A popular trend in the sciences of the mind is to understand cognition as embodied, embedded, enactive, ecological, and so on. While some of the work under the label of “embodied cognition” takes for granted key commitments of traditional cognitive science, other projects coincide in treating embodiment as the starting point for an entirely different way of investigating all of cognition. Focusing on the latter, this paper discusses how embodied cognitive science can be made more reflexive and more sensitive to (...) the implications that our views of cognition have for how we understand scientific practice, including our own theorizing about cognition. Inspired by the “strong programme” in the sociology of scientific knowledge, I explore the prospect of an analogously “strong” program in embodied cognitive science. I first draw from Dewey’s transactional notion of “situation” to identify a broad sense in which embodied cognitive science takes cognition, as an embodied phenomenon, to be _situated_. I then sketch a perspective I call _situated reflexivity_, which extends the Deweyan analysis to understand scientific practice in the same terms, and thereby illustrates what research in line with a strong program in embodied cognitive science can look like. This move, I propose, has the potential of setting up a new inquiry situation that makes more salient the embodiment of scientific practice and that, through this, can help organize our own embodied cognitive activities as we try to make sense of scientific work, including our own. (shrink)

In this paper the role of images in argumentative settings is analyzed from a cognitive angle. In particular, the proposal of this paper is to see visual argumentation as a specific form of extended and distributed cognition. In order to develop this idea, some of Wittgenstein’s insights are used to put evidence produced by research on temporal-spatial reasoning processes into philosophical perspective. Some contemporary argumentative analyses of visual argumentation are also discussed using commercial and political examples. The paper finishes with (...) the notion of collective minds in order to specify the general idea of arguing with images as extended cognition. (shrink)

The possibility of group minds or group mental states has been considered by a number of authors addressing issues in social epistemology and related areas (Goldman 2004, Pettit 2003, Gilbert 2004, Hutchins 1995). An appeal to group minds might, in the end, do indispensable explanatory work in the social or cognitive sciences. I am skeptical, though, and this essay lays out some of the reasons for my skepticism. The concerns raised herein constitute challenges to the advocates of group minds (or (...) group mental states), challenges that might be overcome as theoretical and empirical work proceeds. Nevertheless, these hurdles are, I think, genuine and substantive, so much so that my tentative conclusion will not be optimistic. If a group mind is supposed to be a single mental system having two or more minds as proper parts,¹ the prospects for group minds seem dim. (shrink)

This entry addresses the question of group minds, by focusing specifically on empirical arguments for group cognition and group cognitive states. Two kinds of positive argument are presented and critically evaluated: the argument from individually unintended effects and the argument from functional similarity. A general argument against group cognition – which appeals to Occam’s razor – is also discussed. In the end, much turns on the identification of a mark of the cognitive; proposed marks are briefly surveyed in the final (...) section. (shrink)

Much recent work on cognition is characterized by an augmentation of the role of action coupled with an attenuation of the role of representation. This coupling is no accident. The appeal to action is seen either as a way of explaining representation or explaining it away. This paper argues that the appeal to action as a way of explaining, supplementing, or even supplanting, representation can lead to a serious dilemma. On the one hand, the concept of action to which we (...) appeal cannot, on pain of circularity, be a representational concept. Such an appeal would presuppose representation and therefore can neither explain it nor explain it away. On the other hand, I shall argue, if the concept of action to which we appeal is not a representational one, there is every reason for supposing that it will not be the sort of thing that can explain, or supplement, let alone supplant, representation. The resulting dilemma, I shall argue, is not fatal. But avoiding it requires us to embrace a certain thesis about the nature of action, a thesis whose broad outline this paper delineates. Anyone who wishes to employ action as a way of explaining or explaining away representation should, I shall argue, take this conception of action very seriously indeed. I am going to discuss these issues with respect to a influential recent contribution to this debate: the sensorimotor or enactive model of perception developed by Kevin O’Regan and Alva Noë. (shrink)

