En el siguiente trabajo analizaremos la relación entre cognición y tecnología a través del concepto de “cognición distribuida” relacionado con las ciencias cognitivas. A través del mismo nos introduciremos en el problema de los límites entre mente y artefactos, si podemos decir que la mente extiende su naturaleza a través de la tecnología y la cultura, o si debemos hablar únicamente de cognición dentro de los límites del sistema nervioso.

English: In this paper I indicate why I consider 'experimental philosophy' to be good news, though not as good as it could be, and not as all that new. I'll argue that there is no need to restrict experimental philosophy to eliciting intuitions through questionnaires. I'll indicate that good examples of experimental philosophy already exist in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Neuroscience. Dutch: Hieronder wil ik proberen aan te geven waarom ik de experimentele filosofie weliswaar als goed nieuws beschouw, maar niet (...) half zo goed als zou kunnen, en ook niet als echt nieuw. Qua filosofische experimenten beperkt de XF-beweging zich vooralsnog onnodig door haar focus op het eliciteren van intuïties, terwijl er reeds lang diverse goede voorbeelden van XF bestaan op het gebied van de kunstmatige intelligentie en de cognitieve neurowetenschap. (shrink)

Cognition is embodied when it is deeply dependent upon features of the physical body of an agent, that is, when aspects of the agent's body beyond the brain play a significant causal or physically constitutive role in cognitive processing. In general, dominant views in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science have considered the body as peripheral to understanding the nature of mind and cognition. Proponents of embodied cognitive science view this as a serious mistake. Sometimes the nature of the (...) dependence of cognition on the body is quite unexpected, and suggests new ways of conceptualizing and exploring the mechanics of cognitive processing. Embodied cognitive science encompasses a loose-knit family of research programs in the cognitive sciences that often share a commitment to critiquing and even replacing traditional approaches to cognition and cognitive processing. Empirical research on embodied cognition has exploded in the past 10 years. As the bibliography for this article attests, the various bodies of work that will be discussed represent a serious alternative to the investigation of cognitive phenomena. Relatively recent work on the embodiment of cognition provides much food for thought for empirically-informed philosophers of mind. This is in part because of the rich range of phenomena that embodied cognitive science has studied. But it is also in part because those phenomena are often thought to challenge dominant views of the mind, such as the computational and representational theories of mind, at the heart of traditional cognitive science. And they have sometimes been taken to undermine standard positions in the philosophy of mind, such as the idea that the mind is identical to, or even realized in, the brain. (shrink)

Does connectionism spell doom for folk psychology? I examine the proposal that cognitive representational states such as beliefs can play no role if connectionist models - - interpreted as radical new cognitive theories -- take hold and replace other cognitive theories. Though I accept that connectionist theories are radical theories that shed light on cognition, I reject the conclusion that neural networks do not represent. Indeed, I argue that neural networks may actually give us a better working notion of cognitive (...) representational states such as beliefs, and in so doing give us a better understanding of how these states might be instantiated in neural wetware. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to sketch an idea—seen from the point of view of a cognitive scientist—of cognitive semiotics as a discipline. Consequently, the article presents aspects of the relationship between the two disciplines: semiotics and cognitive science. The main assumption of the argumentation is that at least some semiotic processes are also cognitive processes. At the methodological level, this claim allows for application of cognitive models as explanations of selected semiotic processes. In particular, the processes of embedded (...) interpretation are considered: belief revision, dynamic organization of meaning and metaknowledge. The explanations are formulated in terms of artificial cognitive agents of the GLAIR/SNePS cognitive architecture. Finally, it is suggested that even if someone rejects the idea of artificial cognitive systems as simulations of semiotic processes, they may acknowledge the usefulness of cognitive modeling in analysis of semiotic processes in virtual, simulated worlds and in the area of “new media”. (shrink)

Advocates of dynamical systems theory (DST) sometimes employ revolutionary rhetoric. In an attempt to clarify how DST models differ from others in cognitive science, I focus on two issues raised by DST: the role for representations in mental models and the conception of explanation invoked. Two features of representations are their role in standing-in for features external to the system and their format. DST advocates sometimes claim to have repudiated the need for stand-ins in DST models, but I argue that (...) they are mistaken. Nonetheless, DST does offer new ideas as to the format of representations employed in cognitive systems. With respect to explanation, I argue that some DST models are better seen as conforming to the covering-law conception of explanation than to the mechanistic conception of explanation implicit in most cognitive science research. But even here, I argue, DST models are a valuable complement to more mechanistic cognitive explanations. (shrink)

