embodied cognition, enactivism, and the extended mind university of wollongong, december 10th-11th, 2009

workshop program 10/12/09 8 – 9 registration and coffee 9 – 9.15 Welcome 9.15 - 10.30 Shaun Gallagher (University of Central Florida), "Engaged Justice: the extended mind and social justice" 10.30 - 10.50 Morning Coffee 10.50 – 12.05 John Sutton (Macquarie University), "Interaction and Improvisation: notes on the interanimation of heterogeneous resources in distributed cognition" 12.05 – 1.20 Karola Stotz (University of Sydney), “Cognitive Niche Construction: From Organism-Environment Systems to Extended Minds” 1.20-2.20 lunch 2.20 - 3.35 Ben Jeffares (University of Wellington), "The Coevolution of tools and minds: The extended mind in the hominin lineage" 3.35 – 3.55 Afternoon Coffee 3.55 – 5.10 Richard Menary (University of Wollongong), “The Biological Basis of Cognitive Integration”

11/12/09 9 - 10.15 Dan Hutto (University of Hertfordshire), "Enactivism: why be radical" 10.15 - 10.30 Morning Coffee 10.30 – 11.45 Kim Sterelny (Australian National University),"Minds: Extended or Scaffolded?" 11.45 – 1 Wayne Christensen (Macquarie University), "High order agency in skilled action" 1 – 2 Lunch 2 – 3.15 David Simpson (University of Wollongong), “Intellectual Skills” 3.15 – 3.45 Afternoon Coffee 3.45 Workshop closes

embodied cognition, enactivism, and the extended mind abstracts Wayne Christensen, Andrew Geeves, John Sutton and Doris McIlwain (Macquarie), "High order agency in skilled action" It is argued that, contrary to widespread views, high order agency may play an important role in online skilled action control. The talk begins with goal-directed and autonomous agency, noting the high order structure of the latter and its association with reflective reasoning. Next dual-process views of cognition are considered. If dual process views are right then high order agency is not a feature of much skilled action, however there are grounds for thinking that the dual process picture is oversimplified. We examine the capacity limitations of working memory, the nature of controlled cognitive processes, the circumstances in which cognitive models are advantageous, and ‘chunking’ mechanisms proposed by several theories of working memory. On this basis we argue that cognitive processes supporting high order agency can be rapid enough to participate in time-pressured action. With this theoretical platform we criticise experiments by Beilock purporting to show that cognitive control impairs golf putting, and a model of cognitive control in putting is proposed. Finally we broaden the context by briefly considering possible roles for high order control in musical performance, aircraft piloting and counselling.

Shaun Gallagher (University of Central Florida), "Engaged justice: The extended mind and social institutions" I use the legal system as an example of how we can extend the extended mind hypothesis to include tools and structures provided by large social institutions. Making legal judgments and decisions, which are clearly cognitive in nature, and solving certain kinds of problems in a cognitive manner (or in other terms, exercising phronesis, an intellectual virtue) clearly depend on certain structures of the legal system and in fact could not be done without such structures. Such cognitive processes supervene on these institutional structures to the extent that if we take away the external part of this cognitive process – take away the legal institution – “the system's behavioural competence will drop, just as it would if we removed part of its brain” (Clark and Chalmers 1998, p. 9). If this is right, (1) it suggests a serious revision - a more liberal reading - of the parity principle and its supplemental criteria. (2) At the same time it supports the basic thrust of the extended mind idea, which is a challenge to a narrow Cartesian conception of the mind. More positively, it supports an enactive conception of mind which views cognition not as an internal process, but as a kind of action in-the-world. And (3) it suggests an appropriate response to a basic criticism of the extended mind hypothesis by focusing on the process of cognitive engagement, where basic kinds of cognition are only present when agents (and their brains) are actively engaged with the world.

Daniel D. Hutto (Hertfordshire), "Enactivism: Why Be Radical" Enactivist approaches to the mind treat consciousness and cognition as phenomena constituted by, and thus to be understood in terms of, specifiable patterns of interaction between organisms (or other suitably organized systems) and aspects of their environments. Enactivism is exciting precisely because it starts in a different place from the long established paradigm in cognitive science – a paradigm which regards any form of bona fide intelligent activity as necessarily and essentially requiring the manipulation of representations of some kind or other. In abandoning this assumption, enactivists promote the idea that there is no such thing as a fundamental (and in-itself still to be explained) symbolic-computational basis for

embodied cognition, enactivism, and the extended mind intelligent activity. Rather they hold that cognition is something that emerges from the self-organizing activities of organisms and that these are constituted by their essentially embedded and embodied interactions with their environments over time. Drawing, inter alia, on insights from phenomenology, dynamical systems theory and robotics, proponents of enactivism ask us to invert the familiar explanatory strategies of orthodox cognitive science by supposing that “Abilities are prior to theories ... Competence is prior to content … [and that] knowing how is the paradigm cognitive state and it is prior to knowing that” (Fodor 2008b, p. 10). The framework has proved popular; a great variety of enactivist proposals have now been advanced about many topics, including: consciousness, perception, intentionality, attention, memory, social cognition and self-consciousness. This paper presents and promotes a novel form of enactivism; Radical enactivism. Radical enactivism’s defining feature is its non-intellectualist, teleosemiotic account of basic cognition. This comes with an explicit rejection of claims that truthevaluable informational and representational content are inevitable ingredients of basic cognition. It is shown that version of enactivism is not only wholly in line with the spirit of the original and most philosophically challenging conception of enactivism, it is independently well-motivated – i.e. radical enactivism is entailed by a proper understanding of how organisms respond to and engage with relevant features of their environments in cognitively sensitive ways. Additionally, it is shown how understanding basic cognitive capacities in a content-free way provides the right tools for answering a persistent objection – i.e. that any version of enactivism which focuses on the autonomous, self-organizing activity of complex systems lacks the requisite explanatory resources for an adequate, self-standing understanding of cognition.

Ben Jeffares (Victoria University of Wellington), "The coevolution of tools and minds: The extended mind in the hominin lineage" The structuring of our environment to provide cues and reminders for ourselves is common: We leave notes on the fridge, we have a particular place for our keys where we deposit them, making them easy to find. We alter our world to streamline our cognitive tasks. But how did hominins gain this capacity? What pushed our ancestors to structure their physical environment in ways that buffered thinking and extended minds? I argue that the capacity to engage in these behaviours is a byproduct of increased tool investment and tool curation, which in turn was necessary because of increasingly heterogeneous environments. The minute tools are carried and cared for, they can begin to undergo selection for capacities other than their intended function, they become available as cognitive primers, and what's more, they become available as signals. I explore the trajectory of this co-evolutionary feedback loop of Hominins and their tools, and demonstrate the role tools have in shaping our thinking.

Richard Menary (University of Wollongong), “The Biological Basis of Cognitive Integration” In this paper I argue that there is a strong biological argument in favour of cognitive integration; which is the view that cognitive capacities can be understood, in part, as capacities to manipulate the environment. A central strand in the argument for cognitive integration is a thesis of continuity: manipulative capacities, such as a spider’s capacity to catch prey by constructing, maintaining and manipulating her web, are continuous with cognitive manipulative abilities, such as my capacity to

embodied cognition, enactivism, and the extended mind think by constructing, maintaining and manipulating representational systems. I argue for this thesis of cognitive continuity in the following way: 1. Niche construction often leads to the development of organism–environment systems, such as extended phenotypes. Organism–environment systems are predisposed to create and manipulate their environmental niches. An organism’s manipulations of its environment, whilst part of its phylogenetic history, can in many cases, be fine tuned and calibrated through learning or reinforcement as part of its ontogenetic history. 2. The phylogenetic history of homo-sapiens illustrates how we move on a continuum from biological manipulations as adaptations in our hominid forebears, to tool use and imitation, through to language and the development of representational systems. They all involve niche construction and manipulating the environment and they eventually result in a culture which is a repository of representational systems that is passed on to later generations via learning and development.

David Simpson (University of Wollongong), “Intellectual Skills” Much of the discussion of skills or know-how, and the debate between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism, has focussed on embodied skilful practice, with bicycle riding being the orienting example. I don’t dismiss this discussion, but I want to focus here on skills of a more ‘intellectual’ type: knowledge of others and our engagement in speech acts. Drawing on Ryle, Davidson and others, I hope to show that these achievements, as much as bicycle riding, need to be understood as skilful practices, and cannot be explicated in intellectualist terms.

Kim Sterelny (ANU/Wellington), "Minds: Extended or Scaffolded?" This paper discusses two perspectives, each of which recognises the importance of environmental resources in enhancing and amplifying our cognitive capacity. One is the Clark-Chalmers model, extended further by Clark and others. The other derives from general niche construction models of evolution, which emphasise the role of active agency in enhancing the adaptive fit between agent and world. In the human case, much niche construction is epistemic: making cognitive tools and assembling other informational resources that support and scaffold intelligent action. I shall argue that Extended Mind cases are a limiting special case of such environmental scaffolding, and so while the Extended Mind picture is not false, the niche construction model is a more helpful framework for understanding human action.

Karola Stotz (University of Sydney), “Cognitive Niche Construction: From OrganismEnvironment Systems to Extended Minds” The last years have seen the emergence of theories in cognitive science focusing on the active role of organisms in shaping their own environment, including their cognitive niche. Approaches such as embodied and embedded, distributed and extended cognition look beyond ‘what is inside your head’ to the old Gibsonian question of ‘what your head is inside of’. Elsewhere I have argued that developmental systems unite the organism with its developmental niche, understood as the set of genetic, epigenetic, ecological, social and symbolic

embodied cognition, enactivism, and the extended mind legacies inherited by the organism as necessary developmental resources. This paper will argue that similarly the cognitive system, including the cognitive processes, mechanisms and architectures that constitute it, extends beyond brain and body into the physical, social and cultural environment of the individual agent. The human-built cognitive niche includes devices from pen, paper and iphone to language and general cultural symbols, which rather than mere tools are part and partial of the extended mind whenever they are involved in a cognitive process. To the canny cognizer the epistemic niche present itself not just as a problem space (as a partially self-made adaptive or selective niche) but even more so as a problem-solving resource (both in term of modified informational environment and informational processing equipment).

John Sutton (Macquarie), "Interaction and Improvisation: notes on the interanimation of heterogeneous resources in distributed cognition" One key argument for the extended mind highlights the fact that the (internal and external) resources on which we draw in complex activities of acting and remembering are often highly disparate. We integrate complementary neural, affective, bodily, environmental, social, and technological resources at many timescales, and not always successfully or seamlessly. In this talk I discuss the coordination or interanimation of these wildly heterogeneous resources, aiming to show that study of such motley distributed systems is still tractable as long as the sciences in question include cognitive ethnography as well as phenomenology, cognitive psychology, and the neurosciences. I focus first on socially distributed remembering, much neglected in philosophical work on the extended mind. By way of results from our studies of collaborative recall and transactive memory among strangers, friends, and older couples, I sketch some conditions in which social interaction supports constructive remembering, rather than curtailing or confusing it. Secondly, introducing themes of which we'll hear much more in Wayne Christensen's talk, I discuss improvised interactions between differently-balanced sets of inner and outer resources in skilled movement and performance.