The Mind beyond the Head: Two Arguments in Favour of Embedded Cognition
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.2298/FID1804505RKeywords:
Extended Cognition, Mind, anti–Cartesianism, Situated Cognition, Embedded CognitionAbstract
In this paper I defend situated approaches of cognition, and the idea that mind, body and external world are inseparable. In the first section, I present some anti–Cartesian approaches of cognition and discuss the intuition they share that there is a constitutive interaction between mind, body and external environment. In the second section, I present the fallacy of the Cartesian theater of the mind and explain its theoretical premises. In the third section, I present a spatial argument against it, and argue that some case studies could give support to the idea of the mind stretching over the boundaries of the skull. In the fourth section, I present a temporal argument, and argue that even in this case the idea of an interaction between our cognitive life and the external world has at least a very strong intuitive palatability.
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Sinigaglia, Corrado (2008), “Enactive Understanding and Motor Intentionality”. In: F. Morganti, M., A. Carassa, G. Riva (eds.), Enacting Intersubjectivity: A Cognitive and Social Perspective to Study of Interactions. Amsterdam: IOS Press, pp. 17–32.
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Varela, Francisco, Rosch Eleanor and Evan Thompson (1991), The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Wittmann, Marc (2011), “Moments in Time”, Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience 5: 66.
Burge, Tyler (1979), “Individualism and the Mental”, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4: 73–122.
Clark, Andy, and Chalmers, David (1998), “The Extended Mind”, Analysis 58 (1): 7–19.
Dainton, Barry (2000), Stream of Consciousness. Unity and continuity in conscious experience. London: Routledge.
Dainton, Barry. 2017. The Specious Present: Further Issues, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness–temporal/specious–present.html
Dainton, Barry (2017b), “Some Relevant Empirical Findings (Psychology, Psychophysics, Neuroscience)”. In: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness–temporal/empirical–findings.htmlEXTENDED MIND AND EXTENDED COGNITION│ 515
Di Paolo, Ezequiel, Marieke Rhohde and Hanne De Jaeger (2014), “Horizons for the Enactive Mind: Values, Social Interaction, and Play”. In: J. Stewart, O. Gapenne, E. Di Paolo (eds.), Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 29–48.
Greeno, James G. (1989). “A Perspective on Thinking”, American Psychologist 44 (2): 134–141.
Herzog, Michael, Roinishvili, Maya, Chkonia, Eka, Brand, Andreas (2013), “Schizophrenia and Visual Backward Masking: A General Deficit of Target Enhancement”, Frontiers in Psychology 4: 254.
Hoerl, Christoph (2013), “Husserl, The Absolute Flow, and Temporal Experience”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 86: 376–411.
Hoerl, Christoph (2014), “Time and the Domain of Consciousness”., Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1326: 90–96.
James, William (1890), Principles of Psychology. London: Macmillan.
Lee, Geoffrey (2014), Extensionalism, Atomism, and Continuity. In: L. Nathan Oaklander (ed.), Debates in the Metaphysics of Time. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 149–174.
Le Poidevin, Robert (2007), The Images of Time: An Essay on Temporal Representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lockwood, Michael (2005), The Labyrinth of Time: Introducing the Universe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McClelland, J. L, D. E. Rumelhart, and G. E. Hinton (1986), “The Appeal of Parallel Distributed Processing”. In: J. L. McClelland and D. E. Rumelhart (eds.), Parallel Distributed Processing (Vol. 1). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 3–44.
Paul, Laurie (2004), “Experience and the Arrow”. In: Alastair Wilson (ed.), Chance and Temporal Asymmetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 175–193.
Pöppel, Ernst (1997), “The Brain’s Way to Create ‘Nowness’”. In: Harald Atmanspacher and Eva Ruhnau (eds.), Time, Temporality, Now. Experiencing Time and Concepts of Time in an Interdisciplinary Perspective. Berlin: Springer–Verlag, pp. 107–120.
Prosser, Simon (2016), Experiencing Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Prosser, Simon (2017), “Rethinking the Specious Present”. In: Ian Phillips (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Temporal Experience. London: Routledge, pp. 146–156.
Putnam, Hilary (1975), “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”. In: K. Gunderson (ed.), Language, Mind, and Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 131–193.
Rizzolatti, Giacomo, Gallese, Vittorio, Fogassi, Leonardo and Fadiga, Luciano (1996), “Premotor Cortex and the Recognition of Motor Actions”, Cognitive Brain Research 3: 131–141.
Rizzolatti, Giacomo, Gallese, Vittorio and Leonardo Fogassi (2000), “Cortical Mechanisms Subserving Object Grasping and Action Recognition: A New View on the Cortical Motor Functions”. In: Mauro Gazzaniga (ed.), The Cognitive Neurosciences. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 539–552
Rowlands, Mark (2010), The New Science of the Mind: From Extended Mind to Embodied Phenomenology. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Saccuzzo, Dennis, Cadenhead, Kristin and Braff. David (1996), “Backward versus forward Visual Masking Deficits in Schizophrenic Patients: Centrally, not Peripherally, Mediated?”, American Journal of Psychiatry 153: 1564–1570.
Sinigaglia, Corrado (2008), “Enactive Understanding and Motor Intentionality”. In: F. Morganti, M., A. Carassa, G. Riva (eds.), Enacting Intersubjectivity: A Cognitive and Social Perspective to Study of Interactions. Amsterdam: IOS Press, pp. 17–32.
Sinigaglia, Corrado (2008b), “Mirror Neurons: This Is the Question”, Journal of Consciousness Studies 15: 70–92.
Strawson, Galen (2009), Selves. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Suchman, Lucy (1987), Plans and Situated Actions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Szelag, Elzbieta (1997), “Temporal Integration of the Brain as Studied with the Metronome Paradigm”. In: Harald Atmanspacher, Eva Ruhnau (eds.), Time, Temporality, Now. Experiencing Time and Concepts of Time in an Interdisciplinary Perspective, pp. 121–131.The Mind beyond the Head516 │ Andrea Roseli
Ullman, Shimon and Whitman Richards (1984), Image Understanding. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Varela, Francisco, Rosch Eleanor and Evan Thompson (1991), The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Wittmann, Marc (2011), “Moments in Time”, Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience 5: 66.
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Published
25.12.2018
How to Cite
Roselli, A. (2018) “The Mind beyond the Head: Two Arguments in Favour of Embedded Cognition”, Filozofija i društvo/Philosophy and Society. Belgrade, Serbia, 29(4), pp. 505–516. doi: 10.2298/FID1804505R.
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EXTENDED MIND AND EXTENDED COGNITION
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Articles published in Philosophy and Society are open-access in accordance with the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License.
