An emerging perspective on human cognition and performance sees it as a kind of self-organizing phenomenon involving dynamic coordination across the body, brain and environment. Measuring this coordination faces a major challenge. Time series obtained from such cognitive, behavioral, and physiological coordination are often complicated in terms of non-stationarity and non-linearity, and in terms of continuous vs. categorical scales. Researchers have proposed several analytical tools and frameworks. One method designed to overcome these complexities is recurrence quantification analysis, developed in the (...) study of non-linear dynamics. It has been applied in various domains, including linguistic data or motion data. However, most previous studies have applied recurrence methods individually to categorical or continuous data. To understand how complex coordination works, an integration of these types of behavior is needed. We aimed to integrate these methods to investigate the relationship between language and motion directly. To do so, we added temporal information to categorical data, and applied joint recurrence analysis methods to visualize and quantify speech-motion coordination coupling during a rap performance. We illustrate how new dynamic methods may capture this coordination in a small case-study design on this expert rap performance. We describe a case study suggesting this kind of dynamic analysis holds promise, and end by discussing the theoretical implications of studying complex performances of this kind as a dynamic, coordinated phenomenon. (shrink)

Dynamical systems theory (DST) is a branch of mathematics that assesses abstract or physical systems that change over time. It has a quantitative part (mathematical equations) and a related qualitative part (plotting equations in a state space). Nonlinear dynamical systems theory applies the same tools in research involving phenomena such as chaos and hysteresis. These approaches have provided different ways of investigating and understanding cognitive systems in cognitive science and neuroscience. The ‘dynamical hypothesis’ claims that cognition is and can be (...) understood as dynamical systems. Common consequences for such an approach include rejecting understanding cognition as information processing in nature, including eschewing explanatory roles for computation or representation. Contemporary applications of DST include mouse‐tracking studies in cognitive science and nonrepresentational perspectives on motor control in neuroscience. Such work has philosophical implications concerning the boundaries of cognition, explanation, and representations. DST offers powerful methodology and theories that raise many topics of philosophical significance. (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)

Ecological psychology is one of the most influential theories of perception in the embodied, anti-representational, and situated cognitive sciences. However, radical enactivists claim that Gibsonians tend to describe ecological information and its ‘pick up’ in ways that make ecological psychology close to representational theories of perception and cognition. Motivated by worries about the tenability of classical views of informational content and its processing, these authors claim that ecological psychology needs to be “RECtified” so as to explicitly resist representational readings. In (...) this paper, we argue against this call for RECtification. To do so, we offer a detailed analysis of the notion of perceptual information and other related notions such as specificity and meaning, as they are presented in the specialized ecological literature. We defend that these notions, if properly understood, remain free of any representational commitment. Ecological psychology, we conclude, does not need to be RECtified. (shrink)

In this paper I analyze constitution embodiment, a particular conception of embodiment. Proponents of constitution embodiment claim that the body is a condition of the constitution of entities. Constitution embodiment is popular with phenomenologically-inspired Embodied Cognition, including research projects such as Enactivism and Radical Embodied Cognitive Science. Unfortunately, PEC’s use of constitution embodiment is neither clear nor coherent; in particular, PEC uses the concept of constitution embodiment so that a major inconsistency is entailed. PEC conceives of the body in a (...) transcendental sense as a condition of the constitution of entities, and, in an ontic sense, as a scientifically describable entity. Yet, a condition of the constitution of entities cannot be itself an entity—rather, it is the very condition of the possibility of an entity. This inconsistency entails further problems, among them PEC’s misguided focus on the location of the embodied mind. In order to correct these mistakes, I develop a conception of constitution embodiment based on the work of Heidegger, Husserl and to a lesser degree Merleau-Ponty. This has two purposes. First, it provides the conceptual groundwork to secure the status of PEC as a consistent and coherent research project and to clarify PEC’s conception of the relationship between phenomenology and the sciences. In that spirit, my approach provides further guidelines for fruitful research alliances between PEC and other research programs such as Grounded Cognition and identifies current research alliances, such as those with Radical Enactivism, as undesirable. Second, my account provides an elaborate concept of constitution embodiment that can function as the basis for more sophisticated work in the future. (shrink)

The question whether cognition ever extends beyond the head is widely considered to be an empirical issue. And yet, all the evidence amassed in recent years has not sufficed to settle the debate. In this paper we suggest that this is because the debate is not really an empirical one, but rather a matter of definition. Traditional cognitive science can be identified as wedded to the ideals of “smallism” and “localism”. We criticize these ideals and articulate a case in favor (...) of extended cognition by highlighting the historical pedigree and conceptual adequacy of related empirical and theoretical work. (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)

Direct realism in one form or another is gaining traction as an approach to perception. With the hope of bolstering such positions, we offer a framework upon which to base an argument for direct realism in matters of perception. Better yet, we offer an empirically supported framework. The framework on offer is that of ecological psychology. With the framework in place, we then discuss how it can address visual illusions, one of the major challenges facing proponents of direct realism.

Several philosophers have expressed concerns with some recent uses of the term ‘cognition’. Underlying a number of these concerns are claims that cognition is only located in the brain and that no compelling case has been made to use ‘cognition’ in any way other than as a cause of behavior that is representational in nature. These concerns center on two primary misapprehensions: First, that some adherents of dynamical cognitive science think DCS implies the thesis of extended cognition and the rejection (...) of representation, and second, that cognition is mistakenly equated with behavior. We make three points in response to these claims: First, there is no thoroughly entrenched conception of cognition as distinct from behavior that is being illegitimately disregarded. Second, we present Shapiro’s exposition of dynamical systems theory as revealing a misunderstanding of the way that dynamical models are used in explanations of cognition and related phenomena. Accordingly, a proper conception of DCS’s methods facilitates an appreciation of extended cognition as a legitimate phenomenon of scientific investigation. Finally, we demonstrate that practicing cognitive scientists and psychologists are far more pluralistic in the phenomena they apply ‘cognition’ to than is suggested by some. At the heart of our disagreement with these concerned folks is that although we think it likely that some cognitive phenomena are representational, non-extended, and only in-between the ears, we also think there are good conceptual and empirical reasons to believe that many cognitive phenomena are non-representational, extended, and not confined to the brain. (shrink)