legal,
moral, or linguistic), as well as express obligations, permissions, and
prohibitions.
Finally, abstract rules may be normative in the full sense of
the word, since they may feature in the arguments justifying cer-
tain courses of action (e.g., paying an income tax, helping one’s ill
mother or addressing an older person with due respect). However,
it should be noted that the justificatory force of abstract rules is not
their inherent property; rather, they may warrant some action only
against the backdrop of some theory of rationality (justification).
For example, the proponents of the economic analysis of law claim
that legal rules – which are a kind of abstract rules – justify a cer-
tain course of action if and only if they lead to the maximisation
of social welfare. Some moral rules, in turn, may provide justifica-
tion if they comply with the categorical imperative (in the Kantian
conception of practical rationality) or when they maximise an indi-
vidual utility function of the actor (in some versions of utilitarian-
ism). Therefore, the normativity of abstract rules is relative: whether
a given rule has a “normative force”, i.e. can serve to justify some
action, is determined by the chosen normative (rationality) criteri-
on. It should be added, however, that the comprehensibility of the
concept of abstract normativity is conditioned on the existence of
its rudimentary form. Rudimentary rules are objective and determine
behavioural standards, and the theoretical reflection on this particu-
lar aspect of rudimentary rules enables the construction of various
abstract normative criteria, from correctness (which we attribute to
language rules), through rationality standards (e.g., categorical im-
perative), to some criteria we tend to call descriptive (e.g., truth). To
put it differently, a moral abstract rule may generate justification for
an action, since it is fair (in the Kantian sense of the word); an ab-
stract language rule may justify the use of a certain expression as it
“encodes” the correct way of using language; an abstract methodo-
logical rule (e.g., in physics or in biology) may justify some particu-
lar way of conducting experiments as following it brings us closer to
uncovering the truth about the universe. The key insight is that all

77
kinds of abstract criteria – fairness, correctness or truth – are rooted
in the rudimentary form of normativity.13
Importantly, the relationship between rudimentary and abstract
rules is not one-directional. It is true that abstract rule-following is
conditioned upon rudimentary rule-following. However, abstract
rules do influence our rudimentary rule-following practices. An in-
troduction of an abstract rule – say, a legal provision in a criminal
code – may lead to the emergence of new socially shared patterns of
behaviour, and – as a consequence – to the emergence of new rudi-
mentary rules. Thus, there exists a kind of feedback between the ru-
dimentary and the abstract level of rule-following. Normative orders
are made possible by rudimentary rule-following practices, but they
also influence and reshape them in a decisive way. Thus, the true
picture of any normative order, be it morality, language or law, is
that of a complex interplay between rudimentary and abstract rules.

3. The Missing Link: Imagination

The theory presented above, which underscores the interplay be-

tween abstract and rudimentary rules as the foundation for the com-
plex human rule-following practices and the emergence of normative
orders, has a particular weakness. On the one hand, rudimentary
rule-following is driven by unconscious, emotion-based processes;
on the other, abstract rule-following consists in acting consciously
according to the rules expressed in language. Thus, there seems to
exist an unbridgeable gap between both aspects of the rule-follow-
ing practices: the unconscious and the conscious, the emotion-driv-
en and the reason-guided, the concrete and the abstract. How is a
feedback loop between these two fundamentally different processes
possible?
I believe that an answer to this question lies in the human abil-
ity of mental simulation, which may also be described with anoth-
er – if not a bit misleading – term imagination. However, before
I say something about mental simulations and attempt to sketch a

13
Rudimentary and abstract normativity may also be described with the idiom popular in
the philosophy of economics, where one distinguishes between ecological and constructive
rationalities. Ecological rationality appears when the structure of the decision mechanisms
matches the structure of information in the environment. Arguably, the patterns of conduct
followed intuitively (unconsciously, or “blindly”) in the given community are ecologically ra-
tional. Constructive rationality, on the other hand, is a consciously constructed set of rules
of behaviour, such as utilitarianism or Kantianism. Cf. V. Smith, Constructivist and Ecological
Rationality in Economics, in «The American Economic Review», 93, 3, 2003.

