Cognitive Technologies and the Pragmatics of Cognition: (12 Benjamins Current Topics)

Technology has long been a helpful aid in human cognitive activities. With its growing sophistication and usage, technology is now taking a more intrinsic and active role in human cognition. The shift from an external aid to being an internal component of cognitive processing reflects a revolution in technology, cognition, and their interaction. The creation of such ‘cognitive technologies’ transforms the traditional instrumental function of technology to a constitutive role that shapes and defines cognition itself. This book, which was originally published as a Special Issue of Pragmatics & Cognition 13:3 (2005), explores the new horizon of these ‘cognitive technologies’ and their interactions with humans.

Table of Contents:
1. About the authors; 2. Introduction: Gold mines and land mines in cognitive technology (by Dror, Itiel E.); 3. Articles; 4. Making faces with computers: Witness cognition and technology (by Pike, Graham); 5. Perceptual recalibration in sensory substitution and perceptual modification (by Gonzalez, Juan C.); 6. Distributed processes, distributed cognizers and collaborative cognition (by Harnad, Stevan); 7. Robotics, philosophy and the problems of autonomy (by Haselager, Willem F.G.); 8. Technology and the management imagination (by Phillips, Fred); 9. Information and mechanical models of intelligence: What can we learn from Cognitive Science (by Quilici Gonzalez, Maria Eunice); 10. Is cognition plus technology an unbounded system? Technology, representation and culture (by Griffith, Niall J.L.); 11. Radical Empiricism, Empirical Modelling and the nature of knowing (by Beynon, Meurig); 12. Index

Review :
It used to be clear that human cognition was one thing and that technology was another. But in our cyber-era of global networks, multimedia, robots and tools that extend the powers of our eyes, hands and brains it is becoming clear that cognition and technology are much more profoundly interconnected and interactive than we had thought: The demands of our evolutionary past shaped our brains and our cognitive capacities, but now the "tools" we create with those cognitive capacities are drawing upon and unleashing cognitive capacities we did not even know we had. The boundary between what our brains are doing and what our brain-made technology is doing is dissolving. This volume explores this new hybrid, symbiotic world, with chapters by many of its front-line contributors. This book explores the ways in which cognitive technologies not only assist humans in their cognitive tasks, but actually become part and parcel of our cognitive activity. Does this intimate relationship bring about significant changes in the scope and nature of human cognition? is the question raised in the book. The philosophical and historical significance of an exploration of this issue in the light of the most recent technological developments is immense; for it addresses, ultimately, the central epistemological question of how our knowing capacity can be improved (or hampered) by the tools our knowing capacity itself develops. For the first time, technology is here envisaged not as a peripheral tool vis-à-vis cognition, but as touching its very kernel. This book is a stimulating sampler of an extraordinarily important emerging field. This field will have profound effects not only on how we humans think, feel and behave - but also on what we humans are. Technology can no longer be considered simply a product of human endeavor or a subject of study, but must be understood as providing a context within which we live and function. The chapters herein are of interest to psychologists, computer scientists, neuroscientists and philosophers, and cannot help but open eyes to new possibilities and new realities.