Extended mind, architecture and design

Andy Clark, architecture, cognitive science, david chalmers, Embedded, embodied cognition, embodiment, extended mind, externalism, philosophy of mind

Chalmers’ and Clark’s extended mind thesis cited in this article from an architecture and design publication.

Turning to philosophy and robotics gives us a new insight into what might be going on. In 1998, A. Clark and D. Chalmers proposed the “extended mind” concept, where the workings of our mind actually extend beyond the brain and into our surroundings. An interplay takes place between our thoughts and internal memories, and knowledge and information stored outside yet within ready reach. Mobile robots do, in fact, use their environment as their memory — they have no stored internal memory, and thus save enormous computational overhead. Rodney Brooks’ Mars Explorer works in precisely this way. Its ability to navigate its environment comes from an “intelligence” that links internal processors with external information.

This implies that the environment is crucial to the development of our brain: our mind is an integral part of our environment, and if we wish it to engage our intelligence, the environment should embody the same degree of organized complexity as our neurological processes themselves. Two possible connective scenarios are thus strikingly contrasted. 1. In an information-sparse, minimalist environment, our mind stops at the skull’s interior. 2. In a coherently complex environment, our mind can extend into and interact with the visual information stored outside. In the latter case, we are situated in a vastly richer information field that drives our brain’s growth in order to process and interpret this information.

Meet the New Boss

distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, emergence, extended mind, externalism, spontaneous orders, stigmergic, stigmergic cognition, stigmergy, swarm, swarm behavior, swarm intelligence

This article from The Atlantic.

A FEW YEARS AFTER Philip Rosedale graduated from college with a degree in physics, he joined RealNetworks, then an audio-streaming company. It was a top-down, command-and-control kind of place, where difficult software projects were outlined in advance and executed according to carefully conceived plans.

Rosedale hated it. As a teenager more interested in programming than partying, he had experimented with simulations of flocking birds and other leaderless systems. He marveled at how order could emerge in the absence of hierarchy. “You think that they have a leader and a command architecture, and of course they don’t,” he tells me, going on to describe his “almost spiritual belief” in group self-organization.

Shapin on Polanyi

constructivism, knowing how knowing that, Mary Jo Nye, polanyi, rationalism, social constructivism, social epistemology, spontaneous orders, steven shapin, tacit knowledge

Shapin’s London Review of Books review of Michael Polanyi and His Generation: Origins of the Social Construction of Science by Mary Jo Nye. (Both Hayek and Oakeshott are mentioned by Shapin).

Michael Polanyi lives on in the footnotes. If you want to invoke the idea of ‘tacit knowledge’, Polanyi is your reference of choice. You’ll probably cite his major book Personal Knowledge (1958), maybe the earlier Science, Faith and Society (1946), maybe the later The Tacit Dimension (1966). ‘We know more than we can tell’ was Polanyi’s dictum. We know how to ride a bicycle, but we can’t write down how to do it, at least not in a way that allows non-cyclists to read our instructions, get on their bikes and ride off. We can reliably pick out a familiar face in a crowd, but we can’t say just what it is about the face that we recognise. And, crucially, since Polanyi is now known mainly as a philosopher of science, a scientist can’t adequately describe how to do a bit of science through any version of formalised ‘Scientific Method’. Whether the craft is cooking, carpentry or chemistry, the apprentice learns by watching and doing. Where knowledge and skill are concerned, it’s not all talk.

Conference on Austrian economics and philosophy

austrian economics, bretano, Gloria Zúñiga y Postigo

My chum Gloria is convening the following conference:

Call for Papers for Conference on Austrian economics and philosophy at the University of Texas at Arlington, Nov- 1-3. Abstracts due July 2.

We seek innovative contributions that deepen our understanding of Austrian philosophy and Austrian economics. For the purposes of this conference, we are demarcating the Brentanian tradition as that which starts with Brentano and culminates in the work of the students of his students, such as Stein, Reinach, Ingarden. Similarly, we are demarcating the Mengerian tradition as that which starts with Menger and culminates in the contributions of the last generation of economists of this School who are Austrian nationals.

Abstracts may not be longer than 500 words and prepared for blind reviewing by a selection committee. Enclose a separate file indicating name, affiliation, and title of abstract. These files should be Word documents only. Please send submissions to Gloria Zúñiga y Postigo.

Remembering Varela

Autopoiesis, computer science, consciousness, embodied cognition, embodiment, enaction, enactivism, externalism, francesco varela, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, phenomenology, philosophical psychology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of social science

Four articles (and more) of interest to theorists interested in enaction:

1. Tom Froese’s new article in Adaptive Behavior:

Critics of the paradigm of enaction have long argued that enactive principles will be unable to account for the traditional domain of orthodox cognitive science, namely “higher-level” cognition and specifically human cognition. Moreover, even many of the paradigm’s “lower-level” insights into embodiment and situatedness appear to be amenable to a functionalist reinterpretation. In this review, I show on the basis of the recently published collection of papers, Enaction, that the paradigm of enaction has (a) a unique foundation in the notion of sense-making that places fundamental limits on the scope of functionalist appropriation; (b) a unique perspective on higher-level cognition that sets important new research directions without the need for the concept of mental representation; (c) a new concept of specifically human cognition in terms of second-order sense-making; and (d) a rich variety of approaches to explain the evolutionary, historical, and developmental origins of this sophisticated human ability. I also indicate how studies of the role of embodiment for abstract human cognition can strengthen their position by reconceiving their notion of embodiment in enactive terms.

2. Autopoiesis, Systems Thinking and Systemic Practice: The Contribution of Francisco Varela by Alberto Paucar-Caceres, Roger Harnden & André Reichel introduction to a special themed issue Systems Research and Behavioral Science:

This special issue of Systems Research and Behavioral Sciences (SRBS) is a memorial issue to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the tragic early death of Francisco Varela (7 September 1946–28 May 2001). A truly remarkable ‘renaissance man’, his wide spectrum of interests encompassed biology, mathematics, neuroscience, epistemology, cognitive science, ethics and philosophy. His early death could not mask an amazingly productive life nor the creative and open way he approached all his activities. Because his ideas have been extremely influential and inspiring, we wanted to remember him with a tribute issue composed of papers reflecting and highlighting his influential work in contemporary science, particularly with regard to systems thinking and system practice.

3. Another Froese article From Second-order Cybernetics to Enactive Cognitive Science: Varela’s Turn From Epistemology to Phenomenology

Varela is well known in the systems sciences for his work on second-order cybernetics, biology of cognition and especially autopoietic theory. His concern during this period was to find an appropriate epistemological foundation for the self-reference inherent in life and mind. In his later years, Varela began to develop the so-called ‘enactive’ approach to cognitive science, which sets itself apart from other sciences by promoting a careful consideration of concrete experiential insights. His final efforts were thus dedicated to finding a pragmatic phenomenological foundation for life and mind. It is argued that Varela’s experiential turn—from epistemology to phenomenology—can be seen as a natural progression that builds on many ideas that were already implicit in second-order cybernetics and biology of cognition. It is also suggested that the rigorous study of conscious experience may enable us to refine our theories and systemic concepts of life, mind and sociality.

4. Pier Luigi Luisi’s recollection of Varela in Systems research and behavioral science:

I review here my personal and scientific interactions with Francisco Varela, starting from our meeting in 1983 in Alpbach, Austria, a momentous meeting, which was also the place where the Mind and Life Institute and independently the Cortona week were conceived. Later on, the scientific cooperation focussed on autopoiesis and permitted to arrive at the experimental autopoiesis on the basis of the self-reproduction of micelles and vesicles. I then briefly describe how Francisco, based on the complementary notion of cognition, was able to draw the bridge between biology and cognitive sciences. The main keywords here are enaction and embodied mind. From here, and towards the end of his life, Francisco focussed mostly on neurobiology, where he introduced the notion of neurophenomenology centred on first-person reports. However, his seminal work on autopoiesis was instrumental to conceive the new field of research on the minimal cells, which is briefly described. I conclude with an overview of the meaning of the work of Francisco for life sciences at large.

Free will

freewill, moral philosophy, mri, neural correlates, neurobiology, neuron, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, philosophy, philosophy of biology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, political philosophy

Two articles on that old philosophical chestnut – free will: one from Intelligent Life (neurons v. free will) and one from the sister title, the Economist (Free will and politics).

Longino Reviews “The social epistemology of economic experiments”

Ana Cordeiro dos Santos, Economics, epistemology, Helen Longino, social epistemology

Some two years ago I trailed this book. Helen Longino reviews Ana Cordeiro dos Santos’ book.

Cambridge Companion to Oakeshott

efraim podoksik, oakeshott

I see that CUP now have a page up for Efraim Podoksik’s forthcoming Companion. One doesn’t have to be an astute reader to see that CUP are being slack in that the graphic has Steven Crowell as the editor (Crowell is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism). Judging by the TOC, Podoksik’s volume will be a good complement to Paul and my Companion. I happen to think that Podksik’s In Defence of Modernity still stands as one of the stronger installments from the Imprint Oakeshott catalogue. Between these two volumes 2012 promises to be an exceptionally good year for Oakeshottiana. Update: CUP have now put Efraim’s name to the volume’s graphic.

Views of Hayek, Hebb, and Heisenberg: Toward an Approach to Brain Functioning

brain science, Edelman, erol basar, feynman, hebb, heisenberg, neurophilosophy, Neurophysics, neuroscience, philosophical psychology, philosophy of mind, the sensory order

Neuroscientist Erol Basar on Hayek

F. A. Hayek’s The Sensory Order must rate as one of the most creative books written on general philosophy of neuroscience. Although Hayek was a Noble-prize winner in economics and was not educated as a neuroscientist, his book opens up a new window on neuroscience, and this window certainly offers great possibilities to neuroscientists working on unifying aspects of neuroscience. Guided by the fundamental view of Fuster (1995), I have tried to suggestively interpret Hayek’s concepts firstly as a work on memory and brain dynamics (Basar, 2004), and more recently, as a more general work on the brain–body–mind relationship (Basar, 2010). Although a detailed description and interpretation of Hayek’s philosophical psychology is not possible because of space constraints, I try to explain three concepts that are embedded in the work of Hayek:

1. D. O. Hebb’s learning theory (1949),

2. The S-Matrix concept of quantum dynamics developed by W. Heisenberg (1943), and

3. The Feynman diagrams as a consequence of the S-Matrix theory.

Galen Strawson on Qualia, Panpsychism and Physicalism

cognition, cognitive science, consciousness, dualism, Galen Strawson, Panpsychism, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, physicalism, qualia