Abstract
I critically examine Adams and Garrison’s proposed necessary condition for the mark of the cognitive (Adams and Garrison in Minds Mach 23(3):339–352, 2013). After a brief presentation of their position, I argue not only that their proposal is in need of additional support, but also that it is too restrictive.
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Notes
A&G distinguish between two types of reasons—evolutionary and system centered—and hold that only the latter underwrite cognitive processes. Evolutionary reasons figure in explanations that operate at the level of the species and not at that of the individual system or organism. Whenever I speak of reasons I mean system centered reasons: that is, reasons that are the system’s own and that explain why that particular system has done such-and-so.
A&G express this clearly when they write: “We maintain that if the full and accurate explanation of a system’s behavior must include the systems own reasons, then one is explaining the behavior of a cognitive system and those [...] system centered reasons will be cognitive reasons” (347–348; emphasis mine; cf. 351).
The qualification is important because under certain understandings of the nature of psychological explanations it might turn out to be the case that the availability of a personal-level and normative explanation of an agent’s behavior precludes the possibility of providing a lower-level explanation of that behavior. This view seems to be suggested, for example, by Davidson’s claim that the constraints of rationality, coherence, and consistency which are operative at the level of the agent, “have no echo in physical theory” (Davidson 1970/1980: 231). For present purposes, I ignore this complication.
Hence, A&G face a dilemma. Either they have to assume that certain organisms and systems are not cognitive and then use this assumption to provide support for their proposed mark of the cognitive, or they can try to demonstrate that those organisms and systems are not cognitive by already accepting a mark of the cognitive. Both horns of the dilemma seem unacceptable. The latter fails to provide any support for their mark of the cognitive. The former offers us with no reasons to accept that systems such as bacteria, slime mold, or can-collecting robots are non-cognitive.
The issue at hand is not whether DF is a cognitive system. She clearly is. The issue instead is whether DF’s particular behavior is cognitive. This question is intelligible and one which should admit to an answer. Consider an analogy. Henry is a cognitive system. But is Henry’s walking around the corner a cognitive process? What about Henry’s respiratory system? A mark of the cognitive should allow us to answer those questions.
DF neither acts automatically nor invariably under the same input conditions; she initiates an action when she is asked to; she can choose not to act, even when prompted to do so; and she can initiate action and yet not complete it. Furthermore, DF’s behavior seems to be intelligible in a manner that reflex-responses or other types of automatic behavior are not. DF, like other agnosic patients, is able to learn from her mistakes, and she can recognize success from failure. Milner and Goodale (2006, 144) report that “during the course of several years of living with her profound visual handicap, DF has acquired, wittingly or unwittingly, tricks or adaptive habits to overcome her perceptual difficulties”. For instance, she is now able to monitor her visuomotor behavior in such a way as to inform her overt perceptual judgment (see Murphy et al. 1996).
Here is another reason in support of the claim that DF lacks the relevant concepts. If a subject S possesses a concept C for a property p, then S must be able to discriminate instances of p from instances of not-p. But DF is unable to discriminate between a slot orientated at X degrees and one orientated at X + n degrees on the basis of vision alone.
To be fair to A&G, it is important to point out that in addition to the two understandings of the nature of reasons explanation that I presented in “The Case of Visual Agnosia” section, A&G also spell out the nature of reasons explanation in terms of the notion of representation. They seem to hold that if an explanation of S’s behavior requires us to cite the representational content of S’s states, then S’s explanation is a reasons explanation and, consequently, S’s behavior is cognitive (cf. 346). This third understanding of reasons explanation might be thought to rescue A&G from my accusation that their proposed mark of the cognitive is too restrictive. Here is how. It is plausible to hold that DF’s dorsal stream represents the orientation of the slot. But if such a representing takes place, then when explaining DF’s behavior we can appeal to the representational content of DF’s internal states. Therefore, DF’s behavior turns out to be cognitive.
I am not convinced by the provided response. First, it is not clear whether such permissive understanding of representation—one that permits us to say that DF’s dorsal stream represents the orientation of the slot—is in agreement with A&G’s position. For example, A&G maintain that the states that do the representing must be capable of representing non-actual states of affairs. But is DF’s dorsal stream capable of doing that? Second, even if it turns out that one can explain DF’s behavior by appealing to the representational content of her states, the availability of such an explanation does not vitiate the fact there are still two understandings of the nature of reasons explanation that suggest that DF’s behavior is not cognitive. This is a pressing problem for A&G since they do accept those understandings of the nature of reasons explanation.
References
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Elpidorou, A. Reasoning About the Mark of the Cognitive: A Response to Adams and Garrison. Minds & Machines 24, 201–211 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-013-9319-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-013-9319-1