Is this Table Meaningless?

Maybe Andrew should take TSRM to task for this meaningless list of "affordances".

Is this edible? 2

Does the surface of this statue really structure light in such a way as to specify whether it is edible for humans?

Another Note on Merritt's Abstract

we might suppose that the claims made by Adams and Aizawa as to what cognition must be are misguided – that indeed, cognition need not be marked by non-derived content and furthermore, that the proper response to such criticism is not a retreat, but an even more liberal account of extended cognition.

It sounds like the strategy is to propose another "mark of the cognitive".  Sounds reasonable to me.

Chemero, 2009, on Explaining Cognition

Tony now and again writes of "explaining cognition as mental gymnastics".  So, for example, on p. 43, he writes,

van Rooij, Bongers, and Haselager's dynamical account of imagined action show[s] how radical embodied cognitive science can explain cognition as the unfolding of a brain-body-world system, and not as mental gymnastics.

To me, it is a little odd to suggest that cognitivists want to explain cognition as mental gymnastics; cognition just is mental gymnastics.  It's what the cognitivists think cognition is.  And, I take it that RECSers hypothesize that cognition is the unfolding of a brain-body-world system, which a cognitivist might call "behavior".

A Note on Merritt's Abstract

As Adams and Aizawa (2008), e.g., have suggested, cognitive processes trade in non-derived content and a couple system of the sort Clark and Chalmers (1998) envision could never be characterized in this manner.

Now, this is technically not the A&A view.  We do not maintain that a coupled system could never be said to have non-derived content.  It's just that, as a matter of contingent empirical fact, this does not typically happen.  We are not claiming that extracranial non-derived content or extended cognition is impossible.

But, I don't see that this technicality is crucial to Merritt's overall argument.

Is this edible? 1

Does the way this stuff structures light provide sufficient information to determine whether this is edible?

How about this?

How about this?

Cognition versus Behavior According to Menary

In "Cognitive Integration and the Extended Mind," Menary writes,

This second wave of arguments also takes a more enactive approach to cognition, seeing it as constituted by our bodily activities in the world in conjunction with neural processes and vehicles (Menary, 2010, p. 227).

So, if cognition is constituted by bodily activities in the world in conjunction with neural processes and vehicles, then how is this different from behavior?  After all, think about how Skinner describes behavior in the introduction to Verbal Behavior,

MEN ACT upon the world, and change it, and are changed in turn by the consequences of their action. Certain processes, which the human organism shares with other species, alter behavior so that it achieves a safer and more useful interchange with a particular environment. When appropriate behavior has been established, its consequences work through similar processes to keep it in force. If by chance the environment changes, old forms of behavior disappear, while new consequences build new forms.
     Behavior alters the environment through mechanical action, and its properties or dimensions are often related in a simple way to the effects produced. When a man walks toward an object, he usually finds himself closer to it; if he reaches for it, physical contact is likely to follow; and if he grasps and lifts it, or pushes or pulls it, the object frequently changes position in appropriate directions. All this follows from simple geometrical and mechanical principles. (Skinner, 1957, p. 1)

Surely Menary has options here, but which one does he take? If by "cognition" Menary just means behavior, then I'm for that kind of extended cognition.  How could there no be extended hammering behavior?  Hammering behavior has to include arms and a hammer, right?

Michele Merritt Joins the Fray

Enacted Cognition, Mental Institutions, and Socio-Functionally Extended Minds

Michele Merritt, Ph.D.
University of South Carolina
mindasbrain@hotmail.com

Critics of the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition have argued that „extended minds‟ fail to be genuinely cognitive for various reasons. As Adams and Aizawa (2008), e.g., have suggested, cognitive processes trade in non-derived content and a couple system of the sort Clark and Chalmers (1998) envision could never be characterized in this manner. One way to respond to such concerns is to retreat into a more moderate position, as is exemplified by Clark‟s (2008) recent Hypothesis of Organism-Centered Cognition, which still places the intrinsic nature of intentional states „inside‟ the organism, but allows that cognitive processes are often constituted by more than mere biological brains. On the other hand, we might suppose that the claims made by Adams and Aizawa as to what cognition must be are misguided – that indeed, cognition need not be marked by non-derived content and furthermore, that the proper response to such criticism is not a retreat, but an even more liberal account of extended cognition. We find this suggestion made by Gallagher (2008), who argues that certain social structures – what he calls “Mental Institutions” – are genuine cases of cognitive extension. In this paper, it is my aim to defend the idea that the mind can and often is “socially extended” and that if this is so, there turns out to be no reason to suppose that all cognitive processes must trade in non-derived content. To add to Gallagher‟s original insights, I will use the phenomenon of dance (cf. Noё, 2009) as a model for the way a socially extended mind might work, and in particular, how conceiving of cognition like a dance bolsters the idea that much of what we do in the act of thinking can best be understood as “Participatory Sense Making.” (cf. DeJaeger & DiPaolo, 2007). While it may be the case that certain types of cognitive processing can be argued to operate with intrinsic content, I will argue that this is only by virtue of these processes first being marked by a more primary mode of cognition – namely, social cognition. As a way to practically apply this idea of Mental Institutions as a mechanism that socially extends the mind, I will examine gender as an „institution,‟ one that fulfills the requirements laid out by Gallagher insofar as it includes cognitive practices that are produced in specific times and places and it is activated in ways that extend our cognitive processes when we interact with or are coupled to it in the right way. As a final component to the paper, I argue that although this more liberal account of extended cognition dispenses with the need to preserve non-derived content as the sole marker of „the mind,‟ it does not imply that we ought to stop thinking of the mind in functional terms, an implication Gallagher himself draws from his own argument. I propose instead that we adopt a revised functionalist account – what I term “Socio-Functionalism” – in order to take stock of socially extended systems like the mind.

Is this dig-intoable?

