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Georg Theiner
  • Department of Philosophy
    Villanova University
    St Augustine Ctr Liberal Arts Rm 172
    Villanova, PA 19085
    USA

Georg Theiner

For Descartes, minds were essentially immaterial, non-extended things. Contemporary cognitive science prides itself on having exorcised the Cartesian ghost from the biological machine. However, it remains committed to the Cartesian vision... more
For Descartes, minds were essentially immaterial, non-extended things. Contemporary cognitive science prides itself on having exorcised the Cartesian ghost from the biological machine. However, it remains committed to the Cartesian vision of the mental as something purely inner. Against the idea that the mind resides solely in the brain, advocates of the situated and embodied nature of cognition have long stressed the importance of dynamic brain-body-environment couplings, the opportunistic exploitation of bodily morphology, the strategic performance of epistemically potent actions, the generation and use of external representations, and the cognitive scaffolding provided by artifacts and social-cultural practices. According to the extended mind thesis, a significant portion of human cognition literally extends beyond the brain into the body and its environment. This book aims to clarify the nature and the scope of this thesis, and to defend its central insight that cognition is not confined to the boundaries of the biological individual.
I have finally decided to make available my MA Thesis in its original, unabridged version. Its 400 pages were produced, with a lot of youthful exuberance, during an intense period of writing from 1997-99. When I began to conceive it, I... more
I have finally decided to make available my MA Thesis in its original, unabridged version. Its 400 pages were produced, with a lot of youthful exuberance, during an intense period of writing from 1997-99. When I began to conceive it, I wanted to get closure from my obsessive love-and-hate relationship with Chomsky’s theory of generative grammar that I had developed during my days as an undergraduate student in philosophy and linguistics. Working through the foundations of Chomsky’s theory helped me to clarify my perspective on linguistic nativism, but also to understand more about the ‘deep’ history of generative grammar within linguistics, psychology, formal language theory, automata theory, and philosophy. What I offer in my thesis is an extended reconstruction of Chomsky’s argument for linguistic nativism, understood as a vast ‘inference to the best explanation’ based on his conception of what it means for a theory of grammar to have ‘explanatory adequacy.’ In the end, I cautiously endorsed important aspects of Chomsky’s theory, but questioned certain ‘hidden’ methodological assumptions that were part of the suggested inference.

Since its completion, more than 16 years have passed during which my attitude towards Chomsky’s nativism has become a lot more skeptical. I am still convinced that many of the ‘armchair’ arguments that were originally offered against Chomsky’s then-iconoclastic brand of ‘naturalistic’ mentalism are misguided, and that many ‘old-school’ linguists or psychologists who attacked his argument either misunderstood the mechanics of his theory, or failed to grasp the full complexity of first-language acquisition. However, I now believe that the empirical case for linguistic nativism is fairly thin. In my view, the evidence rests mainly on (a) an impoverished characterization of what can be considered as ‘primary linguistic data,’ (b) flawed methodological assumptions about how we ought to study language and its acquisition, specifically grammar, which lead to a distorted view of human development (e.g., ‘autonomy’, ‘modularity’, ‘methodological solipsism’) and an artificial inflation of certain results in formal learning theory, (c) a serious underestimation of the statistical power of present-day inductive learning machines. In short, I no longer believe that Chomsky’s conclusion is in fact supported by an ‘inference to the best explanation.’

Showing this would require a great deal more than a ‘significant revision’ of my original work. Basically, it means that I would have to write an entirely new book which reflects what we have learned about language, learning, and development over the past 15 years. Needless to say, that book would be very different in outlook, substance, style, and content. Perhaps I will one day write such a book. However, I find it increasingly unlikely that I will ever find the necessary time and energy to go back to my old work, and update and revise it for scholarly publication. Despite its inevitable flaws, though, I believe it would be a shame if my work never saw the light of day, or meet the court of public opinion. It contains interesting discussions of the development of generative grammar, its historical roots, and philosophical reception. If I may say so myself, it was a valiant effort at synthesizing the many interwoven threads of conceptual, formal, and empirical argumentation which together constitute (read: constituted) the case for Chomsky’s linguistic nativism. (And before you ask: it was completed before I was aware of Fiona Cowie’s What’s Within, which – as I later learned – came out a couple of weeks before I submitted my thesis.)

If you find in it any ideas to be of sufficient interest to discuss or otherwise refer to in your own work, I kindly ask that you give credit to it as an unpublished MA Thesis (submitted to, and successfully defended, in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vienna, January 1999).

