Radical embodiment in two directions

Radical embodied cognitive science is split into two camps: the ecological approach and the enactive approach. We propose that these two approaches can be brought together into a productive synthesis. The key is to recognize that the two approaches are pursuing different but complementary types of explanation. Both approaches seek to explain behavior in terms of the animal–environment relation, but they start at opposite ends. Ecological psychologists pursue an ontological strategy. They begin by describing the habitat of the species, and use this to explain how action possibilities are constrained for individual actors. Enactivists, meanwhile, pursue an epistemic strategy: start by characterizing the exploratory, self-regulating behavior of the individual organism, and use this to understand how that organism brings forth its animal-specific umwelt. Both types of explanation are necessary: the ontological strategy explains how structure in the environment constrains how the world can appear to an individual, while the epistemic strategy explains how the world can appear differently to different members of the same species, relative to their skills, abilities, and histories. Making the distinction between species habitat and animal-specific umwelt allows us to understand the environment in realist terms while acknowledging that individual living organisms are phenomenal beings

Stam: a framework for spatio-temporal affordance maps

A�ordances have been introduced in literature as action op- portunities that objects o�er, and used in robotics to semantically rep- resent their interconnection. However, when considering an environment instead of an object, the problem becomes more complex due to the dynamism of its state. To tackle this issue, we introduce the concept of Spatio-Temporal A�ordances (STA) and Spatio-Temporal A�ordance Map (STAM). Using this formalism, we encode action semantics re- lated to the environment to improve task execution capabilities of an autonomous robot. We experimentally validate our approach to support the execution of robot tasks by showing that a�ordances encode accurate semantics of the environment

Mechanistic unity of the predictive mind

It is often recognized that cognitive science employs a diverse explanatory toolkit. It has also been argued that cognitive scientists should embrace this explanatory diversity rather than pursue search for some grand unificatory framework or theory. This pluralist stance dovetails with the mechanistic view of cognitive-scientific explanation. However, one recently proposed theory – based on an idea that the brain is a predictive engine – opposes the spirit of pluralism by unapologetically wearing unificatory ambitions on its sleeves. In this paper, my aim is to investigate those pretentions to elucidate what sort of unification is on offer. I challenge the idea that explanatory unification of cognitive science follows from the Free Energy Principle. I claim that if the predictive story is to provide an explanatory unification, it is rather by proposing that many distinct cognitive mechanisms fall under the same functional schema that pertains to prediction error minimization. Seen this way, the brain is not simply a predictive mechanism – it is a collection of predictive mechanisms. I also pursue a more general aim of investigating the value of unificatory power for mechanistic explanations. I argue that even though unification is not an absolute evaluative criterion for mechanistic explanations, it may play an epistemic role in evaluating the credibility of an explanation relative to its direct competitors

The articulation of enkinaesthetic entanglement

In this article I present an argument for the necessary co-articulation of meaning within our felt enkinaesthetic engagement with our world. The argument will be developed through a series of stages, the first of which will be an elaboration of the notion of articulation of and through the body. This will be followed by an examination of enkinaesthetic experiential entanglement and the role it plays in rendering our world meaningful and our actions values-realising. At this stage I will begin to extend Husserl’s notion of intentional transgression to the enkinaesthetic sphere of lived experience, and in support of this claim I will examine the theoretical and practical work of osteopathic manual listening [Gens & Roche 2014] and the ‘felt sense’ in focusing [Gendlin] which makes possible a shift from a somatic articulation to a semantic, and potentially conceptual, one. Throughout, my position will be compatible with Merleau-Ponty’s claim that “Whenever I try to understand myself, the whole fabric of the perceptible world comes too, and with it comes the others who are caught in it.” [Merleau-Ponty 1964a, p.15]

False claims about false memory research

Pezdek and Lam [Pezdek, K. & Lam, S. (2007). What research paradigms have cognitive psychologists used to study “False memory,” and what are the implications of these choices? Consciousness and Cognition] claim that the majority of research into false memories has been misguided. Specifically, they charge that false memory scientists have been (1) misusing the term “false memory,” (2) relying on the wrong methodologies to study false memories, and (3) misapplying false memory research to real world situations. We review each of these claims and highlight the problems with them. We conclude that several types of false memory research have advanced our knowledge of autobiographical and recovered memories, and that future research will continue to make significant contributions to how we understand memory and memory errors

Designing for human–agent collectives: display considerations

The adoption of unmanned systems is growing at a steady rate, with the promise of improved task effectiveness and decreased costs associated with an increasing multitude of operations. The added flexibility that could potentially enable a single operator to control multiple unmanned platforms is thus viewed as a potential game-changer in terms of both cost and effectiveness. The use of advanced technologies that facilitate the control of multiple systems must lie within control frameworks that allow the delegation of authority between the human and the machine(s). Agent-based systems have been used across different domains in order to offer support to human operators, either as a form of decision support offered to the human or to directly carry out behaviours that lead to the achievement of a defined goal. This paper discusses the need for adopting a human–agent interaction paradigm in order to facilitate an effective human–agent partnership. An example of this is discussed, in which a single human operator may supervise and control multiple unmanned platforms within an emergency response scenario

Extended Knowledge-How

According to reductive intellectualists about knowledge-how :147–190, 2008; Philos Phenomenol Res 78:439–467, 2009) knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. To the extent that this is right, then insofar as we might conceive of ways knowledge could be extended with reference to active externalist :7–19, 1998; Clark in Supersizing the mind: embodiment, action, and cognitive extension: embodiment, action, and cognitive extension. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008) approaches in the philosophy of mind, we should expect no interesting difference between the two. However, insofar as anti-intellectualist approaches to knowledge-how are a viable option, there is an overlooked issue of how knowledge-how might be extended, via active externalism, in ways very differently from knowledge-that. This paper explores this overlooked space, and in doing so, illustrates how a novel form of extended knowledge-how emerges from a pairing of active externalism in the philosophy of mind with anti-intellectualism in the theory of knowledge. Crucial to our argument will be a new way of thinking about the extended mind thesis, as it pertains to the kinds of state one is in when one knows how to do something, and how this state connects with non-accidentally successful performanc

A genealogical map of the concept of habit

The notion of information processing has dominated the study of the mind for over six decades. However, before the advent of cognitivism, one of the most prominent theoretical ideas was that of Habit. This is a concept with a rich and complex history, which is again starting to awaken interest, following recent embodied, enactive critiques of computationalist frameworks. We offer here a very brief history of the concept of habit in the form of a genealogical network-map. This serves to provide an overview of the richness of this notion and as a guide for further re-appraisal. We identify 77 thinkers and their influences, and group them into seven schools of thought. Two major trends can be distinguished. One is the associationist trend, starting with the work of Locke and Hume, developed by Hartley, Bain, and Mill to be later absorbed into behaviorism through pioneering animal psychologists (Morgan and Thorndike). This tradition conceived of habits atomistically and as automatisms (a conception later debunked by cognitivism). Another historical trend we have called organicism inherits the legacy of Aristotle and develops along German idealism, French spiritualism, pragmatism, and phenomenology. It feeds into the work of continental psychologists in the early 20th century, influencing important figures such as Merleau-Ponty, Piaget, and Gibson. But it has not yet been taken up by mainstream cognitive neuroscience and psychology. Habits, in this tradition, are seen as ecological, self-organizing structures that relate to a web of predispositions and plastic dependencies both in the agent and in the environment. In addition, they are not conceptualized in opposition to rational, volitional processes, but as transversing a continuum from reflective to embodied intentionality. These are properties that make habit a particularly attractive idea for embodied, enactive perspectives, which can now re-evaluate it in light of dynamical systems theory and complexity research.This work is funded by the eSMCs: Extending Sensorimotor Contingencies to Cognition project, FP7-ICT-2009-6 no: 270212. XEB hold a Postdoc with the FECYT foundation (funded by Programa Nacional de Movilidad de Recursos Humanos del MEC-MICINN, Plan I-D+I 2008-2011, Spain) during the development of this work and acknowledges IAS-Research group funding IT590-13 from the Basque Government