TSRM suggest that the structure of light enables you to visually perceive whether a thing is dig-intoable or not.  (Cf. TSRM, 1981, p. 261).  But, do you visually perceive this?  This could be a solid matrix of rock or it could be soft dirt or it could be a thin layer of dirt over concrete.  Can you tell by looking?

Or, run this objection like the others.  Get two boxes.  Fill one with concrete and cover this by a thin layer of dirt and fill the other with dirt.  You cannot visually perceive the dig-intoability of the one versus the other.

It's an Empirical Question versus It's an Open Empirical Question

Over the years, I have heard philosophers note that "P is an empirical question" with the implication that we should withold judgment on P.  But, the observation that P is an empirical question should lead us to suspend judgment only if P is an open empirical question, one that current empirical work indicates is not largely settled.

So, for example, I take it that it is an empirical question whether or not there are elephants in Africa, but it is not an open empirical question. Similarly, I take it that it is an empirical question whether or not surfaces often constitute affordances, but the point of my arguments about exploding boxes is that it many cases it is not an open empirical question.  They are empirical questions where our scientific understanding is far enough along that we know that the pick-up-ability of a thing is not often constituted by the surfaces of a thing, but also by its internal structure.  Similarly, it's an empirical question whether a particular pattern in an electrical field specifies something edible, but it is not an open question whether a particular pattern in an electrical field specifies something edible.  It does not, as we can tell from, for example, the experiments Kalmijn did on sharks.

In cases of empirical questions, let's just cut to the heart of the matter and see whether the empirical question is open or not.  That's what's typically up for grabs regarding a claim; not its status as empirical or a priori.

Call for Book Proposals: Studies in Brain and Mind

Studies in Brain and Mind is a book series published by Springer.  It covers all areas in which philosophy and neuroscience intersect: philosophy of mind, philosophy of neuroscience, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of psychiatry, neurophilosophy, and neuroethics.

Under the previous editor, John Bickle, the series published several high quality books (see: http://www.springer.com/series/6540 for a list, but the series has been inactive in recent years. The series is now being relaunched with a new Editor-in-Chief (Gualtiero Piccinini) and Editorial Board: 

Berit Brogaard (UM St Louis)
Carl Craver (Wash U)
Eduoard Machery (Pitt)
Oron Shagrir (Hebrew University in Jerusalem)
Mark Sprevak (Edinburgh U)

The Editors aim to publish technical books for an academic audience of graduate students and up.  They see the series as a great opportunity for the field, providing a venue for specialists as well as junior authors.  Some high quality book projects are too specialized or their authors are too junior for other publishers.  Studies in Mind and Brain fills this gap.  They hope to make Studies in Brain and Mind an excellent addition to the development of interdisciplinary research in philosophy and neuroscience.

Every book published in the series will be available simultaneously in print and as e-book in SpringerLink.  If a library has purchased the Springer e-book package, visitors of the library are able to download these PDF’s for free or order a paperback for Euro: 24.95 / USD 24,95.

The series aims for a high level of clarity, rigor, novelty, and scientific competence.  Book proposals and complete manuscripts of 200 or more pages are welcome.  Initial proposals can be sent to Gualtiero Piccinini at piccininig@umsl.edu.

For more information, see the Series website or contact Piccinini.

Please help spread the news if you have a chance (e.g., on other pertinent blogs).

The affordance for alight-on-ability

So, take to boxes 3' x 3' x 3' in size. They are physically identical on the outside, but one is rigged with a motion sensitive device so that it will explode if you move near it.

I say they are visually perceived to be the same, but that they afford different things (one affords alight-on-ability; the other does not). So, one does not perceive alight-on-ability.  (Cf. TSRM, 1981, p. 261 for the example of alight-on-overability).

Julian & Mirko Nurturing the Mind

Here they do that, while here I enjoy some Lagavulin.

Spina's Review of Noë 's Out of Our Heads

Here.

The Perception of Leap-over-ability

So, take to boxes 3' x 3' x 3' in size. They are physically identical on the outside, but one is rigged with a motion sensitive device so that it will explode if you move near it.

I say they are visually perceived to be the same, but that they afford different things (one affords leap-overability; the other does not). So, one does not perceive leap-over-ability.  (Cf. TSRM, 1981, p. 261 for the example of leap-overability).

Books available for Review at Philosophical Psychology

Their list is here. 

If you are interested in writing a book review for [them], email <mitch@mechanism.ucsd.edu>; 
please include both a detailed CV and contact information (including physical mailing address) with your request.


The Extended Mind
Richard Menary (Ed.)
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010
424 pages, ISBN: 0262014033 (hbk); $40.00

But, there is also
The Character of Consciousness
David J. Chalmers
New York: Oxford University Press, 2010
624 pages, ISBN: 0195311108 (pbk); $29.95

Color Ontology and Color Science
Jonathan Cohen and Mohan Matthen (Eds.)
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010
456 pages, ISBN: 0262513757 (pbk); $45.00

How the Mind Uses the Brain (To Move the Body and Image the Universe)
Ralph D. Ellis & Natika Newton
Chicago: Open Court, 2010
xxx + 267 pages, ISBN: 0812696638 (pbk); $39.95

Embodiment and the Inner Life: Cognition and Consciousness in the Space of Possible Minds
Murray Shanahan
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010
222 pages, ISBN: 0199226555 (pbk); $59.95

Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science
John Stewart, Olivier Gapenne, and Ezequiel A. Di Paolo (Eds.)
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011
481 pages, ISBN: 0262014602 (hbk); $40.00

More fun in Edinburgh

CALL FOR PAPERS: Bodies of Thought: Fleshy Subjects, Embodied Minds, & Human Natures.

9^th-10^th June 2011, Royal Society of Edinburgh
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

• Dr Christine Battersby (Reader Emerita in Philosophy, University of Warwick)
• Professor Susan Oyama (Professor Emerita in Psychology, John Jay College and CUNY Graduate Center, New York)
• Professor Michael Wheeler (Professor of Philosophy, University of Stirling).