The concept of action is playing an increasingly prominent role in attempts to explain how subjects can represent the world. The idea is that at least some of the role traditionally assigned to internal representations can, in fact, be played by the ability of subjects to act on the world, and the exercise of that ability on appropriate occasions. This paper argues that the appeal to action faces a serious dilemma. If the concept of action employed is a representational one, (...) then the appeal to action is circular: representation has been presupposed rather than explained. However, if the concept of action employed is a non-representational one, then the appeal to action will be inadequate: in particular, the appeal will fail to account for the normativity of representation. The way out of this dilemma is to develop a conception of action that is normative, but where this normativity is not inherited from the action's connection to distinct representational states. The normative status of such actions would be sui generis. This paper argues that such a conception of action is available. (shrink)

Science literacy is frequently touted as a key to good citizenship. Based on a two-year ethnographic study examining science in the community, the authors suggest that when considering the contribution of scientific activity to the greater good, science must be seen as forming a unique hybrid practice, mixed in with other mediating practices, which together constitute “scientifically literate, good citizenship.” This case study, an analysis of an open house event organized by a grassroots environmentalist group, presents some examples of activities (...) that embed science in “good citizenship.” Through a series of vignettes, the authors focus on four central aspects: the activists' use of landscape and spatial arrangements, the importance of multiple representations of the same entity, the relational aspect of knowing and becoming part of a community, and the insertion of scientific into moral discourse, resulting in what they call a “stewardship triad.”. (shrink)

Research into expertise is relatively common in cognitive science concerning expertise existing across many domains. However, much less research has examined how experts within the same domain assess the performance of their peer experts. We report the results of a modified think-aloud study conducted with 18 pilots . Pairs of same-ranked pilots were asked to rate the performance of a captain flying in a critical pre-recorded simulator scenario. Findings reveal considerable variance within performance categories, differences in the process used as (...) evidence in support of a performance rating, different numbers and types of facts identified, and differences in how specific performance events affect choice of performance category and gravity of performance assessment. Such variance is consistent with low inter-rater reliability. Because raters exhibited good, albeit imprecise, reasons and facts, a fuzzy mathematical model of performance rating was developed. The model provides good agreement with observed variations. (shrink)

Although there exist today a variety of non-deductive reliable processes able to determine the truth of certain mathematical propositions, proof remains the only form of justification accepted in mathematical practice. Some philosophers and mathematicians have contested this commonly accepted epistemic superiority of proof on the ground that mathematicians are fallible: when the deductive method is carried out by a fallible agent, then it comes with its own level of reliability, and so might happen to be equally or even less reliable (...) than existing non-deductive reliable processes—I will refer to this as the reliability argument. The aim of this article is to examine whether the reliability argument forces us to reconsider the commonly accepted epistemic superiority of the deductive method over non-deductive reliable processes. I will argue that the reliability argument is fundamentally correct, but that there is another epistemic property differentiating the deductive method from non-deductive reliable processes. This property is based on the observation that although mathematicians are fallible agents, they are also self-correcting agents. This means that when a proof is produced that only contains repairable mistakes, given enough time and energy, a mathematician or a group thereof should be able to converge towards a correct proof through a finite number of verification and correction rounds, thus providing a guarantee that the considered proposition is true, something that non-deductive reliable processes will never be able to produce. From this perspective, the standard of justification adopted in mathematical practice should be read in a diachronic way: the demand is not that any proof that is ever produced be correct—which would amount to requiring that mathematicians are infallible—but rather that, over time, proofs that contain repairable mistakes be corrected, and proofs that cannot be repaired be rejected. (shrink)