--Georg Theiner
Philadelphia, August 2015
This chapter approaches the work of the French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, from the point of view of embodied, extended, and distributed cognition. The concepts that form Bourdieu’s central dyad, habitus and field, are remarkably... more
This chapter approaches the work of the French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, from the point of view of embodied, extended, and distributed cognition. The concepts that form Bourdieu’s central dyad, habitus and field, are remarkably consonant with externalist views. Habitus is a form of knowledge that is not only embodied but fundamentally environment-dependent, and field is a distributed network of cognitively active positions that serves not only as a repository of social knowledge, but also as an external template for individual schemes of perception and action. The aim of this chapter’s comparative analysis is not to merely show that Bourdieu’s concepts are compatible with cognitive and epistemological externalism. They further demonstrate that the resources of Bourdieu’s theoretical framework can prove particularly useful for developing externalist accounts of culture and society—two areas that are significantly underexplored within mainstream debates in analytic philosophy.
"As a way of concluding, I should make explicit my contention that the old antagonism between matter and spirit has less impact on the question of what makes us human than has been assumed. Our image of humanity as a cyborg species, which... more
"As a way of concluding, I should make explicit my contention that the old antagonism between matter and spirit has less impact on the question of what makes us human than has been assumed. Our image of humanity as a cyborg species, which stresses the profoundly open-ended nature of our being, departs from (or perhaps just synthesizes) the received Aristotelean and Platonic models in certain key respects. […] I suspect that in the future, Linnaeus’ identification of humanity as a particular type of upright ape uniquely endowed with a rational soul is going to become increasingly problematic on two fronts […] Facing these developments, I am optimistic that the Christian notion of personhood can in fact accommodate a greater diversity of ensoulment and embodiment than Linnaeus and others may have envisioned."
As portrayed in Andy Clark’s extended mind thesis (EMT), human minds are inherently disposed to expand their reach outwards, incorporating and feeding off an open-ended variety of tools and scaffolds to satisfy their hunger for cognitive... more
As portrayed in Andy Clark’s extended mind thesis (EMT), human minds are inherently disposed to expand their reach outwards, incorporating and feeding off an open-ended variety of tools and scaffolds to satisfy their hunger for cognitive expansion. According to Steve Fuller’s heterodox Christian vision of transhumanism, humans are deities in the making, destined to redeem their fallen state with the help of modern science and technology. In this chapter, I re-examine Clark’s EMT through the prism of Fuller’s transhumanism, with the aim of unearthing a subterranean influence of theological tropes that are sweeping along beneath the naturalistic veneer of Clark’s thesis. Starting from four theological principles, which Fuller regards as foundational to his version of transhumanism, I review the philosophical narrative which, in Fuller’s view, provides the best philosophical motivation for the contemporary transhumanist project. On the basis of my reconstruction, I show how distant intellectual offshoots of the same principles mobilized by Fuller are also at play in Clark’s EMT – dressed up in secular garb, for sure, and in a materialistically inflected form, yet with a recognizably transhumanist bent. Undertaking this “archeology” of the EMT takes us surprisingly deep into the history of Western thought – to a point where Clark’s evocative “natural-born cyborg” image of humanity, with its emphasis on the radical openness of human nature to transcend itself, comes into view as a subtly blended continuation of certain historically consequential articulations of the Christian doctrine that humans are born “in the image and likeness” of God (imago dei).
The cross-disciplinary framework of Material Engagement Theory (MET) has emerged as a novel research program that flexibly spans archeology, anthropology, philosophy, and cognitive science. True to its slogan to 'take material culture... more
The cross-disciplinary framework of Material Engagement Theory (MET) has emerged as a novel research program that flexibly spans archeology, anthropology, philosophy, and cognitive science. True to its slogan to 'take material culture seriously', " MET wants to change our understanding of what minds are and what they are made of by changing what we know about what things are and what they do for the mind " (Malafouris 2013, 141). By tracing out more clearly the conceptual contours of 'material engagement,' and firming up its ontological commitments, the main goal of this article is to help refine Malafouris' fertile approach. In particular, we argue for a rapprochement between MET and the tradition of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, based on the 'Vygotskian' hypothesis of scaffolded and/or distributed cognition.
We lay out a Multiple, Interacting Levels of Cognitive Systems (MILCS) framework to account for the cognitive capacities of individuals and the groups to which they belong. The goal of MILCS is to explain the kinds of cognitive processes... more
We lay out a Multiple, Interacting Levels of Cognitive Systems (MILCS) framework to account for the cognitive capacities of individuals and the groups to which they belong. The goal of MILCS is to explain the kinds of cognitive processes typically studied by cognitive scientists, such as perception, attention, memory, categorization, decision making, problem solving, and judgment. Rather than focusing on high-level constructs such as modules in an information processing flow diagram or internal representations, MILCS focuses on mechanisms that allow systems to engage in flexible, adaptive behavior. Examples of these mechanisms are network structure-process pairs that: combine data from perception with top-down theories, achieve consistency and consensus through information exchange, selectively attend to information globally assessed as relevant, and develop specialized units from originally homogeneous networks through competition among the units. Two such systems are considered in some detail -- lateral inhibition within a network for selecting from a candidate set the option that is most attractive, and a diffusion process for accumulating evidence to reach a generally rapid and accurate decision. These system descriptions are aptly applied at multiple levels, including within and across people. These systems provide accounts that unify cognitive processes across multiple levels, can be expressed in a common vocabulary provided by network science, are inductively powerful yet appropriately constrained, and are applicable to a large number of superficially diverse cognitive systems. Given that people are typically highly motivated to participate in strong groups, cognitively resourceful people will frequently form groups that effectively employ cognitive systems at higher levels than the individuals. The impressive cognitive capacities of individual people do not eliminate the need to talk about group cognition. Instead, smart people can provide the interacting parts for smart groups.
Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice advances a view of social reproduction as a cognitive phenomenon, predicated upon acts of acknowledgment--primarily embodied and unconscious ones--among a diversity of social agents. Accordingly... more
Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice advances a view of social reproduction as a cognitive phenomenon, predicated upon acts of acknowledgment--primarily embodied and unconscious ones--among a diversity of social agents. Accordingly Bourdieu would appear to have much to offer to debates about the nature of knowledge and mind. Given his tendency to address these matters only obliquely, however, as corollaries to his more prominent sociological concerns, it is not surprising that the bearing of his work on questions of the cognitive has gone relatively unexplored. Our aim is to contribute to the greater appreciation of Bourdieu’s work within debates on embodied, extended and distributed cognition, in particular concerning cognitive externalism in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and its recent uptake within epistemology. We argue that the concepts that form Bourdieu’s central dyad, habitus and field, are remarkably consonant with externalist views: habitus as a form of knowledge that is not only embodied but fundamentally environment-dependent, and field as a distributed network of cognitively active positions that serves not only as a repository of social knowledge but also as an external template for individual schemes of perception and action. Our goal is not so much to “prove” that Bourdieu’s concepts fit the bill of what now travels under the banner of externalism, but to promote Bourdieu’s own theoretical apparatus as a way of refining and advancing externalist accounts of culture and society, two areas that are significantly underexplored within mainstream analytic debates.
The ‘extended mind’ (EM) thesis asserts that cognitive processes are not bound by the skull or even skin of biological individuals, but actively incorporate environmental structures such as symbols, tools, artifacts, media, cultural... more
The ‘extended mind’ (EM) thesis asserts that cognitive processes are not bound by the skull or even skin of biological individuals, but actively incorporate environmental structures such as symbols, tools, artifacts, media, cultural practices, norms, groups, or institutions. By distributing cognition across space, time, and people in canny ways, we circumvent or overcome the biological limitations of our brains. Human beings are creative, albeit opportunistic experts in cognitive ‘self-transcendence.’ This entry surveys discussions of EM in philosophy of mind and cognitive science which point to this overarching theme.
The goal of this chapter is to introduce the analysis of human groups as distributed cognitive systems, and to examine the related question of whether socially distributed cognition (SDC) amounts to group level cognition. In my... more
The goal of this chapter is to introduce the analysis of human groups as distributed cognitive systems, and to examine the related question of whether socially distributed cognition (SDC) amounts to group level cognition. In my discussion, I first break down the complex notion of SDC into a ‘joint’, a ‘distributive’, and a ‘shared’ aspect. Then, I highlight organization-dependence, novelty, and autonomy as central features associated with the ‘emergent’ qualities of SDC. Finally, I survey five theoretical ‘stances’ that have been invoked to identify the presence of cognitive organization at the group level, and thus bridge the suggested inferential gap between SDC and group cognition: (i) the intentional stance, (ii) the information processing stance, (iii) the computational stance, (iv) the ecological stance, and (v) the dynamical stance.
Review of: Muhammad Ali Khalidi Natural Categories and Human Kinds: Classification in the Natural and Social Sciences Hardcover: 264 pages Publisher: Cambridge University Press (July 15, 2013) Language: English ISBN-13:... more
Review of:

Muhammad Ali Khalidi
Natural Categories and Human Kinds: Classification in the Natural and Social Sciences

Hardcover: 264 pages
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (July 15, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-13: 9781107012745
Price: £55.00 (US$ 90.00)
Organizational learning, at the broadest levels, as it has come to be understood within the organization theory and management literatures, concerns the experientially driven changes in knowledge processes, structures, and resources that... more
Organizational learning, at the broadest levels, as it has come to be understood within the organization theory and management literatures, concerns the experientially driven changes in knowledge processes, structures, and resources that enable organizations to perform skillfully in their task environments (Argote and Miron–Spektor, 2011). In this chapter, we examine routines and capabilities as an important micro–foundation for organizational learning. Adopting a micro–foundational approach in line with Barney and Felin (2013), we propose a new model for explaining how routines and capabilities play a causal role in transforming experience into repertoires of (actual or potential) organization–level behavior. More specifically, we argue that routines and capabilities are built out of capacities for shared – both joint and collective – intentionality (Tomasello, 1999, 2014; Bratman, 1999a, 2014) that enable individuals to engage in complex forms of collaboration in conjunction with multiple layers of scaffolds that encompass material and symbolic resources, social processes, and cultural norms and practices (Weick, 1995; Hutchins, 1995; Clark, 1997, 2008; Orlikowski, 2007). In short, we outline what we call the ‘scaffolded joint action’ model and suggest its potential as a micro–foundation of organizational learning.
Proponents of the “literacy” thesis share with proponents of the “extended mind” thesis the viewpoint that communication systems such as language or writing have cognitive implications that go beyond their purely social and communicative... more
Proponents of the “literacy” thesis share with proponents of the “extended mind” thesis the viewpoint that communication systems such as language or writing have cognitive implications that go beyond their purely social and communicative purposes. Conceiving of media as extensions of the mind thus has the potential to bring together and cross-fertilize research programs that are currently placed in distant corners of the study of mind, language, and society. In this issue, we bring together authors with a diverse set of interests to identify promising areas of overlap, blaze new trails for us to explore, but also to highlight dissonances and challenges that will have to be addressed in future work.
"Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that “the good [that] men do separately is small compared with what they may do collectively” (Isaacson 2004). The ability to join with others in groups to accomplish goals collectively that would... more
"Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that “the good [that] men do separately is small compared with what they may do collectively” (Isaacson 2004). The ability to join with others in groups to accomplish goals collectively that would hopelessly overwhelm the time, energy, and resources of individuals is indeed one of the greatest assets of our species. In the history of humankind, groups have been among the greatest workers, builders, producers, protectors, entertainers, explorers, discoverers, planners, problem-solvers, and decision-makers. During the late 19th and early 20th century, many social scientists employed the notorious “group mind” idiom to express the sensible idea that groups can function as the seats of cognition, intelligence, and agency in their own right (Allport 1968; Wilson 2004). In their quest to stress (rightly) that group phenomena are something “over and above” the sum of individual contributions, a fondness for vitalist metaphors led them to believe (wrongly) that genuine group cognition must be the result of tapping into individualistically inaccessible, “holistic” forces. Today, inspired in part by historically unparalleled forms of mass collaboration enabled by the internet, it has once again become popular to speak of collective intelligence, group agency, or even the emergence of a “global brain” (cf. the wiki-edited MIT Handbook of Collective Intelligence).

