Calvo on Plant Neurobiology

In preparation for the upcoming "Systematicity and the Post-Connectionist Era" workshop, I have been reading some papers by one of the organizers, Paco Calvo.  (Incidentally, I have seen a draft of the program and it looks great.)

Put bluntly, an information‑processing system counts as computational insofar as its state‑transitions can be accounted for in terms of manipulations on representations. The relation of representation refers to the standing in of internal states of a physical system for the content of other states. Cognitive activity is thus marked by the processing of representational states. We need nonetheless a more stringent definition of ‘representation’; a principled way to decide when a system manipulates representational states, beyond the somewhat trivial observation that one internal state ‘stands in’ for the content of another state. For present purposes, I propose to consider the following two principles. First, according to a principle of dissociation, for a physical state to become representational, the state must be able on occasions to stand for things or events that are temporarily unavailable. And second, according to a principle of reification, a system state can only count as representational if it can be detected and a parallel drawn between the state in question and the role it plays in the establishment of a connection between the system’s input and output states. That is, we must be able to identify specific physical states with the computational roles they are supposed to play.
     This framework can serve to assess the cognitive capacities of any information‑processing system whatsoever. Notice that it does not rely upon the existence of any specific brain tissue to perform computations. A physical state is contentful if it can be spatiotemporarily identified as causally efficacious in the connection of the system’s input and output states in such a way that the state in question ‘hangs in there’ while the input state it is tuned to decays or is no longer present.v That’s all that is needed. No restrictions in terms of implementation, neuronal or what may, are imposed. I propose therefore to adopt these two principles, taken together, as a condition on the possession of a cognitive architecture, and consider plants as candidates for its satisfaction. (Garzon, 2007, pp. 209-10).

So, Garzon is an embodied cognitionist of a representationalist stripe.  Nicely muddies the water about what embodied cognition people think.  I take it that there is a fair diversity of opinion among embodied cognitionists.

Now, I've long been keen to get on the table a "mark of the cognitive" for various reasons, but one is simply so we can at least get in the ballpark of what we are talking about.  Now, it seems to me that Paco has informed us what he is talking about.  So, given that, I can see how he can maintains that plants are cognitive systems.

But, I don't see that we are necessarily talking past one another.  It seems to me that we can have common ground in the view that the plant cognition he is talking about differs from the human cognition that I am talking about.

WWWW (What Wheeler Wouldn't Write)

2 Online intelligence is generated through complex causal interactions in an extended brain-body-environment system Recent work in, for example, neuroscience, robotics, developmental psychology, and philosophy suggests that on-line intelligent action is grounded not in the activity of neural states and processes alone, but rather in complex causal interactions involving not only neural factors, but also additional factors located in the nonneural body and the environment. Given the predominant role that the brain is traditionally thought to play here, one might say that evolution, in the interests of adaptive efficiency, has been discovered to outsource a certain amount of cognitive intelligence to the nonneural body and the environment. In chapters 8 and 9 we shall explicate this externalistic restructuring of the cognitive world-with its attendant (typically mild, but sometimes radical) downsizing of the contribution of the brain in terms of what Andy Clark and I have called nontrivial causal spread (Wheeler and Clark 1999). (Wheeler, 2005, p. 12)

Now, this is something that Wheeler did write back in 2005, but it is, I speculate, what Wheeler wouldn't write now.  I think he has gotten to be more careful about loose phrases such as "intelligence is generated through".  That's ambiguous between a thesis about ontogenetic development, on the one, hand (which A&A think is true) and a thesis about, say, the supervenience base of intelligence (which A&A think is not true).  "Grounded" might also be ambiguous, but I would read it as a kind of supervenience claim.  The appeal to evolution, however, suggests that it is not an ontogenetic thesis that is up for grabs, but a phylogenetic thesis.  All these are different claims and I think that Wheeler is probably now on to this. I think he may believe all three theses; I only believe two.  But, this is just a marking out he lay of the land ...

Clark @ University of Tokyo

Schedule of talks here.

Wheeler 2005 on representation and computation 2

The representational theory of mind and the computational theory of cognitive processing are empirical hypotheses. However, they are empirical hypotheses whose truth has been pretty much assumed by just about everyone in cognitive science.  (Wheeler, 2005, p. 8). 

Now, I suppose that if your aim is to undermine opposing views, it's easiest just to say that they are simply assuming something.  But, when you have major, explicitly acknowledged empirical hypotheses--such as that cognition involves rule and representations--then it seems unlikely that such hypotheses will be mere assumptions.  So, if you want to understand the major tenets of an opposing view, you should probably dig around and find out why they hold them.

So, I don't know why Gibsonians are so interested in the direct perception of affordances, but I figure there must be some experimental result or something that drives this.  This is not just something they assume.  And, I assume that there is some reason that Maturana and Varela (and it seems Evan Thompson following them) think that life and mind are very intimately related.  I have no idea what that is, but I'm not going to go out on a limb and say they are just assuming that there is a connection.

Now, of course, finding out why some group holds a view takes a lot of time.  I've been rooting around trying to find out what drives EP.  I don't think reading things like Gibson, 1979, or TSRM are really doing it for me.  I think I need to go back to some of the earlier experimental work.  I've read some Maturana, Varela, and most of Mind in Life, but I still don't get it.

Wheeler 2005 on representation and computation 1

The representational theory of mind and the computational theory of cognitive processing are empirical hypotheses. However, they are empirical hypotheses whose truth has been pretty much assumed by just about everyone in cognitive science.  (Wheeler, 2005, p. 8).

I like Mike's writing because it is clearly wrong, rather than obscurely wrong like so much of the EC lit.  (Isn't there a principle of deontic logic according to which if you're going to be wrong, you should be clearly wrong?)  Mike is probably right that the representational theory of mind and the computational theory of cognitive processing are empirical hypotheses whose truth has long been pretty much assumed by just about everyone in cognitive science.  But, I think it's because folks have largely been satisfied that the empirical case for that has been made, so that it's time to move on to other dimensions of these views.  It's, to me, just like the fact that so much of biology has pretty much assumed that evolution is true.  That has been established, so it is time to move on to other dimensions.

Remember that representationalism emerged in opposition to Skinner's behaviorism which was often anti-representational and which was orthodoxy circa 1955 (right?).  In that context, representationalism didn't just emerge by assumption; there must have been something somewhere that gave at least some people some reason to think that there must be some representations somewhere somehow.  Just so, evolution emerged in opposition to creationism  which was orthodoxy circa 1855 (right?).  In that context, evolution didn't just emerge by assumption; there must have been something somewhere that gave at least some people some reason to think that there must be some evolution somewhere somehow.

Weiskopf on Cognitive Systems 4

When the Terminator retrieves information from memory, it appears as text in his visual field. Presumably this text is read by him and used to guide his murderous actions. But this is a purely internal process, and it is plausibly cognitive. (Weiskopf, 2010)

I don't find it that plausible.  To me, this is just Andy's Martian with the bitmap "mental" image again.

Weiskopf on Cognitive Systems 3

The criterion is this: the boundaries of a cognitive system are given by the location of its transducers and its effectors. A transducer, in Pylyshyn’s terms (pp. 151–178) is a device that (1) maps inputs described in physical terms into outputs described in representational terms in a way that is (2) interrupt-driven and (3) primitive and nonsymbolic. Saying that transducers are interrupt-driven is just to say that their activation is mandatorily determined by the presence of their physical input conditions. Saying that they are primitive implies that they do not carry out their mapping function by any internal representational means; their operations do not involve cognitive processes, although they may obviously be physically complex. The most important condition on transducers, for our purposes, is that they have the function of turning physical stimuli into representational or computational  states. The inputs to a transducer are not themselves representational; transducers respond only to physical properties and magnitudes. They take, for example, pressure, temperature, vibrations in the air, or ambient light in a region of space, and produce vehicles that  represent something, most frequently some aspect of the environment that the stimulus typically carries information about. Transducers can thus be thought of as the place in where things in the external environment become input for the cognitive system.
     The same can be said of effectors. Corresponding to the above definition of a transducer, an effector is a device that (1) maps inputs described in representational terms into outputs described in physical terms in a way that is (2) interrupt-driven and (3) primitive and nonsymbolic. That is, an effector does what a transducer does, but in reverse. It takes a representation and produces a physical event; for example, activation pattern in certain muscle groups. The input representation can be understood as something like a direct motor command, and this command acts immediately on the body. Both transducers and effectors are important for delimiting systems, but for brevity I will sometimes simply call this the transducer view of systems.  (Weiskopf, 2010)

So, is a single neuron a cognitive system by this criterion?  Sounds like yes to me.

Video of Andy at Renssellaer

Link here.

Weiskopf on Cognitive Systems 2

The criterion is this: the boundaries of a cognitive system are given by the location of its transducers and its effectors. A transducer, in Pylyshyn’s terms (pp. 151-178) is a device that (1) maps inputs described in physical terms into outputs described in representational terms in a way that is (2) interrupt-driven and (3) primitive and nonsymbolic. (Weiskopf, 2010)

 So, a being without sense organs that mentally computes a sequence of Fibonacci numbers would not be a cognitive agent?

U. Pittsburgh Philosophy of Science: Embodiment and Adaptation

Sunday, 20 March 2011
Center for Philosophy of Science
817 Cathedral of Learning
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA USA

More info here.

Nivedita Gangopadhyay: The extended mind: born to be wild? A lesson from action-understanding

Here.

Abstract

The extended mind hypothesis (Clark and Chalmers in Analysis 58(1):7–19, 1998; Clark 2008) is an influential hypothesis in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. I argue that the extended mind hypothesis is born to be wild. It has undeniable and irrepressible tendencies of flouting grounding assumptions of the traditional information-processing paradigm. I present case-studies from social cognition which not only support the extended mind proposal but also bring out its inherent wildness. In particular, I focus on cases of action-understanding and discuss the role of embodied intentionality in the extended mind project. I discuss two theories of action-understanding for exploring the support for the extended mind hypothesis in embodied intersubjective interaction, namely, simulation theory and a non-simulationist perceptual account. I argue that, if the extended mind adopts a simulation theory of action-understanding, it rejects representationalism. If it adopts a non-simulationist perceptual account of action-understanding, it rejects the classical sandwich view of the mind. 

 

Keywords  Extended mind – Action-understanding – Simulation theory – Non-simulationist perceptual theory – Embodied intersubjectivity – Representationalism – Dynamical systems – Perception – Action – Social cognition

Weiskopf on Cognitive Systems

A cognitive system is a set of physical structures and mechanisms that collectively realize a specific functional architecture.  Such architecture makes available a representational vocabulary, a set of primitive operations defined over them, a set of resources that these operations may make use of, and a set of control structures that determine how the activation and inhibition of operations and resources is orchestrated. These collectively determine the internal dynamics of processes in the system: how one set of input representations triggers a cascade of processing throughout various parts of the system, resulting eventually in some
sort of output.  (Weiskopf, 2010, p. ??)

So, that seems to me to be a reasonable way to demarcate a cognitive system, but it's not exactly what Weiskopf goes for.  More on this later.

Here's a Nice Bit of Irony

From Shaun Gallagher's forthcoming "The Overextended Mind":

If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a
process which, were it to go on in the head, we would have no
hesitation in recognizing as part of the cognitive process, then
that part of the world is (so we claim) part of the cognitive
process. (Clark and Chalmers 1998, p. 8)

On a strict interpretation this principle appears to measure cognition in
terms of the Cartesian gold standard of what goes on in the head. It suggests
that a process outside of the head counts as cognitive only if in principle it
could be accomplished in the head (Gallagher, forthcoming, p. 1).

