1. The Situation in Cognition 2. Situated Cognition: A Potted Recent History 3. Extensions in Biology, Computation, and Cognition 4. Articulating the Idea of Cognitive Extension 5. Are Some Resources Intrinsically Non-Cognitive? 6. Is Cognition Extended or Only Embedded? 7. Letting Nature Take Its Course.

The first comprehensive presentation of the dynamical approach to cognition. It contains a representative sampling of original, current research on topics such as perception, motor control, speech and language, decision making, and development.

Alva Noë’s _Action in Perception _offers a provocative and vigorous defense of the thesis that vision is enactive: visual experience depends on dispositional motor responses. On this view, vision and action are inextricably bound. In this review, I argue against enactive perception. I raise objections to seven lines of evidence that appear in Noë’s book, and I indicate some reasons for thinking that vision can operate independently of motor responses. I conclude that the relationship between vision and action is causal, (...) not constitutive. I then address three other contentious hypotheses in the book. Noë argues that visual states are not pictorial; he argues that all perception is conceptual; and he argues that the external world makes a constitutive contribution to experience. I am unpersuaded by these arguments, and I offer reasons to resist Noë’s conclusions. (shrink)

Obviously perception is embodied. After all, if creatures were entirely disembodied, how could physical processes in the environment, such as the propagation of light or sound, be transduced into a neurobiological currency capable of generating experience? Is there, however, any deeper, more subtle sense in which perception is embodied? Perhaps. Alva Nos (2004) theory of enactive perception provides one proposal. Where it is commonly thought that.

This is a charming and engaging book that combines careful attention to the phenomenology of experience with an appreciation of the psychology and neuroscience of perception. In some of its aimsfor example, to show problems with a rigid version of a view of visual perception as an inverse optics process of constructing a static 3-D representation from static 2-D information on the retina--it succeeds admirably. As No points out, vision is a process that depends on interactions between the perceiver and (...) the environment and involves contributions from sensory systems other than the eye. He is at pains to note that vision is not passive. His analogy with touch is to the point: touch involves skillful probing and movement, and so does vision, although less obviously and in my view less centrally so. This much is certainly widely accepted among vision scientistsalthough mainstream vision scientists (represented, for example, by Stephen Palmers excellent textbook²) view these points as best seen within a version of the inverse optics view that takes inputs as non-static and as including motor instructions (for example, involving eye movements and head movements).³ The kind of point that No raises is viewed as important at the margins, but as not disturbing the main lines of the picture of vision that descendswith many changesfrom the pioneering work of David Marr in the 1980s (and before him, from Helmholtz). But No shows little interest in mainstream vision science, focusing on non-mainstream ideas in the science of perception, specifically ideas from the anti-representational psychologist J.J. Gibson, and also drawing on Wittgenstein and the phenomenology tradition. There is a sense throughout the book of revolution, of upsetting the applecart. This is a review from the point of view of the applecart. (shrink)

Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction PART I Intentionality Chapter 1 Fodor’ Guide to Mental Representation: The Intelligent Auntie’s Vade-Mecum Chapter 2 Semantics, Wisconsin Style Chapter 3 A Theory of Content, I: The Problem Chapter 4 A Theory of Content, II: The Theory Chapter 5 Making Mind Matter More Chapter 6 Substitution Arguments and the Individuation of Beliefs Chapter 7 Stephen Schiffer’s Dark Night of The Soul: A Review of Remnants of Meaning PART II Modularity Chapter 8 Précis of The Modularity of (...) Mind Chapter 9 Why Should the Mind Be Modular? Chapter 10 Observation Reconsidered Appendix: A Reply to Churchland’s ‘Perceptual Plasticity and Theoretical Neutrality" References Index of Names. (shrink)

In this lucid portrayal of human behavior, Fred Dretske provides an original account of the way reasons function in the causal explanation of behavior.

This book presents an attempt to develop a theory of knowledge and a philosophy of mind using ideas derived from the mathematical theory of communication developed by Claude Shannon. Information is seen as an objective commodity defined by the dependency relations between distinct events. Knowledge is then analyzed as information caused belief. Perception is the delivery of information in analog form for conceptual utilization by cognitive mechanisms. The final chapters attempt to develop a theory of meaning by viewing meaning as (...) a certain kind of information-carrying role. (shrink)

Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? The question invites two standard replies. Some accept the demarcations of skin and skull, and say that what is outside the body is outside the mind. Others are impressed by arguments suggesting that the meaning of our words "just ain't in the head", and hold that this externalism about meaning carries over into an externalism about mind. We propose to pursue a third position. We advocate a very different (...) sort of externalism: an _active externalism_, based on the active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes. (shrink)

