This essay is well worth a read. H/T to Brian Glenney for bringing it to my attention (I hang my head in shame for not having read it before).
Why we still need a mark of the cognitive
Here is Fred’s contribution to the Extended Mind CSR special issue:
What makes a process a cognitive process? I’m not just asking for a list of cognitive processes, but for what makes an item on that list a cognitive process. Why should it be on the list? This is a question that has been ignored far too long in the domain of research calling itself cognitive science. It is time to give an answer and that is what I propose in this paper. I contrast my answer with others that have been given and defend the need against some claims in the literature that a mark of the cognitive is not needed.
Steps to a “Properly Embodied” Cognitive Science
Here is a survey paper that I was “action editor” for.
Intersubjectivity and Objectivity in Adam Smith and Edmund Husserl
This is a highly unusual collection worth checking out, co-edited by the very excellent Dagfinn Føllesdal – for the first time here is a work that seriously brings Adam Smith into the orbit of cogsci:
Can we have objective knowledge of the world? Can we understand what is morally right or wrong? Yes, to some extent. This is the answer given by Adam Smith and Edmund Husserl. Both rejected David Hume’s skeptical account of what we can hope to understand. But they held his empirical method in high regard, inquiring into the way we perceive and emotionally experience the world, into the nature and function of human empathy and sympathy and the role of the imagination in processes of intersubjective understanding. The challenge is to overcome the natural constraints of perceptual and emotional experience and reach an agreement that is informed by the facts in the world and the nature of morality. This collection of philosophical essays addresses an audience of Smith- and Husserl scholars as well as everybody interested in theories of objective knowledge and proper morality which are informed by the way we perceive and think and communicate.
Epistemological Problems of Privacy and Secrecy
EPISTEME ’12 coming up very soon.
Science, the Market and Iterative Knowledge
The second paper co-authored with Dave Hardwick has now been published in Studies in Emergent Order:
Abstract: In a recent paper (Hardwick & Marsh, in press) we examine the recent tensions between the two broadly successful spontaneous orders, namely the Market and Science. We argued for an epistemic pluralism, the view that freedom and liberty (indeed the very concept of liberalism and civil society) exists at the nexus of a manifold of spontaneous forces, and that no single epistemic system should dominate. We also briefly introduced the concept of “iterative” knowledge to characterize the essentially dynamic nature of scientific knowledge. Herein lies a tension. The Market (and perhaps the prevailing culture at large) sees scientific knowledge in cumulative terms, that is, progressing to a conclusion in a linear fashion. This relatively static understanding of medical science as it relates to pharmaceutical studies can have a corrosive effect on the practice of medicine and ultimately, we believe, on the proper functioning of the market itself. In this paper we examine this tension in much closer detail by focusing upon the demands of the market, specifically the pharmaceutical industry, and the science upon which it is based. In other words, we expound upon a clash of epistemic value – one (science) that sees knowledge as essentially iterative (dynamic yet tentative) and the other (the Market) that harvests conclusive scientific knowledge (ostensibly as a fixed and firm commodity) functional to its own interests. Clinical Trials that are sharply focused with precisely determined deliverables often manifest this tension in the sharpest of relief. As a means of recovering drug development and testing costs, conclusive assessment is required to avoid creating serious financial problems for the companies themselves not to mention issues in the public interest.
The Goldilocks problem and extended cognition
Since I’m about to submit another themed issue of Cognitive Systems Research I thought I’d give a plug to the papers from the last CSR “Extended Mind” issue I edited some two months ago. First up is Dan Weiskopf’s paper:
According to the hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC), parts of the extrabodily world can constitute cognitive operations. I argue that the debate over HEC should be framed as a debate over the location and bounds of cognitive systems. The “Goldilocks problem” is how to demarcate these systems in a way that is neither too restrictive nor too permissive. I lay out a view of systems demarcation on which cognitive systems are sets of mechanisms for producing cognitive processes that are bounded by transducers and effectors: structures that turn physical stimuli into representations, and representations into physical effects. I show how the transducer–effector view can stop the problem of uncontrolled cognitive spreading that faces HEC, and illustrate its advantages relative to other views of system individuation. Finally, I argue that demarcating systems by transducers and effectors is not question-begging in the context of a debate over HEC.
Is external memory memory? Biological memory and extended mind
New EM paper by Kourken Michaelian published in Consciousness and Cognition.
Brain (call) box
Some minor amusement from Der Spiegel. (H/T to Phil Hefner for this).
A liberal arts education
This Oakeshott reference from Colorado College’s website, notable because many so-called “liberal” arts colleges are only nominally “liberal” in the Oakeshottian sense. Check out Oakeshott’s essay “A Place of Learning” and other essays of his from The Voice of Liberal Learning. Paul Franco has written an essay for the “Companion” entitled “Un Début dans la Vie Humaine: Michael Oakeshott on Education“.
Endless conversation
It’s not just talk. It’s “an endless unrehearsed intellectual adventure,” the British philosopher Michael Oakeshott told a crowd at the college in 1975 during a week-long visit that left him delighted and impressed by the faculty, the students, and the magnificent setting.
It’s a conversation, Oakeshott said, “in which, in imagination, we enter into a variety of modes of understanding the world and ourselves.” Here, he saw unlimited opportunities to learn and to reflect on learning. This is the tradition you’ll draw upon as you navigate this place of learning, block by block.
Spend an intense three and a half weeks reading Shakespeare, then another pondering the social value of video games, then perhaps another examining RNA with a professor who shares the joy of a science-glimpse into what makes us human. You’ll write, you’ll read, you’ll paint or sing or calculate or contemplate. You’ll take a deep breath and at some point it will all make sense. You’re learning to understand, and you know it’s a lifelong conversation.
