Scaling-up skilled intentionality to linguistic thought

Cognition has traditionally been understood in terms of internal mental representations, and computational operations carried out on internal mental representations. Radical approaches propose to reconceive cognition in terms of agent-environment dynamics. An outstanding challenge for such a philosophical project is how to scale-up from perception and action to cases of what is typically called ‘higher-order’ cognition such as linguistic thought, the case we focus on in this paper. Perception and action are naturally described in terms of agent-environment dynamics, but can a person’s thoughts about absent, abstract or counterfactual states of affairs also be accounted for in such terms? We argue such a question will seem pressing so long as one fails to appreciate how richly resourceful the human ecological niche is in terms of the affordances it provides. The explanatory work that is supposedly done by mental representations in a philosophical analysis of cognition, can instead be done by looking outside of the head to the environment structured by sociomaterial practices, and the affordances it makes available. Once one recognizes how much of the human ecological niche has become structured by activities of talking and writing, this should take away at least some of the motivation for understanding linguistic thinking in terms of content-bearing internal representations. We’ll argue that people can think about absent, abstract or counterfactual because of their skills for engaging with what we will call “enlanguaged affordances”. We make use of the phenomenological analysis of speech in Merleau-Ponty to show how the multiple affordances an individual is ready to engage with in a particular situation will typically include enlanguaged affordances.

     

Individualism versus interactionism about social understanding

In the debate about the nature of social cognition we see a shift towards theories that explain social understanding through interaction. This paper discusses autopoietic enactivism and the we-mode approach in the light of such developments. We argue that a problem seems to arise for these theories: an interactionist account of social cognition makes the capacity of shared intentionality a presupposition of social understanding, while the capacity of engaging in scenes of shared intentionality in turn presupposes exactly the kind of social understanding that it is intended to explain. The social capacity in question that is presupposed by these accounts is then analyzed in the second section via a discussion and further development of Searle’s ‘sense of us’ and ‘sense of the other’ as a precondition for social cognition and joint action. After a critical discussion of Schmid’s recent proposal to analyze this in terms of plural pre-reflective selfawareness, we develop an alternative account. Starting from the idea that infants distinguish in perception between physical objects and other agents we distinguish between affordances and social affordances and cash out the notion of a social affordance in terms of “interaction-oriented representations”, parallel to the analysis of object affordances in terms of “action-oriented representations”. By characterizing their respective features we demonstrate how this approach can solve the problem formulated in the first part.     

What’s Inside Your Head Once You’ve Figured Out What Your Head’s Inside Of

Abstract

In this article, we investigate the foundations for a Gibsonian neuroscience. There is an increasingly influential current in neuroscience based on pragmatic and selectionist principles, which we think can contribute to ecological psychology. Starting from ecological psychology, we identify three basic constraints any Gibsonian neuroscience needs to adhere to: nonreconstructive perception, vicarious functioning, and selectionist self-organization. We discuss two previous attempts to integrate affordances with neuroscience: Reed’s ecological rendering of Edelman’s selectionism as well as Dreyfus’ phenomenological interpretation of Freeman’s neurodynamics. Reed and Dreyfus face the problem of how to account for “value.” We then show how the free-energy principle, an increasingly dominant framework in theoretical neuroscience, is rooted in both Freeman’s neurodynamics and Edelman’s selectionism. The free-energy principle accounts for value in terms of selective anticipation. The selection pressures at work on the agent shape its selective sensitivity to the relevant affordances in the environment. By being responsive to the relevant affordances in the environment, an agent comes to have grip on its interactions with the environment and can thrive in its ecological niche.     

Processing bias: Individual differences in the cognition of situations

An approach to investigating individual differences in the cognition of situations is presented. Situations are characterized in terms of Gibson's notion of affordances, and it is suggested that individuals differ in the extent to which they differentially process information specifying certain types of affordances rather than others. This differential cognitive processing of a situational affordance is termed a "processing bias." It is proposed that processing biases are manifest in an individual's anticipation, perception, and memory of situations. To illustrate the approach, a processing bias for social vs. nonsocial affordances is investigated within and among these three cognitive domains. The relationship of this processing bias to two facets of the personality trait dimension of sociability--overall level and self-schemata--is also examined. Such research on processing biases may help to clarify the role of cognition in person-situation interactions. The greatest strength of the approach is that its characterization of individual differences in cognition and behavior is complementary to a general approach to describing human environments.     

Social cognition in simple action coordination: A case for direct perception

In this paper we sketch the outlines of an account of the kind of social cognition involved in simple action coordination that is based on direct social perception (DSP) rather than recursive mindreading. While we recognize the viability of a mindreading-based account such as e.g. Michael Tomasello’s, we present an alternative DSP account that (i) explains simple action coordination in a less cognitively demanding manner, (ii) is better able to explain flexibility and strategy-switching in coordination and crucially (iii) allows for formal modeling. This account of action coordination is based on the notion of an agent’s field of affordances. Coordination ensues, we argue, when, given a shared intention, the actions of and/or affordances for one agent shape the field of affordances for another agent. This a form of social perception since in particular perceiving affordances for another person involves seeing that person as an agent. It is a form of social perception since it involves perceiving affordances for another person and registering how another person’s actions influence one’s own perceived field of affordances.     

White Supremacy as an affective milieu

Some critical philosophers of race have argued that whiteness can be understood as a technology of affect and that white supremacy is comprised partly of unconscious habits that result in racialized perception. In an effort to deepen our understanding of the affective and bodily dimensions of white supremacy and the ways in which affective habits are socially produced, I look to insights from situated affectivity. Theorists in this field maintain that affective experience is not simply a matter of felt inner states, but rather socially and environmentally embedded and fundamentally relational. Jan Slaby presents the concept of an ‘affective arrangement’ as a way to approach affectivity in terms of relational dynamics unfolding within a particular setting. Applying this concept to the societal level, Paul Schuetze introduces the notion of ‘affective milieu.’ I argue that these notions of ‘affective arrangement’ and ‘affective milieu,’ together with an organicist account of habit, can help to illuminate the workings of white supremacy in the United States. My proposed account highlights the extent to which white supremacy is an affective, bodily phenomenon and how racist habits are formed over the course of learning and ongoing affective engagement, in the context of various social settings. Crucially, these affective habits are fully bound up with habits of appraisal, interpretation, and judgment, and therefore inseparable from how subjects come to see and understand their world.

     

Persons and Affordances

Abstract

Interdisciplinary interest in affordances is increasing. This paper is a philosophical contribution. The question is: Do persons offer affordances? Analysis of the concepts ‘person’ and ‘affordance’ supports an affirmative answer. On a widely accepted understanding of what persons are, persons exhibit many of the features typical of socionormative affordances. However, to understand persons as offering affordances requires, on the face of it, stretching traditional understandings of the concept of affordance: persons, in contrast to the organisms that partially constitute persons, do not seem to be available to perception. This and similar worries are responded to.     

From deed to word: gapless and kink-free enactivism

In their most recent book, Evolving Enactivism: Basic Minds Meet Content (MIT 2017), Dan Hutto and Eric Myin claim to give a complete and gapless naturalistic account of cognition, but it comes with a kink. The kink being that content-involving cognition has special properties found nowhere else in nature, making it the case that minds capable of contentful thought differ in kind, in this key respect, from more basic minds. Contra Hutto and Myin, I argue that content-involving practices are themselves simply a further extension of action and do not therefore warrant being called ‘different in kind’ or ‘kinky’. With the help of Ludwig Wittgenstein and John V. Canfield, I show that Enactivism meets the challenge of explaining higher-level cognition; and, contra continuity sceptics, offer ‘a philosophically cogent and empirically respectable account’ of how human minds can emerge from nonhuman minds.

     

Affordances,context and sociality

Affordances, i.e. the opportunity of actions offered by the environment, are one of the central research topics for the theoretical perspectives that view cognition as emerging from the interaction between the environment and the body. Being at the bridge between perception and action, affordances help to question a dichotomous view of perception and action. While Gibson’s view of affordances is mainly externalist, many contemporary approaches define affordances (and micro-affordances) as the product of long-term visuomotor associations in the brain. These studies have emphasized the fact that affordances are activated automatically, independently from the context and the previous intention to act: for example, affordances related to objects’ size would emerge even if the task does not require focusing on size. This emphasis on the automaticity of affordances has led to overlook their flexibility and contextual-dependency. In this contribution I will outline and discuss recent perspectives and evidence that reveal the flexibility and context-dependency of affordances, clarifying how they are modulated by the physical, cultural and social context. I will focus specifically on social affordances, i.e. on how perception of affordances might be influenced by the presence of multiple actors having different goals.

     

Why ‘scaffolding’ is the wrong metaphor: the cognitive usefulness of mathematical representations

The metaphor of scaffolding has become current in discussions of the cognitive help we get from artefacts, environmental affordances and each other. Consideration of mathematical tools and representations indicates that in these cases at least (and plausibly for others), scaffolding is the wrong picture, because scaffolding in good order is immobile, temporary and crude. Mathematical representations can be manipulated, are not temporary structures to aid development, and are refined. Reflection on examples from elementary algebra indicates that Menary is on the right track with his ‘enculturation’ view of mathematical cognition. Moreover, these examples allow us to elaborate his remarks on the uniqueness of mathematical representations and their role in the emergence of new thoughts.

