Philosophy of [Mind/Psychology/Cognitive Science]

Depending on what mood I'm in, and/or who I'm talking to, I might describe myself as studying either philosophy of mind, or psychology, or cognitive science. So what's the difference? Whilst the terms are often used interchangeably, it seems to me that they each have a slightly variation in emphasis:

Philosophy of Mind: This covers the more traditional metaphysical questions regarding what the mind is, whether it's distinct from the physical, and so on. Up until the mid-20th century this was pretty much your only option. Of the three this is most likely to conduct 'armchair' philosophy, with no reference to empirical evidence.

Philosophy of Psychology: This focuses more on methodological questions about actual scientific practice within psychology, and might be regarded as a sub-discipline of philosophy of science. I would also include 'social cognition', at least as I've been taught it, within this category. Philosophy of psychology is, by necessity, closely engaged with ongoing psychological and neuroscientific research.

[Philosophy of] Cognitive Science: Here the 'philosophy of' prefix is arguably unnecessary, as cognitive science is essentially a fusion of linguistics, philosophy, and computer science. Since its genesis in the 1940s/50s this has become an increasingly dominant paradigm. It tends to focus on relatively fine-grained questions about the structure and instantiation of cognition, and attempts to replicate this in artificial intelligence. Historically cognitive science has tended to be committed to some form of the computational theory of mind, but with the advent of embodied cognition and anti-representationalism this has begun to change.

Now there's obviously a huge amount of overlap between these fields, and it's pretty much impossible to study them in isolation from one another (although some philosophers of mind certainly attempt to do this). Personally I favour the latter two at the moment, yet I believe that it is important to remain aware of the more fundamental issues investigated by classic philosophy of mind.

This is an extremely subjective and provisional analysis, so please let me know if you disagree with my categorisations!

¡Ai, caramba! Let's not jump to conclusions about chimp working memory

For years, Ai the chimpanzee has been stunning researchers with feats of memory that surpass those of her nearest cousins. Ai, part of the Ai project at Kyoto University, is famously able to remember the location of a series of numbers on a screen within a fraction of a second, and to recall them in their correct sequence (1-19), where it would take you or me in the region of a few seconds. It's really worth checking out.

The Ai project has produced many great papers relating to chimpanzee cognition and behaviour over the years and occasionally the popular press picks up on them. Recently The Independent newspaper declared that, based on research with Ai and her son Ayumu, “Chimpanzees have faster working memory than humans”.

Whilst I am nowhere near qualified to make any sensible judgement on this research, I have to share my hesitation in jumping to such conclusions. In short, I am sceptical that working memory is so simple and binary that from such recall experiments we can say, unequivocally, that chimps have it better than us. Is working memory not involved in all reasoning and comprehension? Is working memory not involved in all verbal and non-verbal communication? Processes involved in these tasks seem, at least in part, more complex in humans- could this not be a relevant factor?

The Articles goes on to claim that,

Professor Matsuzawa suggested that chimps have developed this part of their memory because they live in the “here and now” whereas humans are thinking more about the past and planning for the future.

What does living in the “here and now" mean exactly? If a human individual became better at living in the “here and now” would their working memory improve? 

Ai getting down to monkey business...sigh

It seems to me that all the experiment that The Independent cites shows us is that chimps are better at particular recall tasks, and working memory processes involved with such tasks are more efficient.

It may be prudent from here to theorise that the reason why this is the case is that there is some trade off in humans between “present” memorisation and recall capacity, for other reflective and future considering capacities (which surely involve working memory at some level). This is far more conservative than claiming that chimps unequivocally have better working memory because they “live more in the present”.

I'm guessing part of the problem is sloppy science journalism. It would be interesting to hear in more depth what conclusions the team at Kyoto draw about working memory.

The evolutionary implausability of outlandish alien cognition

Contemporary arguments for (and against) the extended mind hypothesis (eg. Sprevak 2009) regularly invoke hypothetical aliens with outlandish forms of internal cognition. Sprevak asks us to imagine an alien that stores memories "as a series of ink-marks" (ibid: 9). This is meant to be functionally equivalent to the case where someone 'stores' their memories in an external diary. The point is that, in order to preserve multiple realisability and the Martian intuition, we are forced to accept that both the alien and the diary-user constitute cognitive systems, with the only difference being that the latter extends beyond the biological brain.

Baby Martian?

In another example, this time intended as a reduction ad absurdum of functionalism and the extended mind, Sprevak proposes an alien with an innate, internal cognitive sub-system that calculates the exact date of the Mayan calendar (ibid: 21). Again, his point is that there seems to be no functional difference between this sub-system and the one that he claims to have installed on his office computer¹. Ergo, his extended mind includes this implicit knowledge of the Mayan calendar.

Ignoring for the moment any questions about the extended mind per se, we should question the plausibility of these kinds of aliens. In each case, but especially the second, it seems that our aliens would possess remarkably over-specialised brains. The ink-jet memory system seems cumbersome, and the Mayan calender calculator is an extremely niche-interest device, one that would probably never see any use. In both cases it is difficult to imagine how or why such a cognitive architecture would have evolved.

This doesn't constitute a counter-argument, as regardless of any evolutionary implausibility Sprevak's aliens serve their rhetorical purpose. However it's interesting to note that much of Clark's own use of the extended mind is intended to highlight the way in which human brains off-load these kinds of specialised skills on to the environment (see his 2003), meaning that we are precisely the kind of generalists that these aliens aren't. Perhaps it's important not to get too caught up with outlandish aliens when we consider the extended mind, and return to the much more homely (and relevant!) examples which it was originally intended for.


1. I have a meeting with him in his office tomorrow, so I'll try and check if is true...

References

• Clark, A. 2003. Natural Born Cyborgs. Oxford: OUP.
• Sprevak, M. 2009. "Extended cognition and functionalism." The Journal of Philosophy 106: 503-527. Available at (and references to) http://dl.dropbox.com/u/578710/homepage/Sprevak---Extended%20Cognition.pdf