Congrats to Chemero

He receives honors at Franklin and Marshall.  Info here.

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.

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 ...

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".

Gibson, Runeson, Physics and Affordances

Andrew sometimes comments that ecological psychology has moved along, in some respects, since Gibson.  And Chemero argues that for a diversity of interpretations of affordances.  (Chemero manuscript here.)  Actually, the other papers in that issue of Ecological Psychology probably attest to a diversity of opinion as well.

So, once we get to the point where we recognize that Ecological Psychology is not a single, monolithic body of theory, we can move on to spelling out the differences.  And, some of those differences might concern how physical and geometrical quantities are to be used, or not, in Ecological Psychology.

Benighted Methodology

I'm kind of surprised at the popularity of replies to the Adams and Aizawa that are based on attributing to us some benighted methodology.  According to Rob Wilson, with our concern for the mark of the cognitive, we are doing conceptual analysis.  According to Tony Chemero, we are doing a priori metaphysics.  According to Susan Hurley, with drawing attention to the role of causation versus constitution, we are doing metaphysics in advance of looking to actual scientific practice.  According to Ladyman and Ross, by drawing attention to the c-c distinction, we are doing primitive analytic metaphysics.

But, as I see things, the debate over EC involves both conceptual issues and empirical issues.  So, suppose you think that physical actions are constitutive of perceptual experiences, rather than mere causal influences on perceptual experiences.  Then, there is a need for some conceptual clarity regarding causation versus constitution.  It's a distinction that is found in actual cognitive science, rather than stylized cognitive science.  It's more than just a philosopher's fiction.  Moreover, there is plenty of empirical evidence that bears on the claim that physical actions are constitutive of perceptual experiences.  The Bounds of Cognition, Chapter 9, bears this out by mixing both conceptual matters and empirical matters.

I think that working through philosophical issues in cognitive science in a serious way involves both conceptual/theoretical and empirical issues.  I don't see that I differ from Wilson, Chemero, Hurley, Ladyman, or Ross very much at all when it comes to a philosophical methodology of taking cognitive science seriously.  Where we seem to find real differences is in the consequences we draw from taking cognitive science seriously.

Dale Review of Chemero's Radical Embodied Cognitive Science

Also in the Journal of Mind and Behavior.

More on Nonlinearity and Mechanistic Explanation

The point is that the more localizability and decomposition fail, the harder mechanistic explanation will be, and a high degree of nonlinearity is bad news for both of these (C&S, 2008, p. 16).

Ok.  So, how is nonlinearity make localizability and decomposition harder?  I guess that if you can't decompose a system into parts, then maybe by the MDC and Bechtel definitions you can't have mechanistic explanation, so why does nonlinearity make composition harder?

(And really, decomposition could be harder with nonlinearity, but if it is still possible wouldn't that be enough to remove the block on mechanistic explanation?)

Nonlinearity and Mechanistic Explanation

So, nonlinearity is supposed to block mechanistic explanation:

A linear system can be decomposed into subsystems. Such decomposition fails however in the case of nonlinear systems. When the behaviors of the constituents of a system are highly coherent and correlated, the system cannot be treated even approximately as a collection of uncoupled individual parts. Instead, some particular global or nonlocal description is required, taking into account that individual constituents cannot be fully characterized without reference to larger scale structures of the system such as order parameters. (Chemero & Silberstein, 2008, p. 16).

But, why does decomposition fail in the case of nonlinear systems?  Think of a double pendulum.  Why can that not be decomposed into two pendulums?

It is not a part of mechanistic explanation that one treat systems as "a collection of uncoupled individual parts" if in fact they are a collection nonlinearly coupled parts. Rather, I would think that mechanistic explanations of systems of nonlinearly coupled components should involve treating them as systems of nonlinearly coupled components.  I know that it is common to think that nonlinearity causes explanatory problems, but it can't be that nonlinearity forces us to treat such systems as collections of uncoupled individual parts.

Moreover, in either the linear or the nonlinear cases, the MDC approach (and I think the Bechtel approach) to mechanistic explanation invokes higher level descriptions (global descriptions) which would be the things to be explained by the lower level mechanisms.  So, there is no "instead" about particular global or nonlocal descriptions.

Nor, need the mechanist "fully characterize" the individual constituents without reference to larger structure of the system.  Isn't that what "fully characterize" means one does?  Refer to the larger structure?

To repeat, however, I think there could be something problematic about nonlinear systems, but I don't see that C&S have put their finger on it.

So, Why Isn't the Methodology of Co-ordination Dynamics an Instance of Mechanistic Explanation?

The methodology of coordination dynamics is as follows. First, for the system as a whole, discover the key coordination variables and the dynamical equations of motion that best describes how coordination patterns change over time. Second, identify the individual coordinated elements (such as neurons, organs, clapping hands, pendulums, cars, birds, bees, fish, etc.) and discern their dynamics. As Kelso and Ensgtrom say, this is nontrivial because the individual coordinated elements are often themselves quite complex, and are often dependent upon the larger coordinated system of which they are components (2006, 109). They put the point even more strongly, “in the complex systems of coordination dynamics, there are no purely context-independent parts from which to derive a context-independent coordinative whole” (2006, 202). Third, derive the systemic dynamics from the description of the nonlinear coupling among the elements. It is this nonlinear coupling between elements that allows one to determine connections across different levels of description. It is important to note that, as in all dynamical explanation, discovering both the systemic dynamics and that of their component parts requires specifying boundary conditions that “establish the context for particular behaviors to arise” (Kelso and Engstrom 2006, 109). The behavior of the whole system ‘emerges’ from the nonlinear interactions among the elements of the system in a particular context where the elements and the contextual features are coupled and mutually codependent. The individual coordinating elements form a collective whole in the sense that microscopic degrees of freedom are reduced to a much smaller set of context dependent coordination variables or order parameters that greatly constrain the behavior of the elements. (Chemero & Silberstein, 2008, pp. 12-13).

So, if we understand C&S's "elements" as entities and their "dynamics" as the interactions among the entities, it looks like we are pretty far along the path to, say, the Machamer, Darden, Craver theory of mechanistic explanation in terms of entities and their activities.  So, why isn't the methodology of co-ordination dynamics an instance of mechanistic explanation?  I figure there could be an answer, but the contrast between mechanistic explanation and whatever rival C&S are offering does not seem to be all that stark.  And, what exactly is it?

Bechtel might not like this (cf., C&S, 2008, p. 16), but what reason is there?  For further comment on this, tune in tomorrow.

Irreducible Brain Components Leads to Cognitive Extension?

C&S write,

If it turns out that there are irreducible mechanisms (nonlocalizable or nondecomposable) at the highest levels within the brain then, because it is at roughly the same scale and there are many interactions at that shared level, it may be necessary to bring in the external environment as part of the cognitive mechanisms in question or at least as essential background for their function. (Chemero & Silberstein, 2008, p. 8).

I'm not getting the thinking here.  So, suppose there are some irreducible (cognitive?) mechanisms at the highest levels in the brain.  Why would this make it necessary to bring in the external environment as part of the cognitive mechanisms in question?  I'm not getting it.  C&S do hedge and throw in "it may be necessary", but still why may this be necessary?

There are other considerations given later, such as that mechanisms often function only in certain contexts, but this is a separate matter from the irreducibility consideration cited above.

Those Successful Skinnerians and Gibsonians

C&S write,

Both Skinnerians and Gibsonians have been very successful as psychologists, and both groups have achieved results that are undeniable psychological milestones. So these views are neither nonstarters, nor obviously crazy.  (Chemero & Silberstein, 2008, pp. 4-5).

This seems to me a bit simplistic.

For one thing, recall that the Ptolemaic astronomers were very successful as astronomers and had results that are undeniable astronomical milestones, but much of their theory was wrong.  So, one can still achieve results with a flawed theory.

