The first work to offer a comprehensive pragmatist anthropology focusing on sensibility, habits, and human experience as contingently yet irreversibly enlanguaged.

This paper offers a biosemiotic account of the poetic aspects of gesture and speech in schizophrenia. The argument is that speech and gesture are not the mere expression of pre-verbal thoughts. Instead, meaning is enacted by the temporal and semantic coordination of speech and gesture. The bodily basis of language is highlighted by the fact that, failing to create language that is organized around topics, individuals with schizophrenia often rely on poetic associations in directing their utterances. Accordingly, the analysis of (...) schizophrenic speech and gesture based on McNeill’s Growth Point theory is enriched with reference to both Cowley’s (2007b) views on language as distributed social coordination, and Alexander’s (Biosemiotics 2(1):77–100, 2009) description of formal causes in nature. Schizophrenic language can be seen as a hypertrophied manifestation of the discourse-scaffolding function of poetic associations in speech and gesture. The analysis of schizophrenic language shows that language behavior need not be built on pre-verbal thoughts and important aspects of schizophrenic language, such as metalinguistic awareness and semiotic agency, can be clarified by applying concepts from biosemiotics. (shrink)

Daniel Weiskopf has recently raised an apparently powerful objection against the so-called “extended mind thesis” with regard to beliefs. His argument is that since alleged cases of “extended beliefs” lack a characteristic feature of beliefs properly so called (newly acquired beliefs are usually integrated with already existing beliefs rapidly, automatically and unconsciously), they do not count as genuine beliefs properly so called. We defend the extended mind thesis by arguing that Weiskopf is wrong. First, we suggest an alternative account of (...) informational integration that is compatible with externally stored beliefs’ being beliefs properly so called, emphasizes the crucial role action plays for cognition, and stresses the embodied and situationally embedded nature of human cognizers. Second, we argue that even if informational integration were usually rapid, automatic, and unconscious, this would not be an essential feature of beliefs. Third, we argue that even if rapid, automatic, and unconscious informational integration were characteristic of our commonsense conception of beliefs, externally stored “beliefs” would still be sufficiently similar to beliefs properly so called for them to be grouped together for all practical and scientific purposes. (shrink)

Upshot: In our response we focus on five questions that point to important common themes in the commentaries: why start in wicked problems, what kind of system is a scientific perspective, what is the nature of second-order research processes, what does this mean for understanding interdisciplinary work, and how may polyocular research help make real-world decisions.

One job for theories of mental representation is to distinguish between different kinds of mental representation: beliefs, desires, intentions, perceptual states, etc. What makes a mental state a belief that p rather than a desire that p or a visual representation that p? Functionalism is a leading approach for doing so: for individuating mental states. Functionalism is designed to allow that psychological states can be multiply realized. Mark Sprevak has argued that, for a functionalist account of psychological states to apply (...) to creatures that are organised in a very different way to humans (call them Martians), the way a psychological state is functionally individuated has to be relatively coarse-grained (Sprevak 2009). Psychological research might show that human beliefs are directly available to consciousness, that they are formed as the result of deliberate judgement, and so on, but theorists would be precluded from including these roles in their account of belief, if Sprevak is right. The argument for coarse-grained individuation fails if we distinguish functionalism about what it takes to be a psychological state in general from functionalism about a particular state type such as belief. Functionalism individuates a psychological state like believing that p partly by reference to its relations to other psychological states: desiring that p, perceiving that p, intending that p, etc. Functionalist motivations do indeed suggest that Martians with a functional organisation and physical substrate quite unlike humans could have psychological states, but not that they should have states with the interrelated collection of functional roles to count as beliefs, desires, intentions, etc. Thus, theorists are not precluded from including functional relations to consciousness or deliberate judgement in their account of (human) belief, consistent with allowing that Martians would have their own collection of functionally interrelated psychological states. Sprevak’s coarse-grained functionalism implies an implausibly liberal form of extended cognition. The point about functional interrelations allows us to avoid that conclusion without jettisoning functionalism (as Sprevak suggests we should): records in a human notebook may not enter into the right interrelations with other human psychological states to count as beliefs; nor do they enter into any interrelations with Martian psychological states. Functionalism can therefore allow that Martians have psychological states while holding that few if any of the beliefs we humans have are, as a matter of fact, extended. (shrink)

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)

I discuss Clark’s predictive processing/extended mind hybrid, diagnosing a problem: Clark’s hybrid suggests that, when we use them, we pay attention to mind-extending external resources. This clashes with a commonly accepted necessary condition of cognitive extension; namely, that mind-extending resources must be phenomenally transparent when used. I then propose a solution to this problem claiming that the phenomenal transparency condition should be rejected. To do so, I put forth a parity argument to the effect that phenomenal transparency cannot be a (...) necessary condition on cognitive extension: roughly, since internal cognitive resources can fail to be transparent when used, by parity, external resources can fail to be phenomenally transparent too. Further, I argue that phenomenal transparency is not even a reliable indicator of cognitive extension; hence its absence should not be considered a problem for Clark’s extended mind-predictive processing hybrid. Lastly, I consider and allay a number of worries my proposal might raise, and conclude the paper. (shrink)

In “Materialized Oppression in Medical Tools and Technologies”, we show how oppression can be inscribed in medical devices. We consider oximeters and spirometers, drawing heavily on the work of anthropologist Amy Moran-Thomas and historian Lundy Braun. Both devices encode racial biases: oximeters because they do not correct for race, and spirometers because they do. We zoom out from these particular devices to examine a wide range of tools and technologies, and we build a theoretical framework that covers not only race (...) but other axes of oppression: gender, ability, class, etc. -/- We are inspired by the peer commentaries and the guest editorial, and we are grateful to the contributors for engaging with our work and sharing their expertise. Their responses to our target article advance our understanding in three directions. First, a set of responses contextualize our framework within the histories of medicine, bioethics, and science and technology studies. Second, a set of responses provide additional examples of oppressive medical tools and technologies: not only material artifacts like oximeters and spirometers, but also spatial environments like inpatient psychiatric units, and cognitive niches comprised of digital technologies like electronic medical records and medical data classifications. Third, a set of responses propose countermeasures: operationalizing anti-oppressive practices for device design and testing; mapping the complex causal relationships involved in real-world problems; and repairing the harms done by materialized oppression through racism-conscious praxis. We reply to these three sets of responses—respectively, the “past, present, and future” of oppressive medical objects and spaces—in what follows. (shrink)

Before I respond to James G. Matlock’s comments on my coedited volume, The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death (MoA), I would like to thank him for taking the time to review such a large volume—and review it conscientiously—even if we ultimately disagree about its import. I would also like to extend my thanks to Journal of Parapsychology editor John Palmer for inviting this response, as it gives me an opportunity to clarify why many secondary issues (...) (and some significant matters) were untouched in the volume. While I find most of Matlock’s complaints specious, they nevertheless underscore the need to clear up misconceptions about the collection’s purpose, some of which are also found in others’ reviews. 1. Poisoning the Well 2. Mind-Brain Correlations are Data that Test Hypotheses 3. The Prior Probability Diversion 4. Apparent Causal Closure is Incidental Corroboration 5. How Relevant is the Metaphysics of Mind? 6. Theological Critiques do not Assess Survival Research 7. How Much Survival Research Ought One Critique? (shrink)

Most accounts of cognitive scaffolding focus on ways that external structure can support or augment an agent’s cognitive capacities. We call cases where the interests of the user are served benign scaffolding and argue for the possibility and reality of hostile scaffolding. This is scaffolding which depends on the same capacities of an agent to make cognitive use of external structure as in benign cases, but that undermines or exploits the user while serving the interests of another agent. We develop (...) criteria for scaffolding being hostile and show by reference to examples including the design features of electronic gambling machines and casino management systems that hostile scaffolding exists and can be highly effective. In cases where the scaffolding is deep and permits the offloading of significant cognitive work, hostile scaffolding exploitatively manipulates cognitive processing itself. Given the extent of human reliance on scaffolding this is an important and neglected vulnerability. [This is an updated version of the paper, added in February 2023.]. (shrink)

