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.
"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."
ReplyDeleteI think you are stating it in such a way as to be deliberately implausible. Cognition doesn't travel down a channel and literally extend *into* a tool. To believe that is to take literally a metaphorical notion. Cognition doesn't extend out as if cognition were a magical fluid and exposure to minds caused leakage into surrounding object-containers. That's silly. To say that cognition extends into tools means that tools become intregrated into the distributed functional system that selects effective overall behavior.
The distributed functional system is that system which affects the environment and is affected by the environment. Since it is the overall behavior of the distributed functional system that counts for success in the life cycle, any compositional analysis which ignores the emergent functional structures that arise from the connections between brain-body-and-world will be incomplete.
Check out this cyborg technology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyeborg
It allows colorblind people to see in color, enabling all sorts of new functional abilities. To deny that the eyeborg is part of the cognitive system that perceives and regulates behavior is absurd. If you did deny it was a part of the system, then you would also have to deny that the eyeball itself is part of the system. But this would immediately raise Dennett's famous question about which parts of the nervous system are cognitive and which ones aren't; where does it all "come together" in a nonderived way?
4E theorists hold that the most productive way to investigate human cognition is to analyze the distributed functional system of the nervous system+body embedded in a social environment.
Your response might be, "Well, cognition depends on there being oxygen molecules in the atmosphere, but you wouldn't want to include those as part of the cognitive system, so being causally coupled doesn't cut it." This is right. But we are coupled to oxygen in a different way than we are coupled to equipment. Strictly speaking, the cognitive system does not depend on oxygen existing in the environment in the same way it depends on equipment and social interaction.
Under normal circumstances, the *organism* depends on the oxygen. It could not exist without it being there in the atmosphere. Under normal circumstances, normal human function requires exposure to language during the critical periods of development. The normal functioning of a human adult could not exist without exposure to such a social milieu. Are we really going to say that the cognitive system depends on oxygen in the same way that it depends on language? The cognitive system only depends on oxygen insofar as it is an organism. But insofar as it is a distributed functional system that is evolutionarily successful in selecting effective behavior, the cognitive system depends on, is constituted by, informationally coupled with, and extended into bodily and extra-bodily resources.
All these phrases are just loose metaphorical expressions to capture the notion of a distributed functional systems that selects effective behavior so as to maintain internal integrity. I think the burden lies with the internalists to show how the normal cognitive functions that put bread on the table and a roof over the head do not depend on bodily and extra-bodily informational resources in the same way that the cognitive functions depend on neural resources. But this idea of "informational resource" does not just mean "causally coupled to the maintenance of organic life support", but rather, "causally coupled to the selection of effective motoric responses over the course of a lifetime".
"To say that cognition extends into tools means that tools become intregrated into the distributed functional system that selects effective overall behavior."
ReplyDeleteYou can, of course, define whatever version of EC you want, but others have already staked out other versions. So, for example, Clark apparently wants to add some condition on the tool being an "information resources".
So, a brain non-lethally lodged into Kanzi's brain seems to me to fit your description of a tool becoming integrated into the distributed functional system that selects effective overall behavior. Is this what you want to call an instance of EC?
"Cognition doesn't travel down a channel and literally extend *into* a tool. To believe that is to take literally a metaphorical notion. Cognition doesn't extend out as if cognition were a magical fluid and exposure to minds caused leakage into surrounding object-containers. That's silly."
ReplyDeleteBut, really, I didn't say anything like this. I don't mention traveling cognition or channels. I don't talk about magical fluids, literally or metaphorically, and I don't talk about leakage or object-containers. So, I don't take a metaphor literally, since I don't even take the metaphor.
"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)."
ReplyDelete"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." (Aizawa)
I guess I just don't see that what I am saying is that different than what Wilson is saying. I take it for granted that embedding a measuring tape in Kanzi's brain is going to significantly modify the nature of his brain's capacities.