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

More Ranting on Relativism: Chemero on Clark's “Being There”

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(by Jonny)

A couple of weeks ago I posted about a problem that occasionally surfaces in philosophy of cognition, particularly embodied cognition. It's the problem of relativism. It's a problem, in my eyes, because it's an unnecessary obstacle for certain very intuitive ideas to become acceptable to many people, it's a distraction. Though the notion an organism's experience of the world is necessarily dependent on contingent sensorimotor capacities is highly plausible, though the notion that the way the world is largely relative to our particular bodily form, and that form's contingent interaction with the world makes some immediate sense, relativism is off-puttingly problematic.

Well I recently came across an example of this sort of view in the form of Chemero's (1998) review of Andy Clark's “Being There” (1997). Chemero, who otherwise positively recommends Clark's embodied conclusions, complains of the author's unwillingness to accept that his thesis implies a rejection of “world-it-itself”, of “scientific realism”.

Andy Clark's "Being There"

The precise reason remains a mystery to me. Chemero seems sensible when he says,

“Since there is no central executive in mobots with connectionist brains, there will be no detailed, action-neutral representation of the world. In most cases, agents will use the world as its own model. ” (pg.3)

And it sensibly follows from the central ideas of embodied cognition that,

“we should expect creatures (including humans) to be sensitive only to those aspects of their environments that matter to the actions they regularly undertake... The world represented by animals with much different needs than humans will be much different than the world humans represent.” (pp.5-6)

But it does not seem to follow that there is no world “in and of itself” independent of our perceptions. One of the issues seems to be Chemero's notion of what realism exactly says. He writes that falsehood of we must reject “so-called "common-sense realism," in which the world-in-itself is thought to correspond to everyday human categories. ” But it is ambiguous what he means by everyday human categories. Perhaps, as I mentioned in my last post, we will have reject the idea that the world is conveniently structured as our thoughts are structured. The world as constituted by giraffes and cactus and melons is a contingent, human perception of the world based on human needs, but it does not imply that the existence of giraffes is entirely relative. There is still something about the giraffe that exists independent of an organism's contingent situation. So perhaps we will reject a certain everyday realism, a realism that takes the world to always conform to everyday human categories, but this is a weak realism.

Though Chemero is right to say that “physics and other sciences depend upon our language-using abilities” (pg.7), he is wrong to conclude that science does not tell us something, in some form, about the real independent properties of the universe. 

Embodied cognition does not entail, and should not imply, this sort of radical relativism.

How I feel when I start thinking about cognitive science and relativism.

Chemero, A (1998) A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and Humans: Review of Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again by Andy Clark. Psyche, 4(14)

Clark, A (1997) Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again. MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Minding the Abyss: World Building without radical relativism

(by Jonny)

In their influential book “The Embodied Mind” (1991) Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch made a pioneering journey through many of the themes that the contemporary field of embodied cognition continues to spend a great deal of its resources exploring. One theme that hasn’t caught on in the same way that, say its emphasis on ecological perception has, is the notion that there is no pre-existing world with a given set of properties, a rejection of the “realism” that pervades most contemporary “analytic philosophy”. They express a position which takes the idea of embodied action, that the way in which we make sense of the world is necessarily dependent on contingent sensorimotor capacities, to imply that a perceiver-dependent world is an incoherent notion. Instead, it is perceivers who build worlds out of their contingent physical circumstances. The authors contend that the thesis of embodied mind leads us to believe that are no properties out there in the world independent of perceivers, that there is no independent or objective world.

Clearly published in the 90s...

Varela et al seem to believe that embodied cognition must tell us something profound about the metaphysical nature of reality. Yet it seems to me that this belief is an unnecessary chasm-leap of logic, one which if taken too seriously threatens the much more mundane claims of this research project. The jump seems to be this: why does the fact that perception is dependent upon action (in turn dependent on a contingent physical apparatus) imply that the world has independent, given properties. Why does the fact that our own knowledge of the world depends on the our particular and happenstance bodily form, imply that the world does not exist prior to our particular and happenstance knowledge of it? Such radically relativist theories about the metaphysic of the world do not seem to me to follow.  Andy Clark nicely reflect the worry about relativism’s unnecessary influence.

This high tech diagram I just stole from the internet has little to do with what we're talking about and probably won't help. ( http://www.unc.edu/~megw/TheoriesofPerception.html ) 

“Varela et al. use their reflections as evidence against realist and objectivist views of the world. I deliberately avoid this extension, which runs the risk of obscuring the scientific value of an embodied, embedded approach by linking it to the problematic idea that objects are not independent of the mind. My claim, in contrast, is simply that the aspects of real-world structure which biological brains represent will often be tightly geared to specific needs and sensorimotor capacities” (1997: 173).

Andy Clark. Nuff said.

“Continental  philosophy”, which I contend at this point in the history of ideas has more time for more radically relativaist theories, has influenced and continues to influence embodied cognition in a tolerant and healthy way that should continue. Yet undoubtedly the majority of research within embodied cognition still takes place within the tradition of “analytic philosophy”, which itself assumes a common sense realism, and whilst it is always healthy to question our paradigms, I believe we would be too quick to throw away the ever prudent belief in an world independent of perception.

Nevertheless, I believe relativist theories do teach the traditional analytic approach important lessons- lessons I believe Varela et al touch upon but take too far. The way human agents carve up the world is heavily shaped by theoretical-framework/s; our relative cultural, historical and physical context. Richard Rorty seems right in some sense when he says the concept of “giraffe” is ultimately contingent (1999: xxvi). It seems to me perfectly plausible that some alien species would not perceive the world as containing giraffes. Giraffes (organisms and their categorization) happen to be a useful object for us to conceptualise for obvious evolutionary reasons. However, this does not mean that there is nothing independent of our cognitive systems, independent of our descriptions, independent of our history, which allows us to pick out giraffes. We can learn from Rorty that for example “our linguistic practices are so bound up with our other social practices that our descriptions of nature… will always be a function of our social needs” without needing to agree that there is no underlying “dough” from which to cut out cookies (1999: 48). We can likewise learn from Varela et al that our contingent physical makeup must determine the way in which we perceive the world without needing claim that there is no world beyond our perception. 

Andy Clark (1997) Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together

Again. MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Rorty, R (1999) Philosophy and Social Hope Penguin: New York

Varela, F., Thompson, E. and Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind. MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts