Abstract
In this chapter I focus on the theoretical grounds of Wells’ Ecological Functionalism. In the first section, I briefly present and discuss the Extended Mind hypothesis, with special regard to the so-called parity principle, and to the concept of active externalism. In the second section, I explain the reasons why, on the one side, we should not worry (at least for the moment) about some ontological issues concerning the Extended Mind hypothesis (e.g., the question: Are the external devices we use in some cognitive activities constitutive parts of our mind?). On the other side, we should focus our attention on the explanation of the functional role of any relevant feature of a cognitive system, be it internal or external to the organism. In the third section, I discuss Wells’ arguments against the Computational Theory of Mind and the connectionist approach. In the last section, I present Wells’ original view of Turing machines as formal models for Gibson’s concept of affordance.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Another mental experiment reported by Clark and Chalmers in the same article involves rotations of geometric shapes in order to decide their fitting into sockets, as in the game of Tetris. Although this last example seems more suited as a starting point for the formulation of an original view about the functioning of the mind, for some reasons, which I will try to interpret later on this chapter, EMH’s critics focused their attention on Otto and Inga’s story.
- 2.
Hurley (2010) interestingly reconstructs a taxonomy of the varieties of externalism where two basic forms, the “what” (Putnam-Burge style) and “how” (e.g., EMH style) varieties, are combined with two possible fields of applications, namely applications to the “content” and/or to the “quality” of experience.
- 3.
Menary (2010) contains an interesting review of this debate from an externalist stance.
- 4.
I am purposely focusing on the meshed position (functionalism + computationalism) but I am not suggesting that we can treat those as undistinguished views. This is a common mistake that must be avoided. See (Piccinini 2010) for a thorough analysis of this topic.
- 5.
Hereafter, for simplicity, I will use the expression ‘universal computer’ instead of the complete expression ‘digital universal computer’.
- 6.
As an example of this contrast, compare Wells position with the following quotation:
The nervous system, constituting an intricate web of neurons with \(10^{14}\) synaptic connections that adapt with experience, cannot be perceived as a static algorithm; the chemical and physical processes affecting the neuronal states, like other natural processes, are based on exact real values and are thus not specifiable by finite means (Siegelmann 2003, p. 105).
.
- 7.
- 8.
This remark does not mean that the inner part of a cognitive system cannot be able to make changes in its environment, but that a cognitive system need to take the structure of its environment as something already given, in order to make an adaptation to environmental conditions possible.
- 9.
A duality is “any symmetrical rule [...] where T applies to map X onto Z and Z onto X” (Shaw and Turvey 1981, p. 381).
- 10.
In situation theory a constraint is defined as a “dependency relation between situation types” (Greeno 1994, p. 338).
References
Adams F, Aizawa K (2001) The bounds of cognition. Philos Psychol 14:43–64
Adams F, Aizawa K (2009) Why the mind is still in the head. In: Robbins P, Aydede M (eds) The Cambridge handbook of situated cognition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Adams F, Aizawa K (2010a) Defending the bounds of cognition. In: Menary R (ed) The extended mind. Bradford Books/MIT Press, London
Adams F, Aizawa K (2010b) The value of cognitivism in thinking about extended cognition. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 9:570–603
Aizawa K (2010) The coupling-constitution fallacy revisited. Cogn Syst Res 11:332–342
Burge T (1979) Individualism and the mental. Midwest Stud Philos 5:73–122
Chou CST, Scammell T (2001) The sleep switch: hypothalamic control of sleep and wakefulness. Trends Neurosci 24:726–731
Clark A (2008) Supersizing the mind. Oxford University Press, New York
Clark A (2010) Coupling, constitution, and the cognitive kind: a reply to Adams and Aizawa. In: Menary R (ed) The extended mind. Bradford Books/MIT Press, London
Clark A, Chalmers D (1998) The extended mind. Analysis 58:10–23
Cleeremans A (1993) Mechanisms of implicit learning: connectionist models of sequence processing. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Cleeremans A, Servan-Schreiber D, McClelland J (1989) Finite state automata and simple recurrent networks. Neural Comput 1:372–381
Cleeremans A, Destrebecqz A, Boyer M (1998) Implicit learning: news from the front. Trends Cogn Sci 2:406–416
Gibson J (1966) The senses considered as perceptual systems. Houghton Mifflin, Boston
Gibson J (1977) The theory of affordances. In: Shaw R, Bransfordk J (eds) Perceiving, acting, and knowing. Toward an ecological psychology. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ
Gibson J (1979) The ecological approach to visual perception. Houghton Mifflin, Boston
Greeno J (1994) Gibson’s affordances. Psychol Rev 101:336–342
Hurley S (2010) The varieties of externalism. In: Menary R (ed) The extended mind. Bradford Books/MIT Press, London
Liu Y, Li J, Ye J (2010) Histamine regulates activities of neurons in the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus. J Physiol 588:4103–4116
McCulloch W, Pitts W (1943) A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity. Bull Math Biophys 5:115–133
Menary R (2010) Introduction: the extended mind in focus. In: Menary R (ed) The extended mind. Bradford Books/MIT Press, London
Minsky ML (1967) Computation, finite and infinite machines. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Piccinini G (2010) The mind as neural software? Understanding functionalism, computationalism, and computational functionalism. Philos Phenomenol Res 81:269–311
Putnam H (1975) The meaning of ‘meaning’. In: Gunderson K (ed) Language, mind, and knowledge. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
Shaw R, Turvey M (1981) Coalitions as models for ecosystems: a realist perspective on perceptual organization. In: Kubovy M, Pomerantz J (eds) Perceptual organization. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ
Siegelmann H (1995) Computation beyond the Turing limit. Science 258:545–548
Siegelmann H (2003) Neural and super-Turing computing. Minds Mach 13:103–114
Turing A (1936) On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem. In: Proceedings of the London mathematical society. Oxford Journals, London, pp 230–265
Turvey M (1992) Affordances and prospective control: an outline of the ontology. Ecol Psychol 4:173–187
Wells A (2002) Gibson’s affordances and Turing’s theory of computation. Ecol Psychol 14:140–180
Wells A (2005) Rethinking cognitive computation: Turing and the science of the mind. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pinna, S. (2017). Cognition as Organism-Environment Interaction. In: Extended Cognition and the Dynamics of Algorithmic Skills. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 35. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51841-1_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51841-1_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51840-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51841-1
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)