     

Enactive social cognition: Diachronic constitution & coupled anticipation

This paper targets the constitutive basis of social cognition. It begins by describing the traditional and still dominant cognitivist view. Cognitivism assumes internalism about the realisers of social cognition; thus, the embodied and embedded elements of intersubjective engagement are ruled out from playing anything but a basic causal role in an account of social cognition. It then goes on to advance and clarify an alternative to the cognitivist view; namely, an enactive account of social cognition. It does so first by articulating a diachronic constitutive account for how embodied engagement can play a constitutive role in social cognition. It then proceeds to consider an objection; the causal-constitutive fallacy (Adams & Aizawa, 2001, 2008; Block, 2005) against enactive social cognition. The paper proceeds to deflate this objection by establishing that the distinction between constitution and causation is not co-extensive with the distinction between internal constitutive elements and external causal elements. It is then shown that there is a different reason for thinking that an enactive account of social cognition is problematic. We call this objection the ‘poverty of the interactional stimulus argument’. This objection turns on the role and characteristics of anticipation in enactive social cognition. It argues that anticipatory processes are mediated by an internally realised model or tacit theory (Carruthers, 2015; Seth, 2015). The final part of this paper dissolves this objection by arguing that it is possible to cast anticipatory processes as orchestrated as well as maintained by sensorimotor couplings between individuals in face-to-face interaction.     

Recalling courage: An initial test of a brief writing intervention to activate a ‘courageous mindset’ and courageous behavior

ABSTRACT

Though theoretical models propose that courage can be ‘activated,’ little experimental work exists to support this idea. The current study examines a writing intervention that asks individuals to reflect on experiences in which they faced their fears (thus demonstrating courage) to determine if such reflection would promote more approach-oriented cognition (Study 1) and behavioral intentions (Study 2). As expected, when asked to decide if they could/would engage in various approach behaviors related to their fear, participants in the courage condition chose ‘yes’ more often and were comparatively faster to choose ‘yes’ and slower to choose ‘no.’ Furthermore, participants in the courage condition demonstrated greater intentions of approach behavior toward feared situations in the laboratory. These results, though small in effect, suggest that the writing intervention can activate a ‘courageous mindset’ and can promote more courageous behavioral intentions.     

Joint Action and the Expression of Shared Intentions: An Expanded Taylorian Account

After having identified several shortcomings of the so‐called ‘standard accounts’ of shared intentions, this paper will develop a novel framework for understanding such intentions. The framework to be advanced hinges on a notion of ‘expression’, as well as on the claim that shared intentions are expressed—that is, manifested, grasped, shaped and clarified—throughout the unfolding of the joint actions they animate, as well as in the various expressive activities and behaviours that accompany joint action. This claim will be defended with particular reference to the work of Charles Taylor on expression, as well as recent work on embodied cognition.     

Hegel on Kant's Analytic–Synthetic Distinction

In this paper, I argue, first, that Hegel defended a version of the analytic/synthetic distinction—that, indeed, his version of the distinction deserves to be called Kantian. For both Kant and Hegel, the analytic/synthetic distinction can be explained in terms of the discursive character of cognition: insofar as our cognition is discursive, its most basic form can be articulated in terms of a genus/species tree. The structure of that tree elucidates the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. Second, I argue that Hegel has an interesting and so far unexplored argument for the analytic/synthetic distinction: Hegel argues that the systematic relationship between concepts expressed in a genus/species tree can only be expressed through synthetic judgments. Third and finally, I explore some of the implications that the arguments in the first two parts of the essay have for understanding the way in which Hegel differs from Kant. I argue that Hegel accepts Kant's point that discursive cognition cannot be used to cognize the absolute. However, Hegel thinks that we can, nevertheless, cognize the absolute. I explore the character of this non‐discursive cognition and argue that we can understand Hegel's glosses on this form of cognition—as simultaneously analytic and synthetic and as having a circular structure—through contrasting it with his account of discursive cognition. As a consequence, I argue that we must give up on attempts to understand ‘the dialectical method’ and ‘speculative cognition’ on the model of discursive cognition.     

Empathy and the aesthetic: Why does art still move us?

