Extended Cognition and Propositional Memory

The philosophical case for extended cognition is often made with reference to ‘extended‐memory cases’ (e.g. Clark & Chalmers 1998); though, unfortunately, proponents of the hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC) as well as their adversaries have failed to appreciate the kinds of epistemological problems extended‐memory cases pose for mainstream thinking in the epistemology of memory. It is time to give these problems a closer look. Our plan is as follows: in §1, we argue that an epistemological theory remains compatible with HEC only if its epistemic assessments do not violate what we call ‘the epistemic parity principle’. In §2, we show how the constraint of respecting the epistemic parity principle stands in what appears to be a prima facie intractable tension with mainstream thinking about cases of propositional memory. We then outline and evaluate in §3 several lines of response.     

How we think and act together

In this paper, I examine the challenges socially extended minds pose for mainstream, individualistic accounts of social cognition. I argue that individualistic accounts of social cognition neglect phenomena important to social cognition that are properly emphasized by socially extended mind accounts. Although I do not think the evidence or arguments warrant replacing individualistic explanations of social cognition with socially extended explanations, I argue that we have good reason to supplement our individualistic accounts so as to include the ways in which situational context affects social interactions. The result, I hope, is a more sophisticated individualism that offers a more comprehensive account of how we think and act together.     

Knowledge,Cognitive Achievement,and Environmental Luck

This article defends the view that knowledge is type‐identical to cognitive achievement. I argue, pace Duncan Pritchard, that not only knowledge, but also cognitive achievement is incompatible with environmental luck. I show that the performance of cognitive abilities in environmental luck cases does not distinguish them from non‐abilities per se. For this reason, although the cognitive abilities of the subject are exercised in environmental luck cases, they are not manifested in any relevant sense. I conclude by showing that this explanation is not ad hoc as it can be generalized to apply to causal features besides cognitive abilities.     

Get lucky: situationism and circumstantial moral luck

Situationism is, roughly, the thesis that normatively irrelevant environmental factors have a great impact on our behaviour without our being aware of this influence. Surprisingly, there has been little work done on the connection between situationism and moral luck. Given that it is often a matter of luck what situations we find ourselves in, and that we are greatly influenced by the circumstances we face, it seems also to be a matter of luck whether we are blameworthy or praiseworthy for our actions in those circumstances. We argue that such situationist moral luck, as a variety of circumstantial moral luck, exemplifies a distinct and interesting type of moral luck. Further, there is a case to be made that situationist moral luck is perhaps more worrying than some other well-discussed cases of (supposed) moral luck.     

Extended cognition,personal responsibility,and relational autonomy

The Hypothesis of Extended Cognition (HEC)—that many cognitive processes are carried out by a hybrid coalition of neural, bodily and environmental factors—entails that the intentional states that are reasons for action might best be ascribed to wider entities of which individual persons are only parts. I look at different kinds of extended cognition and agency, exploring their consequences for concerns about the moral agency and personal responsibility of such extended entities. Can extended entities be moral agents and bear responsibility for actions, in addition to or in place of the individuals typically held responsible? What does it mean to be “autonomous” when one’s cognition is influenced and supported by a milieu of environmental factors? To answer these questions, I explore strong parallels between HEC’s critique of individualism in cognition, and feminist critiques of individualist accounts of self, agency, and autonomy. This relational and social conception of autonomous agency, as scaffolded and supported (or undermined and impaired) by a milieu of social, relational, and normative factors, has important lessons for HEC. Drawing together these two visions of distributed and decentralized aspects of personhood highlights how cognition, action, and responsibility are inextricably linked. It also encourages a reconceptualization of all cognition and all concerns about responsibility for actions, not simply as sometimes “extended” around individuals, but as fundamentally communal, social, and normative, with individual cognition and individual moral responsibility being derivative special cases, not the paradigm examples. Individuals are merely one of many possible loci of cognition, action, and responsibility.     

Extended Cognition & the Causal‐Constitutive Fallacy: In Search for a Diachronic and Dynamical Conception of Constitution

Philosophical accounts of the constitution relation have been explicated in terms of synchronic relations between higher‐ and lower‐level entities. Such accounts, I argue, are temporally austere or impoverished, and are consequently unable to make sense of the diachronic and dynamic character of constitution in dynamical systems generally and dynamically extended cognitive processes in particular. In this paper, my target domain is extended cognition based on insights from nonlinear dynamics. Contrariwise to the mainstream literature in both analytical metaphysics and extended cognition, I develop a nonstandard, alternative conception of constitution, which I call “diachronic process constitution”. It will be argued that only a diachronic and dynamical conception of constitution is consistent with the nature of constitution in distributed cognitive processes.     

