Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind

by Rupert, Robert D.

• ISBN13: 9780195379457
• ISBN10: 0195379454
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-08-19
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind surveys philosophical issues raised by the situated movement in cognitive science, that is, the treatment of cognitive phenomena as the joint products of brain, body, and environment. The book focuses primarily on the hypothesis of extended cognition, which asserts that human cognitive processes literally comprise elements beyond the boundary of the human organism. Rupert argues that the only plausible way in which to demarcate cognitions is systems-based: cognitive states or processes are the states of the integrated set of mechanisms and capacities that contribute causally and distinctively to the production of cognitive phenomena--for example, language-use, memory, decision-making, theory construction, and, more importantly, the associated forms of behavior. Rupert argues that this integrated system is most likely to appear within the boundaries of the human organism. He argues that the systems-based view explains the existing successes of cognitive psychology and cognate fields in a way that extended conceptions of cognition do not, and that once the systems-based view has been adopted, it is especially clear how extant arguments in support of the extended view go wrong. Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind also examines further aspects of the situated program in cognitive science, including the embedded and embodied approaches to cognition. Rupert asks to what extent the plausible incarnations of these situated views depart from orthodox, computational cognitive science. Here, Rupert focuses on the notions of representation and computation, arguing that the embedded and embodied views do not constitute the radical shifts in perspective they are often claimed to be. Rupert also argues that, properly understood, the embodied view does not offer a new role for the body, different in principle from the one presupposed by orthodox cognitive science. "Rupert's book is a good read. It is a sustained, systematic, critical examination of the idea that minds are not simply ensconced inside heads, but extend into both bodies and the world beyond the body.... There is much to admire in this book. It is well-structured and well-written, adopting a self-consciously naturalistic perspective on how to understand the mind -- through our best, even if imperfect, empirical sciences in the domain of cognition. By presenting and critiquing a number of explicit arguments for and against the specific views that Rupert considers, Cognitive Systems advances the field."-- Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews "Rupert's treatment is a state of the art sustained attack on various forms of the 'extended mind hypothesis'. It is rigorous and challenging, and will be of interest to a quite a large audience of researchers (graduates and above) in philosophy and in cognitive science. Rupert studiously avoids the 'straw men' that populate some recent critiques, and raises deep and sympathetic challenges that go to the core of the program." --Andy Clark, Department of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh

Author Biography

Robert D. Rupert is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Mind, the Computer, and the Alternatives	p. 1
The Mind as Computer	p. 1
Alternatives: The Varieties of Situated Cognition	p. 3
Looking Ahead	p. 7
Strategy and Methods	p. 8
The Book's Conclusions	p. 12
The Thinking Organism
Principles of Demarcation	p. 15
The Challenge of Demarcation	p. 16
Extension-Friendly Principles of Demarcation	p. 19
The Parity Principle	p. 29
Conclusion	p. 35
Cognitive Systems and Demarcation	p. 37
The Success of Cognitive Psychology	p. 38
The Systems-Based View	p. 41
Two Arguments against the Extended View	p. 44
Extension-Friendly Rejoinders	p. 47
The No-Self View	p. 50
Realization and Extended Cognition	p. 59
The Argument from Empirical Success and Methodology, Restated	p. 59
Extended Cognition and Realization	p. 61
Functionalism and the Causal Constraint on Realization	p. 63
The Argument from Causal Interaction	p. 68
Wide Realization, Total Realization, and Causal Powers	p. 76
Cleaning Up	p. 82
Arguments for the Extended View
Functionalism and Natural Kinds	p. 89
The Functionalist Argument	p. 89
The Natural-Kinds Argument	p. 96
The Empirical Response	p. 99
The Pragmatic Turn	p. 105
Developmental Systems Theory and the Scaffolding of Language	p. 109
Causal Spread and Complementary Role	p. 110
A Case of Nontrivial Causal Spread: Developmental Systems Theory	p. 113
The Most Powerful Transformation: Language-Learning	p. 118
Dynamical Systems Theory	p. 131
Dynamical Systems Theory and Cognitive Science	p. 131
Dynamical Systems and Extended Cognition: General Patterns of Argument	p. 134
Six Kinds of Dynamical-Systems-Based Model	p. 137
Evolution, Context-Dependence, and Epistemic Dependence	p. 149
The Experience of Extension and the Extension of Experience	p. 155
Cognitive Science and the In-Key Constraint	p. 155
The Phenomenology of Smooth Coping	p. 159
The Sense of One's Own Location	p. 164
Control-Based Arguments	p. 167
Control Simpliciter	p. 169
Extended Cognition and Extended Experience	p. 170
The Embedded and Embodied Mind
Embedded Cognition and Computation	p. 179
The Embedded Approach	p. 180
Computation, Implementation, and Explicitly Encoded Rules	p. 183
Computationalism in Principle and Computationalism in Practice	p. 187
Timing, Computationalism, and Dynamical Systems Theory	p. 188
Conclusion	p. 190
Embedded Cognition and Mental Representation	p. 193
What Is Special about Embedded Representations?	p. 194
Atomic Affordance Representations	p. 201
Embedded Models and External Content	p. 204
Innate Representations and the Inflexibility Objection	p. 209
Conclusion	p. 215
The Embodied View	p. 217
Preliminaries: Where the Disagreement Is Not	p. 218
The Constraint Thesis	p. 226
The Content Thesis	p. 226
Vehicles, Realizers, and Apportioning Explanation	p. 231
The Symbol-Grounding Problem	p. 236
Summary and Conclusion	p. 241
References	p. 245
Index	p. 261
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