Clark, A. & Chalmers, D. (1998) The Extended Mind. Analysis. 58(1)
Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? The question invites two standard replies. Some accept the demarcations of skin and skull, and say that what is outside the body is outside the mind. Others are impressed by arguments suggesting that the meaning of our words "just ain't in the head", and hold that this externalism about meaning carries over into an externalism about mind. We propose to pursue a third position. We advocate a very different sort of externalism: an active externalism, based on the active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes.
I find this idea of active externalism interesting, but I don't see why it should be displayed in opposition to Putnam's externalism. It does define cognitive processes and meanings with the help of cues (e.g. from the immediate environment) different than the ones Putnam suggests (e.g. from history and social construction), but not instead of them. Nothing prevents from (on the contrary, everything suggests) cognition being a multimodal process relying both on direct external surroundings and indirect constructs whether from the community, conventions or history. Indeed, the direct surroundings and tools Chalmers describes are rooted in these constructs!
ReplyDeleteIt might help to distinguish what causes feeling (somehow -- hard problem) from what constitutes a felt state (i.e., what are the pieces that, all together, make up the state that is being felt, the state of feeling it). But this kind of hair-splitting begins to feel too much like doing phenomenology...
DeleteIn this piece, Clark and Chalmers argue that our minds extend past “skin and skull” into our environments. The basic gist is that things in our environment, like neural implants and notebooks and even the thoughts of other people, can be parts of cognitive processes if they’re used in the right way. I think the idea is really interesting and their argument is pretty sound, but I’m not convinced that the Internet, for example, is extension of my mind. We’ve talked at length about the importance of feeling for cognition, and I think this is something the authors leave out. They do anticipate that people will find their externalism argument “unpalatable” if we link consciousness with cognition, but they basically just point out that we have unconscious and yet cognitive processes like memory retrieval going on internally, so we should be willing to accept external unconscious processes too. But even though the memory retrieval process is unconscious/“cognitively impenetrable”, it still feels like something internally to remember a fact or a name – so how could something external like the Internet house part of that “oh I got it!” feeling along with its part in the cognitive process?
ReplyDeleteHi Olivia! I do agree with the point you brought up about how there seems to be a feeling component missing when we talk about using the objects in our environment for executing cognitive processes.
DeleteThe first example in the piece that brought this issue into my attention was how Clark and Chalmers saw the three cases of doing the mental rotation task (a. purely mental, b. with an external computer and c. with a computer transplant) as equivalent. I think there is a clear distinction between the case where you only rely on your mental processes for carrying out the rotation task and when you see the rotation task being done in a computer in front of you. I can think of two reasons why these two cases are different. First, I think by doing the rotation task mentally you are actively carrying out the process, whereas the computer program only displays the instantaneous outcomes of every second of computation to you. We have talked a lot about how computation is only concerned with symbols in and symbols out and I think the computer program only exposes the outcome to your brain and not the actual underlying process. In this example I don’t see the rotation of the object as the main process but the underlying cognitive process that gives us the capacity to perform the mental rotation task should be the center of our investigation.
Second, I think our mental rotation experience is drawing on our sensorimotor grounded ideas about how it feels like to be in a 3D space or to view an object from different angles as a main component of the process and these ideas are responsible for a great deal of the feeling component of performing the task. However, when we do the task with a computer our sensorimotor grounded ideas about the rotation task come into effect after the task is performed by the computer. Therefore, I think in the computer case the real cognitive process happens in our mind when we start to evaluate the results of computation in our head. As for the transplantation case, I don’t think the physical location of the computer really matters. What matters is to what extent and at which points the algorithm executed by the computer engages our mental states and our internal ongoing mental processes.
Olivia, I agree with your point on the mental rotation task. I believe the fundamental difference that occurs between examples 2 (watching the object rotate on the screen) and 3 (having an implant that does the rotation in your head) is that 3 made an alteration to your cognition, whereas 2 merely altered the object in your environment. 3 seems to cross the 'narrow mind' boundary where 2 does not. Second, it seems it would also feel like something to operate with in the example 3 situation. You may not know exactly what process is happening but there must be a way to mentally manipulate the rotation program, whereas it would not feel like something for the computer to go through the same process in example 2.
DeleteThe only trouble is that with the real mental rotation task -- even though it takes longer to match the more the second object has been rotated -- the actual rotation is not felt! It all happens too fast. So you get the answer on a plate, without feeling how your brain did it, just as with the name of Mrs. Pouley (sp?)... So, again, internal vs external rotation (or an external algorithm) all begs the question of whether this is a "mental" process at all (whether internal or external).
DeleteInteresting point Olivia, I also found it counter-intuitive to consider Google or Facebook or anything else is a part of my mind. However, if we’re talking about the ‘feeling’ of memory retrieval, I think Chalmers has an interesting angle here, compatible with our questions in class.
DeleteWhen learning new information there is not a clear difference – the ‘feeling’ of learning is the same whether you learn online via ‘Ask Jeeves’, or from asking some guy called ‘Jeeves’. Outside of Zen reflection upon the meaning of things (which pre-supposes that you have encountered things) we learn through our environment. If learning feels like something, then we can say that the ‘extensions’ of the mind are involved in the process, if only to the extent of electrical signals from or eyes and ears.
For memory retrieval, (as Prof. Harnad points out above) the act of recall doesn’t feel like anything until we suddenly remember. The act of trying to remember how long to cook Zucchini for is not altogether different from furiously scrolling through epicurious for the same answer. The ‘feeling’ pops in when the information pops into our mind, the Mrs. Pooley moment (or 350 degrees for 15 minutes, then broil for 3-5).
http://damndelicious.net/2014/06/21/baked-parmesan-zucchini/
To return to your point, I don’t think Chalmers is the right person to ask for explaining how feeling works. If the act of retrieval doesn’t feel like anything inside our brains, I think it might be too much to ask of an Iphone. His point (made more clearly in the TEDx talk) is that we use our external environment the same way we use the unfelt part of our brains. I set an alarm to get up for CCOM on my phone instead of hoping to wake up in time, but it doesn’t change the fact that 9:30 always feels too early for my lazy bones.
(My third grade teacher’s name is spelled Mrs. Pooley, not that it matters for the argument above)
@Harnad
DeleteRE: The only trouble is that with the real mental rotation task -- even though it takes longer to match the more the second object has been rotated -- the actual rotation is not felt! It all happens too fast. So you get the answer on a plate, without feeling how your brain did it, just as with the name of Mrs. Pouley (sp?)... So, again, internal vs external rotation (or an external algorithm) all begs the question of whether this is a "mental" process at all (whether internal or external).
This is mind blowing. If you don't conflate awareness to feeling, there is something it is like to mentally rotate and object and to actively retrieve a memory. These actions aren't vegetative and surely they could not be performed without an active felt force (the cognizer)
I believe the act of preforming arithmetic using pen and paper can be divided into two clear processes. The use of an algorithm based upon basic knowledge of a particular process (ex. long division) as well as some low level semantic knowledge (multiplication tables, addition/subtraction, etc.) is the internal, cognitive process. The manipulation of the environment is merely to make up for our limited working memory, but should not be considered "cognitive". Tools aid cognition, they do not themselves cognize.
ReplyDeleteOn the case of Otto and his notebook, the authors argue anything put into his book can be considered a belief of his. How does this apply to our modern day computers, from which anyone can quickly and easily look up pretty much any "belief"? The authors mentioned this only is passing in the final section, but I think it is a justifiable counterargument. The internet fits all three "crucial" criteria listed at the end: cell phones are a constant in most people's lives, the information is directly available without difficulty (even more available than the notebook), and for most people, they will automatically endorse whatever they read on the internet. The endorsement is not equal among all people however, some are more selective in what they believe than others. There is something internal which selects what inputs should be incorporated into your beliefs and what inputs should not be. Is this to say that only a part of each person's cognitive state is spread across the internet?
I agree with your first paragraph entirely, and a similar thought was going through my head the entire time I was reading this article. To use the fish/water current analogy mentioned in the reading, the fish takes the role of the cognizer, manipulating its environment and forming a tool (the vortices). However the water does not become an extension of it; separate the two and your left with 1 cognizer and one non-cognizer – and as you put it, tools do not themselves cognize.
DeleteAnd to add to your second point - it might not just be that only a part of each person's cognitive state is spread across the internet, but their cognitive state at that one point in time. As, after all, beliefs can and do change - however reading this article makes me question what exactly they mean by beliefs.
I've had to read this paper for classes before, and every time there's something about it that bothers me...
ReplyDeletePerhaps it's because the paper seems like it explains more than it actually does. As autonomous agents, all living creatures act in a specific environment, leveraging it, offloading certain process to it, and so on. In doing so, organisms are completely dependent on their environment to do whatever it is that they do. The same can be said of cognition.
However all this does is beg the question: what constitutes the kind of organismal/cognitive autonomy which simultaneously has a locus and yet extends out into the world? In other words, what constitutes the inside/outside, internal/external, relationship which organisms have with their environment? Because despite what Clark and Chalmers might want to claim, extension is always extension of *something*. Saying that cognition is extended is fairly trivial if you don't include a discussion about what exactly it is and how it is that it can extend outwards.
To your question, I think part of what constitutes “the kind of organismal/cognitive autonomy which simultaneously has a locus and yet extends out into the world” is what we discussed in previous classes: sensorimotor capacity/ affordances. Mental states are invariably felt states, i.e., equivalent to your notion of “locus”. What “extends out into the world” is simply that we live in the world, and we do so with our sensorimotor capacity – sensing and moving. I don’t think this distinction is hard-and-fast but an undeniable boundary between mental states and what are not mental states is that mental states are felt.
DeleteI completely agree with Austin. The question of extension of mental state becomes irrelevant when we consider felt states. You may write something a notebook, but you will never say i felt the writing. You only feel your own thoughts. Though the definition of an objective boundary is loose because cognition is receiving and offloading all the time, it still exists as a part of the self. It is epistemologically perceived and set by the self. In the normative case, identified with a body. However, the mind does not identify with a brain, it inferentially knows that a brain exists, but does not directly perceive it. Does this mean that the brain also becomes external to what an autonomous system is?