78
solution to the above stated problem connected to rule-following,
a more general picture of the functioning of the human mind and
brain is needed. A useful background is supplied by Paul Church-
land’s conception of conceptual maps14.
When one’s brain receives some input from the environment,
it is through the sensory neurones (e.g., those located in rods and
cones in the retina, mechanoreceptors within the skin, etc.). How-
ever, those populations of sensory neurones do not produce the final
representation of the perceived phenomena; rather, they only serve
as the first rung in a complex, hierarchical neural structure, where
information retained at one level is transformed – through synaptic
connections – to a higher level. «Each rung of each of these lad-
ders constitutes a unique cognitive canvas or representational space,
a canvas or space with its own structured family of categories, its
own set of similarity and difference relations, and its own peculiar
take on some enduring aspects of the external world. What hap-
pens, as sensory information ascends such a ladder, is its progres-
sive transformation into a succession of distinct representational for-
mats, formats that embody that brain’s background “expectations”
concerning the possible ways in which the world can be».15 In this
way, face recognition, the categorisation of colours, and any other
cognitive activity is enabled by the existence of an appropriate neu-
ronal “ladder”; it follows, inter alia, that the representation of some
concept – say, of “red” – is not an activation pattern at the level of
sensory neurones, but rather “redness” is a part of the conceptual
system encapsulated in a hierarchy of neural networks. In such a hi-
erarchy, the information from the lower-level network is transformed
through the synaptic connections to the higher-level, and hence the
ability to recognise colour red, and to distinguish it from other col-
ours, is determined by the configuration of the connection weights
across the transforming population of the synapses. Such a cognitive
architecture cannot be properly captured by any system of logic; it
is rather a vector space, and thus our representation of the world is
geometrical.
Crucially, such vector spaces provide a framework for represent-
ing both perception and action. «The brain’s representations of the
world’s enduring categorical and causal structure (its ‘factual’ knowl-
edge), and the brain’s representations of its various acquired motor
skills and abilities (its ‘practical’ knowledge), are both embodied

14
Cf. P.M. Churchland, Plato’s Camera: How the Physical Brain Captures a Landscape of
Abstract Universals, Cambridge (Mass.), The MIT Press, 2012.
15
Ibid., p. 35.

79
in the carefully sculpted metrics of similarities and differences that
provide lasting structure to each one of the brain’s many activation
spaces».16 Thus – contrary to many philosophical theories and the
“received wisdom” of folk psychology – no unbridgeable gap exists
between the representations of perception and action.
Another important aspect of the functioning of the mind is that
the neural activation patterns are a result of the long process of in-
dividual learning. We are not born with the ability to discern be-
tween red and orange, or distinguish female from male faces. But
our brains are so constructed as to enable the gradual formation of
neural activation patterns, and this process leads firmly to the estab-
lishment of hierarchies of neural networks which make it possible
for us to categorise and conceptualise our experience and act in the
world. If so, our mental representations are embodied and enacted:
they emerge in the interactions of our bodies with the environment,
and they are shaped by what we do, and not – at least not only –
by what we passively experience.
There is one further aspect of the above described cognitive
mechanism that should be stressed here. The mechanism «displays
the capacity to reach beyond the shifting vagaries of one’s sensory
inputs so as to get a grip on the objective and enduring features
of one’s perceptual environment».17 The training of a given neural
network, the painstaking orchestration of the numerous synaptic
weights, takes place over a long period of time, fine-tuning the en-
tire system to the environment, and hence capturing its unchanging,
invariant features. Naturally, not all such features are represented in
the human brain – only those which happen to be relevant for our
actions. Moreover, the cognitive apparatus of other animals, from
quite simple organisms to non-human primates, also capture objec-
tive aspects of reality. For example, bats must have representations
of the environment which are quite distinct from human conceptual
maps, even in relation to the same aspect of the world. «A blind
bat, […] may know what flamingos are, and be perfectly able to
discriminate flamingos from other flying creatures, but it will do so
by focusing (actively) on the distinctive acoustic signature of the so-
nar echo returned from such a bird, or (passively) on the equally
distinctive acoustic signature (“swoosh, swoosh”) given off when any
flamingo takes flight».18 But conceptual maps differ not only across
but also within species. No two people have exactly the same neural

