About the Book
Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind surveys philosophical issues raised by the situated movement in cognitive science, that is, the treatment of cognitive phenomena as the joint products of brain, body, and environment. The book focuses primarily on the hypothesis of extended cognition, which asserts that human cognitive processes literally comprise elements beyond the boundary of the human organism. Rupert argues that the only plausible way in which to
demarcate cognitions is systems-based: cognitive states or processes are the states of the integrated set of mechanisms and capacities that contribute causally and distinctively to the production of cognitive
phenomena--for example, language-use, memory, decision-making, theory construction, and, more importantly, the associated forms of behavior. Rupert argues that this integrated system is most likely to appear within the boundaries of the human organism. He argues that the systems-based view explains the existing successes of cognitive psychology and cognate fields in a way that extended conceptions of cognition do not, and that once the systems-based view has been adopted, it is especially clear
how extant arguments in support of the extended view go wrong. Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind also examines further aspects of the situated program in cognitive science,
including the embedded and embodied approaches to cognition. Rupert asks to what extent the plausible incarnations of these situated views depart from orthodox, computational cognitive science. Here, Rupert focuses on the notions of representation and computation, arguing that the embedded and embodied views do not constitute the radical shifts in perspective they are often claimed to be. Rupert also argues that, properly understood, the embodied view does not offer a new role for the body,
different in principle from the one presupposed by orthodox cognitive science. "Rupert's book is a good read. It is a sustained, systematic, critical examination of the idea that
minds are not simply ensconced inside heads, but extend into both bodies and the world beyond the body.... There is much to admire in this book. It is well-structured and well-written, adopting a self-consciously naturalistic perspective on how to understand the mind -- through our best, even if imperfect, empirical sciences in the domain of cognition. By presenting and critiquing a number of explicit arguments for and against the specific views that Rupert considers, Cognitive Systems
advances the field."-- Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews "Rupert's treatment is a state of the art sustained attack on various forms of the 'extended mind hypothesis'. It is rigorous and
challenging, and will be of interest to a quite a large audience of researchers (graduates and above) in philosophy and in cognitive science. Rupert studiously avoids the 'straw men' that populate some recent critiques, and raises deep and sympathetic challenges that go to the core of the program." --Andy Clark, Department of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh
Table of Contents:
Preface
1: Introduction: The Mind, the Computer, and the Alternatives
1.1: The Mind as Computer
1.2: The Alternatives: The Varieties of Situated Cognition
1.3: Looking Ahead
1.4: Strategy and Methods
1.4.1: Slaying the Cartesian Beast?
1.4.2: The Scope of Situated Views
1.4.3: Philosophy of Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind
1.5: The Book's Conclusions
Part I: The Thinking Organism
2: Principles of Demarcation
2.1: The Challenge of Demarcation
2.2: Extension-Friendly Principles of Demarcation
2.2.1: The Causal Principle
2.2.2: Epistemic Dependence
2.2.3: Metaphysical Necessity and Sufficiency
2.2.4: Clark and Chalmers's Four Criteria
2.3: The Parity Principle
2.4: Conclusion
3: Cognitive Systems and Demarcation
3.1: The Success of Cognitive Psychology
3.2: The Systems-based View
3.2.1: In Outline
3.2.2: A Technical Elaboration
3.2.3: The Virtues of the Systems-based View
3.3: Two Arguments against the Extended View
3.4: Extension-Friendly Rejoinders
3.4.1: Organism-Centered Cognition
3.4.2: Abstract Properties and Extended Systems
3.4.3: Growing and Shrinking Systems
3.5: The No-Self View
3.5.1: Cognitive Systems without Robust Selves
3.5.2: The No-Self View and Arguments against the Extended Approach
3.5.3: Rejoinder and Response
4: Realization and Extended Cognition
4.1: The Argument from Empirical Success and Methodology, Restated
4.2: Extended Cognition and Realization
4.3: Functionalism and the Causal Constraint on Realization
4.4: The Argument from Causal Interaction
4.4.1: Basic Statement of the Argument
4.4.2: Premise One
4.4.3: Premise Two
4.4.4: Premise Four and Beyond
4.4.5: A Rejoinder and a Rebuttal
4.5: Wide Realization, Total Realization, and Causal Powers
4.5.1: Wilson on Realization
4.5.2: Semantic Externalism and Total Realization
4.5.3: The Role of Relational Properties in Cognitive Science
4.6: Cleaning Up
4.6.1: Socially Embedded Properties and Wide Core Realization
4.6.2: The Single-Neuron Argument
4.6.3: Additional Support
Part II: Arguments for the Extended View
5: Functionalism and Natural Kinds
5.1: The Functionalist Argument
5.2: The Natural-Kinds Argument
5.3: The Empirical Response
5.3.1: Short-Term External Memory?
5.3.2: Cognitive Impartiality
5.4: The Pragmatic Turn
6: Developmental Systems Theory and the Scaffolding of Language
6.1: Causal Spread and Complementary Role
6.1.1: Nontrivial Causal Spread
6.1.2: Environment as Complement
6.2: A Case of Nontrivial Causal Spread: Developmental Systems Theory
6.3: The Most Powerful Transformation: Language-Learning
6.3.1: Linguistic Content and Thought Content
6.3.2: Structural Effects
7: Dynamical Systems Theory
7.1: Dynamical Systems Theory and Cognitive Science
7.2: Dynamical Systems and Extended Cognition: General Patterns of Argument
7.3: Six Kinds of Dynamical-Systems-Based Model
7.3.1: Model-Type One: Historical Grounding
7.3.2: Model-Type Two: Organismically Internal Dynamical Interactions
7.3.3: Model-Type Three: Active External Control
7.3.4: Model-Type Four: Organismic Collective Variables, Extended Realizers
7.3.5: Model-Type Five: Extended Collective Variable, Organismic Separability
7.3.6: Model-Type Six: Extended Order Parameter, No Local Separability
7.4: Evolution, Context-Dependence, and Epistemic Dependence
8: The Experience of Extension and the Extension of Experience
8.1: Cognitive Science and the In-Key Constraint
8.2: The Phenomenology of Smooth Coping
8.2.1: The Argument from Smooth Coping
8.2.2: The Heideggerian Framework
8.2.3: Wheeler's Appeal to Dynamical Systems Theory
8.3: The Sense of One's Own Location
8.4: Control-based Arguments
8.5: Control Simpliciter
8.6: Extended Cognition and Extended Experience
Part III: The Embedded and Embodied Mind
9: Embedded Cognition and Computation
9.1: The Embedded Approach
9.2: Computation, Implementation, and Explicitly Encoded Rules
9.3: Computationalism in Principle and Computationalism in Practice
9.4: Timing, Computationalism, and Dynamical Systems Theory
9.5: Conclusion
10: Embedded Cognition and Mental Representation
10.1: What Is Special about Embedded Representation?
10.1.1: Detailed or Partial?
10.1.2: Context-Dependent and Action-Oriented Representations
10.1.3: Relational and Egocentric Representations
10.2: Atomic Affordance Representations
10.3: Embedded Models and External Content
10.4: Innate Representations and the Inflexibility Objection
10.5: Conclusion
11: The Embodied View
11.1: Preliminaries: Where the Disagreement Is Not
11.1.1: Materialism
11.1.2: Functionalism
11.1.3: Arbitrary Symbols and Embodiment
11.1.4: Abstract Symbols
11.2: The Constraint Thesis
11.3: The Content Thesis
11.3.1: External Content
11.3.2: Content-Determination by Causal Mediation
11.3.3: Narrow Content
11.4: Vehicles, Realizers, and Apportioning Explanation
11.5: The Symbol-Grounding Problem
11.5.1: Symbol-Grounding and Reference
11.5.2: Symbol-Grounding and Narrow Content
12: Summary and Conclusion
Works Cited
Index
About the Author :
Robert D. Rupert is Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado, Boulder
Review :
"There's much to be admired in this book, and not much left to be desired. Without sacrificing philosophical rigor or attention to empirical details, Rupert repeatedly brings empirical findings under philosophical scrutiny. From start to finish, he spots enthymematic arguments, and over and over again, he challenges both opponents of the embedded view and those who hold that the rules and representations approach to cognition is outdated and needs to be
supplanted. Cogntive Systems demands the attention of everyone who is interested in the nature of cognition. I highly recommend this book." --Minds and Machines
"Rupert's work is impressive both in its scope and its depth. I'll give it the highest praise that I can think to give a book in philosophy: before I read it, I was on the fence about HEC. The book convinced me. It is excellent work, and one that should be read by anyone in the debate." --Journal of Mind and Behavior
"Rupert's book is a good read. It is a sustained, systematic, critical examination of the idea that minds are not simply ensconced inside heads, but extend into both bodies and the world beyond the body.... There is much to admire in this book. It is well-structured and well-written, adopting a self-consciously naturalistic perspective on how to understand the mind -- through our best, even if imperfect, empirical sciences in the domain of cognition. By
presenting and critiquing a number of explicit arguments for and against the specific views that Rupert considers, COGNITIVE SYSTEMS advances the field."--Robert A. Wilson, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
"Rupert's treatment is a state of the art sustained attack on various forms of the 'extended mind hypothesis'. It is rigorous and challenging, and will be of interest to a quite a large audience of researchers (graduates and above) in philosophy and in cognitive science. Rupert studiously avoids the 'straw men' that populate some recent critiques, and raises deep and sympathetic challenges that go to the core of the program."
--Andy Clark, Department of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh
