The Cure for the Cure: Networked Cognition and the Extended Mind more

Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology The Cure for the Cure: Networked Cognition and The Extended Mind 1. Introduction In a recent critique of the Extended Mind (EM) hypothesis, Adams and Aizawa (in press a) accuse Clark and Chalmers (1998) of committing “coupling-constitution fallacy.” That a notebook or any other object or process might be coupled to a cognitive agent and thereby aid in her cognitive processing, they claim, has been conflated with the idea that such coupling implies that the object or process is actually a constitutive part of the agent’s cognition. To illustrate the point, they cite this example: Question: Why did the pencil think that 2 + 2 = 4 Clark’s Answer: Because it was coupled to the mathematician. (Adams and Aizawa, in press a, 1) This misunderstanding, Adams and Aizawa argue, highlights what is wrong with pretty much all accounts of extended or distributed cognition (cf. Haugeland, 1998; Clark, 2001; 2005), as such arguments mistakenly attribute cognition to objects or processes simply by virtue of their being tools used by a cognitive agent. What makes a process cognitive, they assert, is not what sorts of external objects are employed, but rather, cognition is marked by what is going on ‘in the head’ of the agent. Adams and Aizawa go on to clarify that “the mark of the cognitive” or “what makes something a cognitive agent” must be understood in terms of specific underlying causal processes and the type of content produced by them. They argue that “cognition is constituted by 1 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology certain sorts of causal process that involve non-derived content” (forthcoming a, 3). As Clark (2008) notes, there are two elements to this argument; on the one hand, the claim about content says that in order for a process to count as cognitive, the representations, concepts or information employed must be non-derived, non-extrinsic, and internal to the system doing the processing. On the other hand, the claim about causality says that only specific kinds of processes are sufficient for bringing about such non-derived content. I will examine this particular criticism of Extended Cognition as well as the responses Clark (2008, forthcoming) and others have offered to counter it. Rather than proceed simply by way of recasting the debate and further buttressing the externalist arguments, I will instead reconstruct Adams and Aizawa’s objection in such a way that the accusatory finger they have pointed might be better turned back on their own argument concerning ‘the mark of the cognitive.’ Essentially, they have indicted Clark’s account of extended cognition on two charges: first, they claim, extended cognition unnecessarily imbues discrete parts of coupled systems with cognition. As their critique suggests, in a system such as a blind man using a cane to navigate his way through town, extended cognition would have us believe that the cane itself actually ‘knows’ where to go, what obstacles to avoid, and so forth. In other words, Adams and Aizawa have set up the argument such that if extended cognition is true, then this entails implausible and undesirable consequences. Second, they have charged Clark with overlooking the special sorts of processes that subtend cognition, namely, that it involves trading in non-derived content and that this ability is caused by nomological regularities which happen to be, as far as we can tell, specific to human neurobiology. This second accusation can also be reformulated as a denial of an undesirable consequent; if extended cognition is true, then the ‘received view’ of what cognition is and where it is found will need to be revised. 2 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology In this paper, I intend to show that neither of the two conditionals regarding EC hold. For the first, the idea that EC implies that cognition can quite literally be found in any object, so long as it is ‘coupled’ to a human is based on a misunderstanding of what distributed accounts of cognition are supposed to offer. In the end, I will suggest changing the metaphors slightly, such that the often misleading label, ‘extended’ might better be understood as ‘distributed’ or ‘networked.’ But more importantly, Adams and Aizawa fail to recognize the reductio behind their own accusation. As Clark (2008) notes, if we ask of a V4 neuron, how does it know that the museum is on 53rd street, and answer, because it is coupled to the human agent, the absurdity of the original objection is glaring. “Talk of an object’s being or failing to be ‘cognitive’ seems almost unintelligible when applied to some putative part or aspect of a cognitive agent or system” (87). If what you are calling a cognitive process is for example, a person engaged in a recall task, then the whole person is the cognitive system, not each of his or her arms, legs, or neurons. And even if it turns out that only human brains can realize genuinely cognitive states, this in no way implies that a brain cannot be or is not already a coupled system. As we shall see, many genuinely cognitive systems, which include at their core, a human brain, remain largely ‘coupled’ either to brain implant technology, or to external tools, all of which can arguably be said to constitute this or that particular cognitive process. The second conditional is a bit trickier to dismantle, as it involves arguing that the received view of human cognition is flawed. Nevertheless, it is my contention that a large part of the internalist-externalist debate is not just about where cognition is to be found, but is also about what sorts of processes we want to call cognitive. Examining Clark’s responses to the content and cause components of Adams and Aizawa’s objections will highlight the ways in trading in non-derived content is neither necessary nor sufficient for a system to be marked as 3 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology cognitive. Second, in order to address the worry that coupled systems will fail to allow for a genuine ‘science’ of mind due to the improbability of locating the specific causes underlying cognition given an externalist picture, I will look further at the ways in which Rupert (2004) and Weiskopf (2008) push against EC, but will argue that neither the ‘cognitive bloat’ nor the ‘informational integration’ concerns rule out the idea that a cognitive system can be caused by the coupling of human organisms and artifacts. It will not be sufficient however to simply redefend extended cognition (HEC)via Clark’s latest concession of Organism-Centered Cognition (HOC). Although his response provides a way to stave off some of the worries raised by Rupert and Weiskopf, it is also an overhasty retreat. Thus, in order to disprove this second condition of Adams and Aizawa’s I will ultimately return to and defend a claim implicit in the original HEC, namely, that the received view of what cognition is and where we can expect to find it might need serious revision. 2. Non-Derived Content In order to expose the problematic nature of “cognition” as defined by Adams and Aizawa, Clark examines each component of their definition in turn. The first necessary characteristic of cognitive processes, according to Adams and Aizawa, is their being comprised of non-derived content. Paradigm cases of items bearing non-derived content are they say, “thoughts, experiences, and perceptions,” while items that bear derived content would be things like “traffic lights, gas gauges, and flags” (2005, 662). As an immediate response, one might demand that Adams and Aizawa provide a way out of such viciously circular stipulations. Indeed, if the question at hand is what makes something count as thinking, and you answer, ‘if it bears non-derived content,’ to which I reasonably ask, ‘what then, is non-derived content,’ and 4 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology you reply, ‘thinking,’ then I will hardly have learned anything interesting about ‘the mark of the cognitive’ other than that it is, well, cognitive. The explanation Adams and Aizawa provide regarding how and why non-derived content actually constitutes thought spans a large amount of text (1992, 2001, 2005, in press a, b and Dennett, 1990) and a full discussion of the debate concerning it is too time-consuming and not entirely relevant for our purposes here. The way they defend non-derived content can be summarized as thus: mental content arises from very different sorts of processes than non-mental content; in other words, mental content is said to be non-derived just insofar as it is intrinsic to a cognitive agent and are therefore not dependent or at least are only partially dependent on external objects or processes. To further illustrate, they cite an example from Clark (2005) in which he seeks to defend the idea that derived content can genuinely be said to characterize cognitive processing in a case such as thinking about set theory by way of representing Euler circles to oneself. Clark argues that the meaning of the Euler circles, even ‘in our heads’ must still be