16
Ibid., p. 49.
17
Ibid., p. 67.
18
Ibid., p. 89.

80
representations of the given phenomenon: the relevant synaptic con-
nections and their weights may differ to a greater or lesser degree,
even though the fact that humans have similar genetic underpinning,
as well as that they deal with the same type of environment, signifi-
cantly reduces such differences.
What reduces them even further – but only in humans – is one
of the greatest discoveries in the evolutionary history of our species:
the ability to use language. When a child learns to speak, the ef-
fect on her conceptual maps is that they are formed in a way which
is typical for the society in which she was born. Of course, some
level of idiosyncrasy remains, but it is by far smaller than it would
be were there no language, since «most obviously […], a shared
language and a shared theoretical vocabulary allows us to coordi-
nate our individual conceptual maps of a given domain, both in our
background understanding of that domain’s abstract structure and
in our local sensory and instrumental indexings of that map in the
business of interrogating the objective world».19
There is a number of issues that need to be stressed in connec-
tion to the brain/mind architecture sketched above. First, the brain-
level representation of concepts does not come in isolated units;
rather, our knowledge is inscribed into hierarchical and intercon-
nected structures. For example, recognising something as red is also
a recognition that the thing under consideration is not blue, yellow,
or orange. This fact contributes in an essential way to the explana-
tion of how pattern-recognition works. Second, the brain-level repre-
sentations of perception and action take advantage of the same kind
of neural mechanisms: there is no fundamental difference between
the architecture responsible for perceiving the world and acting in it.
Third, the “conceptual maps” we have are shaped through individual
experience and over long periods of time. Finally, cultural pressure,
and language in particular, serves as a powerful tool for aligning the
conceptual maps of the members of the same community.
Now, let us turn to mental simulation. People, and quite prob-
ably also other animals20, have the ability to imagine various objects
or situations, to “play them out” in their heads. There is a very
good evolutionary explanation for the development of this ability.
Mental simulations enable us to prepare for future circumstances,
which reduces the cost of acting in the world. To put it in a nut-

19
Ibid., p. 269.
20
Cf. R.W. Byrne, The Early Evolution of Creative Thinking: Evidence from Monkeys and
Apes, in S. Mithen (ed.), Creativity in Human Evolution and Prehistory, London, Routledge,
1988, pp. 110-124.

81
shell: it is better to die in one’s imagination than in real life. Instead
of risking one’s life, one can imagine a number of ways for killing
a dangerous animal and eliminate at least some of the errors that
would otherwise occur; instead of risking one’s reputation, one can
mentally “play out” a few versions of a talk to be given in front of
an important and demanding audience and reduce the likelihood of
public humiliation.
Crucially, the recent neuroimaging studies as well as behavioural
experiments strongly suggest that mental simulation takes advantage
of the same brain circuits which are used when an object is actu-
ally observed or an action executed. For example, when I imagine a
hammer, the same brain regions are involved as when I see a ham-
mer; when I mentally simulate using a hammer to drive a nail, the
same neural circuits are used which are activated when I carry out
this particular action. Of course, the activations under consideration
may be much weaker when simulation is “played out” than when
an actual action or perception takes place. Some behavioural experi-
ments seem to corroborate the findings of the neuroimaging stud-
ies. Most of them are connected to the so-called Perky effect: men-
tal imagery can interfere with actually perceiving the world. For ex-
ample, when someone is asked to imagine a particular object at the
bottom of an empty screen, she is slower to spot a new picture that
emerges on the screen when the new picture is located at the bot-
tom rather than at the top21.
An important feature of mental simulations is that they are multi-
modal: they may simultaneously involve visual, auditory, motor and
emotional ingredients. When imagining a triangle, one would prob-
ably use only those brain circuits which are responsible for visual
perception. However, a mental simulation of a dog may involve
much more than a static picture of a Labrador Retriever or a Cava-
lier King Charles Spaniel. Most likely, one would “see” the dog in
action (wagging its tail, barking, begging for food), and the simula-
tion would elicit some positive or negative emotions.
Studies also show that there exists an important link between
mental simulations and language. Hearing or uttering the word
“hammer” activates the same brain circuitry which is involved in
seeing a hammer or doing something with it. This fact is confirmed
by both neuroimaging techniques and behavioural experiments. For
example, imagine that you have the following task: there is a screen
and three buttons: grey, black, and white. When you press and

21
B. Bergen, Louder than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning, New
York, Basic Book, 2012, pp. 26 ff.