A wave of recent work in metaphysics seeks to undermine the anti-reductionist, functionalist consensus of the past few decades in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. That consensus apparently legitimated a focus on what systems do, without necessarily and always requiring attention to the details of how systems are constituted. The new metaphysical challenge contends that many states and processes referred to by functionalist cognitive scientists are epiphenomenal. It further contends that the problem lies in functionalism itself, and that, to (...) save the causal significance of mind, it is necessary to re-embrace reductionism. We argue that the prescribed return to reductionism would be disastrous for the cognitive and behavioral sciences, requiring the dismantling of most existing achievements and placing intolerable restrictions on further work. However, this argument fails to answer the metaphysical challenge on its own terms. We meet that challenge by going on to argue that the new metaphysical skepticism about functionalist cognitive science depends on reifying two distinct notions of causality (one primarily scientific, the other metaphysical), then equivocating between them. When the different notions of causality are properly distinguished, it is clear that functionalism is in no serious philosophical trouble, and that we need not choose between reducing minds or finding them causally impotent. The metaphysical challenge to functionalism relies, in particular, on a naïve and inaccurate conception of the practice of physics, and the relationship between physics and metaphysics. Key Words: explanation; functionalism; mental causation; metaphysics; reductionism. (shrink)

It is generally recognized that descriptive and normative individualism are logically independent theses. This paper defends the stronger view that recognition of the falsehood of descriptive individualism is crucial to understanding the evolutionary and developmental basis of normative individualism. The argument given for this is not analytic; rather, it is based on empirical generalizations about the evolution of markets with specialized labor, about the nature of information processing in large markets, and about the socialization of human children.

The nature of craft creativity has often been ignored in research which focuses on innovative and novel ideas and thought processes. This view of creativity casts the repetitive nature of craft as antithetical to the disruptive nature of genuine creativity. Drawing on combined enactivist and pragmatist accounts of habits and on a focused cognitive ethnography of a wooden bowl turner, this paper explores the nature of the constraints wrought by habitual action. Habitual action will be shown to be less repetitive (...) than may be initially assumed because of the uncertainty inherent in working with both the wood which forms the initial material and the tools necessary to transform it. Rather, this paper proposes habitual learned movements as an important concept in a pragmatist-informed theory of creativity since they mark the skilled co-ordination of material, tool and maker, at once constraining and enhancing the creative craft process. (shrink)

Controversies over the innateness of cognitive processes, mechanisms, and structures play a persistent role in driving research in philosophy as well as the cognitive sciences, but the appropriate way to understand the category of the innate remains subject to dispute. One venerable approach in philosophy and cognitive science merely contrasts innate features with those that are learned. In fact, Jerry Fodor has recently suggested that this remains our best handle on innateness.

Conceptual integration theory (Fauconnier & Turner, 1998, 2002) is re-examined in the light of recent criticisms (e.g., Gibbs, 2000, 2001). It is argued that the assumption of four independent "cognitive spaces" enters the model primarily as an entailment of the "space," "blending," and "construction" metaphors, leads to unnecessary ambiguity, and works against statement of the theory in a form that supports derivation of testable hypotheses. Several examples from Fauconnier and Turner (2002) are analyzed to show that they can be interpreted (...) more simply, without need of four separate "spaces." Suggestions are made for reformulating conceptual integration theory without the problematic metaphors. (shrink)

Determining how we use our body to support cognition represents an important part of understanding the embodied and embedded nature of cognition. In the present investigation, we pursue this question in the context of a common perceptual task. Specifically, we report a series of experiments investigating head tilt (i.e., external normalization) as a strategy in letter naming and reading stimuli that are upright or rotated. We demonstrate that the frequency of this natural behavior is modulated by the cost of stimulus (...) rotation on performance. In addition, we demonstrate that external normalization can benefit performance. All of the results are consistent with the notion that external normalization represents a form of cognitive offloading and that effort is an important factor in the decision to adopt an internal or external strategy. (shrink)