The aim of this event is to foster a dialogue between researchers in feminist philosophy working on debates around the body, and researchers in philosophy of cognitive science with interests in embodied cognition and the extended mind. Many theorists of embodiment now think of mind and cognition as being continuous with life, in some theoretically significant way. Thus, contributions from those working in relevant areas of philosophy of biology will also form a natural part of this dialogue.

Recent research across these different fields often shares a central concern: to challenge dualistic modes of thinking inherited from a broadly Cartesian paradigm, and to find alternative frameworks which no longer position mind and body, or nature and culture, as fundamentally distinct or opposed. In keeping with this, many of those working in both feminist philosophy and recent philosophy of the cognitive and biological sciences have been engaged in challenging the divide between material and biological processes on the one hand, and cultural constructivism and representation on the other. Instead of remaining within a clear-cut nature/nurture divide, thinkers in both fields seek to re-think matter, body and environment as playing an active and generative role in the formation of knowledge, memory and identities.
Despite these productive resonances, thinkers in these different fields do not often have opportunities to engage directly with one another: the aim of this conference is to create an occasion for such engagement, and to foster productive conversations between researchers in feminist philosophy and the philosophy of the cognitive and biological sciences, so as to enhance the resources and reference points available to each of these groups.

We are seeking papers of 20-25 minutes (not including discussion time) which will contribute to this dialogue. Papers may adopt an approach from either feminist philosophy, or the philosophy of the cognitive or biological sciences (or related areas), and need not directly combine these different fields (though we welcome contributions which do so).
Possible topics include but are not restricted to the following:

• feminist philosophies of the body; fleshy subjects and embodied selves; sexed embodiment, identity and otherness;
• the role of the body and/or the material environment in knowledge, memory, learning and perception; reason and embodiment; materiality, bodies, and cognition;
• non-dualistic approaches to the body and its relation to mind / thought / spirit / consciousness
• life/mind, nature/nurture, sex/gender, biology/culture: critical perspectives and alternative approaches
• re-thinking the nature and sites of intelligence; the role of process in the formation of knowing bodies and bodies of knowledge

Possible approaches include those drawing on phenomenology and continental philosophy (e.g. Nietzsche, Bergson, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty); philosophy of cognitive science, especially debates in extended mind/embodied cognition; feminist philosophy; process philosophy; developmental systems theory; the enactive account of life and mind; new materialisms (eg Grosz, Deleuze).
Proposals of c.500 words should be emailed to Rachel Jones (r.e.jones@dundee.ac.uk) by Friday 4th March 2011.

Please note: we have a small number of bursaries for postgraduates and early career researchers to participate in this event. Please indicate when submitting your abstract if you wish to be considered for such a bursary, and indicate your academic status (e.g. PhD student, early career researcher).

This conference is the first of three events being organised as part of an RSE funded Network in the Arts and Humanities hosted by the Philosophy Programme at the University of Dundee. The aim of the Network is to engender dialogue between feminist philosophers and other key areas of contemporary philosophical debate. Subsequent events will focus on issues of gender and sexed embodiment in the contemporary visual arts as well as on the productive links between feminist philosophy and philosophy of education. For further information, or to be added to the Network mailing list, please contact the Network organiser, Dr Rachel Jones: r.e.jones@dundee.ac.uk

(credits to Jon Protevi at NewAPPS)

I wish I could read French ...

so,  I would know whether Spaulding has killed me or not.  For the Franco-literate there is this.

Blomberg Review of Rowlands' New Science

In Metapsychology here.

I have my copy of Rowlands' book, which looks interesting, but alas I doubt I can get to this until June.

Gallagher on the Overextended Mind

More here.

Andy Clark at Rensselaer

More info here.

The perception of stand-on-ability

So, take to boxes 3' x 3' x 3' in size. They are physically identical on the outside, but one is rigged with a touch sensitive device so that it will explode if you stand on it.

I say they are visually perceived to be the same, but that they afford different things (one affords stand-on-ability; the other does not). So, one does not perceive stand-on-ability.

Spauling on EC

Shannon Spaulding, "Overextended Cognition", (Forthcoming), in Philosophical Psychology. 

Abstract 

Extended cognition is the view that some cognitive processes extend beyond the brain. One prominent strategy of arguing against extended cognition is to offer necessary conditions on cognition and argue that the proposed extended processes fail to satisfy these conditions (Adams and Aizawa, 2008; Rupert, 2010; Weiskopf, 2008). I argue that this strategy is misguided and fails to refute extended cognition. I suggest a better way to evaluate the case for extended cognition that should be acceptable to all parties, captures the intuitiveness of previous objections, and avoids the problems with the strategy of offering necessary conditions on cognition. I conclude that extended cognition theorists have failed to establish the truth of extended cognition.

Link here.

Maybe some surfaces can constitute some affordances

Perhaps the composition and layout of surfaces constitutes what they afford.  (Gibson, 1979, p. 127).

If see-ability were an affordance, then maybe it could be an affordance that is constituted by the composition and layout of surfaces.

If ability-to-be-an-occluder were an affordance, then maybe it could be an affordance that is constituted by the composition and layout of surfaces.

I don't know that these are the kinds of affordances that EPists have envisioned.  Maybe not.  But, they look to be exceptional cases.  The point of the exploding boxes cases is to get a clear simple case to use as a beach head, then press on from there.  I don't think one necessarily has to eliminate all cases of the composition and layout of surfaces constituting affordances in order to challenge the significance of the view.

Blogging will be slow for the next few days as I am on the road

S does not visually perceive pick-up-ability in the normal box

Here's the argument.

Take two ring boxes that are physically identical on the outside (in their surfaces, if you will), but one is normal where the other is rigged with a touch-sensitive explosive mechanism.  If you touch the box, it will explode.  Give them identical conditions of lighting, temperature, etc.  That's just my stipulation.

Suppose we agree that if you can't touch the box, then you can't pick it up.  (Some room to argue there, perhaps.)