Delete"By embracing an active externalism, we allow a more natural explanation of all sorts of actions. One can explain my choice of words in Scrabble, for example, as the outcome of an extended cognitive process involving the rearrangement of tiles on my tray. Of course, one could always try to explain my action in terms of internal processes and a long series of "inputs" and "actions", but this explanation would be needlessly complex."
ReplyDeleteI understand the general idea put forward by the authors that we are coupled with our environment, but I am having trouble understanding what this paragraph is trying to convey. When a person rearranges the tiles in Scrabble, is there not still a series of internal inputs and outputs working to make this happen? Isn't our confusion at not being able to make any words from the tiles we selected leading to a conscious decision to move the tiles, and keep moving them until we are able to understand a word from them?
I thought this reading was very interesting and ties up a lot of the themes of our class in nicely.
ReplyDeleteIt states that “The human organism is linked with an external entity in a two-way interaction creating a coupled system that is seen as a cognitive system in it’s own way”. Clark and Charlmers’ idea of Active Externalism stipulates that events and features of the environment actively impact the organism and its behaviour; actually playing a causal role in “driving the cognitive processes of the here and now”. I originally thought that this piece would be rather abstract or complicated from the title alone, but the idea is quite intuitive and seems especially logical when one considers “the general tendency of human reasoners to lean heavily on environmental supports” (e.g. pen and paper for long multiplication). At first I was tempted to indulge in “okay, but without the operations of the brain, no long-multiplication can be performed on paper with pen”. However, the same argument can be made for the reverse: what would the operations of the brain be without the external environment? It is an ego-centric temptation to have the mind act as the focal point, but I agree with Clark and Chalmers’ idea that more accurately, a dynamic exchange system description is due.
This reminds me somehow of epigenetics: the idea that the environment can actually affect the expression of one’s genes through processes such as DNA methylation. Though not directly parallel with the opposition for active externalism, here too it is tempting to attribute all causal power to the genome which interacts with the environment as a stable entity. Instead, environmental factors such as stress can change its very fabric, together influencing the organism.
At first I was tempted to indulge in “okay, but without the operations of the brain, no long-multiplication can be performed on paper with pen”. However, the same argument can be made for the reverse: what would the operations of the brain be without the external environment?
DeleteIn a situation with no external environment at all, we'd have far deeper philosophical questions to ask about the brain. However, I think that our brains are build to adapt to use what we have access to, and adjust our rationing of brainpower appropriately based what outside resources we do have, and what we don't.
Before it was common to write things down, stories were passed down through orally--this meant that far more importance was placed on the memory. Even in recent generations, before facts were so easily accessible by the internet, it was more common for students to memorize long passages and huge amounts of facts. Thinking about this today, I know that I would struggle, since I'm not used to that volume of memorization.
Similarly, since we have access to pen and paper to help us do long-multiplication, of course we put no mental efforts into becoming skilled at doing it in our heads. However, if for some reason we could never use pen and paper for this, I would guess that we would develop to be able to do these calculations, in the same way that people used to memorize long stories more often.
In conclusion, I think that we adapt to use external resources, but usually aren't absolutely reliant on them, and can learn to not use them, especially if learned from birth.
"It is an ego-centric temptation to have the mind act as the focal point, but I agree with Clark and Chalmers’ idea that more accurately, a dynamic exchange system description is due"
DeleteI’d have to disagree with your first point – I suppose one way to look at it is egocentrism, but the fact of the matter remains that the mind IS the focal point. Unless we are to count pens, papers, calculators, etc. as cognizers, the mind remains within the skull and the tools we use externally are just a means to an end, environmental manipulations to achieve our goals. Epigenetics, as you bring it up, is more related to the stresses the environment places on the body and our genes and not so much to do with the ‘externalized mind’.
While the accessibility and distribution of the internet can make it alluring to claim that it is an extension of the cognition of the people who access it, can the same not be said of any book or really any way of communicating or storing information? Language is a cognitive technology, art hanging on a wall is cognitive technology, and as I’ll demonstrate below, a wall can be cognitive technology.
ReplyDeleteTo provide an absurd example, a man in a prison is told that he will be jailed indefinitely. In order to keep track of how many days that pass by, he scratches a mark into his prison wall every day in order to keep track. In some way, he is using the wall as a cognitive technology, but it would be ridiculous to say that the wall is part of the man’s mind. As Dr. Harnad said, if the man were to get a migraine in jail, the wall wouldn’t have the migraine too.
Hey Karl,
DeleteClarke and Chalmers' criteria for something to be an extension of cognition is a high degree of trust, reliance, and accessibility. Because you are unable to carry a library around with you, books in general often aren’t there as you need them, when you need them, and as such they fail the above criteria.
If you had a particular book that you kept on you almost all the time, and you had previously read through for familiarity, and you had a tab system for quickly referring to information throughout the book, then this would certainly fit the criteria.
The internet in general also wouldn’t fit because a lot of the information it holds is untrustworthy and the sheer amount of information means we lack the ability to fluently integrate the information we get from it into our actions in a way that is comparable to unextended cognition.
Clark and Chalmer take on an interesting perspective in attempting to explore the issue of whether mental/cognitive processes are internal or external. However, what exactly is Clark and Chalmers' definition of "belief"? Is their belief = feeling - it seems rather ambiguous and hinders their whole argument. The use of Inga and Otto to distinguish how belief can come from introspection vs. perception. Although they reach the same destination, they do not share the same feeling. Are they comparing the performance of the two and ignoring feelings? It seems as though they ignore the hard problem - how and why we feel what we do but only address the easy problem - how and why we do what we do. If belief is feeling, then I feel like their argument is flawed. Its true that we can rely on various inputs from our external environment to aid in our cognitive functions - e.g. laptops, phones etc but how do we outsource the capacity to feel externally?
ReplyDeleteHi Fiona,
DeleteI don’t think Clark and Chalmer are assuming that beliefs are equated to feelings. It seems that they are committed to beliefs in terms of a general accepted definition of beliefs.
Google defines beliefs as:
1. an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists
2. trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something.
This suggests that beliefs and feelings are different. It may feel a certain way to hold a belief, but different beliefs will have different feelings associated with them, so it’s not necessarily a problem that it may feel different for Otto to hold his beliefs externally compared to average beliefs based on memory and self-schemas. Both will be associated with a feeling of some type and both will aid cognition in terms of remembering these beliefs, bringing them to the forefront of the mind. This wouldn’t be an outsourcing the ability to feel externally, but outsourcing tools that help our cognitive processes work in a way that seamlessly integrate the environment around us. This then comes down to what is defined as the mind – if the mind is only feeling, then the mind cannot be “extended” in this way, but if the mind is all cognitive processes, then it appears that certain outside forces can “replace” or at least aid in the success of cognitive processes, implying that cognitive processes can be extended (in this case a memory of beliefs).
Hi Fiona,
DeleteI think you nailed it exactly when you said that Clark and Chalmers seem to be ignoring the hard problem, that is: why and how we feel. Clark and Chalmers are arguing for cognition to be extended beyond the mind and they argue that not all of cognition is conscious. Cognition is everything that is going on in our brains that allows us to do everything we can do. I do not believe that cognition is beyond the brain. From previous weeks in this course, we came to classify consciousness as feeling. Unfelt vegetative states are not cognition. Despite memory retrieval being cognitively impenetrable, it still feels like something to recall a memory. It seems that Chalmers and Clark are saying that there is an 'unconscious mind' outside the body that explains our extended cognition. But if something is unconscious, it is simply unfelt and we cannot and should not call this an unconscious mind. Therefore, I do not believe that parts of the external world, like the internet, a piece of paper or even another person (in the case that you speak to another person), can be considered extended cognition.
“Another example may be language, which appears to be a central means by which cognitive processes are extended into the world. Think of a group of people brainstorming around a table, or a philosopher who thinks best by writing, developing her ideas as she goes. It may be that language evolved, in part, to enable such extensions of our cognitive resources within actively coupled systems.”
ReplyDeleteInstead of saying language is a cognitive process that is extended into the world, I prefer saying that we/our brains produce symbols as the output to express our thoughts, i.e. the cognition process of understanding or producing language is still inside our brains. When someone writes down some ideas, I don’t think the symbols on the paper themselves are a part of cognition. When a group of people brainstorming around a table, what happens is each of them produces some verbal sounds, and the others process the verbal sounds and interpret those as sentences with distinct words. The understanding part of the language is still inside our head.
From Inga and Otto’s example, I understand what the reading is suggesting, but Otto’s notebook does not have the “forgetting” process to get abstract information, neither can categorize. To me, it sounds more like Otto is a forgetful person and he has a notebook, just like we have a notebook, to keep the information such that we won’t forget. Otto’s notebook may store information that is from his sensorimotor experience, but except this, Otto having the notebook is pretty much like anyone having an encyclopedia or a google database where they can have some information readily to retrieve. Do we extend our cognitive ability to the tools? Google? Notebook? Pocket calculator? Symbols?
Allison,
DeletePerhaps written ideas are part of cognition. "Language appears to be a central means by which cognitive processes are extended into the world."
This implies that we are thinking in language. Language is cognitive and extended outside of us, in our environment. This is an interesting notion considering what we have previously learned about language acquisition. Prof. Harnad, would this notion support the Wharfian Hypothesis?
The authors make the point that both language and beliefs are sitting somewhere (presumably in our cortex, but not simply in the head) waiting to be accessed, and only once they are accessed are we cognizing. As for extending our cognitive abilities to the tools, the authors state that "What is central is a high degree of trust, reliance, and accessibility." I would argue then that my agenda and my iPhone are extensions of my brain. Those are two pieces of equipment that I always carry on me. They are reliable and accessible and what I write down (either in my agenda or on my phone) I can offload from my brain.
