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.

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 ...

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.

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. 

Julian & Mirko Nurturing the Mind

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

Kiverstein Review of Noë 's Out of Our Heads

Julian Kiverstein (co-editor with Andy Clark of that special issue of Topoi) has a new review of Noë 's Out of Our Heads in the Journal of Consciousness Studies.

Julian kindly sent me a draft of this a while ago, but it is now available for easy download here.

It also contains a reply to my criticism of Noë's treatment of Sur's work on ferrets sketched here.  The full manuscript of my paper is available here.