Suppose we further agree that we do not visually perceive pick-up-ability in the exploding box.  It doesn't have the property of pick-up-ability, so you cannot (factively) visually perceive it.

(*) Since they are physically identical on the outside (in their surfaces, if you will) and in their background lighting conditions, one will have identical visual perceptions when viewing them.  

(*) is not a stipulation, but an empirical hypothesis.  So there is perhaps some room to challenge it.

The stipulation plus (*), however, appear to suffice for a very simple and kind of radical objection to EP.

If subject S does not visually perceive pick-up-ability in the exploding box, then since what S visually perceives of the exploding one, S perceives of the normal one, S does not visually perceive pick-up-ability in the normal box.

So, S does not visually perceive pick-up-ability in the normal box.

Gibson: Are Affordances Constituted by the Composition and Layout of Surfaces?

I have described the environment as the surfaces that separate substances from the medium in which the animals live. But I have also described what the environment affords animals, mentioning the terrain, shelters, water, fire, objects, tools, other animals, and human displays. How do we go from surfaces to affordances? And if there information in light for the perception of surfaces, is there information for the perception of what they afford?  Perhaps the composition and layout of surfaces constitutes what they afford.  (Gibson, 1979, p. 127).

So, here is a crucial juncture for Gibson.  He's got all this apparatus about surfaces.  (Sentence 1)  He's got all this talk about affordances.  (Sentence 2) How do they fit together?  (Sentence 3)  Maybe information from surfaces could give you information about affordance? (Sentence 4).  But, how could that work?  Possible answer: The composition and layout of surfaces constitutes what they afford.  (Sentence 5.)

But, the problem is that the composition and layout of surfaces does not constitute what they afford.

The pick-up-ability of a box is not constituted by its surface; it's constituted by what's inside, namely, not having a touch-sensitive explosive device inside.

The walk-on-ability of pond ice is not constituted by its surface; it's constituted by its whole thickness.

The sit-on-ability of a chair is not constituted by its surface; it's constituted by the weight bearing properties of the whole of the components.

TSRM and Exploding-Box-Like Cases

In comments a couple of posts back, Andrew has claimed that the exploding box type cases have a pretty marginal significance for EP.   Setting aside for a moment whether those type cases work, here is how I see it being sort of important for TSRM at least.  (Yesterday was why it should matter to Gibson.)

What these cases bear on is the idea that there is lawful specification of affordance by an optical property.

Thus we have two laws relating properties: 'o-ness -> c-ness' (between occurrent property and affordance) and 'e-ness -> o-ness' (between optical property and occurrent environmental property). By transitivity we have: 'e-ness -> c-ness'. That is, there is a lawful specification of an affordance by an optical property. In sum, there is a legitimate construal of dispositions and of natural law that, in principle, allows affordances to be optically specified, thus denying (on grounds separate from those identified in Section 4) Fodor and Pylyshyn their argument against the direct perception of ecologically-significant properties. Recall that Fodor and Pylyshyn admit quite cheerfully in the conclusion of their Section 4 that if there were laws about ecological kinds then there could be direct detection of ecological kinds. (TSRM, 1981, p. 266).

So, I'm pursuing (in my blogolife), though I do not yet claim to have, an objection that goes pretty close to the heart of the TSRM paper.  I'm challenging the idea that there is a lawful specification of affordances by optical properties.  The argument might not work, but I'm not just firing random shots in the air.

Gibson, 1979, Chapter 8

Andrew just suggested that the exploding box example is not a problem for EP.  But, it's the kind of case that appears to be relevant in evaluating empirical claims suggested in the following:

I have described the environment as the surfaces that separate substances from the medium in which the animals live. But I have also described what the environment affords animals, mentioning the terrain, shelters, water, fire, objects, tools, other animals, and human displays. How do we go from surfaces to affordances? And if there information in light for the perception of surfaces, is there information for the perception of what they afford?  (Gibson, 1979, p. 127).

So, consider the last question: "If there information in light for the perception of surfaces, is there information for the perception of what they afford?"

Now, there is, to my mind, an ambiguity in this.  Notice that, strictly speaking, Gibson is writing about surfaces, not objects.  To see this, replace the pronoun with its antecedent:

(A) If there information in light for the perception of surfaces, is there information for the perception of what surfaces afford?

Contrast that with the question: 

(B) If there information in light for the perception of surfaces of an object, is there information for the perception of what the object affords?

Now, (A) is a little odd, since it is perhaps not the surface of the fish, say, that affords edibility, but the "meat" of the fish that affords edibility.  Or, to use a TSRM example, it is not the surface of a thing that affords potability.


Now, contrast these questions with some more restrictive questions:

(A') If there information in light for the perception of surfaces, is there information for the perception of what surfaces afford prehension?

Contrast that with the question: 

(B') If there information in light for the perception of surfaces of an object, is there information for the perception of what the object affords prehension?

Maybe this too reads a bit awkwardly, but one gets the idea (I hope) that it is not the information for all affordances that is provided by information in light for the perception of surfaces; instead, it is only the information for prehension affordances that is provided by information in the light for perception of surfaces.

Finally, there are questions about even weaker matters, like the one's Noë hints at,

(A'') If there information in light for the perception of surfaces, is there information for the perception of some of the properties that surfaces afford?

Contrast that with the question: 

(B'') If there information in light for the perception of surfaces of an object, is there information for the perception of some of the properties that the object affords prehension?

Noë on Exploring the Environment

Actionism is committed to the idea that perception is active, but not in the sense that it requires that one move. What is required is that one understand the relevance of movement to action, and that one knows what would happen if one were to move. Perception is active, according to the actionist, in the same way that thought is active. We exercise our sensorimotor understanding when we see.
(Noë, 2010, p. 247).

