Dror, I. & Harnad, S. (2009) Offloading Cognition onto CognitiveTechnology. In Dror & Harnad (Eds): Cognition Distributed: How Cognitive Technology Extends Our Minds. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
"Cognizing" (e.g., thinking, understanding, and knowing) is a mental state. Systems without mental states, such as cognitive technology, can sometimes contribute to human cognition, but that does not make them cognizers. Cognizers can offload some of their cognitive functions onto cognitive technology, thereby extending their performance capacity beyond the limits of their own brain power. Language itself is a form of cognitive technology that allows cognizers to offload some of their cognitive functions onto the brains of other cognizers. Language also extends cognizers' individual and joint performance powers, distributing the load through interactive and collaborative cognition. Reading, writing, print, telecommunications and computing further extend cognizers' capacities. And now the web, with its network of cognizers, digital databases and software agents, all accessible anytime, anywhere, has become our “Cognitive Commons,” in which distributed cognizers and cognitive technology can interoperate globally with a speed, scope and degree of interactivity inconceivable through local individual cognition alone. And as with language, the cognitive tool par excellence, such technological changes are not merely instrumental and quantitative: they can have profound effects on how we think and encode information, on how we communicate with one another, on our mental states, and on our very nature.
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Harnad, S. (2003b) Categorical Perception . Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science . Nature Publishing Group. Macmillan. http://www.youtube.com...
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(10a. Comment Overflow) (50+)
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Psychology PSYC 538, Winter 2018: Categorization, Communication and Consciousness Time : Tuesdays 2:35-5:25 Place : STBIO S3/3 ...
I find it very interesting that there seems to be a U shaped curve in the way in which we view organisms as being only one single organism or many. At one end, we have collections of cells, each perform a particular function and together they form a single organism. We do not consider each individual cell as being a separate organism in a person’s body. At the far end of the spectrum we have larger individual organisms, like ants that people contemplate could be considered one single organism. In the middle, we have individuals that are two separate entities in a single body like Siamese twins. In this situation we do not consider the two twins as being a single organism even though these are conjoined. The article mentions that this is because we consider then as having two separate minds. Why is it that this perception disappears when we consider larger groups of organisms, be they small like cells or larger like a colony of ants? Surely in the case of ants, each organism has a separate mind, so why does the view not hold up at that end? Perhaps at the far end of the spectrum individuals are so numerous that they become more and more indistinct from one another when we consider then as a whole (like cells in a body) and so we are more likely to see them as “cogs in a wheel” of a larger organism rather than as separate entities. It seems as though we perceive a large set of organisms as being able to somehow develop a separate mind out of sheer force of number which is quite illogical but highly intriguing.
ReplyDeleteI think ants are individual organisms, that they have nervous systems, and that they feel. Amoeba can coalesce into a superorganism (a mushroom-like slime mold) but it does not have a nervous system, so it does not feel. Neither does and any colony, a flock of birds or a school of fish.
DeleteKlein, Colin and Barron, Andrew B. (2016) Insects have the capacity for subjective experience. Animal Sentience 9(1)
Vallverdu, J., Castro, O., Mayne, R., Talanov, M., Levin, M., Baluska, F., … & Adamatzky, A. (2017). Slime mould: the fundamental mechanisms of cognition.
“Why, then, would we no longer consider that same datum as part of that distributed cognitive state just because its locus happened to be outside the cognizer’s body?”
ReplyDeleteAs mentioned in the previous article (11a), someone relying on notes in a notebook to recall things is performing exactly the same task as someone relying on their memory processes. From an easy-problem perspective, both are doing the same thing: remembering something with the help of the processes of reading and of recollecting, respectively. Does the fact that the recollecting occurs ‘outside the cognizer’s body’ exclude it from the realm of cognition? I wouldn’t think so, as one still cognizes¬ as–though I’m not particularly familiar with the exact processes that occur–one brings data not present within one’s thought into one’s thought by means of searching (one’s memory, or one’s physical memory i.e. the notebook). Perhaps we could call it by a different name: perhaps the fact that the notebook is detached from the cognizer’s body makes it an unreliable mechanism, and thus, unlike memory, must involve a risk factor of suddenly disappearing. But all this is superfluous–the processes occurring when one person looks into one’s memories and another person looks into one’s notebook are essentially the same.
Don't give in to Clark and Chalmers so easily!
DeleteRemember the first week of the course, remembering your 3rd grade school teacher? We have no idea how our brains do it; we're just handed the answer on a platter.
So, yes, the search and retrieval could have been done by google. Whether it was internal to your head or external to it does not matter, because it is not a felt state!
But "mind" and "mental" mean felt.
Once you know the teacher was Mrs. Grundy, knowing that is a felt state, hence a mental state (while you're feeling it).
We are doing reverse-engineering here: What is the machine that is generating (and having) that felt state? It's your brain. Google is not part of it. Neither is Mrs. Grundy. Any more than a star millions of light-years away is part of your mental state when you are looking at it. The star may already be dead for millennia!
The only thing that could be part of the mental state is the proximal stimulus on your retina, and from there inward.
"You" are no wider than your head (or your skin, if you want to include peripheral nervous system activity).
