Cognition (and Learning) On the Loose

eLearn ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Clark Quinn
Keyword(s):  
Extended Mind ◽  
Cognition And Learning ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Learning And Instruction

Annie Murphy Paul's new book, "The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain," covers emerging research that extends our understanding of thinking beyond the typical view of "mind in the brain." Illustrated with stories, this book unpacks new recognitions, and provides the implications for the design of learning and instruction.

scholarly journals Agency, Responsibility, Selves, and the Mechanical Mind

Philosophies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Fiorella Battaglia
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Human Machine Interaction ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Legal Perspective ◽  
Area Of Concern ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Brain

Moral issues arise not only when neural technology directly influences and affects people’s lives, but also when the impact of its interventions indirectly conceptualizes the mind in new, and unexpected ways. It is the case that theories of consciousness, theories of subjectivity, and third person perspective on the brain provide rival perspectives addressing the mind. Through a review of these three main approaches to the mind, and particularly as applied to an “extended mind”, the paper identifies a major area of transformation in philosophy of action, which is understood in terms of additional epistemic devices—including a legal perspective of regulating the human–machine interaction and a personality theory of the symbiotic connection between human and machine. I argue this is a new area of concern within philosophy, which will be characterized in terms of self-objectification, which becomes “alienation” following Ernst Kapp’s philosophy of technology. The paper argues that intervening in the brain can affect how we conceptualize the mind and modify its predicaments.

Can Consciousness Extend?

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-264
Author(s):  
Karina Vold ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Popular Belief ◽  
Nervous Systems ◽  
Robust Version ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Different Shapes ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Cognitive Niches ◽  
Extended Mind Thesis

The extended mind thesis prompted philosophers to think about the different shapes our minds can take as they reach beyond our brains and stretch into new technologies. Some of us rely heavily on the environment to scaffold our cognition, reorganizing our homes into rich cognitive niches, for example, or using our smartphones as swiss-army knives for cognition. But the thesis also prompts us to think about other varieties of minds and the unique forms they take. What are we to make of the exotic distributed nervous systems we see in octopuses, for example, or the complex collectives of bees? In this paper, I will argue for a robust version of the extended mind thesis that includes the possibility of extended consciousness. This thesis will open up new ways of understanding the different forms that conscious minds can take, whether human or nonhuman. The thesis will also challenge the popular belief that consciousness exists exclusively in the brain. Furthermore, despite the attention that the extended mind thesis has received, there has been relatively less written about the possibility of extended consciousness. A number of prominent defenders of the extended mind thesis have even called the idea of extended consciousness implausible. I will argue, however, that extended consciousness is a viable theory and it follows from the same ‘parity argument’ that Clark and Chalmers (1998) first advanced to support the extended mind thesis. What is more, it may even provide us with a valuable paradigm for how we understand some otherwise puzzling behaviors in certain neurologically abnormal patients as well as in some nonhuman animals.

Consciousness: Don't Give Up on the Brain

2010 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 263-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Aizawa
Keyword(s):  
Extended Mind ◽  
Visual Illusions ◽  
Neural Correlate ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Neural Correlate Of Consciousness

AbstractIn the extended mind literature, one sometimes finds the claim that there is no neural correlate of consciousness. Instead, there is a biological or ecological correlate of consciousness. Consciousness, it is claimed, supervenes on an entire organism in action. Alva Noë is one of the leading proponents of such a view. This paper resists Noë's view. First, it challenges the evidence he offers from neuroplasticity. Second, it presses a problem with paralysis. Third, it draws attention to a challenge from the existence of metamers and visual illusions.

Deaf Studies in Learning and Cognition

2020 ◽  
pp. xviii-17
Author(s):  
Marc Marschark ◽  
Harry Knoors
Keyword(s):  
Hard Of Hearing ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Practical Interest ◽  
Cognitive Factors ◽  
Individual Family ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Cognition And Learning ◽  
Learning And Cognition ◽  
Hearing Children ◽  
The Brain

The intersection of cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and neuroscience with regard to deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals recently has received increasing attention from academic and educational audiences. Research and pedagogy associated with this nexus have focused largely on questions about whether DHH children learn in the same ways as hearing children, how signed languages and spoken languages might affect different aspects of cognition and cognitive development, and ways in which hearing loss influences the way that the brain processes and retains information. Frequently overlooked are interactions among various developmental and cognitive factors, as well as ways in which they are influenced by various individual, family, and environmental factors. This chapter addresses several areas of research on cognition and learning among DHH individuals, identifying gaps in our knowledge, illuminating some faulty assumptions, and pointing out broader implications of similarities and differences in DHH and hearing individuals of theoretical and practical interest.

scholarly journals THE PROBLEM OF BOUNDARIES OF COGNITIVE PROCESSES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 14-24
Author(s):  
Alexandra Pronkina
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
External Resources ◽  
Andy Clark ◽  
Controversial Problem ◽  
The Brain

The article deals with a controversial problem of the philosophy of mind, known as the problem of cognitive boundaries. This problem is illustrated by the polemic between two actively debating philosophical positions – internalism, according to which mental states are localized in the brain, and externalism, which assumes that cognitive acts are not limited to our body. The author analyzes Andy Clark and David Chalmers’s theory of extended cognitive processes and the extended mind, which is fundamentally new for the modern philosophy of mind and has taken on relevance today. It is shown that this concept is based on the idea of subject’s activity, which has its roots in James Gibson’s “ecological psychology”, Francisco Varela’s idea of “embodied cognition” and Alva Noë’s theory of sensorimotor enactivism. The author comes to the conclusion that the theory of extended cognitive processes has a number of deficiencies, one of which is the dependence on external resources and tools. David Chalmers’s thesis that we should not try to neutralize the negative effects of such dependency, but rather try to adapt our practices to the changing ways of thinking is seen as the way out of this problem.