According to the sensorimotor or, as I shall call it, actionist approach, perceiving is an activity of exploring the environment making use of this kind of knowledge of the sensory effects of movement. 
(Noë, 2010, p. 245)

So, Noë doesn't think that perception requires movement, but he does think that perceiving is an activity of exploring the environment.  But, then, how does one explore an environment without moving?

Fodor on Thinking in English/Pictures

From a book review in which Fodor spends a lot of time challenging argument for the view that we do not think in English, Menary takes the following:

 “I wouldn’t be in the least surprised, for example, if it turned out that some arithmetic thinking is carried out by executing previously memorised algorithms that are defined over public language symbols for numbers (“now carry the ‘2’ and so forth”).” (Fodor 1998, p. 72)

This looks bad for A&A, but the context matters.  So, here is more of Fodor's book review:

I want to end by returning to a point I've already made in passing. I don't think that there are decisive arguments for the theory that all thought is in Mentalese. In fact, I don't think it's even true, in any detail, that all thought is in Mentalese. I wouldn't be in the least surprised, for example, if it turned out that some arithmetic thinking is carried out by executing previously memorized algorithms that are defined over public language symbols for numbers ("Now carry the '2,'" and so forth). It's quite likely that Mentalese co-opts bits of natural language in all sorts of ways; quite likely the story about how it does so will be very complicated indeed by the time that the psychologists get finished telling it.
     But here's a bet that I'm prepared to make: For all our philosophical purposes (e.g., for purposes of understanding what thought content is, and what concept possession is, and so forth), nothing essential is lost if you assume that all thought is in Mentalese. Hilary Putnam once remarked that if you reject the analytic/synthetic distinction, you'll be right about everything except whether there is an analytic/synthetic distinction. Likewise, I imagine, in the present case: If you suppose that all thought is in Mentalese, you'll be right about everything except whether all thought is in Mentalese. More than that is maybe more than it's reasonable to ask for. (Fodor, 1998, p. 72).

Now, this is a kind of puzzling concession on Fodor's part, but he seems to be willing to make it only because he thinks nothing philosophically interesting turns on it (and because the evidence is less than decisive).  And, if I thought that I might agree.  But, something philosophically interesting does seem to me to turn on this, so I don't agree.

So, I want some empirical evidence that we do arithmetic in English or in pictures.  Fodor notes the inadequacy of the taking literally the familiar claim that we think in English.  This seems to me to be all that Menary has.

As for Dehaene, I'm not holding my breath for decisive evidence.  The issue has been around for a while without resolution to the satisfaction of all.

SFB/TRR 62 Kolloquium: Extended Social Cognition and Theories of Mind - 17.1.2011

Info here.

Noë on Gibson on Affordances

Here is a kind of interesting passage from Noe's paper:

On a familiar reading of Gibson (1979), he is said to have held something like this. For example, Campbell (2002) characterizes Gibson as follows:

... suppose, for example, that an unfamiliar piece of apparatus appears on a workbench. I have no idea what this thing is for. I don't know if I can touch it - maybe I will be electrocuted, or the thing will blind me, if I do that. Or maybe it is simply the latest kind of television, or a paper weight. So I don't see it as affording anything in particular. In that case, by Gibson's theory, the thing should be simply invisible; I should be able to see it only when I am told what it is for. But that is not a persuasive conclusion; it seems perfectly obvious that we can see things without knowing what they can be used for.
(Campbell, 2002, p.143)

As I read Gibson he is not committed to such a conclusion, for it is not Gibson's view that we only see affordances, or that we can only see objects in so far as we can see their affordances. Gibson's point comes earlier: that we can see affordances. The significance of his thought is this: for Gibson, perceptual consciousness is not confined to so-called categorical properties of things, such as shape say, or size, or qualities like colour. Gibson is advancing 'the radical hypothesis' that 'the "values", and "meanings" of things in the environment can be perceived directly' (Gibson, 1979, p.127).  (Noë, 2010, p. 247).

Now, I had always thought that Gibson's view is that one always perceives affordances.  I'm not entirely sure why, but I thought that perception was always supposed to work something like this: Affordances structure light (for example) and humans pick up the information in the light.  Simple.

I wonder how many people read Gibson as Noë does.  Comments welcome.  Comments with references to Gibsonian pronouncements even more welcome.

But, suppose that Noë is right.  Is there some place where Gibson spells out when one perceives (or can perceive) affordances and when not.  In other words, when do we get affordance perception and when do we not?

Noë's Activism versus The Movement View

I've just started Noë's recent "Vision without Representation".  In it, he draws a distinction between Activism and The Movement View:

1. Actionism

This is the view that seeing requires the possession and exercise of knowledge of the sensory effects of movement (sensorimotor understanding, in other words).

2. The Movement View

On this view, actual physical movement is necessary for seeing. (Noë, 2010, p. 250).

This is, in essential respects, the distinction I marked in "Consciousness: Don't Give up on the Brain", in terms of Strong and Weak Enactivism:

what we might call Noë’s “strong enactivism”.  This is the view that bodily movement is necessary for perception or perceptual consciousness.  Contra Noë’s strong enactivism, there is solid empirical evidence against the view that consciousness requires the joint operation of the brain, body, and world or that seeing is an activity of exploring the world.  This evidence consists of certain experiments and clinical observations involving neuromuscular blockade that reveal perception without bodily movement.  Section 3 will challenge what we might call Noë’s “weak enactivism”.  Noë claims that “For mere stimulation to constitute perceptual experience—that is, for it to have genuine world-presenting content—the perceiver must possess and make use of sensorimotor knowledge.”   Perhaps we can drop the idea that a perceiver must make use of sensorimotor knowledge in the form of bodily movement in order to perceive.  Perhaps instead, in the absence of the joint operation of the brain, body, and world, tacit knowledge of sensorimotor contingencies has the role in perception that Noë attributes to it.  (Aizawa, 2010, p. 264)

Call for Papers Special Issue of *Philosophical Explorations* on "Extended Cognition and Epistemic Action"

Guest Editors: Andy Clark (University of Edinburgh), Duncan Pritchard (University of Edinburgh), Krist Vaesen (Eindhoven University of Technology)

Submission Deadline: September 15, 2011

Invited Contributors: Fred Adams (University of Delaware) & Ken Aizawa (Centenary College of Louisiana), Ronald Giere (University of Minnesota), Sanford Goldberg (Northwestern University), Richard Menary (University of Wollongong) and Kim Sterelny (Australian National University and Victoria University).