In this chapter, we analyze the relationships between the Internet and its users in terms of situated cognition theory. We first argue that the Internet is a new kind of cognitive ecology, providing almost constant access to a vast amount of digital information that is increasingly more integrated into our cognitive routines. We then briefly introduce situated cognition theory and its species of embedded, embodied, extended, distributed and collective cognition. Having thus set the stage, we begin by taking an embedded (...) cognition view and analyze how the Internet aids certain cognitive tasks. After that, we conceptualize how the Internet enables new kinds of embodied interaction, extends certain aspects of our embodiment, and examine how wearable technologies that monitor physiological, behavioral and contextual states transform the embodied self. On the basis of the degree of cognitive integration between a user and Internet resource, we then look at how and when the Internet extends our cognitive processes. We end this chapter with a discussion of distributed and collective cognition as facilitated by the Internet. (shrink)

Intersemiotic translation (IT) was defined by Roman Jakobson (The Translation Studies Reader, Routledge, London, p. 114, 2000) as “transmutation of signs”—“an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems.” Despite its theoretical relevance, and in spite of the frequency in which it is practiced, the phenomenon remains virtually unexplored in terms of conceptual modeling, especially from a semiotic perspective. Our approach is based on two premises: (i) IT is fundamentally a semiotic operation process (semiosis) and (ii) (...) IT is a deeply iconic-dependent process. We exemplify our approach by means of literature to dance IT and we explore some implications for the development of a general model of IT. (shrink)

Habit in semiosis can be modeled both as a macro-level in a hierarchical multi-level system where it functions as boundary conditions for emergence of semiosis, and as a cognitive niche produced by an ecologically-inherited environment of cognitive artifacts. According to the first perspective, semiosis is modeled in terms of a multilayered system, with micro functional entities at the lower-level and with higher-level processes being mereologically composed of these lower-level entities. According to the second perspective, habits are embedded in ecologically-inherited environments (...) of signs that co-evolve with cognition. Both descriptions offer a novel approximation of Peirce’s semiotics and theoretical findings in other areas (hierarchy theory, evolutionary biology), suggesting new frameworks to approach the concept of habit integrated with its role in semiosis. (shrink)

Whilst much has been said about the implications of predictive processing for our scientific understanding of cognition, there has been comparatively little discussion of how this new paradigm fits with our everyday understanding of the mind, i.e. folk psychology. This paper aims to assess the relationship between folk psychology and predictive processing, which will first require making a distinction between two ways of understanding folk psychology: as propositional attitude psychology and as a broader folk psychological discourse. It will be argued (...) that folk psychology in this broader sense is compatible with predictive processing, despite the fact that there is an apparent incompatibility between predictive processing and a literalist interpretation of propositional attitude psychology. The distinction between these two kinds of folk psychology allows us to accept that our scientific usage of folk concepts requires revision, whilst rejecting the suggestion that we should eliminate folk psychology entirely. (shrink)

An emerging consensus in cognitive science views the biological brain as a hierarchically-organized predictive processing system that relies on generative models to predict the structure of sensory information. Such a view resonates with a body of work in machine learning that has explored the problem-solving capabilities of hierarchically-organized, multi-layer (i.e., deep) neural networks, many of which acquire and deploy generative models of their training data. The present chapter explores the extent to which the ostensible convergence on a common neurocomputational architecture (...) (centred on predictive processing schemes, hierarchical organization, and generative models) might provide inroads into the problem of digital immortality. In contrast to approaches that seek to recapitulate the connectomic microstructure of the human brain, the present chapter advocates an approach that is rooted in the use of machine learning algorithms. The claim is that a future form of deep learning system could be used to acquire generative models of a given individual or (alternatively) the sensory data that is processed by the brain of a given individual during the course of their biological life. The differences between these two forms of digital immortality are explored, as are some of the options for digital resurrection. (shrink)

Clark and Chalmers propose that the mind extends further than skin and skull. If they are right, then we should expect this to have some effect on our way of knowing our own mental states. If the content of my notebook can be part of my belief system, then looking at the notebook seems to be a way to get to know my own beliefs. However, it is at least not obvious whether self-ascribing a belief by looking at my notebook (...) is a case of introspection the same way that knowing my non-extended beliefs is. Traditionally this sort of introspection is thought to be privileged and special in ways that the extended introspection case seems not to be. There is nothing privileged about looking at my notebook. Anyone could do it. The aim of the paper is to find out how to understand extended introspection and whether there is something privileged and special about knowing one’s own extended beliefs. Moreover, the notebook case has close analogs using twenty-first century technology. It seems possible to know our beliefs that are extended to smartphones, wearable technology or a cloud-based data store. First, I present the case of extended introspection. I then discuss whether it should be understood as ordinary introspection or as mind-reading. Both seem to be bad fits, which finally prompts an original account for extended introspection based on epistemic rules. (shrink)

