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

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.

Whatever Next and Close to My Self—The Transparent Senses and the “Second Skin”: Implications for the Case of Depersonalization

In his paper “Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science,” Andy Clark seminally proposed that the brain's job is to predict whatever information is coming “next” on the basis of prior inputs and experiences. Perception fundamentally subserves survival and self-preservation in biological agents, such as humans. Survival however crucially depends on rapid and accurate information processing of what is happening in the here and now. Hence, the term “next” in Clark's seminal formulation must include not only the temporal dimension (i.e., what is perceived now) but also the spatial dimension (i.e., what is perceived here or next-to-my-body). In this paper, we propose to focus on perceptual experiences that happen “next,” i.e., close-to-my-body. This is because perceptual processing of proximal sensory inputs has a key impact on the organism's survival. Specifically, we focus on tactile experiences mediated by the skin and what we will call the “extended skin” or “second skin,” that is, immediate objects/materials that envelop closely to our skin, namely, clothes. We propose that the skin and tactile experiences are not a mere border separating the self and world. Rather, they simultaneously and inherently distinguish and connect the bodily self to its environment. Hence, these proximal and pervasive tactile experiences can be viewed as a “transparent bridge” intrinsically relating and facilitating exchanges between the self and the physical and social world. We conclude with potential implications of this observation for the case of Depersonalization Disorder, a condition that makes people feel estranged and detached from their self, body, and the world.

Whatever Next and Close to my Self – The Transparent Senses and the ‘Second Skin’: Implications for the Case of Depersonalisation

In his paper ‘Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science’ Andy Clark (2013) seminally proposed that the brain’s job is to predict whatever information is coming ‘next’ on the basis of prior inputs and experiences. Perception fundamentally subserves survival and self-preservation in biological agents such as humans. Survival however crucially depends on rapid and accurate information processing of what is happening in the here and now. Hence the term ‘next’ in Clark’s seminal formulation must include not only the temporal dimension (i.e. what is perceived now); but (ii) also the spatial dimension (i.e. what is perceived here or next-to-my-body). In this paper we propose to focus on perceptual experiences that happen ‘next’, i.e. close-to-my-body. This is because perceptual processing of proximal sensory inputs has a key impact on the organism’s survival. Specifically, we focus on tactile experiences mediated by the skin and what we will call the ‘extended skin’ or ‘second skin’, that is immediate objects/materials that envelop closely our skin, namely clothes. We propose that the skin and tactile experiences are not a mere border separating the self and world. Rather they simultaneously and inherently distinguish and connect the bodily self to its environment. Hence these proximal and pervasive tactile experiences be viewed as a ‘transparent bridge’ intrinsically relating and facilitating exchanges between the self and the physical and social world. We conclude with potential implications of this observation for the case of Depersonalisation Disorder, a condition that makes people feel estranged and detached from their self, body and the world.

Whatever Next and Close to my Self – The Transparent Senses and the ‘Second Skin’: Implications for the Case of Depersonalisation

In his seminal paper ‘Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science’ Andy Clark (2013) argued that the brain’s job is to predict whatever information is coming ‘next’ on the basis of the prior information perceived before. In this paper we suggest that term ‘next’ should be understood not only at the temporal scale (i.e. what is perceived in the upcoming second); but (ii) also from a spatial dimension (i.e. what is perceived literally next to or close-to-my-body). We examine the perceptual processing of proximal sensory inputs which have a key impact on the organism’s survival. Specifically, we focus on tactile experiences that extend to the immediate objects/materials that envelop closely our skin, namely clothes. One relatively overlooked aspect of our experiences is that humans in modern societies spend most of their lives having their bodies closely enveloped by materials/textile. Following the seminal ‘extended mind’ thesis (Clark & Chalmers 1998; Kirchhoff & Kiverstein 2019), we argue that these materials may be conceived as a ‘second skin’ or ‘extended skin’ that underwrite what we will call here ‘extended body-image’ and ‘extended body-schema’ (cf. Gallagher 2005). We argue that tactile experiences – mediated by the skin and the ‘extended skin’ – may be viewed as a ‘transparent bridge’ intrinsically relating and facilitating exchanges between the self and the physical and social world. Contrary to the standard approach that views the skin (and tactile experiences) as a mere border separating the self and world, here we propose that the skin (and its extended version, ‘the second skin’, i.e. the clothes) simultaneously and inherently distinguish and connect the bodily self to its environment. We conclude with potential implications of this observation for the case of Depersonalisation Disorder, a condition that makes people feel estranged and detached from one’s self, body and the world.

Externalismo ativo e convergência tecnológica NBIC: o advento da hipercognição

: Este artigo tem por objetivo sustentar a hipercognição, resultado da interação da cognição humanacom os artefatos interativos provenientes da Convergência Tecnológica NBIC (nano-bio-info-cogno),como perspectiva factível perante as teses pós-humanistas que esboçam uma transformação ontológica doser humano a partir da fusão com máquinas. A factibilidade da hipercognição está alicerçada na concepçãode cognição sustentada pelo externalismo ativo, em especial o de Andy Clark, para o qual o ambiente possuicaracterísticas relevantes o suficiente para desempenhar um papel protagonista no processo de cognição,uma vez que os humanos já seriam, por natureza, peritos na tarefa de incorporar material não biológico emsuas rotinas físicas e cognitivas. A simbiose entre humanos (genuínos ciborgues tecnológicos) e máquinasseria algo que decorreria naturalmente, sobretudo na acepção de que os processos cognitivos seriamdependentes de ajuda externas. No contexto da Convergência Tecnológica NBIC, essa simbiose é o quepossibilita a hipercognição.

Thinking embodiment with genetics: epigenetics and postgenomic biology in embodied cognition and enactivism

The role of the body in cognition is acknowledged across a variety of disciplines, even if the precise nature and scope of that contribution remain contentious. As a result, most philosophers working on embodiment—e.g. those in embodied cognition, enactivism, and ‘4e’ cognition—interact with the life sciences as part of their interdisciplinary agenda. Despite this, a detailed engagement with emerging findings in epigenetics and post-genomic biology has been missing from proponents of this embodied turn. Surveying this research provides an opportunity to rethink the relationship between embodiment and genetics, and we argue that the balance of current epigenetic research favours the extension of an enactivist approach to mind and life, rather than the extended functionalist view of embodied cognition associated with Andy Clark and Mike Wheeler, which is more substrate neutral.

Economic cognitive institutions

This paper introduces the notion of ‘cognitive’ institution and discusses its relevance to institutional economics. Cognitive institutions are conceptually founded on the philosophy of mind notion of extended mind, broadened to also include the distinctly social, institutional, and normative dimensions. Cognitive institutions are defined as institutions that not just allow agents to perform certain cognitive processes in the social domain but, more importantly, without which some of the agents' cognitive processes would not exist or even be possible. The externalist point of view of the extended mind has already had some influence in institutional economics: Arthur Denzau and Douglass North first introduced the notion of institution understood in terms of ‘shared mental models’, and relatedly philosopher Andy Clark introduced the notion of ‘scaffolding institution’. We discuss shared mental models and scaffolding institutions and go a step further by showing that the notion of cognitive institution can capture more fundamental and salient aspects of economic institutions. In particular, we focus on the market as an economic cognitive institution.

What Is a Cognitive System? In Defense of the Conditional Probability of Co-contribution Account

A theory of cognitive systems individuation is presented and defended. The approach has some affinity with Leonard Talmy’s Overlapping Systems Model of Cognitive Organization, and the paper’s first section explores aspects of Talmy’s view that are shared by the view developed herein. According to the view on offer – the conditional probability of co-contribution account (cpc) – a cognitive system is a collection of mechanisms that contribute, in overlapping subsets, to a wide variety of forms of intelligent behavior. Central to this approach is the idea of an integrated system. A formal characterization of integration is laid out in the form of a conditional-probability based measure of the clustering of causal contributors to the production of intelligent behavior. I relate the view to the debate over extended and embodied cognition and respond to objections that have been raised in print by Andy Clark, Colin Klein, and Felipe de Brigard.

Ben Jonson and the Limits of Distributed Cognition

Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (1614) and The Alchemist (1610) depict characters attempting to establish and redefine themselves within and against the marketplace. In this chapter the network of goods for sale, and especially the street-sellers’ cries which were so characteristic of London life, and which are recorded in songs from the period, are seen as a cognitive ecology in which dramatic versions of distributed selfhood take particular shapes. Jonson’s plays anticipate and also comment on notions of extended, economic, and ‘soft’ selfhood like those explored by Andy Clark, Don Ross, and others.