Background and Aim

According to the thesis of extended cognition, cognitive processes do not need to be located inside the skin of the cognizing agent. Humans routinely engage their wider artifactual environment to extend the capacities of their naked brain. They often rely so much on external aids (notebooks, watches, smartphones) that the latter become a proper part of a hybrid (human-artifact) cognitive system.

The thesis of extended cognition has been influential in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, linguistics, informatics, and ethics, but, surprisingly, not in epistemology. The discipline concerned with one of the most remarkable products of human cognition, viz. knowledge, has largely ignored the suggestion that her main object of study might be produced by processes outside the human skin.

In this special issue of *Philosophical Explorations* we therefore are looking for papers that explore the ramifications of the thesis of extended cognition for contemporary epistemology in general, and for conceptualizations of epistemic action in particular. The special issue will include five invited papers (by Fred Adams & Kenneth Aizawa, Ronald Giere, Sanford Goldberg, Richard Menary and Kim Sterelny), plus two contributions selected from the papers submitted in response to this open call for papers.

We expect contributions discussing the impact of extended cognition on issues as: epistemic agency and responsibility, cognitive ability, ownership of belief, the distribution of epistemic credit, the sources of belief, artifactual testimony, the growth of knowledge, non-propositional knowledge, the evolution and reliability of extended cognitive processes, the varieties of extended epistemic action.

Submission Details

Please send a pdf-version of your paper (max. 8000 words) to Krist Vaesen. Contributions that do not make it to the special issue may be considered for publication in one of the regular issues of *Philosophical Explorations*.

Further Inquiries

Please direct any inquiries about this call for papers to Krist Vaesen.

Adams and Aizawa's Stipulation

In the final subsection I argue that cognitive scientists don’t care about Adams and Aizawa’s stipulation. There is empirical research in cognitive neuroscience that does not respect the stipulation, therefore Adams and Aizawa ought to give it up.

Now, A&A have been pretty careful to make explicit that we are not defining cognition in terms of bearing non-derived content.  There was, however, one point in The Bounds of Cognition where we slipped a little.  (See discussion here.)  Rather than stipulating that cognitive processing involve non-derived representations, we hypothesize that cognitive processes involve non-derived representations.  In this, we think we are following the views of cognitivist cognitive psychologists.  So, Menary, it seems to me, fashions this uncharitable interpretation, then bludgeons us with it.

I take it that Dehaene and colleagues are doing empirical research on cognition and yet if we are to take Adams and Aizawa’s underived content condition seriously they cannot be. This seems to me to be decisive. Scientists often ignore the strictures and demarcations laid down a priori by philosophers. Philosophers, such as Adams and Aizawa, may think that they are providing a theory of underived content for cognitive scientists (2001, p. 50), yet cognitive scientists may not be at all interested in these theories because their work does not need them, or they may not be working only with representations with underived content. (Menary, 2010).

But, of course, scientists don't care about the stipulations of philosophers.  They often don't care about anything by philosophers.  But, that's not what we are up to.  The idea is that there is this scientific tradition of cognitivism that postulates mental representations with non-derived content.  This tradition is apparently being challenged by other scientists (and philosophers).  There are scientists on both sides of this issue, so let's cut to the chase and try to figure out which scientific theory is correct

Why can't we take the Ecumenical Turn?

I will now take it that Adams and Aizawa ought to concede that there is no difference in content between my thought that ‘the harbour Bridge looks beautiful in the sunlight this morning’ and my utterance to you that ‘the Harbour Bridge looks beautiful in the sunlight this morning.’ Indeed I might think that very sentence to myself in my head before uttering it to you. If Adams and Aizawa are happy to accept this conclusion, then we really have no disagreement, because we have an example of thinking in natural language (English in this instance). Similarly it seems obvious to me that a Venn diagram that I am imagining now has the same meaning as the Venn diagram that I am drawing on the page now.
     However, this ecumenical turn contradicts some of their earlier claims, where, for example, they “presuppose that thoughts have non-derived content, but that natural language has merely derived content.” (Adams and Aizawa 2008 p. 35) Given that commitment in conjunction with their stipulation, they cannot really help themselves to my example above. That is why I have always found Adams and Aizawa’s position so strange, it leads to clear problems and even contradictions.

I don't think the ecumenical turn contradicts some of our earlier claims; it is one of our earlier claims.  It really looks like Menary's view is that thinking in English is a matter of having a token of English that bears derived content occuring in the brain or a picture with derived content occuring in the brain.

Now, later, Menary writes this,

I suspect that it just turns out that Adams and Aizawa are making a merely trivial claim (which no one I take it denies): a pencil drawing of a Venn diagram on a piece of paper cannot literally be found in the brain—you wouldn’t find pieces of paper in my head if you opened it up and had a look. It doesn’t follow from this claim that the meanings of Venn diagrams aren’t the same whether they are represented as images neurally or as circles on a page.

Yes, we are making the trivial claim that no one denies, namely, that mental imagery is not a matter of little pictures bearing derived content being found in the brain.  Thinking in English is not a matter of sound streams bearing derived content being found in the brain.  So, Menary has to work out the idea of mental image and thinking in English in such a way that there are some other sorts of mental representations that have derived content in the mind.  That's the tricky part.