derived from social convention, but nevertheless, the circles feature as part of our thought process. Adams and Aizawa respond first by charging Clark with overlooking a crucial difference: Intersecting Euler circles on paper getting their meaning is one thing; intersecting Euler circles in mental images getting their meaning is another. Clark apparently overlooks this difference, hence does not bother to provide a reason to think that Euler circles in mental images get their meaning via social convention. (in press a, 6) So, according to Adams and Aizawa, there is a principled difference in the way mental items become meaningful and the way external objects do. Nevertheless, they can be accused of 5 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology precisely what they charge Clark with; namely, they never provide a compelling reason to believe that such a principled distinction exists. What they do go on to argue is that mental items are constituted by different sorts of processes than non-mental items. To quote them at length: It is like this. The dependence of meaning of the mental image of intersecting Euler circles on the social contrivance regarding the intersection of Euler circles is just like the dependence of the meaning of a mental representation of a car on the contrivance of a car. Had the car not been invented, there would not have been mental images of cars. Had the usage of Euler circles not been invented, there would not have been mental images of Euler circles for set-theoretic purposes. This sort of historical truth, if it is a truth, does not show what Clark might want it to show, namely, that the content of certain mental items derives (in the relevant sense) from a social convention (in press a, 8) Here we see the idea that non-derived content might be partially dependent upon external objects – without the invention of cars, we would not have the relevant mental images – but this, they argue, does not entail that the mental image we have of a car is derived from social convention. Another way to put it: mental content most certainly depends, at least in a large part, upon our having perceptions of external objects, but in order for it to be considered derived, mental content must be said to arise solely via socio-linguistic convention. However, Clark is not concerned with showing that the actual content is not itself intrinsic; rather, that the meaning of the intersection of the Euler circles must be extrinsically derived. In this sense therefore, Clark’s point is quite simply a harkening back to classical semantic externalism. The content of a mental state, such as the wetness of water or its drinkability, can be non-derived, but its meaning, namely, that it is H20, is a product of linguistic convention and social agreement that the term ‘water’ in fact picks out the stuff that is composed of hydrogen and oxygen molecules. We might think of it in this way as well: clearly, thoughts, perceptions, and the like usually depend on some external objects in order to be contentful. Indeed, every thought and every perception are thoughts and perceptions of something. This is 6 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology one level or type of mental content, while meanings are often much more complex and often do derive entirely from social convention. The idea that one of the Euler circles functions as a representation of a particular set, whose members are in some way related to other sets of entities represented by other Euler circles, is all part of the larger social contrivance known as set theory. While the truths of set theory might indeed be human-independent or perhaps even Fodorian innate concepts (in which case they would be entirely non-derived), set theory as a practice, the way we come to know these truths and understand them, is an external, social practice, from which mental meanings involving set theoretic principles are entirely derived. In this sense therefore, we can think of the relationships among pieces of mental content as the sorts of cognitive content that Clark wants to claim can be derived and hence, something can be extrinsic and still count as genuinely cognitive. Adams and Aizawa foresee this objection, as they claim: Insofar as there must be a social convention regarding the intersections of Euler circles in order to have a mental representation regarding the intersections of Euler circles, this is not a fact about the constitution of the content of a mental image of the intersections of Euler circles. (in press a, 7) Again, the idea is not that the images are what Clark is claiming to be derived, but precisely the “mental representation regarding the intersections of the Euler circles. Clearly, information about what those intersections mean, imply, denote, and so forth, should count as ‘cognitive’ and yet, even as Adams and Aizawa claim, these representations are constituted by social convention. Adams and Aizawa go on to argue therefore that the original thought experiment in 7 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology which Otto consults his notebook in order to remember the location of MOMA (Clark and Chalmers, 1998) involves nothing more than a coupling in which an external object, the content of which is derived, aids in Otto’s ability to get to the museum. Whatever cognition we want to attribute to Otto must still be going on within his head, most likely in the form of a standing belief that his notebook is a reliable source of information that supplements his imperfect memory. The ability to execute actions based on these beliefs arises solely internal to Otto’s organism, and more specifically, it is caused by certain neural patterns of activation which produce their content intrinsically. In response, Clark (2008) claims that Otto and his notebook is not ipso facto a story about extrinsic content. Based on Clark and Chalmers’ (1998) original Parity Principle, if we can imagine that a process which is otherwise ‘external’ to a system were going on ‘inside’ of it, and then would have no qualms about calling that external-turned-internal process cognitive, then the divide between internal and external is not in itself sufficient for marking off cognitive processes from non-cognitive ones. Neither is location of processing a sufficient marker for derived versus non-derived content. As he suggests, the words in Otto’s notebook might in fact require interpretation and convention to be utilized, but “that need not rule out the possibility that they have also come to satisfy the demands on being, in virtue of their role within the larger system, among the physical vehicles of various forms of intrinsic content” (90). In fact, Adams and Aizawa (2005) endorse this very idea when they provide an exposition of their view on nonderived content by way of machine intelligence. If, as they suggest, we were to design a thinking machine modeled on human thought, there must be symbols or representations that mean something to the machine solely by virtue of their being internal to the machine’s processing. To be sure, the cause of such meanings might be originally engineered by the machine’s designers, 8 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology but that symbols mean something to the machine, cannot be derived. And yet, Adams and Aizawa concede that it might turn out that “the symbols in the machine ‘X,’ ‘Y,’ and ‘Z’ could mean X, Y, and Z in virtue of satisfying conditions for both derived and non-derived content” (665). Thus, ‘within the larger system’ of Otto + Notebook, it is conceivable at least that the entailment conditions for something being both derived and non-derived are indistinguishable. Even if we must admit that the notebook encodings are entirely derived, the demand that absolutely no part of a cognitive system can trade in conventional representations, argues Clark (2008, 2005) is too stringent. Suppose there were Martians, he suggests (2005), who had an extrabiological mechanism responsible for storing bitmapped images of blocks of text, such that they could later recall and use the images, much in the same way Otto utilizes his notebook. Surely, Clark argues, we would grant that the images stored even prior to retrieval count as part of our Martian friend’s cognitive processing, and if we can accept that some skin-and-skull bound processes trade in extrinsic representations, then it makes no sense to claim that only those processes involving derived content that occur ‘in the head’ count as cognitive. Thus, if other forms of memory are going to count as memory at all, then, as the Parity Principle holds, it would be overly presumptuous to exclude synonymous cases of memory based solely on the fact that the confines of the brain have been breached. Based on the functional similarity of memory retrieval in these various 9 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology cases, Clark (2008) concludes that every truly cognitive system need not operate entirely with intrinsic representations, nor must every proper part of a cognitive system operate with such representations. Interestingly, Adams and Aizawa (in press, b) claim to have never made such demands in the first place: “it is unclear to what extent each cognitive state of each cognitive process must involve non-derived content” (2001, 50). In one sense, it could be said that Clark has misrepresented their position and that their actual argument runs something like this: for something to count as truly cognitive, it must trade in non-derived representations at least some of the time. But then, if this is the case, what good does such a specification do if we are trying to define and delimit ‘the mark of the cognitive?’ If the answer is simply that some of the system’s content must be nonderived, then Otto and his notebook can easily be smuggled back into the picture, as quite clearly, some of Otto’s mental content is intrinsic. Furthermore, if this is truly the position Adams and Aizawa want to maintain, then they are not at odds with Clark’s original claim that cognition might be characterized by one or the other or both kinds of representational processes. At the end of the day, nevertheless, Adams and Aizawa stubbornly resist the idea that certain sorts of extrinsic content, especially that content which is externally derived, could ever feature as a proper part of a genuinely cognitive system. In order to understand why they keep returning to this intracranialism as an explanatory marker for cognition, we must now turn to the other of their two conditions, namely that genuinely cognitive processes arise from specific types of causes, none of which could be external to the system or agent in question. 3. Kinds of Causes 10 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology The motivation for claiming that specific causes of cognitive processes are necessary for determining the ‘mark’ of cognition in general seems to be twofold. First, we find in Adams and Aizawa a continuation of the claim that what makes human thought special is that it involves non-derived content and this kind of content can only be caused by specific processes. Second, and closely related to Adams and Aizawa’s concerns, Rupert (2004) echoes the notion that if cognitive science is to remain a meaningful enterprise whatsoever, it should proceed like any other unified science, by attempting to discover causal regularities or nomological features of the human mind. In fact, we should expect that cognition should be explicable in terms of as few laws as possible, if we are to believe that there is a ‘science’ of mind and that this science, like any other, should strive to be elegant and simple. I have explained above why it is at least dubious that the mark of the cognitive will be made solely on the basis of finding systems that trade in non-derived representations, but even if we accept that this is what truly characterizes cognition, intracranialism is hardly a quick inference to be made. Adams and Aizawa seem to help themselves to the assumption that nonderived content must be internally produced, without explaining precisely what the mechanism is that is responsible for such production. They are not foolish enough to claim strict mind-brain identity, as Clark (2008) notes, and yet, it is “a matter of contingent historical fact” that such representations are manufactured by human brains (Adams and Aizawa, 2001, my emphasis). Is it really a ‘fact’ that the brain is the only means of intrinsic content production? Or is this the very debate we are trying to settle? There are several problems with the ‘special kinds of causes’ argument as it is so far construed. First, I have only been hypothetically granting Adams and Aizawa the original claim that cognition is ‘marked’ by non-derived content, and so, if this turns out not to be the case, , 11 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology looking for special kinds of causes solely for non-derived content is rendered pointless. However, if their argument were to work, it would still not follow that what goes on inside the head is the only place to look for the cause of non-derived content. On the one hand, perhaps the entire organism plays an essential causal role in producing these representations; in fact, one need not stop with the organism itself, but could conceivably argue that many environmental factors actually cause intrinsic content. This might seem to countervail the very definition of ‘intrinsic’ as being entirely generated from within, but it need not. The very question on the table is what exactly do we mean by a cognitive system and so, if our answer rests on the notion that it must internally produce content, then the next step must be to determine what counts as the ‘inside’ of the system and what counts as the ‘outside.’ Indeed, if it turns out that Otto+notebook=one entire cognitive system, then surely, the notebook can produce non-derived content. Nevertheless, Adams and Aizawa do not find this crucial piece of the puzzle compelling enough to discuss. They simply assume that the ‘whole’ of cognition is captured by a technological virgin human body, and in their more extreme moments, a naked brain. But let’s suppose that we grant them the weaker claim, namely, that cognitive processes must involve at least some operations whose content is intrinsic. It becomes immediately clear that this only hurts their case, as we no longer know precisely how much of the system must trade in these non-derived representations, how often, and to what extent. Determining the lawlike causal nature of a system we don’t fully understand seems a rather arduous task. Besides, if we open the door to allow that some derived or even socially constructed content might actually constitute certain cognitive processes, then intracranialism is not only a difficult inference to make, but a foolish one. Perhaps Otto and his notebook constitute a cognitive system and to be sure, Otto has some intrinsic content, such as the standing belief that the notebook is trustworthy, 12 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology that if he desires to go somewhere, he ought to consult it, etc. But then the occurent belief, that the museum is at such and such location, which is content that surely features as a proper part of the cognitive process, is a matter of socially contrived symbols and scribbles in notebook. So, Adams and Aizawa are faced with the dilemma of either sticking to their original guns and then begging the entire question concerning the ‘what’ and ‘where’ of cognition, or they retract and then must deal with the consequences of allowing that cognition is hybridized and often causally dependant on extrinsic content. Suppose Adams and Aizawa did concede the second horn of this dilemma and accepted that at least some of the time, cognition is constituted by more than mere neural activity and can include coupled systems such as Otto and his notebook. The worry remains for them and for Rupert (2004) however, that there would be no end to the ‘odd couplings’ we might consider to be cognitive and hence the laws governing such systems will grow increasingly complex and unwieldy. In the name of parsimony therefore, we should assume that cognition is bound to the human organism, or maintain a hypothesis of Human Embedded Cognition (HEMC). While coupled systems might in fact facilitate cognitive processes, the actual cognitive process itself remains embedded within the organism, such that cognitive science remains holistic and intact, its subject matter simply being the human brain or perhaps the entire human organism. While it should be granted that a science of mind should have a unified set of processes it studies, this demand in no way proves that the causes subtending such processes are entirely within the organism. For one thing, by insisting that we look for specific kinds of causes for cognitive processes, Rupert tacitly sneaks in the notion that the effects, the cognitive processes themselves, have been comprehensively catalogued and comprise a unified set. . To be sure, we have some very coarse-grained mental ‘types’—memory, belief, hunger, etc., but these cognitive 13 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology kinds 1) are not the only types of cognitive processes that make up ‘cognition’ generally, and 2) many of them were not at all discovered by examining brains or even entire organisms for that matter. Surely, memory, belief and hunger were psychological phenomena long before we had any idea that the brain even played a role whatsoever in any of these events. Take depression, for example. While we can identify dopamine levels as indicative of emotional states, this is at once only a recent discovery and furthermore, as any critical philosopher of science will attest, brain chemistry is at best strongly correlated with more complex psychological states. So how did we go about determining that persons can be in a cognitive state of sadness over long periods of time before we had neuroscience? It seems that observable behavior – lack of eating, sleeping, loss of interest, and quite simply, verbal reporting – is a large part of how we come to understand that there is a ‘type’ of mental state called depression. To be sure, behavior is belongs to an organism, but