In this chapter, I review some contemporary developments of the idea of group cognition, defined broadly as the collaborative performance of cognitive tasks such as remembering, problem-solving, decision-making, or verbal creativity for the purpose of producing a group-level outcome. My discussion serves a two-fold purpose. First, by discussing how the idea of group cognition can be operationalized, I seek to show that we can retain some central theoretical insights of the “group mind” thesis without succumbing to its eccentric metaphysical overtones. Second, by providing a useful array of generalizable taxonomic resources, I hope to foster greater degrees of mutual awareness among insufficiently integrated areas of research on group performance."
We extend Smaldino’s approach to collaboration and social organization in cultural evolution to include cognition. By showing how recent work on emergent group-level cognition can be incorporated within Smaldino’s framework, we extend... more
We extend Smaldino’s approach to collaboration and social organization in cultural evolution to include cognition. By showing how recent work on emergent group-level cognition can be incorporated within Smaldino’s framework, we extend that framework’s scope to encompass collaborative memory, decision-making, and intelligent action. We argue that beneficial effects arise only in certain forms of cognitive interdependence, in surprisingly fragile conditions.
"Conventional wisdom in the philosophy of mind holds that (1) minds are exclusively possessed by individuals, and that (2) no constitutive part of a mind can have a mind of its own. For example, the paradigmatic minds of human beings are... more
"Conventional wisdom in the philosophy of mind holds that (1) minds are exclusively possessed by individuals, and that (2) no constitutive part of a mind can have a mind of its own.  For example, the paradigmatic minds of human beings are in the purview of individual organisms, associated closely with their brains, and no parts of the brain that are constitutive of a human mind are considered as capable of having a mind.  Let us refer to the conjunction of (1) and (2) as standard individualism about minds (SIAM).  Put succinctly, SIAM says that all minds are singular minds.  This conflicts with the group mind thesis (GMT), understood as the claim that there are collective types of minds that comprise two or more singular minds among their constitutive parts.  The related concept of group cognition refers to psychological states, processes, or capacities that are attributes of such collective minds.

In recent years, the once-discredited concept of group cognition has shown definite signs of a comeback in the social sciences, some regions of cognitive science, and among philosophers concerned with collective agency. However, there are important differences among their respective views of why some psychological property should count as a group level phenomenon.  If we want to understand these differences, it is critical that we develop a shared ‘lingua franca’ that we can use to taxonomize different variants of group cognition.  It is the goal of my paper to contribute to this larger enterprise.  The paper is organized as follows.  First, I elaborate on the distinction between singular and group minds, and draw a distinction between hive cognition, collective cognition, and socially distributed cognition.  Then I briefly clarify the concept of mind that we can plausibly take to be at play in the present debate.  In the rest of the paper, I sketch an analysis of the emergent character of socially distributed cognition that is free from the metaphysical shackles of vitalism.  I close with a few remarks on the idea that there are multiple levels of cognition."
Wegner, Giuliano, and Hertel (1985) defined the notion of a transactive memory system (TMS) as a group level memory system that “involves the operation of the memory systems of the individuals and the processes of communication that occur... more
Wegner, Giuliano, and Hertel (1985) defined the notion of a transactive memory system (TMS) as a group level memory system that “involves the operation of the memory systems of the individuals and the processes of communication that occur within the group (p. 191).  Those processes are the collaborative procedures (“transactions”) by which groups encode, store, and retrieve information that is distributed among their members.  Over the past 25+ years, the conception of a TMS has progressively garnered an increased interest among social and organizational psychologists, communication scholars, and management theorists (Ren & Argote 2011).  But there remains considerable disagreement about how exactly Wegner’s appeal to group memory should be understood.  My goal in this paper is contribute to this debate, by articulating more clearly the value of conceptualizing groups as TMSs.  This value, I argue, consists in providing us with a blueprint for how to explain group memory in terms of collective information-processing mechanisms.  Collective information-processing mechanisms are dependent on, and interact with, the brain-bound information-processing of individuals, but cannot be reduced to the latter.  In my analysis, I lean on extant accounts of mechanistic explanation in the philosophy of science (Bechtel & Richardson 1993; Machamer, Darden, & Craver 2000; Wimsatt 2007) that have been used to analyze the explanatory practices of psychology and cognitive neuroscience (Bechtel 2008, 2009).  Based on my reconstruction of Wegner’s conceptualization of a TMS, I argue that the reality of emergent group cognition is compatible with its mechanistic explanation.  More generally, my analysis shows that group cognition cannot be reduced to individual cognition, while avoiding the false dilemma between “wholism” and “nothing but-ism” which has hampered traditional construals of the “group mind” thesis (Allport 1968).
Talk of group minds has arisen in a number of distinct traditions, such as in sociological thinking about the “madness of crowds” in the 19th-century, and more recently in making sense of the collective intelligence of social insects,... more
Talk of group minds has arisen in a number of distinct traditions, such as in sociological thinking about the “madness of crowds” in the 19th-century, and more recently in making sense of the collective intelligence of social insects, such as bees and ants.  Here we provide an analytic framework for understanding a range of contemporary appeals to group minds and cognate notions, such as collective agency, shared intentionality, socially distributed cognition, transactive memory systems, and group-level cognitive adaptations.
"In recent years, philosophical developments of the notion of distributed and/or scaffolded cognition have given rise to the “extended mind” thesis. Against the popular belief that the mind resides solely in the brain, advocates of the... more
"In recent years, philosophical developments of the notion of distributed and/or scaffolded cognition have given rise to the “extended mind” thesis. Against the popular belief that the mind resides solely in the brain, advocates of the extended mind thesis defend the claim that a significant portion of human cognition literally extends beyond the brain into the body and a heterogeneous array of physical props, tools, and cultural techniques that are reliably present in the environment in which people grow, think, and act (Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 1997, 2003, 2008; Wilson 2004; Rowlands 1999, 2012; Menary 2007; Theiner 2011). However, as commentators who are friendly to the idea of distributed cognition have pointed out, the philosophical debate over extended cognition has predomi¬nantly focused on the impact of tools on our thinking while somewhat neglecting the distinctively social and cultural dimensions of cognitive scaffolding (Sterelny 2004, 2010; Caporael 1997a, 1997b; Smith and Semin 2004; Wilson 2005; Barnier et al. 2008; Sutton et al. 2010; Theiner, Allen, and Goldstone 2010).

To reorient the reigning paradigm, Hutchins (2010, 445) has recently proposed the “hypothesis of enculturated cognition” (HEnC) as an alternative to Clark’s (2003, 2008) largely individualistic vision of the extended mind. According to the HEnC, the “ecological assemblies of human cognition make pervasive use of cultural products” and are typically “assembled … in ongoing cultural practices” (ibid.). Cultural practices, for Hutchins, are essentially “the things people do in interaction with one another” (ibid., 440). My goal in this chapter is to follow up on Hutchins’s call to “spur the program forward” (ibid., 445), by generalizing Kirsh and Maglio’s (1994) distinction between pragmatic and epistemic actions from the level of individuals to the level of groups. The concept of a collective epistemic action refers to the ways in which groups of people actively change the structure of their social organization, with the epistemic goal of reshaping and augmenting their cognitive performance as integrated collectivities. By placing a renewed emphasis on the interactions between people, rather than between people and their tools, I hope to recon¬nect the cognitive-scientifically-driven “extended mind” thesis with complementary areas of social-scientific research in which groups are analyzed as the seats of action and cogni¬tion in their own right. In particular, the literature to which I aim to build a bridge in this paper is, on the one hand, certain segments of social and organizational psychology (Larson and Christensen 1993; Hinsz et al. 1997; Mohammed and Dumville 2001), and, on the other hand, theories of collective and institutional action (Ostrom 1990; List and Pettit 2011)."
In this paper, we approach the idea of group cognition from the perspective of the ‘‘extended mind’’ thesis, as a special case of the more general claim that systems larger than the individual human, but containing that human, are capable... more
In this paper, we approach the idea of group cognition from the perspective of the ‘‘extended mind’’ thesis, as a special case of the more general claim that systems larger than the individual human, but containing that human, are capable of cognition (Clark , 2008; Clark & Chalmers, 1998). Instead of deliberating about ‘‘the mark of the cognitive’’ (Adams & Aizawa, 2008), our discussion of group cognition is tied to particular cognitive capacities. We review recent studies of group problem solving and group memory which reveal that specific cognitive capacities that are commonly ascribed to individuals are also aptly ascribed at the level of groups. These case studies show how dense interactions among people within a group lead to both similarity-inducing and differentiating dynamics that affect the group’s ability to solve problems. This supports our claim that groups have organization-dependent cognitive capacities that go beyond the simple aggregation of the cognitive capacities of individuals. Group cognition is thus an emergent phenomenon in the sense of Wimsatt (1986). We further argue that anybody who rejects our strategy for showing that cognitive properties can be instantiated at multiple levels in the organizational hierarchy on a priori grounds is a "demergentist," and thus incurs the burden of proof for explaining why cognitive properties are ‘‘stuck’’ at a certain level of organizational structure. Finally, we show that our analysis of group cognition escapes the ‘‘coupling-constitution’’ charge that has been leveled against the extended mind thesis (Adams & Aizawa, 2008).
The Group Mind Thesis—understood as the claim that groups as a whole can be the subjects of mental states—was a popular idea in the intellectual landscape of the late 19th and early 20th century. For many scientists and philosophers of... more
The Group Mind Thesis—understood as the claim that groups as a whole can be the subjects of mental states—was a popular idea in the intellectual landscape of the late 19th and early 20th century. For many scientists and philosophers of that period, it provided a succinct expression of what they perceived to be two characteristic features of groups: on the one hand, their ability to function as collective agents who can have intentions, make decisions, and pursue their own goals; on the other hand, the idea that groups are emergent wholes which are more than the sum of its members. Combine the two features, and the functional analogies between individual and group behavior strongly suggest adopting an intentional stance towards both.

