Call for Papers Special Issue of *Philosophical Explorations* on "Extended Cognition and Epistemic Action"

Guest Editors: Andy Clark (University of Edinburgh), Duncan Pritchard (University of Edinburgh), Krist Vaesen (Eindhoven University of Technology)

Submission Deadline: September 15, 2011

Invited Contributors: Fred Adams (University of Delaware) & Ken Aizawa (Centenary College of Louisiana), Ronald Giere (University of Minnesota), Sanford Goldberg (Northwestern University), Richard Menary (University of Wollongong) and Kim Sterelny (Australian National University and Victoria University).

Background and Aim

According to the thesis of extended cognition, cognitive processes do not need to be located inside the skin of the cognizing agent. Humans routinely engage their wider artifactual environment to extend the capacities of their naked brain. They often rely so much on external aids (notebooks, watches, smartphones) that the latter become a proper part of a hybrid (human-artifact) cognitive system.

The thesis of extended cognition has been influential in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, linguistics, informatics, and ethics, but, surprisingly, not in epistemology. The discipline concerned with one of the most remarkable products of human cognition, viz. knowledge, has largely ignored the suggestion that her main object of study might be produced by processes outside the human skin.

In this special issue of *Philosophical Explorations* we therefore are looking for papers that explore the ramifications of the thesis of extended cognition for contemporary epistemology in general, and for conceptualizations of epistemic action in particular. The special issue will include five invited papers (by Fred Adams & Kenneth Aizawa, Ronald Giere, Sanford Goldberg, Richard Menary and Kim Sterelny), plus two contributions selected from the papers submitted in response to this open call for papers.

We expect contributions discussing the impact of extended cognition on issues as: epistemic agency and responsibility, cognitive ability, ownership of belief, the distribution of epistemic credit, the sources of belief, artifactual testimony, the growth of knowledge, non-propositional knowledge, the evolution and reliability of extended cognitive processes, the varieties of extended epistemic action.

Submission Details

Please send a pdf-version of your paper (max. 8000 words) to Krist Vaesen. Contributions that do not make it to the special issue may be considered for publication in one of the regular issues of *Philosophical Explorations*.

Further Inquiries

Please direct any inquiries about this call for papers to Krist Vaesen.

Vaesen's SISSICASE

Credit Theories of Knowledge claim knowing that P somehow involves deserving epistemic credit for believing that P is true.  The heart of Vaesen's paper is the development of a case that is meant to challenge certain versions of this.  The case in one in which Sissi knows, but does not deserve credit for believing that p.

Suppose, now, that SYSTEM1 is an ordinary pre-9/11 baggage scanner, whereas SYSTEM2 is a post-9/11 upgrade, including a “false signal” engine. Whenever SYSTEM2 projects a false image and the operator notices (she informs the system by, say, clicking on the image), the following message pops up: “False alarm: you were being tested!” If no message appears, the operator knows the threat is real. [So, SYSTEM2 makes Sissi more reliable than does SYSTEM1.]  Consider, then, the following scenario:

SISSICASE: Sissi has been a baggage inspector all her life. She used to work with an old-fashioned SYSTEM1, but since 9/11, the airport she is working for introduced a SYSTEM2. Her supervisor Joseph, a cognitive engineer who was actually involved in the design of the device, has informed her how it works (how its operation is almost identical to the operation of the old system). Currently Sissi is inspecting a piece of luggage which contains a bomb. She notices and
forms a true belief regarding the contents of the suitcase. As such,  the bomb is intercepted and a catastrophe prevented from happening. (Vaesen, 2010).

Yet, here it seems to me that robust EC (of the sort to which A&A object) actually threatens to offer a rebuttal to Vaessen's case.  An epistemologist of the robust EC stripe would probably want to explore that idea that Joseph is also part of Sissi's cognitive system.  EC folks roll that way, sometimes.  If Joseph is part of Sissi's extended cognitive system, then she gets credit.  So, it looks as though Vaesen would be better served siding with A&A and rejecting robust EC.

Vaesen and the State of Play in EC

These are thorny issues indeed, [This is not to say that they can’t be handled satisfactorily. Quite convincing [extended cognition] (counter)arguments are e.g., Clark (2007), Menary (2006) and Rowlands (2009).]

Just for the record, there are further replies to these, including some in The Bounds of Cognition,  Aizawa, (2010), and Adams and Aizawa (forthcoming).

 In truth, I don't see that Vaesen needs to have our critique rebutted in order to have his project go forward.  He doesn't endorse a kind of extended cognition that A&A challenge.  So, to put matters as I see them, even though there is essentially no extended scientific cognition out there, this is not a problem for Vaesen.

Vaesen's Presentation of the A&A Objections

Much has been said about the plausibility of [extended cognition]. One obvious problem is conceptual: despite functional equivalence, external processes do not seem to meet traditional criteria of the cognitive. Adams and Aizawa (2001), for instance, argue that real cognitive processes involve non-derived content (which e-cog processes don’t), and that the causal mechanisms underlying external and internal processes are too different to form a cognitive kind.  (Vaesen, 2010, p. 6).

This is not exactly how I would put it.  The objection is that, by the standards implicit in contemporary cognitive psychology, Inga and Otto are not functionally equivalent.  And, this seems to me to have been fairly widely accepted, since the principal EC rejoinder is to claim that there is some sort of "coarse" functional equivalence.  "Coarse", of course, needs some explication (that I don't think it's been given in the literature).  To try to sharpen the point a bit, notice that Inga and Otto are not even what Pylyshyn would call "weakly equivalent."  Inga forgets things that Otto does not.  Evidently, "liberal functionalism" is going to have to be so liberal as to not even require input-output equivalence.

So, barring some explication of "function equivalence" I want to resist any concessions on that score.

Vaesen's EC

But to reassure the reader: the brand of extended cognition my argument relies on is, as will become apparent, quite weak, hence easily digestible. Basically, the only thing one needs to accept is that humans may use cognitive aids to produce cognitive outputs, that we may acquire knowledge by putting to work simple things like glasses, thermometers and computers. Indeed, my argument works whenever one is willing to subscribe to this quite trivial claim. (Vaesen, 2010, p. 3)

Vaesen's version of EC is really as tame as he suggests.  It is consistent with both HEC and HEMC, and, to my knowledge, no one has challenged HEMC. (Although, in a forthcoming paper, Teed Rockwell alleges that there are opponents to HEMC out there.)

Future posts 11/16/2010

This week I'll be leaving off with the Runeson posts, then turning briefly to some largely supportive (for me) comments on Krist Vaesen's "Knowlege without credit, exhibit 4: Extended Cognition".  It is conveniently available for download here.

Next week I think I'll be turning to Sutton, Harris, Keil, and Barnier, (2010), "The Psychology of Memory, Extended Cognition, and Socially Distributed Remembering".  Marko Farino and Gary Williams have chided me about this one.  You can see the principal lines of my reply to Sutton, et al., over at Gary's blog.

After that, I'll have a few stray comments before, I think, returning to the TSRM paper.  Billing to the contrary, I don't think that TSRM solve either Fodor & Pylyshyn's Trivialization Problem or the problem of illusions.  The problems, indeed, interact.