Mind Outside Brain

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Heylighen ◽  
Shima Beigi
Keyword(s):  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
Holistic View ◽  
Elementary Reactions ◽  
Process Metaphysics ◽  
Mechanistic Worldview ◽  
Eastern Philosophies

We approach the problem of the extended mind from a radically non-dualist perspective. The separation between mind and matter is an artifact of the mechanistic worldview, which leaves no room for mental phenomena such as agency, intentionality, or experience. We propose to replace it by an action ontology, which conceives mind and matter as aspects of the same network of processes. By adopting the intentional stance, we interpret the catalysts of elementary reactions as agents exhibiting desires, intentions, and sensations. Autopoietic networks of reactions constitute more complex super-agents, which exhibit memory, deliberation and sense-making. In the case of social networks, individual agents coordinate their actions via the propagation of challenges. The distributed cognition that emerges cannot be situated in any individual brain. This non-dualist, holistic view extends and operationalizes process metaphysics and Eastern philosophies. It is supported by both mindfulness experiences and mathematical models of action, self-organization, and cognition.

Enactive neuroscience, the direct perception hypothesis, and the socially extended mind

2015 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Froese
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Direct Perception ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Cognition And Emotion ◽  
Spatial Extension

AbstractPessoa's The Cognitive-Emotional Brain (2013) is an integrative approach to neuroscience that complements other developments in cognitive science, especially enactivism. Both accept complexity as essential to mind; both tightly integrate perception, cognition, and emotion, which enactivism unifies in its foundational concept of sense-making; and both emphasize that the spatial extension of mental processes is not reducible to specific brain regions and neuroanatomical connectivity. An enactive neuroscience is emerging.

scholarly journals How Far we Can Go Without Looking Under the Skin: The Bounds of Cognitive Science

2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-109
Author(s):  
Łukasz Afeltowicz ◽  
Witold Wachowski
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Cognitive System ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
External Representations

Abstract The aim of this paper is to discuss the concept of distributed cognition (DCog) in the context of classic questions posed by mainstream cognitive science. We support our remarks by appealing to empirical evidence from the fields of cognitive science and ethnography. Particular attention is paid to the structure and functioning of a cognitive system, as well as its external representations. We analyze the problem of how far we can push the study of human cognition without taking into account what is underneath an individual’s skin. In light of our discussion, a distinction between DCog and the extended mind becomes important.

Surrealism, Chance and the Extended Mind

2020 ◽  
pp. 171-188
Author(s):  
Kerry Watson
Keyword(s):  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Objective Chance ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Exquisite Corpse ◽  
Automatic Drawing ◽  
Unconscious Mind ◽  
Artistic Skill ◽  
Unconscious State

This chapter discusses how the Surrealists engaged with techniques like automatic drawing, the exquisite corpse, collage, frottage and decalcomania, and how this might be interpreted in the context of theories of distributed cognition, enactivism, embodiment, and the extended mind. The Surrealists’ use of ‘objective chance’ was driven by a belief in the existence of an unconscious state of mind which could only be accessed obliquely, by using techniques which bypassed both artistic skill and conscious thought. ‘Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?’. This question is posed by Clark and Chalmers (1998) as an introduction to the concept of the extended mind, but it could just as well be the very question the Surrealists were trying to address in their search for a universal truth, the key to which they believed to be the unconscious mind as defined by Freud.

On the importance of things: a relational approach to agency

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Carlos Mendoza-Collazos
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Relational Approach ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe present review is conceived to be a contribution from the double perspective of a semiotician and a designer to the current debate on the extended mind and on distributed cognition, focusing on the role of things (artefacts, material culture) for the emergence of agency in animate beings. The theory of material engagement as conceived by Lambros Malafouris was formally introduced seven years ago, proposing an idea of boundless cognition and reformulating key notions such as agency, intentionality, and mental representations, philosophically framed with the help of approaches such as postphenomenology (Ihde 2009; Ihde and Malafouris 2019). There is much to commend about a non-hierarchical, interdependent relationship between the world and living organisms — and more specifically between material things and human beings. Nevertheless, a balanced review of the notion of “material agency” is still called for. In this review, I show that an asymmetry can be introduced into the relationship between artefacts and human beings without committing the “sin” of anthropocentrism.

scholarly journals 4E’s Are Too Many Why Enactive World-Making Does Not Need The Extended Mind Thesis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfonsina Scarinzi
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Extended Cognition ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Active Process ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Extended Mind Thesis

4E’s cognition – embodied, embedded, enacted, extended – replaces the cognitivist notion of world-mirroring with an active process of world-making: cognition needs no mental representation and is distributed over body, brain and environment. In recent years, the remark that extended cognition is not enactive and that the embodied approach to cognition fails to provide a definition of body raise the question of whether a postcognitivist approach to experience needs 4E’s. This contribution suggests that it does not. The enactive body as a moving sense-making-system informed by phenomenology and pragmatism and its role in the constitution of the distinctive quality of an experience are discussed.

scholarly journals Making Sense of Sense-Making: Reflections on Enactive and Extended Mind Theories

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Thompson ◽  
Mog Stapleton
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Enactive Approach ◽  
Cognition And Emotion ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Extended Mind Thesis

This paper explores some of the differences between the enactive approach in cognitive science and the extended mind thesis. We review the key enactive concepts of autonomy and sense-making. We then focus on the following issues: (1) the debate between internalism and externalism about cognitive processes; (2) the relation between cognition and emotion; (3) the status of the body; and (4) the difference between ‘incorporation’ and mere ‘extension’ in the body-mind-environment relation.

Timescales and the Temporal Emergence of Musicking

2021 ◽  
pp. 168-196
Author(s):  
Juan M. Loaiza
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Participatory Systems ◽  
Normative Constraints

The aim of this chapter is twofold: to present a new way of mapping timescales of musicking, and to elaborate an explanatory approach that overcomes philosophical reductionism and allows interdisciplinary conversation. It proposes that the emergence of organizational properties in musicking is best understood by looking at the relations between timescales, using the heuristic of inter-scale relationships within temporal ranges. The chapter argues that simpler models of timescales have limited explanatory use and do not naturally capture the experiential richness of musicking. In contrast, the mapping of temporal ranges highlights the relations between many processes that mutually enable and constrain one another across timescales, and across brains, bodies, and environment. The map guides research into the complexity of musicking without sacrificing disciplinary focus. It consists of three domains of organization—sensorimotor, social life, and person/Self—interweaving ecological-enactive concepts of embodiment, self-organization, participatory systems, attunement, normative constraints, habits, and sense-making.

scholarly journals Attachment and reflective function: Their role in self-organization

1997 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 679-700 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER FONAGY ◽  
MARY TARGET
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
Reflective Function ◽  
Self Development ◽  
The Relationship

The paper traces the relationship between attachment processes and the development of the capacity to envision mental states in self and others. We suggest that the ability to mentalize, to represent behavior in terms of mental states, or to have “a theory of mind” is a key determinant of self-organization which is acquired in the context of the child's early social relationships. Evidence for an association between the quality of attachment relationship and reflective function in the parent and the child is reviewed and interpreted in the context of current models of theory of mind development. A model of the development of self-organization is proposed which has at its core the caregiver's ability to communicate understanding of the child's intentional stance. The implications of the model for pathological self-development are explored, with specific reference to the consequences of maltreatment.

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