82
hold the grey button a sentence appears on the screen. If the sen-
tence makes sense, you should release the grey button and press the
black one, which is closer to you; if the sentence is nonsensical, you
should press the white button which is further away from you than
the grey one. It turns out that if a meaningful sentence – whether
declarative or imperative – describes an action involving motion to-
ward you, your responses are faster than in those cases when the
sentences describe movement away from you.22 There are dozens of
experiments conducted in a similar setting, which – together with
neuroimaging studies and behavioural observations based on brain
lesions – strongly indicate that people perform perceptual and mo-
tor simulation while they’re processing language. They do so using
the same parts of the brain they use to perceive the world and ex-
ecute actions. Moreover, when specific aspects of embodied simu-
lation are hindered, people have more trouble processing language
about those specific aspects of perception or action. And finally,
when brain regions dedicated to action or perception are damaged
or temporarily taken offline, people have more trouble processing
language about the specific perceptual or motor events it encodes.
Taken together, all this evidence makes a pretty compelling case that
embodied simulation plays a functional role in language understand-
ing23.
Moreover, it should be stressed that the mental simulations in-
volved in language processing do not necessarily have to be con-
scious. To the contrary: the behavioural studies of this problem
– such as the experiment described above – show that the mental
simulations of the processed sentence are usually “played out” at the
unconscious level.
There is one significant problem with the simulation-based view
of language, which has to do with processing abstract language.
When one reads the sentence “Paul has smashed Adam’s iPhone
with a hammer”, it is easy to see how the scene described in the
sentence may be imagined. However, let us consider the sentence
“Paul has destroyed Adam’s movable property”. It is not obvious
what kind of simulation may accompany the understanding of this
sentence, if any. Fortunately, there are small pieces of evidence sug-
gesting that imagination plays an important role also in relation to
abstract expressions such as “movable property”. First, there are
many studies of the processing of linguistic metaphors, which yield
similar results to the studies of concrete language. For example,

22
Ibid., pp. 78 ff.
23
Ibid., p. 238.

83
people reading that “The rates climbed” would be faster to press a
button which is located higher, and slower to press a button located
lower. Second, more abstract sentences, such as “You radioed the
message to the policeman”, interfere with motor functions, which
suggests that some mental simulation involving motor neurones
takes place when one is trying to understand them. Third, it is safe
to assume that simulations connected to abstract language vary sig-
nificantly between individuals. While reading about Paul destroying
Adam’s movable property, a person A may imagine some concrete
object being destroyed, while a person B may simulate the destruc-
tion of a different object or just of something which is not clearly
identifiable, save that it may be moved. Fourth, it is quite likely that
the mental simulations accompanying abstract language processing
are in general much less specific than the imagery involved in un-
derstanding concrete language.24 All in all, while there is no ground
for claiming that mental simulations constitute the entirety of the
brain-level phenomena associated with the understanding of linguis-
tic expressions, it seems more than likely that they provide a key in-
gredient in this process.
An additional insight into the nature of abstract language may be
gained by taking into consideration the so-called dual coding theory
proposed first by A. Paivio25. According to this theory, linguistic ex-
pressions are processed by our mind in two distinct ways: analogue
(through the so-called imagens, i.e. a nonverbal, imagery code) and
symbolic (through the so-called logogens, i.e. the linguistic code).
The word “dog” is associated with an imagen (or a set of imagens),
enabling us to mentally visualise a dog when we utter, hear or read
the word; but the word “dog” is also encoded in the mind through
the relevant logogen, which – on the one hand – is “tied up” with
the imagen of a dog, while – on the other – is connected to other
logogens. The more abstract the linguistic expression is, the weaker
are the relations between logogens and imagens. Such words as “jus-
tice”, “Hilbert’s space” or “statio fisci” are connected in many ways
to other concepts at the level of linguistic code, but it is hard to
see how different people can relate them to the same imagens. One
may imagine “justice” as a blindfolded lady, someone else – through
a concrete situation in which “justice was done”, while other peo-
ple may have no recognisable mental images associated with this ab-
stract concept.

Ibid., p. 209 ff.

24

Cf. A. Paivio, Mind and Its Evolution: A Dual Coding Theoretical Approach, New York,
25

Mahwah, 2013.

