Date: November 23 - 25, 2009

Venue: ZiF Bielefeld, Germany

Organizers:
Holger Lyre (Magdeburg)
Ipke Wachsmuth (Bielefeld)
Sven Walter (Osnabrück)

Invited speakers:
Kenneth Aizawa (Shreveport)
Jon Bird (Milton Keynes)
Andy Clark (Edinburgh)
Andreas Engel (Hamburg)
Peter König (Osnabrück)
Thomas Metzinger (Mainz)
Robert Rupert (Boulder)
Gregor Schöner (Bochum)
Lawrence Shapiro (Madison)
Mark Sprevak (Cambridge)
Henrik Walter (Bonn)
Michael Wheeler (Stirling)

Invited participants:
Holk Cruse (Bielefeld)
Martin Kurthen (Zürich)
Miriam Kyselo (Osnabrück)
Hedda Lausberg (Cologne)
Hans Markowitsch (Bielefeld)
Miljana Milojevic (Belgrade)
Albert Newen (Bochum)
Michael Pauen (Berlin)
Helge Ritter (Bielefeld)
Louise Röska-Hardy (Witten-Herdecke)
Tobias Schlicht (Tübingen)
Adrian Smith (Mainz)
Achim Stephan (Osnabrück)
Gottfried Vosgerau (Bochum)
Markus Werning (Düsseldorf)

Registration

Conference registration is free (conference meals will be charged), but only a limited number of regular participants can be allowed. If you are interested in participating please send an email with a small statement indicating your interest into the topic and your scientific background until end of September to: Marina.Hoffmann@uni-bielefeld.de (ZiF conference office).

Links

Conference poster (pdf)
ZiF Website: English version, German version

Abstract

At least since the late nineties the cognitive neurosciences have been experiencing a programmatic and paradigmatic thrust, which manifests itself in the key words 'embodiment', 'situated cognition' and 'dynamicism'. At the core of this development is the insight that cognitive processes cannot be isolated from the physical constraints of the cognitive system, its situatedness and its dynamic interaction with the environment. The idea that cognitive processes are no longer simply characterized at an abstract, purely information-processing level blurs gradually also the intuitively plausible boundary between the "inside" and "outside" of a cognitive system, between what's in the "mind" and what supposedly takes place outside the boundaries of the mind in the body and the environment. A growing number of authors argues that our traditional views about what cognitive processes are and where they take place must be revised insofar as the nature of such processes is substantially constituted by body and environment. Cognitive systems are not limited to the local processing system, the neural machinery, but extend across its traditionally conceived boundary into the surroundings, in external cognitive tools and into social communities.

This "Extended Mind Thesis" (EMT) became particularly known by a paper of Andy Clark and David Chalmers (1998) and has been defended and developed most prominently by Clark since then. Meanwhile other EMT-supporters like Susan Hurley, Richard Menary, Mark Rowlands, Michael Wheeler and Robert Wilson but also critics have raised their voice, and a fruitful debate about the validity and scope of EMT has emerged both within the empirical cognitive and neurosciences as well as in the philosophy of mind. In the German-speaking community, however, little attention has been paid so far to EMT, neither from the philosophical nor the empirical perspective. It is one goal of the workshop to fill this gap, but also to explore the prospects of the empirical support of EMT by clarifying to which extent researchers from the cognitive and neurosciences in their everyday work and practice already implicitly assume extended cognition ideas or even actively operate with them.

Time table

Abstracts

Kenneth Aizawa (Shreveport): Intracranial Cognition is Inevitable

A familiar theme in the situated cognition literature is that we should shift our attention away from the processes that take place within the brain to attend to brain processes in context. Instead of focusing on the central and peripheral nervous systems, we should examine brain-body-world systems. Yet, one feature of systems analysis is that, understanding the capacities of an entire system typically involves dividing the system into components and analyzing their sub-capacities. But, if the brain is one of the components of the brain-body-world system, as it obviously is, then one might expect there to be a theory of the capacities of this component. But, what kind of theory would apply to the brain? An obvious candidate is a cognitive theory. If a cognitive theory is going to apply to anything in the world, surely the best candidate is the brain. But, if that is right, then it looks like intracranial cognition is inevitable.