The irony, of course, is that Clark, and others, have taken to charging A&A with brain-o-centric bias.

Clark (2008, p. 114) rejects this interpretation, insisting that the
parity principle should not be interpreted as requiring any similarity
between inner and outer processes. Wheeler (2006, 3) explains that the
parity principle does not “fix the benchmarks for what it is to count as a
proper part of a cognitive system by identifying all the details of the causal
contribution made by (say) the brain [and then by looking] to see if any
external elements meet those benchmarks.”  (Gallagher, forthcoming, p. 2)

And, it's good to see them on the defensive on this.

Jobs in Edinburgh

Edinburgh is a great place, so I'm thinking that there will be two more happy people there in the future!


### Permanent Lectureship in Philosophy of Cognitive Science

Applications are invited for a permanent lectureship in Philosophy of Cognitive Science, tenable from 1 August 2011. Salary Scale: £36,862 - £44,016. This permanent post has been created to help support a new interdisciplinary masters level initiative in Cognition in Science and Society. The successful candidate will conduct philosophical and interdisciplinary research and teaching (including doctoral supervision) in the areas of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, and Philosophy of Mind and Language. She or he will have a PhD and publications commensurate with their stage in career, and should demonstrate potential for attracting external funding. The successful candidate will have a strong background in Philosophy, and in Cognitive Science, and will show a proven track record of teaching and research that crosses the borders between Philosophy, Psychology, and Linguistics.

For more information, go to: http://www.jobs.ed.ac.uk/ and enter the reference number 3014085.

### Teaching Fellowship in Mind and Embodied Cognition

Applications are invited for a full-time 2-year fixed-term Teaching Fellowship in the area of Mind and Embodied Cognition. This post has been created to support teaching and graduate supervision during a period of research leave granted to Professor Andy Clark. The successful candidate will have a PhD and publications commensurate with their stage in career. She or he will deliver philosophical and interdisciplinary teaching (including helping with graduate supervision) in the areas of Embodied Cognition and Philosophy of Mind. The successful candidate will also contribute teaching to the masters level specialization in Mind, Language and Embodied Cognition. Teaching skills in the area of consciousness studies and/or philosophy of perception would be considered an advantage.

The position is available from 1 April 2011 for a period of 24 months.

For more information, go to: http://www.jobs.ed.ac.uk/ and enter the reference number 3014036

Gibson on Information and Misinformation 2

Let me note another feature of the following:

It is because the affordances of things for an observer are specified in stimulus information. They seem to be perceived directly because they are perceived directly.

…

The central question for the theory of affordances is not whether they exist and are real but whether information is available in ambient light for perceiving them.  The skeptic may now be convinced that there is information in light for some properties of a surface but not for such a property as being good to eat. The taste of a thing, he will say, is not specified in light; you can see its form and color and texture but not its palatability; you have to taste it for that.  (Gibson, 1979, p. 140)

MISINFORMATION FOR AFFORDANCES

If there is information in the ambient light for the affordances of things, can there also be misinformation? According to the theory being developed, if information is picked up perception results; if misinformation is picked up misperception results.

The brink of a cliff affords falling off; it is in fact dangerous and it looks dangerous to us. It seems to look dangerous to many other terrestrial animals besides ourselves including infant animals. Experimental studies have been made of this fact. If a sturdy sheet of plate glass is extended out over the edge it no longer affords falling and in fact is not dangerous, but it may still look dangerous. The optical information to specify depth-downward-at-an-edge is still present in the ambient light; for this reason the device was called a visual cliff by E. J. Gibson and R. D. Walk (1960). Haptic information was available to specify an adequate surface of support, but this was contradictory to the optical information. When human infants at the crawling stage of locomotion were tested with this apparatus, many of them would pat the glass with their hands but would not venture out on the surface. The babies misperceived the affordance of a transparent surface for support, and this result is not surprising.

Similarly, an adult can misperceive the affordance of a sheet of glass by mistaking a closed glass door for an open doorway and attempting to walk through it. He then crashes into the barrier and is injured. The affordance of collision was not specified by the outflow of optical texture in the array, or it was insufficiently specified. He mistook glass for air. The occluding edges of the doorway were specified and the empty visual solid angle opened up symmetrically in the normal manner as he approached, so his behavior was properly controlled, but the imminence of collision was not noticed. A little dirt on the surface, or highlights, would have saved him.

These two cases are instructive. In the first a surface of support was mistaken for air because the optic array specified air. In the second case a barrier was mistaken for air for the same reason. Air downward affords falling and is dangerous. Air forward affords passage and is safe. The mistaken perceptions led to inappropriate actions.  (Gibson, 1979, p. 142)

In the first passages on p. 140, one implicitly knows how affordances are supposed to structure light, then one can use this to predict what a subject will perceive.  On p. 142, however, one has cases in which the prediction is that the affordance for "walk-on-ability" and "walk-through-ability" should structure light in such a way as to have babies go over the "invisible cliff" or have adults not walk into the glass occluder.  Yet, rather than acknowledging the failed predictions, Gibson instead postulates information in the light the will save the phenomena. This is the kind of move that Fodor and Pylyshyn were complaining about when saying that the notion of what is directly perceived is unconstrained.  It's the kind of problem that TSRM hint that they are trying to solve, but which I have been arguing they do not.

Gibson: Surfaces are on the Outside; The Affordances is on the Insider

On any number of occasions, I've pointed out that what structures light are surfaces, which are on the outside of objects, but that affordances are constituted (not by the composition and layout of surfaces, but) by what's inside an object.  Gibson agrees, at least sometimes.  As Genny notes, one could see this in Chapter 2, where Gibson describes his "ecological laws of surfaces":

2. Any surface has resistance to deformation, depending on the viscosity of the substance.
3. Any surface has resistance to disintegration, depending on the cohesion of the substances. (Gibson, 1979, p. 24).