often, it is generated by organism-environment interactions, which extend well beyond the scope of processes internal to our brains or bodies. If we are using such broad descriptors to define the suitable types of processes to be studied by cognitive science, then, as Clark (2008) asks, what principled reason do we have for rejecting the idea that the ‘science of mind’ will eventually concern itself with a “motley crew of mechanisms”? The flaw of the argument for scientific kinds, he claims, resides in “its assessment of the potential for some form of higher level unification despite mechanistic differences” (96). So, on the one hand, our coarsegrained psychological types are hardly unified or agreed upon in the first place and thus, it is a bit hasty to go looking for their causes, meanwhile delimiting those causes to the skin and skull barrier; on the other hand, even if we do have a common sense understanding of what sorts of processes are to count as types of cognition, such understanding is so often on the human + her tools, the human + her environment, or the human + her culture, and not the isolated and 14 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology encapsulated brain. Another worry that is implicit in Clark’s responses, but one he perhaps does not spend enough time discussing, is that by insisting that 1) cognitive science should study only natural kinds, we must also accept the corollary argument which is 2) that only natural kinds can have causal regularities. This further suggests 3) an assumption that we have some principled way to distinguish between natural and non-natural ‘types’ of processes. In turn, this often leads one to suppose that 4) ‘the mind’ will eventually be shown to be a ‘natural’ kind. Regarding 1), this is an assumption made by nearly all ‘natural science,’ hence the term natural modifying science, and yet, why should we believe that cognitive science is necessarily a natural science? As Gallagher and Zahavi (2008) define it, cognitive science is already an assortment of other sciences: neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, and even philosophy, the last of which could hardly be said to only study naturally occurring kinds of processes. If cognitive science is itself not entirely concerned with natural kinds, then perhaps part of its reaches go beyond law-like regularities. Even if the case were made successfully that cognitive science, like any other science, must proceed by discovering causal regularities, nowhere in any of this reasoning is the further entailment that what we might call a non-natural process could not have law-like regularity of which we could easily discover and record. A paradigm case of a non-natural kind would be computers, as they are prototypical human artifacts. Nevertheless, such ‘artifacts’ – technological memory-enhancements, calculating devices, and word processors – are surely describable in terms of causal regularity, hence we have ‘computer science’ What we are interested in describing in computer science is computation, and is generally not whether that computation takes place in a Mac or a PC. In other words, the causal regularities studied in science are often functional roles and have little to do with the realizers of those processes. 15 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology So, on the one hand, we might think that the distinction between natural and non-natural kinds is of no use insofar as both natural and non-natural kinds of ‘stuff’ can still realize the same processes of which we are interested in studying in ‘natural science.’ The very simple point Kim (1992) makes concerning the non-naturalness of Jade applies here. Jade can be said to be a composite, itself not being a ‘natural kind,’ but instead composed of two naturally occurring kinds of minerals, jadeite and nephrite. Nevertheless, we treat jade as one jewel, much like we treat a cake as one object, and one ‘natural’ object at that. To be sure, cakes are composed of other ingredients, but we don’t typically say that a cake is unnatural simply because it is made of flour, milk, eggs, and so forth. Furthermore, cakes have specific causal regularities governing them. They burn if baked at too high of a temperature, they grow mold if left out for too long, and they have certain saturation thresholds. Thus, what we typically assume to be naturally occurring ‘wholes,’ including the human organism or the brain for that matter, arguably decompose into parts, some of which are not entirely biological themselves. A brain has no meaning or function if not to control a body and hence, many people now speak of the brain and the central nervous system as one thing. Likewise, we typically mark off bodies by virtue of referring to the skin barrier that seems to provide a boundary from environmental ‘outsiders,’ and yet, the body remains constantly penetrated by these external factors, especially in the case of technologically enhanced bodies transformed by prostheses and implants. Nevertheless, we would like to think that ‘humans’ represent one kind of specie, regardless of their penetrative and alterative qualities. Hence, the lesson to be learned from these ‘cyborgs’ as Clark (2003) calls us, is that the biological matter of which we are composed is not what makes us natural kinds. If we are natural kinds at all, it is only by our being consistently ‘non-natural’ – plugged in, wired up, and technologically modified – that we achieve our status as human kinds. Hence, Clark’s 16 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology peculiar verbiage,“natural-born cyborgs.” Another point to consider regarding natural kinds and causality is that even if we were forced to admit that causal regularities are the means by which we discover natural kinds, it does not follow that cognition is itself a natural kind. Indeed, as the previous discussion indicates, we have plenty of reasons for thinking that cognitive processes are caused by a whole array of phenomena, from biological to technological and hence, law-like regularity regarding such a diverse set of causes seems dubious at best. As Levy (2007) suggests, “if it is true that causal regularities pick out natural kinds, then the mind is not a natural kind. It is a compound entity comprised of at least two (and probably many) natural kinds” (51). We can summarize the implications of the discussion above as follows: Science deals in kinds. If it only deals in natural kinds then if cognition is a natural kind, we should expect causal regularities governing it that we can pick out and study. It is possible that these nomic structures exist even if cognition does not occur entirely within the organism. Hence, the claim that EC violates the ‘natural kinds’ principle of science fails. On the other hand, if science simply deals in ‘kinds’ then if cognition turns out to be a non-natural kind, it still can be the subject of cognitive science. In other words, something can have law-like regularity and still not be considered natural, such as an extended mind. The larger point here seems to me to be that it is arbitrary whether we call something natural or non-natural in science. What matters is whether sufficient law-like regularity is present so as to study the entity or process in question. Extended cognition, be it natural or not, passes this litmus test, despite Rupert’s protests. So much for relying on natural kinds of causal processes as a means for marking off cognitive from noncognitive phenomena; nevertheless, a worry remains, namely that without causal regularities we cannot identify with any regularity, the cognitive agent, which is of course, the real subject of 17 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology cog sci. To be sure, there is a sense in which accepting HEC entails some difficulty in setting boundaries on what the phrase ‘cognitive agent’ denotes. Is this a worry specific to HEC however? It would hardly seem so and here is why. The problem as I see it, according to Rupert, Adams and Aizawa, et al, is that without the ability to reference regularly occurring causal kinds, there will be no way to effectively decide what is the proper subject of cognitive science and what is not. Traditionally, they claim, ‘the human mind’ or more broadly, the human, is the what cognitive science studies and if we begin extending what it means to have a mind or to be a cognitive agent too far, we will thereby relinquish the entire science that concerns itself with otherwise regularly occurring natural phenomena. While I concede that humans are regularly occurring phenomena, this by no means suggests that limiting the study of their cognition to what goes on inside their heads will magically make clear what it means to be cognitive agent. If Rupert is so worried about the loss of unified personhood in the wake of HEC, he might do well to consider that this problem is not specific to HEC. Indeed, as far back at least as Hume we are forced to realize that defining a person is treacherous business, and this lineage continues with Parfit (1971), Perry (1975) and others, who remind us that even referring to a body as the bounds of personhood will never be a sufficient criterion for marking of one agent from another, nor will memories, personality traits, or phenomenological descriptions. Thus, pointing the finger at HEC and charging it with dissipating the subject of cognitive science merely distracts one from recognizing the same inherent difficulty of HEMC or any other theory in which ‘the cognitive agent’ is the central focus of discussion. It would seem therefore that Rupert (2004) conflates two worries that he thinks are endemic to HEC: 1) the dissipation of the cognitive agent and thus, the subject matter of cognitive science and 2) the over-saturation of the mental into an otherwise endless purview of 18 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology coupled systems, or what he terms “cognitive bloat.” As to 1), this problem is better left to another project altogether. As we have seen, the issue arises with or without extended cognition and furthermore, it is a separate concern that we need to define and delimit cognitive agents as opposed to cognitive processes. Regarding 2), this appears to be the chief concern underpinning all criticism levied against HEC. Thus, Clark (2007, 2008, in press) has recently presented a more modest view, Organism-Centered Cognition (HOC), in an effort to assuage some of the paranoia which accompanies envisaging a world bloated by cognition. 4. HOC: Moderate Resolution or Hasty Retreat? The only real danger of HEC, Clark (2008) argues, “is that it may blind us to the genuine extent to which human cognition, though not organism bound, remains importantly organism centered” (138-9). The hypothesis is that at times, cognitive processes might in fact reach beyond the skin and skull barrier of the human organism; nevertheless, the organism and in particular the brain/central nervous system, remain the core constituents of human cognition. Thus, OrganismCentered Cognition (HOC) represents somewhat of a withdrawal from the original thesis of HEC, as it places the human organism in the role of a “senior partner” in constituting cognition. Although Clark (2008) still thinks HEC can be maintained and hence, HOC is merely a modification of it, in some sense, HOC places constraints, sets boundaries as it were, on an otherwise unruly HEC. The worry expressed by Adams and Aizawa’s (in press) mathematician+pencil coupling, for example, seems to center on HEC as providing no such bounds and hence allowing more for an “equal partner” thesis,1 such that the human and the pencil both share to the same extent in the cognitive process. Clark’s reformulation ameliorates 1 The senior partner/equal partner description is borrowed from Dan Hutto, personal communication. 19 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology this concern by reminding us that the brain, although not the only component involved in cognitive processes, remains the ‘chief executor’ of them. Has the worry entirely subsided? The HOC still suffers from the inability to specifically mark cognitive processes from non-cognitive ones, insofar as the only claim being made is that the human organism is a necessary component of cognition. Surely, having a human body or brain will not suffice for cognition all by itself. Furthermore, EXTENDED, as Clark (2008) now calls it, still governs the overall picture we should have of minds; namely, that while organismcentered, mental processes are not always bound to the organism. Thus, the question remains, just how far do they reach? Is it possible, as Clark and Chalmers (1998) suggest that a belief about what time a meeting is to be held can be constituted by a coupled system involving two organisms, one of whom is an absent-minded business person, the other being her secretary? Clark’s (2008) appeal to what Braddon-Mitchell and Jackson (2007) term ‘common-sense functionalism,’ or the idea that a functional description of cognitive processes should allow some degree of multiple realizability, even across various physical substrates, does little work here. Common-sense functionalism would seem not to extend so far as to include couplings such as literally coupled people; if I cannot ever seem to remember where the theater is, but my spouse can and, upon driving to a show, I depend on his memory to get me there, it hardly seems like something the everyday functionalist would endorse as a singular cognitive process. Moreover, it would be difficult to determine whose ‘mind’ is extending in such a scenario. We might appeal to a ‘senior partner’ thesis once again, such that whoever is actually driving the cognitive process along most robustly would around whom we would say cognition is centered. Indeed, if I have a faulty memory and my spouse is responsible for remembering how to get to the theater, in some sense, ‘I’ don’t play an extremely important role in achieving this part of the equation. However, 20 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology it would not quite be right to say of my spouse and I, if we both arrive at the theater on time, that only one of us was thinking. Based on HOC, of course, we both have brains and under normal circumstances, would be considered separate and distinct organisms. Hence, if cognition is organism-centered, then the coupling of two organisms seems to muddy the waters. On the other hand, if what is meant by ‘organism’ is itself not entirely based on biology, but instead admits to degrees of flesh-machine or even person-person couplings, then perhaps the common sense functionalist need not be concerned. However, Rupert’s (2004) worry about the HEC, namely that it suffers from cognitive bloat, wherein the whole world is potentially imbued with cognition, is only that much more exacerbated by this revised version of ‘organism.’ If we begin counting two persons as one organism, a corollary organism bloat – counting any and all organism-like configurations as organisms, seems to follow. Even Clark (2003) recognizes in great detail how much of embodiment is infiltrated by technology as well as by the ‘ultimate artifact’ – language, and hence, so much of the world actually gets incorporated into our bodies and likewise, our ‘bodies’ are constantly being pushed beyond their usual biological barriers. To be sure, the biological body, by definition can only include what has already been deemed ‘biological kinds of processes’ but the human body with its plastic hearts, its cochlear implants, and its prostheses, is hardly limited to strictly biological parts. Despite the complications that ‘organism bloat’ presents, it might arguably be the case that the worry is simply an offshoot of the more general concern that Rupert (2004) has regarding the dissipation of the cognitive agent under HEC. If so, then the response I gave earlier could equally well apply to my own concern about what exactly counts as an organism. To be sure, the hypothesis of organism-centered cognition does us no good if we don’t properly know what we mean by ‘human organism,’ but then again, if Clark means to suggest, and I think he 21 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology does, that human biological bodies and brains are the core of cognition, then we have at least partitioned off the rest of the world and maintained that the organism truly is the senior partner in any cognitive process. An ambiguity persists however, one that is shared by intracranialists and transcranialists alike. The ‘hiccupping’ back and forth between HEC and HEMC can be seen as a disagreement over what sorts of processes should count as instances of human cognition, or it could be a dispute over what constitutes cognition generally. Indeed, Adams and Aizawa (2001, in press) often speak about the historically contingent nature of “human cognition,” as being caused by brain processes, but then also slip into a more global understanding of ‘the mark of the cognitive.’ Likewise, in Clark’s more liberal functionalist moods, he is optimistic about the possibility of genuinely cognitive robots, but then again, the HOC is specifically a story about the human organism and how it is central to human cognition. This murkiness may appear inconsequential, but for anyone with “common-sense” functionalist tendencies, it should at least matter whether or not the brain is truly a necessary element for cognition writ large. Especially for Clark, if he retreats too far into a story about human-organism centered cognition, the likes of which are impossible without a biological brain, then the idea that an artificially intelligent being might be worthy of genuine cognition becomes a rather distant dream. If however, all of this debate is concerned with cognition generally, then Adams and Aizawa and Rupert will be hardpressed to avoid being labeled as arguing an overly restrictive type-physicalism. On my interpretation, Clark does attempt to resolve the ambiguity by arguing that the brain and body of a human have special abilities that are central to cognition, of which we had better have a comprehensive functional account if we hope to capture such processing in nonbrained intelligences. In this way, his HOC is both a story about human cognition, as human 22 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology minds are what we hope to understand above all, but this human-centered cognition might itself be ‘extended’ to cover other cognitive systems that do not necessarily inhere solely (or at all) in human organisms. Nevertheless, one could ask exactly why the organism, and in particular, the organism’s brain should receive such senior partner status. Exactly what is it about the brain that is necessary for cognition? If we want to avoid the protracted battle over content and its derived or non-derived nature in relationship to the brain’s causal role, then we need a better way to cash out what makes brains so special. Clark is relatively silent on this specific point, although he does claim that a unique capacity that human cognizers have is the ability to update and reorganize information in a seamless and mostly unconscious manner. In describing how Otto’s notebook will differ to some degree from Inga’s biological memory, he says: Part of the answer emerges as soon as we focus on the role the retrieved information will play in guiding current behavior. It is at this point that the common-sense functional similarity becomes apparent. True, that which is stored in Otto’s notebook won’t shif and alter while stored away. It won’t participate in the ongoing underground reorganizations, interpolations, and creative mergers that characterize much of biological memory [2008, 98] He goes on to argue that in terms of functional similarity however, we cannot call Otto’s notebook somehow less a part of his memory simply because it is a less active form of storage. I think these difficulties can be rendered irrelevant if Clark retracts on his claim that Otto’s notebook will not be able to be ‘informationally integrative’ in the way that Inga’s brain is. 5. Informational Integration and Border Patrols If the difference that makes a difference between a system like Inga and a system like Otto cannot be determined based solely on the kinds of causes involved and the representational 23 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology products they render, then perhaps the actual processing of information, and not the information itself is a source of distinction. The HOC concedes that the brain is central to human cognition and one reason for thinking this is so stems from the way mental states are stored, retrieved, updated, and organized, or what Fodor (1983) has referred to as informational integration. Mental states are integrated with one another for the most part below the level of our conscious awareness or control and as such, informational integration is argued to be part of the everyday dynamics of cognition. In an attempt to expose the implausible character of radical HEC, Weiskopf (2008) argues that this feature of cognition is not replicated in coupled systems such as Otto and his notebook. Specifically, beliefs are such that their unconscious integration with one another, a phenomenon occurring naturally in typical human brains, could not be even functionally equivalent to the type of belief-updating in which Otto and his notebook engage. As an example, Weiskopf asks to consider how belief inference normally works when we are told, for instance, that Sam and Max are married. A “default” assumption I will endorse upon hearing this information is that Sam and Max live together. To be sure, I need not always go with my default belief, and contrary evidence would certainly change my default such that my belief about Sam and Max actually corresponded with all other available information. Suppose I am told that Sam and Max are married, but I also know that Sam has a post-doc in Prague and Max is a school teacher in London. My default setting in this case would most likely be quite the opposite; given the beliefs I have associated with working conditions, the distance between London and Prague, the workweek of a school teacher, and so forth. Nevertheless, I don’t consciously ‘sort through’ all of this potentially relative information. The belief that Sam and Max live together is brought about by a series of unconscious connections made among standing and occurent beliefs I already maintain and thus, I need not ‘think’ about the inferential and 24 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology integrating process; it just happens. Informational Integration ‘just happens’ in my biological brain unlike the way it would have to occur for Otto and his notebook, as his notebook contains ‘informationally inert’ memories. Indeed, for Otto to have written in his notebook that the Museum is on 53rd Street and then to learn that it has been torn down and moved to a new location, he must consciously manipulate the information in his external memory such that it reflects these new beliefs. The integration of information therefore does not happen automatically, unconsciously, or systematically for Otto and hence, he and his notebook do not functionally equate to a belief system like Inga’s. This point bears serious consideration and has been relatively left unanswered, although some (cf. Wheeler, 2001; Levy, 2007) have taken stabs at defending externalism despite the worries surrounding informational integration. One of the problems with thinking that Otto’s notebook could be informationally integrated in the way Inga’s biological memory is, claims Weiskopf (2008), is the strong change that having not updated his notebook upon hearing new facts about the museum, for instance, the notebook will cause behavior that is inconsistent across time. As Levy (2007) points out however, we can look at persons suffering from delusional states to see that such inconsistent behavior is easily caused internally. He cites an example of a woman who was operating under two contradictory beliefs, one being that her husband had died and the other, that he was staying in the same hospital as she was (cf. Breen, et al. 2000). Likewise, people suffering from Capgras’ syndrome will insist that they believe a friend or loved one has been replaced by an ‘imposter’ replica and that they have no idea what has been done with the their real companion, a belief that when integrated in the right sort of way with other beliefs ought to cause friend-seeking behavior, such as calling the authorities, for instance. Nevertheless, this is not the typical behavior of these patients. In other words, deluded persons 25 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology often deviate from what Schwitzgebel (2002) terms the “dispositional stereotype” associated with holding a particular belief. If Otto believes p (p being, say, the proposition that the museum is on 53rd Street), then we expect him to be characterized in certain behavioral, phenomenal, and cognitive ways in relation to p; he should act as if p, and assert p, he will be surprised if not-p, and he will draw certain inferences about p, such as the fact that if he finds out that it is also the case that p → q, he will then believe q. The very mark of delusion is a violation of one or more of these stereotypical dispositions, and the inconsistent behavior has nothing to do with informationally inert and external memory. Furthermore, as Levy argues, in delusion, the inconsistent behavior is not a phenomenon observed stretched out over time, but rather, the countervailing beliefs occur almost simultaneously, and hence, there are situations involving internal or biological memory that are even more incoherent than the types of deviations we would expect to find with Otto. But, one might protest, delusional states are not paradigm cases of belief. Indeed, delusions, especially severe delusions like the ones mentioned, are extremely rare and perhaps we do want to say that in these outlying circumstances, internal memory and belief are not sufficiently similar to warrant calling a deluded person robustly cognitive, at least not in the way we would extend the ascription to someone like Inga. Even if we went that route however, it seems we would then need to start removing the ‘mark of the cognitive’ from many otherwise ‘normal’ persons, who, upon closer examination, often violate one of the dispositional stereotypes of their beliefs. The deluded, Levy argues, often ‘hover’ somewhere between belief and disbelief regarding their delusions, as someone who genuinely believes their loved one has been replaced by a counterfeit version will, according to the standard model of belief advocated by Weiskopf, also act as if this really were the case. While Capgras’ patients exhibit some of 26 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology these stereotypical behaviors, they do not act entirely in accordance with their beliefs nor do they maintain their delusion at all times. It should not take a vast amount of contemplation to discover that this description applies readily to a whole array of belief-disposition schemas of persons with normal cognitive function. I might have every reason to trust my friend, having known her for a decade, worked closely with her, and so on, and thus, when she tells me that her book has finally been accepted for publication, given that I believe