84
 In the recent years the dual coding theory has received additional
support from the research on embodied mental simulation reported
above. The idea is simple: both codes – imagens and logogens – are
realised through mental simulations. The simulations of the first type
are mental pictures of real situations. The imagen of a dog is a men-
tal picture (or a set of pictures), produced with the use of roughly
the same neural circuitry, which is active when one observes a real
dog. Logogens are also simulations – we experience them conscious-
ly when we speak to ourselves in our minds. There is, however, a
crucial difference between the two systems of representation: ima-
gens are embodied and multimodal, while logogens – disembodied
and amodal. When our mind uses the imagen of a dog, various
modalities typical of our interactions with real dogs are simulated:
visual, auditory, tactile, or emotional. On the other hand, when one
uses the logogen “dog”, the simulation is unidimensional; it does
not include many modalities and has little to do with perceiving a
real dog26.
The key aspect of this “dual” view is that both systems of rep-
resentation – imagens and logogens – interact with one another.
The more concrete logogens one uses, the more intimately they are
connected to the relevant imagens. To put it in a different way: the
processing and understanding of concrete linguistic expressions is
based mainly on the embodied multimodal simulations. On the oth-
er hand, the more abstract our language becomes, the weaker is its
relationship with imagens, and the more we rely on the relationships
between different logogens. The meaning of linguistic expressions
is determined by both the mental simulations of objects and events,
and the structure of relationship between logogens. However, the
concrete language is more firmly rooted in the multimodal mental
representations, which are shaped by our interactions with the envi-
ronment, while the abstract language is primarily based on the infer-
ential networks consisting of linguistic symbols.

4. Putting it All Together: Rule-following Reconsidered

Let us now consider what is the role of mental simulations in the

practice of rule-following, and – more precisely – in the interplay
between rudimentary and abstract rules. Here is our problem: there
are two faces of rule-following. On the one hand, we unconscious-

26
Cf. G. Dove, On the Need for Embodied and Dis-Embodied Cognition, in «Frontiers in
Psychology», 1, 2012, pp. 1-13.

85
ly follow rudimentary rules, i.e. the behavioural patterns which are
characteristic of the given community; on the other, we also seem
capable of the rule-guided behaviour, i.e. of consciously acting in ac-
cordance with an explicitly and often abstractly stated rule. The for-
mer type of rule-following is intuitive and emotion-driven; the latter
involves the use of language and conscious deliberation. Is there any
link between them?
I posit that the missing link between rudimentary and abstract
rule-following is the human capacity for mental imagery. Given the
multi-modal character of the mental simulations (they involve not
only visual or auditory, but also motor and emotional aspects of ex-
perience), there seems to be two distinct ways in which imagination
interacts with rudimentary rule-following. First, mental simulations
may activate our intuitions. For example, if I imagined taking part
in a burglary, I would feel a negative emotion (guilt, embarrassment,
or shame), which is associated with violating a rudimentary rule.
Second, imagination may also help in (re)educating one’s intuitive
reactions. Let us assume that Mr. X is moving from the US to Ja-
pan, and he knows he will be working in a very traditional social
environment, where one greets other persons only by bowing - shak-
ing hands is strictly forbidden. A good method for preparing Mr.
X for those new circumstances is to imagine different situations in
which he greets his new colleagues by bowing, and abstains from
shaking hands. Such visualisations are often used to eliminate old
and train new habits, e.g. in professional sport27.
The relationship between imagination and abstract rule-following
is even more important. When confronted with a written rule – say,
“You should not destroy Adam’s iPhone” – we understand it by
(consciously or unconsciously) imagining the forbidden behaviour
(in fact, the available data suggests that we imagine the “positive”
behaviour, and the deontic operator “forbidden” is something exter-
nal to the simulation; similarly, when processing a sentence includ-
ing a negation, e.g. “John has not destroyed Adam’s iPhone”, one
mentally simulates the ‘positive part’ of the state of affairs described
in the sentence, and “adds” the negation afterwards)28. Thus, imagi-
nation plays a “hermeneutic” role in the understanding of rules ex-
pressed in language. Of course, the situation becomes more prob-

Cf. Bergen, Louder than Words, cit., p. 23 ff.

27

Cf. B. Kaup, J. Ludtke, R.A. Zwaan, The Experiential View of Language Comprehension:
28

How is Negation Represented?, in F. Schmalhofer, C.A. Perfetti, eds., Higher Level Language
Processes in the Brain. Inference and Comprehension Processes, New York-London, Lawrence
Elbraum Associates, Mahwah, 2007, pp. 255-288.