Shaun Gallagher Talk on "The Socially Extended Mind"

http://www.cscm.isc.uqam.ca/?q=fr/node/289

The ExtendedMind.Org Blog

http://extendedmind.org/

Gibson on Information and Misinformation 1

From Gibson, 1979, Chapter 8:

It is because the affordances of things for an observer are specified in stimulus information. They seem to be perceived directly because they are perceived directly.

…

The central question for the theory of affordances is not whether they exist and are real but whether information is available in ambient light for perceiving them.  The skeptic may now be convinced that there is information in light for some properties of a surface but not for such a property as being good to eat. The taste of a thing, he will say, is not specified in light; you can see its form and color and texture but not its palatability; you have to taste it for that.  (Gibson, 1979, p. 140)

MISINFORMATION FOR AFFORDANCES

If there is information in the ambient light for the affordances of things, can there also be misinformation? According to the theory being developed, if information is picked up perception results; if misinformation is picked up misperception results.

The brink of a cliff affords falling off; it is in fact dangerous and it looks dangerous to us. It seems to look dangerous to many other terrestrial animals besides ourselves including infant animals. Experimental studies have been made of this fact. If a sturdy sheet of plate glass is extended out over the edge it no longer affords falling and in fact is not dangerous, but it may still look dangerous. The optical information to specify depth-downward-at-an-edge is still present in the ambient light; for this reason the device was called a visual cliff by E. J. Gibson and R. D. Walk (1960). Haptic information was available to specify an adequate surface of support, but this was contradictory to the optical information. When human infants at the crawling stage of locomotion were tested with this apparatus, many of them would pat the glass with their hands but would not venture out on the surface. The babies misperceived the affordance of a transparent surface for support, and this result is not surprising.

Similarly, an adult can misperceive the affordance of a sheet of glass by mistaking a closed glass door for an open doorway and attempting to walk through it. He then crashes into the barrier and is injured. The affordance of collision was not specified by the outflow of optical texture in the array, or it was insufficiently specified. He mistook glass for air. The occluding edges of the doorway were specified and the empty visual solid angle opened up symmetrically in the normal manner as he approached, so his behavior was properly controlled, but the imminence of collision was not noticed. A little dirt on the surface, or highlights, would have saved him.

These two cases are instructive. In the first a surface of support was mistaken for air because the optic array specified air. In the second case a barrier was mistaken for air for the same reason. Air downward affords falling and is dangerous. Air forward affords passage and is safe. The mistaken perceptions led to inappropriate actions.  (Gibson, 1979, p. 142)

In comments on a post from weeks ago, Gennady Erlikmann draws our attention to some important texts from the latter portions of Chapter 8 of Gibson, 1979.   Now, it seems to me that the passages from p. 140 cited above champion the view that affordances structure light in such a way as to enable the affordances to be perceived.  And he does not there back off the view.  But, then on p. 142, he apparently does back off of this apparently admitting that sometimes affordances do not structure light in such a way as to enable them to be perceived.  (That's the italized part in paragraph 3 from p. 142.)  In the final paragraph, the two italicized sections suggest that the glass in the two cases did not structure light in such a way as to specify an affordance of, say, "stand-on-ability" or "walk-through-ability".  Instead, the glass apparently specified something else, namely, air.  Kind of grudging admissions.

Nevertheless, however true all this may be, the basic affordances of the environment are perceivable and are usually perceivable directly, without an excessive amount of learning. The basic properties of the environment that make an affordance are specified in the structure of ambient light, and hence the affordance itself is specified in ambient light. Moreover, an invariant variable that is commensurate with the body of the observer himself is more easily picked up than one not commensurate with his body.  (Gibson, 1979, p. 143).

In the final paragraph here, Gibson suggests that, while maaaybe not all affordances are perceived, at least all the basic affordances are perceived. 

Now, I've been trying to give examples showing that this kind of analysis will not work.  The box and the exploding box are physically the same on the outside, so structure light in the same way.  There is no room to say that one of these structurings is information, where the other is misinformation.  As light structure, they are the same.  At most, calling one "information" and the other "misinformation" is just to rename the one light structure as coming from the normal box, where the other light structure as coming from the exploding box.

3rd meeting of the Mind Network

Warwick University
Mathematics, Room MS.03, Warwick University
Tuesday 26th April 2011, from 10am to 6pm
Programme:

• 10.30 Coffee
• 11.00-12.30 Elizabeth Schechter, ‘Bodies, Agents, and Psychological Subjects’
• 12.30-1.00 Round table session
• 1.00-2.30 Lunch
• 2.30-4.00 David Ward, ‘Achieving Transparency’
• 4.00 Coffee
• 4.30-6.00 Mark Sprevak, ‘Inference to the hypothesis of extended cognition’
• 6.00 Dinner

There is no registration fee. Please sign up before 19th April 2011 by email to Steve Butterfill: s.butterfill@warwick.ac.uk.

Gibson and the Learning of Affordances

Let me add a comment on this passage:

"The central question for the theory of affordances is not whether they exist and are real but whether information is available in ambient light for perceiving them. The skeptic may now be convinced that there is information in light for some properties of a surface but not for such a property as being good to eat. The taste of a thing, he will say, is not specified by light; you can see its form and color and texture but not its palatability; you have to taste it for that."
Gibson, 1979, p.140-141

Andrew, Gary, and Gennady have each proposed that Gibson could handle exploding box cases by appeal to learning.  (Now, this won't work, since your learning is not going to change the ability of a typical affordance to structure light.  The problem is that surfaces are on the outside of objects, but what makes for the typical affordance is on the inside of the object, so the light can reach to affordance to be structured by it.)   And, they are right that Gibson does mention learning about affordances. But, notice that, following this passage, Gibson might well just admit that the palatability of a thing is not specified by light and that you have to learn whether an object affords palatability by tasting it, then .....?  Instead, he presses on with the view that higher-order invariants in light are going to save the day.  So, in what follows in this passage, he is more willing to stay the course in saying that affordances are specified by light than have been Andrew, Gary and Gennady.  But, then again, Gibson apparently didn't consider anything exactly like the exploding box protocol.  So, it seems to me that Gibson is somewhat equivocal regarding how he might handle such cases. 