And, yes, it doesn't follow from this claim that the meanings of Venn diagrams aren’t the same whether they are represented as images neurally or as circles on a page.  But, A&A already said that mental representations and physical representations can have the same content.  That's what we are noting here:

The first thing to observe about the derived/non-derived distinction is that it concerns the conditions in virtue of which an object bears a particular content. A thought might bear the content that the cat is hungry in virtue of satisfying some conditions on non-derived content, whereas a particular inscription on a piece of paper might bear that same content by satisfying some other conditions on derived content. To put the matter another way, there are two questions one might ask of a representation. The first is what content that representation bears; the second is what conditions make it the case that it bears that content.  (Adams & Aizawa, 2010, p. 582).

Workshop on Perception, Action, and Time

June 2-3, 2011
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Department of Philosophy
UAB. Casa Convalescència: http://www.fundaciouab.com/casa/ENG/galeria.asp?Id_CARPETA=1&Id_FOTO=62&offs

Perception, thought and action have traditionally been considered constitutively independent yet functionally related mental realms. Much recent work in the philosophy of mind has either emerged from, or has resulted in, questioning the independence of these three realms. In such work, perception is often more closely related to action, or thought is considered to be a variety of action. Some of these new developments focus on experiences in which time is a basic factor, such as in the experience of something moving or the experience of succession. However, there has also been certain resistance to some of these developments. Alternative, refined versions of the more traditional picture have been offered instead. The aim of this workshop is to bring together philosophers from both sides of this on-going debate.

SPEAKERS:

• Christoph Hoerl   (Warwick)
• Conor McHugh  (Jean Nicod / Southampton)
• Ian Phillips (UCL/Oxford)
• Hanna Pickard  (Oxford)
• Josep Lluís Prades   (Girona)
• Susanna Schellenberg  (ANU)
• Marta Vidal (UAB)

Contact: Josefa Toribio (jtoribio@ICREA.CAT).

Further details will be circulated closer to the date.
Registration: For those wishing to attend the workshop, registration is appreciated. It’s free, and it helps our planning. To register send an email to workshopuab@gmail.com with “Registration” in the subject line.

The event is funded by the Spanish government via the research project FFI2008-06164-C02-02 and by the Catalan government via the consolidated research group GRECC, SGR2009-1528.

Menary on the Harbour Bridge

I will now take it that Adams and Aizawa ought to concede that there is no difference in content between my thought that ‘the harbour Bridge looks beautiful in the sunlight this morning’ and my utterance to you that ‘the Harbour Bridge looks beautiful in the sunlight this morning.’ Indeed I might think that very sentence to myself in my head before uttering it to you. If Adams and Aizawa are happy to accept this conclusion, then we really have no disagreement, because we have an example of thinking in natural language (English in this instance). Similarly it seems obvious to me that a Venn diagram that I am imagining now has the same meaning as the Venn diagram that I am drawing on the page now.

Yes, A&A agree that there is no difference in content as outlined in the first sentence here.  We note this here:

The first thing to observe about the derived/non-derived distinction is that it concerns the conditions in virtue of which an object bears a particular content. A thought might bear the content that the cat is hungry in virtue of satisfying some conditions on non-derived content, whereas a particular inscription on a piece of paper might bear that same content by satisfying some other conditions on derived content.

Menary thinks this concession, however, cooks our goose.  He observes that the first thought is an instance of thinking in English and that we have mental imagery.  And, of course, there is thinking in English and there is mental imagery.

But, this apparently depends on a particular interpretation of "thinking in English" and there being mental imagery.  To a first approximation, this only shows that there are instances of derived representations occurring in thought if there is a token of an English sentence in the head or a picture in the head, rather than merely a mentalese representation of an English sentence in the head or a mentalese representation of an image.  It looks as though this is a problem for A&A only if thinking in English and mental imagery are cases of non-derived representations occurring in thought.  But, Menary gives no reason to think this.  He takes it as obvious.  But, of course, there is a vast literature on these issues, a literature that A&A think does not bode well for Menary.

Philosophy Talk on Embodied Cognition and Extended Mind

To be recorded in Berkeley, CA: http://www.yelp.com/events/berkeley-philosophy-talk---live-at-the-marsh

Why doesn't the derived/non-derived distinction matter?

Menary's discussion here is confusing to me.  I am not sure that I understand his objection.  So, the section begins,

In their joint paper for this issue, Adams and Aizawa respond to some of my
concerns about their usage of the intrinsic/extrinsic underived/derived distinctions as applied to representations and content (Menary 2006). Their concern is how something gets its content, the pertinent question is: how does the way that a representation get its content matter to whether or not a representation can count as a cognitive representation? It turns out not to matter much, because Adams and Aizawa really think that there is no difference in kind between underived and derived content. Both underived and derived representations have the same content, they just get those contents determined differently (2010b).

In the last sentence, Menary seems to get our point that there are two questionsone might ask of a representation: 1) What is its content? and 2) In virtue of what conditions does it get that content.  That's what we are on about here:

The first thing to observe about the derived/non-derived distinction is that it concerns the conditions in virtue of which an object bears a particular content. A thought might bear the content that the cat is hungry in virtue of satisfying some conditions on non-derived content, whereas a particular inscription on a piece of paper might bear that same content by satisfying some other conditions on derived content. To put the matter another way, there are two questions one might ask of a representation. The first is what content that representation bears; the second is what conditions make it the case that it bears that content.  (Adams & Aizawa, 2010, p. 582).

Now, what's puzzling in this light is Menary's claim that "Adams and Aizawa really think that there is no difference in kind between underived and derived content."  Well, no.  There is a difference in kind between underived and derived content, namely, the conditions in virtue of what something bears a given content.

Workshop on Embodied, Distributed and Extended Cognition

The Philosophy Department at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona is hosting the Workshop on Embodied, Distributed and Extended Cognition, that will be held in Barcelona on March 24th and 25th 2011.