"Language, thus construed, is not a mirror of our inner states but a complement to them. It serves as a tool whose role is to extend cognition in ways that on-board devices cannot. "
DeleteI like Chalmer's and Clark's remarks on how language affords the mind to extend into notebooks , computers, and social circles. This is no small point I think, but is perhaps a bit obvious. The power of subject-predicate formation to make categorizes also allows us to use systems with the capacity to store this ability (eg. books, the internet) as extensions of cognitive capabilities. Though the argument still holds that pieces of paper with written words do not cognize and do not feel, I think that investigating deeper into the historical advent of written language, printed text, recorded voice, and other language mediating technologies would be a super interesting way to deepen the extended cognition argument and perhaps enlighten new ideas. For example, printed text was not universally accepted when the press was invented in the 16th century, "storing" language using movable type required a great deal of trust before it could be understood as a way to offload language.
Clark and Chalmers begin by differentiating the incorporation of bodily actions, using our fingers for calculation, into cognitive processes versus other aspects of our external environment such as a pocket calculator.
ReplyDeleteThey go on to say, “In the distant future we may be able to plug various modules into our brain to help us out: a module for extra short-term memory when we need it, for example. When a module is plugged in, the processes involving it are just as cognitive as if they had been there all along.”
“If the relevant capacities are generally there when they are required, this is coupling enough.”
In the example of Otto with his notebook functioning as his memory, I understand that the notebook essentially replaces what would be his healthy, functioning memory and therefore acts in the same way that Inga’s intact memory operates. Back to the finger vs. calculator example, if someone has dyscalculia or another learning disability that prevents them from being able to compute basic arithmetic that other individuals could compute using only their minds and fingers, would they incorporate a pocket calculator in the same way the Otto incorporates his notebook? In this situation, would the calculator not be any different from the notebook and thus also “qualify just as well as Inga’s memory” or the ability of another individual to calculate using their fingers?
Hi Aliza,
DeleteI think that there are many similarities between the example of the memory notebook and of the pocket calculator, but they are not exactly alike.
Clark and Chalmers spend a lot of time in their paper discussing the role of belief in being able to consider the memory notebook as part of Otto's mind, and I think that in terms of the calculator, this piece is missing. If someone was using a calculator, they were not the ones originally to design the calculator and input the "beliefs" or answers that come from using the calculator. This piece of technology did not originally derive from the mind of the person, so it could not be considered part of their mind in the future, either. However, on this train of thought, it could be argued that using one's fingers since it is part of their own body and not borrowing beliefs that someone else recorded (in the form of programming the calculator), that the fingers are part of the extended mind, in this case Embodied and not strictly extended.
The idea of outside sources such as books and the internet were suggested to be able to be part of the mind based on this extended mind theory (briefly by Clark and Chalmers and also by several other people in the discussion), but this importance of belief also signals a difference here. Unless someone originally wrote the outside source, the information that is presently being used cannot be considered part of their mind, because the belief in such did not originate from their mind.
I liked this article - I found it very interesting. I did have a question in regards to one part of it, however. The authors write, “In the distant future we may be able to plug various modules into our brain to help us out: a module for extra short-term memory when we need it, for example. When a module is plugged in, the processes involving it are just as cognitive as if they had been there all along.”
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting idea… but it seems a bit far-fetched. How would this be possible? Wouldn’t this require solving the “hard” problem of cognitive science? In other words, wouldn’t we need to be able to explain how/why feeling occurs? It feels like something to retrieve a memory… so how could we just insert a module into the brain to give us extra short-term memory without solving the hard problem first?
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is already used to treat neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's. In these cases, a stimulating electrode is implanted in the brain and sends out electrical pulses which significantly reduce patients' tremors.
DeleteBrain computer interfaces (BCI) are also a fairly recent technology, and have so far allowed paraplegics or amputees, for example, to control robotic limbs, and in some cases full body suits by recording neural activity and translating it into movement commands. I'm fairly certain that within the next decade we'll see the first voluntary amputee replace her biological arm with a sensing, moving, high-powered robotic one.
None of this technology requires us to have solved the hard problem, because it all has to do with performance capacity: doing. On the other hand, none of these are modules like the ones Clark and Chalmers describe: they have clinical use bringing people with disabilities back to baseline, rather than extending the abilities of healthy people beyond baseline. But you can see the analogy. By furthering what we've already come up with, I think we'll eventually get to the point of cognitive modules for mental rotation (but also for far more interesting things).
Google (I think) is already working on a contact lens version of the Google Glass, which can be used to display information onto your retina, so not all these sorts of extensions need to be internal. Transcranial direct current stimulation (placing stimulating electrodes on the scalp to increase the excitability of neurons beneath them) has also been shown to increase performance on a variety of tasks.
But, presumably, an internal brain implant would require extensive knowledge of the neural circuitry involved in generating cognitive capacity, enough so as to engineer a device that can enhance or extend it. Again, none of this requires an answer to the hard problem, because all we want to do here is to enhance performance capacity. The "implantee" can tell us directly if it feels like anything.
Michael, you bring up such interesting examples to this topic on the external mind. Deep Brain Stimulation resembles Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) which is used to treat depression and to regulate mood usually in the prefrontal cortex. Magnetic fields are used to stimulate nerve cells in the brain, inducing brief pulses of neural activity from an external source. One could argue that there is a point in which the outside source connects with the internal hardware we know as neurons.
DeleteIt really begs the question that the article starts with: where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? I believe this even hits closer to feeling since how we feel is closely linked to what mood we are in. The internal states that drive our so called feelings seem to be vacant for manipulation though such technologies, and it will be interesting to see what other technologies we can come up with.
As for the contact lens, I believe it is Sony that has a patent for one that records, plays, and stores video. This new technology has the potential to record our daily experiences from the blink of an eye. I like the point you mention in which such an implant would have to be connected to neural circuitry involved in generating cognitive capacity. With such a contact lens, it could serve as some sort of hard drive that links with one’s memory. This enhancement or extension of human capabilities has the potential to affect how we feel, bringing us closer to answering the easy problem. However, the hard problem is still in question, since it would be rather complicated to figure out how and why we feel instead of how and why we do what we do.
I liked the argument the authors put forth about Otto’s notebook. They mentioned that some may argue that Otto’s notebook would not be as reliable as Inga’s mental information. The authors then went on to explain how this is a flawed assumption - “A surgeon might tamper with [Inga’s] brain, or more mundanely, she might have too much to drink. The mere possibility of such tampering is not enough to deny her the belief.”
ReplyDeleteI liked this example the authors gave. Another interesting point that wasn’t mentioned, though, is the concept of false memories. It has been long-established that humans have false memories - it’s not a question if, it’s a question of how much. So, in this case, it might even be true that Otto’s notebook would be more reliable than Inga’s mental memory because presumably he would be writing down information as it were occurring (thus, less susceptible to false memories). I think this is an interesting idea to ponder.
I think while the Otto's book example is interesting, it doesn't to do much to answer cognition or why and how we feel. If memories can be likened to a book then it seems like memories aren't feelings either until we are feeling them. Until Inga recalls the location of the arts museum, she doesn't feel the memory of its location. The false memory addition is interesting but again in terms of the mechanism of feeling, I think it actually provides evidence against the memory bank being a part of feeling. Memories can be false while feelings can't be, just like feelings can't be unfelt. Like Descartes says the only thing you can be sure of is the fact that you are feeling something if you are feeling at this very moment. I think this provides more support for the idea that memory and cognitive tools are functional whereas feeling is something else entirely.
DeleteWhile the evidence in memory research shows that our memories are largely false, I'm not sure that I would consider Otto's notebook to be more reliable than Inga's memory. When Otto refers back to his notes, they are not just cues for retrieval, but are the actual information itself which means he has to reinterpret what he previously wrote and rebuild the idea from scratch. I think the process of reinterpretation could include as much room for human error as false memories do.
DeleteRe: “Even if one were to make the portability criterion pivotal, active externalism would not be undermined. Counting on our fingers has already been let in the door, for example, and it is easy to push things further. Think of the old image of the engineer with a slide rule hanging from his belt wherever he goes. What if people always carried a pocket calculator, or had them implanted?”
ReplyDeleteClark and Chalmers suggest the possibility of having ‘modules’ plugged into the brain to subserve cognitive processes and compare these to counting on our fingers or having implanted calculators. It is true that in modern society, people depend on external resources to aid cognitive processes (i.e. using a cell phone to store numbers instead of memorizing them, using google to search for answers) but I cannot buy this completely. I do understand that we have off-loaded some processes onto the environment in order to become more advanced as a species, but there must be some sort of limit to which we can depend on external modules. There must be an extent to which we still have to ‘train our brains’ in order to maintain some form of cognitive function that is autonomous. While something like language may have evolved as a potential ‘extension of our cognitive resources,’ not every module is necessarily as important to be intrinsic to humans. I consider language and external symbols to be somewhat a natural extension of the mind while a module that increases memory capacity is not. It may seem extreme, but these types of future advances could potentially cause our species to regress in which case we could lose our basic knack for communication and other social processes.
This seems intuitive to me to. Although I can’t think of a way to prove or think much into a scenario where our brain functions autonomously from the environment (no offloading). Maybe this is where the extended mind hypothesis gains a large part of it’s strength?
DeleteAnnabel, I think that your comment about how there must be a limit to which we can depend on external modules is a little flawed. I do not think that Clark and Chalmers argue for extra “modules” (like the example of “plugging in” extra short-term memory) as a way to replace parts of our cognitive function, but merely to enhance them. The argument is that we find ourselves limited, somewhat like computers, by our hardware. For example, we have the capacity to process more things at a time, but we are limited by the classic seven slots available to us in our short-term memory. The argument for extraneous modules is to extend the capacities of this hardware, with the most common example being memory.
Delete"The alternative is to explain Otto's action in terms of his occurrent desire to go to the museum, his standing belief that the Museum is on the location written in the notebook, and the accessible fact that the notebook says the Museum is on 53rd Street; but this complicates the explanation unnecessarily. If we must resort to explaining Otto's action this way, then we must also do so for the countless other actions in which his notebook is involved; in each of the explanations, there will be an extra term involving the notebook. We submit that to explain things this way is to take one step too many."