For another, I think that one has to recognize that theories have different parts (to speak generically).  Some parts might be true and others false.  So, maybe it is true that the world contains affordances, but false that these are directly perceived.  Indeed, one philosophical sort of project might be to draw distinctions among the components of theories to see how evidence supports one or another of them. 

For a third, I wouldn't want to undertake the burden of proof to show that Skinnerian or Gibsonian psychology is a nonstarter or obviously crazy.  (Maybe just crazy?)  Maybe just wrong on certain important points.

Psychology without the brain?

Chemero and Silberstein report that:

Note that neither Gibson nor Skinnerians claim that the brain is not importantly involved in cognition; rather they claim that psychologists can do all their explanatory work without referring to the brain.  (Chemero & Silberstein, 2008, p.4).

Ok. So, what is the story about why John Dalton was color blind?  He lacked a type of retinal cone, right?  So, do Gibson and Skinner dodge this objection by saying that the retina is not part of the brain?  Or by saying that color blindness is not a concern of psychology?

It seems to me not enough to say the retina is involved in color vision.  It looks like facts about the retina do some explanatory work.

This sort of line looks to have it both ways, that the brain is, of course, important, but not important.

Another Instance of the C-C Fallacy?

Here Chemero and Silberstein seem to me to attribute the C-C fallacy to Clark:

Clark (2003) takes this further, arguing that external tools (including phones, computers, language, etc.) are so crucial to human cognition that we are literally cyborgs, partly constituted by technologies (Chemero & Silberstein, 2008, p. 5).

The fallacy here is in thinking that something that contributes "crucially" to some sort of cognitive or behavioral success is thereby cognitive.  The crux of the difference between what Rupert calls HEC and HEMC is the difference between crucial causal contributors being cognitive crucial causal contributors and non-cognitive crucial causal contributors.

Future Posts 6/17/2010

I'm reading Chemero & Silberstein's "After the Philosophy of Mind: Replacing Scholasticism with Science", available here, and will be posting my typical "reading notes" in a few days.

WWCD? 2

Ok.  Maybe there is more to this Hegelian arguments idea than I had first expected.

Chomsky's argument can be outlined as follows.
1. Children uniformly and rapidly learn language, without specific reinforcement.
2. Children are presented with evidence insufficient to infer the characteristics of the grammar they attain in learning language.
3. Learning language is the attainment of a grammar, an internal deductive mechanism that allows the recognition and production of appropriate sentences.
4. Therefore, the grammar must be largely innate.
5. Therefore, any theory that does not posit such an innate grammar cannot account for language learning.
Before criticizing this argument, I should point out its reasonableness. Humans acquire a mechanism that is apparently unlearn able given the opportunities for learning, so it must be innate. This is rather plausible, and many people-nearly all linguists-are convinced by it. There is, however, a problem with this argument, and it is with the evidence for the premises. The problem with the evidence for the premises is that none is provided, and no empirical studies of language learning are cited. Chomsky relies entirely on casual observations in the case of the semiempirical premises (1 and 2). The theoretical premise (3) is derived by inference to the best explanation of the semi empirical premises. This, then, is the particular character of Chomsky's argument that I would like to focus on: it is an argument that a class of scientific approaches is doomed to fail, based on theoretical posits and little or no empirical evidence.  (Chemero, 2009, p. 7, italics added).

So, here is Timo Järvilehto making a case for the inseparability of the organism and environment, a fundamental principle of ecological psychology.

 Is it possible to establish the border between the systems? Is it possible, however, to define separately the elements of the organism and environment systems and the border between the two systems? Let us try to define the border between the two systems when looking at such behavior as drinking coffee from a cup, for example. This is certainly behavior which has physical, physiological, and mental aspects. Is it possible to separate these aspects in the description of the behavior and to determine to which system each of them belongs?  