Accounts of video game play developed from an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic perspective remain relatively scarce. This study collects together an emerging, if scattered, body of research which focuses on the material, practical “work” of video game players. The study offers an example-driven explication of an EMCA perspective on video game play phenomena. The materials are arranged as a “tactical zoom.” We start very much “outside” the game, beginning with a wide view of how massive-multiplayer online games are played within (...) dedicated gaming spaces; here, we find multiple players, machines, and many different sorts of activities going on. Still remaining somewhat distanced from the play of the game itself, we then take a closer look at the players themselves by examining a notionally simpler setting involving pairs taking part in a football game at a games console. As we draw closer to the technical details of play, we narrow our focus further still to examine a player and spectator situated “at the screen” but jointly analyzing play as the player competes in an online first-person shooter. Finally, we go “inside” the game entirely and look at the conduct of avatars on-screen via screen recordings of a massively multiplayer online game. Having worked through specific examples, we provide an elaboration of a selection of core topics of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis that is used to situate some of the unstated orientations in the presentation of data fragments. In this way, recurrent issues raised in the fragments are shown as coherent, interconnected phenomena. In closing, we suggest caution regarding the way game play phenomena have been analyzed in this study, while remarking on challenges present for the development of further EMCA-oriented research on video game play. (shrink)

Accounts of video game play developed from an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic perspective remain relatively scarce. This study collects together an emerging, if scattered, body of research which focuses on the material, practical “work” of video game players. The study offers an example-driven explication of an EMCA perspective on video game play phenomena. The materials are arranged as a “tactical zoom.” We start very much “outside” the game, beginning with a wide view of how massive-multiplayer online games are played within (...) dedicated gaming spaces; here, we find multiple players, machines, and many different sorts of activities going on. Still remaining somewhat distanced from the play of the game itself, we then take a closer look at the players themselves by examining a notionally simpler setting involving pairs taking part in a football game at a games console. As we draw closer to the technical details of play, we narrow our focus further still to examine a player and spectator situated “at the screen” but jointly analyzing play as the player competes in an online first-person shooter. Finally, we go “inside” the game entirely and look at the conduct of avatars on-screen via screen recordings of a massively multiplayer online game. Having worked through specific examples, we provide an elaboration of a selection of core topics of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis that is used to situate some of the unstated orientations in the presentation of data fragments. In this way, recurrent issues raised in the fragments are shown as coherent, interconnected phenomena. In closing, we suggest caution regarding the way game play phenomena have been analyzed in this study, while remarking on challenges present for the development of further EMCA-oriented research on video game play. (shrink)

This essay is about the ensuing problem that in general it is nothelpful to talk about non-standard knowledge practices as modeled after our Western ideas of what knowledge is. It negotiates this problem by arguing that artisanal knowledge is an independent and self-contained mode of knowledge and is arranged in three parts. In the first part an outline is given of the key assumptions of the interactionist conception of knowledge that needs to be put in place as an alternative to (...) the basically Kantian mixture of empiricist and rationalist assumptions of the folk model of Western academic thinking about knowledge. In this interactionist conception of knowledgeartisanal knowledge gets center stage. In the second part, the notion of craftknowledge is opened up as much as possible. The third and final part takes upthe question whether craft knowledge is a cultural universal. (shrink)

A computer can come to understand natural language the same way Helen Keller did: by using “syntactic semantics”—a theory of how syntax can suffice for semantics, i.e., how semantics for natural language can be provided by means of computational symbol manipulation. This essay considers real-life approximations of Chinese Rooms, focusing on Helen Keller’s experiences growing up deaf and blind, locked in a sort of Chinese Room yet learning how to communicate with the outside world. Using the SNePS computational knowledge-representation system, (...) the essay analyzes Keller’s belief that learning that “everything has a name” was the key to her success, enabling her to “partition” her mental concepts into mental representations of: words, objects, and the naming relations between them. It next looks at Herbert Terrace’s theory of naming, which is akin to Keller’s, and which only humans are supposed to be capable of. The essay suggests that computers at least, and perhaps non-human primates, are also capable of this kind of naming. (shrink)