ReplyDeleteI like the thesis of this paper in general, but I'm not sure I follow it all the way through. The idea of coupled systems and cognitive offloading is powerful, but the point quoted above in particular seems like a weak justification for the mind itself being extended.
The reason explaining Otto's actions takes an extra step is because his access to his "beliefs" actually does take an extra step. Inga can think up the location of the museum at will, whereas Otto has to pull out his notebook from wherever he keeps it, flip through the pages until he finds the right one, and read it off. The extra step in the explanation reflects the extra step in the process. The explanation is more cumbersome because the process is more cumbersome too.
Perhaps I'm falling prey here to a sort of homunculus fallacy, where I'm ignoring all the complexities of the mental operations involved in Inga's memory retrieval, but my point does still seem to apply, both visually to an external observer and phenomenologically to Otto himself.
I think you're correct here. The feeling that you might be assuming a homunculus is warranted because there is a very real boundary between us and the world. We are autonomous agents with non-arbitrary boundaries between our embodied heads, where cognition and feeling occur, and the world in which we and society have offloaded a huge amount of information. Your point about the extra step helps drive that home I think.
DeleteNow when it comes to defining what the autonomous system is, as far as I can tell cognitive science has either assumed that we know or not considered it to be an issue of any import. Professor Harnad has brought it up but doesn't seem to think it's a big deal. I think this might be a mistake, because it doesn't seem like the answer is obvious at all!
DeleteI think we have an intuitive (dare I say pre-ontological?) grasp of what an autonomous system is, but perhaps that conception falls short. Simply, it seems like it's whatever is inside my skin is part of my system. My clothes, though they move with me, are not a part of me, and my cell phone definitely is not.
DeleteI have no problem saying I offload my cognitive capacities onto my phone. It stores plenty of information related to my schedule, my contacts, acts as a proxy for communication, and grants me access to virtually all accumulated human knowledge. It comes with me just about everywhere I go (but not in the shower). When I need to do math, I use it as a calculator. When I need to remember something, I write it down for later access. Then, when I forget it, I don't function quite the same as before.
I'm fine with admitting that my cell phone is an extremely powerful tool that significantly lightens my cognitive load, but I don't see what we gain by positing that it's really a part of my mind. I suppose we can create a new term "extended mind" but it's really not the same.
Otto has Alzheimer's. Of course he can't remember things! If his notebook were part of his mind, then he wouldn't have Alzheimer's.
It gets trickier though with neural implants, and that's where I see this thesis gaining more traction. If I'm able to use my implant as I would any other part of my brain (that is, by asking the little man in my head to do something for me) then I'd say it's more a part of me. Until then, I see the point as more of a metaphor, like my saying that my glasses are a part of my eyes.
In response to Michael, with Otto's Alzheimer's, I think the self-evident contradiction you've tried to point out is in your use of "Alzheimer's" in two ways: a chronic functionally defined memory disorder and then a medically defined biologically circumscribed memory disorder. Simply, Otto has a neurological condition that results in a memory disorder. With his notebook, he still has a neurological condition but does not have a functionally defined memory disorder.
DeleteAlso, if introspection as we have seen in the course provides no insight into the processes through which we cognize, how can we rule out extended cognition? Do we really ask the little man in my head to do something for me when I cognize and is that different from when I use the implant in my extended cognizing?
Well the glasses may not be a part of my eyes, I would argue that they would make up the visually active "seeing" system at work. The glasses are lenses that are functionally analogous to the cornea and they function in the same way, for the same purpose and I see no relevant distinction other than the synthetic versus biological make-up. You can't see without them, and you can see with them. Similarly, the neural implant would not be part of the brain, it would be part of the physical system that causes the mind. They essentially become a component of the functional system. It seems like a brain chauvinism to deny it and contradicts the idea that we would be able to construct a T3 passing AI without first passing T5.
I'm not sure we can definitely rule out extended cognition. We just can't be sure it's taking place at all.
DeleteYour explanation of why glasses are actually part of the (distributed) visual system is just as compatible with my saying that my glasses are simply an (external) tool that modifies the input to my (internal) visual system, such that I can see clearly. Are my glasses doing any of the "seeing"? I most certainly can see without them, just not nearly as well.
I can also try to lift a 1000 pound boulder by myself, but I won't be successful. On the other hand, I can get a crane and some rope and lift it with ease. Is the crane "part of" my motor system, or is it a "tool for" it? How can we tell? What's the difference? What's even at stake? Am I a "body chauvinist" for suggesting that the crane is not a part of me, even if I work as a full-time crane operator?
You'll have to explain the contradiction I've introduced with TT-robots because I don't see it. A T3 can still be cognizing and operating a crane without the crane being a part of it.
I'll grant that the situation seems different when neural implants are involved, and maybe that's where my argument falls apart. But to me, the difference would have to be a seamless integration with the rest of my cognition, such that, phenomenologically, using the implant feels the same as using any other part of my brain. Referring to a notebook just isn't like that. Whatever the mechanism involved, and no matter how little introspection can tell us about it, I think the feeling matters.
RE: Otto’s notebook and Ingra’s memory, “In both cases the information is reliably there when needed, available to consciousness and available to guide action, in just the way we expect a belief to be.”
ReplyDeleteIn this article, Clark and Chalmers argue that the ‘mind’ extends beyond the brain. For the authors, there exists a constant feedback loop between the brain and the environment, such that the world beyond the brain is a necessary and dynamic component of the mind. The authors support this claim with the example of Otto’s notebook.
This example quite convincing when thought of in terms of the analogous CRA systems reply. Instead of Searle who writes algorithms on the wall, we have Otto who must rely on his notebook to “understand”. Unlike Searle who can memorize the algorithms on the wall, Otto is not as fortunate. Since Otto cannot memorize the algorithms on the wall, he is only a part of the system. Therefore, understanding/ mind can only be achieved by the entire system: Otto+ notebook = a system (the “extended” mind).
Hi Manda, I found the connection you draw between the CRA system reply and Otto's notebook very interesting. I do agree that in the Otto's case “understanding/ mind can only be achieved by the entire system” but I think this would make the extended mind argument vulnerable to an issue brought up in CRA system reply. If Otto's brain is only a component in the system that executes cognitive processes, we cannot ascribe cognition to Otto's brain and that would compromise the integrity of our initial assumption that cognition and mental states arise from the brain. We can also take this one step further and argue that the Otto’s mind is only a part of the overall mind of the system where cognition happens. Therefore, investigating Otto's mind and mental states would be an incomplete approach to studying cognitive science but our intuitions about cognitive science and mental states show that this is not the case.
DeleteHi Dorsai,
DeleteThank you for your comment.
RE: "If Otto's brain is only a component in the system that executes cognitive processes, we cannot ascribe cognition to Otto's brain and that would compromise the integrity of our initial assumption that cognition and mental states arise from the brain."
Otto would be a part of a system that generates "cognitive capacity". Although Otto may still be fully executing cognitive processes, he would need to rely on the help of his notebook/rule book/ algorithms)
That being said, this claim does not state that cognition is to be found in one place over another. Rather, it argues that it is distributed. Therefore, I do not think that this would negate the fact that the brain generates the mind.
Hey Manda,
DeleteI also thought of the System’s Reply when reading this article, and I agree that it would not negate the claim that the brain generates cognition, but rather supports the argument that cognition is “extended” (not one or the other) to the features of the environment to form a “coupled system”. The authors say, “the flow of information between notebook and brain is not perceptual at all; it does not involve the impact of something outside the system”. Here, Chalmers and Clark suggest that the notebook is not outside the “system”, but intrinsic to it. The “coupled system” is the “bigger system” that actually achieves “understanding”.
To add, Searle countered the System’s Reply by embodying the entire system to prove that, even having memorized all the rules, he still did not understand Chinese. I think an essential difference between Searle’s CRA and the “coupled system” (Otto + Notebook) is that the symbols in the former case are not grounded, whereas the notes in the journal are. Searle doesn’t understand Chinese even after “embodying the system”, since the memorized symbols lack a referent and thus, do not generate the “feeling” of understanding. Otto’s notebook contains notes written by Otto, consisting of information that came from his own mind, in his own language and thus, reading them generates “understanding”. Contrary to Searle’s case, the System’s Reply actually is valid in the case of Otto and his notebook because the “coupled system” of which they constitute, does understand.
2) RE: Issues with Otto’s notebook
ReplyDeleteThe problem with the example of Otto’s notebook is that the authors’ argument relies heavily on the fact that we are not aware of how it is that we "retrieve information" (or do what we do--a.k.a. cognitive capacity).
Therefore, although the authors argue that both methods of information retrieval are the same: To learn about the museum, Otto picks up a paper with writing on it, just as Ingra somehow “retrieves” the information that is stored somewhere in her memory.
These explanations are unconvincing because of their homuncularity. They do not explain cognitive doing, but instead, they equate the outcome of cognitive capacity. In both cases, this common outcome is generated by Otto and Ingra, alone. Therefore, they are the cognizers in and of themselves. In Otto’s case, his notebook serves as input to augment his cognitive capacity, but he is still the entire system.
I'm not sure if I agree with you Manda. I think that you're right that they do not explain cognitive doing, but I don't necessarily think that that is what the authors are aiming to do. I think they would probably agree that Otto and Ingra actions can be considered "week equivalence," meaning that they have the same input and output but are not done in the same way.
DeleteI do think however that they would argue that Otto and his notebook together can be looked at as one system, because as they point out, how do you determine the line between what could constitute an internal versus an external cognitive capacity. For example, if we could insert a ram drive into your brain to enhance your memory storing capacities, would you consider that part of the system?
