The New Science of the Mind

by Mark Rowlands

  In an earlier chapter, I provided some reasons for doubting that the moral of the case of Otto is that the entries in his notebook qualified as a subset of his beliefs. I argued that it was more plausible to frame the conclusion in terms of processes rather than states: Otto's manipulation of his notebook could, in the appropriate circumstances, be regarded as part of the process of remembering. The point I want to develop in this section, however, is indifferent to whether we want to understand the case of Otto in terms of states or processes. My discussion to follow, therefore, will follow Clark and Chalmers's version of the extended mind more than I think, in other contexts, would be advisable.

  The problem with Clark and Chalmers's response is perhaps clear from the earlier discussion of the role played by liberal functionalism in the extended mind. On most accounts of functional role, of course, the mode of access one has to one's beliefs would be counted as part of the functional role of those beliefs. This is because the functional role of an item is defined in terms of its typical causes and typical effects. But the effects typical of a virtual VDU would be different from those of a belief traditionally understood. For example, among the causal effects of the virtual VDU would be the belief that I am having a visual experience of a particular sort. This would not be true of belief in its traditional form. Therefore, the causal roles are in fact distinct. Therefore, if we are relying on a functionalist account of belief to justify our claims concerning Otto, we would have to deny that the entries in his notebook qualify as his beliefs. The only way around this is to regard the sorts of functional difference in question as shallow ones-not significant enough to make a difference in the way we type psychological states or processes. But this will only work if we think there is a more abstract level of description of function that preserves the important aspects of functional role while whittling away these unimportant ones. This more abstract functional description would, in other words, allow us to justify the claim that there are certain aspects of functional role that are sufficiently unimportant to be safely ignored. But this, as we might have guessed, leads us straight back to the dispute between liberal and chauvinistic forms of functionalism-and, therefore (i) to the possibility of stalemate, and, more seriously, (ii) to a standoff between the extended and embodied strands of the amalgamated mind.

  The account of intentional directedness I have developed allows us to sidestep the issue of the appropriate level of functional description for psychological kinds. From the point of view of the account of intentional directedness developed in this book, the claim that Otto's access to his notebook entries is perceptual while Inga's access to her beliefs is not is, of course, true; but it is also misleading and irrelevant. Consider, first, why it is misleading. When Otto looks in his book and reads "The Museum of Modern Art is on 53rd Street," what is the phenomenology of this visual experience? Is he aware of the words and letters? Is this a correct way of thinking about the visual phenomenology of reading in general? In one sense of "aware," then, of course, when one reads, one is aware of the words that one is reading, and the letters that make up these words. We shall look more closely at what this sense of awareness amounts to in due course. For now, let's simply assume that Otto is aware of the words and sentences written in his book. Without awareness in this sense, Otto can scarcely be thought of as reading.

  However, to suppose that this is all Otto is aware of would be a mistake that disguises the true nature of the phenomenology of reading. When reading, if things are going well, one is aware not primarily of the words on the page but of what those words describe-what they are about. To be aware only, or even primarily, of the words or letters on the page is a sure sign of intentionality that has been stymied or otherwise thwarted. Earlier, we looked at Heidegger's discussion of the sorts of environmental breakdown that could thwart one's intentional directedness in this way. Applied to Otto, perhaps his writing is not particularly legible, and he must stare intently at the sentence to work out whether the indistinct scrawl at part of the sentence is a "5" or a "3." In such circumstances, Otto might well be aware primarily of the words on the page, and not what those words are about. But such circumstances are abnormal. Following Heidegger we might imagine various levels of environmental breakdown-conspicuousness, obstinacy, and obduracy-of varying degrees of severity. Perhaps Otto must don his spectacles in order to read some of the sentences-but after he does so he can resume his normal circumspective dealings with the book (conspicuousness). Perhaps even with his spectacles on, some of the sentences are not particularly legible, and he must stare intently at them in order to try and decipher what they are saying (obstinacy). Or perhaps his book is nowhere to be found, and Otto must try and work out how he is possibly going to cope without it (obdurateness).

  However, these are all circumstances where something has gone wrong. In normal circumstances matters are not like this at all. The relevant sense of "normal," here, is a normative rather than statistical sense: perhaps, for Otto, things go wrong more often than not. In normal circumstances, where things are going as they should, Otto's consciousness passes through the words of his notebook to what those words are about. He is not primarily aware of the sentence "The Museum of Modern Art is on 53rd Street." He is aware of the fact that the Museum of Modern Art is on 53rd Street. Similarly, Inga is not aware of her neural states. Her consciousness passes through those states to what they are about: the fact that the Museum of Modern Art is located on 53rd Street. In both cases, when it is not stymied by unfortunate environmental circumstances, the intentional directedness of both Otto and Inga passes through their material realizations out to the world itself.

  This is why the appeal to visual phenomenology is also, ultimately, irrelevant. To see why, consider the sense in which Otto is aware of the sentence "The Museum of Modern Art is on 53rd Street." The pronounced temptation to suppose that he is aware of the sentence results from the conflation identified and examined in earlier chapters: the confusion of awareness of and awareness with. Fundamentally, when things are going as they should, Otto is not aware of the sentence-this is not the intentional object of act. Rather, the sentence in his book is something with which, or in virtue of which, he is aware of other things-notably the fact of the location of the museum. The sentence is, in part, what discloses to Otto the empirical mode of apprehension under which the museum fallsbeing located on 53rd Street. Otto's manipulation of his notebook is, no more and no less than Inga's consultation of her memory, a way of revealing the world, in memory, as falling under a given empirical mode of presentation-that is, as containing the Museum of Modern Art that is located on 53rd Street. As such, Otto's manipulation of his notebook is a way of revealing or disclosing the world, and his consciousness, typically, passes all the way through the words on the page to what those words are about.

  The neural states of Inga, and the notebook entries of Otto, are both vehicles of disclosure. They are both items with which Inga and Otto are aware of objects in the world. And they are both items of this sort because they are both, in part, the vehicles by which the world is disclosed as containing objects that fall under one or more empirical mode of presentation. They are, in this sense, both vehicles of Inga's and Otto's revealing or disclosing activity. They are vehicles in virtue of which, in part, the world is disclosed as being a certain way: as containing as the Museum of Modern Art that is located on 53rd Street. This, I think, is the justification for regarding Otto's manipulation of his notebook as part of his process of remembering. Otto's manipulation of his notebook forms part of the vehicle of his cognitive disclosure of the world. The museum is disclosed, in memory, as falling under the empirical mode of apprehension "located on 53rd Street." Otto's manipulation of his notebook forms part of the vehicle of this disclosure. And that is why the manipulation should be regarded as part-a cognitive part-of a cognitive process.

  7 Disclosure and Cognitive Disclosure

  I can already envisage attempts to parody this position. I walk around the corner, th
ereby disclosing things that would have otherwise remainder undisclosed. Therefore, walking around the corner is a cognitive process. But this, of course, is nothing more than a parody. Walking around the corner is a means of disclosure. But not all disclosure is cognitive disclosure. Therefore, not all disclosure forms part of a cognitive process. What is the difference between cognitive and noncognitive disclosure? That's easy: cognitive disclosure is disclosing activity that satisfies the criterion of the cognitive. Cognitive disclosure is disclosure that takes the form of (1) the manipulation and transformation of information-bearing structures, where this (2) has the proper function of making available, either to the subject or to subsequent processing operations, information that was hitherto unavailable, where (3) this making available is achieved by way of the production, in the subject of the process, of a representational state, and (4) the process belongs to a cognitive subject, understood as an organism that satisfies conditions (1)-(3).s

  Walking around the corner does not consist in the manipulation or transformation of information-bearing structures. Therefore, it does not satisfy condition (1). Walking around the corner is something that can be done for many reasons, and so does not have the proper function of making information available, either to a subject or to subsequent processing operations. Of course, it may, as a matter of fact, make information available to the subject or to its processing operations. But if it does so this will not be a matter of fulfilling its proper function-for it has no such function. It has no proper function-other than, perhaps, the generic one of "getting around the corner"-because it can be done for a variety of purposes and with a variety of effects. Therefore, it fails to satisfy condition (2). And since it has no proper function, it can hardly satisfy this function by way of the production in the subject of a representational state. As a result of walking around the corner, a new representational state may well be produced in the subject. But this production can hardly be the result of fulfilling the proper function of walking around the corner. Therefore, walking around the corner fails to satisfy condition (3).

  Walking around the corner may be a vehicle of disclosure-part of the means whereby an object is disclosed as falling under an empirical mode of presentation. But it is not, at least not typically, a vehicle of cognitive disclosure. Therefore, there is no reason to regard walking around a corner as part of a cognitive process.' A further advantage of this account is that it emphasizes the significant commonalities between cognition and action in a useful way, but without collapsing the one into the other. Cognition is a means by which an object in the world is disclosed as falling under an empirical mode of presentation, where this means satisfies the criterion of the cognitive. Some forms of action can also be means by which an object is disclosed in this way-means that also satisfy the criterion. So some action is cognitive, but not all action is.

  8 Cognition Embodied and Extended: Back Together Again

  The amalgamated mind is the conjunction of the theses of the embodied and extended mind. The central goal of this book has been to provide a conceptual framework within which the claims of the amalgamated mind could be advanced and most fruitfully understood. A serious problem with this project was seen to lie in the differing attitudes of the embodied mind and the extended mind to functionalism. The extended mind is predicated on a liberal form of functionalism. The embodied mind is characterized by a general antipathy toward functionalism: at most it could countenance chauvinistic forms of functional specification but not their more liberal counterparts. Therefore, one of the most important tasks in developing a conceptual underpinning for the amalgamated mind was to find a way of reconciling embodied and extended accounts.

  This book has attempted, insofar as this is possible, to take functionalism out of the equation. This is not to say that functionalism has been rejected, simply that it has largely been ignored. The role of functionalism in motivating the extended mind has been replaced with the idea of intentional directedness as revealing or disclosing activity-activity that reveals objects as falling under empirical modes of presentation-and the resulting idea of intentionality as traveling through its material realizations. Crucial to the reconciliation of the mind embodied and the mind extended is the idea that revealing activity subsumes, for the same reasons and in equal measure, both bodily and environmental components of this activity.

  Suppose the world is disclosed in a given way: an object is disclosed, either in perception or in thought, as falling under a certain aspect or empirical mode of presentation. From the perspective of the model of intentional directedness developed in this book, the key question is: what are the vehicles of (causal) disclosure? That is, what are the vehicles causally responsible for the disclosure of the world as being this way? As we have seen, the vehicles can be of several sorts. Neural processes are, obviously, in all cases among the vehicles of disclosure. This is why any sane version of both the embodied and the extended mind thesis will recognize that there is a noneliminable neural component involved in every cognitive process. However, often-not always, not necessarily, but oftenneural processes do not exhaust these vehicles of disclosure. Sometimes, disclosure is implemented by bodily processes. These processes are among the vehicles of causal disclosure. Sometimes, disclosure is implemented by way of wider environmental processes-things that the subject does to and with things in its environment. An item counts as part of a cognitive process if it forms part of the means whereby that process, in a manner specified by the criterion of the cognitive, discloses the world as falling under a given empirical mode of presentation.

  In the case of any given process, it is an open empirical question as to what constitutes the vehicles whereby that process discloses the world as falling under a given empirical mode of presentation. Different processes will employ different vehicles; some of them will be purely neural, but some will not. However, the general model of intentional directedness defended here is indifferent to whether the vehicles of disclosure of the world are neural, bodily, or environmental. The vehicles-whether neural, bodily, or environmental-all contribute to the same thing: the disclosure of the world as falling under some empirical mode of presentation. The model of intentional directedness defended here, therefore, provides the general theoretical picture that unites the theses of the mind embodied and the mind extended.

  9 The Problem of Ownership

  In the first half of this book, I argued that all of the major objections to the thesis of the extended mind could be traced back to the mark of the cognitive objection. I provided a mark of the cognitive-a list of conditions that were collectively sufficient for an item to count as cognitive. Of these, the most problematic condition was the ownership condition: anything that was to count as a cognitive process must be owned by a cognitive subject (understood as a subject that satisfied the first three conditions of the criterion). Earlier attempts to understand ownership were faltering. I restricted my attention to personal-level cognitive processes and argued that the ownership of subpersonal cognitive processes was derivative upon these. Then I explored the idea that personal-level ownership has something to do with authority, and something to do with agency. But these arguments were far from conclusive. In particular, the phenomena of authority and agency seemed to be derivative.

  The model of intentional directedness defended here allows us to cut through these problems. A cognitive process belongs to me if it discloses the world to me. It can do this in two ways. It can disclose the world to me directly, in the form of my personal level processes-thoughts, perceptions, experiences, and the like. These processes are essentially characterized by the fact that they are items in virtue of which something in the world is disclosed to me-in perception, in memory, in thought, and so on-as falling under an empirical mode of presentation. Or it can, in the form of an informational state, disclose the world to my subpersonal cognitive processes. These processes count as mine, ultimately, because of the role they play in underwriting personal-level processes that disclose the worl
d to me directly.

  To add a little flesh to the bones of this account, recall the distinction between causal and constitutive disclosure. The former applies at the level of the vehicles or material realizations of thoughts, perceptions, memories, experiences, and the like. The latter applies at the level of the content of thoughts, perceptions, memories, and experiences. Consider, for example, the content of experience. What it is like to have or undergo an experience is, I argued, identical with the transcendental mode of presentation of the experience. But whenever there is an experience for which there is something that it is like to have or undergo it, the mineness of the experience is built into it as part of what it is like to have it. That is, part of what it involved in having an experience characterized by there being something that it is like to have it is to recognize that the experience is mine. Thus, the question of to whom the experience belongs does not arise. Here is an experience; to whom does it belong? That is not the sort of question that, except in the most atypically pathological of circumstances, makes sense. The mineness of an experience is part of its phenomenological characterpart of its what-it-is-like-ness.

  This phenomenological fact follows from the nature of intentional directedness as disclosure or revelation. There is no such thing as disclosure in itself. Disclosure is a relational concept: disclosure is always disclosure to someone (or, if it takes place at the subpersonal level, to something). Thus, what it is like to have or undergo an experience consists in the way the world is disclosed when a subject has an experience that is essentially characterized by this what-it-is-like-ness. The mineness of the experiencepart of its what-it-is-like-ness-therefore consists in the fact that in the having of the experience the world is not only disclosed as falling under a given empirical mode of presentation; it is disclosed in this way for me.