The Beautiful American

Louis Armstrong

This from Ricky Riccardi’s excellent blog.

Even with his frustrations over the treatment of his people, Armstrong remained a proud American and one of the country’s greatest cultural ambassadors. In 1959, Armstrong was asked about his title of “Ambassador of Goodwill,” Armstrong told a German reporter, “I’m an American first of all. And I don’t know let my country down. And that’s the way it should be.”

That’s why it seemed so right to celebrate Armstrong’s birth on July 4 every year. He was told as a child that he was born on July 4, 1900 and he stuck with that until his dying day on July 6, 1971. When researcher Tad Jones discovered a baptismal certificate 15 years after Armstrong’s passing that stated Armstrong was actually born on August 4, 1971, many longtime Armstrong fans felt a sense of disappointment. Armstrong should have been born on July 4. Who was more American than Louis Armstrong? Even when Duke Ellington dedicated a composition to Armstrong in 1961, he simply named it, “The Beautiful American.”

John Searle: Consciousness & the Brain

consciousness

Here is Searle, still the master performer after all these years. He hasn’t dimmed an iota since I saw him in London in 1989.

Food first . . .

food, new orleans

Saundra Green’s NOLA cooking classes.

“We don’t count carbs and we don’t count calories,” Green jokes. “If we know we are going to be really bad, we just double up on the Lipitor.”

She can’t resist adding that her grand-mère (grandmother) ate bacon fat every day of her life and lived to be 102.

This class is much more than a technical demonstration; it’s also a culinary history lesson.

Ken Minogue (September 11, 1930–June 28, 2013)

kenneth minogue

It is with sadness that I report the death of my chum Ken Minogue. It was only two months ago that I got him out to New York for a conference in which he performed brilliantly. Just two weeks ago we had corresponded and as usual Ken always ready to extend kindness and generosity. I will write up a more detailed recollection of the good times both professionally and socially (though it’s hard to prize them apart) we had together over the past twenty-five years.

Kenneth_Minogue

Li’l Band O’Gold & Robert Plant

"Fats" Domino

Confirmation of the Plant man’s Louisiana music credibility. As I’ve said all along, Plant is the only superstar from the 60s that never stood still. His music is deeper and richer than ever. More than anywhere, I know where I’d like to be on July 17th. Also check out Li’l Band O’Gold latest and the Fats tribute album Goin’ Home – Plant is the star with two brilliantly executed songs.

The Peripheral Mind

extended cognitive systems, extended mind, externalism

Last August I chanced upon a forthcoming book by István Aranyosi. I’m pleased to say that my copy arrived today and I’m very much looking forward to reading it. Any book that opens with a Kafka quote suggests immaculate taste. Not only that, but the series of which this book is a part is edited than none other than Dave Chalmers who quickly saw the virtues of István’s work. Last, but by no means least, there is a very personal story behind the realization and motivation of the book, refreshingly different from the inflated egos of writers who get funding to spend six months in say, Vézelay, to do some writing and then very pretentiously sign off their preface Joe Blogs, New York and Vézelay.

I also look forward to a close-grained review that I have commissioned for The Journal of Mind and Behavior.

The Peripheral Mind introduces a novel approach to a wide range of issues in the philosophy of mind by shifting the focus of analysis from the brain to the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS). Contemporary philosophy of mind has neglected the potential significance of the PNS and has implicitly assumed that, ultimately, sensory and perceptual experience comes together in the brain. István Aranyosi proposes a philosophical hypothesis according to which peripheral processes are considered as constitutive of sensory states rather than merely as causal contributors to them. Part of the motivation for the project is explained in the autobiographical opening chapter, which describes the author’s subjective experiences with severe peripheral nerve damage.

Although Aranyosi’s approach could be classified as part of the current “embodied mind” paradigm in the philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience, this is the first time that notions like “embodiment” and “body” in general are replaced by the more focused concept of the PNS. Aranyosi puts the hypothesis to the test and offers novel solutions to puzzles related to physicalism, functionalism, mental content, embodiment, the extended mind hypothesis, tactile-proprioceptive illusions, as well as to some problems in neuroethics, such as abortion and requests for amputation of healthy body parts. The diversity of the volume’s methodology–which results from a combination of conceptual analysis, discussion of neuroscientific data, philosophical speculation, and first-person phenomenological accounts–makes the book both engaging and highly informative.

Quintuple Extension: Mind, Body, Humanism, Religion, Secularism

extended mind, externalism

Here is the intro to Leonard’s article.

Some say that the mind is extended. I’d say that the current debate about one important interpretation of this view focuses on an overly narrow topic, whether cognition is extended. (‘Extended’ means extended beyond the ordinary physical body boundary.) All agree, though, that what will here be called fognition is extended. A system is a fognitive system iff it is a system that includes cognition and all representational sources for cognition, where a representational source for cognition is a representation used as a representation by a cognitive system. This definition allows for two sorts of theories: in one it is maintained that there is no overlap between cognitive states and any external-tothe- ordinary-body source state; in the other it is maintained that there is overlap between cognitive states and the external-to-the-ordinary-body representational source states. However, if fognition is extended, then, it is plausible to hold, the mind is extended.

Before showing such plausibility, though, a bit of background is appropriate. There is a distinction between semantic externalism (begun in the 1970’s), and active externalism (begun in the 1990’s); it is the latter view that sets the stage for our interest. Andy Clark and David Chalmers, in ‘The Extended Mind’ defended an active externalism (and they there inaugurated use of the term ‘active externalism’) in which there is “an active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes” (Clark & Chalmers 1998, Introduction). Their examples include computer aids and notebooks. Since they examined not only processing systems but also beliefs, they concluded that there is extended mind. That is, the physical base of the mind goes beyond the ordinary physical body boundary.

There is also a criticism of semantic externalism that should be briefly mentioned. Some say that semantic externalism merely presents a theory about semantic content in which there seems to be no constituency relationship between semantic content and the mind. Another way to put this is to say that semantic externalism only yields mental externalism if the contents of mental states are essential to those states; but the environmental conditions in question are not, or do not seem to be, essential to what we might well mean by mental states (Rowlands 2003, Ch. 7).

Active externalism, by contrast, attempts to identify the physical base of the mind as external. Clark and Chalmers took it that they first showed that the physical base of (some) cognition is external; then they added beliefs, which are clearly mental states, to the picture, and tried to show that the physical base of not only cognition, but also the mind, is external. Since beliefs are not only mental states, but also cognitive states, one way to construe this argument for active externalism is to say that a hidden contention within active externalism is, or seems to be, expressed in the following identity statement:

A: The physical base of cognition is the physical base of the mind.

In assessing the credibility of A we are brought to an examination from which the plausibility of extended mind, I suggest, emerges.

Critics of active externalism argue that the physical base of cognition is not extended. A fine recent criticism of active externalism is Adams and Aizawa’s The Bounds of Cognition (2008). Adams and Aizawa maintain that cognition only occurs in the substrate of non-derived representation and in the substrate with a certain sort of mechanism. That mechanism, they maintain, could be outside the brain, but is not, at the moment, outside the brain (Adams and Aizawa 2008, 9). After careful applications of these criteria, they conclude that, given what exists, the physical base of cognition is internal to the brain.

One way to take this argument against active externalism is to take it that Adams and Aizawa agree with A. Looked at this way, Adams and Aizawa’s view states that since cognition is not extended, but is only physically based in the brain, and since the physical base of cognition is the base of the mind, then the mind is not extended.

However, there are other ways to interpret the content of Adams and Aizawa’s remarks. One might focus on the modality, what could be the case, though it is, in Adam’s and Aizawa’s view, not currently the case. This tack (closely related to Clark and Chalmers’ portability arguments, 1998, section 3, one interpretation of which also rejects A) will not be followed here, but, rather, another tack, that, too, undoes A, will be sketched. It will be shown that there is no inconsistency between accepting Adams and Aizawa’s view that the extent of the base of cognition is only in the brain, and rejecting A. Some writers, e.g., Hacker and Bennett 2003, hold or imply that the base of the personal (human) mind is the whole intuitively picked out body (Hacker and Bennett: 3, and throughout). Adams and Aizawa say that orthodox psychologists take cognition to be internal to the brain, and so, if Hacker and Bennett accept A, then Hacker and Bennett reject the content of Adams and Aizawa’s psychological orthodoxy. Yet Hacker and Bennett’s approach demonstrates the consistency of the views that there is a technical psychological notion to be called cognition, that cognition is internal to the brain, and that the whole organism is the base of the mind. Orthodox psychologists, too, can hold cognition to be internal to the brain, and can reject the identity expressed in A. That allows for something broader than Hacker and Bennett’s view of the mind.

Given the modality, and given the many views in psychology, including philosophical psychology, what shall we make of the central claim of the active mind externalists, that the human mind is extended?

Adams and Aizawa (2008 x, 106-7, 146), and all members of the philosophical community who are interested in the topic, agree that what was defined above as the fognitive system is extended: the fognitive system includes things in the brain, in the intuitively picked out body, and in its environment. The notion of fognition allows all, both exponents and critics of the view that cognition is extended, to hold that A is false and yet the personal mind is extended. Whether those who hold that the base of cognition is only in the brain agree that the mind is extended depends on the degree to which they agree with the putative identity expressed in B:

B: The base of fognition is the base of the mind.

Further, B seems to be at least as credible as A. A lot of the operations in the mind are subconscious or non-conscious. But then whether or not an element is a part of the generating system of conscious cognition seems to be irrelevant. The focus should be on dispositional states and the mind.

The dispositional structure – a functional structure – seems to be independent of whether or not something is a part of the base yielding consciousness. Given the many subconscious or non-conscious features in the physio-chemical, biological, or neurophysiological base of the mind, the only thing that seems to be functionally required for something to be part of the base of the mind is that it be part of the base of fognition. Then the non-conscious aspect of a notebook in one’s pocket doesn’t prevent the notebook in one’s pocket from being part of the base of the mind.

There is another way to put this point. One could try to limit the base of the mind, taking it only to be the base of conscious cognition. But this would yield many counterintuitive results: the many levels of consciousness, sub-consciousness, and nonconsciousness, for instance, make it hard to arrive at a suitable distinction. And we don’t know yet if any region(s) of the brain can be located as the base of conscious cognition. It may well be that the continuities are too extensive for such picking out to occur. And we do want the dispositional states to count in a criterion for the mind; a human in deep sleep should still be regarded as having a vast array of mental structures usably stored in some way. But then, once we allow these in-the-brain dispositional structures to be included, we should also allow what the critics of active externalism call the non-cognitive dispositional structures to be included too. In short, that which is dispositionally fognitive seems to be all that is required for a system-base to be the base of the mind.

Supposing that Adams and Aizawa and other orthodox cognition theorists are right – that the base of cognition is only in the brain, whereas fognition extends beyond the brain and beyond the ordinarily picked out human body – it could still be that the base of cognition together with the representational sources of cognition inside or outside the ordinary body, add up to the base of the mind. Accordingly, it would seem, since fognition is extended, the base of the personal mind is extended too. This defends the main conclusion of the active externalists in a way that sidesteps the key point defended by central critics of active externalism, namely, that cognition occurs, at the moment, entirely in the brain. The main thesis of the active mind externalists is not at all implausible, despite various vigorous criticisms based on the location of cognition.

Let this be put more positively: The central theme of active mind externalists is plausible. More than that, it is intriguing. But of what further use is this intriguing notion? There are a few hints and modest suggestions at the end of Clark and Chalmers’ paper. Here, a much larger result will be taken to follow from the active extended mind view. I will claim that the active extended mind view is complemented by another intriguing intellectual view, that the underlying human body is extended beyond the ordinary human body. Then I will suggest that these two intriguing intellectual views have strong practical applications. One is in humanism and one in religion. And then I will suggest that whatever view one holds on extended mind, extended body, extended humanism, and extended religion, one should agree that there is an institutional extension of secularism. It will take a bit of time to expose these points, but the fourfold outcome is important.

Cultural-historical activity theory and the zone of proximal development in the study of idioculture design and implementation

social cognition

Robert Lecusay, Lars Rossen, and Michael Cole’s intro:

The absence of context and culture from the early history of the cognitive sciences was, according to Gardner (1987), the result of a general attempt by cognitive scientists to “factor out these elements to the maximum extent possible,” (p. 41). The traditional vision of cognition framed human thinking as the manipulation of inner mental representations of an external world (the central processing unit metaphor). Computational models were viewed as a key way to study cognitive phenomena thus interpreted. These models assume cognitive processes that are invariant across contexts, cultures, and history. This theoretical vision set the agenda of cognitive science as a project of explaining the mind from the inside out. From this perspective the external/internal distinction is clear: processing goes on inside the head.

Over the past several decades approaches challenging these foundational assumptions have emerged or been rediscovered within the cognitive and social sciences (Cole, 1996, Engeström, 1987 and Hutchins, 1995). These alternatives approach the problem of cognition from the outside in, bringing us to reevaluate the importance of culture in our theories of cognition (Hutchins, 2001). In this paper we focus on one such approach: Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). Rather than conceptualizing culture and cognition as two separate phenomena that interact in a manner akin to stimulus and response, CHAT argues for a view of culture and cognition as co-constituted in socially organized, culturally mediated, historically conditioned forms of activity. This move broadens the unit of analysis beyond the individual to include the development and deployment of the mediational means through which humans coordinate with one another and their multifaceted environments; it places particular focus on the dynamics of change over time.

In this article we seek to accomplish two goals. First, we present a brief overview of CHAT sufficient to permit analysis of a real-world example of change in joint mediated activity that reveals the dynamics of cognitive change in a theoretically fruitful manner. Second, we present the example and its analysis. The example is presented in two forms: as a printed transcript with interspersed interpretive comments and as a videotaped archival record available on the internet. We return at the end to examine the impact of this approach in relation to other efforts to understand cognition as a socio-culturally constituted process.