Hello Lucy and Manda, it is interesting to clarify what Clark and Chalmers are trying to convey with this article: yes, like Lucy said, I don't think they are aiming to answer cognitive doing and the easy question with this paper. They seem to looking at the parameters of cognition - by proposing the embodiment of the environment as also a core part of cognitive processing, which in terms, they also claim to extend the mind and self. And, like Manda also said, it is like a system (with the example of Otto and his notebook) with weak equivalence between Otto and Ingra's behavioural output.
DeleteBut I think, through class discussion and the following reading, most of the class is quite convinced that Clark and Chalmer's claims about extended mind is puzzling and doubtful. We know that it feels like something to be in this mental state, such that an extended mind should also be in such state. So fundamentally, the notebook is merely just a physical, bodily extension, and not of the mind.
I have some questions regarding the examples of Otto and Twin Otto. Taking notes down is just like writing down a memo, this process of actively interacting with the environment does not necessarily mean that the belief is not simply in the head. Rather, this process could act as a way to save willpower resources because having everything remembered in the head is too tiring when you run out of willpower e.g. late in the afternoon. So is it possible that they still hold the belief, while just unaware of it because the “note-taking process” has somewhat made them feel so safe that they don’t have to use their willpower on remember these routes right now. There’s possibly an association between the belief and the notebook, but it’s an association linking the notebook with the belief that “since I have taken down the address on the notebook so I will just check the notebook when I want to go to the Museum of Modern art“.
ReplyDeleteI found the arguments of active externalism particularly interesting, because surely there is an active role of the environment driving our cognitive processes. I wonder if this can be applied to explain the phenomenon that sometimes we need a notebook or a computer to “think”. For example, it feels like ideas will automatically flow to us when we write down our though processes. As such, does it mean the the external interactions with the environment indeed aids our cognitive processes and it works better than we use our brain alone?
ReplyDeleteThe phenomenon you bring up is more related (I believe) to the fact that writing things down takes a load off the brain, freeing up processing power that would otherwise be tangled up in trying to compute things while remembering whatever it is that you would’ve otherwise written down. I think the reason why ideas automatically flow a little easier when one writes things down is due to this increases processing power – to use a computer analogy, we’ve cleared up some RAM.
DeleteOr is it possible that it’s actually part of a classical conditioning mechanism, in which we have paired up “thinking” with “writing” through our experience? And that’s why for some people, writing is also a means to aid memory.
DeleteRE: "So the mere fact that external processes are external where consciousness is internal is no reason to deny that those processes are cognitive."
ReplyDeleteThe authors have some interesting ideas about the reassignment of cognitive processes to external devices. I am not wholly convinced, namely because the way in which they provide examples seem to be overly simplified. The equating of memory call and notebook retrieval issues aside, the use of "availability" seems like a flimsy argument. Perhaps I am not understanding the significance of the question of externalism and active environment in the first place, but it seems like a non-starter debate. I can see the merits of choosing this third viewpoint over pure externalism, but it still seems like word play to me. Can the mind be restricted to the body but cognitive capacity extended to the environment?
We outsource many cognitive processes onto external objects, yes, but it doesn't call for the necessity of an externalist view.
I really enjoyed this piece. I think it’s really powerful to think of external cognitive processes as extenuations of ourselves. I wonder if cognition can also be considered to encompass other people. For example, if the Alzheimer’s patient described by the authors used his wife to constantly remind him, instead of his notebook, can that still be considered part of his external processes? I think you could argue that it could. Without getting too anthropological, this then brings us into territories of not just how we demarcate cognition, but how we define selves.
ReplyDeleteHi Lucy, I really like where your thought process is going on this. I would also argue that if Otto relied on his wife to constantly remind him of things (in place of a notebook) that this could be considered an external process or an extension of his mind as well. I think you're right that this somewhat introduces us to the topic of how we define the self. In a sense, when you share your thoughts with others, you are letting them into the constructs of your mind. Sharing your beliefs with other gives them access to the workings of your own internal world. This kind of relates back to the idea of heterophenomenology, that we learnt about in week 10's readings.
DeleteAfter reading the example with Otto’s notebook, I started to wonder whether we can move all our internal capabilities to an external source (like how Otto moved his memory to a notebook). We can move our math capabilities to a calculator or some other external software. Once we do that with all our capabilities, wouldn’t we only need a rule book to tell us when to use which device? Then before doing anything, we simple consult this rule book which will point us to the right devices (and the order) to use for a given scenario. Is there any aspect that we must have “internally”? If we do, what is this “internal aspect”? If we don’t, wouldn’t that mean that we can build machines that can do exactly what we do?
ReplyDeleteRegarding Clark and Chalmer's discussion of "portability" of cognitive processes as an argument for the location of cognition within the brain: this sounds a lot like implementation independence, namely how the products are replicable regardless of the local environment. My question is how does this relate to the notion of coupling? The "coupling" between an external environmental signal and internal cognitive processes is presented earlier on in the passage but I have difficulty seeing how it relates to this specific counterargument and the idea of "true" cognitive processes and a " constant core".
ReplyDeleteThere is something about this article that I do not fully grasp. Why is it that they considered from beginning to end that cognitive processes were the actions that the protagonist was performing in each of the situation they presented? For example the Otto notebook was not a tool to cognition in their example, it was an intrinsic part of cognition itself. Intuitively I would have thought that the notebook was a tool, and that the cognitive process associated to it was not "data storage" but the retrieval, reading, comprehension and manipulation of the data. In this example, Otto and Otto's twin have the same brain, they retrieve information in the booklet the same way, they can read, understand and make sense of the information in order to use it. They have different booklets which leads to different actions, but in my perspective the booklet and the actions are outside of the scope of their cognition, isn't it? If the booklet was specifically performant (the same way the bionic implant of the first example is more performant than the "normal" way to rotate the shape) then it is just an extraneous enhancement, but it does not truly make the cognitive capacity higher, wouldn't it prove that it is not part of the mind? The bottom line is that the cognitive process is still existent without the booklet, or without the bionic rotation device, it just cannot be used, or not as well, so why are these external enhancements relevant to the internal side of the mind?
ReplyDelete"The Extended Mind" posits that not all cognition is conscious. Does this mean Clark and Chalmers were trying to hint that the non-conscious part of cognition is computation?
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, consider the example in the reading that discussed Inga, who remembered that the museum is on 53rd Street, and Otto, who has Alzheimer's, uses a notebook to remember that the museum is on 53rd Street. They can both carry out the same function even though they use different mechanisms. Clark and Chalmers help us simplify the easy problem by showing us that some cognitive processes do not need to be internal.
Tying with Fodor, I think this article may be the most “just so” tale we’ve dealt with. The article is filled with self-fulfilling premises. Rather than pull apart different points made in the article and critique them or refute the theory of extended mind at whole, I think it might be useful to assume the “what thens” if the extended mind hypothesis is valid. Perhaps as a way to feel with other animals and sympathise with them? But I’m not sure we need to assume our mind as extended into theirs for this to occur. I’m even less sure if this theory is as serious as I’m afraid it might be.
ReplyDeleteIt is pointlessly complex, in the same way that it would be pointlessly complex to explain Inga's actions in terms of beliefs about her memory. The notebook is a constant for Otto, in the same way that memory is a constant for Inga; to point to it in every belief/desire explanation would be redundant. In an explanation, simplicity is power.
ReplyDeleteI followed the logical path to explain why cognition could then be extended out of it classical “brain boundaries” in this case. However, I cannot help but wonder where is the new boundary now to this cognition? How extensible is it? Simply observing today’s society, we would have to infer that our Iphones are an extension of our minds too, being constantly in our hands and aiding in every single task. Would it extent to our laptops too? I feel like once we’ve jumped the fence of brain limitation, there is no where to put a new boundary.
The idea of extended cognition has always appealed to me and I can support a good number of Clark and Chalmers' arguments.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I did find their argument using Otto and Inga to be somewhat confusing and unsatisfying. Clark and Chalmers argue that Otto has beliefs about the location of the Museum even before he checks his notebook. It seems as if they could be two things in this case. In one case, they mean that the beliefs linger in his physical brain. Alternatively, they meant that because these beliefs exist in his notebook and his notebook constitutes a part of his active, extended consciousness, these beliefs exist in his mind. They state that "in both cases, the information is reliably there when needed, available to the consciousness and available to guide action, in just the way we expect a belief to be".
However, memories and beliefs are known in psychology to influence decisions and beliefs. In the case where Inga's beliefs are in her mind, conscious initially and then sinking to an unconscious level, there are still situations in which those beliefs might influence her behaviours. In Otto's case, it seems to depend on whether or not his beliefs are lingering in his brain as or whether he is keeping those beliefs in his notebook. The former might still allow for the beliefs to affect cognition unconsciously. The latter, however, shouldn't affect his cognition because the knowedge is not accessible to his physical brain and isn't being explicitly accessed.
If it is the latter, there is a distinct different between Otto and Inga. In this instance, the only belief that Otto has in his physical brain is that the information is in the notebook. While the case in question - the direct input//output of the question and the answer of the museums location - might be the same, Inga's memory seems more likely to influence other cognitions she might have, while Otto, when he's not checking his notebook, won't have those influences. They are similar but I don't believe they can be considered on par.
I'm not by any means opposed to the notion of Active Externalism or external events that play into cognitive processes but I don't believe that those external features - like Otto's notebook - are of the same 'stuff' as bounded cognitive processes
I wanted to reply separately (and somewhat facetiously) to their final suggestion that Active Externalism might contribute to a weakening or broadening of the definition of the self.
DeleteI'm genuinely a little horrified by this! It feels incredibly unsettling to suggest that objects and habits (like checking the notebook) are a part of one's integral self, rather than a habit or a tool. I'm perfectly content to consider myself a bundle of occurent states if it means that I don't have claim my cellphone is a literal part of my self! A very grim and unsettling note to end a paper on!
Hi Ruby, I too find it a bit unsettling to consider my iPhone part of my self! However, I think that Chalmers has a point here, and I don't see the same problem between Otto and Inga that it seems like you do. It is true that they have different techniques of remembering and guiding themselves, but where consciousness (feeling, as we have said in class) is concerned they differ only in technique.