Jon Bird (Milton Keynes): Investigating the extended mind by rapid prototyping sensory augmentation devices

The interdisciplinary e-sense project (www.esenseproject.org) has two goals: first, to build useful sensory augmentation devices; second, to generate novel insights into sensory, bodily and cognitive extension. I will describe two devices that we have rapid prototyped: MusicJacket, a wearable device that uses motion capture technologies and vibrotactile feedback to help novice violin players improve their posture and bowing technique; and a minimal tactile vision sensory substitution (TVSS) system. I will then outline a series of experiments that we are planning to conduct using the TVSS system that we hope will provide insight into more theoretical issues. In particular, we are investigating transparent tool use and its relation to active self-movement and why TVSS technologies have not been extensively adopted by blind people.

Andy Clark (Edinburgh): Are Brains Special?

The Extended Mind Hypothesis depicts brains, bodies, and select aspects of the environment as jointly implementing some of our cognitive states and processes. In their recent book, The Bounds of Cognition, Fred Adams and Ken Aizawa argue that human brains (perhaps even just a sub-set of neural cells) are special in some way that effectively (for the moment, at least) blocks such joint implementation. After a brief introduction to the debate over the extended mind, I shall focus on this important but elusive issue. What is the actual business of the brain, and how should we relate this to the business of the mind? Is there really what Adams and Aizawa dub a ?mark of the cognitive?: a distinctive common thread that, as it happens, gathers together (in us humans) all and only the processing done by the brain, neatly carving off the contributions of all extra-neural loops and processes? Even is there is such a common neurocentric thread, should that imply a matching limit on the architecture of the mind? I shall tentatively sketch a positive picture of ?what brains do? that reveals just such a common neurocentric thread, while leaving plenty of space for the machinery of mind to distribute across brain, body, and world.

Andreas Engel (Hamburg): The pragmatic turn in cognitive science: neuroscientific evidence and its implications

In cognitive science, we currently witness a ?pragmatic turn? away from the traditional representation-centered framework towards a paradigm that focusses on understanding cognition as ?enactive?, as a form of practice itself. According to this view, cognition is not understood as primarily serving for making models of the world, but as subserving action and being grounded in sensorimotor skills. On this account, cognitive states and their associated neural activity patterns are individuated primarily with respect to their functional role in action generation. I will suggest that such an action-oriented framework is not only conceptually viable but already supported by much experimental evidence. Numerous findings either overtly demonstrate the action-relatedness of cognitive processing, or can be re-interpreted in this new framework. I will argue that new vistas on the functional relevance and the presumed ?representational? nature of neural processes are likely to emerge from this paradigm.

Peter König (Osnabrück): On the relation of action and perception

Rising interest in theories of embodiment highlight the need to better understand the relation of action and conscious perception. Specifically, we investigate the concept that the quality of sensory awareness is determined by systematic change of afferent signals resulting from behaviour and knowledge thereof. In a first step we formalize two competing hypotheses action-precedes-perception and action-follows-perception and test these measureing eye-movements and pupil diameter in human subjects viewing ambiguous and disambiguated stimuli. Results provide evidence for the action-precedes-perception hypothesis and no causal role of conscious perception could be uncovered. Next, we investigate sensory enhancement by a feelSpace belt in a congenitally blind subject. Consistent with an earlier report improved behavioural performance and perceptual effects could be induced. However, unsupervised training by itself was not sufficient, and explicit instructions and training was necessary to ground the qualitatively new signals and provide associations with the available senses. Finally, a short report is given on current investigation of cortical plasticiy upon extended training with the feelSpace belt. In summary, the presented experiments argue for a constitutive role of action in the formation of perception, although in some aspects it was dependent on available cognitive resources.

Thomas Metzinger (Mainz): Self-representation and Active Externalism

I am interested in the connection between extended cognition and self-representation, especially *phenomenal* self-representation. Conceptually, I will argue for the thesis that agency is not part of the metaphysically necessary supervenience-basis for bodily self-consciousness. I will distinguish three different levels of embodiment and introduce the concept of "minimal phenomenal selfhood" (MPS; Blanke & Metzinger 2009). Based partly on data from my own interdisciplinary work, I will present an argument that MPS is ontologically independent of external interactions. If time allows, I will then proceed to some ideas about extended self-representation.