Sutton's Reply to K&F

John Sutton (in conversation) has objected to us that developmental arguments of the kind we’ve been developing are powerless to establish synchronic here and now extended cognition as opposed to intracranial, embedded cognition of the kind Adams and Aizawa favour.   Cognitive dovetailing of the kind we’ve been arguing for doesn’t address the casual-constitution conflation charge that is often levelled against the EMT. According to this objection EMT is guilty of mistaking a perhaps necessary causal contribution from the environment for the claim that environmentally located elements have cognitive status.  Maybe we’ve shown that the environment makes a necessary contribution to cognition, but we haven’t shown that this contribution is cognitive. 

Spot on it seems to me.

We are grateful to Sutton for pressing this worry but doesn’t the thought behind it rest on something like Adams and Aizawa’s distinction between extended cognition and extended cognitive systems?  It seems to require us to concede that an externally located component can be a part of an extended cognitive system, perhaps because of developmental considerations of the kind we’ve sketched above, without this component being counted as cognitive.  We’ve attempted to address this objection above.

Yes, the attempt was the part about cooling needing more than just the evaporation coil.  And, that reply does not work.

K&F on the Differences between AC systems and Cognitive Systems

Next we want to probe Adams and Aizawa’s claim that extended cognitive systems are analogous with air conditioning systems. We think there are significant differences, which may decide the case in favour of extended cognition.  The components of the air conditioning system have come to perform their distinctive functions through design, not through development and learning.  Our brains, by contrast, learn to factor into their processing operations, external artefacts that have a place in our cultural practices.  Through development, the sorts of functional structures and representations that are constructed in our brains are geared into working in partnership with external resources.  These external resources become grafted into the workings of the internal neural circuitry so that at least some of our cognition can only be accomplished through the symbiotic partnership our brains have formed with their cultural environs.  The inner only assumes the form it does, and works in the way it does because it is encultured, forged and moulded by the many different activities it repeatedly and regularly engages during the course of development.   The biological internal components of an extended cognitive have developed to work in partnership with the external, cultural components. Our minds are hybrid minds. (Kiverstein and Farina, forthcoming, p. ???)

Ok.  Everything in the third sentence and thereafter (except maybe the last sentence) seems to me to be correct.  But, how does any of that show that cognitive processes pervade the whole of the cognitive system?

Suppose that the human digestive system has evolved to process cooked food.  Would that show that digestion extends into the environment?

Suppose that an individual's digestive system adapts to enable that person to be able to digest alcohol more efficiently.  Would that show that digestion extends into the environment?

Suppose the digestive system only assumes the form it does, and works in the way it does because it is encultured, forged and moulded by the many different activities it repeatedly and regularly engages during the course of development.  Would that show that digestion extends into the environment?

I'm not buying.

Gibson, Exploding Boxes, Invariants, and Higher-Order Invariants

So, Gennady believes that a solution to the exploding box type cases can be found in the following.  The skeptic, which would be me, puts the view on the table in the first half of this first paragraph.  Gibson's reply follows.

Gibson, 1979, p.140-141
"The central question for the theory of affordances is not whether thy exist and are real but whether information is available in ambient light for perceiving them. The skeptic may now be convinced that there is information in light for some properties of a surface but not for such a property as being good to eat. The taste of a thing, he will say, is not specified by light; you can see its form and color and texture but not its palatability; you have to taste it for that. The skeptic understands the stimulus variables that specify the dimensions of visual sensation; he knows from psychophysics that brightness corresponds to the intensity and color to wavelength of light, He may concede the invariants of structured stimulation that specify surfaces and how they are laid out and what they are made of. But he may boggle at invariant combinations of invariants that specify the affordances of the environment for the observer. The skeptic familiar with the experimental control of stimulus variables has enough trouble understanding invariant variables I have been proposing without being asked to accept invariants of invariants.

Nevertheless, a unique combination of invariants, a compound invariant, is just another invariant. It is a unit, and the components do not have to be combined or associated. Only if percepts were combinations of sensations would they have to be associated. Even in the classical terminology, it could be argued that when a number of stimuli are completely covariant, when they always go together, they constitute a single "stimulus." If the visual system is capable of extracting invariants from a changing optic array, there is no reason why it should not extract invariants that seem to us highly complex.

The trouble with the assumption that high-order optical invariants specify high-order affordances is that experiments, accustomed to working in the laboratory with low-order stimulus variables, cannot think of a way to measure them. How can they hope to isolate and control an invariant of optical structure so as to apply it to an observer if they cannot quantify it? The answer comes in two parts, I think. First, they should not hope to apply an invariant to an observer, only to make it available, for it is not a stimulus. And, second, they do not have to quantify the invariant, to apply numbers to it, but only to give it an exact mathematical description so that other experimenters can make it available to their observers. The virtue of psychophysical experiment is simply that it is disciplined, not that it related the psychical to the physical by a metric formula."

Ok.  So, Gennady thinks the invariants and higher-order invariants story is going to solve problem with the exploding box type cases.  But, grant Gennady and Gibson their invariants and higher-order invariants in light.  The problem remains: the physical surfaces on the outside of the boxes are what structure the light into invariants and higher-order invariants, but the inside of the boxes are what constitute or anchor affordances, such as for pick-up-ability, stand-on-ability, climb-on-ability.  So, both boxes are going to have the same invariants in the light and the same higher-order invariants in the light, so the visual perceivers will have the same visual perceptions.  The visual perceiver does not visually perceive the pick-up-ability of the exploding box, and since this visual perception is the same as visual perception of the normal box, the visual perceiver does not visually perceive the pick-up-ability of the normal box either.