The molecules of social recognition memory: implications for social cognition, extended mind, and neuroethics

Social cognition, cognitive neuroscience, and neuroethics have reached a synthesis of late, but some troubling features are present. The neuroscience that currently dominates the study of social cognition is exclusively cognitive neuroscience, as contrasted with the cellular and increasingly molecular emphasis that has gripped mainstream neuroscience over the past three decades. Furthermore, the recent field of molecular and cellular cognition has begun to unravel some molecular mechanisms involved in social cognition, especially pertaining to the consolidation of memories of particular conspecific organisms. Some new experimental techniques for positive interventions into these hypothesized mechanisms offer opportunities for establishing direct causal linkages between intra-neuronal molecular events and the behaviors used to measure social cognitive phenomena. Predicted results from an experiment described below also cast doubt on the application of the “extended mind” approach from recent cognitive science to ground the neuroscience of social cognition. Since neuroethics relies heavily on our best neuroscience of social cognition, that field may soon need to extend its attention beyond cognitive neuroscience, and into neuroscience’s cellular and molecular mainstream.     

Thinking about luck

Luck looms large in numerous different philosophical subfields. Unfortunately, work focused exclusively on the nature of luck is in short supply on the contemporary analytic scene. In his highly impressive recent book Epistemic Luck, Duncan Pritchard helps rectify this neglect by presenting a partial account of luck that he uses to illuminate various ways luck can figure in cognition. In this paper, I critically evaluate both Pritchard’s account of luck and another account to which Pritchard’s discussion draws our attention—viz., that due to Nicholas Rescher. I also assess some novel analyses of luck that incorporate plausible elements of Pritchard’s and Rescher’s accounts.     

Extended music cognition

Discussions of extended cognition have increasingly engaged with the empirical and methodological practices of cognitive science and psychology. One topic that has received increased attention from those interested in the extended mind is music cognition. A number of authors have argued that music not only shapes emotional and cognitive processes, but also that it extends those processes beyond the bodily envelope. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the case for extended music cognition. Two accounts are examined in detail: Joel Krueger’s “musically extended emotional mind” and Tom Cochrane’s “expression and extended cognition.” Each account is evaluated using three “anti-extension” arguments. I argue that Krueger and Cochrane’s accounts offer important steps toward extended music cognition, but that each account remains underdeveloped in various ways. To supplement existing approaches, I propose a complementary extended computational approach to music cognition (ECMC). The claim is that music cognition forms part of an extended system in virtue of involving computational processes that range across environmental and in-the-head elements. The paper concludes by showing how the ECMC deals with each of the three anti-extension challenges and responds to objections.     

Extended cognition and the space of social interaction

The extended mind thesis (EM) asserts that some cognitive processes are (partially) composed of actions consisting of the manipulation and exploitation of environmental structures. Might some processes at the root of social cognition have a similarly extended structure? In this paper, I argue that social cognition is fundamentally an interactive form of space management—the negotiation and management of “we-space”—and that some of the expressive actions involved in the negotiation and management of we-space (gesture, touch, facial and whole-body expressions) drive basic processes of interpersonal understanding and thus do genuine social-cognitive work. Social interaction is a kind of extended social cognition, driven and at least partially constituted by environmental (non-neural) scaffolding. Challenging the Theory of Mind paradigm, I draw upon research from gesture studies, developmental psychology, and work on Moebius Syndrome to support this thesis.     

You Make Your Own Luck

This essay takes up two questions. First, what does it mean to say that someone creates her own luck? At least colloquially speaking, luck is conceived as something out of an agent's control. So how could an agent increase or decrease the likelihood that she'll be lucky? Building on some recent work on the metaphysics of luck, the essay argues that there is a sense in which agents can create their own luck because people with more skill tend to have more opportunities to benefit from luck. Second, what implications does this conception of luck have for related topics such as how we evaluate performances (like shooting an arrow), including coming to know something? The ubiquitous presence of luck in our actions is often underappreciated. The essay argues that when we combine an expected outcomes view of luck with a counterfactual view of causation, the distinction between environmental and intervening veritic luck seems to disappear. We need a more nuanced view of how luck sometimes undermines credit for success in agents' actions. The upshot of this view is that while luck may undermine the creditworthiness of an agent's success, it only partially undermines creditworthiness.     

What,and Where,Luck is: A Response to Jennifer Lackey

In ‘What Luck Is Not’, Lackey presents counterexamples to the two most prominent accounts of luck: the absence of control account and the modal account. I offer an account of luck that conjoins absence of control to a modal condition. I then show that Lackey's counterexamples mislocate the luck: the agents in her cases are lucky, but the luck precedes the event upon which Lackey focuses, and that event is itself only fortunate, not lucky. Finally I offer an account of fortune. Fortune is luck-involving, and therefore easily confused with luck, but it is not itself lucky.     

The coupling-constitution fallacy revisited

The hypothesis of extended cognition maintains that cognitive processes sometimes span the brain, body, and world. One of the most prominent types of arguments for this hypothesis begins with observations of the role of certain sorts of bodily and environmental influences on cognitive processes, then concludes that these bodily and environmental influences are themselves cognitive processes. This paper will argue that, while it is widely appreciated that the simplest versions of these “coupling arguments” are fallacious, the advocates of extended cognition still seem to underestimate how prevalent even the simplest forms are in the literature, why they are so pervasive, and how these fallacious arguments might be avoided by greater attention to a plausible theory of what distinguishes cognitive processes from non-cognitive processes.     