The events in this piece of behavior may be described according to the modem psychological conception. Let us start with the cup on the table. The cup of coffee is a physical part of the environment and clearly outside the organism system. It may be thus defined as an element of the environment or as a stimulus. The human being is sitting at the table and has the need to drink coffee. This could be described as a physiological process within the organism, but there is also its mental aspect, which could correspond to some state of the brain, for example. The environmental stimulus (reflection of light from the cup) sets off a process in the organism eventually leading to the movement of the hand, one element of the organism, towards the cup. This is clearly overt behavior because there is a change in the relation of the two elements, one belonging to the environment and the other to the organism. So far, so good.
Now our subject grasps the cup; the hand holds it. Thus the hand is immobile in relation to the cup, but both the hand and cup (which contains coffee) move in relation to the environment (and mouth). Is the cup now part of the organism system or environment?   Probably we should include it in the organism system because the critical functional relation exists between the cup and coffee; it is just the environmental coffee that the subject is bringing to the mouth when "drinking coffee."  

However, the cup was earlier on the table and it was then clearly part of the environment. Now it has changed into a part of the organism. This would mean that elements of the environment could change to become elements of the organism system and vice versa. Thus, we could not unequivocally decide whether an element belongs to one of these systems simply by looking at the properties of these elements.  

But can we somehow define at any instant a clear border between the two systems? The coffee in the cup is clearly part of the environment, and when the subject is drinking it it becomes a part of the organism system---or does it? Is it possible to say when the coffee is in the organism? When it is in the mouth? Or in the intestines? Or when the chemical parts of the coffee are in the blood? In fact, it is impossible to define any exact border which should be exceeded so that we could on this basis unequivocally determine whether the coffee has moved from the environment into the organism. The same is true in general of metabolism and, especially, of breathing. When is the breathed air outside and when inside?  

Or what about spectacles? On the table they are certainly part of the environment; on I my nose they are part of the organism just in the same sense as is the lens of the eye. At . what point in the air is the "border" between the two systems exceeded when I move them '. from the table to my nose?
It is just as difficult to define the movement of one part of the environment to a part of the organism as it is to carry out the task in the reverse direction. For example, from the point of view of the visual system, certain parts of the body are "outside" just in the same sense as the coffee cup on the table. My hand is, of course, part of me, but it is not within me or inside me; from the point of view of the eye it is certainly outside. If from the point of view of perceptual activity it is outside, where is the border between the inside and the outside?
But even if we cannot define any exact border between the organism and the environment, we should be able to define unequivocally the organism itself, shouldn't we? The body consists of cells and tissues; aren't these clearly separable from the environment?  

Unfortunately not. Take, for example, tissue. It is a structure consisting of cells and interstitial spaces, the environment of the cells. But where is the end of this inner environment, and where does the outer environment start? Does sweating, for example, occur inside or outside? If we consider it to be outside, then we simultaneously extend the inner environment to outside the body. In this connection we may also ask what it actually means to have an "inner" environment. Whom or what is this environment environing? Or what about the sense organs? Are the receptors inside or outside? For a visual receptor, for example, part of its environment consists of electromagnetic radiation from outside and part of the connective tissues and fluids of the body. Is there any possibility of defining the border between these two?  

In conclusion, these considerations show that any attempt to develop an explanation of human behavior on the basis of an assumption of two systems meets considerable difficulties right at the beginning. In contrast to our common-sense impression, critical scrutiny shows that we cannot define unequivocally any of our basic concepts on this basis. We cannot simply define whether any object which we study is part of the organism or part of the environment. This follows from the fact that we are not able to show any absolute border between the organism and the environment. Consequently, we cannot define behavior as a change of the relation between the organism and environment systems and, therefore, we do not know what we are looking at when we want to explain behavior.  

How can we then maintain that, for example, information is moving from one system to the other or that it is processed within the organism? Or, how can we say that some of the events which we have described before, like mental activity, representations, maps, or models are in the organism and not in the environment? Or maybe somewhere between these two? (Järvilehto, 1998, pp. 327-9)

WWCD?

