Calvo and Keijzer on Cognition

What is cognition? Although cognition is one of the core concepts in the behavioral and cognitive sciences, there is no generally accepted answer. For example, in his classic book Cognitive Psychology, Ulrich Neisser defined cognition as: “all processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used.” (1967, p.4) But this definition seems to include many artifacts, like tape recorders, and organisms, like plants, that were not intended to be labeled as cognitive. The classical cognitive sciences that grew up under the influence of people like Neisser used a much more limited interpretation of cognition: not all forms or information processing did suffice. The implicit extra constraint in this definition was that cognition involves the kind of information processing that also occurs in human intelligence, where it is described in terms like perception, planning, thinking and action. (Calvo & Keijzer, 2008, p. 249)

More cognitivism in plants, it seems.

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.)

The "EC = Science, Anti-EC = a priori speculation" meme 2

In an as-yet unpublished paper, "Varieties of Externalism", Susan Hurley writes,

The issues between internalism and externalism should be resolved bottom up by such scientific practice, not by advance metaphysics:  by seeing whether any good psychological explanations are externalist, not by deciding on a criterion of the mental and using it to sort explanations as constitutive or not.  In this context, I’m aware of no appropriate criterion independent of good explanations; to the extent good explanations reveal constitution, a criterion of the constitutive cannot be used to select among good explanations.  As I understand it, externalism predicts that some good psychological explanations of the ‘what’ or ‘how’ kinds will be externalist. (p. 5)

One can agree with Hurley's methodology, but why suppose that current science does not already weigh in in favor of internalism (anti-EC)?

The advocates of EC have on the table some empirical explanations of certain phenomena, e.g. what is going on when one does long division or when people make gestures and solve problems.  So, now advocates and critics are in the process of evaluating those explanations, not a priori or by advance metaphysics, but by empirical methods.  Hurley seems to be misrepresenting the nature of (at least some portions of) the current debate.

The "EC = Science, Anti-EC = a priori speculation" meme 1

A while ago, someone (Garzon or Keijzer I suppose) posted a link on this blog to a paper, "Cognition in Plants" by Paco Calvo Garzon and Fred Keijzer. 

In this chapter, we will discuss the question whether an extended reading of cognition, as developed within Embodied Cognition might apply to plants. Within Embodied Cognition, the notion of cognition – being based on perception and action – is used to make sense of a wide range of behaviors exhibited by ‘simple’ animals, like nematodes or flies. The message is clearly that we should set generalizing dismissive intuitions concerning such animals aside and go for a more empirically informed approach. We believe that this open attitude is also beneficial to the study of possible cognitive phenomena in plants. (p. 2).

Clearly, there is a widespread preference for empirically informed approaches, rather than mere intuition.  But, why suppose that the status quo is empirically uninformed?  In the case at hand, we might think that botanists and psychologists have made the empirical discovery that plants don't think.  Why think otherwise?

This is worth challenging, since Garzon and Keijzer are not the only ones who try to paint anti-EC views as methodologically backward.  In fact, as I will try to document in coming days, it is a fairly common meme in the EC literature.