The Dynamically Extended Mind – A Minimal Modeling Case Study

extended mind, externalism

This from Froese, Gershenson, and Rosenblueth.

The extended mind hypothesis has stimulated much interest in cognitive science. However, its core claim, i.e. that the process of cognition can extend beyond the brain via the body and into the environment, has been heavily criticized. A prominent critique of this claim holds that when some part of the world is coupled to a cognitive system this does not necessarily entail that the part is also constitutive of that cognitive system. This critique is known as the “coupling-constitution fallacy”. In this paper we respond to this reductionist challenge by using an evolutionary robotics approach to create a minimal model of two acoustically coupled agents. We demonstrate how the interaction process as a whole has properties that cannot be reduced to the contributions of the isolated agents. We also show that the neural dynamics of the coupled agents has formal properties that are inherently impossible for those neural networks in isolation. By keeping the complexity of the model to an absolute minimum, we are able to illustrate how the coupling-constitution fallacy is in fact based on an inadequate understanding of the constitutive role of nonlinear interactions in dynamical systems theory.

A Confederacy of Dunces – quotes and extracts – 11

A Confederacy of DuncesWrite a comment

“Employers sense in me a denial of their values” (p. 44).

Check out the lovely work of Matt Dawson, the artist behind the featured image.

Hayek

hayek

Born on this day in 1899. It’s to analytical (social) epistemology’s (and philosophy of mind’s) impoverishment and shame that Hayek is not that well-known beyond the tiresome caricatures. For all my Hayekana see here. The featured image was very generously given to me by the highly exceptional Walt Weimer.

Kingdom Come

david bowie

From the last great Bowie album, Scary Monsters and Super Creeps. This song written by the equally creative Tom Verlaine.

Well I walked in the pouring rain
And I heard a voice that cries
“It’s all in vain”
The voice of doom
was shining in my room
I just need one day
somewhere far away
Lord I just need one day

Well I’ll be breaking these rocks
And cutting this hay
Yes I’ll be breaking these rocks
What’s my price to pay?

Well the river’s so muddy,
but it may come clear
And I know too well what’s keeping me here
I’m just the slave of a burning ray
Oh give me the night,
I can’t take another sight
Please, please give me the night

Sun keeps beating down on me, wall’s a mile high

Up in the tower they’re watching me hoping I’m gonna die

I won’t be breaking no rocks
I said “I won’t be breaking no rocks”

(I won’t be breaking no rocks)
(I won’t be breaking no rocks)
(I won’t be breaking no rocks)
When the kingdom comes

Functionalism and mental boundaries

functionalism

I’ve decided to dust off some of the papers from a themed issue that I co-edited five years ago since I happen to be very much in “extended mind” mode just now. First up is Larry Shapiro – below is his into; here is his abstract.

1. Introduction

Where are minds? For most people the answer to this question is obvious: the mind is in the head. The tough questions about minds typically concern how the physical stuff in the head produces minds. Surprisingly, however, there is growing controversy among psychologists and philosophers over how to answer the first question I asked. Traditional cognitive scientists (henceforth cognitivists) continue to defend the obvious answer. Researchers in the area of extended cognition (henceforth extended cognitivists) have urged a different answer. According to extended cognitivists, the mind’s location is only partly in the head. In addition, extended cognitivists have argued, the mind is located in parts of the world outside the body.

Clearly there is much at stake in this dispute. If extended cognitivists are right, there is much about psychology that is wrong. Cognitive neuroscience, for instance, would have been grounded in the false belief that all cognitive processes emerge somehow from neural processes. Computational psychologists would have to look beyond the brain to specify in full the implementation of algorithmic processes that previously had been thought to occur only in the head. Studies of psychopathologies could not limit themselves to an investigation of brain disorders.

Moreover, the possibility of extended cognition suggests new lines of research within the domain of social cognition. If minds extend, the boundaries that define the units of social interaction become less certain. Perhaps minds overlap. If, as some extended cognitivists believe, features of the environment comprise parts of a cognitive system, then a single piece of the world might constitute a piece of distinct cognitive systems. More dramatically, perhaps parts of a mind of one individual may be located within the mind of another. Insofar as extended cognition can make such possibilities plausible, social psychologists will need to re-interpret the nature of social interaction, will need to re-examine how the motivations and emotions of a single agent can influence an extended cognitive system, and so on.

Perhaps more seriously, if minds are extended then our ordinary ways of describing and thinking about human beings must undergo dramatic revision. We might have to learn to make sense of claims like “Welch accidentally left his memory on the bus,” or “Dixon stubbed his mind on his way to work this morning.” To traditionalist ears, both these claims sound like category mistakes, as in this example from Gilbert Ryle: “she came home in a flood of tears and a sedan-chair” (1949, p. 22). Just as floods of tears and sedan-chairs belong to distinct logical categories whose combination is jarring, the re-conception of minds that extended cognition promotes is likely to strike many as at least unnerving and quite possibly incoherent.

