Fellowships at the Center for Philosophy of Science, Pittsburgh

This has circulated a bit, but maybe not to all those in the EC community.  Coincidentally, Mark Sprevak was a visiting fellow in this program last year.

The application deadline of December 15 is approaching for postdoctoral and visiting fellowships at the Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, for the academic year 2011-2012.

For more details, see "joining" on the Center Web site (http://www.pitt.edu/~pittcntr).

John D. Norton
Director
Center for Philosophy of Science
University of Pittsburgh

Gregory's Case for Filling In

A free online version.

Parsing the A&A Rhetoric

One does not have to insist that the hypothesis of intracranial processes of memory processing is a mere relic of an unexamined Cartesian prejudice. Instead one can  maintain, as we do, that there is a scientifically and philosophically motivated  reason to believe that there are psychological processes that are found in brains that are unlike processes that span brains, bodies, and environments. (2008, p.179)

This rhetoric is particularly puzzling from the point of view of a complementarity theorist, whose projects rest on analyzing such differences between coordinated internal and external processes. In characterizing Sutton’s work as ‘non-revolutionary’, then, Adams and Aizawa must be construing a truly ‘revolutionary’ form of extended cognition as the view that external resources always constitute psychological processes, and that thus memory processing, for example, is never intracranial: but this dramatically extremised view is not one that complementarity theorists, at least, have ever defended .

There are two claims that are up in the air: A) Cognitive processes are commonly realized by the brain, body, and world.  B) There are no intracranial cognitive processes.  A&A think both are false.  A) Sutton, et al., no longer seem to want to argue about this, dismissing the talk of where the mind "really" is.  B) is the "dramatically extremised view" that Sutton, et al., have not noticed has been advocated by many in the EC literature. That's what all the posts on revolutionary EC are about.  Maybe Wilson and Sutton have not made these claims, but plenty of others have.

N.B.: Rowlands vigorously protests that he does not deny, and never has denied, instances of purely intracranial cognition.   (See comments here.)  I still find what he has written on this more equivocal than he does, but that's the state of play.

Shaun Gallagher on How Yoga Works: Posture and Human Potential

An online discussion at The Magazine of Yoga.

What about Menary?

So, Sutton et al. propose that "complementarity theorists" have never denied that there is ever purely intracranial cognition. 

But, isn't Menary a "complementarity theorist" and doesn't he deny that there is ever purely intracranial cognition?  Doesn't Menary think we are always the locus of a complex of tools into which our minds are always extended?

TSRM Bleg #2

Also, have there been any publications anywhere that take up the TSRM strategy for explaining visual illusions?  I have searched the journal Ecological Psychology with "illusion" and "visual illusion" and found nothing promising.  Google scholar doesn't help either.  Nor does PsychInfo. 

I can only say that "To my knowledge, there are no publications that take up the TSRM strategy", but I hate to go with weak claims like that.

What does this mean?

For example, the Müller-Lyer illusion is interpreted traditionally as exemplifying a measurement error. The perceiver sees difference in length between two lines that are equal to some standard of measure, say, a ruler. …  The Establishment is tempted to say that the perceiver … falsely infers from the play of light at the eyes that the two lines are of different lengths when, in fact, they are of the same length.
     What must be assumed to give legitimacy to this claim for perceptual error? The following come quickly to mind: (1) Whatever the proper basis of measurement for describing the figure is, it is one and the same as the basis of the measurement device by which the figure is described. (TSRM, p. 279).

So, I have been wrestling with TSRM for a while now, trying to figure out how they mean to explain visual illusions.  They suggest that cognitivists make assumption (1) above, but I am having a tough time parsing this. I am not sure what they are attributing to cognitivists. Let me explain my confusion.

Suppose, just for expository convenience, that the proper basis of measurement for describing the Müller-Lyer illusion is length, that is, that the Müller-Lyer illusion should be described in terms of length.  Is that one side of the kind of identity claim TSRM are noting?

So, then is length one and the same as "the basis of the measurement device by which the figure is described"?  That doesn't make sense to me.  How can length be a device?  Is there some typo here?

Any help here would be appreciated.

A Blog Commentary on Clark's Supersizing ...

Here.

Gregory Recalls S.B.

An interesting note from Nature from a while ago. Many readers of this blog will know of S.B. (Sidney Bradford) by way of Alva Noë's Action in Perception.  Bradford was one of the  congenitally blind individuals who had corneal grafts in adulthood.  Noe interpreted this case as an illustration of "experiential blindness".

Gregory believes S.B.'s case provides a positive answer to the Molyneaux question.

The Rich Middle Ground

So Adams and Aizawa first treat extended cognition as a ‘revolutionary’ thesis which denies intracranial cognition, and then suggest that complementarity fails to deliver on the revolutionary promise. They are thus seeking to trap the extended cognition theorist in a dilemma: either maintain the extreme ‘revolutionary’ position, or collapse back into individualism. But we reject the alleged dilemma. Along with Clark and the others, we inhabit a rich middle ground, one which this paper continues to develop, which is entirely distinct both from internalist forms of cognitivism and from externalist anti-cognitivism. Yet when Adams and Aizawa do accurately acknowledge that our views are not anti-cognitivist, they try to assimilate us to a more conservative internalism. (Sutton, et al.)

A&A don't offer this dilemma.  That dilemma is of Sutton, et al.'s, making.  The A&A view is easy.  Complementarity does not support the rejection of intracranial cognition.  That's now common ground between A&A and Sutton, et al.  Second, complementarity does not offer an argument for HEC. A&A argued for this, and Sutton, et al., apparently don't want to fight over HEC versus HEMC.  This whole middle ground that they want to explore is what we conceded they should explore ... just don't take it to be HEC or to undermine intracranial cognition.

To me, again the upshot is that, apparent misunderstandings aside, the rich middle ground is a fine topic to study.