The Beautiful Brain

These are genuinely stunning and beautiful images.

HT Eric Schwitzgebel and Theresa Cook.

A&A vs Sutton, et al.

The empirical programs we describe below have their own momentum, independent of any connection with philosophical issues. In particular, we do not argue that the Desert Song case, or any of the other examples of collaborative recall which we discuss below, entails any particular view on whether cognition and memory are in fact often extended or distributed. Theorists can continue to treat each individual’s cognitive processes in isolation, as occurring solely within the head, even if causally triggered or cued by non-cognitive external input. (Sutton, Harris, Keil, & Barnier).

Sutton’s project, they say, ‘can be undertaken while leaving much of the cognitive psychology of memory as the study of processes that take place, essentially without exception, within nervous systems’ (2008, p.179). 

So, why do Sutton, et al., want to disagree with us?  We seem to be on the same page.

Findley & Gilchrist on Active Vision 2

From Active Vision, p. 1

A Martian ethologist observing humans using their visual systems would almost certainly include in their report back: 'they move these small globes around a lot and that's how they see'.
     The starting point for this book is an acceptance of the premise of that ethologist. We believe that movements of the eyeballs are a fundamental feature of vision. This viewpoint is not widely current. Many texts on vision do not even mention that the eye can move. In this chapter, we try to outline the reasons why most work on vision pays so little attention to the mobility of the eyes and set out how we feel this balance should be redressed.

As I mentioned earlier, the parts of their book that I have read have been very interesting.  My only reservation is the extent to which they may overstate the heterodoxy of their approach.  One can get a sense of the extent to which orthodoxy embraces their view by a quick survey of the experimental work they discuss.  There is a lot of it and they have not done it all.  There seems to me to be a good body of research on active vision.  So, it seems to me that they are (understandably) just being  a bit overly enthusiastic in marketing their work.

Future posts 12/3/2010

For next week, I'm going to finish up with a few posts on Sutton's paper, then turn to Menary's "The holy grail of cognitivism: a response to Adams and Aizawa".  Menary seems to really take us to the woodshed, but I'll argue that appearances are misleading.

I'll also post a few comments on Gibson's (1979) treatment of the retinal image.  The short of it is he thinks that postulating a retinal image leads to a mental homunculus.  (Hence all the inferentialist denials of homunculi.)

I have some posts on TSRM in the hopper, but I don't have the whole paper under control.  Moveover, my post topics have not been all that focused this past week or so, so I'm hoping to get a coherent package of posts on TSRM together in the next two weeks.

A&A's Concession to Complementarity

Here is what Sutton, et al., have to say about the A&A concession to complementarity:

After quoting Clark (1998) and Sutton’s (2010) exposition of the complementarity principle, Adams and Aizawa write ‘We agree with this completely’. We are delighted that they accept the basic claims of the complementarity argument.

But, that doesn't get our view right.  We concede that there is a complementarity between brain processes and environmental processes, but we do not concede an argument from complementarity of brain and environmental processes to extended cognitive processes.  So, we do not accept the basic claims of the complementarity argument.  Consider the text of The Bounds of Cognition,

“Second-wave” extended cognition, however, is based on what Sutton calls a ‘complementarity principle”: 

in extended cognitive systems, external states and processes need not mimic or replicate the formats, dynamics, or functions of inner states and processes.  Rather, different components of the overall (enduring or temporary) system can play quite different roles and have different properties while coupling in collective and complementary contributions to flexible thinking and acting” (Sutton, forthcoming)

We agree with this completely.  Only, we do not think this in any way supports the hypothesis that cognitive processes extend from the brain into the body and environment.  Many of the ideas we have developed in previous chapters should make it clear why.  (Adams & Aizawa, 2008, p. 145).

The A&A view is that there is complementarity, but that's no reason to believe in HEC.  One should, however, bear in mind that A&A draw a distinction between the hypothesis of extended cognitive systems and the hypothesis of extended cognition (or hypothesis of extended cognitive processes).

Findley & Gilchrist on Active Vision 1

From the back over of Active Vision.

Active Vision
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LOOKING AND SEEING
More than one third of the human brain is devoted to the processes of seeing vision is after all the main way in which we gather information about the world. But human vision is a dynamic process during which the eyes continually sample the environment. Where most books on vision consider it as a passive activity, this book is unique in focusing on vision as an 'active' process. It goes beyond most accounts of vision where the focus is on seeing, to provide an integrated account of seeing AND looking.
     The book starts by pointing out the weaknesses in our traditional approaches to vision and the reason we need this new framework. It then gives a thorough description of basic details of the visual and oculomotor systems necessary to understand active vision. The book then goes on to show how this approach can give a new perspective on visual attention, and how it has progressed in the areas of visual orienting, reading, visual search, scene perception and neuropsychology. Finally, the book summarizes progress by showing how the active vision approach sheds new light on the old problem of how we maintain perception of a stable visual world.

Although I've only read a fraction of the book, it seems to me that when Findley & Gilchrist talk about active vision, they think of vision as both involving eye and body movements and mechanisms for these as well as active computational mechanisms.  So, they think that vision is active in the two senses to which Gregory alludes.

Need to Procrastinate? Find your Erdős Number

Here.

Thanks to Pete Mandik for the cool link.

Block's Review of Damasio's Self Comes to Mind

In the NYT here.

Sutton's Project and Intracranialism

Sutton’s project, they say, ‘can be undertaken while leaving much of the cognitive psychology of memory as the study of processes that take place, essentially without exception, within nervous systems’ (2008, p.179). We disagree: this reversion to internalism is not an implication of Sutton’s view. (Sutton, Harris, Keil, and Barnier, forthcoming, pp. 8-9).

I think there is a misinterpretation here.  The A&A claim (as one can see from the fragment that Sutton, et al., quote right there) is that Sutton's project can be undertaken ...  It is not that Sutton's project requires or implies that cognitive psychology of memory is, or must be, the study of processes that take place, essentially without exception, within nervous systems.  So, the earlier comment Sutton, et al., made on this score is not a mere typo or accidental infelicity in wording.  They seem genuinely to have mistaken the A&A claim.

Gregory on Intelligence from Perception

This philosophy, or paradigm, is largely derived from Helmholtz. It is, that visual and other perception is intelligent decision-taking, from limited sensory evidence. The essential point is that sensory signals are not adequate for direct or certain perceptions; so intelligent guessing is needed for seeing objects. The view taken here is that perceptions are predictive, never entirely certain, hypotheses of what may be out there.
     It was, perhaps, the active intelligence of perception that was the evolutionary start of conceptual problem-solving intelligence. (Gregory, 1997, p. 5).

While Gregory does not "do anything" about this idea of problem-solving intelligence evolving from perceptual intelligence, there seems to be nothing in at least his conception of intelligent vision that precludes this.