Scaling Up with Radically Embodied Cognition

Radically embodied cognitive science (REC) is typically concerned with basic cognition such as perception and action. However, complex cognition or higher-order cognition is difficult to explain for REC, as these theories eschew traditional representational explanations. This leaves REC with a scaling-up problem. In this dissertation I will explore options for REC to fix its scaling-up problem. I am specifically interested in autonoetic cognition, which is the ability to remember and imagine objects and events in the way they would be experienced if they were immediately present to be perceived. I contend that a simulationist account provides many of th necessary conceptual tools for understanding autonoetic cognition from a REC perspective. Furthermore, simulationist accounts are generally useful, as they are suggestive of a way to understand the observed neural activity and can be used to make empirical predictions. I will examine different simulationist theories in order to determine whether or not they can cohere with REC and help solve the scaling-up problem. Eventually I will argue that the REC commitment to reject representations makes the scaling-up problem insurmountable at this time

Two conceptions of the mind

Since the cognitive revolution during the last century the mind has been conceived of as being computer-like. Like a computer, the brain was assumed to be a physical structure (hardware) upon which a computational mind (software) was built. The mind was seen as a collection of independent programs which each have their own specific tasks, or modules. These modules took sensory input data and transduced it into language-like representations which were used in mental computations. Recently, a new conception of the mind has developed, grounded cognition. According to this model, sensory stimulus is saved in the original format in which it was received and recalled using association mechanisms. Rather than representations being language-like they are instead multimodal. The manipulation of these multimodal representations requires processing distributed throughout the brain. A new holistic model for mental architecture has developed in which the concerted activity of the brain\u27s modal systems produces functional systems which are intimately codependent with one another. The purpose of this thesis is to explore both the modular and multimodal theories of mental architecture. Each will be described in detail along with their supporting paradigms, cognitivism and grounded cognition. After my expositions I will offer support for my own position regarding these two theories before suggesting avenues for future research

The embodied phenomenology of phenomenology

We argue that bodily affects are in part constitutive of phenomenal consciousness. We find resources in Phenomenology, psychology, and neuroscience that point to the importance of bodily affects (e.g. hunger, fatigue, pain, as well as other various conscious and non-conscious bodily processes) for shaping not only our perceptions of and judgments about the world, but the phenomenal \u27something it is like\u27 to experience such perceptions and judgments

Anchoring know-how: Action, affordance, and anticipation

© 2020, Imprint Academic. All rights reserved. Action is always situated, always tied to specific contexts, and this is the case with respect to both the non-conscious — and largely subpersonal — processes or mechanisms that make action possible, and the person-level — and sometimes conscious — aspects of action that make action more than mere behaviour. According to one theory about the kind of know-how that we require to do what we do, the ‘automatic mechanisms’ that support action are ‘perfectly general’ (Stanley, 2011, p. 84), in contrast to the detailed propositional knowledge that informs action. We will argue, against this view, that the motoric aspects of action are not perfectly general but are extremely specific, and indeed, more so than any propositional knowledge that we may have in regard to our actions. We will also argue that one reason for this specificity involves the anticipatory processes involved in action which tie action to the particularities of the agent’s affordance space. One implication of this, at the very least, is that not all aspects of know-how are reducible to or can be subsumed by propositional knowledge. We draw from both phenomenological and predictive processing accounts to make this case

Anchoring know-how: Action, affordance, and anticipation

Action is always situated, always tied to specific contexts, and this is the case with respect to both the non-conscious — and largely subpersonal — processes or mechanisms that make action possible, and the person-level — and sometimes conscious — aspects of action that make action more than mere behaviour. According to one theory about the kind of know-how that we require to do what we do, the ‘automatic mechanisms’ that support action are ‘perfectly general’ (Stanley, 2011, p. 84), in contrast to the detailed propositional knowledge that informs action. We will argue, against this view, that the motoric aspects of action are not perfectly general but are extremely specific, and indeed, more so than any propositional knowledge that we may have in regard to our actions. We will also argue that one reason for this specificity involves the anticipatory processes involved in action which tie action to the particularities of the agent’s affordance space. One implication of this, at the very least, is that not all aspects of know-how are reducible to or can be subsumed by propositional knowledge. We draw from both phenomenological and predictive processing accounts to make this case

The embodied phenomenology of phenomenology

We argue that bodily affects are in part constitutive of phenomenal consciousness. We find resources in Phenomenology, psychology, and neuroscience that point to the importance of bodily affects (e.g. hunger, fatigue, pain, as well as other various conscious and non-conscious bodily processes) for shaping not only our perceptions of and judgments about the world, but the phenomenal \u27something it is like’to experience such perceptions and judgments