Lambros Malafouris at Seed Magazine

Maybe folks have not seen this. 

Malafouris on transforming the "Handaxe Enigma" 2

Just to emphasize the fact that Malafouris is not using EC to resolve the handaxe enigma, we have additional text that shows that he is, instead, interested in putting on the table a kind of enactivist theory of intentional states. 

I want to argue that the 'handaxe enigma' embodies much more than a simple question about what precise goal the knapper pursues. ...  In other words, it is not simply a problem about the precise content of the knapper's 'intentional states', e.g. a cutting instrument vs a symmetric cutting instrument. It is instead a problem about the actual nature, location and constitution of these intentional states in human cognitive evolution. ... But the key issue underlying the hand axe enigma is not about whether humans in the Stone Age were producing one sort of intentional states rather than another. The issue does not lie in deciding between a core and a blade. The key issue, rather concerns, on the one hand, the question of how humans - in contrast to what we see in other animals - came to possess this special property that we call 'intentionality', and, on the other hand, the question of how and when humans became aware of the intentional character of their actions and of the actions of others. The unique challenge that the 'handaxe enigma' poses to the archaeology and philosophy of mind lies precisely in thinking about when and how this explicit understanding emerges. (Malafouris, 2010, pp. 16-17).

Now, it is true that the issue of how humans came to possess intentionality is a large and important one and it may be true that the handaxe enigma may presuppose human intentionality, but Malafouris' contention notwithstanding it really does seem to be a debate over which intentions early humans had.  It is not about whether they had them (or maybe it is, given some ways in which Malafouris sets up the debate).  Nor is it about what it is for early humans to have had intentions.  It is about which intentions they had.

Or, if Malafouris is right, I don't see what reason he has given for his take on what the issue really is.

Malafouris on transforming the "Handaxe Enigma" 1

So, what exactly is this "handaxe enigma"?  Roughly, it is a debate over two different ways in which humans might make Acheulean handaxes: either by intending to make an envisioned symmetrical tool or by intending just to knock off chips.  (In truth, Malafouris at time seems to set up the debate as over an intentional way of making the handaxes versus an unintentional way.)  And one might think that Malafouris' project is to show how EC will help resolve this debate.  See the following, for example:

Broadly speaking there are two main sides in the 'hand axe debate'. On the one hand, we have those archaeologists (e.g. Wynn 1995; 2002) that identify 'conscious intention' behind the symmetry of the hand axe, although as we shall be discussing below, they differ on the precise selective forces or mechanisms that they see as furnishing the main influences on hand axe morphology (for a good summary discussion see Lycett 2008 ). On the other side of the debate, many archaeologists would disagree with the above interpretations arguing that the perceived symmetry in stone tools is simply the consequence of the manufacture technique, rather than the product of human intention (Noble & Davidson 1996; McPherron 2000). On this construal, symmetrical handaxes are simply seen as more effective cutting and chopping tools that do not involve any conscious choice on the part of Acheulean toolmakers (e.g. Ohe11987; Mitchell 1996; Simao 2002).

     How are we then to understand the cognitive life of this object? What questions should we ask of it? My contention is that what we call 'the handaxe enigma' (Wynn 1995) needs to be placed altogether on a different ontological foundation. We need to abandon our common representational/internalist assumptions, and recognize knapping as an act of thought; that is a cognitive act.  (Malafouris, 2010, p. 14).

One might have thought that EC is supposed to help us decide between these two interpretations, but instead (per the last two sentences) EC is just a proposal for rethinking the description of these two alternatives.  This is repeated later.

I propose, that' active externalism' clearly points out that the problem of human intentionality which the handaxe ' enigma' primarily embodies, is grounded on the false assumption that intentional states are 'in the head' whereas in fact in many cases they can be seen to spread out across skin and skull. Consequently, in the last part of this paper, I will attempt to describe knapping as an embodied cognitive process which criss-crosses the boundaries of skin and skull, since its effective implementation involves elements that extend beyond the purely 'mental' or neural realm.  (Malafouris, 2010, p. 17).

 Ok.  So, this transforms the problem.  Now, the handaxe enigma is not about competing hypotheses about intentions in the head, but about competing hypotheses about intentions spread out over brain, body, and world.  I don't see that this does much to address the anthropologists who were interested in the enigma in the first place.

Moreover, one might have hoped that Malafouris would show how EC could help resolve the debate, hence that this would be some evidence in favor of believing in EC.  Yet, we seem only to get an EC reformulation of a debate with no apparent payoff.  Why would this tranformation be helpful?

Handaxes are Part of the Extended Mind 2

A second reason Malafouris, 2010, gives for believing in EC is:

For another, the more we study material culture, the more it looks like a genuine element of the human cognitive system and its long-term development. Thus, given the archaeological preoccupation with long-term processes and the study of material culture, one would expect some questioning of the conventional boundaries and intuitions about the whereabouts of the human mind.  (Malafouris, 2010, p. 15).

But, doesn't this just beg the question?  Why is it that the more one studies material culture, the more it looks like a genuine element of the human cognitive system?

I'm fine with the claim that material culture is an element in the long-term development of the human cognitive system, because that is perfectly consistent with HEMC.  But, why think that because some factor is an element in the long-term development of the cognitive system that it is part of the cognitive system?  Maybe a regular night-day cycle of light is an important element in the long-term development of the cognitive system.  That does not seem to me to make the cycle part of the cognitive system, rather than a causal influence on the cognitive system.

Handaxes are Part of the Extended Mind 1

According to the anti-EC view of handaxes, as presented by Malafouris, 2010:

The hand axe, being a thing made of stone, cannot participate in the knapper's cognitive realm per se. Instead, it can only be the index of a mental process, like a footprint is the index of walking. In other words, the hand axe is simply the product, or external representation, of an 'internal' preformed idea, or cognitive process, which was subsequently realized in the external physical world.  (Malafouris, 2010, p. 15)

So far, so good.  So, what reason does Malafouris give for challenging the anti-EC view?