I'm not much of a fan of Chemero's objecting to giving Hegelian arguments, since I don't think it happens that often, but then again I could be wrong.  This looks like an a priori argument to me:

This example is illustrated in Figure 9.3 and can be described as follows. Imagine an organism A, whose behavior R is the function of I, A and E. For instance, A shows behavior R when A detects that E = z and 1= y. Note, however, that because of the mutual and reciprocal union of A and E (denoted by the solid lined arrows), E is also influenced by I, such that E = z is only subsequent to I = w. Now imagine that there are two observers (scientists) of A, both attempting to understand the cause of behavior R. For the first observer, E is not observed or assumed to be of little consequence. Thus, to the confusion of Observer 1, A and I do not predict R directly. I is sometimes y and sometimes some other state (z, w, v, etc.). As a result, Observer 1 discerns (after a while) that R results when I passes successively through states wand y and hypothesizes that R = I + A + (A's memory of I). In other words, Observer 1 endows A with other causal structure. In contrast, Observer 2 does observe E in addition to A and I. Thus, Observer 2 discovers (after only a short period of time) that R occurs when E = z and I = y. As a result, Observer 2 concludes that R is a direct result of the total system, R = I + A + E. That is, Observer 2 makes no hypothesis about "other" cause, internal to A, as such cause is not required. This example, though somewhat obvious in its simplicity, is by no means trivial, nor is its facetious criticism of traditional theory unjustified. To be blunt, when organism is considered separate from environment, and the partial system (organism) deputizes for the whole system (organism and environment), there is a tendency to fashion explanation through variables that are beyond immediate observation. Gratuitous appeals to internal states as explanations of everyday behaviors exemplify this tendency.  (Richardson, Shockley, Fajen, Riley, & Turvey, 2008, pp. 165-6).

Now, I guess I don't care so much about the fact that the argument is a priori or that it is a thought experiment.  I do think this is a caricature of, say,  the cognitivist view, so it would be nice to have some references to cognitivists who have actually made this mistake.  They could be out there.  I haven't read everything.

Moreover, what is wrong with explanations through variables that are beyond immediate observation?  Doesn't science regularly appeal to  the unobservable to explain the observable?

And, won't everyone agree that gratuitous appeals to internal states as explanations of everyday behaviors are bad?  They are, after all, gratuitous appeals.  In fact, isn't the issue about internal states really about whether the appeals to them are gratuitous in the first place?

The "EC = Science, Anti-EC = a priori speculation" meme 4

In Radical Embodied Cognitive Science, Chemero presents the meme in the guise of what he calls "Hegelian Arguments":

In what follows, 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. (p. 7).

You can see how this will play out.  Criticism of Gibsonian psychology and radical embodied cognitive science consists of Hegelian arguments.

The "EC = Science, Anti-EC = a priori speculation" meme 3

Here are Chemero and Michael Silberstein on this meme:

the extended cognition thesis might really be true. The holism question is an open and empirical one—the reason to attempt full-blooded extended cognitive science is that the world might really be that way and such methods may capture that. Such questions cannot be settled a priori by any kind of essentialist arguments about what is and what is not a cognitive system. (Chemero & Silberstein, 2008, p. 132.)

Chemero vs Thompson & Stapleton

Thompson and Stapleton write,

Without autonomy (operational closure) there is no original meaning; there is only the derivative meaning attributed to certain processes by an outside observer.  (Thompson and Stapleton, 2010, p. 28).

So, T&S believe in non-derived content and Chemero has written that he is pursuing an enactivist theory of cognition of the sort developed by Thompson, Varela, and others.  Yet, one of Chemero's core ideas is anti-representationalism.  I'm not sure how that all works out, but it looks to me as though one should read Chemero as developing his own views, rather than pushing those of others.  (In fact, I have this vague sense from having read an earlier draft of his book manuscript that Chemero's "Gibsonianism" doesn't look 100% like Gibson's views.  But, that was a long time ago and I'm getting a little long in the tooth.)