she has been writing for a year and has been diligently seeking approval, I should come to believe that she is telling the truth. All of my previously held beliefs would seem to jibe with the current piece of information I am receiving and as such, there should be no integrating problem, and yet, for some reason, I am not convinced that she is being honest. Assume also, for the sake of argument, that nothing about her overt behavior in telling me this news triggers the ‘liar response’ in me – I am able to think rationally about how she conveyed the information and upon reflection, I confirm that it came across as a prototypically honest account. And yet, I do not entirely believe her. I ‘hover’ between belief and disbelief, and as such, go about much like a detective, trying to corroborate her story, when according to the stereotypical dispositions that would accompany a trustworthy account, I ought to simply believe her. The same hovering between belief states can be applied as well to couples, one of whom does not behave as if she trusts her partner, and goes about looking for evidence of an affair, while simultaneously maintaining that there is no reason to believe that any infidelity is or has been taking place. An objection foreseeable would be to argue that the violation of dispositional stereotypes in such cases is not severe enough to count as the kind of inconsistency with which Otto will act, given faulty or non-updated information in his notebook. He might, for example, scribble in his notebook that his favorite restaurant is adjacent to the museum, but not remember its name when 27 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology recording this information. His friend Inga then asks him to meet for lunch at Dunderbak’s, which is incidentally the very same referent denoted by ‘Otto’s favorite restaurant.’ So, he records that he will be having lunch at Dunderbak’s in a couple of days. Of course, Otto will have to look up amongst his various notes, how to get to Dunderbak’s and upon finding this information, he might notice that the location is adjacent to the museum. Nevertheless, since his notebook is unable to informationally integrate these various synonymous denotations – favorite restaurant, restaurant adjacent to the museum, and place where Inga and he will dine – it is quite likely that Otto would exhibit some strange behavior. Suppose you asked him if he believed that his favorite restaurant was adjacent to the museum. He would flip through his notes and would confirm that it indeed was, thereby endorsing this belief, call it p. Later, you ask him if he is going to eat with Inga at Dunderbak’s this week. Again, he would check his calendar and endorse this belief as well, call it q. It just so happens, as we omniscient and non-memory defective observers know, that p and q are really the same belief, but this is not the crucial element. Forget that Otto might not realize that the referent of p and q is the same; what is even more striking is that Otto will at time t¹, assert that p and will at t² assert that q, but might very well disbelieve at t³ that p and q. We could ask him if he is going to his favorite restaurant and if he is meeting Inga for lunch today and he might not believe that both of these propositions are true. Not only would this be an example of an inconsistency in typical disposition towards one’s beliefs, but it would be an entirely irrational behavior, one that violates an arguably universal principle of belief, namely that if you believe p and you believe q, then you automatically endorse the conjunction of p and q. Believing that p and that q, but not that p and q could quite clearly be construed as a lack of informational integration and perhaps this is the sort of blatant inconsistency that Weiskopf 28 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology (2008) has in mind when deeming Otto and his notebook incapable of constituting genuine belief. The argument would then be more restrictive, allowing that atypical dispositions occur at times in systems who are otherwise genuinely cognitive. On this read, the argument would run thus: if a system is susceptible to inconsistent beliefs and the behavior that accompanies them, then that system is not properly cognitive. Otto and his notebook are susceptible to just such inconsistency and hence will not constitute legitimate cognition. If in order to fail the test of genuine belief-possession or any cognitive process for that matter, such egregious incoherence is the defining feature, then at first blush, this would appear to be a convincing account. Clearly, one would think, only systems such as Otto and his inert external memory aide and perhaps highly delusional persons who are shown to truly believe two contradictory items would count as non-cognitive, leaving human organisms with no serious cognitive pathologies as the ‘true believers.’ A question lingers however: just how sure can we be that someone or something is capable of entertaining such inconsistent beliefs? In other words, perhaps Weiskopf and others help themselves too hastily to the claim that all normal, rational humans are unable to believe that p and that q, but not that p and q. Evnine (2008), for example, asks to consider that it is quite conceivable that otherwise ‘normal’ persons could believe precisely such conflicting propositions. Is it not possible, he suggests, that a person could assert p, with p being the proposition evolution is true, and later assert q, which might be the statement god created the world in seven days but then refuse at an even later time, to believe that it is both true that evolution occurs and that god created the world in seven days, hence not (p and q)? Never mind that a long debate about whether the two beliefs are incompatible to begin with or if a compatiblism exists that might render the actual inference invalid or tautologous. The idea is that it seems to be a standard feature of human thought that we often believe inconsistent 29 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology propositions over time and that we behave as if we do (consider the Sunday morning religious zealot living an entirely incongruous life on the other six days of the week). Thus, it is at least imaginable that humans with internal memory are on par with those who have external memory when it comes to the ‘capability’ of believing and behaving inconsistently. This leaves a dilemma for the internalist who insists that informational integration marks genuine cognition. Accept the claim above that even humans are susceptible to egregious incoherence of belief, and there is no way to distinguish between Otto + notebook and a regular skin-bound and tool-free person. Each is fallible and might behave peculiarly based on failure to informationally integrate. Or, insist that this is too limited a notion of informational integration and that what indicates something failing to do so is a deviation from stereotypical dispositions, such as ‘hovering’ between beliefs. This is unfavorable to the internalist of course, because it means even more profoundly that there are all sorts of instances of failure to informationally integrate rampant in organism-only cognition. The only way out of such quandary would be to deny that genuinely cognitive systems ever believe and behave as inconsistently as coupled systems would, thereby denouncing all delusional persons as genuinely cognitive, unless of course there were a way to argue that the phenomenology of these patients is still somehow less unexplainable and unpredictable than that of Otto’s. But as Levy (2007) argues, in considering severe delusions as opposed to Otto and his notebook, “compared to this dramatic deviation from the dispositional stereotype associated with believing that someone has died, the deviations that arise from the lack of informational integration of external representations are relatively mild” (57). Either way, as a last discussion, I must address this third possibility, that Otto+notebook truly is incapable of informational integration, while human organisms, although potentially susceptible to bouts of strange behaviour, are characterized by just such ability. 30 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology 6. Otto Gets Googled – Networking the Mind( A point that Levy (2007) notes and one that is scattered throughout pro-externalist literature (cf. Clark, 2005; 2008; Menary, 2006; Wheeler, 2001; Rowlands, 2003) is that there are no principled reasons for denouncing the possibility of an external memory device being capable of behaving exactly like our internal biological brains, while there are reasons to believe that something like informational integration in coupled systems is quite possible. For starters, and so as to avoid our Luddite friend Otto being socially ostracized, let’s take away the paper notebook and replace it with an iPhone-like device. Already we see an external aide that is not nearly as passive as the original pencil-paper tool. Nevertheless, Weiskopf will argue that because Otto must consciously log information into his iPhone, the seamlessness with which usual integration is carried out will still be lacking.Even with an iPhone, which is itself capable of some informational updating and speedier integration, Otto + iPhone will still fail to be genuinely integrative in the way a brain is, since Otto still must explicitly command the device and log information into it. What the foregoing discussion concerning informational integration illustrates is that Weiskopf’s argument rests on a fundamental empirical assumption that human brains (or human organisms) possess a potentiality that human+machine couplings will never obtain. The problem with this assumption however, is that it is groundless. On the one hand, Weiskopf bases it on the notion that no coupled systems today currently have the capacity to informationally integrate the way human brains do and thus, it is not plausible that they ever shall. The faulty reasoning behind saying A is currently not occurring, therefore it never will, is glaring; but furthermore, as we have seen, it is not altogether clear that informational integration truly marks cognitive beings from non-cognitive beings. Delusional states, inconsistent beliefs, and the like suggest that 31 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology perhaps ‘normal’ human minds are not always capapble of informational integration and nonnormal or coupled minds often show just as much potential for the task as internal brains. The second problem with Weiskopf’s assumption is that empirically, it would seem a genuinely integrative coupled system is not only imaginable, but plausible, given the historical trajectory of soma-technological advances. Clark and Chalmers’ (1998) “cyberpunk” futuristic ‘Tetris’ scenario in which someone has an implant that will mentally rotate shapes on the screen without the need of an external controller is not such a distant dream. If we could endow Otto with a memory device that would sort, update, and integrate all his old beliefs with incoming new ones, then why would we not call this obviously cybernetic coupled system an instance of true informational integration? Weiskopf (2008) does entertain the idea that to make things even more convincing for the externalist, we could imagine that a device such as this be plugged directly into someone’s biological memory such that the integration really would be entirely offline, so to speak, and that a person with such a memory aide, call her Wanda, would then count as an example of a truly extended cognitive system. Because however, as he claims, such a scenario is highly unlikely to ever be achieved, it is not that extended minds are impossible, but that they do not saturate the world as Clark and others would like to think. To be sure, even if these types of scenarios are imaginable, they would indeed be rare, a far cry from the ‘NaturalBorn Cyborgs’ Clark claims we all are. . However, I don’t think that this fact hurts the case for extended cognition any more than the original objection Weiskopf lodges, namely that informational integration simply does not occur in coupled systems. First, to assume that we could somehow plug a device ‘into’ a biological memory store (most likely the brain) is already to assume that there is some place in which memories and beliefs are contained and that this is entirely biological, and again, most likely ‘in’ the brain. If the very question on the table is 32 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology whether or not beliefs must be entirely within the head, then you cannot argue that we should plug a device into the head if we hope to even begin to show how external tools might in fact become integrative with these beliefs. This stacks the deck entirely too much in favor of internalism from the beginning. Hence, HOC, even though it is a proposed ‘cure’ for the cognitive hiccupping between HEC and HEMC, allows the pendulum to swing a bit too far back in the direction of HEMC. Perhaps a lot of beliefs do occur in the head, and perhaps the brain is the chief executor of integrating those beliefs with new information. These are the empirical questions nonetheless, to which I take it Clark (2008) refers and for which we are still seeking answers. Another reason that it ought not matter to the externalist whether or not such fanciful technological scenarios are plausible comes from considering the original proposal of extended cognition (Clark and Chalmers, 1998) and the subsequent literature on the overabundance of it, so much so that it is arguably the ‘human condition’ to be biotechnologically hybridized (Clark, 2003). Rather than assuming that information must be plugged into us, why not think of our biological bodies as being constantly plugged into the world, a coupling that has always been prevalent, but that is increasingly more so due to the technological availability of devices that forces us to reconsider the boundaries of who and what we are, both biologically and sociologically. Considering the way information is realized in a computer and the way that memories are stored, updated, and integrated, it is difficult nowadays not to talk about these processes without referencing the internet. Where computers were once encapsulated objects, designed via ‘non-derived content’ and syntax and relatively shut-off from the possibility of being informationally coupled to other computers, it is now the case that most laptops, in their default mode, automatically begin searching for available networks, downloading updates, 33 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology streaming weather, stocks, and baseball stats, and plugging themselves into LANs. But this is a story about the evolution of the computer. Now rewind back to ‘us.’ Have we ever been any different than modern-day computers in terms of our probing the environment, downloading information, and, to use Clark’s (2008) phrase, poising ourselves for action? One might respond that all of this is true and yet, the cognition is still going on in the head, but as I have attempted to show, the only reasons we have for believing this is necessarily the case come from the arguments concerning non-derived content and causal kinds, as well as the privileging of human organisms in being capable of informational integration. As Weiskopf (2008) characterizes Adams and Aizawa’s (2001) position, “they argue against the hypothesis that cognitive processing extends into the environment, on the grounds that different mechanisms are at work when we interact with the environment than when we use our natural, biological cognitive resources” (12). I have attempted to show why such reasoning fails, but a final point worth noting is the vagueness involved in distinguishing ‘interaction with the environment’ from using “our natural, biological cognitive resources.” Do we not interact with the environment naturally, biologically, and cognitively? Surely, extended mind detractors cannot think that no environmental interaction is needed for cognition and hence, it would be wrongheaded to caricaturize the position in this way. But then, all that remains is some kind of out-of-hand rejection of interaction involving technological artifices as constituting cognition, while ‘normal’ biological functioning somehow is necessary. Again, to assume that the human organism itself is meaningful or even functional in any way without exploiting, being exploited by, and at many times fusing with its environment, is untenable. Indeed, if we take Clark (2003) seriously, one of the chief means by which cognition has evolved and been scaffolded such that we can now think about even our own thinking is via language, the “ultimate artifact.” I suggest instead that 34 Forthcoming, Philosophical Psychology language and other tools be thought of as networking servers, such that the more ‘plugged into’ these devices I am, the more I meaningfully interact with, gain knowledge from, and simultaneously shape and influence the world in which I find myself. This is not to claim somehow that standard biological cognition is not important; indeed, for the most part, HOC can be seen as a way to recognize just such importance. Rather than claiming that there is a “senior partner” in the business of cognition, or that we should have as the “proper subjects of cognitive science” are simply biological organisms, which appear as nothing more than “knee-jerk reactions that simply express our strong prejudices in favor of biology over technology, rather than justifying them in any way” (Clark, 2005, 7), I think it’s time to admit an equal partnership, a networked mind if you will, that is co-constituted by the bio-technological world and the organisms plugged into it. Works Cited Adams, Frederick R. & Aizawa, Kenneth (in press, a). Defending the Bounds of cognition. In Richard Menary (ed.), The Extended Mind. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate. Adams, Frederick R. & Aizawa, Kenneth (in press, b). Challenges to active externalism. In P. Robbins & Murat Aydede (eds.), Cambridge Handbook on Situated Cognition. Cambridge. Adams, Frederick R. & Aizawa, Kenneth (2005). Defending non-derived content. 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