A discussion is going on in cognitive science about the use of representations to explain how intelligent behavior is generated. In the traditional view, an organism is thought to incorporate representations. These provide an internal model that is used by the organism to instruct the motor apparatus so that the adaptive and anticipatory characteristics of behavior come about. So-called interactionists claim that this representational specification of behavior raises more problems than it solves. In their view, the notion of internal representational (...) models is to be dispensed with. Instead, behavior is to be explained as the intricate interaction between an embodied organism and the specific make up of an environment. The problem with a non-representational interactive account is that it has severe difficulties with anticipatory, future oriented behavior. The present paper extends the interactionist conceptual framework by drawing on ideas derived from the study of morphogenesis. This extended interactionist framework is based on an analysis of anticipatory behavior as a process which involves multiple spatio-temporal scales of neural, bodily and environmental dynamics. This extended conceptual framework provides the outlines for an explanation of anticipatory behavior without involving a representational specification of future goal states. (shrink)

After more than twenty years of representational debate in the cognitive sciences, anti-representational dynamicism may be seen as offering a rival and radically new kind of explanation of systematicity phenomena. In this paper, I argue that, on the contrary, anti-representational dynamicism must face a version of the old systematicity challenge: either it does not explain systematicity, or else, it is just an implementation of representational theories. To show this, I present a purely behavioral and representation-free account of systematicity. I then (...) consider a case of insect sensorimotor systematic behavior: communicating behavior in honey bees. I conclude that anti-representational dynamicism fails to capture the fundamental trait of systematic behaviors qua systematic, i.e., their involving exercises of the same behavioral capacities. I suggest, finally, a collaborative strategy in pursuit of a rich and powerful account of this central phenomenon of high cognition at all levels of explanation, including the representational level. (shrink)

Some regularities enjoy only an attenuated existence in a body of training data. These are regularities whose statistical visibility depends on some systematic recoding of the data. The space of possible recodings is, however, infinitely large – it is the space of applicable Turing machines. As a result, mappings that pivot on such attenuated regularities cannot, in general, be found by brute-force search. The class of problems that present such mappings we call the class of “type-2 problems.” Type-1 problems, by (...) contrast, present tractable problems of search insofar as the relevant regularities can be found by sampling the input data as originally coded. Type-2 problems, we suggest, present neither rare nor pathological cases. They are rife in biologically realistic settings and in domains ranging from simple animat behaviors to language acquisition. Not only are such problems rife – they are standardly solved! This presents a puzzle. How, given the statistical intractability of these type-2 cases, does nature turn the trick? One answer, which we do not pursue, is to suppose that evolution gifts us with exactly the right set of recoding biases so as to reduce specific type-2 problems to type-1 mappings. Such a heavy-duty nativism is no doubt sometimes plausible. But we believe there are other, more general mechanisms also at work. Such mechanisms provide general strategies for managing problems of type-2 complexity. Several such mechanisms are investigated. At the heart of each is a fundamental ploy – namely, the maximal exploitation of states of representation already achieved by prior, simpler learning so as to reduce the amount of subsequent computational search. Such exploitation both characterizes and helps make unitary sense of a diverse range of mechanisms. These include simple incremental learning, modular connectionism, and the developmental hypothesis of “representational redescription”. In addition, the most distinctive features of human cognition – language and culture – may themselves be viewed as adaptations enabling this representation/computation trade-off to be pursued on an even grander scale. (shrink)

Recent work in biology and cognitive science depicts a variety of target phenomena as the products of a tangled web of causal influences. Such influences may include both internal and external factors as well as complex patterns of reciprocal causal interaction. Such twisted tales are sometimes seen as a threat to explanatory strategies that invoke notions such as inner programs, genes for and sometimes even internal representations. But the threat, I shall argue, is more apparent than real. Complex causal influence, (...) in and of itself, provides no good reason to reject these familiar explanatory notions. To believe otherwise, I suggest, is generally to commit (at least) one of two seductive errors. The first error is to think that the general notion of a state x coding for an outcome y involves the state's constituting a full description of y. This is what I call the myth of the self-contained code. The second error is to think that the practice of treating certain factors as special (e.g., seeing genes as coding for outcomes in a way environmental factors do not) depends on the (often mistaken) belief that the singled out factor is somehow doing the most real work. Where the amounts of causal influence are evenly spread, it is assumed there can be no reason to treat one factor in a special way. This is what I term the Myth of Explanatory Equality. Avoiding these errors involves reminding ourselves of (1) the rich context-dependence of even standard, unproblematic uses of the notions of code, program and information content (all three make sense only relative to an assumed ecological backdrop) and (2) the difference between explaining why an event occurred and displaying the full workings of a complex causal system. (shrink)

