Wilson's Point in Contrasting Kanzi and Rush Hour

In my previous post, I commented on the way the Kanzi and Rush Hour cases seem to distinguish Clark's version of EC from some other versions of EC (in particular one that Wilson seems to prefer.)  Where Wilson goes with this, however, is to invoke it as a distinction between technological cases of extended cognition (such as Kanzi's) and sociological cases of extended cognition (such as Rush Hour).  (It seems to me to be a bit strained to see the Rush Hour case as a sociological instance, but set that aside.)  Here's the point:

This isn't to say that technological development and appropriation is unimportant in thinking about extended cognition, or that it is never a primary shaper of the extended mind. Rather, it is to claim that we need also to take the nonsymbolic environment seriously in articulating the extended mind thesis, and that the most important place to look in doing so is the social realm. The social and the technological are both significant aspects of extended cognition-evolutionarily, historically, biologically, culturally-and I suspect that it is in tandem that they have sculpted human cognition over tens of thousands of years to its present level. (Wilson, 2010, p. 182).

The symbolic/non-symbolic seems to me to be an odd way to draw a distinction between the technological and the sociological.  Some years ago, in personal communications, I found that Sandy Goldberg and Deb Tollefsen seemed to be interested in cases of extended cognition that involve interpersonal interactions.  [Wilson: "These social features include the interpersonal relations found in human social groups-from dyads through to face-to-face communities" (p. 182)]  They thought that these cases were more plausible cases of extended cognition than some of the standard cases, such as Otto and his notebook or the three modes of Tetris play, since other people's mind are plausibly construed as bearers of (non-derived) representations.  What is odd is that Wilson seems to think that humans are not symbol users.  I'm not sure I'm getting the picture here.

Kanzi versus Rush Hour

This brings me to the chief difference between these two examples [Kanzi and Rush Hour] that I want to draw explicit attention to. This is that whereas the first involves the causal integration of explicit symbols located in an organism's environment into that organism's cognitive regime, the second appeals to the cognitive incorporation of nonsymbolic aspects of that environment. Much of the discussion of the extended mind has focused exclusively on cases of just the former kind. (Wilson, 2010, p. 181).

I think there is something to what Wilson is saying here.  Clark, it seems to me, focuses on instances of being causally integrated to informational resources as cases of EC, where others, such as Wilson, it seems to me, have been happy to let causal integration with any sort of thing count as instances of EC.  So, there is (another) division among those who advance EC.

(That said, there does seem to me to be some room for saying that those who play Rush Hour by moving the pieces around as aids are using the pieces as an informational resource, even if the pieces themselves are not representations.)

Rush Hour Revisited 2

Second, suppose that you are playing a visual problem-solving game, such as Rush Hour, or completing a jigsaw puzzle.

Here is, perhaps, a simpler way to get to my point.  Suppose that problem solving is a behavior.  Then, one might have extended behavior without extended cognition.  Cognitive processes are one thing; behavior another.  Cognitive processes contribute to cognitive behavior is the idea.  That's what I take to be the standard cognitivist line.  (Somewhere Chomsky says something like "linguistic behavior is the product of linguistic competence, along with poorly understood factors such as attention, set, etc."  I'm thinking this appeared in Chomsky's Language and Mind, or earlier.)  What muddies the water, perhaps, is the idea that problem solving is properly described as cognitive behavior.  But, why is it cognitive behavior?  Because it includes a cognitive process in the brain of course.

So, I see this appeal to problem solving inconclusive.

Moreover, I think that essentially the same story can be told about Gary Williams example of decision making in sortilege.

Rob Wilson Lecture: Mind Spread. October 15, 2010

A lecture, Mind Spread, on The extended mind thesis in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and philosophy of biology.

Oct. 15 5:30pm
Alumni Hall, University of King's College, 6350 Coburg Rd.

A part of Atlantic Region Philosophers Association's (ARPA)

Annual Meeting 2010
The Individual in Science and Philosophy

www.situsci.ca

Rush Hour Revisited 1

Second, suppose that you are playing a visual problem-solving game, such as Rush Hour, or completing a jigsaw puzzle. (Rush Hour involves a square board loaded with cars and trucks in various positions," and the object is to move these in a sequence so as to allow a designated car to leave the board through the only exit.) Here the problem solving in part consists of internal mental operations (let us suppose), but also in part it consists of the active physical manipulation of pieces on a board or pieces within the puzzle. One might suppose that these manipulations-rotations of puzzle pieces, or trials of car move sequences-were simply presented to you in a computer simulation, or through an automation of trial moves from which you select the best outcome. I suspect that this would change the problem-solving task in a significant way; but note that even here problem solving requires active engagement with a part of the world beyond the head, namely, the various visual displays from which one must select. In both cases, the problems are solved by utilizing, exploiting, or manipulating a set of resources, some of which are outside of the head. These are not simply inputs to those that are inside the head, because the very process of problem solving involves them as much as it involves resources inside the head. There is nothing bounded by the skull that counts as solving these kind of problems. (Wilson, 2010, pp. 180-181).

Ok.  So, the idea appears to be that problem solving is just going to be a term to describe all the things that go on in getting the red car out of the parking lot.  So be it.  Then, the question separating EC from anti-EC is how much of the problem solving is achieved by cognitive processing?  The EC answer is all of it; the anti-EC answer is only the stuff done by the brain is achieved by cognitive processing.

This might be clearer by an analogy.  Suppose you have to solve the problem of printing the numerals for the first one hundred prime numbers on a sheet of paper.  Also suppose that you have a computer with a program that computes these numerals and sends them to the printer.  All you have to do is hit the "return" key.  Now, I'm ok with saying that the problem solving involves the stuff that the computer and printer do, but why go further with Wilson and say that the cognitive contribution also includes the stuff the computer and printer do?  That is, why accept EC?  What's wrong with the view that the cognitive processing dedicated to solving the problem ends with your hitting the return key?  That is, what is wrong with the anti-EC interpretation?

Kanzi Revisited

First, consider the bonobo Kanzi's planning, thinking, and decision making that utilizes a 256-symbol keyboard, which Kanzi has, over the years, learned to use to communicate his beliefs and desires. Bonobos in the wild surely have desires (e.g., for bananas), but just as surely they don't have the kind of sophisticated, cooperative desires that Kanzi expresses, such as the desire to be taken by a particular person to a sequence of locations, or to do one activity first and then another. What the symbol board has done is to reconfigure Kanzi's capacity for belief and desire, much as our using pen and paper reconfigures our mathematical ability by augmenting the in-the-head capacity we have for multiplication. Both are cases in which an external symbol system becomes integrated with preexisting cognitive capacities in ways that significantly modify the nature of those capacities. We can, of course, distinguish between the parts of those capacities that are internal and those that are not, but this is already to concede that the overall cognitive process itself is extended. (Wilson, 2010, p. 180).

I'm going to guess that lodging a bullet in the brain would reconfigure Kanzi's capacity for belief and desire.  And it would be pretty well integrated with preexisting cognitive capacities in ways that significantly modify the nature of those capacities.  But, I wouldn't want to say that Kanzi's cognitive processes extend into the bullet.  (Maybe it would be a cognitive resource, but regarding that idea see my post on "Cognitive Resources".) 

This looks to me to be just a thinly veiled version of the coupling-constitution fallacy.  To reconfigure is to have a certain kind of causal influence.  To be integrated is to have a certain kind of persistent causal influence.

Maybe Wilson could add, following Clark, that the reconfiguring, integrated thing has to be an information processing resource.  How about embedding a measuring tape in Kanzi's brain?  (Maybe that would be a cognitive resource, but ... see above.)

Well, maybe, if the measuring tape were integrated in the right way in the overall information processing economy of Kanzi's brain, then cognitive processing would extend into it.  If, by this, Wilson means that, were the measuring tape to bear non-derived content and be manipulated in particular sorts of ways characteristic of cognitive processing, then yes.  That's the Adams and Aizawa view.  Our point is that such reconfigurations and integrations do not typically lead to the right sorts of information processing economies.   But, in any event, this line does not seem to be the sort of reconfiguration and integration Wilson has in mind, since he doesn't mention them.

Cognitive Resources

One of the challenging features of coming to grips with the hypothesis of extended cognition is sifting through the many ambiguous claims that appear in the literature.  The most familiar, of course, is the claim that cognitive processes depend on bodily and environmental processes.  Is this dependence constitutive, as the EC folks maintain, or merely causal, as Rupert, Adams, Aizawa, and others maintain?