The workshop is aimed at discussing methodological and general philosophical issues in post-cognitivist cognitive science and to provide an interdisciplinary overview of newly developed approaches to cognition. The idea is to examine and discuss recently developed programs such as embodied cognition, the extended mind and socially distributed cognition.
Confirmed speakers include:

• Corrado Sinigaglia (U. degli Studi di Milano)
• Robert Wilson (U. Alberta)
• David Kirsh (UCSD)

Besides invited talks, there will be four symposia discussing the notion of embodiment and its implications for the study of cognition, the viability of the extended mind thesis, the limits of computational models of cognition and, as the final discussion, the question of where cognitive science is heading (i.e. to a neo-cognitivist framework, or to a real change of paradigm?).

Call for Poster Presentations
Graduate and undergraduate students are specially encouraged to submit a proposal for a poster presentation. Topics can include, but are not limited to: the notion of embodiment, sensorimotor representations, the extended mind thesis, socially distributed cognition, the state of the art in cognitive science, embodied artificial intelligence, and the value of the computationalist approach.

Researchers interested in submitting a poster presentation should send an anonymized abstract of no more than 1.000 words to saray.ayala@uab.es , in .doc or .pdf format, including, in the body of the email, author’s name, institutional affiliation and e-mail address. Abstracts will be blindly reviewed by experts designated by the organizing committee.

Deadline for submission: February 4, 2011
Notification of acceptance: February 15, 2011
website: http://tecnocogworkshoponcognition.wordpress.com/

Thinking in English and Thinking in Pictures

I will now take it that Adams and Aizawa ought to concede that there is no difference in content between my thought that ‘the harbour Bridge looks beautiful in the sunlight this morning’ and my utterance to you that ‘the Harbour Bridge looks beautiful in the sunlight this morning.’ Indeed I might think that very sentence to myself in my head before uttering it to you. If Adams and Aizawa are happy to accept this conclusion, then we really have no disagreement, because we have an example of thinking in natural language (English in this instance). Similarly it seems obvious to me that a Venn diagram that I am imagining now has the same meaning as the Venn diagram that I am drawing on the page now.

Menary seems to me not to respect the difference between having a thought that P and have an English sentence with the content that P in one's head.  Sure, one can have a thought with the content that the harbour Bridge looks beautiful in the sunlight this morning, and one can even "think this in English", but that's not to admit that there is an English sentence in the head that has the content "that the harbour Bridge looks beautiful in the sunlight this morning".

So, I now think that maybe A&A indulged the Clark and Menary discussion of these cases a bit too much.  Spending a lot of time explaining their view may have obscured our view, which I think is pretty simple. 

1) All thought is in mentalese (a system of mental representation that differs from all natural languages) which gets its semantic content by way of satisfying conditions on non-derived representations. 

2) Thinking in English is forming mentalese representations of English sentences; it is not a matter of having tokens of English sentences in the head.

3) Thinking in images is forming mentalese representations of pictures; it is not a matter of having tokens of pictures in the head.

These are just statements of our view.  There is a huge literature on mental imagery and a large literature on thinking in a natural language, so I would think it would take a lot of work on Menary's part to show that we are wrong on any of 1)-3).  And, he is trying to show, or maybe is just assuming, that we are wrong on 1)-3).

Noë: Thinking versus Behaving

to insist that thinking and feeling happen in the brain is rather like insisting that speech — talking — happens in the brain. We could not speak without the brain, to be sure. But speech also depends on many other physical processes — such as articulatory movements in the mouth and throat, and also respiratory activity. And of course it depends on social circumstances, and needs. People speak, and they do so thanks to their brains, and mouths, and throats, and much else besides (e.g. the existence of socially shared linguistic practices!)

So, here is really the nub of something important. Speaking is a behavior, hence clearly constitutively involves more than just the brain.  Now, the proposal can be that thinking and feeling are also behaviors, in which case they too would constitutively involve more than just the brain. But, the analogy breaks down if thinking and feeling are not behaviors, but mental processes.  Didn't analytic philosophy work through this about fifty years ago?

COGS Lecture Series at UBC

Info here.

Menary on the A&A appeal to Searle

it is odd to use the demarcation as a principle of defining cognition, since the demarcation was introduced by John Searle (1980) precisely to attack classical cognitivism and to show that the symbolic representations beloved of classical cognitivism, including cognitive psychology and AI, were examples of derived representations.

*

A&A have a somewhat different view of Searle's (1980) argument.  It's conclusion is that nothing gets to have semantic content simply in virtue of running a formal computer program.  So, the naturalized semantics stuff tries to provide an account of how something gets semantic content other than by simply running a formal computer program.  Not a bad fit, it seems to me.

I don't want to go so far as to say that the latter program arose as a response to the Chinese room argument, but there is a confluence between the Searle argument and the naturalized semantics stuff.

Menary (2006) on Integration and Constitution

Controversially, on this account, the process of remembering is constituted by the integration of internal and external vehicles and processes which complement one another in the completion of a cognitive task (Menary, 2006, p. 330).

So, here Menary is invoking a notion of constitution (that he thinks A&A need to explicate for him) and "integration" seems to be another causal coupling kind of notion (only under a new term).  So, as I read things, there are causal and constitutive notions in play here, ripe for the C-C fallacy.

The picture looks to be like this.  There is a task, say, getting to the MoMA.  Then there are these things brainy representations in Otto's brain and these inscriptions in this book, among other things.  It is the integration--the causal coupling--between all these things that enable Otto to get to the MoMA.  So, all those integrated things--all those causally coupled things--constitute the process of remembering.  The fallacy looks to be that simple.

Noë: From the epistemological to the metaphysical

The epistemological:

We are a very long way off from knowing how to answer these questions.

2. We see that the practical questions trail off into questions of principle. But the matters of principle ramify. Consider this: When we speak of establishing baselines and “training up the detector,” what we are acknowledging is that neural states and processes only have meaning or significance in context. This is very important. It shows not that absent information about context, we can’t make sense of what the brain is telling us. It shows that in the absence of context, the brain isn’t telling us anything at all.

The metaphysical:

Mental phenomena are not neural phenomena.

You get the drift ...  Read the whole of Noë's NPR post here.