Rationality and Emotions in Decision Making

Decision making is traditionally viewed as a rational process where reason calculates the best way to achieve the goal. Investigations from different areas of cognitive science have shown that human decisions and actions are much more influenced by intuition and emotional responses then it was previously thought. In this paper I examine the role of emotion in decision making, particularly Damasio's hypothesis of somatic markers and Green's dual process theory of moral judgment. I conclude the paper with the discussion of the threat that deliberation and conscious rationality is an illusion.philosophy of cognitive science, decision making, emotions, the problem of free will, ethics

Extended Cognition: Feedback Loops and Coupled Systems

The article explores two waves of active externalism. I first introduce the distinction between passive and active externalism and analyse a proposal of active externalism based on the principle of parity proposed by Clark and Chalmers. There are two main obstacles, causal-constitution fallacy and cognitive bloat, that threaten the extended cognition hypothesis. The second wave of discussions based on the complementarity principle deals with cognitive systems with feedback loops between internal and external elements and is a more radical departure from functionalism and traditional thinking about cognition. I conclude with some remarks on potential ethical considerations of extended cognition