In this article I will argue for the affective-motivation (background affective attitude or orientation) hypothesis that incubates the aesthetic experience and sets the deep frame of our engagement with art. For this, I look at these microgenetic—early passages of (a) affective perception as mapped into the early emergence of tertiary qualities that underlie a sensorimotor synchronization—a coupling of action, emotion and perception via mirroring that result in dynamic embodied anticipatory control and a feeling of proximity/connectedness and (b) developmental passages that are characterized by spatiotemporal coordination and proximity of the self-other/interactive object and thus structure intentionality, shape experience, in an engaging world of action potentialities forming a background affective attitude. As I will argue these qualitative emergent layers provide the minimal for the aesthetic and the ‘feeling into’ empathy, or their phenomenological counterparts enable engaged, embodied perception and imagination underlying expressive symbolic communication in interpersonal settings but also for the possibility of art. These layers have an ‘echoing’ effect (pre-attentive) when we let ourselves to be ‘moved’ from within by art. The underlying mechanism could be found in the mirroring interface of the upcoming bottom-up and feeding forward anticipatory/predictive (top-down) function of the ‘embodied action’ representations that are affective, imitative and grounded in the body-affective matrix—carrying experiential affordances and keeping the intersubjective ties between spectator and beheld/object. Given the asymmetry on action tendency between them that affords the ‘subordination of the goal-directed action’ into to the means of the action’s unfolding, aesthetic experiences can go deeply back reconstructing the first level of emerging consciousness where both the aesthetic and ethic became actualities. This could be by itself deeply rewarding, amplifying the experience to the ‘edge’. This is a ‘hot’ cognition self-restructuring related to morality when facing the sufferings—so there might be something special bout art and negative emotions in relation to empathy.     

Sacrifice and Relational Well-Being

ABSTRACT

The well-being account of sacrifice says that sacrifices are gross losses of well-being. This account is attractive because it explains the relationship between sacrifice and moral obligation. However, sacrifices made on behalf of loved ones may cause trouble for the account. Loving sacrifices occur in a context where the agent’s well-being and the beneficiary’s well-being are intertwined. They present a challenge to individualism about well-being. Drawing inspiration from feminist philosophers and bioethicists, I argue that a notion of ‘relational well-being’, analogous to ‘relational autonomy’, can help account for loving sacrifices without either undermining the well-being theory of sacrifice or minimizing the very real sacrifices made in caregiving situations.     

Metastable attunement and real-life skilled behavior

In everyday situations, and particularly in some sport and working contexts, humans face an inherently unpredictable and uncertain environment. All sorts of unpredictable and unexpected things happen but typically people are able to skillfully adapt. In this paper, we address two key questions in cognitive science. First, how is an agent able to bring its previously learned skill to bear on a novel situation? Second, how can an agent be both sensitive to the particularity of a given situation, while remaining flexibly poised for many other possibilities for action? We will argue that both the sensitivity to novel situations and the sensitivity to a multiplicity of action possibilities are enabled by the property of skilled agency that we will call metastable attunement. We characterize a skilled agent’s flexible interactions with a dynamically changing environment in terms of metastable dynamics in agent-environment systems. What we find in metastability is the realization of two competing tendencies: the tendency of the agent to express their intrinsic dynamics and the tendency to search for new possibilities. Metastably attuned agents are ready to engage with a multiplicity of affordances, allowing for a balance between stability and flexibility. On the one hand, agents are able to exploit affordances they are attuned to, while at the same time being ready to flexibly explore for other affordances. Metastable attunement allows agents to smoothly transition between these possible configurations so as to adapt their behaviour to what the particular situation requires. We go on to describe the role metastability plays in learning of new skills, and in skilful behaviour more generally. Finally, drawing upon work in art, architecture and sports science, we develop a number of perspectives on how to investigate metastable attunement in real life situations.

     

心智化社会认知观的演变及发展——来自潜心智化的思考

社会认知的机制一直存在心智化与具身认知观点的争论。前者认为社会认知是对心理状态的推测,而后者则认为社会认知是具身实践活动。虽然,心智化研究者认为具身认知有关灵长类动物和婴儿的社会认知的解释可以兼容于内隐心智化,但内隐心智化在解释社会互动时仍然存在间接性的问题。近期,潜心智化理论旨在挑战上述立场中有关社会认知先天论的预设,该理论将个体的潜心智化视为内隐心智化的替代,通过检验与分析相关研究的构想效度,强调社会认知是从非社会性的一般认知功能中衍生而来的,这种立场在社会认知的领域特殊性与非社会认知的领域一般性之间建立起了纽带,从而挑战了心智化与具身认知的争论。未来研究应设计更为严谨的心智化研究方法并对其进行方法学验证,借助先进的技术手段,尝试在神经科学层面探索一般认知功能与社会认知的关系。     

Trust in the Guise of Belief

Abstract

What kind of mental state is trust? It seems to have features that can lead one to think that it is a doxastic state but also features that can lead one to think that it is a non-doxastic state. This has even lead some philosophers to think that trust is a unique mental state that has both mind-to-world and world-to-mind direction of fit, or to give up on the idea that there is a univocal analysis of trust to be had. Here, I propose that ‘trust’ is the name we give to mental states that we would think of as beliefs if belief was to be thought of in ‘pragmatist’ terms (that is, as a state posited primarily to explain agents’ actions) and belief resists ‘pragmatist’ treatment. Only such an account, I argue, can univocally account for all the diverse features of trust. As such, I also propose that the explanation of trust provides us with a case for understanding the limitations of a comprehensively ‘pragmatist’, or ‘Neo-Wittgensteinian’ conception of the mental.