The term "cognitive resource" has an ambiguity as well.  This can be brought out through the  parallel case of "computational resource".  In a dual core processor of a standard desktop computer, each processor would be a computational resources and both would realize computational processing.  Computational processes take place in both CPUs.  But, note that the hard disk of a standard desktop computer is also a computational resource, but it is not one in which computational processes take place.  The process of computation takes place in the CPU(s).  So, you can have a computational resource in which computation does not take place, but which is merely a tool for the bona fide computational processes in the CPU.

So, return to the case of a cognitive resource.  The question is what kind of cognitive resource is, say, the non-neural parts of the body?  Are the non-neural parts of the body a cognitive resource in which cognitive processing takes place (as in the parallel case of a dual core processor) or are they cognitive resources that are mere tools for the bona fide cognitive processes in the brain (as in the parallel case of the computer's hard disk)?   This is yet another way of getting at what is at issue in the EC debate.  The use of the phrase "cognitive resource" threatens to mask the issue.

Wilson's New Argument

(e) External cognitive resources often play the same or similar functional roles in the detection and creation of meaning as do internal cognitive resources, or complement, compensate for, or enhance those roles. External cognitive resources can replace internal cognitive resources (e.g., external memory) or can create capacities in agents that they would not otherwise have (e.g., Kanzi, the bonobo who has exhibited advanced linguistic capabilities). In either case, they are no less central to cognition than are internal cognitive resources. (Wilson, 2010, p. 175).

Note that the non-modal premise (e) is much stronger than the modal commentary about what external resources can do.  Rupert, Adams, and Aizawa have been pretty insistent over the years that we at least do not want to challenge the modal claims about the possibility of extended cognition; instead, we challenge the idea that external resources function in the same way as to internal resources.

Wilson's Premise (e)

In an earlier post, I did register the kind of objection one should probably explore against Wilson's premise (e), namely, that external cognitive resources do not often play the same or similar functional roles in the detection and creation of meaning as do internal cognitive resources.  I also noted some apparent shift of position between Wilson's statement of the premise and the accompanying text that would appear to be commentary.

Wilson adds this to his defense of (e) on the next page

Third, even those happy to make both of these concessions might well think that the final premise, (e), is indefensible, since there will always remain a crucial asymmetry between internal and external cognitive resources. Roughly speaking, the latter only gain purchase on cognitive activity via the former, and so internal resources remain fundamental to cognition in a way that vitiates the inference to externalism. (Wilson, 2010, p. 176).

Here I think that Rupert, Adams, and Aizawa have been pretty consistent in admitting that extended cognition is possible, hence that we do not maintain that there will always be a crucial asymmetry between internal and external resources.  Maybe there are other critics of EC who have maintained this.  The Rupert, Adams, and Aizawa view, at any rate, is that there will typically be an asymmetry.  (But, really, Adams and I don't really talk about this asymmetry kind of stuff anyway.  That's Rupert's, and others', spiel.)

Minds are Semantic Engines

*

(a) Minds are intentional machines or semantic engines.
(b) Intentional machines or semantic engines detect and create meaning.
(c) Meaning detection and creation involve the sequestering and integration of internal and external cognitive resources. 
(d) Internal cognitive resources are part of the structure of the intentional machine that detects and creates meaning.
(e) External cognitive resources often play the same or similar functional roles in the detection and creation of meaning as do internal cognitive resources, or complement, compensate for, or enhance those roles.
Thus:
(f) External cognitive resources, like internal cognitive resources, are part of the structure of the intentional machine that detects and creates meaning.
Therefore:
(g) The extended mind thesis is true.

While Wilson takes this to be a new argument, and by some measures it surely is, one can see where the challenge will arise.  (e) is going to be challenged just as were claims that Inga and Otto are in all important respects alike.

A New Argument for EC

In a previous post, I cited the following from Wilson's "Meaning Making":

... Adams and Aizawa (2001) on Clark and Chalmers (1998), Grush (2003) on Haugeland (1998), and, most recently, Rupert (2004) largely on Rowlands (1999). For the most part, these critiques have to reconstruct, sometimes quite imaginatively, the arguments that they critique, leaving one with the feeling that externalists must surely have something more up their sleeves than what their critics draw from the hat. (Wilson, 2010, p. 173).