I advocate a theory of syntactic semantics as a way of understanding how computers can think (and how the Chinese-Room-Argument objection to the Turing Test can be overcome): (1) Semantics, considered as the study of relations between symbols and meanings, can be turned into syntax – a study of relations among symbols (including meanings) – and hence syntax (i.e., symbol manipulation) can suffice for the semantical enterprise (contra Searle). (2) Semantics, considered as the process of understanding one domain (by modeling (...) it) in terms of another, can be viewed recursively: The base case of semantic understanding –understanding a domain in terms of itself – is syntactic understanding. (3) An internal (or narrow ), first-person point of view makes an external (or wide ), third-person point of view otiose for purposes of understanding cognition. (shrink)

Habits are the topic of a venerable history of research that extends back to antiquity, yet they were originally disregarded by the cognitive sciences. They started to become the focus of interdisciplinary research in the 1990s, but since then there has been a stalemate between those who approach habits as a kind of bodily automatism or as a kind of mindful action. This implicit mind-body dualism is ready to be overcome with the rise of interest in embodied, embedded, extended, and (...) enactive (4E) cognition. We review the enactive approach and highlight how it moves beyond the traditional stalemate by integrating both autonomy and sense-making into its theory of agency. It defines a habit as an adaptive, precarious, and self-sustaining network of neural, bodily, and interactive processes that generate dynamical sensorimotor patterns. Habits constitute a central source of normativity for the agent. We identify a potential shortcoming of this enactive account with respect to bad habits, since self-maintenance of a habit would always be intrinsically good. Nevertheless, this is only a problem if, following the mainstream perspective on habits, we treat habits as isolated modules. The enactive approach replaces this atomism with a view of habits as constituting an interdependent whole on whose overall viability the individual habits depend. Accordingly, we propose to define a bad habit as one whose expression, while positive for itself, significantly impairs a person’s well-being by overruling the expression of other situationally relevant habits. We end by considering implications of this concept of bad habit for psychological and psychiatric research, in particular with respect to addiction research. (shrink)

We present a multiscale integrationist interpretation of the boundaries of cognitive systems, using the Markov blanket formalism of the variational free energy principle. This interpretation is intended as a corrective for the philosophical debate over internalist and externalist interpretations of cognitive boundaries; we stake out a compromise position. We first survey key principles of new radical views of cognition. We then describe an internalist interpretation premised on the Markov blanket formalism. Having reviewed these accounts, we develop our positive multiscale account. (...) We argue that the statistical seclusion of internal from external states of the system—entailed by the existence of a Markov boundary—can coexist happily with the multiscale integration of the system through its dynamics. Our approach does not privilege any given boundary, nor does it argue that all boundaries are equally prescient. We argue that the relevant boundaries of cognition depend on the level being characterised and the explanatory interests that guide investigation. We approach the issue of how and where to draw the boundaries of cognitive systems through a multiscale ontology of cognitive systems, which offers a multidisciplinary research heuristic for cognitive science. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of a technological revolution that many in the industry think is likely soon to come to pass: neuromedia. In particular, the paper is interested in how this will constitute an especially persuasive kind of extended cognition, and thereby will facilitate extended epistemic states. This will in turn have ramifications for how we understand the epistemic goals of education. The paper argues that the challenges posed by neuromedia remind us that the overarching epistemic goal of education (...) is not orientated towards facilitating a body of knowledge (or the development of mere cognitive skills) but rather is concerned with the development of intellectual character, where this in turn essentially involves the cultivation of intellectual virtues, character traits that are not amenable to extended cognition. (shrink)

What does it take to convert the deliverances of an extended cognitive process into knowledge? It is argued that virtue epistemology, at least of an epistemic externalist kind, offers the resources to satisfactorily answer this question, provided that one rids the view of its implicit commitment to epistemic individualism. Nonetheless, it is also claimed that while virtue reliabilism can accommodate extended cognition, there are limits to the extent to which virtuous epistemic standings can be extended. In particular, it is argued (...) that it is in the nature of intellectual virtue to be directed at non-extended epistemic standings. This point has important implications for an extended virtue epistemology, as is illustrated by considering how this point plays out in the context of the contemporary debate regarding the epistemology of education. (shrink)