Robert Rupert (Boulder): Do Groups Have Mental States?

I consider the application of the extended mind thesis to groups of thinkers, asking whether a group might serve as the collective subject of a mental state. Much of my focus will be on methodology, on questions about what it would take to establish that a group has mental states. When applied, the methodology supports a (tentatively) skeptical conclusion. It seems ontologically profligate and conceptually misleading to attribute mental states to groups in the typical cases at issue (involving, e.g., corporations, courts, or governments).

Gregor Schöner (Bochum): Understanding the context dependent emergence of cognition in terms of neuronal mechanisms

Work on the development of cognition in early childhood provides rich evidence for the context dependence of cognition. Cognitive function emerges under the appropriate environmental conditions and dependent on the behavioral history that an individual brings to a task. Is there a tension between such features of soft causation and neuronally mechanistic accounts of cognition? Neuronally based theoretical accounts of the emergence of cognitive function illustrate the conceptual committments that are required to avoid that tension. I discuss the root of the problem in terms of the difference between deterministic mechanism and predictability.

Lawrence Shapiro (Madison): Embodied Cognition: Lessons from Linguistic Determinism

Among the various research programs that embodied cognition comprises is an attempt to understand how the body might constrain or shape the mind. I shall call this project body determinism. A more precise characterization of body determinism is frustratingly elusive. What is it to constrain or shape the mind? What features of the mind are susceptible to shaping? How might one experimentally demonstrate the body?s effects on the mind? In an effort to make some progress toward answering these questions, I propose to draw on a familiar and rigorously explored topic within psychology that bears a striking prima facie similarity to body determinism: linguistic determinism. Those who study linguistic determinism must ask the very same questions I mentioned above, and the answers they offer can help both to clarify body determinism and suggest useful strategies for its investigation.

Mark Sprevak (Cambridge): The functionalist argument for extended cognition: challenges and responses

The hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC) is intimately related to functionalism about cognitive states. I argue that HEC is entailed by a minimal form of functionalism. This appears to give HEC very strong support, since functionalism is our best current theory of cognitive states. However, I argue that the version of HEC entailed by functionalism is more radical than the version that Clark and Chalmers originally suggested. I argue that it is so radical as to form a counterexample to functionalism, rather than a surprising but true consequence. In this paper, I present some recent challenges that have been mounted against this functionalist argument for extended cognition. I argue that, with some clarifications, the functionalist argument can be defended from those challenges.

Henrik Walter (Bonn)

...

Michael Wheeler (Stirling): Is Cognition Embedded or Extended? The Case of Gestures

Are bodily gestures vehicles of cognition? More specifically, is it ever true that a coupled system made up of neural activity and bodily gestures counts as realizing a process of thought, in such a way that the bodily movements concerned should be granted cognitive status along with, and in essentially the same sense as, the neural activity? After I have filled in some conceptual background and described some relevant empirical work, I shall examine various arguments from the recent literature that either (a) conclude explicitly that gestures are not merely props for subtly embedded but wholly neural cognitive activity, but are themselves literally part of cognitive processing, or (b) strongly suggest that conclusion as a consequence of more general considerations. Along the way we?ll encounter the view that gestures contribute to the accomplishment of thought (Shaun Gallagher), the claim that certain patterns of bodily movement count as cognitive representations independently of any relations they happen to bear to other intentional states (Mark Rowlands), and the phenomenon of anarchic cognitive self-stimulation (Andy Clark). The character of the arguments under consideration is such that if any of them did establish the cognitive status of gestures, they would thereby provide support for a more general extended cognition hypothesis according to which not only certain bodily movements, but also certain beyond-the-skin factors may sometimes qualify as cognitive. I shall maintain, however, that all of the arguments fall short of what is required to secure the cognitive status of bodily gestures, and so fail to provide support for the more general hypothesis of extended cognition. More positively, I shall try to say something about how the gap here might be bridged.

The conference is supported by the ZiF and the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung.

 

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Extended Mind Conference