Cognition, situated Author: Elena Pasquinelli [INSTNICOD] Contributors: none Current version (on 2006-02-09) The claim of the situated character of cognition is a characteristic of a group of approaches to perception, action and cognition that in some way relate to each other and converge in the new wave of approaches to cognitive studies that can be indicated as “enactive cognitive sciences”. This new wave is characterized by a strong accent upon the role of action in contest, for consequence upon the situated and embodied character of cognitive processes. Nevertheless, the enactive, situated, embodied view is not a homogeneous theoretical system. Some of the representative figures of this new wave (such as [Brooks, 1991], [Kirsh, 1991] and [Pylyshyn, 2000]) put a strong accent on the fact that action, perception and cognition are anchored in some state of the world external even to the body. External states can be constituted by other people symbolic processes [Vygotskij, 1962] [Hutchins, 1995] and by technological devices and other objects [Hutchins, 1995] [Clancey, 1995]. This kind of situated cognition is also indicated as distributed cognition. As [Brooks, 1991] does, distributed cognition approaches affirm the role of the world and of the actions of collaborating agents in the shaping of high-level cognitive processes. The situated and distributed character of cognition leads to an externalist view of the mind, as it is explicated by [Clark, 1998]: the external reality is responsible for the beliefs of the individual by driving cognitive processes and behaviors of the organism. In Brooks’ view, it is the embeddedness, the fact that the system interacts with the world through its own body, and not the internal structure that is held to be responsible for what can be considered the intelligent behavior of the system. Because the state of the world guides their behaviour, creatures need no explicit representation of the world or of the intentions of the system in order to generate intelligent behavior. Another possible attitude toward representations is to accept the existence and the role played by symbolic representations

but to advance the necessity of integrating symbolic representations with other kinds of representations which are not based upon symbolic encoding. [Pylyshyn, 2000] argues for the necessity of including demonstrative reference or visual indexes in order to integrate purely conceptual representations so as to make action in context possible. Symbolic representations are not given away, but they are recognized as insufficient for explaining action on objects based upon visual inputs. A representation that there is a stone in a box is not sufficient to prompt action (emptying the box) if it is not anchored to the situation in which action should take place; there must be a representation that there is a stone in this box. The representations that there is a stone in this box is a demonstrative index or demonstrative reference which is situated in the egocentric perception of the agent. In absence of demonstrative reference, an exhaustive representation should be prompted of the entire scene, including all its properties encoded in absolute terms. Demonstratives are normally required by the visual system and can be used in robotics in order to connect perception to action. [Clancey, 1995] proposes a view of situated learning and cognition which considers situatedness in a larger sense, such as in the case of the situated and embodied Creatures proposed by Brooks. Contrarily to Brooks, representations are not necessarily discarded within this approach, but the necessity of understanding how representations are created and given meaning is affirmed. In the process of learning, for instance, representations are not means for gaining new knowledge: a learner also participates in the creation of what constitutes a representation, that is in its meaning. The attribution of meaning to representations typically involves two levels of interaction with the external environment: the interpersonal level (social setting) and the gestural-material level (interaction with physical materials, perceptual activities). In many senses, then, cognition is situated: in a body, in a physical world and also in a social one.

References: Brooks, R. A. (1991). Intelligence Without Representation. Artificial Intelligence Journal(47), 139-159. Clancey, W. J. (1995). A tutorial on situated learning. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the International Conference on Computers and Education, Taiwan. Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 58, 10-23.

Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kirsh, D. (1991). Today the earwig, tomorrow man. Artificial Intelligence, 47, 161-184. Pylyshyn, Z. (2000). Situating vision in the world. Trends in Cognitive Science, 4(5), 197-207. Pylyshyn, Z. W. (2003). Seeing and Visualizing: It's Not What You Think. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vygotskij, L. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Related items: Cognition, distributed Cognitive sciences Enaction Enactive cognitive sciences Embodied cognition Representational/computational paradigm

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