Are there sufficient grounds to uncritically accept as archaeologists the above popular 'internalist' scenario (see also Introduction, this volume)? I think not. From an archaeological perspective, I see no compelling reason why the study of mind should stop at the skin or skull, despite what other disciplines might think. For one thing, most of our evidence about the origin and evolution of human intelligence comes in the form of material culture, rather than abstract ideas and brain tissue. (ibid.)

So, there are two things here.

First, he notes that there is no reason (he sees) why the study of mind should stop at the skin or skull.  Ok.  But, there is an understanding of the anti-EC view according to which the study need not stop at the skin or skull.  As I noted in an earlier post, even those who think the mind is in the head think that one needs to understand the role of the body and environment in causally influencing cognitive processes.  This is what Rupert labels "HEMC."

Second, there is the observation about where most of our evidence comes from.  But, why should the boundaries of the mind be co-extensive with the boundaries of the evidence?  If most of our evidence about the origin and evolution of human intelligence were to come from fMRI, would that mean that our minds extend into these giant magnets, etc.?

Now, I would be happy to accept something like the Hypothesis of Extended Evidence, according to which much of our evidence about the origin and evolution of human intelligence extends beyond the boundaries of skin and skull, but not the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition.

Archeulean Handaxes and EC

In "Knapping Intentions and the Marks of the Mental", Malafouris uses the example of Acheulean handaxes as an instance of EC.

For some reason, I find this an attractive example, even though I don't think they provide instances of EC.

For the advocate of EC, however, the situation is more interesting.  There seems to be an issue of whether or not these could count as tools wherein cognition might extend.  As I've mentioned before, I think it is Clark's view that tools suitable for EC must be information resources or information processors.  I get this as implicit in Clark's conditions on "trust and glue".  Here is one version of them:

1. The resource must be reliably available and typically invoked.
2. Any information retrieved from the resource must be more-or-less automatically endorsed. It should not usually be subject to critical scrutiny (unlike the opinions of other people, for example).
3. Information provided by the resource should be easily accessible as and when required. 

The information requirement is implicit in conditions 2. and 3.  So, are the handaxes tools like a recipe or like an oven used in baking a cake?  For me, the answer is no, but for the advocate of EC it seems to be up for grabs. 

Engrams and Exograms

Malafouris and Renfrew discuss the Mycenaean Linear B clay tablet as a prototypical exogram, hence as a kind of extended memory.  They, then, proceed to note differences between it and engrams.  And even note that we should be careful not to overlook the differences between engrams and exograms.  This, however, is what Adams and Aizawa and Rupert have been emphasizing.  The differences are significant enough that, while we might take a vague similarity between them as motivating calling them "memory" (as happens with human memory and computer memory, for example), the way of the scientific future should be not to just lump these exograms and engrams together in a generic "memory science".

Methodological Implications of EC

Malafouris & Renfrew repeat a relatively familiar claim about EC:

The methodological implication of this is that cognition can be studied independently of any consideration of the external environment, the body, or the material world.  (Malafouris & Renfrew, 2010, p. 10).

I have a tough time putting a favorable interpretation on this.  Think about the experimental study of vision over the last 40 years.  Maybe there are parts of it, such as some computational modeling tasks, such as finding lines in scenes, that can be done with little consideration of the body or environment.  But, there are vast tracts of research in vision science dedicated to controlled experiments that tweak minor parameters of the visual stimulus in order to try to determine various properties of the visual system.  Gibsonians will dislike much of this, but the problem for them is not that it works independently of any consideration of the external environment, the body, or the material world.  It is that this work looks at the wrong features of the environment, or looks at them in the wrong way.

Moreover, vision science includes a lot of work on the structure of the eye, structures such as the lens and the macular pigment.  These are features of the non-neural body.

And the study of hearing is much the same.  In the sensation and perception text I use, Blake and Sekuler's Perception, for example, there is ample discussion of the role of the head and the ears.  My favorite line in the book is when they describe the head as a dense barrier.  (Many people have told me that my head is a dense barrier, but not in the context of the study of audition.)

And think of Chomsky's poverty of the stimulus argument.  Whether or not you think this is a good argument, it is not an argument that ignores the environment.  It is one that makes a claim about the environment, namely, that it does not contain enough information to enable normal infants to acquire language in a reliable manner.

What is the Extended Mind Hypothesis?

In their Introduction to The Cognitive Life of Things, Malafouris and Renfrew write,

A key question to ask then, is what exactly is the Extended Mind Hypothesis, and how precisely does it relate with the perspectives advanced and the examples discussed in the book?
     Put simply, the extended mind is a new, radical and much contested thesis over the mind's location.  (Malafouris & Renfrew, 2010, p. 5)

This is, of course, a pretty standard thing to say about what EC is all about, but there really seem to me to be two big expository matters to address when one asserts something such as that cognitive processes sometimes extended into the body and environment.  First, what are you talking about when you speak of "cognitive processes" and, second, what are the conditions under which they extend?

And, in fact, M&R go on to reject cognitive processes understood as computational processes in favor of a more enactivist sort of approach to cognition (op. cit., pp. 7-8).

I think that the literature has not yet taken the what-are-you-talking-about issue seriously enough.  More explicitness is in order here.  So, I guess I don't care that much about the truth of the Hypothesis of Extended Folk Cognition, where it is some folk theory that is suppose to extended.  And, I don't care that much about the Hypothesis of Extended Autopoeitic Cognition either.  And, I even believe in the Hypothesis of Extended Information Processing.  Let's just have some clarity on what is being proposed.