86
lematic when the formulation of the rule utilises very abstract terms.
For example, the provision “One should not appropriate somebody
else’s movable property” may be understood through different men-
tal simulations; moreover, to have a good grasp of such an abstract
rule, one should be able to imagine various situations to which it
applies, e.g. stealing phones, cars, bread, etc. It is exactly what is
used in legal education: lawyers learn how to use abstract legal rules
and abstract legal concepts (property, legal capacity, etc.) by con-
sidering particular examples. Naturally, as suggested by dual coding
theory, the understanding of abstract language is not limited to the
mental simulations of particular objects or events; it also takes ad-
vantage of the inferential connections between various logogens. In
other words, in order to process the provision “One should not ap-
propriate somebody else’s movable property” one may take various
actions, which do not require imagination. For instance, it is pos-
sible to paraphrase it by saying “One should not take someone else’s
material object, which is separated from other objects, may be sub-
ject to legal transactions, has an economic value and is not a real
estate”. Such a paraphrase enhances our understanding of the inter-
preted provision, even if it remains at quite a high level of abstrac-
tion29. Ultimately, however, the goal of paraphrases and other formal
and quasi-formal methods of interpretation is to provide a broader
conceptual framework facilitating mental simulations of concrete sit-
uations relevant for the interpreted provision.
The use of mental simulations for the understanding of abstract
rules has one more advantage: it prepares our brain for action. Let
us assume that we are considering the following rule: “When the
red light flashes, press the right button”. To understand such a rule
one (consciously or unconsciously) simulates mentally the relevant
situation. However, since simulation takes advantage of the same
brain circuits which are responsible for the realisation of the given
action, our brain is better prepared for executing the action once
the red light flashes. The connection between an abstract rule and
the execution of an action via mental simulation is even more obvi-
ous when the rule under consideration is well known. For example,
imagining that “One should visit one’s hospitalised mother” immedi-
ately activates an existing intuition: the simulated situation is noth-
ing new, but rather is associated with a well trained reaction.
It should be easier now to understand how to move from an ab-
stract to a rudimentary rule. Let us consider again the formulation

29
Cf. B. Brożek, Beyond Interpretation. A Reply to Jerzy Stelmach, in Krakauer-Augsburger
Rechtsstudien V, Warszawa, Wolters Kluwer, 2011, pp. 19-28.

87
“One should not appropriate somebody else’s movable property”. In
order to (partly) grasp it, one needs one or more mental simulations
(imagining stealing a car, an iPhone, a loaf of bread, etc.), possibly
aided by the utilisation of some formal or quasi-formal methods of
interpretation. In a typical case, this leads to the activation of an ex-
isting intuition (an existing somatic marker). In such cases one fol-
lows an abstract rule by executing a well-trained behavioural pattern
(one may also say: by acting according to a rudimentary rule). How-
ever, two other situations are possible. First, the abstract rule may
prescribe a course of action which activates no intuitions. For exam-
ple, a new legal rule may require for everyone to say “quine” while
entering a public building. The rationale behind such a rule not-
withstanding, the best way to learn how to follow it, is to mentally
simulate various instances of entering a public building in order to
“educate” new intuitions. Second, an abstract rule may prescribe an
action which – when imagined – gives rise to a “counter-intuition”.
For example, if the rule says “When greeting your neighbours, you
should punch them in the face”, a mental simulation used to grasp
the meaning of the rule would activate a negative emotional reac-
tion. In such cases an effortful process of reeducating the existing
intuitions would be needed to change the rudimentary rule-follow-
ing practices.

5. Conclusion

Rule-following is a complex practice. It has two different “faces”:
the unconscious, emotion-driven, and the conscious, language-based.
However, it must be stressed that the two faces are not strictly sep-
arated. They may take advantage of different neural mechanisms
and mental faculties, but at the same time they “work in concert”
to generate the complex networks of human societies. In the paper,
I have tried to substantiate the thesis that the connection between
them is possible through our ability of mental simulation. Imagina-
tion – often neglected by epistemologists and legal philosophers – is
the missing link, which explains how unconscious intuition may be
influenced by abstract reasoning (and vice versa).

88