Identifying and individuating cognitive systems: a task-based distributed cognition alternative to agent-based extended cognition

This article argues for a task-based approach to identifying and individuating cognitive systems. The agent-based extended cognition approach faces a problem of cognitive bloat and has difficulty accommodating both sub-individual cognitive systems (“scaling down”) and some supra-individual cognitive systems (“scaling up”). The standard distributed cognition approach can accommodate a wider variety of supra-individual systems but likewise has difficulties with sub-individual systems and faces the problem of cognitive bloat. We develop a task-based variant of distributed cognition designed to scale up and down smoothly while providing a principled means of avoiding cognitive bloat. The advantages of the task-based approach are illustrated by means of two parallel case studies: re-representation in the human visual system and in a biomedical engineering laboratory.     

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.     

The extended cognition thesis: Its significance for the philosophy of (cognitive) science

While the extended cognition (EC) thesis has gained more followers in cognitive science and in the philosophy of mind and knowledge, our main goal is to discuss a different area of significance of the EC thesis: its relation to philosophy of science. In this introduction, we outline two major areas: (I) The role of the thesis for issues in the philosophy of cognitive science, such as: How do notions of EC figure in theories or research programs in cognitive science? Which versions of the EC thesis appear, and with which arguments to support them? (II) The potentials and limits of the EC thesis for topics in general philosophy of science, such as: Can naturalism perhaps be further advanced by means of the more recent EC thesis? Can we understand “big science” or laboratory research better by invoking some version of EC? And can the EC thesis help in overcoming the notorious cognitive/social divide in science studies?     

Extended cognition and the metaphysics of mind

This paper explores the relationship between several ideas about the mind and cognition. The hypothesis of extended cognition claims that cognitive processes can and do extend outside the head, that elements of the world around us can actually become parts of our cognitive systems. It has recently been suggested that the hypothesis of extended cognition is entailed by one of the foremost philosophical positions on the nature of the mind: functionalism, the thesis that mental states are defined by their functional relations rather than by their physical constituents. Furthermore, it has been claimed that functionalism entails a version of extended cognition which is sufficiently radical as to be obviously false. I survey the debate and propose several ways of avoiding this conclusion, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing the hypothesis of extended cognition from the related notion of the extended mind.     

Emotional sharing and the extended mind

Synthese - This article investigates the relationship between emotional sharing and the extended mind thesis. We argue that shared emotions are socially extended emotions that involve a specific...     

Theory of mind and moral cognition: exploring the connections

It is widely recognized that people sometimes use theory-of-mind judgments in moral cognition. A series of recent studies shows that the connection can also work in the opposite direction: moral judgments can sometimes be used in theory-of-mind cognition. Thus, there appear to be cases in which people's moral judgments actually serve as input to the process underlying their application of theory-of-mind concepts.     

Vivisecting the religious mind: Religiosity and motivated social cognition

The relation between motivated social cognition and the religiosity dimensions, which Wulff (1991, 1997) described (Exclusion vs. Inclusion of Transcendence and Literal vs. Symbolic), was investigated in a Flemish speaking Belgian student sample (N=330). The Need for Closure Scale (NFC, Webster & Kruglanski, 1994) was used to measure motivated social cognition and the Post-Critical Belief Scale (Duriez et al., 2000) was used to measure Wulff's religiosity dimensions. Although NFC was expected to relate to the Literal vs. Symbolic dimension only, results also revealed a relation between NFC and the Exclusion vs. Inclusion of Transcendence dimension. However, whereas the former relationship is due to the NFC facets, Discomfort with Ambiguity and Closed-Mindedness, the latter relation can be attributed to the facets, Order and Structure and Predictability. Results obtained in a second Flemish speaking Belgian student sample (N=392) confirm these findings. Thus, apparently, whereas religious belief as such seems to be associated with a preference for order and structure as well as predictability, it is those who deal with religious content in a literal way who are incapable of dealing with alternative opinions.     

Sketch this: extended mind and consciousness extension

This paper will defend the claim that, under certain circumstances, the material vehicles responsible for an agent’s conscious experience can be partly constituted by processes outside the agent’s body. In other words, the consciousness of the agent can extend. This claim will be supported by the Extended Mind Thesis (EMT) example of the artist and their sketchpad (Clark 2001, 2003). It will be argued that if this example is one of EMT, then this example also supports an argument for consciousness extension. Clark (2009) rejects claims of consciousness extension. This paper will challenge Clark and argue that he fails to show that the material vehicles responsible for consciousness must be internal to the agent.     

Extended cognition & constitution: Re-evaluating the constitutive claim of extended cognition

This paper explores several paths by which the extended cognition (EC) thesis may overcome the coupling-constitution fallacy. In so doing, I address a couple of shortcomings in the contemporary literature. First, on the dimension of first-wave EC, I argue that constitutive arguments based on functional parity suffer from either a threat of cognitive bloat or an impasse with respect to determining the correct level of grain in the attribution of causal-functional roles. Second, on the dimension of second-wave EC, I argue that especially the complementarity approach suffers from a similar sort of dilemma as first-wave EC: an inability to justify just what entails the ontological claim of EC over the scaffolding claim of weaker approaches in cognitive science. In this paper I show that two much more promising explanations by which to ground the ontological claim of EC are available, both starting from an exploration of the coordination dynamics between environmental resources and neural resources. On the one hand, I argue that second-wave EC based on cognitive integration, with its focus on bodily manipulations constrained by cognitive norms, is capable of resolving the coupling-constitution fallacy. On the other hand, I argue that the framework of cognitive integration can be supplemented by philosophical accounts of mechanistic explanation, because such accounts enable us to explain the emergence of higher-level cognitive properties due to a system's organization-dependent structure.     

Extended mind and cognitive enhancement: moral aspects of cognitive artifacts

This article connects philosophical debates about cognitive enhancement and situated cognition. It does so by focusing on moral aspects of enhancing our cognitive abilities with the aid of external artifacts. Such artifacts have important moral dimensions that are addressed neither by the cognitive enhancement debate nor situated cognition theory. In order to fill this gap in the literature, three moral aspects of cognitive artifacts are singled out: their consequences for brains, cognition, and culture; their moral status; and their relation to personal identity.     

Sexually selective cognition: beauty captures the mind of the beholder

Across 5 experimental studies, the authors explore selective processing biases for physically attractive others. The findings suggest that (a). both male and female observers selectively attend to physically attractive female targets, (b). limiting the attentional capacity of either gender results in biased frequency estimates of attractive females, (c). although females selectively attend to attractive males, limiting females' attentional capacity does not lead to biased estimates of attractive males, (d). observers of both genders exhibit enhanced recognition memory for attractive females but attenuated recognition for attractive males. Results suggest that different mating-related motives may guide the selective processing of attractive men and women.     

Cognitive ability and the extended cognition thesis

This paper explores the ramifications of the extended cognition thesis in the philosophy of mind for contemporary epistemology. In particular, it argues that all theories of knowledge need to accommodate the ability intuition that knowledge involves cognitive ability, but that once this requirement is understood correctly there is no reason why one could not have a conception of cognitive ability that was consistent with the extended cognition thesis. There is thus, surprisingly, a straightforward way of developing our current thinking about knowledge such that it incorporates the extended cognition thesis.     

Make up your mind: octopus cognition and hybrid explanations

In order to argue that cognitive science should be more accepting of explanatory plurality, this paper presents the control of fetching movements in the octopus as an exemplar of a cognitive process that comprises distinct and non-redundant representation-using and non-representational elements. Fetching is a type of movement that representational analyses can normally account for completely—but not in the case of the octopus. Instead, a comprehensive account of octopus fetching requires the non-overlapping use of both representational and non-representational explanatory frameworks. What this need for a pluralistic or hybrid explanation implies is that cognitive science should be more open to using both representational and non-representational accounts of cognition, depending on their respective appropriateness to the type of cognition in question.

     

Empty and extended craving: an application of the extended mind thesis to the four noble truths

According to Buddhism's four noble truths, (1) we find our lives filled with anguished suffering because (2) we habitually crave for life to be other than it is; and (3) this habit of craving will cease (4) only if we cultivate in our lives the Buddha's path of mental discipline, wisdom, and moral conduct. The aim of Buddhist practice is to cure craving. There is a model of the self that can be derived from the recent work of some philosophers in the field of cognitive science, Andy Clark in particular. His writings suggest a model of the self that is spread out or extended. I will argue that the model of the extended self offers contemporary insight for interpreting what craving is in the Buddhist sense and how to cure it.