The New Science of the Mind
Page 11
For Heidegger (1927/1962), Dasein-the being of humans-is essentially being-in-the-world. By this, he didn't mean that first there are humans and, in addition, there is this property of being-in-the-world that all humans possess essentially. His claim was that humans are being-in-the-world. That is, the being of each of us consists in a network of related practices. Each of these practices presupposes an instrumental network of related items. We might find ourselves tempted to describe this by saying that human practices are embedded in a wider system of instruments. However, this would be crucially misleading. To describe the relation as embedding presupposes that there is a distinction between the practices and the instrumental network that embeds them. And this is precisely what Heidegger wished to deny. The instruments are partly constitutive of the practices. Division I of Being and Time is the attempt to understand humans simply as a system of practices in this sense. So, each one of us incorporates both the practices and the instrumental network that is constitutive of those practices. But if this is the underlying vision then cognition is extended for the simple reason that everything we do is extended. We must eschew thinking of a human being as a biological entity with biological boundaries of the usual sort. The being of humans is simply practices-practices that take place in the instrumental networks that partly realize them. Any expectations we might possess concerning the likely trajectory of our experiences are derivative upon this more basic way of being-in-the-world. Given this Heideggerian vision, there cannot be any special issue of whether the mental things we do are extended. The claim that the expectations constitutive of our sensorimotor knowledge are extended, therefore, would emerge as trivially true. So too would the extended mind.
I leave it to the reader to judge the relative appeal of this Heideggerian move. In any event, it is not clear that it is a move that Noe is in a position to make-at least not without a lot of shuffling of assumptions. The Heidegger-Dreyfus-Wheeler axis emphasizes the nonpropositional, hence nonprocedural, nature of sensorimotor knowledge. However, although Noe's official position is that sensorimotor knowledge is a form of knowing how, all the actual examples he gives of this knowledge seems to be forms of knowing that. Recall the passage cited earlier:
Our perceptual sense of the tomato's wholeness-of its volume and backside, and so forth-consists in our implicit understanding (our expectation) that the movements of our body to the left or right, say, will bring further bits of the tomato into view. (Noe 2004, 63; emphasis mine)
This is knowledge that rather than knowledge how. Or take the other passage cited earlier:
When you experience an object as cubical merely on the basis of its aspect, you do so because you bring to bear, in this experience, your sensorimotor knowledge of the relation between changes in cube aspects and movement. To experience the figure as a cube, on the basis of how it looks, is to understand how its look changes as you move. (Ibid., 77)
Here, Noe does at least talk of understanding "how" the look of something changes as you move. But this is such an anodyne sense of understanding how that it seems interchangeable with understanding that. After all, what is it to understand how the look of something changes as you move? This seems to amount to nothing more than understanding that if you were to move thus, then the look of the object would change in such and such a way. In other words, the grammar of Noe's claim is, here, misleading: though he appears to be talking about understanding how, he is really talking about understanding that (Rowlands 2006, 2007).'
So, if sensorimotor knowledge, as Noe seems to understand this, were to be regarded as extended, we would have to make out the case that at least some tokens of declarative knowledge or understanding are extended. And not just any declarative knowledge: we would have to show this with regard to the declarative knowledge implicated in perception. The difficulties with this are, I think, formidable. Therefore, if there is a stronger connection between the enacted mind and the extended mind, we shall have to find it in the second constitutive feature of the former: the ability to act on the world-to probe and explore its structures by way of the visual modality.
Claim (2): The Ability to Act on the World
In assessing whether the ability to probe and explore the visual environment is extended, we need to draw a familiar distinction between ability and the exercise of that ability. There are two ways of understanding claim (2), one much stronger than the other. According to the weak version, visually perceiving the world only requires the ability to probe and explore the world by way of the visual modality. It does not require the actual exercise of that ability-it does not require the actual probing and exploring of the world. On the stronger version of the claim, visually perceiving the world requires not only the ability to probe and explore the world by way of the visual modality; it also requires exercise of that ability.
Consider, first, the weaker claim. Is there any reason for thinking that abilities to probe and explore the world are extended? Given the distinction between an ability and the exercise of that ability, there does not seem to be. My playing of the piano is a spatially and temporally extended process that centrally involves, as one of its constituents, the keys of the piano itself. But I can have the ability to play the piano even if I never come across another piano in my life and so never have the chance to exercise that ability. The distinction between the possession and the exercise of ability can be applied to abilities of all kinds-human or not. The fertilization of an egg by a sperm is a process that incorporates, as constituents, both sperm and egg. But the sperm has this ability even if, owing to the vicissitudes of fortune, it never finds itself in the right place at the right time. The obvious moral seems to be that although the exercise of ability might be an extended process, the same does not hold for the ability itself. Abilities are not extended in the sense required by the thesis of the extended mind.