I was left pretty confused after the previous article, but I think this paper did a much better job at articulating the important distinction between extensions of our cognitive capacities and extensions of our minds. Sure, the environment that we are embedded in is filled with things that can extend our sensorimotor and cognitive capacities because we can offload cognitive processes into them. However, this does not mean that the things themselves are cognizing. They are neither mental or feeling. I am curious, though, about our ability to offload into other cognizers. If/when we offload into humans who are definitely cognizing, what does this mean for cognitive science?
ReplyDeleteIt means sometimes it's not google but someone else's brain that's giving you the information.
DeleteThere are many cognitive capacities that can be offloaded to non-cognitive systems: a notebook or a laptop can replace our memory; a car can replace our motor movement; a calculator can replace our mathematical abilities. Some of them even goes beyond the limitations of human capacity, achieving faster speed and better accuracy. However, the distinction is, neither of these cognitive offload has the ability to cognize. Cognition still solely exists in our brain. When contemplating on nonliving objects, things are not ambiguous. However, one thing that is interesting to consider is that, for instance, we all know split brain patients, who after the surgery seems to have two separate consciousnesses that can make two different decisions at the same time. Does it mean our felt state is actually separatable within an individual? Then what is the boundary between one mind and two?
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, since feelings are generated from our brain, although we do not know how and why, it seems perfectly logical and possible to connect two brains neurologically. So will it be possible to connect two brains biochemically that make the two beings feel both their own feelings and their counterparts, or once we do this, the two minds will be emerged as one?
I don't think the split-brain patient has two minds (like Siamese twins) -- two parallel sets of felt states. It only feels one thing at a time. But it can do more than one thing at a time (unconsciously -- unfelt).
DeleteIf neurology connects two brains, it will either still be two minds, each feeling its own separate (but similar) feelings -- or it will become one mind, with two bodies.
The question is not neurological (or rather it is more than neurological). A mind is a feeler. And a feeler cannot feel any feelings but its own. That's the nature of feeling.
(When you empathize, by the way, you are not feeling someone else's feelings yourself; but you are perceiving what they are likely to be feeling, as when a mother perceives that her child is hungry, or tired, without herself feeling hungry or tired. Or like when an beta male chimp perceives that the alpha is angry with him, and about to attack him. The beta feels his own fear, not the alpha's anger. -- And the hallucinogen-induced feeling that we're all having the same feeling is an illusion: at best we're having similar feelings; at worst they're all different feelings, but we're very suggestible...)
RE: Neural vs Google Storage and Retrieval.
ReplyDelete“So what difference does it make if you recall it through an unconscious retrieval state in your brain, or by Googling it (again relying on a state in some remote computer and database of which you are not conscious)?”
It seems to me like the difference is quite obvious. The end state might be the same (i.e. you retrieve the same information), but as we have seen with Searle’s Chinese room, the process is an integral part of cognition. You cannot just say that googling is similar to retrieving information from unconscious states. You might not be conscious about it, but while you sleep your brain is still active and searching your memory to find the name of the poet you were looking for. Thus, can we really say that these two “external” recalls are the same just because in the end you get the same answer to your question…?
The two kinds of unfelt processing (internal and external) are not the same, but what difference does it make for the question of the "extended mind"? A mental state is a felt state, not an unfelt state. How wide can a felt state be. (Not the input to the felt state: the felt state itself.)
DeleteIn this reading, what stood out the most for me was the idea that the use of cognitive technology may affect our brain development and capacities.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that constant and continued human interaction with technologies that we can offload brain function onto may alter our brain development is something I have thought a lot about before.
I’ve firsthand felt the effects of taking pictures and videos as a way to substitute my memory. I find that I remember events MUCH better when I don’t take a picture or video of them because when I do it implicitly influences me to not remember the event at hand. Will episodic memory capacity decrease with the increase of relying on pictures and videos to offload memory capacity??
Likewise, with the rise of more and more people using google maps for navigation are we going to slowly lose our spatial awareness and navigation capabilities? Or, maybe instead of losing our capabilities they morph into something different. For example, instead of visualizing streets when we give directions, maybe we’ll start visualizing google maps layouts instead.
I wonder if offloading brain function onto new technologies will decrease our overall brain function, or if will it leave room for new skills to be acquired that we didn’t have space for before.
In the case of pictures/videos, is the poor memory of the event because you feel you don't need to remember it, or because you're focusing on taking the picture rather than attending to what's happening? Seeing as attention is an important part of memory formation my bet would be on the latter.
DeletePeople have made similar arguments for every new technology. Cultures with strong oral traditions were skeptical that writing would be a detriment since people wouldn't have to remember everything anymore. It's true that many functions of the brain are use it or lose it, If I remember correctly one study found a difference in the region of the hippocampus related to spatial memory in London Cab drivers who had to memorize their routes, but I'm not sure that it's really a bad thing. So long as the technology doesn't fail there won't be a difference in performance, and we can spend more time on other things.
Nobody knows for sure yet whether offloading neural functions onto cognitive technology will weaken those neural functions, nor whether they will redeploy elsewhere. As long as the technology is available, and does what you need, there is no obvious problem, but if it weakens our ability to do other things we need to be able to do, then there is a problem. The analogy with motor activity is relevant: Use it or lose it (as Oscar notes)...
DeleteAyal, I find your post very interesting as these thoughts have crossed my mind before as well. It is my opinion that, in general, having these tools like google maps do free up space in our minds to do other things, but I also agree that it becomes an issue when we become reliant on these technologies. If you always use google maps, you may be passively following directions without actively knowing where you are (again, related to attention as Oscar pointed out), which could be detrimental to your sense of direction. That being said, I don't see this as being a permanent or disastrous issue. It is simply the way we adapt. As far as the comment on the taxi drivers, use it or lose it is definitely in effect here. There was a study done that showed evidence pointing to the possibility that London taxi drivers are not able to effectively acquire new visuo-spatial information (as if their brains are at capacity with their current knowledge); so, in this case, having extensive spatial knowledge may come at a cost. Perhaps there will be some plasticity-driven changes in our brain if we under-use a brain area as well?
DeleteI think this paper did a great job of clearing up the fuzzy lines that Clark and Chalmers made in the 11a reading. The cognitive extensions that they are describing can extend our cognitive capacity, but they do not represent the cognitive states themselves. That is, Otto’s notebook that was described to be analogous to Inga’s memory is not a cognitive state because it can not cognize. Since the ability to cognize is a conscious phenomenon, his notebook cannot also be a conscious state because it is not feeling, but doing.
ReplyDeleteI agree, this paper really cleared up the felt aspect that these technologies don’t have- although they can add to our memories and cognition they are not conscious or capable of feeling. Putting this argument in the perspective of feeling makes the question much easier to answer- for example, is a notebook a cognizer? It’s pretty easy to say no.
Delete“Is cognitive technology limited to increasing the cognitive performance capacity of its users? No. We have argued that cognitive tools are not themselves cognizers, nor do they have -- or serve as distributed substrates of -- mental states.”
ReplyDeleteI think this summary from the paper is really important and helped me to understand the concept better. In my opinion I don’t think you can argue that external sources of knowledge are capable of cognizing (especially the ones that we have modern times), however you can understand that these resources help us through the interactions that we can have with them. The way that I understand it is that we don’t see a calculator as cognizing when it does the numbers since that would mean it was thinking on its own. On the flipside that same calculator would be a part of cognitive technology if we were to use it to help us solve a complex math problem which is a complex mental state in our minds.
Dror and Harnad explicitly and clearly confront many of the conflicts raised by Clark and Chalmers with respect to what cognition encompasses. That is, D+H provide a straight-forward explanation as to why we should not consider our mind as being extended beyond our body/brain. D+H impose an important distinction between the mind and the external technology it uses: “It is still cognizers who cognize -- the tool-users, not the tools.” While cognitive technology/tools allow for more efficient thinking and cognition, the tools themselves are not thinking or cognizing. Rather it us, as the cognizers, who use the tools and allow for them to aid in our cognition.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, while Clark and Chalmers appear to be caught up in the possibility of the extension of our ‘doing’ capacity onto the external world, D+H address the question of the extension of our ‘feeling’ capacity. As Steven says, ‘mind’, ‘thinking’, etc. are all just weasel words for ‘feeling’. Therefore, the issue at hand is best viewed as that of the ‘extended feeling’, rather than the ‘extended mind’ and we must turn to FELT states to determine its bounds. D+H effectively do this through their analogy of a migraine, which represents a ‘felt’ state. It is easy to conceptualize that a migraine cannot be distributed across others’ heads. Similarly, any felt state cannot be extended in such a way either, and hence feeling is internal. So, if mind = feeling, the mind too is internal (rather than extended).
The Siamese twins reveal that minds are tied to a brain (a brain has a mind), which may not be exceptionally shocking but perhaps still worth restating, and that the locus for minds (felt states specifically) must be a brain, this is where feeling occurs despite extensions of other cognitive capacities. But the case of multiple personality disorder could very interesting if there really are multiple minds… which means that one brain can have distinct ‘minds’ associated with it – minds which are feeling separately at different times i.e. personality 1 really never feels what personality 2 does (which is perhaps the only way to know if minds are separate… it’s like the other mind’s problem happening within 1 body). The explanation of how and why that happens itself is very interesting…what does that mean for our overarching theory of 'feeling'?
ReplyDeleteI wonder how much Theory of Mind relates to “mind reading” in this sense. If theory of mind requires us to be able to put ourselves in the mind of another person and essentially infer what they do or do not know about the world, is this the other minds problem in essence? Sometimes people with intellectual disabilities are not capable of solving Theory of Mind problems, so I wonder how much this specific task is related
ReplyDeleteI agree that our mental states are internal to us and what I feel no one else can feel. But what I find interesting is that sometimes we are often convinced to feel something after being told several times what it should feel like. In that sense, we as humans are very easily persuaded. But in the end, even if someone is brain washed and tries to believe the same as another mind, that person will eventually come to their own conclusion and make up their mind according to their mental states.
ReplyDeleteI find this idea of a "collective" mind interesting as well. There's been controversial research that suggests things like ADHD and depression are at such high levels right now because we are talking about them so much. For example being at such a rigorous university, our chances of depression are elevated, so then we may expect to be depressed and therefore end up becoming depressed. Now like I said these are controversial studies and I'm not 100% supporting them, however it does point to the influence your society can have on your felt states. And this may lead to many different brains feeling a similar brain state however they are not the same brain states because a brain state is completely unique to the individual experiencing it.
Delete"Human discourse is certainly interactive cognition, indeed collaborative cognition, and the speed and distance at which we could speak, and understand our interlocutors, set biological limits on the rate and scope of that collaborative cognition, hundreds of thousands of years ago. "
ReplyDeleteThis article was one of my favorites of the entire year. I felt that it very systematically explained the limits of our cognition and debunked the idea of distributed cognition extremely well.
I particularly appreciated the examination of cognition as interactive and/or collaborative. In discussing how the pace of interactions were limited by written word (which was important for archiving and communicating across distance) but then accelerated by online interactions, I felt that this paper highlighted the role of our cognition in these processes.
Further, I felt like the point that really drove home the argument against distributed cognition was the clarification that mental states are conscious states. While technology can augment our cognition, without feeling how can it be a part of our cognition?
"The only reason we want to call the brain states that occur while we are conscious mental states is that they occur while we are in a conscious state, and they physically implement that conscious state. But just as vegetative states such as the regulation of breathing, which occur unconsciously while we are conscious, are nevertheless not themselves mental, nor part of our mental state, why would we want to call the unconscious state that “delivers” our conscious mental state mental?"
ReplyDeleteI think this article did a great example systematically addressing and disproving the "extended minds" theory of the previous paper, especially in explaining the concept of "cognitive technology." After reading the Clark and Chalmers paper, I had a hard time explaining to myself why I was so uncomfortable with their explanations of active externalism, but I was able to differentiate between memory recall (which is episodic, and feels like something) and simple input-output function similar to Googling something or automatically regurgitating information (ex: multiplication tables), which can be brain states without being felt states.
I found this paper was not only effective in highlighting the ways in which cognizers employ external environmental tools and technologies to aid in cognition, but in acknowledging the ways in which these tools in turn shape our own cognition and thinking. Language for instance, which is arguably the most powerful cognitive tool, has undoubtedly altered (if not entirely revamped) the ways in which we think, interact, and communicate, and ultimately has reshaped our minds. More recent technologies have continued to influence our minds; email and texting have “accelerated the potential speed of written interactions in almost real-time to something closer to the speed of thought.” And I am certain that with the continued development of cognitive technologies, our thinking and cognition will continue to be altered. Thus, unlike Clark and Chalmers contention (that the mind extends onto the external environment), D+H highlight that the mind rather engages with the external environment and it in turn shapes the mind.
ReplyDeleteIt would make sense that these somatic extenders help us cognize better but in and of themselves don't cognize nor would be considered an extension of the brain. Although the tools we use make us more productive they don't make us cognize, only enhance the cognition going on already. They also help us do and not feel therefore dont cognize. The points brought up about wide-body and how you cant have the brain smeared all around the universe also helped me wrap my head around the mind extenders and how that type of argument does not work as you would not have cognition flowing throughout the world, it would have to be cognition in one individual and therefore not out in the open.
ReplyDeleteWhich level of turing test must be passed to achieve mental states? Turing never explicitly stated that T3, a full sensorimotor robot, would have feeling. Beyond that, how would you differentiate a TT robot using cognitive technology from a T robot's "mental states"? Doesn't the cognitive technology (aka the code written by a human programmer) enable the robot to have these mental states? This extra step of removal makes a TT robot a stronger example of distributed cognition than a human brain.
ReplyDelete"Hence, although sensorimotor and cognitive technology can undeniably extend our bodies' sensorimotor and cognitive performance power in the outside world, only their sensorimotor input and output contact points with our bodies are part of our cognitive (mental) state.
I understand that sensorimotor technology extending our body's "feeling" is contained within the input and output contact points. Like if you are driving a fast car, you feel as though you're going much faster than if you were walking. However, I don't see how the same is true for cognitive technology. Because of the advances in cognitive technology, we can go beyond what our basic minds can do, and breech the limitations of our humanity. For example, it is possible to have a robot with capabilities beyond what is humanly possible, including things like seeing colors we cannot or hearing frequencies beyond our range. Despite this technology, we will never have the subjective experience of feeling what it is like to see these colors, or hear those sounds. Without this feeling, the technology cannot put us in a mental/felt state.
I'm not sure about the answer here, but from what I understood, cognitive technology can definitely go beyond our body and into the environment, but that doesn't make it a mental/cognitive state. For example, language is technically a cognitive technology that we developed, but it is part of our mental state because it remains within our bodies reach. Additionally, the main issue, like you mention at the bottom, is that regardless of being able to replicate certain actions or even potentially go beyond what we are currently capable of, it is not something that we "feel" or something that can be considered "inherent" to us. Take my words with a grain of salt however because this is something Im quite confused about to but am attempting to understand.
DeleteThis paper, solidified my thoughts after reading the article by Chalmers. Firstly, that the main reason one dismisses the externalism theory is due to a distinction between computation and cognition. In this paper, the author declares cognition as a mental state (aka having a feeling, understanding element), which allows one to deconstruct all of Chalmer's point, which would only be valid in a computationalist world (where cognitive states become instances of functional states, than a tool becomes an extension of the cognition). In the article, the author explains, how cognitive technologies should be accurately looked at, "Cognizers can offload some of their cognitive functions onto cognitive technology, thereby extending their performance capacity beyond the limits of their own brain power." Essentially, a calculator can aid in calculating an answer, much faster and perhaps beyond my scope of arithmetic, but because a calculator lacks understanding, the numbers are merely squiggles and squaggles that it outputed based on the inputs done by me. Between myself and the calculator, only I can interpret the squiggles and squaggles on the screen, because I have a mind, and I can understand.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite point made in this article was about the siamese twins. When faced with the concept of multiple TT passing robots interacting and collaborating, in addition to the ants and Gaia examples, they fail when confronted with the concept of distinct minds. The question for all those becomes are there distinct minds, forget if they are one body, or if they all aid in one function. The question than becomes how do I know they have a mind, the creative answer becomes are they capable of feeling a migraine (thus reinforcing they have a mental state). If they can each have a migraine (or any feeling situation) the question than becomes if ant #1 has a migraine, can ant #1 'extend' its migraine to ant #2? If they can't which, nothing can, then you can not say there is an external mind.
ReplyDelete"What difference does it make if the database in
which the datum is stored, outside your awareness, is in your brain, or on the shelf of a library, or in someone else’s brain?"
This was said while discussing distributed databases in the context that some children might never actually memorize things but instead rely on external devices to store information. I would argue that the key difference between relying on an external or internal database, would be the mechanism by which we access these databases. The neural processes through which one would access an internal database for going through the multiplication tables would almost certainly have a different firing pattern than just looking at the answer in a calculator. However, it is debatable if there is a functional difference in what having an internal or external database allows us to do. However what we must remember is that there is most likely a difference in the feeling of accessing an internal vs external database, which relates further into the idea of felt and unfelt states as related to internal processes. This idea would be that you can feel like you know 2+2 = 4, but that feeling of knowing can only be internal, it cannot be projected on to the external database or tool.
I don’t think there’s disagreement that the internal mental process of consulting memory or a database is different, but the question is are the FELT states different? I don’t know what the difference in feeling would be. When I try recall my 3rd grade teacher’s name by consulting my memory or a notebook, the feeling is that first I don’t have the name “in my head” and then I do. Any explanation of how the feeling associated with memory retrieval differs from notebook consultation would verge either on a homuncular description or would refer to unfelt processes. You can’t even say that the difference is in understanding. Reading a mathematical proof doesn’t entail I understand it any less than if I regurgitate it from memory, so I would argue that the feeling of UNDERSTANDING the proof wouldn’t differ regardless how you retrieved the information (assuming your understanding of the proof is equivalent in the two situations)
Delete
ReplyDeleteAlthough Clark and Chalmers provided a tempting point of view in that both the brain and the external cognitive technology were equal in a dynamic system, this paper stipulated importantly that only the brain is cognizing, whereas the external technology is not. Features in the environment can extend our cognitive capacity, but they cannot be cognizers themselves, and there lies the important difference. They do not have feeling capacity, and therefore do not have mental states like humans do. This feeling capacity (as far as we know) cannot be distributed beyond the mind, the same way a headache cannot be. This at least points us in a direction to answer the hard problem - we can assume that the feeling generator is located in the mind, since it cannot be distributed (so science tells us so far). I guess this in part answers my questions in 11a. This paper addresses what Clark and Chalmers do not - the problem of feeling. Although I am in agreement that there exists a dynamic interplay between mind and environment, this paper showed that they are not equally causal when it comes to influencing an organism's behaviour - if they were, it would mean a pen and paper could be considered a cognizer, and though the other minds problem prevents us from ever being one hundred percent certain on this, we can assume these nonliving things are not.
In today's world, the offloading of information onto technology has caused a blur of the line between cognizers and the cognitive technology available to them. I enjoyed how the paper made clear the notion that just because a piece of the brain may be wirelessly connected from outside the body (i.e. it is no longer internal), does not make it distributed cognition. It is simply a distributed body, since it originates from the same entity. It is important to remind ourselves that mental states are feeling states, and that even the most sophisticated technologies (like Google, Wikipedia, and language - technologies that are distributed themselves and contribute to the speed and efficacy with which we cognize) are not cognizing.
“[…] only mental states are cognitive states […], cognition is only narrow, and […] the only place it is “distributed” is within a single cognizer’s brain.”
ReplyDeleteThis article clearly describes what Clark and Chalmers mean by “extended cognition”, and convincingly explains why there cannot be such a thing. Dror and Harnad emphasize that cognizing is a mental state or, in other words, a felt state. In order to have a mental state, one must have a mind. Therefore, calculators, computers, and Otto’s notebook, because they do not have minds, do not cognize. They are cognitive tools, meaning that they help us in our cognitive tasks such as learning and memorizing.
It is interesting to wonder about whether or not we could create machines that cognize and whether or not a brain is necessary in order for there to be a mind, as the above quote suggests. If we could create a robot that could do everything we can do, we would have to believe that it had a mind, just as we infer that other humans have minds because they can do everything we can do (because of the other-minds problem, we know that we have no way of knowing with certainty that anyone or anything else has a mind). Because cognizing is a mental state, if creating this cognizer without a brain were possible, it would show that one does not need a brain in order to have a mind.
After reading article 11a, I felt confused and frustrated about a lot of the points that Clark & Chalmers made in regards to the "extended mind". That being said, Dror & Harnad do a great job of breaking down the different arguments when it comes to the idea of extended cognition and really highlight and explain both what is meant by the terms, and how they relate to the world in a vivid way. One sentence that stands out in explaining why cognition cannot be extended outside the head is:
ReplyDelete"There is no such thing as a distributed migraine – or, rather, a migraine cannot be distributed more widely than one head. And as migraines go, so goes cognizing too -- and with it cognition: Cognition cannot be distributed more widely than a head -- not if a cognitive state is a mental state."
As Dror & Harnad state, if a cognitive state is a mental state, there is no way for it to extend beyond the brain. Furthermore, their explanation of how cognitive technologies/tools are used by the cognizers to enhance mental efficiency -- though these cognitive technologies are NOT a part of the cognizer -- is an important point to note, especially as we move forward in the world. The way that we interact with technology has seen rapid change over the past 100 years, and we can only expect that these changes are going to continue shaping the way that we live our lives. As Dror & Harnad point out, cognitive technology is likely to change the way that we "think, learn, and communicate", and we can only hope that it continues to be for the better.
I liked the overall layout of the paper, but I got a little confused over the distinction of conscious and unconscious states. From my understanding, conscious states are essentially mental states because they imply that we are feeling or cognizing in that moment. In addition, it is possible to be conscious, but to do things that do not require cognition/mental states, like breathing or controlling our bodily temperature, which would then be considered unconscious. However, consciousness and unconsciousness seem to fall more into a spectrum, than into distinct categories. I thought of two examples to try to show my point.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, there are many actions that we perform without being consciously aware of how exactly we are performing them. For example, when I walk to school every morning, I listen to music and think about everything except the fact that I am walking or even actively checking street lights to know that I can cross or can’t cross. From neuroscience classes, I have learned that I can do this because of my habitual behaviour learning centres that encode actions that I do frequently, so that I don’t spend time “thinking” about how to do them. It seems to me that this walk is occurring in a conscious state, but without any real cognitive/feeling properties.
In addition, I was thinking about subjects that have their corpus callosums cut, often to reduce epilepsy (i.e. split brain patients). Scientists have shown that if you present a word to their left eye only (which signals to the right side of the brain), their right side of the brain is unable to say this word because it cannot access the left hemisphere, which controls language. However, if a pencil is given to the left hand of the subject, they are more often than not able to draw the word that was given to them. When asked why they drew that photo, they are unable to answer and say “I guess I just felt like it.” Once again, I may be totally incorrect, but this seems like this falls some point between a conscious and unconscious state. While cognition is being used because there is a sense of “feeling” like doing something, it seems like they are not exactly conscious of their actions.
Cognizers are only cognizers if they are capable of cognition. Humans, of course, with our capacity to be introspective, to think, and to comprehend are cognizers. In an effort to connect with other cognizers, language has developed and has proved to be an incomparably strong tool in bridging the gap. It is important to note that the tools that help us cognize are not cognizers on their own, rather our minds act as the puppet master (cognizer) and language is the puppet (cognitive technology); we can use them and manipulate them to help us convey what we want. One of the greatest evolutionary developments is tool use, and I think language should be framed in this way as well. More literal examples of cognitive technology such as the internet help us as well. The internet can even be conceptualized as a cognitive tool for the cognitive tool; immediate use of language can only help us communicate with other cognizers in close proximity, whereas the internet opens up a new space that increases the efficacy of the primary tool. The internet can even help us time travel, allowing us to jump to literature and artefacts from decades and centuries ago. This mental efficacy and efficiency that we gain through the use of these tools (we can call it cognitive offloading) renders our cognitive abilities as limitless.
ReplyDelete“Changing how we think, learn, and communicate, our cognitive tools are reshaping our minds.”
ReplyDeleteAs Dror and Harnad explain, cognitive technologies do not have mental states, therefore they cannot be cognizers. However, they bring up a very interesting idea in stating that these tools reshape our minds. Though they will never be cognizers themselves, they can change the way we cognize by enhancing our cognitive capacities. For instance, because we have calculators, we can perform calculations at a much higher speed, enabling us to tackle larger problems. The Internet allows us to learn endless amounts of information about almost every topic we can think of, which helps us think creatively about current problems that need to be solved. In short, what these cognitive tools do is not cognizing, but allowing our cognitive abilities to work on problems that are increasingly complex. I think it is accurate to say that these cognitive technologies are not a part of our minds in the way that Clark and Chalmers suggested, but rather help shape and expand the ways in which we can use our minds.
I really like the line that this paper draws between cognizers and cognitive technologies. The difference between the two is what Clarke and Chalmers continuously mix up and it causes them to develop this notion of extended-mind which allows for cognitive technologies (like computers) to be part of a cognitive system, which of course does not make sense. Offloading onto cognitive technology is certainly useful and is a part of our everyday lives and thus, learning to know the difference between something that is doing the thinking and something that is used to help the thinker becomes more important. Notebooks and papers are not what is thinking. They are simply an aid for the thinker.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you int he sense that technology and pen and notebooks are a helping hand to the mind but are not part of the thinking process itself. However, after reading this paper, I realize that these cognitive technologies, although are an aid to us, restructures the way our mind works and thinks. In this paper it states, "offloading of brain function onto cognitive technology is now transforming our cerebral lives". As mentioned, cognitive technology affects the way we think. Could this be considered an extension of the mind then?
Delete“Physical technology altered the frequency, intensity, and manner of our muscle use, altering our muscular development (even introducing new ‘technological diseases’, such as carpal tunnel syndrome). Cognitive technology will do likewise, but instead of affecting our muscles it will affect our brain development, organization and capacities.”
ReplyDeleteI think this is a very interesting subject, because we can see beginnings of the effects of using technology in younger generations which usually horrifies older ones. Simple things such as remembering every phone number became remembering maybe a few or just putting them away in our contact lists. We can see how it effects our memory in this way, similarly to how using your phone to get around all the time reduces our capacity to memorize the cartography of a city or country. Maybe using technology for these things will allow us to store new cognitive functions in the future, or change the processes already there in a way that allows both our brains and technology to work together more efficiently. It’s already amazing how introducing technology to children changes the way they interact with the world, and it would be very interesting to see whether the modifications technology brings to our cognition could be negative.
I believe that the most important distinction made here is between cognitive technology affecting our brain development, capacities and use, versus technology actively expanding or extending what we would deem to be our cognition. Whether through cars, telescopes, or language Harnad is not discounting the importance of technology or cognitive technology for adding to our cognitive abilities. But that these additions must be separate from what could be considered to be our mind. Certainly we may feel as though we are be confined when squeezing through a tight space in a car, but should that car be taken away, our mind would still be quite present. As I was reading through this article I also thought of a way to discount dualism that seemed to make sense for me. Dualism is like Santa Claus. Let us assume for a moment we do not know how our presents arrive under the Christmas tree. It could very well be that a bearded man with a magical sled carried by flying reindeer delivers our Christmas presents while we are sleeping. However, there is no real evidence to support this assertion. A dualist may intercede: “but you cannot reject this possibility as there are not other confirmed ways in which the presents appear”. A monist could respond, “surely if you stay awake all Christmas eve you will not see Santa, nor Rudoloph and friends, and will instead see your parents bringing the presents.” The dualist could respond, “well Santa could have given your parents the presents, he could have an invisibility cloak for his sled” etc.. Ultimately, like the true dualist argument, this dualist is making far-fetched arguments in the realm of the imaginary to support far-fetched assertions. We must stick to what we know: we know that we have feeling, and that when we feel it seems to be the product of the brain. Believing that there is some other substance or interaction outside the brain that produces our feelings is like believing in Santa Claus.
ReplyDeleteThis article clarifies some distinctions that Chalmers and Clarke fail to make in their writings about extended cognition. They conflate cognitive technologies, which allow cognizers to offload some of their tasks onto their environment, with the cognizers themselves. As professor Harnad has pointed out, the most foolproof way to avoid confusing the two is to think of mental states as felt states. All the non-vegetative functions of our brain (which constitute the mind) are felt states. Chalmers and Clarke argue that mental states can extend to the tools cognizers use, but if we consider our mental states to be felt states, this idea falls apart. If I use a telescope to observe a dying star in another galaxy, the telescope (let alone the star) cannot be part of my mental state, because it isn’t part of my felt state. It provides input, and extends my visual ability, but no feeling occurs within the telescope.
ReplyDelete"We simply need to make the observation that what makes some of our capacities cognitive rather than vegetative ones is that we are conscious while we are executing them, and it feels like we are causing them to be executed – not necessarily that we are conscious of how they get executed"
ReplyDeleteThis is an important point of differentiation that Dror & Harnad make. Again, it is the notion of consciously 'feeling' that separates what is cognitive from what is not. It is not the idea that we understand 'cognitively' HOW they are occurring, but instead that it 'feels like something' when we cause them to be executed -- and that is what makes them cognitive capacities. This may be a bit outside of the scope of this class, but it makes me thing about what it means for when we are in states like dream-states? We are not 'conscious' but it definitely 'feels like' something while we dream. Or perhaps it feels like something after we dream. Either way, I wonder how dreaming would fit into the cognizing paradigm.
“This change in perceived body image is indeed a change in mental state; but although its distal inputs and outputs certainly extend wider than the body (as all sensory inputs and all motor outputs do), the functional mechanism of that altered mental state is still just proximal -- skin and in – exactly as when it is induced by VR technology. “
ReplyDelete“We are not aware of the generating mechanism underlying our cognitive capacity, however, only of its outcome: Hence retrieving a word from memory or retrieving a word via a Google search feels much the same to us.”
My comment on 10a was left open with a question about whether every conscious state felt. After reading this, I should have asked if every cognitive state is felt. These two passages summarize my intuitions on active externalism and answer my question about felt states. Cognizing is a mental state and mental states are felt states. Therefore, it’s obvious that extended minds doesn’t seem to be plausible because we are the ones who are feeling.
"The beginning of cognitive technology was surely language, which allowed cognizers to “offload” a lot of brainwork onto other brains that could do it for you, and deliver you the results"
ReplyDeleteDoes this mean that in terms of cognition, we are not cognizing to our full capacity. We use the computer to write papers with functions such as spell check, grammar corrections, and other computations that simplify our lives. This then makes us lazy in the sense that we are not using our full brain function and relying on these computations. is this joint effort in producing work and getting the results then considered positive and productive? Does it matter at the end of the day?
There is something intuitive about knowing that humans have distinct minds; there is no hesitation to say that conjoined twins have separate minds. We are similarly intuitive about whether or not people cognize (we do), yet there is a unwillingness to assume that any non-human process is cognition because our intuition does not extend beyond human cognition. If we didn’t hesitate to attribute to cognition to any non-human system, Turing wouldn’t have created the Turing Test, nor would we be having half of the discussions that we had in this course. However, if we are so inclined to believe that humans have distinct minds (i.e. no shared minds between siamese twins and no hive minds), I see nothing wrong (logically) with thinking that non-humans (for example ant colonies) could have a shared mind. It is not appropriate to come to instinctive, or visceral conclusions about the minds and cognitive processes of non-humans, when until this point all evidence has suggested we don’t understand them at all.
ReplyDeleteIn this paper, Dror and Harnad argue that cognitive technology can extend the scope of cognition, but it does not necessarily indicate that our mind/mental state/cognition can be “wider” than the brain.
ReplyDelete“(16) Although sensorimotor and cognitive technology can undeniably extend our bodies’ sensorimotor and cognitive performance powers in the outside world, only their sensorimotor input and output contact points with our bodies are part of our cognitive (=mental) state, not the parts that extend beyond.”
I agree with the argument of the passage; however, I do not fully understand what the authors mean by sensorimotor input and output contact points, are output contact points referring to our body parts which have contact with the outside world such as the eyes and the skin? In that case what are input contact points?
“(19) We are not aware of the generating mechanism underlying our cognitive capacity, however, only of its outcome: Hence retrieving a word from memory or retrieving a word via a Google search feels much the same to us.”
This is a great demonstration of how we “feel” about unconscious cognitive processes – we do not feel anything when we are retrieving from memories as just we don’t feel anything when we retrieve a word from Google. In other words, cognitive technology is able to extend and enhance our performance capacities, but it only applies to “doing” instead of “feeling.”
"movement itself, inasmuch as it includes the movements of parts of the organism, and not just the whole of the organism, covers everything that we are able to do; and that, in turn, extends naturally to all of our cognitive capacities- what we are able to think, deduce, understand, etc.- encompassing also the internal mechanisms that generate those capacities."
ReplyDeleteI think this is a really interesting way the structure what can and cannot be done within cognition by what our body can do and not do. It reminds me of Pinker's article where he says that "the shape of the human vocal tract has been modified in evolution for the demands of speech". This dynamic interplay between the physical and the mental in setting the outer limits of what is possible for human cognition is really interesting. It also brings up the "chicken and egg" paradox, leaving you to wonder which was the first to affect the other: cognition effecting the evolution of physical structure or vice versa.
"The answer is again the (insoluble) other-minds problem: Since there is no way of knowing whether or not there can be cognizing without a mind, or even of knowing what the actual geographic boundaries of a mind are."
This position make sense. If there is no way to nail down the actual geographic boundaries of a mind, I suppose it is reasonable to begin at the outer reaches of what could be considered part of the cognitive system and work your way in, by which I mean, refine the definition through research until you achieve a clearer map of the finite "mind".
“Cognitive technology does, however, extend the scope and power of cognition, exactly as sensory and motor technology extends the scope and power of the bodily senses and movement.”
ReplyDelete“Both sensorimotor technology and cognitive technology extend our bodies’ and brains’ performance capacities as well as giving us the feeling of being able to do more than just our bodies and brains alone can do.”
I think the main point of these quotes was how technology can help us expand what we can do cognitively. As we can see with evolution, machines like calculators, computers and Internet has made us able to do more things; more quicker. A kid today can access more information through technology and advance cognitively faster than a child 100 years ago. Although being able to put our cognitive abilities to outside machines it still doesn’t explain cognition to its full capacity.
Furthermore it goes with the previous reading on active externalism and epistemic actions which but offloading our cognitive abilities onto something like a calculator then we are actively using external cognitive cues for our internal states.
I thought this article made it very clear how just because something extends our cognitive capabilities, does not mean it itself is cognizing. This section in particular brought it home to me: “cognitive tools are not themselves cognizers, nor do they have -- or serve as distributed substrates of -- mental states.” I also appreciated the conclusion, which although sticking to its guns with regards to dismissing cognitive tools as being part of the mind itself, recognizes the profound effect these tools will have on our minds regardless of being separate to it! “Cognitive technology will do likewise, but instead of affecting our muscles it will affect our brain development, organization and capacities. Changing how we think, learn, and communicate, our cognitive tools are reshaping our minds.”
ReplyDelete