The basic problem remains.  Simplifying: What structures light is typically on the outside of objects; what constitutes affordances are typically on the inside of objects.

Workshop on Socially Extended Cognition

It seems to me that I might have posted this before, but what the heck.

Thanks to Jon Protevi at NewAPPS for the link.

Future Posts 2/8/2011

So, over the next few days I'll be moving on a bit in my posts on Gibson, 1979, p. 127.  (I think I've been beating a dead horse, but Andrew seems to think the horse might be good for another quarter mile.)  A number of replies have cropped up in comments and I would like to bring them to the top in separate posts of their own to try to make clear how I do not think they will help.  These include appeals to other sense modalities, to learning, and maybe "looking X-able".  But, I'll be drawing more on Gibson, 1979, Chapter 8, for anyone who is reading along. (Thanks to Gennady for bringing this additional material to the front.)

Is this stand-on-able?1

 

Does the surface of this stool structure light in such a way as to enable a human to visually perceive that this is stand-on-able?

K&F on the A&A AC System

Complementarity, say Adams and Aizawa, at best establishes the existence of extended cognitive systems.   It doesn’t establish extended cognition; at least it won’t if one concedes that extended cognitive systems work like air con and sound systems.  Our first response is that it sounds a little odd to our ears to say that the evaporating coil is causally responsible, all on its own, for cooling the air.  Take the coil out of the larger system of which it is a part, and the house in which it is installed isn’t going to feel cooler.  The air conditioning system is made up of components each of which performs particular operations, and when these components interact in the right way what you get is cool air.  Maybe the evaporating coil is particularly crucial – it is if you like the “core realiser” of air conditioning, but it is only by working in partnership with all the other components that it can perform this function. (Kiverstein & Farian, forthcoming, p. ???)

Now, it seems to me that it is the evaporator coil where the cooling takes place.  Just feel it.  That's where things are cold.  Things are hot around the compressor.

But, let's agree that other components are necessary in order to cool the air, e.g. the compressor, and say that the cooling process extends into these.  Still, the ductwork is part of the AC system and you don't need it to cool the air, do you?  What about the blower?  The ductwork and blower serve to distribute the air, not cool it.  So, even conceding all that K&F want, the same basic principle of the argument still applies.  The air conditioning (aka cooling) does not pervade the whole of the system, but only a part (or parts, if you prefer). Just so, even if Otto + notebook is an extended cognitive system, it might still be the case that there is only cognitive processing in the brain.  So, it is still not a trivial move to go from extended cognitive systems to extended cognitive processes.

And, there is also the example of a computing system ...

Thanks Again, Dear Readers

So, after another page view record-setting month in January, page views have topped 4,500, and have been running ~220/day through February.  I'm thinking it must be the pictures of food.

Kiverstein & Farina's Example of Mental Imagery

This is nicely illustrated by Chambers and Reisberg’s (1985) finding that when individuals are shown a picture of an ambiguous image for 5 seconds, a period to short for them to discover the alternative interpretation, and then asked to find the alternative interpretation through recall, subjects fail to find the alternative image.  However when asked to draw the ambiguous figure from memory they can discover a second image in what they’ve drawn. People find it impossible to find different interpretations in their mental imagery, a difficulty they don’t have when presented with a picture on a page. (Kiverstein & Farina, forthcoming, p. ???)

This is just the kind of evidence that Pylyshyn, for example, uses to argue that mental imagery is not a matter of having little pictures in the head.  It's just the kind of thing that makes A&A not really worry about Menary's appeal to mental imagery to challenge the non-derived content condition on the cognitive.

Chemero Goes All Hegelian on TSM

I will call arguments like this Hegelian arguments.  Specifically, Hegelian arguments are arguments, based on little or no empirical evidence, to the conclusion that some scientific approach ... will fail. (Chemero, 2009, p. 7).

So, that's what a Hegelian argument is and here is what one looks like:

So, on the Turvey-Shaw-Mace view, either babies do not perceive their mothers (because the information for direct perception is unavailable) or they do not perceive them directly.  I take it that either alternative is unacceptable to radical embodied cognitive scientists.  (Chemero, 2009, pp. 112-3).

This looks to me like an argument based on little or no empirical evidence to the conclusion that some scientific approach will fail.  Now, one might say "But, Ken asking for empirical evidence that babies perceive their mothers is like asking for empirical evidence that dogs have tails."  (Cf., Chemero, 2009, p. 210, fn, 7)  But, maybe the thing to say is that one should be able to demand evidence for any empirical premise in an argument.

But, enough of ribbing Tony.  The more serious reply, I think, is that Chemero would seem to me to beg the question against TSM.  I thought their view is that one perceives affordances, rather than objects.  So, rather than seeing chairs, we see sit-on-ables.  So, by extension, it would seem that TSM would deny that one perceives Ken Aizawa; instead, one might perceive "argue-with-able" or "slap-in-the-faceable".

I happen to agree that we perceive objects and individuals, but I would want to give an empifical argument for that, given that TSM seem to disagree with me on that.

Carnap Lectures 2011 "The Boundaries of the Mental"

With Tim Crane (Cambridge, UK) & Katalin Farkas (Budapest)---March 14th - 16th 2011

*Call for Graduate Papers*

Graduate students are cordially invited to submit papers on extended minds, extended selves, and social minds. Four submissions will be selected for presentation (25min. plus 10min. discussion); the authors will receive free accommodation and an award of 200€. Full papers (no longer than 3000 words) should be submitted electronically to Robert Schütze (robert.schue...@rub.de ) by *February 5th 2011*.

