Andy Clark

Supersizing the Mind

Forward: By David Chalmers / Acknowledgements / Introduction: BRAINBOUND versus EXTENDED / I: From Embodiment to Cognitive Extension - 1. The Active Body: 1.1 A Walk on the Wild Side 1.2 Inhabited Interaction 1.3 Active Sensing 1.4 Distributed Functional Decomposition 1.5 Sensing for Coupling 1.6 Information Self-Structuring 1.7 Perception, Qualia, and Sensorimotor Expectations 1.8 Time and Mind 1.9 Dynamics and (Soft) Computation. 1.10 Out from the Bedrock 2. The Negotiable Body: 2.1 Where the Rubber Meets the Road 2.2 Whats in an Interface? 2.3 New Systemic Wholes 2.4 Substitutes 2.5 Incorporation Vs Use 2.6 Towards Cognitive Extension 2.7 Three Grades of Embodiment 3. Material Symbols: 3.1 Language as Scaffolding 3.2 Augmenting Reality 3.3 Sculpting Attention 3.4 Hybrid Thoughts? 3.5 From Translation to Coordination 3.6 Second-order Cognitive Dynamics 3.7 Self-made Minds. 4. World, Incorporated: 4.1 Cognitive Niche Construction: A Primer 4.2 Cognition in the Globe: A Cameo 4.3 Thinking Space 4.4 Epistemic Engineers 4.5 Exploitative Representation and Wide Computation 4.6 Tetris: The Update 4.7 The Swirl of Organization 4.8 Extending the Mind 4.9 BRAINBOUND versus EXTENDED: The Case So Far. II. Boundary Disputes - 5. Mind Re-bound?: 5.1 EXTENDED Anxiety 5.2 Pencil Me In 5.3 The Odd Coupling 5.4 Cognitive Candidacy 5.5 The Mark of the Cognitive? 5.6 Kinds and Minds 5.7 Perception and Development 5.8 Deception and Contested Space 5.9 Folk Intuition and Cognitive Extension 5.10 Asymmetry and Lopsideness 5.11 Similarity vs Complementarity 5.12 Hippo-World 6. The Cure for Cognitive Hiccups (HEMC, HEC, HEMC): 6.1 Ruperts Challenge 6.2 HEC versus HEMC 6.3 Parity and Cognitive Kinds (Again) 6.4 The Persisting Core 6.5 Cognitive Impartiality 6.6 A Brain Teaser 6.7 Thoughtful Gestures 6.8 Material Carriers 6.9 Loops as Mechanisms 6.10 Anarchic Self-Stimulation 6.11Autonomous Coupling 6.12 Why the HEC? 6.13 The Cure 7. Rediscovering the Brain: 7.1 Matter into Mind 7.2.Honey, I Shrunk the Representations 7.3 Change Spotting: The Sequel 7.4 Thinking about Thinking: The Brains Eye View.: 7.5 Born-Again Cartesians? 7.6 Surrogate Situations 7.7 Plug Points 7.8 Brain Control 7.9 Asymmetry Arguments 7.10 Extended in a Vat 7.11 The (Situated) Cognizers Innards III: The Limits of Embodiment - 8. Painting, Planning, and Perceiving: 8.1 Enacting Perceptual Experience 8.2 The Painter and the Perceiver 8.3 Three Virtues of the Strong Sensorimotor Model 8.4 A Vice: Sensorimotor (Hyper) Sensitivity 8.5 What Reaching Teaches 8.6 (Tweaked)Tele-Assistance 8.7 Sensorimotor Summarizing 8.8 Virtual Content, Again 8.9 Beyond the Sensorimotor Frontier 9. Disentangling Embodiment: 9.1 Three Threads 9.2 The Separability Thesis 9.3 Beyond Flesh-eating Functionalism. 9.4 Ada, Adder, and Odder 9.5 A Tension Revealed 9.6 What Bodies Are 9.7 Participant Machinery and Morphological Computation 9.8 Quantifying Embodiment 9.9 The Heideggerian Theatre / 10. Conclusions: Mindsized Bites / Appendix: The Extended Mind (Andy Clark and David Chalmers)

Genome-wide association scan identifies a colorectal cancer susceptibility locus on 11q23 and replicates risk loci at 8q24 and 18q21.

In a genome-wide association study to identify loci associated with colorectal cancer (CRC) risk, we genotyped 555,510 SNPs in 1,012 early-onset Scottish CRC cases and 1,012 controls (phase 1). In phase 2, we genotyped the 15,008 highest-ranked SNPs in 2,057 Scottish cases and 2,111 controls. We then genotyped the five highest-ranked SNPs from the joint phase 1 and 2 analysis in 14,500 cases and 13,294 controls from seven populations, and identified a previously unreported association, rs3802842 on 11q23 (OR = 1.1; P = 5.8 × 10−10), showing population differences in risk. We also replicated and fine-mapped associations at 8q24 (rs7014346; OR = 1.19; P = 8.6 × 10−26) and 18q21 (rs4939827; OR = 1.2; P = 7.8 × 10−28). Risk was greater for rectal than for colon cancer for rs3802842 (P < 0.008) and rs4939827 (P < 0.009). Carrying all six possible risk alleles yielded OR = 2.6 (95% CI = 1.75–3.89) for CRC. These findings extend our understanding of the role of common genetic variation in CRC etiology.

Natural-Born Cyborgs?

Cognitive technologies, ancient and modern, are best understood (I suggest) as deep and integral parts of the problem-solving systems we identify as human intelligence. They are best seen as proper parts of the computational apparatus that constitutes our minds. Understanding what is distinctive about human reason thus involves understanding the complementary contributions of both biology and (broadly speaking) technology, as well as the dense, reciprocal patterns of causal and co-evolutionary influence that run between them.

Doing without representing

Connectionism and classicism, it generally appears, have at least this much in common: both place some notion of internal representation at the heart of a scientific study of mind. In recent years, however, a much more radical view has gained increasing popularity. This view calls into question the commitment to internal representation itself. More strikingly still, this new wave of anti-representationalism is rooted not in ‘armchair’ theorizing but in practical attempts to model and understand intelligent, adaptive behavior. In this paper we first present, and then critically assess, a variety of recent anti-representationalist treatments. We suggest that so far, at least, the sceptical rhetoric outpaces both evidence and argument. Some probable causes of this premature scepticism are isolated. Nonetheless, the anti-representationalist challenge is shown to be both important and progressive insofar as it forces us to see beyond the bare representational/non-representational dichotomy and to recognize instead a rich continuum of degrees and types of representationality.

Towards a cognitive robotics

There is a definite challenge in the air regarding the pivotal notion of internal representation. This challenge is explicit in, e.g., van Gelder, 1995; Beer, 1995; Thelen & Smith, 1994; Wheeler, 1994; and elsewhere. We think it is a challenge that can be met and that (importantly) can be met by arguing from within a general framework that accepts many of the basic premises of the work (in new robotics and in dynamical systems theory) that motivates such scepticism in the first place. Our strategy will be as follows. We begin (Section 1) by offering an account (an example and something close to a definition) of what we shall term Minimal Robust Representationalism (MRR). Sections 2 & 3 address some likely worries and questions about this notion. We end (Section 4) by making explicit the conditions under which, on our account, a science (e.g., robot ics) may claim to be addressing cognitive phenomena.

Language, embodiment, and the cognitive niche

Embodied agents use bodily actions and environmental interventions to make the world a better place to think in. Where does language fit into this emerging picture of the embodied, ecologically efficient agent? One useful way to approach this question is to consider language itself as a cognition-enhancing animal-built structure. To take this perspective is to view language as a kind of self-constructed cognitive niche: a persisting but never stationary material scaffolding whose crucial role in promoting thought and reason remains surprisingly poorly understood. It is the very materiality of this linguistic scaffolding, I suggest, that gives it some key benefits. By materializing thought in words, we create structures that are themselves proper objects of perception, manipulation, and (further) thought.

Are we predictive engines?: Perils, prospects, and the puzzle of the porous perceiver

The target article sketched and explored a mechanism (action-oriented predictive processing) most plausibly associated with core forms of cortical processing. In assessing the attractions and pitfalls of the proposal we should keep that element distinct from larger, though interlocking, issues concerning the nature of adaptive organization in general.

From Folk Psychology to Naive Psychology

The notion of folk-psychology as a primitive speculative theory of the mental is called into question. There is cause to believe that folk-psychology has more in common with a naive physics than with early speculative physical theorising. The distinction between these is elaborated. The conclusion drawn is that commonsense ascription of psychological content, though not a suitable finishing point for cognitive science, should still provide a more reliable source of data than some contemporary theorists are willing to admit.

The Dynamical Challenge

Recent studies such as Thelen and Smith (1994), Kelso, (1995), Van Gelder, (1995), Beer, (1995), and others have presented a forceful case for a dynamical systems approach to understanding cognition and adaptive behavior. These studies call into question some foundational assumptions concerning the nature of cognitive scientific explanation and (in particular) the role of notions such as internal representation and computation. These are exciting and important challenges. But they must be handled with care. It is all too easy, in this debate, to lose sight of the explanatorily important issues and to talk at cross-purposes, courtesy of the (surprisingly) various ways in which different theorists often conceive the key terms. The primary goal of the present paper is thus a modest one: to begin to clarify just what is at issue and to highlight some of the most central and pressing concerns. In so doing, we may hope to develop a constructive framework for future debate. In addition, I try to open up a space of intermediate options—ways in which dynamical and representational/computational understandings may sometimes afford complementary (rather than competing) perspectives on adaptive success.

Genic representation : Reconciling content and causal complexity

Some recent cognitive-scientific research suggests that a considerable amount of intelligent action is generated not by the systematic activity of internal representations, but by complex interactions involving neural, bodily, and environmental factors. Following an analysis of this threat to representational explanation, we pursue an analogy between the role of genes in the production of biological form and the role of neural states in the production of behaviour, in order to develop a notion of genic representation. In both cases an appeal to normal ecological context is used to balance multi-factoral, interactive causal determination against the intuition that certain aspects of the causal nexus play a special role in promoting adaptive success. Certain worries abut this vision help us to get a better grip on the concept of genic representation itself. We end with a puzzle concerning the relation between cognition and representation.