This paper discusses modeling from the artifactual perspective. The artifactual approach conceives models as erotetic devices. They are purpose-built systems of dependencies that are constrained in view of answering a pending scientific question, motivated by theoretical or empirical considerations. In treating models as artifacts, the artifactual approach is able to address the various languages of sciences that are overlooked by the traditional accounts that concentrate on the relationship of representation in an abstract and general manner. In contrast, the artifactual approach (...) focuses on epistemic affordances of different kinds of external representational and other tools employed in model construction. In doing so, the artifactual account gives a unified treatment of different model types as it circumvents the tendency of the fictional and other representational approaches to separate model systems from their “model descriptions”. (shrink)

A large body of compelling evidence has been accumulated demonstrating that embodiment – the agent’s physical setup, including its shape, materials, sensors and actuators – is constitutive for any form of cognition and as a consequence, models of cognition need to be embodied. In contrast to methods from empirical sciences to study cognition, robots can be freely manipulated and virtually all key variables of their embodiment and control programs can be systematically varied. As such, they provide an extremely powerful tool (...) of investigation. We present a robotic bottom-up or developmental approach, focusing on three stages: (a) low-level behaviors like walking and reflexes, (b) learning regularities in sensorimotor spaces, and (c) human-like cognition. We also show that robotic based research is not only a productive path to deepening our understanding of cognition, but that robots can strongly benefit from human-like cognition in order to become more autonomous, robust, resilient, and safe. (shrink)

Im ersten Abschnitt illustrierte ich die These der erweiterten Kognition und diskutiere einige mögliche Missverständnisse. Im zweiten Abschnitt werde ich vier Domänen kognitiver Erweiterung auseinanderhalten, nämlich eine Erweiterung in die körperliche, physikalische, 'informatorische' und soziale Umgebung betreffend. Um die These der erweiterten Kognition vor dem Einwand der kognitiven Inflation zu schützen, muss man für jeden dieser Bereiche (und gegebenenfalls noch spezieller) spezifische Bedingungen und Mechanismen der kognitiven Kopplung an die externen Komponenten angeben. Im dritten Abschnitt unterscheide ich die These der (...) erweiterten Kognition, von der sich im ersten Abschnitt bereits zeigen wird, dass sie eine These kognitiver Vehikel ist, von einer externalistischen Gehaltsthese. Letztere bezeichne ich im Anklang an Clark und Chalmers als aktiven Externalismus und illustriere dessen Unterschiede und Besonderheiten gegenüber den bekannten 'passiven' Formen des semantischen oder mentalen Externalismus in der Philosophie des Geistes, die sich mit den Namen Putnam, Millikan und Burge verbinden. Im vierten Abschnitt verfolge ich die spezifische Idee, die Mechanismen geteilter Intentionalität als Kopplungsmechanismen kognitiver Erweiterung in die soziale Umgebung, speziell soziale Interaktionspartner, anzusehen. Dazu mache ich in einigem Detail von Bratmans bekannter Plan-Konzeption geteilter Intentionalität Gebrauch. Anhand der Ergebnisse dieser Analyse wird sich im fünften und letzten Abschnitt zeigen, in welchem Sinne es sich dabei im Keim bereits um einen sozialen Externalismus handelt. Der soziale Externalismus, so der Clou, stellt bereits eine verkappte Variante eines aktiven Externalismus dar. (shrink)

David Chalmers thinks his iPhone exemplifies the extended mind thesis by meeting the criteria ‎that he and Andy Clark established in their well-known 1998 paper. Andy Clark agrees. We take ‎this proposal seriously, evaluating the case of the GPS-enabled smartphone as a potential mind ‎extender. We argue that the “trust and glue” criteria enumerated by Clark and Chalmers are ‎incompatible with both the epistemic responsibilities that accompany everyday activities and the ‎practices of trust that enable users to discharge them. Prospects (...) for revision of the original ‎criteria are dim. We therefore call for a rejection of the trust criterion and a reevaluation of the ‎extended mind thesis.‎. (shrink)

The subject of mental processes or mental states is usually assumed to be an individual, and hence the boundaries of mental features – in a strict or metaphorical sense – are naturally regarded as reaching no further than the boundaries of the individual. This chapter addresses various philosophical developments in the 20th and 21st century that questioned this natural assumption. I will frame this discussion by fi rst presenting a historically infl uential commitment to the individualistic nature of the mental (...) in Descartes’ theory. I identify various elements in the Cartesian conception of the mind that were subsequently criticized and rejected by various externalist theories, advocates of the extended mind hypothesis and defenders of embodied cognition. Then I will indicate the main trends in these critiques. (shrink)

If the intelligence of artificial systems were to surpass that of humans significantly, this would constitute a significant risk for humanity. Time has come to consider these issues, and this consideration must include progress in AI as much as insights from the theory of AI. The papers in this volume try to make cautious headway in setting the problem, evaluating predictions on the future of AI, proposing ways to ensure that AI systems will be beneficial to humans – and critically (...) evaluating such proposals. (shrink)

Unified, all-purpose, philosophical models of reduction in science lack resources for capturing varieties of cross-scientific relations that have proven critical to understanding some scientific achievements. Not only do those models obscure the distinction between successional and cross-scientific relations, their preoccupations with the structures of both theories and things provide no means for accommodating the contributions to various sciences of theories and research about long-term diachronic processes involving large-scale, distributed systems. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is the parade case. (...) Explanatory pluralism accommodates a wider range of connections between theories and inquiries in science than all-purpose models of reduction do. Consequently, it provides analytical tools for understanding the roles of the theoretical proposals about the evolution of the human mind/brain that have proliferated over the last two decades. Those proposals have testable implications pertaining to both structure and processing in the modern human mind/brain. An example of such research illustrates how those proposals and investigative tools and experiments cut across both explanatory levels and modes of analysis within the cognitive sciences and how those studies can yield evidence that bears on the assessment of competing theories and models. (shrink)

Are we being manipulated online? If so, is being manipulated by online technologies and algorithmic systems notably different from human forms of manipulation? And what is under threat exactly when people are manipulated online? This volume provides philosophical and conceptual depth to debates in digital ethics about online manipulation. The contributions explore the ramifications of our increasingly consequential interactions with online technologies such as online recommender systems, social media, user-friendly design, micro-targeting, default-settings, gamification, and real-time profiling. The authors in this (...) volume address four broad and interconnected themes: • What is the conceptual nature of online manipulation? And how, methodologically, should the concept be defined? • Does online manipulation threaten autonomy, freedom, and meaning in life, and if so, how? • What are the epistemic, affective, and political harms and risks associated with online manipulation? • What are legal and regulatory perspectives on online manipulation? The Philosophy of Online Manipulation brings these various considerations together to offer philosophically robust answers to critical questions concerning our online interactions with one another and with autonomous systems. It will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in moral philosophy, digital ethics, philosophy of technology, and the ethics of manipulation. (shrink)

Poetry is the most complex and intricate of human language used across all languages and cultures. Its relation to the worlds of human experience has perplexed writers and readers for centuries, as has the question of evaluation and judgment: what makes a poem "work" and endure. The Poem as Icon focuses on the art of poetry to explore its nature and function: not interpretation but experience; not what poetry means but what it does. Using both historic and contemporary approaches of (...) embodied cognition from various disciplines, Margaret Freeman argues that a poem's success lies in its ability to become an icon of the felt "being" of reality. Freeman explains how the features of semblance, metaphor, schema, and affect work to make a poem an icon, with detailed examples from various poets. By analyzing the ways poetry provides insights into the workings of human cognition, Freeman claims that taste, beauty, and pleasure in the arts are simply products of the aesthetic faculty, and not the aesthetic faculty itself. The aesthetic faculty, she argues, should be understood as the science of human perception, and therefore constitutive of the cognitive processes of attention, imagination, memory, discrimination, expertise, and judgment. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship between emotional sharing and the extended mind thesis. We argue that shared emotions are socially extended emotions that involve a specific type of constitutive integration between the participating individuals’ emotional experiences. We start by distinguishing two claims, the Environmentally Extended Emotion Thesis and the Socially Extended Emotion Thesis. We then critically discuss some recent influential proposals about the nature of shared emotions. Finally, in Sect. 3, we motivate two conditions that an account of shared emotions (...) ought to accommodate: Reciprocal Other-awareness and Integration. Consideration of and discussion of relational accounts of joint attention lead us to the proposal that a construal of socially extended emotions in terms of a constitutive integration of the participating individuals’ experiences is more promising than proposals that simply appeal to various forms of social situatedness, embeddedness, or scaffolding. (shrink)