Assistive technology is widely used in contemporary special needs education. Our interest is in the extent to which we can conceive of certain uses of AT in this educational context as a form of extended cognition. It is argued that what is critical to answering this question is that the relationship between the student and the AT is more than just that of subject-and-instrument, but instead incorporates a fluidity and spontaneity that puts it on a functional par with their use (...) of the student’s biological cognitive traits. It is claimed that AT use in special needs education offers an especially plausible case of extended cognition for just this reason. It is further maintained that understanding AT in this fashion has some important philosophical and practical ramifications, including how we should conceive of mainstream education, given that this is increasingly conducted within highly technologically-embedded environments. (shrink)

Discussing the workings of technology in care as aesthetic rather than as ethical or epistemological interventions focusses on how technologies engage in and change relations between those involved. Such an aesthetic study opens up a repertoire to address values that are abundant in care, but are as yet hardly theorized. Kamphof studies the problem that sensor technology reveals things about the elderly patients without the patients being aware of this. I suggest improvement of these relations may be considered in aesthetic (...) terms, for instance by developing the affective quality of people’s technological relationships. (shrink)

As is often the case when scientific or engineering fields emerge, new concepts are forged or old ones are adapted. When this happens, various arguments rage over what ultimately turns out to be conceptual misunderstandings. At that critical time, there is a need for an explicit reflection on the meaning of the concepts that define the field. In this position paper, we aim to provide a reasoned framework in which to think about various issues in the field of distributed cognition. (...) We argue that both relevant concepts, distribution and cognition, must be understood as continuous. As it is used in the context of distributed cognition, the concept of distribution is essentially fuzzy, and we will link it to the notion of emergence of system-level properties. The concept of cognition must also be seen as fuzzy, but for a different reason: due to its origin as an anthropocentric concept, no one has a clear handle on its meaning in a distributed setting. As the proposed framework forms a space, we then explore its geography and visit famous landmarks. (shrink)

This article addresses the relationship between technology and institutions and asks whether technology itself is an institution. The argument is that social theorists need to attend better to materiality: the world of things and objects of which technical things form an important class. It criticizes the new institutionalism in sociology for its failure to sufficiently open up the black box of technology. Recent work in science and technology studies (S&TS) and in particular the sociology of technology is reviewed as another (...) route into dealing with technology and materiality. The recent ideas in sociology of technology are exemplified with the author’s study of the development of the electronic music synthesizer. (shrink)

In this paper, the radical view that transparent equipment is the result of an ecological assembly between tool users and physical aspects of the world is critically assessed. According to this perspective, tool users are normally viewed as plastically organized hybrid agents. In this view, such agents are able to interact with tools (artefacts or technologies) in ways that are opportunistic and fully locked to the local task environment. This intimate and flexible interaction would provide grounds for the thesis that (...) cognitive agents and tools constitute literal extended cognitive systems. By contrast, a revised understanding of tool use transparency will be attempted. In this perspective, the interplay between on-line and off-line thinking is understood in terms of a socially reified cognitive delegation that subsumes the advantages normally associated to the so-called ‘open-ended ecological controllers.’ Thus, the notion of transparent technologies can be explored on the basis of a derived or mediated cognitive delegation. This view will be complemented by the notion of communities of practice (CoP). Special sorts of CoP will be proposed as suitable and flexible cognitive environments for the development of tool transparency. (shrink)

Simon’s notion of bounded rationality is deeply intertwined with his activity as a cognitive psychologist and founder of so-called cognitivism, a mainstream approach in cognitive psychology until the 1980s. Cognitivism, understood as ‘symbolic information processing,’ provided the first cognitive psychology foundation to bounded rationality. Has bounded rationality since then fully followed the development of cognitive psychology beyond symbolic information processing in the post-Simonian era? To answer this question, this paper focuses on Simon’s opposition during the 1990s to a new view (...) of cognition called situated cognition, which has since put into question the entire view in cognitive psychology of humans as symbolic information processors. This paper then reads the cognitivism/situated cognition debate through the lens of current bounded rationality research in economics, in order to inquire into whether it has tackled the issues in that controversy; to envisage possible new foundations for a cognitive psychology-based bounded rationality. (shrink)