It is true, of course, that some abilities might be embodied." Here is John Haugeland discussing the ability to type:
[1] hat some particular pulse pattern [in my brain], on some occasion, should result in my typing an "A" depends on many contingencies, over and above just which pattern of pulses it happens to be. In the first place, it depends on the lengths of my fingers, the strengths and quicknesses of my muscles, the shape of my joints, and the like. Of course, whatever else I might do with my hands, from typing the rest of the alphabet to tying my shoes, would likewise depend simultaneously on particular pulse patterns and these other concrete contingencies. But there need be no way to "factor out" the respective contributions of these different dependencies, such that contents could consistently be assigned to pulse patterns independent of which fingers they're destined for. (Haugeland 1995, 253)
I think one should readily agree with Haugeland on this point. Many abilities are embodied in the sense that whether or not you have them is a matter not just of what is going on in your brain but also of dispositions built into your body whether through training or biological endowment. My ability to surf is not simply a matter of my brain encoding the relevant form of practical knowledge but also of my body having acquired, through a long process of training, the necessary bodily dispositions or tendencies. Without these dispositions, what is going on in the brain would not add up to the ability to surf. Although not all abilities are embodied, it seems undeniable that some of them are. However, as we have seen, the extended mind is a quite different thesis from the embodied mind. Even when both are understood as ontic theses of composition, composition by bodily structures is quite different from composition by environmental structures. The enacted mind's appeal to abilities to probe and explore the world by way of the visual modality might point us in the direction of an embodied view of perception. But this, by itself, does not yield an extended account of perception.19
The same sorts of considerations also point to the conclusion that some abilities are environmentally embedded. The bodily dispositions I have acquired in the course of learning to surf themselves have to be tailored to specific envir
onmental contingencies. For example, the ability to surf on a 7'11" Mini-mal does not translate into the ability to surf on a 5'11" Thruster. However, as we saw earlier, the extended mind is distinct from, and considerably stronger than, the claim that mental processes are embedded. The claim that mental processes have environmental constituentsthat they are composed, in part, of processes that take place in the world outside the head-is a much more striking claim than merely that they are dependent, even essentially dependent, on the wider environment. One can accept that many abilities-though by no means all-seem to be complex constructions out of brain activity, acquired or innate bodily dispositions, and environmental feedback. This still does not give you an extended account of abilities.
According to the stronger interpretation of claim (2), visually perceiving the world requires not only the ability to probe and explore the world by way of the visual modality; it also requires exercise of that ability. It goes without saying, of course, that the exercise of many abilities consists in processes that are extended into the world and include items in the world among their constituents. So, the stronger interpretation of (2) might certainly entail the extended mind. The problem, however, is that this stronger interpretation seems grossly implausible.
The immediate problem, of course, lies in accounting for novel visual phenomena. Suppose you encounter-to return to Noe's examplea tomato that you have never seen before. According to condition (1), perceiving the shape of the tomato consists in grasping the relevant sensorimotor contingencies. That is, it involves understanding how your visual experience will change contingent on your moving relative to the tomato, or the tomato moving relative to you, or an object occluding the tomato, and so on. But suppose we now add on the stronger version of condition (2): perceiving the shape of the tomato involves the actual exercise of the ability to probe and explore the world by way of the visual modality. But this entails that prior to exercising the ability one does not see the shape of the tomato.
The obvious response is to appeal to prior experience. You do not need to actually exercise the ability to probe and explore the environment, because although you might not have seen this particular tomato before, you have seen tomatoes of a similar shape. Therefore, on the basis of this prior experience, you can anticipate how your experience would change contingent upon certain events, such as your moving relative to the tomato.
This response, however, faces two problems: the first intrinsic to it, the second pertaining to the possibility of regarding the enacted mind as yielding an extended account of perception. The first problem concerns the possibility of perceiving novel visual shapes. For any object with a shape that you have hitherto not encountered, the stronger version of (2) entails that you do not actually perceive that shape until you have acted on itvisually probed and explored it-and witnessed how your experience changed as a result. Failing this, you will fail to perceive the novel shape. The same, according to this strong interpretation of the enactive account, is true of any novel visual property of an object.
The worry here, of course, is that the enactive account is confusing perception with subsequent cognitive operations. In essence, the worry is that the enactive approach runs together the distinction between perception and judgment.20 It certainly seems that something in the vicinity of seeing must be going on prior to the probing and exploratory activity. There is no probing and exploratory activity simpliciter. That is, probing and exploratory activity is not something one does willy-nilly. On the contrary, the activity is guided by some visually salient feature of the situation. So, when we explore the visual potential of a novel shape, for example, what is it that guides our exploration? The obvious response is that what guides our exploration is our perception of the shape. We certainly see something, and the most natural candidate for what we see is the shape. We may not know exactly what shape it is; that is what the subsequent exploration is to tell us. But this latter issue is a matter of judgment, not perception.
The second problem is more germane to our concerns. Noe does seem to endorse the stronger interpretation of claim (2). In a passage cited earlier, for example, he talks of perception being "constituted by our possession and exercise of bodily skills" (Noe 2004, 25).21 However, sometimes his claims seem to suggest that the actual exercise of a sensorimotor ability is required only during the process of learning to perceive a visual property. Thus: "only though self-movement can one test and so learn the relevant patterns of sensorimotor dependence" (ibid., 13).
However, if the exercise of one's ability to probe and explore the environment is only required for learning how to perceive a visual property, whereas simply the ability will suffice for actually perceiving a property one has previously encountered, then this means that only learning how to perceive a visual property will be an extended process. Perceiving an already encountered property will require only the relevant expectations concerning how one's experience will change given certain contingencies, and the ability to probe and explore the relevant portion of the environment. And if the arguments developed here are correct, there is no reason to think that either of these is an extended process.
We can represent the situation in the form of a dilemma. If the enacted mind claims that the actual exercise of one's ability to visually probe the world is required for perception, then it is implausible. If, on the other hand, it claims that exercise of this ability is required only during the learning phase, then it yields only an extremely attenuated version of the extended mind: an extended account of learning to perceive, but not of perception itself. As far as its account of the latter goes, the enacted mind supplies us with a solidly internalist account oriented around the possession of expectations and abilities. This is, of course, not necessarily a bad thing. Many would regard this anodyne internalist interpretation of the enactive mind as counting in its favor rather than as a strike against it. However, it does suggest that if there is to be a non-Cartesian science of the mind-radically different from its Cartesian forebears-then the enactive mind, at least as this has been developed by Noe, is not going to be at the heart of it.
Thus, it seems that any attempt to return the enactive mind to the heart of the non-Cartesian science is, in one way or another, going to have to try and undermine the distinction between perceiving and learning to perceive; and it has to do this in such a way that perception turns out to be a lot more like learning than learning is like perception. Interestingly, an attempt to undermine the distinction between learning and perception can be found in both Hurley and Noe 2003 and Hurley 2010.22 Here, the learning-perception distinction is represented as the training-post-training distinction. The attempt to undermine this distinction is based on trying to shift attention away from what Hurley calls the "sufficiency question" to what she calls the "explanatory question." With regard to perceptual experience, the sufficiency question would be: "What in the system suffices for a visual experience, P, with a given content?" The corresponding explanatory question would be: "Why is this neural state the neural correlate of the visual experience P?" Thus, Hurley proposes that we switch focus from the issue of the most local mechanism of perceptual experience to the issue of what provides the best explanation of the quality and character of the experience. Whereas the local mechanism that suffices for a perceptual experience may be internal to the perceiving subject, Hurley argues, the best explanation of the quality and character of the experience will have to advert to "a characteristic extended dynamic." That is, the best explanation of the quality and character of the perceptual experience will advert to a distributed process incorporating brain, body, and the active probing or exploration of the world.
Unfortunately, however, I do not think this attempt will work. To see why, consider a distinction I drew in my Rowlands 2003: the distinction between the possession of a property and the location of things that possess that property. Consider, for example, the property of being a planet. Possession of this property by an object requires that it stand in a certain relation to th
ings outside it-a sun that it orbits, for example. It is standing in this relation that makes something a planet; and an explanation of why something is a planet would, therefore, have to refer to these things. But it does not follow from this that a planet is located wherever its central sun is located. Issues of property possession, and explanation of that property possession, do not translate into issues concerning the location of the token items that possess this property.23 Thus, we might agree with Hurley that the best explanation of the quality and character of an experience might appeal to a characteristic extended dynamic. And we might agree that this is the best explanation because this dynamic is indeed responsible for the possession by the experience of this quality or character. However, it does not follow from this that the experience is extended.24 In other words, even if we accepted Hurley's attempt to switch the focus of concern, this move will yield, at most, only an embedded account of perceptual processes. It will not yield an extended account.25
6 The Mind Embodied, Extended, and Amalgamated
As things stand, the embedded mind is a neo-Cartesian fallback position employed by those who accept the force of the arguments for the extended account but seek to limit their consequences. However, it is far from clear that the enacted mind, at least as represented by Noe, significantly diverges from an environmentally aware form of internalism. That is, short of an injection of Heideggerian phenomenological ontology, the enactive account still yields only an embodied and/or embedded account of cognitive processes. With the possible exception of perceptual learning, it does not yield an extended account. Therefore, if the arguments of this chapter are correct, at the heart of a non-Cartesian cognitive science, we find the mind embodied and the mind extended. The four Es with which we began this chapter have, effectively, shrunk to two.