DeleteWhen we break it down to feeling, as long as we acknowledge that Otto can look at his notebook and retain his short-term memory of where he is going, there is no significant difference (in Chalmers’ view, which I agree with here). If Inga gets lost, or blanks for a minute, she puts effort into drawing forth the knowledge of where she is going – for Otto, the same thing can happen the same way, he just checks his book instead. As for mediating his feelings and beliefs, he has the same freedom that she does. He can think about things, putting them in his book to remember them – making decisions about his future based on things he knows. What separates an ‘unconscious belief’ (which must be accessed wilfully) from a belief stored in a little book? If he put it there, I think it is his, and otherwise I believe you deny Otto a form of self-hood which you grant to Inga.
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ReplyDeleteRE: "Some find this sort of externalism unpalatable. One reason may be that many identify the cognitive with the conscious, and it seems far from plausible that consciousness extends outside the head in these cases. But not every cognitive process, at least on standard usage, is a conscious process. It is widely accepted that all sorts of processes beyond the borders of consciousness play a crucial role in cognitive processing: in the retrieval of memories, linguistic processes, and skill acquisition, for example. So the mere fact that external processes are external where consciousness is internal is no reason to deny that those processes are cognitive."
ReplyDeleteThe authors make an interesting distinction made here between consciousness and cognition. As we have seen, consciousness is feeling (and internal) and perhaps not all of cognition involves feeling. If we were to think back to our 3rd grade teacher and remember her name, would this be external cognition and therefore not conscious? Doesn’t it feel like something to remember her name?
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ReplyDeleteChalmers spends most of the paper discussing the boundary between internal and external inputs to cognition, claiming that the internal inputs are no more central to cognition than the external inputs. To me, this difference is interesting in a philosophical sense, but besides the point of cognitive science.
ReplyDeleteI think it is more useful to think of internal vs external inputs in terms of data. Some data are stored in the brain. Some data are out there in the world. Both external data and stored data influence our cognitions. Data that is stored in the brain is more likely to influence subsequent cognitions. The more the environment prompts us to call upon certain stored data, the more accessible it is, the higher bandwidth this connection attains, the more pertinent this data is to our cognitions.
To cognitive scientists trying to solve the easy problem, I think it is obvious that sensory/ environmental data influence our cognition. However, I think it makes more sense to conceptualize the core of cognition as the processes BETWEEN the inputs (data) and the output (internal/ mental states). The data itself is not the crux of how we do what we do, the mechanism by which we do it, is.
I’m trying to piece together what that mechanism might be based on what we have learned in this course, so I’ll pose a question. Theoretically, why would a human make a bad decision?
1. Bad data (sampling biases/ not sampling the right data)
2. Pathophysiology (faulty hardware, eg: physiological deficiency of the mesolimbic system)
3. Faulty structuring of the data
#3. This would involve faulty categorization of the data, or put another way, faulty algorithms governing the solution landscape. This would result in the erroneous weighting of certain connections over others, leading to poor predictions, and then poor decisions.
Based on “To Cognize, to Categorize,” and other readings, reasonably, the core of cognition is not the data, but the algorithms governing the solution landscape. Of course the data is important as it gives the organism the landscape by which to cultivate solutions, but it is not the crux of cognition. The distinction between internal and external data is irrelevant, or at least secondary to the grand scheme of cognitive science, how we do what we do. Whether the data is new, (from present-moment sensory data) or if it is brain-stored data, we are cognizing just the same, and we don't know HOW this happens. To put it to an analogy, I think the distinction between Jane and Otto is besides the point of cognitive science. I agree both Jane and Otto are cognizing equally, Jane is using more cognitive resources, but they are both cognizing in so far as we have defined the term.
I agree with Chalmers in that I think external data is important for cognition; the brain could not cognize if it wasn’t socialized and didn’t interact with an environment in a sensorimotor capacity. However, the fact that we can offload data doesn’t convince me that it is useful to conceptualize cognition as something broader than how we do what we do (emphasis on the how).
Clark and Chalmers argues that cognition goes beyond the normal skin and skull, and that if a “belief can be constituted partly by features of the environment, when those features play the right sort of role in driving cognitive process. If so, the mind extends into the world.” It was a very interesting paper to read and kind of curious to entertain the thought that in our modern world, it would be like our phones and laptops as extensions of our minds as well.
ReplyDeleteIn reading the paper, I found myself more doubtful as I went along. The first part of talking about external and its influence on the brain were mostly convincing. Such as, when they said discuss about the example where the brain “develops in a way that complements the external structures, and learns to play its role within a unified, densely coupled system.” Yes, it’s true that we all know the importance in the influence of the environment on our thinking and extending cognitive capacity, but I don’t seem to agree when Clark and Chalmers started to sway that it is part of the mind and the core of cognitive processing – it didn't seem convincing and too much of an assumptive jump to include externals as also the mind.
I was also a little bit confused when they said that, “not every cognitive process, at least on standard usage, is a conscious process.” It seems to my understanding, that cognitive process, which we know as including knowledge, intelligence, understanding, and thinking – all processes with awareness, is always a conscious process. Or perhaps, Clark and Chalmers meant something else when suggesting this?
I am not sure I agree with Chalmers’ argument about cognition being in the head, or out of the head. Adding a device that is not endogenous to the human body into the brain does not mean that it is part of the person’s brain. All it means is that it is within the skull. I think a more interesting thought experiment would be altering someone’s genes so that they produce channel rhodopsin on synaptic channels in a particular brain region. They can then press a button, which turns on a light and activates that brain region. The light would be ‘external’ to the mind but the brain region being active would not. I think this may be a better example than the Otto case. If the particular brain region stores where the museum is, then the belief would have been in the brain all along, but how the belief is retrieved, instead of a notebook, is with a blue light.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, the epistemic credit argument is not convincing to me. Using physical scrabble tiles to make a word is cognitively different than using only your mind and certain letters to find possible words. I think it is a bit of a leap to say that scrabble tiles can be considered part of a cognitive process. To put it another way, it feels different to move tiles around then do it in your head. I think they may be the referent, or the ‘grounded’ symbol. However, I am not sure you can say that the tiles themselves are part of the cognitive process. Similarly, I think maybe the mark may have been missed in Chalmers discussion of language. Yes, words could be used to help formulate more elaborate thoughts with less strain on memory, but I do not think that it demonstrates the external world being part of cognition. Instead I think the argument: language symbols being grounded in the world, is the strongest. Formulating any thought or utterance will somehow rely on how the word is grounded.
I do think that Chalmer’s view and my point brings up a very interesting idea, namely, if we were to say that there are two systems that are external and internal, which work together, then couldn’t symbol grounding be the external part and computation the internal part?
I would disagree with several of the examples and comparisons that Clark and Chalmers used in their paper. I think they make the mistake of equating external tools with portions or processes of the brain, and talking about concepts that have not been clearly defined.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, Clark and Chalmers made the point that removing cognitive technology affects a person’s behavioural competence, the same way that removing part of the brain does. I don’t think this is completely true, due to the fact that cognitive technologies are generally developed to enhance a certain brain process (for instance speeding it up), or provide information (like in the case of Otto, who recorded everything in a notebook). Thus, removing these technologies would affect these components, whereas removing brain components would disrupt the process itself. For example, if someone used a calculator to solve math problems, taking the calculator away would only make the person slower at solving the problems. On the other hand, removing a part of someone’s inferior parietal cortex might prevent them from understanding how to compute the answer at all. Similarly, taking Otto’s book away would be like forgetting— it would not disrupt the memory process (or in his case, the ability to gather information from books), it would simply take away the information that was once available.
Secondly, I did not agree with their use of the memory example, in which Inga remembers what street an art museum is on, and Otto (who has Alzheimer’s disease) checks his notebook to see what street it is on. These authors argue that in both of these cases, the person already “believed” that the museum was on 53rd street, before they consciously knew it, through the use of either memory or the notebook. I don’t agree with the way they think about “beliefs” or “memory.” Clark and Chalmers argue that a “belief” can be present even when it is not occurring consciously. I would argue that, in order to be called a “belief,” something has to be experienced, or felt, at that moment in time. Of course, this is not always how the word is used in everyday speech— we would say that Inga believed the museum was on that street, however this only makes sense to say because she remembered where it was, implying that this was a belief she held in the past. Similarly, we think of people having “beliefs” for long periods of time, possibly throughout their whole lives. However, I believe what this really means is that a person held that specific belief at many moments in time, making it appear consistent and continuous.
These authors also talk about memory as if it were a process separate from cognition, by which information simply appears in the brain. As they mentioned, “to provide substantial resistance, an opponent has to show that Otto’s and Inga’s cases differ in some important and relevant respect [… not] solely on the grounds that information is in the head in one case but not in the other.” The main difference is not in the location but the retrieval process itself. It is not the same for a person to remember something as it is for them to look it up in a notebook, because memory is a cognitive function allowing for the retrieval of information, while reading a notebook is simply a passive learning process. Inga could not have remembered the information had it not been for a prior belief, but Otto’s situation would have been the same whether he had written the information down himself, found it on the ground or been given it (even if it was by someone who held a different belief about the address and was trying to lie to him). In these situations, would it still make sense to argue that Otto had held this “belief” all along?
“We see that extended cognition is a core cognitive process, not an add-on extra. An analogy may be helpful. The extraordinary efficiency of the fish as a swimming device is partly due, it now seems, to an evolved capacity to couple its swimming behaviours to the pools of external kinetic energy…The fish and the surrounding vortices together constitute a unified and remarkably efficient swimming machine”
ReplyDeleteUsing this example, the authors attempt to further their claim that humans + environment = cognitive machine, and that using the environment is a core part of our cognitive capabilities. I want to disagree; I feel that the core cognitive processes that occur within us give us the ability to use external resources as an add-on. They state that in doing maths by counting on my fingers, they become an extension of my mind and cognition – I argue that my fingers merely supplement the processes occurring in my mind and help. But they are not an extension of my mind. Otherwise, what would the difference between my mind, my hands, and an abacus be?
I admit that while this paper presents an interesting point/thought experiment, I don’t think it holds very much traction – my initial reaction to it was “Surely they don’t actually believe this”. Clark and Chalmers seem to be claiming that anything which comprises an ‘epistemic action’, perhaps things such as general tools and visual aids, are cognitive – an extension of the mind beyond the skin and the skull, a product of our cognitive manipulations on the world and therefore a part of us. Using this argument, I could conceivably waltz into a calculus exam with a graphing calculator and claim that really, it was a part of me and therefore I wasn’t cheating; I’m just using my ‘external mind’. The problem I felt with this article was at what point does something stop being cognitive? If I can perform this cognitive coupling with anything in the environment then the entire world could be an extension of my mind, including this class and the people within it. I also don’t understand how article this furthers our knowledge or capabilities in the field of cognitive science whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteAmar, I agree with your commentary fully. I think the authors fail to make the distinction between an extension of our sensorimotor capabilities and the extension of the feeling "mind". A hearing aid simply amplifies vibrations in the air. It does not feel this sound or perceive it in anyway. This process does not constitute some external mind. These epistemic actions are simply just extensions of sensorimotor capabilities.
DeleteAmar, I think you hit the nail on the head with what bothered me about this article. I think Clark and Chalmers supposed that any cognitive aid we use externally constitutes cognition because we use them to help us with our cognitive processes. The point about mental rotation particularly irked me because it just seems so homuncular – it rests entirely on the notion of a visual representation of a shape (like the Tetris shape) being manipulated in our heads the same way it is manipulated on screen. This doesn’t tell us anything about how it’s manipulated in our heads, it just puts the screen otherwise in front of us into our heads. Then who’s pressing the key to rotate the shape in the mental representation in our heads, a little man? Then who’s pressing the key to rotate the shape in his head?
DeleteThe article’s idea seemed very much like computationalism to me. It is basically saying that cognition is just information processing. However, a notebook or tiles on a Scrabble have no meaning on their own. We ascribe meaning to it. There would be no point in Scrabble without us. However, the reverse is not true. There would be a point in us without letters on tiles or notebooks. External cognition is something we created. It is not as nearly complicated as us. Our cognition has more to it than the simplicity this paper puts. Although we do depend on our environment and take information from it, I feel like it needs another word than extended cognition. Furthermore, many examples this article gives are artificial. They are things that we, as cognitive animals, have created. Thus, we also created some of the dependency in our environment, some of which our body adapted to. With the example of Otto and Inga, they both learned from their environment, but need their own cognition to go to the museum and search/process the information in their memory/notebook. The complexity, the amount of processing, and action taking capacity our brain can’t be compared to a notebook. Information processing may and probably is a part of it, but is definitely not the whole story. Thus, the concept that the authors are talking about should be referred to as something else.
ReplyDeleteThis paper doesn’t do a good job of convincing me that our cognitive processes extend beyond our minds. I do believe that external, environmental processes contribute a lot to our cognitive functions, but to go as far as to say that these external events are cognitive themselves is too much. I even believe that external events are necessary for our ability to cognize, such that we need to have sensorimotor interactions with the environment for cognition to occur in the extent that it does. However, while these external events are necessary and contribute to this ability of ours, they do not perform cognition themselves and are therefore not cognitive processes. The authors make the point that as memory retrieval and linguistic processes play a role in our cognition and aren’t conscious processes, then the fact external processes also aren’t conscious doesn’t mean they can’t be cognitive. However, I would say that memory retrieval and linguistic processes aid in our cognitive ability, but they aren’t actually cognitive. To build on that point, the fact that Otto uses a notebook to write information down doesn’t mean that this notebook is then a part of his cognition; rather, he uses it to help him cognize, it isn’t cognizing itself. Thus, this further builds on my point that external processes are involved in and contribute to our cognition, but they aren’t an extension of our cognition and they don’t perform cognitive operations. Merely, our interaction with these external entities plays a role in our cognitive processes
ReplyDeleteI see Clark and Chalmers extended mind argument as a spectrum of objects that are relatively more or less implicated in our cognition, rather than what they propose of external objects like calculators, the internet etc. as part of an extended “mind” (i.e. feeling). The closest object that could be part of our cognition is perhaps a piece of brain tissue that accurately replicates the structure and function of the brain. But in other examples they mention, such as the mental rotation task, the user may be able to perform a task, but it doesn’t feel as if the user was the one who performed it. And so there isn’t really an explanation that links the task to what it feels like to cognize.
ReplyDeleteAnother thought – If feeling is all that we can know, and if external objects feel like they are part of our cognition (such as VR), isn’t that enough to say that they are in a sense part of our felt cognition? But thinking through this further, I suppose they are as much a part of our felt cognition as other things in our environment, like grass or the sky. It does not feel as if the VR or calculator is doing the thinking for us, we still feel like the agents of the thinking. This is the point where I could not follow the argument of the authors. What makes the internet more different than other stimulus around us?
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ReplyDeleteWhat bothers me about this argument is the assumptions it appears to make on the causal cognitive processes of the brain. In the section about Otto and Inga's desire and subsequent retrieval of information about the location of a museum, Clark and Chalmers argue that the cases are "on par", and that they "mirror each other precisely" because they both have a desire to go to the museum and a belief that it is on 53rd street. I think that the casual process of how exactly Inga accesses the memory is important to the argument because we can causally trace through looking it up in the notebook how Otto believes that the museum is on 53rd street. As we do not know how someone accesses their memories (ie. Mrs.Poole problem), I don't think it's clear enough to describe these situations as the same. If how cognizers do what they do is important to cognition, then we don't know enough about memory retrieval to argue that an extension of memory is actually mental. It's tempting to think about our memory as a library or bank, but we don't know enough to assume that it is, thus we have to ask if it isn't, if using an alternative way of accessing memory can still be subsummed under human cognition.
ReplyDeleteRE: What this comes to is that Otto himself is best regarded as an extended system, a coupling of biological organism and external resources. To consistently resist this conclusion, we would have to shrink the self into a mere bundle of occurrent states, severely threatening its deep psychological continuity. Far better to take the broader view, and see agents themselves as spread into the world.
ReplyDeleteI would argue that the notebook is meaningless without Otto himself. Without Otto, the notebook would be a meaningless set of words scribbled onto the paper. The meaning manifests through something that happens in Otto’s mind when he reads the book. He is not really spread out anywhere, the book is just something that carries information. That information is still being felt by Otto in his own mind, not elsewhere. Yes my glasses are an extended system of how I perceive light, but they are not doing any cognizing, I am doing it in my mind the same way Otto reads the information on the book.
Hi Alex, I agree with you in that even though we may extend our cognitive process to include things in the external world, we are still the ones doing the cognizing, not an object such as a notebook. On its own, the object is not engaged in a cognitive process unless we interpret or use it as a cognitive tool for our own cognitive process. I think this is why the portable argument does not even matter, because the cognizer is always yourself, coupling with something in the external world only enhances your own cognitive process going on inside your head, which is never separated from you.
DeleteIf we look at the story of Otto and Inga, there are clear similarities between how memory is used in cognition versus how the notebook is used by cognition. Otto's notebook is described as an extension of his cognition, and extended part of himself, ‘[a] coupling of biological organism and external resources.’ We have memories that we can choose to believe or not, and we tamper with out own memories sometimes as well. If a person witnesses a crime foe example, the longer it takes for them before they talk to the authorities, the more it is distorted and modified. Your mind can manipulate your memories with ease and without you realising because of your beliefs. If we automatically endorse what we think, doesn’t that mean we don’t truly question things? When it comes down to it, what exactly are the tools for cognition versus cognition itself? How do we know what we’re supposed to be looking for?
ReplyDeleteIt seems that the authors are alluding to Baldwinian evolution in section 3 regarding the evolutionary device a fish uses to swim and how language evolved using external resources. I think that this is a really interesting point in extended cognition . It seems obvious that technology has extended the capacities of human cognition, from the telescope to Google. We are progressively off loading cognitive work to external tools, similar to how Baldwinian evolution off loaded specific cognitive states for language onto the ability to learn language. In the case of cognitive technologies, we are designing the tools onto which we off load, rather than by natural selection.
ReplyDeleteThe authors used thought experiments to argue for extended cognition. By extended cognition, they meant that cognition was not contained to just the brain and by removing that constraint it could change cognitive science. Using Inga and Otto, the authors aim to refute the belief that beliefs are instinctively thought to occur within the brain. To argue this point they used an example of Otto who had Alzehiemer’s and the book he relied on to remember things. To go to the art’s museum, Otto would have to look in his book, see the address, walk to the address and enjoy his afternoon in the museum. Compare this to you or I, who would recall the address from our memory or past experience of going there, believe that memory so we walk to the address and attend the event. As Otto lies on his book as heavily as we rely on memory, the author argues that Otto believes the address is at that location even before he has read it in his book. Thus, Otto must be considered an extended system consisting of himself (a biological organism) and his inorganic, external resources (his book). There seems to be a few issues here, how far would these extended systems go if this was the case? Would Otto’s cognitive system also include cellphone, daughter, nurse, clock, pictures on the wall, etc? Descartes said there were two things we can be sure of which include mathematical truths and the fact that I if I am feeling at this very moment then I am sure that there is feeling on.
ReplyDeleteIf feeling is going on can it be unfelt, most likely not. If we translate believing to feeling, then Otto would be said to feel the address before he had read the book containing the address. This doesn't make intuitive sense. Instead of extending the cognitive system, things like Otto's book (and our memory bank) can be thought of as extending our sensorimotor capacity such as storing information etc.
DeleteI am not sure I fully understand active externalism, but from what I do understand- I agree with. We are our environment, we internalize the external and externalize the internal. It is a beautiful circle with no beginning or end. We are brought into the world like this, right out of the womb, we internalize the sounds and light of the natural world and react with a cry. Every human has the same response because we all come equipped with the same sensory input machinery- more or less- every human experiences the same world and thus have the same mental states. I strongly believe that cognitive processes exist beyond the mind, because I strongly believe that mind IS the environment. We are active kitties interacting WITH the environment, not passively judging it.
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree with you. We do interact with the environment, learn from it, and depend on it. However, the environment still should not be considered as cognitive. It is not autonomous or mental. It does not have a consciousness and it does not feel. It is an extended body, not cognition. What do you mean by saying that the mind is the environment? I believe that to be an over statement. What in the environment feels exactly? It is not alive.
DeleteI liked that language was used to illustrate this theory. Language is the most "physical" data we have to work with in Cognitive Science, so it makes it a lot easier to understand how our verbal communication with people externalizes. Psychologically, as well, our mental health and more are affected by our relationships with people and our environment.
ReplyDeleteBut something I don't understand is that wouldn't there need to be a border somewhere? I only interact with so much of the available environment. This theory makes it seem like the whole universe is an extension of our minds, but more practically is it supposed to be taken into account that it's only who or what we directly interact with?
PS Kind of off topic (and new agey), but i think the parallels between the brain (cells mostly) and the universe are very interesting. An image of a neuron looks almost exactly alike and it makes me wonder if there is a connection.
I think you bring up a good point about what we consider an extension of our minds and where that ends. Take for example "Mary" - She doesn't quite remember how to get to MoMA but she doesn't have alzheimers. She can find her way by looking at street signs and familiar buildings and figure it out. She's using the "same causal dynamics" of Otto and Inga - She is consulting something, but she's not consulting a book or (only) her memory. Do we say all of this part of NYC is part of her "extended mind"?
DeleteI like how this concept of the extended mind and the videos from 10 were the choice to end the course. Regardless of how much abstraction we've delved into throughout the semester this grounds (not to use the word ironically) our understanding back into the world. I appreciate the re-conception of thinking/feeling/mindfulness outside the context of the human body. While I struggle with Chalmer's argument, which to me seems to say that every human that interacts and things they interact with that function at some toy-level of cognition is the extended mind (which I don't really see as say a notebook, or my iPhone as cognizing, because without my brain/internal subjective interpretation of the objective function of these tools, their function would ultimately be relatively meaningless), I appreciate the attempt to re-conceive what we've learnt outside the context of the human mind/brain. It allows me to reassess my position on a lot of these concepts outside of myself, and my experience and re-evaluate it in terms of something I can observe detaching probably a lot of ego-centrism from the way I interpret these concepts.
ReplyDelete“If this is right, we can even construct the case of Twin Otto, who is just like Otto except that a while ago he mistakenly wrote in his notebook that the Museum of Modern Art was on 51st Street. Today, Twin Otto is a physical duplicate of Otto from the skin in, but his notebook differs. Consequently, Twin Otto is best characterized as believing that the museum is on 51st Street, where Otto believes it is on 53rd. In these cases, a belief is simply not in the head.”
ReplyDeleteI find the example of Otto very thought provoking, however, I’m wondering if it necessarily only applies in the case of someone who has memory difficulties. Could the use of a notebook/journal/agenda still be considered an extended mind if a person does not suffer from Alzheimer’s disease? I would argue that it could. In essence, our memories have limited capacities, and making notes in an agenda to keep track of daily tasks helps to extend that memory capacity. In the same way that Otto would mistakenly believe that the Museum was on 51st street if that’s what he had written in his journal, a person might mistakenly believe that a meeting scheduled for Thursday was actually on Tuesday, if that’s what they had written in their agenda. Essentially, I think that the use of external tools to help keep track of thought processes and information that is central to ordinary life can be considered an example of an extended mind, whether or not someone is suffering from a memory disorder.
Where the outer limits of the mind are seems like kind of a weird question to ask to me. But based on what Chalmers and Clark say, they believe that the mind is equivalent to cognition, but do not exactly define what they think cognition is. They describe cognition as being beliefs about the world, and do not explain any more than that. As we’ve discussed previously, talking about beliefs doesn’t really explain much about how or why we feel. Also as we’ve discussed, cognition doesn’t mean anything without addressing feeling. So based on what Chalmers and Clark are saying, to me it seems obvious that beliefs are a product of our minds interaction with our environment, but what it feels like to have beliefs is another question. I think the processing of our beliefs, the feeling of having a belief, does not extend beyond the brain. We don’t live in a vacuum, so how can we ever really know what kind of processing is unique to what’s inside our skulls, and what processing is ‘coupled’ with our external world? Yes we have tools to aid in our functioning (like calculators) but is using a calculator really extending our mind beyond our brain? Or is the ultimate feeling of using a calculator to find the answer solely located in the brain.
ReplyDelete“Clearly, Otto walked to 53rd Street because he wanted to go to the museum and he believed the museum was on 53rd Street. And just as Inga had her belief even before she consulted her memory, it seems reasonable to say that Otto believed the museum was on 53rd Street even before consulting his notebook. For in relevant respects the cases are entirely analogous: the notebook plays for Otto the same role that memory plays for Inga. The information in the notebook functions just like the information constituting an ordinary non-occurrent belief; it just happens that this information lies beyond the skin.”
ReplyDeleteI agree with the authors that we don’t necessarily need to have cognition end with skin and the skull, but – and I may be making the mistake of computationalism by trying to divorce “mental processes” too far from the physical world - I felt like this article did not sufficiently recognize the difference between something that is cognitive and something that is part of the physical world. Our cognition may be reliant on the physical world, but there is still a distinction between what is ‘us thinking’ (what is part of our ‘mind’) and what is the physical world that we interact with. For example, in order to understand what words mean we have to ‘ground them’ - connect them to physical objects in the real world that we can sense. But does this mean these physical objects in the world themselves are PART of our cognition, part of our minds? If we read something (as Otto does here) we see the words with our senses (vision, for most of us), we interpret the words to “mean” something, and may then use that information to do something in the physical world (walk to 53rd Street, for example). Can’t we say our cognition stops and ends when we transition from “thinking” and sensing and doing (something physical)? When Inga consults her memory, she’s cognizing because she’s not interacting with the physical world by consulting her memory. But when Otto consults the book, he is interacting with the physical world through his senses.
I don't think that the 'physical objects in the world' are parts of our cognition so much as what we do with our perception of them is part of our cognition. Isn't what we do with these physical objects considered to be categorizing, and that is part of our cognition? In Otto's case, even though he is reading the words instead of consulting his memory, the statements that he's reading allow him to learn categories.
DeleteI think this article makes an important point, which is that rarely can human cognition be studied entirely in separation from its surrounding environment. The idea of an extended mind is really intriguing, particularly since we are living in the so-called "Information Age". So much of our intellectual capacities depend on the use of cognitive tools that facilitate cognition. However I do think it is still important to differentiate between cognitive tools that extend our cognition and that which is internal to our brain. For example, it is important to differentiate between a mental rotation task and rotation with the aid of computer modelling.
ReplyDeleteI also thought Clark and Chalmers last point about language and its relation to the extended mind demonstrates the power of language.
"But the advent of language has allowed us to spread this burden into the world. Language, thus construed, is not a mirror of our inner states but a complement to them. It serves as a tool whose role is to extend cognition in ways that on-board devices cannot. Indeed, it may be that the intellectual explosion in recent evolutionary time is due as much to this linguistically-enabled extension of cognition as to any independent development in our inner cognitive resources."
Information is most frequently transferred from human to human via language. While this is a simple fact, its importance should not be overlooked. Language enables us to build on scientific disciplines and domains of study. We are able to learn about the products of centuries of research through reading a textbook and integrate this information to inform future study.
The main argument of this paper centers around Herbert Simon’s argument that:
ReplyDelete"Search in memory is not very different from search in the external environment."
Clark and Chalmers did a very convincing job of explaining this by using the examples of Inga and Otto. Inga uses her memory while Otto uses his notebook to retrieve the same information (an address).
During our brief class discussion on the extended mind, I was hesitant to agree that external resources are part of one’s cognition. However, I realize that we access information from external resources majority of the time. We aren’t really born knowing much at all; rather we are born with the capacity to learn. We learn through instruction, induction, and observation. We also learn when there is corrective feedback and negative evidence. This leads me to think that the only thing we are born knowing is universal grammar (UG). Ordinary grammar (OG) is essentially learned through external resources. We see other people use OG correctly/incorrectly while speaking (observation), we use OG to speak to others (induction), and we are told how to use OG correctly (instruction). In a literal sense, everything we have ever learned how to say with OG has come from somewhere that is extended from oneself. Since language is a nuclear weapon and the primary transmitter of information (through speaking, reading, etc.) is anything truly off limits to cognition—extended or not?
Back to the examples of Inga and Otto, Clark and Chalmers stated:
"In both cases the information is reliably there when needed, available to consciousness and available to guide action, in just the way that we expect a belief to be."
And:
"For in relevant respects, the cases are entirely analogous: the notebook plays for Otto the same role that memory plays for Inga."
These are both fair points. Inga can rely on her memory; but didn’t she get the address from her friend? In other words, she didn’t just know it herself (and neither did her friend, I assume). The address itself is information that was retrieved externally. So, Inga memorizing the address is truly no different from Otto using his notebook to find the same address. I think what is actually more important is that they both understand the information, regardless of how it was retrieved. In that case, I do think that the extended information does become part of one’s cognition.
However, I don’t necessarily agree that everything out there in the world, whether it’s from a library or on the internet, is part one’s cognition. Not everything can be understood. As a graduate student, I am constantly looking up research papers to add to my literature review. Let’s say I come across a paper that is written in German. As someone who does not speak or understand German, I don’t think that external resource could ever become (part of) my cognition, unless I can suddenly understand German or acquire a very committed translator. In this example, I do not argue against the fact that this paper is available when I need it, but the only action it guides is me not understanding. The difference between me and Inga/Otto is that I have no way of making the extended information something that is retrievable, but Inga and Otto can make their extended information retrievable because they understand the information. Thus, perhaps extended cognition only works when extended information can be understood by the cognizer.