The social epistemology of science would benefit from paying more attention to the nature of argumentative exchanges. Argumentation is not only a cognitive activity but a collaborative social activity whose functioning needs to be understood from a psychological and communicative perspective. Thus far, social and organizational psychology has been used to discuss how social diversity affects group deliberation by changing the mindset of the participants. Argumentative exchanges have comparable effects, but they depend on cognitive diversity and emerge through critical interaction. (...) An example of a cognitive psychological theory is discussed that explains how mutual reasoning affects how we think, make decisions, and solve problems, as well as how cognitive biases may facilitate an efficient division of cognitive labor. These observations are compared with the existing results in the social epistemology of science. Moreover, I explicate the conceptual differences between the distributed and social processing of information. While argumentative exchanges belong to the latter domain, most existing simulations model distributed processing, which may compromise their real-world relevance and proper conceptual interpretation. However, I aim not to criticize the existing simulation methods but to promote an approach from the cognitive psychology of reasoning that complements the current use of organizational psychology and computer simulations by investigating a different set of mechanisms relating to similar phenomena of interest in the social epistemology of science. (shrink)

Distributed cognition provides a theoretical framework for the analysis of data from socio-technical systems within a problem-solving framework. While the approach has been applied in tightly constrained activity domains, composed of well-structured problems and highly organised infrastructures, little is known about its use in other forms of activity systems. In this paper, we explore how distributed cognition could be applied in less well-constrained settings, with ill-structured problems and loosely organised resource sets, critically reflecting on this using data from a field (...) study. The findings suggest that the use of distributed cognition in an augmented form can be useful in the analysis of a wide range of activity systems in loosely coupled settings. (shrink)

This paper pursues the intertwined tracks of robotics and art since the mid 20th century, taking a loose chronological approach that considers both the devices themselves and their discursive contexts. Relevant research has occurred in a variety of cultural locations, often outside of or prior to formalized robotics contexts. Research was even conducted under the aegis of art or cultural practices where robotics has been pursued for other than instrumental purposes. In hindsight, some of that work seems remarkably prescient of (...) contemporary trends. The context of cultural robotics is a highly charged interdisciplinary test environment in which the theory and pragmatics of technical research confronts the phenomenological realities of physical and social being in the world, and the performative and processual practices of the arts. In this context, issues of embodiment, material instantiation, structural coupling, and machine sensing have provoked the reconsideration of notions of (machine) intelligence and cognitivist paradigms. The paradoxical condition of robotics vis-à-vis artificial intelligence is reflected upon. This paper discusses the possibility of a new embodied ontology of robotics that draws upon both cybernetics and post-cognitive approaches. (shrink)

This paper presents a theory and computational model of the role of emotions in group decision making. After reviewing the role of emotions in individual decision making, it describes social and psychological mechanisms by which emotional and other information is transmitted between individuals. The processes by which these mechanisms can contribute to group consensus are modeled computationally using a program, HOTCO 3, which has been used to simulate simple cases of emotion-based group decision making.

We like Euclidean geometry because we are men [sic], and have eyes and hands, and need to operate a concept of space that will be independent of orientation, distance and size. Lucas, A Treatise on Time and Space.