I am perfectly open to a further explication of how the many passages Adams and I have cited regarding the C-C fallacy turn out to involve something that we have overlooked.  We've looked at many variations on the kinds of coupling that have been proposed in the literature and found them wanting.  So, even if one does have the feeling that externalists have something more up their sleeve, it would be good if they would bring it forth.  Let's get beyond that "coupled in the right way" stuff and let's see what they have up their sleeve.

But, rather than explicate the argument that Adams and Aizawa have mistakenly interpreted as the C-C fallacy, Wilson offers a new argument for EC.  Some commentary omitted, the argument is this:

(a) Minds are intentional machines or semantic engines.
(b) Intentional machines or semantic engines detect and create meaning.
(c) Meaning detection and creation involve the sequestering and integration of internal and external cognitive resources. 
(d) Internal cognitive resources are part of the structure of the intentional machine that detects and creates meaning.
(e) External cognitive resources often play the same or similar functional roles in the detection and creation of meaning as do internal cognitive resources, or complement, compensate for, or enhance those roles.
Thus:
(f) External cognitive resources, like internal cognitive resources, are part of the structure of the intentional machine that detects and creates meaning.
Therefore:
(g) The extended mind thesis is true.

Do we have a winner?

So, it is back to Wilson's "Meaning making ..." where I think we find an instance of the C-C fallacy.

Common to both active cognition and cyborg fantasy arguments for extended cognition is the idea that by examining just what is involved in the exercise of some particular cognitive capacity, one finds that it actually does or could well involve causal loops that extend beyond the body of the individual agent. In particular, these causal loops (do or may) pass through objects and other entities in the agent's environment, and it is only the whole, functioning, beyond-the-head causal system that constitutes the matter in motion that realizes the exercise of the capacity. (Wilson, 2010, p. 173).

So, first of all, it's nice to have another example of the advocates of EC invoking the language of causation and constitution.  Further support for my contention that Ross and Ladyman should be directing their critique not just at Adams and Aizawa, but at least at a large number of advocates of EC.

Second, in the second sentence, it looks to me as though Wilson is moving from an observation about the causal contribution of some extracortical processes to cognitive processing to a conclusion about the constitutive contribution of these extracortical processes. What else could be going on?

... Adams and Aizawa (2001) on Clark and Chalmers (1998), Grush (2003) on Haugeland (1998), and, most recently, Rupert (2004) largely on Rowlands (1999). For the most part, these critiques have to reconstruct, sometimes quite imaginatively, the arguments that they critique, leaving one with the feeling that externalists must surely have something more up their sleeves than what their critics draw from the hat. (Wilson, 2010, p. 173)

And I agree that one has to use some imagination to try to figure out what the EC arguments are supposed to be.  But, the only thing that seems to me to make sense of the text is the C-C fallacy.  Of course, that's not a good argument, which is a defeasible reason to think that the reading is incorrect.

But, then again, "philosopher makes mistake" is not news, right?  Yes, it would be great to think that the EC folks have something more up their sleeves, but what is it?  Adams and I have also taken into consideration the stuff about loops, "trust and glue", etc., etc.  I feel as though we are still waiting.

Active Cognition Arguments

Active cognition arguments are so called because they all appeal to the active exercise of cognitive capacities in the real world ...
     These arguments all focus on determinate forms of a particular cognitive ability (e.g., memory, attention, problem solving) as they are exercised by individual agents. They view the integration of individuals with both their biological and artificial environments as critical to their status as cognitive agents with these particular capacities. With this focus on actual agents and the abilities they act on, active cognition arguments try to preempt the objection that "the extended mind" is merely a conceptual possibility or a far;on de parler. The chief aim of active cognition arguments has been to show directly that much of cognition as we know it is extended; the real question for their proponents is just which aspects of cognition are extended, and in what ways. (Wilson, 2010, p. 172).

The first thing to be on the look out for in what follows, I think, is an instance of the coupling-constitution fallacy.  When an argument begins by drawing attention to the "important" contribution some bodily or environmental process makes to cognition, one can expect the fallacy to arrive sooner or later.  Similarly, when an argument begins by drawing attention to how one actively exercises one's cognitive capacities in the world, one is drawing attention to the way one is causally connected to the world, hence probably lining up to commit some version of the coupling-constitution fallacy.

