Substituting the Senses

distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, embodied cognition, embodiment, enactivism, extended cognitive systems, extended mind, externalism

Check out this essay forthcoming from the power team of Clark, Kilverstein and Farina.

Sensory substitution devices are a type of sensory prosthesis that (typically) convert visual stimuli transduced by a camera into tactile or auditory stimulation. They are designed to be used by people with impaired vision so that they can recover some of the functions normally subserved by vision. In this chapter we will consider what philosophers might learn about the nature of the senses from the neuroscience of sensory substitution. We will show how sensory substitution devices work by exploiting the cross-modal plasticity of sensory cortex: the ability of sensory cortex to pick up some types of information about the external environment irrespective of the nature of the sensory inputs it is processing. We explore the implications of cross-modal plasticity for theories of the senses that attempt to make distinctions between the senses on the basis of neurobiology.

Oakeshott and Hobbes

Noël Malcolm

Here is a trailer from possibly the greatest living Hobbes scholar – Noel Malcolm – who we were lucky enough to nab for our Companion.

Even those who know only a little about Michael Oakeshott know that he had a strong and abiding interest in the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. His edition of Leviathan (1946) became the standard edition for several generations of students, and his substantial Introduction to that volume, which was reissued in a revised version in 1975, remains one of the classic texts of modern Hobbes interpretation. Oakeshott’s special interest in Hobbes had developed more than a decade before the appearance of that edition; his first publication devoted to Hobbes was a long essay in the literary-critical magazine Scrutiny in 1935, in which he surveyed a range of recent publications on Hobbes’s political thought and emphasized that the old caricature of Hobbes as a philosopher of “despotism” was now completely untenable (CPJ 110-21). In 1937 Oakeshott returned to this subject with a review of another book, a study of Hobbes’s political philosophy by Leo Strauss; here he agreed with Strauss that Hobbes’s political thought was not grounded on a crudely “naturalistic” kind of science, while disagreeing with Strauss’s attempt to derive it from a set of purely moral assumptions. After the Introduction to Leviathan, Oakeshott wrote another lengthy exploration of Hobbes’s moral theory (with an “appendix” on his theory of the formation of the state), an essay entitled “The Moral Life in the Writings of Thomas Hobbes,” published in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962). With the exception of the Scrutiny article, these items were gathered (together with a short essay, originally a radio talk, entitled “Leviathan: a Myth,” which 304 Oakeshott described as “a conversation piece, a flight of fancy”) in a volume published under the title Hobbes on Civil Association in 1975. And from the same period (1974) dates also a substantial book review, of a monograph on Hobbes by Thomas Spragens, which was later reprinted under the title “Logos and Telos” in the expanded edition of Rationalism in Politics; here Oakeshott once again challenged the idea that Hobbes’s philosophy was simply modeled on natural science, emphasizing that it explored, rather, a world of human intentions and human meanings. In every one of these texts it is evident that Oakeshott wrote about Hobbes not merely as a historian of ideas, but as a philosopher who found, in Hobbes’s central arguments, something valid and philosophically important.

The science of conducting

music

An interesting article from The Economist:

Determining a conductor’s influence is tricky. Does a “good” conductor wangle bravura performances from his players, or simply preside over a self-organising virtuoso ensemble? To find out, Dr D’Ausilio watched two (anonymous) conductors leading five excerpts from Mozart’s symphony number 40 played by eight violinists from the Città di Ferrara orchestra.

The findings are in harmony with what conductors knew all along: that baton-toting despots, like the late Herbert von Karajan, do add value—but only if they rein in the uppity musicians in front of them.

Kwak in London

beer

I ordered two bottles of Kwak for my chum and I at De Hems, a hybrid pub/bar with a superior range of brews. The barman cavalierly plonked the opened bottles on the bar. This sort of service does not befit a bar that supposedly knows how to do things properly: as with all Belgian beers there is a specific receptacle for each beer. I insisted on having the highly distinctive Kwak glass and holder. In consultation with the manager I was provided with the correct kit subject to my giving up one of my shoes as a deposit for a dreadful Birkenstock that was kept behind the bar just in case they served a non-ignoramus. Head’s turned in puzzlement in this busy bar as this transaction was effected.

EPISTEME: 9.1

sandy goldberg

Check out the freely available symposium on Pragmatic Encroachment. Also there is a critical notice of Sandy Goldberg’s Relying on Others (sadly not free) that:

focuses on the book’s central claim, the extendedness hypothesis, according to which the processes relevant for assessing the reliability of a hearer’s testimonial belief include the cognitive processes involved in the production of the testimony.

Of Men and Manners

anthony quinton

Here is a review of Tony Quinton‘s last (and posthumous) work edited by Anthony Kenny (who else would be up to the task?)

CFP: Philosophical Approaches to Social Neuroscience

cognitive systems research

Special Issue of Cognitive Systems Research

Edited by Leslie Marsh (Medical School, University of British Columbia) and Philip Robbins (Department of Philosophy, University of Missouri)

A Confluence of Interest

It’s been twenty-five years or so since Gazzaniga’s (1985) empirically motivated work that understood the brain as a kind of hermeneutic device or “interpreter” that evolved in response to social forces. This work could be considered a landmark in the nascent field of social neuroscience (SN). From a philosophical perspective it’s also been some twenty-five years since Churchland (1986) broke ranks with the a priorism characteristic of the prevailing philosophy of mind by taking heed of developments within neuroscience.