Emotion-related words differ across societies and eras. Does this mean that emotions themselves differ in similar ways? Three perspectives on language-emotion relations suggest alternative answers to this question. A referential approach implies that any language's emotion concepts provide a potentially perfectible mapping of the emotional world. Constructionist approaches suggest that linguistic concepts shape culturally different emotion perceptions. By contrast, a pragmatic approach emphasizes the performative functions served by conversational uses of emotion words. From this perspective, emotional language is attuned to (...) culture-specific requirements for aligning relations between people and objects. Thus, emotional utterances may be constituents of socially functional emotions rather than separate commentaries on them. Full understanding of cultural variation requires investigation of naturalistic emotional conversations in different societies. (shrink)

The basic human ability to treat quantitative information can be divided into two parts. With proto-arithmetical ability, based on the core cognitive abilities for subitizing and estimation, numerosities can be treated in a limited and/or approximate manner. With arithmetical ability, numerosities are processed (counted, operated on) systematically in a discrete, linear, and unbounded manner. In this paper, I study the theory of enculturation as presented by Menary (2015) as a possible explanation of how we make the move from the proto-arithmetical (...) ability to arithmetic proper. I argue that enculturation based on neural reuse provides a theoretically sound and fruitful framework for explaining this development. However, I show that a comprehensive explanation must be based on valid theoretical distinctions and involve several stages in the development of arithmetical knowledge. I provide an account that meets these challenges and thus leads to a better understanding of the subject of enculturation. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the postulation of irreducible, distributed cognitive systems is necessary for the successful explanatory practice of cognitive science and sociology. Towards this end, and with an eye specifically on the phenomenon of distributed cognition, the debate over reductionism versus emergence is examined from the perspective of Dynamical Systems Theory. The motivation for this novel approach is threefold. Firstly, DST is particularly popular amongst cognitive scientists who work on modelling collective behaviors. Secondly, DST (...) can deliver two distinct arguments in support of the claim that the presence of mutual interactions between group members necessitates the postulation of the corresponding group entity. Thirdly, DST can also provide a succinct understanding of the way group entities exert downward causation on their individual members. The outcome is a naturalist account of the emergent, and thereby irreducible, nature of distributed cognitive systems that avoids the reductionists’ threat of epiphenomenalism, while being well in line with materialism. (shrink)

In Weaving the Web, Berners-Lee defines Social Machines as biotechnologically hybrid Web-processes on the basis of which, “high-level activities, which have occurred just within one human’s brain, will occur among even larger more interconnected groups of people acting as if the shared a larger intuitive brain”. The analysis and design of Social Machines has already started attracting considerable attention both within the industry and academia. Web science, however, is still missing a clear definition of what a Social Machine is, which (...) has in turn resulted in several calls for a “philosophical engineering” ; Halpin et al. 2010). This paper is a first attempt to respond to this call, by combining contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science with epistemology. The idea of philosophical engineering implies that a sufficiently good conception of Social Machines should be of both theoretical and practical advantage. To demonstrate how the present approach can satisfy both objectives it will be used in order to address one of Wikipedia’s most worrying concerns—i.e., the current and ongoing decline in the number of its active contributors. (shrink)

Strong epistemic anti-individualism—i.e., the claim that knowledge can be irreducibly social—is increasingly debated within mainstream and social epistemology. Most existing approaches attempt to argue for the view on the basis of aggregative analyses, which focus on the way certain groups aggregate the epistemic attitudes of their members. Such approaches are well motivated, given that many groups to which we often ascribe group knowledge—such as juries and committees—operate in this way. Yet another way that group knowledge can be generated is on (...) the basis of epistemic collaborations, such as scientific research teams and Transactive Memory Systems. To produce knowledge, epistemic collaborations rely heavily on the mutual interactions of their group members. This is a distinctive feature of epistemic collaborations that renders them resistant to aggregative analyses. To accommodate this kind of group knowledge, the paper combines virtue reliabilism with the hypothesis of distributed cognition in order to introduce the hybrid approach of distributed virtue reliabilism. On this view, beliefs produced by epistemic collaborations entertain positive epistemic standing in virtue of the mutual interactions of their group members; this positive epistemic standing is a collective property; epistemic collaborations qualify as epistemic group agents; collaborative knowledge is a special kind of group knowledge, motivating strong epistemic anti-individualism in a distinctive way. (shrink)