But, that aside, it is important to note that Wilson, at least, is not merely arguing that EC is possible.  He wants to argue that something closer to the view that EC is a prevalent feature of the human condition ... kind of like saying that we are natural born cyborgs.

"Meaning making ..." can wait

Over the past few days, I've been enjoying some great exchanges on ecological psychology with Andrew Wilson (Thanks, Andrew!), which is consuming all of my usual blogging time and more.  That and teaching and the usual work tell me I should put my "Meaning making ..." posts on hold for a bit.  I know everyone is crying.

EC: Wild or Mild?

A while back, Gary Williams was proposing that we should understand EC as something other than a radical claim.  I'm sure that there are non-radical elements and takes on EC.  (Indeed, as I have posted before, I think that edgy ambiguity is almost a modus vivendi of EC.)  For example, it is not radical to claim that the body and environment play an important role in the life of the mind.  If that's all one wants out of extended cognition, then to my mind everyone but Leibniz and a few of his sympaticos is on board.

Do you like your EC mild or wild?

But, there are those who do intend to have EC be a radical claim.  Wilson is one of them:

Locational externalism, environmentalism, and the extended mind thesis are radical forms of externalism in at least two ways. First, they do not rest on claims and intuitions about whether the content of a pair of states of two individuals in different environments (or one individual in two such environments over time) is the same or different, about how particular intentional states are taxonomized, or about the role of the physical or social environments in individuating such states. Instead, they appeal to the nature of psychological processing, to the arbitrariness of the head (or the skin) for bounding cognitive systems, and to what happens in real-life, online cognitive activity in the world. Thus, if the extended mind thesis is true, it is true in virtue of something implementationally deep about cognition, rather than some debatable view of mental content. Second, locational externalism is not simply a view of how we "talk about" or view cognition and the mind-about the epistemology of the mind, one might say-but about what cognition and the mind are-about the ontology of the mind.  (Wilson, 2010, p. 171).

The Big 80's

During the 1980s, many philosophers of mind, and even the occasional cognitive scientist, were very exercised about something called "the problem of intentionality." The problem was something like this. There are certain things in the world that appear to possess, through their operation and functioning, a special kind of property: intentionality. This is the property of being about something, of having content about that thing, of carrying information about that thing. The problem of intentionality was threefold: to explain what intentionality was; to delineate which things had intentionality (and so which things didn't); and to provide an account of just why they had not only intentionality, but the particular intentionality they had-their content. The third of these chores was the core one, the task of specifying in virtue of what certain things in the world were about the particular things they were about. (Wilson, 2010, p.167).

I'm glad that Wilson recounts this bit of history of the profession.  In fact, I like the entire set up of the paper.  Adams and I were both interested in this literature, even to the point of contributing (if you can call it that) to it.  So, in our 2001 paper, "The Bounds of Cognition," we just assumed that everyone knew what we we talking about when we said that cognition requires intrinsic content.  Very roughly, it's the content one is theorizing about in Wilson's third chore.

Some have complained that nothing can have content intrinsically, but I think Adams and I said enough to have avoided that confusion.  Moreover, "intrinsic content" was a bit of jargon from that literature.  We have since given up using the term.  Yet, even the term to which we have moved, namely, "non-derived content" has not been without criticism.  See, for example, Fisher's review of The Bounds of Cognition in the Journal of Mind and Behavior.

EC or not EC?

Deric Bownds here suggests that this research in which emotional negativity was reduced for participants who placed a written recollection of a regretted past decision or unsatisfied strong desire inside an envelope provides a case of embodied cognition.

What do you say if your are Andy Clark?
What do you say if you are Rob Wilson?

My guesses: No. Yes.  Andy, I think, (as I've posted before) thinks that one has to have informational resources in order to have extended cognition, but Rob, I think, does not have this requirement.  (Why I think this about Rob will only come out in my forthcoming posts on his "Meaning making the and the mind of the externalist".  Please stay tuned.

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.

Future Posts 8/30/2010

Rob Wilson's "Meaning Making and the Mind of the Externalist" from Richard Menary's collection, The Extended Mind.  I have a large number of things to post on this paper.  Alas, much of it will repeat things I've said before, but I have a take on "cognitive resources" that is new.

Future Posts 8/20/2010

Still working through Menary's The Extended Mind.  Next up: Ross and Ladyman, then Wilson.