1 INTIMACY Among Descartes's most and consequential achievements has been his of the mental as an independent ontological domain. By taking the mind as a substance, with cognitions as its modes, he accorded them a status as self-standing and determinate on their own, without essential regard to other entities. Only with this metaphysical conception in place, could the idea of solipsism-the idea of an intact ego existing with nothing else in the universe-so much as make sense. And behind that engine (...) have trailed the sorry boxcars of hyperbolic doubt. the mind-body problem, the problem of the external world, the problem of other minds, and so on. -/- Although the assumptions have been under fire, off and on. at least since Hegel-including with renewed intensity in recent years … the Cartesian separation that is still so pervasive as to be almost invisible. In particular, inter-relationist accounts retain a principled distinction between the mental and the corporeal-a distinction that is reflected in contrasts like semantics versus syntax, the space of reasons versus the space of causes, or the intentional versus the physical. (Notice that each of these contrasts can be heard either as higher versus lower’ level" or as inner versus outer 'sphere‘.) The contrary of this separation-or battery of separations-is not inter-relationist holism but something that I would like to call the intimacy of the mind's embodiment and embeddedness in the world. The term 'intimacy' is meant to suggest more than just necessary interrelation or interdependence but a kind of commingling or integralness of mind, body,and world-that is, to undermine their very distinctness. The challenge is as much to spell out what this could mean as to make a case for it. Indeed, no sooner does such a possibility seem intelligible at all, than ways bring out its plausibility and significance turn up everywhere. -/- There is little original in what follows. The strategy will be to bring some well known principles of systems analysis to bear on the mind- body-world 'system' in a way that refocuses questions of division and unity, and then to canvas a selection of investigations and proposals - some fairly recent, others not-in the light of this new focus. The hope is that these superficially disparate ideas, none of them new, will seem to converge around the theme of intimacy in a way that illuminates and supports them all. Sorting and and aligning issues in this manner has sometimes been discussed under titles like 'embedded computation’ and 'situated cognition'. (shrink)

This paper -distinguishes between the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition and the Hypothesis of Embedded Cognition, characterizing them as competitors (both motivated by situated, interactive cognitive processing, with the latter being the more conservative of the two interpretations of the data) -clarifies the relation between content externalism and extended cognition -introduces the problem of cognitive bloat, as part of a critical discussion of Clark and Chalmers's "past-endorsement criterion" (if the criterion is embraced, we privilege the internal, endorsing process -- which looks (...) more like an embedded view -- and if the criterion is rejected, bloat follows) and as a problem for extended views more generally -develops a dilemma critical of Clark and Chalmers's "explanatory kinds" argument for extended mind and cognition (arguing that their reasoning faces serious problems regardless of whether one individuates the kinds in question in a fine-grained or a coarse-grained way) -argues that an appeal to functionalism doesn't resolve the issue -argues for the priority, in debates about extended cognition, of the identification of cognitive systems (e.g., because a functionalist approach can't be applied unless we already know what count as inputs and outputs, which requires having already identified the boundaries of the cognitive system). (shrink)

An alarming number of philosophers and cognitive scientists have argued that mind extends beyond the brain and body. This book evaluates these arguments and suggests that, typically, it does not. A timely and relevant study that exposes the need to develop a more sophisticated theory of cognition, while pointing to a bold new direction in exploring the nature of cognition Articulates and defends the “mark of the cognitive”, a common sense theory used to distinguish between cognitive and non-cognitive processes Challenges (...) the current popularity of extended cognition theory through critical analysis and by pointing out fallacies and shortcoming in the literature Stimulates discussions that will advance debate about the nature of cognition in the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

A critique of the hypothesis of extended cognition.

In Cognitive Integration: Attacking The Bounds of Cognition Richard Menary argues that the real pay-off from extended-mind-style arguments is not a new form of externalism in the philosophy of mind, but a view in which the 'internal' and 'external' aspects of cognition are integrated into a whole. Menary argues that the manipulation of external vehicles constitutes cognitive processes and that cognition is hybrid: internal and external processes and vehicles complement one another in the completion of cognitive tasks. However, we cannot (...) make good on these claims without understanding the cognitive norms by which we manipulate bodily external vehicles of cognition. -/- Shaun Gallagher: “Menary sets out some extremely welcome clarifications that help to integrate the models of embodied and extended cognition. He not only provides convincing responses to all of the main objections that have been made against these approaches, he also puts flesh on the integrated model by incorporating concepts such as epistemic action, by expanding the discussion to include a Peircean view of representation, by demonstrating its evolutionary roots, and by exploring its implications for language and cognition. This is one of those books that takes us forward a number of giant steps. Menary makes it comprehensive and comprehensible.” . (shrink)

In ‘‘The Myth of Original Intentionality,’’ Daniel Dennett appears to want to argue for four claims involving the familiar distinction between original (or underived) and derived intentionality. 1. Humans lack original intentionality. 2. Humans have derived intentionality only. 3. There is no distinction between original and derived intentionality. 4. There is no such thing as original intentionality. We argue that Dennett’s discussion fails to secure any of these conclusions for the contents of thoughts.

In ‘‘The Myth of Original Intentionality,’’ Daniel Dennett appears to want to argue for four claims involving the familiar distinction between original (or underived) and derived intentionality.

"This is an important new Cummins work.