In recent years, the growing scientific interest in design has led to great advances in our knowledge of authentic design processes. However, as these findings go counter to the existing theories in both design research and cognitive science, they pose a serious challenge for both disciplines: there is a wide gap between what the existing theories predict and what designers actually do. At the same time, there is a growing movement of research on authentic cognitive activities, which has among other (...) things documented the central roles of action and the physical environment in these activities, something that existing cognitive theories have overlooked and cannot properly account for. This creates an explanatory gap analogous to the one found in design. This book aims to fill both of these gaps with a cognitive theory of how designers work. It revolves around the roles of physical activities and working materials in design, and the theory explains at length how these have functions that are essential to cognition. The two threads of design and cognition run in parallel throughout the book: the cognitive theory is applied to design, but is also consistently related to cognition in general. The result is, in back cover text parlance, a 'provocative' account of cognition and human performance, which should be of interest to cognitive scientists as well as to design researchers. (shrink)

La plupart des auteur-es ayant abordé le problème de l'extension du cognitif, tel qu'il a émergé des débats autour de la thèse de l'esprit étendu, ont supposé que cette extension devait prendre la forme d'un espace régulier, qui peut être ceint par des frontières. Cependant, la littérature en question ne traite pas explicitement de cette supposition, de sorte que, malgré son influence, il n'y a pas d'évaluation de sa véracité ou de sa légitimité. Dans ce mémoire, cette hypothèse est remise (...) en question, et nous prenons sa contrepartie pour hypothèse de recherche, à savoir que, malgré l'assurance des auteur-es qui l'épousent, il est tout à fait légitime d'explorer des propositions de caractérisation du cognitif qui aboutissent à d'autres formes d'extension. Pour démontrer notre hypothèse (H1), nous posons deux autres hypothèses : (H2) les auteur-es qui épousent la supposition selon laquelle l'esprit doit s'étendre sur un espace ceint par des frontières le font sur la base de l'intuition individualiste, et (H3) l'intuition individualiste, malgré certaines apparences, ne permet pas de justifier cette supposition. Nous démontrons H2 à l'aide d'une analyse de texte faite sur le corpus des auteur-es ayant abordé la question de l'extension du cognitif dans la foulée des débats sur l'esprit étendu, et nous montrons que la littérature en sciences cognitives et en philosophie de l'esprit nous donne des raisons de croire que H3 est vraie. Ensemble, H2 et H3 justifient H1. (shrink)

In this article we move beyond the problematic distinction between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ cognition by accounting for so-called ‘higher’ cognitive capacities in terms of skillful activities in practices, and in terms of the affordances exploited in those practices. Through ethnographic research we aim to further develop the new notion of skilled intentionality by turning to the phenomenon of the tendency towards an optimal grip on a situation in real-life situations in the field of architecture. Tending towards an optimal grip is (...) an inherently affective and dynamic phenomenon. It has been under explored in philosophy, despite its central place in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. When the architects experience discontent, attention is typically solicited by the affordances through which possible ways of continuing the improvement of the design can be explored. In various ways this tension or disequilibrium - fueling a tendency towards an optimal grip - is encountered in the complex architectural design practices that we observed. Based on our field material we distinguish between: a) grip in visual perception, b) grip on the design, and c) grip on ‘how to design’. The move towards an optimal grip takes shape by joining forces with a landscape of affordances. This landscape includes, for instance, affordances for grasping a cup of coffee, affordances provided by a cardboard model to improve it, as well as for engaging with a person who is not physically present. Because they are skilled, the architects can be responsive to these different affordances in similar ways. Furthermore, in practice the architects are responsive to multiple affordances simultaneously. Through our analysis of the tendency towards an optimal grip we show that our surroundings contribute to skillful action and cognition in a far more complex way than is currently acknowledged in philosophy and cognitive science. (shrink)

We argue that existing learning algorithms are often poorly equipped to solve problems involving a certain type of important and widespread regularity that we call “type-2 regularity.” The solution in these cases is to trade achieved representation against computational search. We investigate several ways in which such a trade-off may be pursued including simple incremental learning, modular connectionism, and the developmental hypothesis of “representational redescription.”.