‘Unlucky’ Gettier Cases

This article argues that justified true beliefs in Gettier cases often are not true due to luck. I offer two ‘unlucky’ Gettier cases, and it's easy enough to generate more. Hence even attaching a broad ‘anti‐luck’ codicil to the tripartite account of knowledge leaves the Gettier problem intact. Also, two related questions are addressed. First, if epistemic luck isn't distinctive of Gettier cases, what is? Second, what do Gettier cases reveal about knowledge?     

Empirical Vindication of Moral Luck

In resultant moral luck, blame and punishment seem intuitively to depend on downstream effects of a person’s action that are beyond his or her control. Some skeptics argue that we should override our intuitions about moral luck and reform our practices. Other skeptics attempt to explain away apparent cases of moral luck as epistemic artifacts. I argue, to the contrary, that moral luck is real—that people are genuinely responsible for some things beyond their control. A partially consequentialist theory of responsibility justifies moral luck. But this justification is no mere rationalization of the status quo. Recent experimental and evolutionary work on punishment and learning suggests that the very same reasons that justify moral luck have also shaped the evolution of our luck‐sensitive moral practices.     

Defending Luck Egalitarianism

abstract    This article defends luck egalitarianism as an interpretation of the egalitarian ideal against two major criticisms levelled against it by Elizabeth Anderson — that it is trapped in the distributive paradigm, and that it treats the victims of bad option luck too harshly to be considered an egalitarian theory. Against the first criticism, I argue that luck egalitarianism will condemn non-material inequalities and injustices if an appropriate conception of well-being is adopted. I demonstrate this by showing how the approach is sensitive to the five faces of oppression developed by Iris Young. Although the second criticism is more troubling, it does not defeat luck egalitarianism, either. I will show that few of the inequalities that arise in the real world result from option luck. Further, if cases do occur, rather than abandoning the theory, the best response is to combine luck egalitarianism with another egalitarian principle that will ensure that the basic needs of all citizens are satisfied. The paper concludes by defending the appeal of the distinction between option luck and brute luck, in light of the preceding discussion.     

EVALUATING THE EXTENDED MIND

According to proponents of radically extended cognition, some cognition is located outside the boundaries of biological organisms. In this paper, I offer a new argument for a modest version of this view according to which some cognitive processes are radically extended. I do so by showing that features of a subject's environment—in particular, the pen and paper that a subject uses to solve complex mathematical problems—can have epistemic roles that are indicative of cognitive roles. I end the paper by discussing how epistemology might play a significant role in diagnosing alleged cases of radically extended cognition.     

Extended spider cognition

There is a tension between the conception of cognition as a central nervous system (CNS) process and a view of cognition as extending towards the body or the contiguous environment. The centralised conception requires large or complex nervous systems to cope with complex environments. Conversely, the extended conception involves the outsourcing of information processing to the body or environment, thus making fewer demands on the processing power of the CNS. The evolution of extended cognition should be particularly favoured among small, generalist predators such as spiders, and here, we review the literature to evaluate the fit of empirical data with these contrasting models of cognition. Spiders do not seem to be cognitively limited, displaying a large diversity of learning processes, from habituation to contextual learning, including a sense of numerosity. To tease apart the central from the extended cognition, we apply the mutual manipulability criterion, testing the existence of reciprocal causal links between the putative elements of the system. We conclude that the web threads and configurations are integral parts of the cognitive systems. The extension of cognition to the web helps to explain some puzzling features of spider behaviour and seems to promote evolvability within the group, enhancing innovation through cognitive connectivity to variable habitat features. Graded changes in relative brain size could also be explained by outsourcing information processing to environmental features. More generally, niche-constructed structures emerge as prime candidates for extending animal cognition, generating the selective pressures that help to shape the evolving cognitive system.     

The Coherence of Luck Egalitarianism

One of the foremost egalitarian theories in recent years, luck egalitarianism, has recently been subjected to the charge that it is in fact incoherent. This charge is brought by David Miller who highlights two dimensions of luck egalitarianism: on the one hand a commitment to the justice of certain inequalities arising from responsible choices; on the other a commitment to injustice of brute inequalities. The putative incoherence emerges in cases where the inequalities that justice requires on the basis of individuals' responsible choices also entail brute luck inequalities for which there are the very same grounds of justice to condemn. Here I argue that the charge of incoherence against luck egalitarianism fails. In service of this I clarify the quite specific sense in which luck egalitarianism requires inequalities and demonstrate the coherence of this with its condemnation of other inequalities.     

具身认知的“七宗罪”

近二十年来,具身认知已逐渐成为认知科学研究的主流趋势,其理论主张已经辐射到心理学、哲学、语言学、计算机科学等许多领域,研究成果运用范围逐渐扩大。诚然,具身认知在某种程度上弥补了“离身”认知的不足,但其在方法论和认识论方面的问题也日益突显,如循环论证,解释不充分,完全的二元对立,文化、社会、语言因素的忽视等。因此,当务之急是改进研究方法,摒弃先入之见,使其真正成为多角度、全方位、综合性研究。