Social neuroscience, by definition, is an acknowledgement that the nervous system cannot be considered in isolation from the social environments in which humans have evolved. By the same token, the non-Cartesian wing of cognitive science is also a de facto acknowledgement that ubiquitous sociality must be factored into philosophy of mind. This said, there is still a very limited literature dealing with this clear confluence of interest. Of course, social neuroscience is not totally unknown to philosophy – possibly the most famous instance being the work of Gallese et al (1996), given philosophical currency via Gallese and Goldman (1998). But given the diversity of research projects that drive social neuroscience and “situated” philosophy of mind, the possible topics of philosophical investigation go well beyond mirror neurons.

The motivation behind this special issue is to harvest some of the results from SN with a view to:

(a) empirically enriching philosophy of mind, and

(b) philosophically informing social neuroscience.

To this end, we seek philosophical assessments of work being done in and around SN – including (but not limited to) work on mindreading, moral cognition, judgment and decision making, law and testimony, and social epistemology. The list of topics includes empathy, altruism, social pain, attribution, the self, stereotyping (race, gender, etc.), and collective intentionality.

Some overlapping questions for consideration:

1) Methodologically speaking, how social is (or can) neuroscience really be if all that is measured is brain activity in non-social contexts, i.e. fMRI scanners? (Keysers & McKay, 2011). Put another way, does social cognition draw upon a distinct set of processes dissociable from non-social processes? (Jenkins & Mitchell, 2011)

2) What count as foundational results in SN? (Ochsner, 2004)

3) What sort of metaphysical and epistemological commitments does research in SN presuppose? To what extent is SN opposed to reductionism in the philosophy of science? (Decety & Cacioppo, 2010)

4) What drives the “techno-ebullience” surrounding neuroimaging in general, and neuroimaging in SN particular, and how might it be problematic for the field? (Vul et al, 2009; Decety & Cacioppo, 2010).

Timeline

Official start: December 1, 2012
Final drafts due: February 1, 2014
Refereeing: February/March 2014
Final versions due: August 1, 2014

In the first instance we are looking for proposals of not more than 500 words. The aim is to have a broad spread of interest comprising the issue. Final papers should be between 7,500 and 9,000 words. Contributors are encouraged to scan the contents of two major journals that have social neuroscience as a dedicated interest: Neuroimaging (Elsevier) and Social Neuroscience (Taylor and Francis) as well as journals that have SN as a major interest, namely Neuropsychologica ( Elseveier), Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (MIT), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (APA) and Brain Research (Elsevier).

Please send your proposals to both Philip and Leslie:

Philip Robbins
Leslie Marsh

References

Churchland, P. (1986). Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Decety, J. & Cacioppo, J. T. (2010). Problems and Prospects in Social Neuroscience. Japanese Journal of Physiological Psychology and Psychophysiology 28(1): 5-16.
Decety, J. & Keenan, J. P. (2006). Social Neuroscience: A new journal. Social Neuroscience, 1.1, 1-4.
Gallese, V., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L. and Rizzolatti, G. (1996). Action recognition in the premotor cortex. Brain 119: 593-609.
Gallese, V. & Goldman, A. (1998) Mirror neurons and the simulation theory of mind-reading. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12:493-501.
Gazzaniga, M. S. (1985). The Social Brain: Discovering the Network of the Mind. New York: Basic Books.
Jenkins, A.C. & Mitchell, J.P. (2001) How has Cognitive Neuroscience Contributed to Social Psychological Theory? In: Todorov et al.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Doubleday
Keysers, C. & McKay (2011). How to Make Social Neuroscience Social. Psychological Inquiry: An International Journal for the Advancement of Psychological Theory 22:3, 210-216.
McEwen, B. S. & Akil, H. (2011). Introduction to Social Neuroscience: Gene, Environment, Brain, Body. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1231, vii-ix.
Ochsner, K. N. (2004). Current directions in social cognitive neuroscience. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 14: 254-258.
Ogawa, S, Lee, T. M, Nayak, A. S. & Glynn, P. (1990). Oxygenation-sensitive contrast in magnetic resonance image of rodent brain at high magnetic fields. Magnetic Resonance Medicine 14: 68-78.
Todorov, A., Fiske, S.T., & Prentice, D.A. (2011). Social Neuroscience: Toward Understanding the Underpinnings of the Social Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Vul, E., et al. (2009). Voodoo correlations in social neuroscience. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(3): 299-307.

The Fate of Rationalism in Oakeshott’s Thought

rationalism, rationalism in politics

Here is Ken Minogue’s intro paragraph to his essay in the Companion to Michael Oakeshott (I recently had dinner with Ken and am pleased to report that he is doing quite well).

Michael Oakeshott is perhaps best known as the foe of a political vice called “rationalism,” and it is a vice because, in believing that all knowledge is technical, it fails to recognize the crucial role of what Oakeshott calls “practical knowledge.” The famous distinction between technical and practical knowledge, however, obscures the sheer complexity of Oakeshott’s understanding of political activity. We can, indeed, find a simple theme running through much of Oakeshott’s criticism at this period: namely, that the contingencies of the human world cannot be reduced to a simple, abstract (and manageable) plot. Rationalism does this, and Oakeshott detects it also in Whig history as analyzed by Herbert Butterfield: “What is, in fact, a resultant, or even a byproduct, of conflicting purposes and interests is made to appear as the consummation of a single homogeneous stream of activity triumphing over opposition and obstruction” (WIH 221). But this general theme becomes recessive as he developed his political philosophy in the years after the famous Inaugural. He seeks a more complex understanding of these things.