Visual Acquaintance, Action & The Explanatory Gap

Much attention has recently been paid to the idea, which I label ‘External World Acquaintance’ (EWA), that the phenomenal character of perceptual experience is partially constituted by external features. One motivation for EWA which has received relatively little discussion is its alleged ability to help deal with the ‘Explanatory Gap’ (e.g. Fish 2008, 2009, Langsam 2011, Allen 2016). I provide a reformulation of this general line of thought, which makes clearer how and when EWA could help to explain the specific phenomenal nature of visual experience. In particular, I argue that by focusing on the different kinds of perceptual actions that are available in the case of visual spatial vs. colour perception, we get a natural explanation for why we should expect the specific nature of colour phenomenology to remain less readily intelligible than the specific nature of visual spatial phenomenology

Predictive processing and mental representation

According to some (e.g. Friston, 2010) predictive processing (PP) models of cognition have the potential to offer a grand unifying theory of cognition. The framework defines a flexible architecture governed by one simple principle – minimise error. The process of Bayesian inference used to achieve this goal results in an ongoing flow of prediction that both makes sense of perception and unifies it with action. Such a provocative and appealing theory naturally has caused ripples in philosophical circles, prompting several commentaries (e.g. Hohwy, 2012; Clark, 2016). This thesis tackles one outstanding philosophical problem in relation to PP – the question of mental representation. In attempting to understand the nature of mental representations in PP systems I touch on several contentious points in philosophy of cognitive science, including the explanatory power of mechanisms vs. dynamics, the internalism vs. externalism debate, and the knotty problem of proper biological function. Exploring these issues enables me to offer a speculative solution to the question of mental representation in PP systems, with further implications for understanding mental representation in a broader context. The result is a conception of mind that is deeply continuous with life. With an explanation of how normativity emerges in certain classes of self-maintaining systems of which cognitive systems are a subset. We discover the possibility of a harmonious union between mechanics and dynamics necessary for making sense of PP systems, each playing an indispensable role in our understanding of their internal representations

Are There Any Situated Cognition Concepts of Memory Functioning as Investigative Kinds in the Sciences of Memory?

This thesis will address the question of whether there are any situated cognition concepts of memory functioning as investigative kinds in the sciences of memory. Situated cognition is an umbrella term, subsuming extended, embedded, embodied, enacted and distributed cognition. I will be looking closely at case studies of investigations into memory where such concepts seem prima facie most likely to be found in order to establish a) whether the researchers in question are in fact employing such concepts, and b) whether the concepts are functioning well – functioning as investigative kinds – and should therefore continue to be employed, or whether something has gone wrong in the practice of the science and they should employ a different kind of concept. An historically situated approach to the case studies will allow me to answer part b) here. Along the way, I will argue for a way of construing scientific research that I call the dynamic framework account, an account of (im)maturity for science, a variety of conceptual role semantics with respect to scientific concepts, and the historically situated case study-based method I will employ in answering the central question. My conclusions, and the way I reach them, constitute contributions to debates about situated cognition particularly, and to philosophy of science more generally, as well as recommendations for scientific practice

Wide computation: a mechanistic account

This Ph.D. thesis explores a novel way of thinking about computation in cognitive science. It argues for what I call ‘the mechanistic account of wide computationalism’, or simply wide mechanistic computation. The key claim is that some cognitive and perceptual abilities are produced by or are the result of computational mechanisms that are, in part, located outside the individual; that computational systems, the ones that form the proper units of analysis in cognitive science, are particular types of functional mechanisms that, on occasion, spread out across brain, body, and world. Wide mechanistic computation is the result of bringing together two distinct strands of thinking about computation: (i) ‘wide’ views, which hold that computational systems can, on occasion, include parts of the surrounding environment; and (ii) ‘mechanistic’ views, which hold that computational explanation is a species of mechanistic explanation, and that computational mechanisms are a special type of functional mechanism. I argue that wide mechanistic computation draws support from several sources. First, I examine research on animal and human psychology and show that several organisms’ behaviours are properly treated as being the output of wide computational mechanisms. Second, I defend the view from several philosophical charges, including worries about its explanatory parsimony and empirical testability. Finally, I argue for the view’s theoretical credentials by showing that it can help resolve specific problems that have recently troubled 4E cognition. The result is an argument for not only the coherence but also empirical plausibility of wide mechanistic computation. On route to its main objective, the thesis also accomplishes a number of related tasks, including: (i) providing a framework for organising and conceptualising different views of computation, (ii) securing the conceptual foundations of mechanistic computation by addressing an outstanding challenge called the ‘abstraction problem’, (iii) sounding a cautionary note about recent predictive processing accounts of extended cognition and (iv) arguing against a particular conception of levels often used within cognitive science, what is labelled the ‘hierarchical correspondence view of levels’.

Pretence: Role of Representations and Intersubjectivity?

This thesis investigates the role of representations and intersubjectivity in explaining pretend play of young children. Its goal is to show that basic forms of pretending can be explained without recourse to mental representations. The thesis targets two aspects of pretence: imagining (underlying the ability to act as if), and guiding (underlying the ability to play in specific ways). It proposes an alternative account of pretence to cognitivist accounts that dominate in the literature. The alternative account is based on enactivism; it proposes to explain pretending through dynamic interactions of environmental affordances and animal effectivities in context. The thesis emphasises the role of social and environmental factors as well as cultural engagements in shaping the relevant context for pretence to occur. The thesis is an important contribution both to the literature on pretence as well as to philosophy of mind. While the topic of pretence is narrow, considering it through enactive lens involves considering some of the most debated issues, such as the applicability of mechanistic explanations to studying cognition

Co-Speech Gesture in Communication and Cognition

xv, 256 p. : ill.This dissertation stages a reciprocal critique between traditional and marginal philosophical approaches to language on the one hand and interdisciplinary studies of speech-accompanying hand gestures on the other. Gesturing with the hands while speaking is a ubiquitous, cross-cultural human practice. Yet this practice is complex, varied, conventional, nonconventional, and above all under-theorized. In light of the theoretical and empirical treatments of language and gesture that I engage in, I argue that the hand gestures that spontaneously accompany speech are a part of language; more specifically, they are enactments of linguistic meaning. They are simultaneously (acts of) cognition and communication. Human communication and cognition are what they are in part because of this practice of gesturing. This argument has profound implications for philosophy, for gesture studies, and for interdisciplinary work to come. As further, strong proof of the pervasively embodied way that humans make meaning in language, reflection on gestural phenomena calls for a complete re-orientation in traditional analytic philosophy of language. Yet philosophical awareness of intersubjectivity and normativity as conditions of meaning achievement is well-deployed in elaborating and refining the minimal theoretical apparatus of present-day gesture studies. Triangulating between the most social, communicative philosophies of meaning and the most nuanced, reflective treatments of co-speech hand gesture, I articulate a new construal of language as embodied, world-embedded, intersubjectively normative, dynamic, multi-modal enacting of appropriative disclosure. Spontaneous co-speech gestures, while being indeed spontaneous, are nonetheless informed in various ways by conventions that they appropriate and deploy. Through this appropriation and deployment speakers enact, rather than represent, meaning, and they do so in various linguistic modalities. Seen thusly, gestures provide philosophers with a unique new perspective on the paradoxical determined-yet-free nature of all human meaning.Committee in charge: Mark Johnson, Chairperson; Ted Toadvine, Member; Naomi Zack, Member; Eric Pederson, Outside Membe

Bodily skill and internal representation in sensorimotor perception

The sensorimotor theory of perceptual experience claims that perception is constituted by bodily interaction with the environment, drawing on practical knowledge of the systematic ways that sensory inputs are disposed to change as a result of movement. Despite the theory’s associations with enactivism, it is sometimes claimed that the appeal to ‘knowledge’ means that the theory is committed to giving an essential theoretical role to internal representation, and therefore to a form of orthodox cognitive science. This paper defends the role ascribed to knowledge by the theory, but argues that this knowledge can and should be identified with bodily skill rather than representation. Making the further argument that the notion of ‘representation hunger’ can be replaced with ‘prima facie representation hunger’, it concludes that although the theory could optionally be developed scientifically in part by reference to internal representation, it makes a strong and natural fit with anti-representationalist embodied or enactive cognitive science