*Preliminary Program*

Monday, March 14th
11.30 -- 13.15 | Tim Crane: Non-existent objects
15.15 -- 17.30 | Tim Crane: Psychologism, semantics and the non-existent

Tuesday, March 15th
10.15 -- 12.15 | Katalin Farkas: Extended Minds
14.15 -- 17.30 | Graduate Presentations "Extended Mind, Extended Self, Social Mind"

18.15 -- 20.00 | Tim Crane: What is distinctive of human thought?

Wednesday, March 16th
10.15 -- 12.15 | Katalin Farkas: Extended Selves

*General**registration* will be open until March 5th 2011. Please email
Lena Kästner (lena.kaest...@rub.de ).

For detailed information concerning registration, accommodation and
contact, please consult our website: www.rub.de/philosophy/carnap2011
.

Scientific Organization:
Prof. Dr. Albert Newen, Lena Kästner
Ruhr-Universität Bochum -- Institut für Philosophie II

U. Central Florida Philosophy Colloquium: Somogy Varga, Ph.D

The Truly Extended Mind. Made in Interaction  

 

Tuesday, Feb 8 6:00p to 8:00p

at University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL

The talk aims to critically engage with a 'radical autonomy claim' (RAC) of the Extended Mind Hypothesis (EMH). While underpinning this claim is crucial for the EMH to become a credible alternative framework for the pursuit of cognitive science, the talk shall argue that Clark fails to prove it. The talk will construct a new version of the EMH, the Truly Extended Mind Hypothesis (TEMH), which entails the RAC, while simultaneously being immune to the problems of the EMH. In the last part of the talk, the talk will demonstrate that the TEMH is useful in explaining particular cognitive phenomena that emerge in interaction. While the usual examples in the EMH-discussions by and large involve individually used props, this talk highlights the somewhat neglected fact that human problem solving activity is often an intrinsically social issue.

Somogy Varga is a postdoctoral researcher in Philosophy of Mind and Cognition at the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrueck and currently a visiting researcher at the Center for Subjectivity Research in Copenhagen. Previously, he worked at the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt and received his Ph.D. from the University of Frankfurt with a dissertation on social philosophy (supervised by Axel Honneth). He mainly pursues research interests in the philosophy of psychiatry, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, social philosophy and critical theory.

Location: Psychology Building, Conference Room(0226)

Chemero and the Exploding Boxes

In comments, Andrew has asked whether Chemero's, 2009, approach to information helps with the exploding box type cases.  I have not read the whole of the relevant chapters yet (Chapters 6 and 7, I think), but I think the answer is now.  Moreover, the problem rears its head right about here:

Imagine that there is a beer can on a table in a room that is brightly lit from an overhead source. Light from the source will reflect off the beer can (some directly from the overhead source, some that has already been reflected off other surfaces in the room). At any point in the room to which there is an uninterrupted path from the beer can, there will be light that has reflected off the beer can. Because of the natural laws governing the reflection of light off surfaces of particular textures, colors, and chemical makeup, the light at any such point will be structured in a very particular way by its having reflected off the beer can. In situation s1, the light at point p has structure a of type A. Given the laws just mentioned, there is a constraint connecting the situations with light-structure type A to the beer-can-present situations of type B. So the light structure at point p contains information about token beer-can-presence b (of type B). Notice too that, because of conventional constraints governing the relationship between cans and their contents, beer-can-presence b being of type B carries information about beer-presence c of type C. Furthermore, the light at some point in the room from which the beer can is visible will contain information about the beer can's affordances. Take some point p, which is at my eye height. The light structure available at this point will contain not just information about the beer can and the beer, but also about the distance the point is from the ground, the relationship between that distance and the distance the beer can is from the ground, and hence the reach ability of the beer can and drinkability of the beer for a person with eyes at that height. (Chemero, 2009, pp. 118-9)

Ok.  So, the stuff up until "Notice too that ..." is essentially the Gibsonian line (of Gibson, 1979, p.127) about surfaces structuring light.  That sound right.  The trick, then, is to somehow connect the structuring of light by surfaces to affordances.  Gibson, 1979, p. 127, tried to make the connection by way of the hypothesis that the composition and layout of surfaces constitutes affordances.  Chemero has a different idea: There are constraints between surfaces and their innards.  In the case of beer cans, society puts beer in beer cans.  That's the constraint.  From there, Chemero glides willy-nilly (i.e. without telling us how) to having constraints go all the way to drinkability.

But, this is not going to work.  Take two beer cans that are physically identical on the outside.  Have one with beer and the other with something non-potable, say, bleach.  Subjects will, presumably, have the same visual perceptions of the two cans, but the two cans afford different things, so visual perception is not of affordances.  I take it as evident how to run this with the exploding boxes, piles of white stuff, panes of glass, etc.

This goes back to the cartoonish formulation of the problems.  Visual perception is typically based on outers; affordances are typically based on innards.

Chemero could rightly point out that in this imagined scenario, we do not have the requisite conventions regarding the contents of beer cans.  Correct, but we still have perception, right?  Which suggests that social conventions regarding the physical configurations of things do not have that much to do with perception.

Maybe there is some trick Chemero has up his sleeve later, but we shall see ...

A TSRM Snippett

The second stage in analyzing an affordance for an animal is very much a matter (for visually detected affordances) of mathematical optics: to describe the light patterned by an affordance-specific occurrent property and to characterize that patterning in terms of an optical variable, an optical property, that stands in strict correspondence to the occurrent property. (TSRM, 1981, p. 265).

So, in comments on an earlier post, Andrew asked about where it is that TSRM talk about anchoring properties structuring light. It is in section 5. "The specification of intension: affordances and ecological laws", pp. 260-7.  It is rough sledding.

Is this Walk-on-able? 2

Does the glass floor structure light in such a way as to enable a human to visually perceive stand-on-ability?

Charles wondered, at one point, whether my exploding box example was just some philosophical exotica, like imagining a wizard, but as I said earlier, the point is completely pedestrian.  The basic point can be transferred to plenty of other examples.

I guess it's unfortunate that the EPists have been too busy to test one of the fundamental assumptions of Gibson's theory, namely, whether the composition and layout of surfaces constitute affordances, or the TSRM assumption that anchoring properties structure light.

Kiverstein & Farina on Fine-grained Functionalism

Opponents of EMT have repeatedly argued that the functional roles that define a mental state must be understood in a fine-grained way ...

Actually, this coarse-grained/fine-grained stuff is an innovation from the EC side of things.  It's a distinction that ECists have introduced (but left in intuitive terms) to fend off the observations (which seem to be universally accepted*) that there are differences between Inga and Otto that brain-o-centric cognitive psychologists have cared about.  (Indeed, Inga and Otto don't even behave the same way.  Otto will "remember" much more reliably than will Inga.  As the story is typically told, his memories do not fade over time.)

That aside, my sense is that some history of these arguments has been lost.  Ten+ years ago, one often encountered the claim that there is no principled reason for thinking that cognitive processes take place in the brain.  But, if one can understand cognitive processes as cognitive psychologists do (as what Clark, Kiverstein, Farina, et al., describe as"fine-grained"), then there is some principled reason to think that cognitive processes take place in the brain.  So, A&A don't say that functional roles, or the individuation of cognitive states, must be fine-grained.  Only that the states brain-o-centric cognitive psychologists study are such-and-so (which Clark, Kiverstein, Farina, et al.will describe as fine-grained).  That's why they are principled, brain-o-centric cognitive psychologists.

Or, think of it this way.  We can draw a distinction between an hypothesis of fine-grained cognition and a hypothesis of coarse-grained cognition.  The first, by all accounts, would seem not to be extended, where the latter might be.  But, that's fine by me.  The old-fashioned cognitive psychology that studies brain processes could go on as before.

Kiverstein & Farina's and the Modal Version of Extended Cognition

NB: The posts on this paper that will follow in the coming days are all based on this late draft of the Kiverstein & Farina paper.  I've sent them these comments, so the final publication may or may not be different.  And, since Julian and Mirko read the blog (at least at times), they might appreciate some feedback.  Pile on or rise to their defense!

We will call the more general thesis that mental states can supervene on organised systems of processes and mechanisms that criss-cross the boundary of brain, body and world, the Extended Mind Thesis (EMT).  EMT would seem to be a thesis that any philosopher of mind committed to functionalism ought to sign up for.  For it looks to be a straightforward implication of the central tenet of functionalism that it is a state of mind’s causal role that makes it the type of state that it is. The biological and the artefactual can coalesce to realise a type of mental state, so long as they work together to make the right kinds of causal contribution in the initiation and guidance of successful purposeful behaviour.  Where the materials that make this causal contribution are located is not relevant, what is important is simply the job that these materials perform.  Often these jobs can be performed better when the biological agent works in partnership with resources located in the environment beyond the boundary of skin and skull.  (Kiverstein & Farina, forthcoming, p. 2)

Now, Rupert and A&A agree with EMT formulated this way: "mental states can supervene on organised systems of processes and mechanisms that criss-cross the boundary of brain, body and world, the Extended Mind Thesis (EMT). " (italics added).  This is a modal claim, which is to be distinguished from the non-modal claim that mental states supervene on organised systems of processes and mechanisms that criss-cross the boundary of brain, body and world.  Mike Wheeler has made this distinction pretty prominent in the manuscript for his current book. 

Is this Walk-on-able? 1

Does the surface of this pond structure light in such a way as to enable a human to visually perceive that this is walk-on-able?

From Blomberg's Review of Rowlands' New Science

    To sum up, The New Science of the Mind is in my view an uneven book. The first part is a brief and useful introduction to the philosophy of embodied, extended and enactive cognition. The second part is an excellent analysis of counterarguments to the embodied and extended mind (and their combination in the amalgamated mind), and an interesting response to these arguments via a plausible criterion of what counts as a cognitive process. As far as I know, critics of the extended mind (such as Fred Adams, Kenneth Aizawa or Robert Rupert) have not responded to Rowlands criterion (first presented in Rowlands 2009). It would be interesting to see what they make of it.

I have written a reply to Rowlands, (2009), on this.  It is in Aizawa, K. (2010).  "The Coupling-Constitution Fallacy Revisited,  (2010), Cognitive Systems Research, 11, (4), 332-342

And, actually, Mark and I talked about this in our discussion on Philosophy TV.

Is this edible? 4

Do the surfaces here structure light in such as way as to specify whether this is edible for humans?

Job: Teaching Fellow in Mind and Embodied Cognition

Department of Philosophy
University of Edinburgh

Applications are invited for a full-time 2-year fixed-term Teaching Fellowship in the area of Mind and Embodied Cognition.

This post has been created to support teaching and graduate supervision during a period of research leave granted to Professor Andy Clark. The successful candidate will have a PhD and publications commensurate with their stage in career. She or he will deliver philosophical and interdisciplinary teaching (including helping with graduate supervision) in the areas of Embodied Cognition and Philosophy of Mind. The successful candidate will also contribute teaching to the masters level specialization in Mind, Language and Embodied Cognition.

Teaching skills in the area of consciousness studies and/or philosophy of perception would be considered an advantage.

The position is available from 1 April 2011 for a period of 24 months.
For more information, go to: http://www.jobs.ed.ac.uk/ and enter the reference number 3014036

Still Another Note on Merritt's Abstract

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,‟

Just to be clear, it's not the A&A view that bearing non-derived content is the sole marker of the "the mind" or cognition.  There is that stuff about how representations bearing non-derived content are manipulated.

Is this edible? 3

Do the surfaces of these pellets really structure light in such a way as to specify whether they are edible for humans?