Of course, the possibility of extended minds must rest on a theory of mind. By this I mean that talk of extended minds can make sense only given various assumptions about what minds are. For instance, if one thought that minds are identical to brains – that mental properties are identical to neural properties – then the claims of extended cognition could be rejected outright. Grounding extended cognition must be a theory of mind that is consistent with the possibility of extended minds. This point may make one wonder whether the dispute between cognitivists and extended cognitivists is in fact a dispute over theories of mind. If so, this would be disappointing. The controversy is interesting only insofar as its participants share a view about what minds are but disagree over how to draw the mind’s boundaries.

Fortunately, many involved in the dispute seem committed to a common theory of mind, viz. functionalism. From the perspective of functionalism, mental states are identical to particular functional roles. Agreement about this lets the controversy over extended cognition take place at the appropriate level: the dispute can now focus on where minds are given a common assumption about what minds are.

Unfortunately, or so I shall argue, functionalism is the wrong perspective from which to judge the merits of the extended cognition program. Indeed, commitment to functionalism makes arguments for or against extended cognition too easy. Consequently, the decision regarding the mind’s extent must take place against the backdrop of non-functionalist considerations.

In the first part of this chapter I show how functionalism has been used to support a case for extended cognition. I then consider an argument that tries to drive a wedge between functionalism and extended mind. Although this argument is compelling, I next present what I take to be a more significant barrier to those who use functionalism to motivate extended cognition. More specifically, I argue that functionalism is ill-equipped to answer a boundary problem that confronts decisions about the extent of a property’s realization. Because functionalism cannot solve the boundary problem, I conclude that any principled assessment of extended cognition must rest in part on non-functionalist grounds. Before starting on these tasks, however, I must say something about the content of functionalism.

The Neuroscience of Freedom and Creativity: Our Predictive Brain

joaquin fuster

My chum Joaquín Fuster and eminent Hayekian has a new book about to hit the shelves. See here for my “Fusteriana.”

Religion and the Mode of Practice in Michael Oakeshott

religion

Here is the intro to Elizabeth’s essay:

Michael Oakeshott’s religious view of the world stands behind much of his political and philosophical writing. Yet it is difficult to get a firm grasp on what religion means to Oakeshott. His ideas about it constitute nothing that most people would recognize as religious. He rarely writes about God, creeds, dogma, metaphysics, theology, or transcendent experience. Many readers find it a stretch to see his thought as religious at all. How, then, can one reasonably assert that it was an essential part of his philosophy?

To appreciate the centrality of religion in Oakeshott’s work we must attend to two preliminary tasks. First, there is the obstacle of the language Oakeshott employs to discuss religion. His most explicit consideration of it took place only in his youth, during the 1920s and 1930s. During these years he was immersed in the philosophical school of British Idealism, and his usage of such technical terms as abstract and concrete will likely be foreign to a present-day audience. Readers of Oakeshott also must consider his view of modality, because his explicit discussion of religion occurs as part of a discussion of the particular “mode” of practice. The first task, therefore, is to explain these concepts and to place Oakeshott’s theorizing within the philosophical context in which he wrote.

The second task is perhaps more important, as well as more interesting. It is fundamentally a work of translation or, perhaps better, transposition. Because the “key” of British Idealism serves nowadays more to obscure than to clarify, the present essay aims to transpose Oakeshott’s provocative ideas into language more accessible to a modern reader. It aims to answer the following questions: What is the experience that Oakeshott calls religion? How is it related to the mode of practice? What exactly is the character of the religious person? Clear answers to these questions depend not only on Oakeshott’s own work but also on the writings of others who have described a similar experience.

Thus I proceed first to discuss Oakeshott’s view of religion and modality in his own terms. I then attempt to illuminate his idea of religion by describing it in less technical language, drawing upon other thinkers who share a similar view. Finally, I turn to an evaluation of his view as a whole, considering whether it can stand up to criticism and whether it has any value for present-day reflection on religion.

A Confederacy of Dunces – quotes and extracts – 10

A Confederacy of Dunces

“Ignatius, what’s all this trash on the floor?”

“That is my worldview that you see. It still must be incorporated into a whole, so be careful where you step.”

“And all the shutters closed. Ignatius! It’s still light outside.”

“My being is not without its Proustian elements,” Ignatius said from the bed, to which he had quickly returned. “Oh, my stomach.”

“It smells terrible in here.”

“Well, what do you expect? The human body, when confined, produces certain odors which we tend to forget in this age of deodorants and other perversions. Actually, I find the atmosphere of this room rather comforting. Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I too, have my needs. You may remember that Mark Twain preferred to lie supinely in bed while composing those rather dated and boring efforts which contemporary scholars try to prove meaningful. Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate” (p. 41).