The Victorian Extended Mind: George Eliot, Psychology and the Bounds of Cognition

2020 ◽  
pp. 43-60
Author(s):  
Peter Garratt
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Extended Cognition ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
Mental Experience ◽  
Franz Joseph Gall ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

The modern identification of the mind with the brain has its roots in the intellectual traditions of the nineteenth century. Isolating the brain as the seat of mental experience, and as the organ of the mind, emerged in the empirical work of Franz Joseph Gall and Johann Spurzheim and became a central, normative assumption of Romantic and Victorian culture, cutting across literary and psychological discourses. Less understood, however, is the extent to which novelists and critics thought seriously about the mind as a distributed phenomenon – or what might be described as Victorian extended cognition. Focusing on George Eliot, and exploring relevant aspects of nineteenth-century psychology, this chapter seeks to recover just that. At issue is the idea that mid-Victorian writing and culture did not always think of the mind as sealed hermetically in the head, a point developed through readings of such texts as The Lifted Veil and Middlemarch which show how Eliot’s fiction intuitively probes some defining claims in 4E cognitive theories.

Extended Affectivity, Reconsidered

2019 ◽  
pp. 56-68
Author(s):  
Michelle Maiese
Keyword(s):  
Extended Mind ◽  
Extended Cognition ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Convincing Case ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Extended Mind Thesis

According to Andy Clark’s Extended Mind Thesis, the operations that realize certain forms of human cognition do not do not stay neatly in the brain, but instead span brain, body, and world. While this thesis is best known as the hypothesis of extended cognition, Clark himself has wondered whether it also might be applied to affective states. What Colombetti and Roberts call the Hypothesis of Extended Affectivity says that a variety of occurrent and dispositional affective phenomena can extend. However, there are important reasons to reject this hypothesis. First, extended functionalism is in tension with the claim that affective states are essentially embodied. Second, these authors’ examples do not make a convincing case for extended affectivity. Third, their componential approach to occurrent emotions falls short given that they fail to establish that each of the components of emotion is not merely environmentally embedded, but also can extend.

Supercharged Apes versus Super-Sized Minds

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-112
Author(s):  
Louise Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Processing Activity ◽  
Evolutionary Continuity ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Processing Framework ◽  
The Way

Clark’s philosophy brings body, brain, and world together again, offering a new conception of both human and nonhuman cognition. This chapter agrees that the predictive processing framework provides our best bet for a species-neutral cognitive science. However, the use of cognitivist, representational language often seems unnecessary, especially when J. J. Gibson introduced a “resonance” metaphor to replace notions of representation, hypothesis, and inference. This chapter is therefore interested to know why Clark resists embracing Gibson, when this seems one of the best ways to embrace evolutionary continuity. The chapter also raises the apparent tension between the predictive processing position and that of the extended mind: Is the brain the principal seat of information-processing activity? Or is it userless tools all the way down? Finally, the chapter raises the issue of epistemic artefacts, and whether these increase or decrease cognitive load.

Variations on Embodied Cognition

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Brain Function ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Biological Model ◽  
System P ◽  
Neural Reuse ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

This chapter maps out a range of embodied cognition (EC) theories, starting with ‘weak EC’, which focuses on body-formatted representations and the neural reuse hypothesis, and remains close to traditional cognitivist conceptions of the mind. This approach to EC is then contrasted to functionalist proposals for extended mind, to a biological model of EC, and finally to enactivist proposals. Each section includes discussions of the empirical evidence for these approaches. The chapter concludes by arguing that weak EC’s representationalist conception of brain function is not compatible with the more radical conceptions of EC, which suggest that we rethink how the brain works within a dynamical brain–body–environment system.

scholarly journals Improvisational Artistry in Live Dance Performance as Embodied and Extended Agency

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aili Bresnahan
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Dance Performance ◽  
The World ◽  
Extended Agency ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Individual Style

This article provides an account of improvisational artistry in live dance performance that construes the contribution of the dance performer as a kind of agency. Andy Clark's theory of the embodied and extended mind is used in order to consider how this account is supported by research on how a thinking-while-doing person navigates the world. I claim here that while a dance performer's improvisational artistry does include embodied and extended features that occur outside of the brain and nervous system, that this can be construed as “agency” rather than “thought.” Further I claim that trained and individual style accounts for how this agency acquires its artistic nature. This account thus contributes to the philosophy of improvisation in dance performance in a way that includes motor as well as cognized intentions.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document