Tracing the leading role of emotions in the evolution of the mind, a philosopher and a psychologist pair up to reveal how thought and culture owe less to our faculty for reason than to our capacity to feel. Many accounts of the human mind concentrate on the brain’s computational power. Yet, in evolutionary terms, rational cognition emerged only the day before yesterday. For nearly 200 million years before humans developed a capacity to reason, the emotional centers of the brain were (...) hard at work. If we want to properly understand the evolution of the mind, we must explore this more primal capability that we share with other animals: the power to feel. Emotions saturate every thought and perception with the weight of feelings. The Emotional Mind reveals that many of the distinctive behaviors and social structures of our species are best discerned through the lens of emotions. Even the roots of so much that makes us uniquely human—art, mythology, religion—can be traced to feelings of caring, longing, fear, loneliness, awe, rage, lust, playfulness, and more. From prehistoric cave art to the songs of Hank Williams, Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel explore how the evolution of the emotional mind stimulated our species’ cultural expression in all its rich variety. Bringing together insights and data from philosophy, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and psychology, The Emotional Mind offers a new paradigm for understanding what it is that makes us so unique. (shrink)

What is the role of the environment, and of the information it provides, in cognition? More specifically, may there be a role for certain artefacts to play in this context? These are questions that motivate "4E" theories of cognition (as being embodied, embedded, extended, enactive). In his take on that family of views, Hajo Greif first defends and refines a concept of information as primarily natural, environmentally embedded in character, which had been eclipsed by information-processing views of cognition. He continues (...) with an inquiry into the cognitive bearing of some artefacts that are sometimes referred to as 'intelligent environments'. Without necessarily having much to do with Artificial Intelligence, such artefacts may ultimately modify our informational environments. -/- With respect to human cognition, the most notable effect of digital computers is not that they might be able, or become able, to think but that they alter the way we perceive, think and act. (shrink)

This is a work concerned with justification and freedom and the relationship between these. Its summational aim is to defend a transcendental argument for free will – that we could not be epistemically justified in undermining a strong notion of free will, as a strong notion of free will would be required for any such process of undermining to be itself epistemically justified. The book advances two transcendental arguments – for a deontically internalist conception of epistemic justification and the aforementioned (...) argument for a libertarian conception of free will. In defending each of these arguments, the book both defends and relies upon the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. In articulating the latter transcendental argument – for freedom – heavy reliance is made on the earlier, epistemic, work: especially on the deontological conception of rational justification (on epistemic internalism). (shrink)

While it is well recognized that many everyday consumer behaviors, such as purchases of sweatshop goods, come at a cost to the global poor, it has proven difficult to argue that even knowing, repeat contributors are somehow morally complicit in those outcomes. Some recent approaches contend that marginal contributions to distant harms are consequences that consumers straightforwardly should have born in mind, which would make consumers seem reckless or negligent. Critics reasonably reply that the bad luck that my innocent purchase (...) contributes distantly to harm provides insufficient grounds for moral blame; moreover, such distant and seemingly inevitable collective effects are not by themselves obvious reasons for agents to refrain from acting. Granting these criticisms, I argue that the harm that agents do through knowing contributions to distant collective harm actually builds on the morally sparse agential phenomenology of everyday purchases and decisions: contributors who knowingly disregard distant harms, rather than being reckless or negligent about consequences they should have foreseen, very directly perpetuate the moral invisibility and the lack of recognition from which the global poor generally suffer. This provides agents with clearer moral reasons to refrain from knowing participation in unstructured collective harms, and clearer reason to bear them in mind in acting. (shrink)

How has the storage of information shaped human cognition? We bring together current advances in cognitive science, the neurobiology of memory, and archaeology to explore how storage of information affects consciousness. These fields strongly suggest that the increase in storage of information in the environment – which we call exosomatic storage of information – may have led to changes in human consciousness and human neurophysiology over time. To bring these findings together conceptually, we develop what we call a dialectical model (...) of the relationship between storage of information and the development of human consciousness. Using the system of dialectic philosophy, we put forward that (a) environmental changes, consciousness, and neurophysiology develop together, (b) these changes were irreversible, (c) quantitative increases in exosomatic storage of information may have led to qualitative changes in human consciousness and neurophysiology, (d) these changes in turn affected how we see ourselves. Indeed, our capacity to store information exosomatically distinguishes us from other animals, and may be a key attribute of our self-awareness and therefore self-consciousness. Because metaphors are central to human thought and can help structure scientific inquiry, we illustrate our model using a metaphor of drops of silver on the back of a glass, eventually making a mirror—where successive quantitative change leads to an irreversible qualitative development in human consciousness. The dialectic model can offer new insights into the co-evolution of material culture and human beings through its broader philosophical foundations and explanatory power. (shrink)

Recent developments in science and technology point to the need to unify, and extend, the definition of memory. On the one hand, molecular neurobiology has shown that memory is largely a chemical process, which includes conditioning and any form of stored experience. On the other hand, information technology has led many to claim that cognition is also extended, that is, memory may be stored outside of the brain. In this paper, we review these advances and describe the increasingly accepted extended (...) definition of memory. This definition is largely accepted in neuroscience but not explicitly stated. In the extended definition, memory is the capacity to store and/or retrieve information. Does this new definition of memory mean that everything is now a form of memory? We stress that memory still requires incorporation, that is, a corpore. It is a relationship -- where one biological or chemical process is incorporated into another, and changes both in a permanent way. Looking at natural and biological processes of incorporation can help us think of how incorporation of internal and external memory occurs in cognition. We further argue that, if we accept that there is such a thing as the storage of information outside the brain -- and that this organic, dynamic process can also be called “memory” -- then we open the door to a very different world. The mind is not static. The brain, and the memory it uses, is a work in progress; we are not now who we were then. (shrink)

This paper argues that Michael Polányi’s account of how science, as an institution, establishes knowledge can provide a structure for a future institution capable of countering misinformation, or fake news, and deepfakes. I argue that only an institutional approach can adequately take up the challenge against the corresponding institution of fake news. The fact of filtering news and information may be bothering. It is the threat of censorship and free speech limitation. Instead, I propose that we should indicate reliable information (...) with a trademark and news signing-approved information and brand equity. I offer a method of creating a standard for online news that people can rely on (similar to high-quality shopping products). (shrink)

Practical knowledge is discussed in close relation to practical expertise. For both anti-intellectualists and intellectualists, the knowledge of how to φ is widely assumed to entail the practical expertise in φ-ing. This paper refutes this assumption. I argue that non-experts can know how to φ via other experts’ knowledge of φ-ing. Know-how can be ‘outsourced’. I defend the outsourceability of know-how, and I refute the objections that reduce outsourced know-how to the knowledge of how to ask for help, of how (...) to get things done, or of external contents. Interestingly, outsourcing differs from social cooperation, collective agency, testimonial transmission, and many other notions in social-epistemological debates. Thus, outsourcing provides not only a hitherto unconsidered form of know-how but also a novel way for knowledge to be social. Furthermore, outsourcing plausibly involves a ‘social’ cognitive extension that does not rest on EMT or HEC. Given the outsourceability of know-how, we must reconsider the nature of know-how and expertise, as well as the relation between non-experts and experts. (shrink)

The moral enhancement of humans by biological or genetic means has recently been urged as a response to the pressing concerns facing human civilization. In this paper, I argue that proponents of biological moral enhancement have misrepresented the facts of human moral psychology. As a result, the likely effectiveness of traditional methods of moral enhancement has been underestimated, relative to biological or genetic means. I review arguments in favor of biological moral enhancement and argue that the complexity of moral psychology (...) raises serious problems for such interventions. I offer a programmatic sketch of the ways in which our improved understanding of moral psychology can help facilitate more traditional methods of moral enhancement. I conclude that the best response to the dangers faced by human civilization is the continued use of traditional methods of moral enhancement and the use of our improved understanding of moral psychology to further refine and develop these methods. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs and critically analyzes Husserl’s philosophical engagement with symbolic technologies—those material artifacts and cultural devices that serve to aid, structure and guide processes of thinking. Identifying and exploring a range of tensions in Husserl’s conception of symbolic technologies, I argue that this conception is limited in several ways, and particularly with regard to the task of accounting for the more constructive role these technologies play in processes of meaning-constitution. At the same time, this paper shows that a critical (...) examination of Husserl’s account of symbolic technologies, particularly as developed in his mature, genetic phenomenology, can be enduringly fruitful—if some of the specific conceptual weakness of this account are identified and properly accounted for. My discussion will proceed as follows. In the first part I briefly analyze the early Husserl’s account of the role the ‘method of sensible signs’ plays in arithmetic cognition. In the second, main part I critically examine the bearing the genetic-phenomenological concepts of sedimentation and technization have on the conceptualization of symbolic technologies in Husserl’s work. In the final part I summarize the major strengths and weaknesses of Husserl’s account of symbolic technologies, and in the process make a case for the ongoing relevance of some of the crucial elements of this account. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the view that we can literally perceive the morally right and wrong, or something near enough. In defending this claim, I will try to meet three primary objectives: to clarify how an investigation into moral phenomenology should proceed, to respond to a number of misconceptions and objections that are most frequently raised against the very idea of moral perception, and to provide a model for how some moral perception can be seen as literal perception. Because (...) I take “moral perception” to pick out a family of different experiences, I will limit myself to a discussion of the moral relevance of the emotions. (shrink)

I respond to Ned Block’s claim that it is ridiculous to suppose that consciousness is a cultural construction based on language and learned in childhood. Block is wrong to dismiss social constructivist theories of consciousness on account of it being ludicrous that conscious experience is anything but a biological feature of our animal heritage, characterized by sensory experience, evolved over millions of years. By defending social constructivism in terms of both Julian Jaynes’ behaviorism and J.J. Gibson’s ecological psychology, I draw (...) a distinction between the experience or what-it-is-like of nonhuman animals engaging with the environment and the secret theater of speechless monologue that is familiar to a linguistically competent human adult. This distinction grounds the argument that consciousness proper should be seen as learned rather than innate and shared with nonhuman animals. Upon establishing this claim, I defend the Jaynesian definition of consciousness as a social–linguistic construct learned in childhood, structured in terms of lexical metaphors and narrative practice. Finally, I employ the Jaynesian distinction between cognition and consciousness to bridge the explanatory gap and deflate the supposed hard problem of consciousness. (shrink)

This paper considers ten questions that those puzzled by or skeptical of extended cognition have posed. Discussion of these questions ranges across substantive, methodological, and dialectical issues in the ongoing debate over extended cognition, such as whether the issue between proponents and opponents of extended cognition is merely semantic or a matter of convention; whether extended cognition should be treated in the same way as extended biology; and whether conscious mental states pose a special problem for the extended mind thesis. (...) Lethocerus, the giant water bug, will be a recurrent reference point for much of the discussion. (shrink)

The Westermarck Effect posits that intimate association during childhood promotes human incest avoidance. In previous work, I articulated and defended a version of the Westermarck Effect by developing a phylogenetic argument that has purchase within primatology but that has had more limited appeal for cultural anthropologists due to their commitment to conventionalist or culture-first accounts of incest avoidance. Here I look to advance the discussion of incest and incest avoidance beyond culture-first accounts in two ways. First, I shall dig deeper (...) into the disciplinary grooves within cultural anthropology that make attractive the view that incest has a naturalness to it that is countered only or primarily by explicit social rules, such as taboos. Second, I further explore the emerging, post-conventionalist view of incest avoidance in a more positive vein by elaborating on the nature of the Westermarckian mechanism and how it relates to such explicit social rules and our innate biological endowments. One general aim here is to overcome the bifurcation between perspectives that are seen as biological and those seen as cultural, preempting or countering the claim that rejecting culture-first accounts entails a form of biological reductionism, a general aim I have pursued in related publications on bioessentialism about kinship. (shrink)