I argue that we find the articulation of a problem concerning bodily agency in the early works of the Merleau-Ponty which he explicates as analogous to what he explicitly calls the problem of perception. The problem of perception is the problem of seeing how we can have the object given in person through it perspectival appearances. The problem concerning bodily agency is the problem of seeing how our bodily movements can be the direct manifestation of a person’s intentions in the (...) world. In both cases what, according to Merleau-Ponty, obscures a recognition of the phenomenon in question is a conception of our bodily capacities, i.e. our sensibility and our motility, which reduces these to the workings of mechanisms that are blind to meaning. I argue that both the problem concerning perception and the problem concerning bodily agency can be properly called transcendental. The problem of perception is transcendental because it concerns the very intelligibility of appearances and judgements with empirical content. The problem of bodily agency is transcendental in the sense that it concerns the very intelligibility of our bodily capacity to carry out intentions and by implication the intelligibility of our intentions as such. (shrink)

A suitable project for the new Millenium is to radically reconfigure our image of human rationality. Such a project is already underway, within the Cognitive Sciences, under the umbrellas of work in Situated Cognition, Distributed and De-centralized Cogition, Real-world Robotics and Artificial Life1. Such approaches, however, are often criticized for giving certain aspects of rationality too wide a berth. They focus their attention on on such superficially poor cousins as.

In recent decades, non-representational approaches to mental phenomena and cognition have been gaining traction in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. In these alternative approach, mental representations either lose their central status or, in its most radical form, are banned completely. While there is growing agreement that non-representational accounts may succeed in explaining some cognitive capacities, there is widespread skepticism about the possibility of giving non-representational accounts of cognitive capacities such as memory, imagination or abstract thought. In this paper, I (...) will critically examine the view that there are fundamental limitations to non-representational explanations of cognition. Rather than challenging these arguments on general grounds, I will examine a set of human cognitive capacities that are generally thought to fall outside the scope of non-representational accounts, i.e. numerical cognition. After criticizing standard representational accounts of numerical cognition for their lack of explanatory power, I will argue that a non-representational approach that is inspired by radical enactivism offers the best hope for developing a genuine naturalistic explanatory account for these cognitive capacities. (shrink)

I identify three lessons from Kenneth Craik’s landmark book “The Nature of Explanation” for contemporary debates surrounding the existence, extent, and nature of mental representation: first, an account of mental representations as neural structures that function analogously to public models; second, an appreciation of prediction as the central component of intelligence in demand of such models; and third, a metaphor for understanding the brain as an engineer, not a scientist. I then relate these insights to discussions surrounding the representational status (...) of predictive processing – which, I argue, provides a contemporary vindication of Craik’s extremely prescient “hypothesis on the nature of thought.”. (shrink)

According to Enactivism, cognition should be understood in terms of a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment. Further, this view holds that organisms do not passively receive information from this environment, they rather selectively create this environment by engaging in interaction with the world. Radical Enactivism adds that basic cognition does so without entertaining representations and hence that representations are not an essential constituent of cognition. Some proponents think that getting rid of representations amounts to a revolutionary (...) alternative to standard views about cognition. To emphasize the impact, they claim that this ‘radicalization’ should be applied to all enactivist friendly views, including, another current and potentially revolutionary approach to cognition: predictive processing. In this paper, we will show that this is not the case. After introducing the problem, we will argue that ‘radicalizing’ predictive processing does not add any value to this approach. After this, we will analyze whether or not radical Enactivism can count as a revolution within cognitive science at all and conclude that it cannot. Finally, in section 5 we will claim that cognitive science is better off when embracing heterogeneity. (shrink)

Discuto, neste artigo, a proposta de uma teleosemântica informacional, tal como concebida por Fred Dretske. Sustento neste texto que, embora a teleosemântica informacional defronte-se com sérias dificuldades relativas à determinação dos conteúdos das crenças, ela oferece bons critérios para distinguir sistemas meramente informacionais de sistemas representacionais.