Mark Rowlands

Extended cognition and the mark of the cognitive

According to the thesis of the extended mind (EM), at least some token cognitive processes extend into the cognizing subjects environment in the sense that they are (partly) composed of manipulative, exploitative, and transformative operations performed by that subject on suitable environmental structures. EM has attracted four ostensibly distinct types of objection. This paper has two goals. First, it argues that these objections all reduce to one basic sort: all the objections can be resolved by the provision of an adequate and properly motivated criterion—or mark—of the cognitive. Second, it provides such a criterion—one made up of four conditions that are sufficient for a process to count as cognitive.

Contractarianism and animal rights

In this chapter, I shall argue that a strong — and perhaps the best — case for the moral claims of non-human animals can be made using the apparatus of contractarian or contractualist moral theory. The canonical version of contemporary contractarianism was supplied by John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice and subsequent writings. I am going to argue that contractarianism, of a form recognizably similar to that defended by Rawls, can be used to underwrite the moral claims of animals. In particular, it can be used to justify the claim that non-human animals possess moral rights.

AGAINST METHODOLOGICAL SOLIPSISM: THE ECOLOGICAL APPROACH

Abstract This paper argues that an ecological approach to psychology of the sort advanced by J. J. Gibson provides a coherent and powerful alternative to the computational, information‐processing, paradigm. The paper argues for two principles. Firstly, one cannot begin to understand what internal information processing an organism must accomplish until one understands what information is available to the organism in its environment. Secondly, an organism can process information by acting on or manipulating physical structures in its environment. An attempt is made to show how these principles can be extended to cognition as a whole. It is suggested that these principles may have a foundation in evolutionary biology.

Consciousness and Higher-Order Thoughts

This paper argues that higher-order thought (HOT) models of consciousness face serious logical problems. The precise form these problems take varies depending on whether HOT models are understood as attempts to explicate the concept of (intransitive state) consciousness or as attempts to identify the property in virtue of which mental states are (intransitively) conscious. Understood in the former way, HOT models face a problem of circularity. Understood in the latter way, such models face a problem of regress.

Connectionism and the Language of Thought

In an influential critique, Jerry Fodor and Zenon Pylyshyn point to the existence of a potentially devastating dilemma for connectionism (Fodor and Pylyshyn [1988]). Either connectionist models consist in mere associations of unstructured representations, or they consist in processes involving complex representations. If the former, connectionism is mere associationism, and will not be capable of accounting for very much of cognition. If the latter, then connectionist models concern only the implementation of cognitive processes, and are, therefore, not informative at the level of cognition. I shall argue that Fodor and Pylyshyns argument is based on a crucial misunderstanding, the same misunderstanding which motivates the entire language of thought hypothesis.

Supervenience and materialism

The concept of supervenience supervenience and token identity supervenience and reduction supervenience and psychological laws supervenience and explanation.

Arguing about representation

The question of whether cognition requires representations has engendered heated discussion during the last two decades. I shall argue that the question is, in all likelihood, a spurious one. There may or may not be a fact of the matter concerning whether a given item qualifies as a representation. However, even if there is, attempts to establish whether cognition requires representation have neither practical nor theoretical utility.

The Normativity of Action

The concept of action is playing an increasingly prominent role in attempts to explain how subjects can represent the world. The idea is that at least some of the role traditionally assigned to internal representations can, in fact, be played by the ability of subjects to act on the world, and the exercise of that ability on appropriate occasions. This paper argues that the appeal to action faces a serious dilemma. If the concept of action employed is a representational one, then the appeal to action is circular: representation has been presupposed rather than explained. However, if the concept of action employed is a non-representational one, then the appeal to action will be inadequate: in particular, the appeal will fail to account for the normativity of representation. The way out of this dilemma is to develop a conception of action that is normative, but where this normativity is not inherited from the actions connection to distinct representational states. The normative status of such actions would be sui generis. This paper argues that such a conception of action is available.

From the Inside: Consciousness and the First‐Person Perspective

Abstract To adopt a first‐person perspective on consciousness is typically understood as a matter of inwardly engaging one’s awareness in such a way as to make one’s conscious states and their properties into objects of awareness. When awareness is thus inwardly engaged, experience functions as both act and object of awareness. As objects of awareness, an experience‐token and its various properties are items of which a subject is aware. As an act of awareness, an experience‐token is that in virtue of which items – in this case, other experience‐tokens and their properties – can appear, to a subject, as objects of awareness. The precise nature of the relation between experience functioning as act and as object is a matter of dispute. However, two broad possibilities can be distinguished: (1) as acts of awareness, experiences reveal other experiences to subjects by way of a form of direct, unmediated, acquaintance, (2) as acts of awareness experiences reveal other experiences to subjects by way of modes of presentation of those experiences. I shall argue against (1). Possibility (2), I shall argue, entails a form of representationalism about experiences: experiences are defined by their representational role. However, (2) also yields a crucial but largely neglected consequence of representationalism: necessarily, in any given experience, there is an aspect of this experience that must be understood in terms of its representational role but cannot be understood in terms of its representational content. I shall call this the ineliminable intentional core of the experience. The ineliminable intentional core of the experience is, necessarily, not an object of inwardly engaged awareness. This entails a significant revision in the way we think about the concept of the first‐person perspective, and of what it is to study consciousness from the inside.

The Mind–Body Problem

What has become known in philosophy as the ‘mind–body problem’ is, in fact, best regarded as a collection of related problems. The ‘item’ problem is the problem of understanding the nature of mental items. The category of mental items, in turn, breaks down into two basic sorts: mental ‘types’ or kinds of mental state, and mental ‘tokens’ – concrete, dated, nonrepeatable instances of those kinds. Accordingly, the mind–body problem comprises two distinct item problems. The ‘essence’ problem is that of understanding the nature of the defining features of the mental – and traditionally these have been understood as ‘consciousness’ and ‘intentionality’. Accordingly, the mind–body problem also comprises two distinct essence problems. This article examines these mind–body problems.