Clearly, what drives much of the current philosophical interest in the idea of group cognition is its appeal to the manifestation of psychological properties—understood broadly to include states, processes, and dispositions—that are in some important yet elusive sense emergent with respect to the minds of individual group members. Like the group mind thesis, the term “emergence” had long fallen into disrepute, only to be rehabilitated for its seeming applicability to a wide variety of empirical phenomena as well as its usefulness in articulating certain claims in metaphysics, particularly claims concerning the ontology of the mind. However, care needs to be taken in understanding the usage of particular authors. It is apparent that there are at least three families of concepts that are at play in different contexts. (See O’Connor & Wong, 2000 for further discussion.) First, some intend a purely epistemological concept: emergence in this broad sense implies unpredictability (in some sense) from a certain vantage point. Second, there are modest metaphysical concepts: emergent properties of certain complex systems are taken to be real and nonidentical to structures of underlying properties and to make a distinctive causal contribution to the world, yet this is explicated in such a way as to be consistent with a broadly (albeit nonreductive) physicalism. Finally, there are strong metaphysical concepts: emergent properties whose manifestation is explicitly avowed as being inconsistent with one or other defining feature of physicalism—either the causal completeness (or “closure”) of physics (Gillett’s 2006 “strong emergence”) or both completeness and the realization of all macro-level features (O’Connor & Wong’s 2005 notion of “ontological emergence”; see also O’Connor & Churchill, forthcoming).

For the present paper, we will suppose for the sake of argument the correctness of the majority view that human mentality is a wholly physical phenomenon yet emergent in some modest metaphysical sense. Our goal will then be to address a set of related, conditional questions: If human mentality is real yet emergent in a modest metaphysical sense only, then (1) what would it mean for a group to have emergent cognitive states? (2) Is this even a metaphysically coherent view? (3) Relative to which notion of emergence do we have reason to believe that certain groups in fact have emergent cognitive states?  We will argue that evidence from a wide variety of social science domains makes it plausible that there are group cognitive states and processes no less metaphysically emergent than human cognitive (and other special science) states and processes.
The “extended mind” thesis (Clark, 2008) has focused primarily on the interactions between single individuals and cognitive artifacts, resulting in a relative neglect of interactions between people. At the same time, the idea that groups... more
The “extended mind” thesis (Clark, 2008) has focused primarily on the interactions between single individuals and cognitive artifacts, resulting in a relative neglect of interactions between people. At the same time, the idea that groups can have cognitive properties of their own has gained new ascendancy in various fields concerned with collective behavior. My main goal in this paper is to propose an understanding of group cognition as an emergent form of socially distributed cognition. To that end, I first clarify the relevant notions of cognition and emergence that are at play in the contemporary debate. I then apply our conceptual framework to recent developments in the theory of transactive memory systems (Wegner, 1986), arguing that the idea of group cognition is neither trivial nor shrouded in metaphysical mystery.
Does cognition sometimes literally extend into the extra-organismic environment (Clark, 2003), or is it always “merely” environmentally embedded (Rupert, 2004)? Underlying this current border dispute is the question about how to... more
Does cognition sometimes literally extend into the extra-organismic environment (Clark, 2003), or is it always “merely” environmentally embedded (Rupert, 2004)? Underlying this current border dispute is the question about how to individuate cognitive processes on principled grounds. Based on recent evidence about the active role of representation selection and construction in learning how to reason (Stenning, 2002), I raise the question: what makes two distinct, modality-specific pen-and-paper manipulations of external representations – diagrams versus sentences – cognitive processes of the same kind, e.g. episodes of syllogistic reasoning? In response, I defend a “division of labor” hypothesis, according to which external representations are dependent on perceptually grounded neural representations and mechanisms to guide our behavior; these internal mechanisms, however, are dependent on external representations to have their syllogistic content fixed. Only their joint contributions qualify the extended computational process as an episode of syllogistic reasoning in good standing.
My goal in this paper is to defend the plausibility of a particular version of collectivism – understood as the evolutionary claim that individual-level cognition is systematically biased in favor of aggregate-level regularities – in the... more
My goal in this paper is to defend the plausibility of a particular version of collectivism – understood as the evolutionary claim that individual-level cognition is systematically biased in favor of aggregate-level regularities – in the domain of language. Chomsky's (1986) methodological promotion of I-language (speaker-internal knowledge) and the corresponding demotion of E-language (aggregate output of a population of speakers) has led mainstream cognitive science to view language essentially as a property of individual minds/brains whose evolution is best explained as a result of the natural selection of an innate language faculty (Pinker 1994). Such a framework is largely oblivious to the linguistic dynamics arising from iterated learning, i.e. the fact that linguistic information must be periodically mapped from its I-linguistic into its E-linguistic medium and back in order to persist over time. Recent expression/induction models of language evolution, which are heavily inspired by the simulation-based methodology of Artificial Life, suggest that linguistic universals, such as compositional and recursive structure, can emerge from cultural selection alone (Brighton et al. 2005). I conclude that there is both a biological and a cultural route towards collectivism.
A wide-ranging discussion on the philosophy of mind, expanding human consciousness via technology, the ethics of microdosing LSD, AI, and the evolving idea of being human. Listen here:... more
A wide-ranging discussion on the philosophy of mind, expanding human consciousness via technology, the ethics of microdosing LSD, AI, and the evolving idea of being human. Listen here:
https://thecultureoflifepodcast.com/episodes/villanova-philosophy-professor-georg-theiner-on-the-philosophy-of-mind-the-ethics-of-microdosing-lsd-and-aquinas-vs-scotus-on-knowing
This interdisciplinary speaker series will cover ethical, philosophical and empirical issues surrounding the engineering of artificial and human intelligence. Those include the dynamic interactions between AI and HI, how... more
This interdisciplinary speaker series will cover ethical, philosophical and empirical issues surrounding the engineering of artificial and human intelligence. Those include the dynamic interactions between AI and HI, how human-computer-interfaces affect humanity, how humans outsource thinking to computers and other related technologies, how digital technologies transform the production, dissemination and validation of knowledge and how ethical values translate into technological and social decisions that affect who we are and who we're capable of being.
This interdisciplinary speaker series will cover ethical, philosophical and empirical issues surrounding the engineering of artificial and human intelligence. These include the dynamic interactions between artificial intelligence and... more
This interdisciplinary speaker series will cover ethical, philosophical and empirical issues surrounding the engineering of artificial and human intelligence. These include the dynamic interactions between artificial intelligence and human intelligence, how human computer-interfaces affect humanity, how humans outsource thinking to computers and other related technologies, how digital technologies transform the production, dissemination and validation of knowledge, and how ethical values translate into technological and social decisions that affect who we are and who we are capable of being.
The Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture, the Cura Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation cordially invite you to attend a webinar featuring a discussion on the qualities unique to humans such as the ability to reason and have... more
The Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture, the Cura Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation cordially invite you to attend a webinar featuring a discussion on the qualities unique to humans such as the ability to reason and have free will, decision making, and moral reasoning. This is the second of a series of webinars entitled "Bridging Science and Faith" and it will be moderated by Dr. Max Gomez, Senior Medical Correspondent, CBS2 New York. The webinar series explores the role of religion, faith and spirituality, the relationship between the mind, body and soul, the anthropological and cultural dimensions of being human and look for areas of convergence between the humanities and the natural sciences.

Follow this link to watch the video recording: https://thecurafoundation.org/webinars/human-uniqueness/

Featuring:

Markus Gabriel, Dr. Phil.
Chair in Epistemology, Modern and Contemporary Philosophy and Director of International Center for Philosophy and Center for Science and Thought, University of Bonn, Germany

Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE
Founder, the Jane Goodall Institute and
UN Messenger of Peace

William C. Mobley, MD, PhD
Associate Dean for Neurosciences Initiatives and Interim Director of the Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion, Department of Neurosciences, University of California San Diego

Georg Theiner, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Villanova University
Executive Editor, Social Epistemology
Research Interests:
Information & Registration: InsideStoryConference.org A transdisciplinary conference on Mind, Matter, Meaning and Mysticism November 9-10, 2018 Descartes’ famous dictum—I think, therefore I am—gave rise to the modern distinction... more
Information & Registration: InsideStoryConference.org

A transdisciplinary conference on Mind, Matter, Meaning and Mysticism

November 9-10, 2018

Descartes’ famous dictum—I think, therefore I am—gave rise to the modern distinction between mind and matter. But “the inside story” is more complex and thrilling—possibly uniting mind and matter, meaning and mysticism.

Join us for an in-depth exploration of consciousness, nature, and transcendence, as scientists, philosophers, and theologians ask “What’s on the inside?”

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
Philip Clayton (Claremont) - Does Mind Emerge from Matter?
Steve Fuller (Warwick) - Panpsychism 2.0: Is it Worth Another Shot?
Timothy O'Connor (Indiana) - Panpsychism vs. Dualism: Does it Matter?
Ilia Delio (Villanova) - Can Matter Transcend Alone? Insights from the Mystics

RESPONDENTS:
John Caputo (Villanova)
Research Interests:
Yellowdig, social learning platform in Blackboard LMS, gives students and faculty the ability to share and pin content in multiple formats. Once a pin is created, students in the course may comment and “like” any of the previous pins.... more
Yellowdig, social learning platform in Blackboard LMS, gives students and faculty the ability to share and pin content in multiple formats.  Once a pin is created, students in the course may comment and “like” any of the previous pins.  Faculty may assign different points for interactions; the point system may be used to drive student engagement and report a participation score to Blackboard’s grade book. The event is facilitated by Akiba Covitz, Head of Commercial, Yellowdig.

Villanova faculty discuss how they have incorporated Yellowdig: Seth Fishman, Education & Counseling; Georg Theiner, Philosophy; Kristen Turpin, Romance Languages & Literature
Research Interests:
GREATER PHILADELPHIA PHILOSOPHY CONSORTIUM – COLLOQUIUM The New Materialisms: Emergence or Panpsychism? March 25, 2017 1:00 - 5:00 Bartley Hall, Room 1011 Villanova University Open to the Public - Reception to follow Speakers: Jane... more
GREATER PHILADELPHIA PHILOSOPHY CONSORTIUM – COLLOQUIUM

The New Materialisms: Emergence or Panpsychism?

March 25, 2017
1:00 - 5:00
Bartley Hall, Room 1011
Villanova University
Open to the Public - Reception to follow

Speakers:
Jane Bennett (Political Science, Johns Hopkins University)
"Life, Intensities, and Outside Influence"

Evan Thompson (Philosophy, University of British Columbia)
"The Nature of Nature"

Commentator:
Georg Theiner (Philosophy, Villanova University)

For more information, contact:
John Carvalho (Philosophy, Villanova University): john.carvalho@villanova.edu
Georg Theiner (Philosophy, Villanova University): georg.theiner@villanova.edu
Research Interests:
Social thinkers in all fields are faced with one unavoidable question: what does it mean to be 'human' in the 21st century? As definitions between what is 'animal' and what is 'human' break down, and as emerging technologies such as... more
Social thinkers in all fields are faced with one unavoidable question: what does it mean to be 'human' in the 21st century? As definitions between what is 'animal' and what is 'human' break down, and as emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and nano- and bio- technologies develop, accepted notions of humanity are rapidly evolving. Humanity 2.0 is an ambitious and groundbreaking book, offering a sweeping overview of key historical, philosophical and theological moments that have shaped our understandings of humanity. Tackling head on the twin taboos that have always hovered over the scientific study of humanity - race and religion - Steve Fuller argues that far from disappearing, they are being reinvented. Fuller argues that these new developments will force us to decide which features of our current way of life - not least our bodies - are truly needed to remain human, and concludes with a consideration of these changes for ethical and social values more broadly.

Organized by Georg Theiner
For about ten years now, I have been developing a version of transhumanism (or ‘Humanity 2.0’) that is continuous with aspirations common to both Christian theology and modern science. These are traceable to the exceptional status of our... more
For about ten years now, I have been developing a version of transhumanism (or ‘Humanity 2.0’) that is continuous with aspirations common to both Christian theology and modern science. These are traceable to the exceptional status of our species as having been created ‘in the image and likeness of God’. To be sure, there have many well-voiced objections to this project, not least coming from theologians who regard such literal readings of the imago dei doctrine as blasphemous. But there are also objections from the transhumanists, most of whom see themselves as pro-science but anti-religion. In addition, there is a growing number of ‘posthumanists’, who while generally sympathetic to both religious and scientific matters, nevertheless see the continued privileging of the human as the source of much of the world’s problems. In this talk I plan to define and defend my position in the face of these challenges, which together point to the need for a more open and frank discussion about the value of being ‘human’ in our times.

Introduction: Georg Theiner
Extended cognition is the hypothesis that the reach of the mind need not end at the boundaries of the human body. Tools, instruments, technologies and other physical and social infrastructures can, under certain conditions, count as... more
Extended cognition is the hypothesis that the reach of the mind need not end at the boundaries of the human body. Tools, instruments, technologies and other physical and social infrastructures can, under certain conditions, count as parts of human cognitive activity. The separation of mind, body, and environment has been imperative throughout the philosophical tradition. Yet, external objects play a significant role in facilitating cognitive processes. Directions written down in a notebook can serve the function of memory. In the not so distant future, one may imagine a biological being that retains information in non-neural ways (e.g. prosthetics to support memory). In this way, cognition is extended into the world through different media.

This panel unravels the major challenges involved in understanding the complementarity between internal and external elements of cognition. Instead of focusing exclusively on physical devices, panel speakers are invited to reflect upon the social and human basis for extended cognition. How do libraries, art collections, digital media and social networks constitute human extensions? And how can we understand the object of study in the humanities and social sciences as a product of extended humanity? In order to investigate these questions, the panel comprises three short papers complemented by a collective experiment, in which the results of a series of audio interviews will be presented and discussed interactively during the session.
Groups of people working together in a collaborative fashion can accomplish things that would completely baffle individual human beings. The nature, speed, scope, and interdependence of group collaboration have been dramatically expanded... more
Groups of people working together in a collaborative fashion can accomplish things that would completely baffle individual human beings. The nature, speed, scope, and interdependence of group collaboration have been dramatically expanded by web-based technologies which support the large-scale distribution of cognition across space, time, and people. This development has led many people to speak of groups as 'distributed cognitive systems' in their own right. But what exactly does that mean? Building on the psychological infrastructure of joint and collective intentionality (Tomasello, 2014), I distinguish between various forms of joint cognition, distributed cognition, and collective cognition, and illustrate the resulting taxonomy with research from various fields and cognitive domains.
The interview focuses on the Extended Mind Thesis (EMT). It starts by hearing about the historical contact by Theiner and Palermos with the EMT of Andy Clark and David Chalmers. The main topics of the interview are cognitive science,... more
The interview focuses on the Extended Mind Thesis (EMT). It starts by hearing about the historical contact by Theiner and Palermos with the EMT of Andy Clark and David Chalmers. The main topics of the interview are cognitive science, psychology, philosophy of mind, science and technology studies, epistemology and the relevance of the EMT in interdisciplinary collaboration.
Invited Commentary on: Ken Cheng, “Cognition beyond representation: Varieties of situated cognition in animals” (Target article), Forthcoming in: Comparative Cognition and Behavior Reviews. In this commentary, I explore the space of... more
Invited Commentary on: Ken Cheng, “Cognition beyond representation: Varieties of situated cognition in animals” (Target article), Forthcoming in: Comparative Cognition and Behavior Reviews.

In this commentary, I explore the space of “distributed cognition” across human and non-human animal cognition. First, I distinguish between three different varieties in which cognition can be socially distributed, and consider their respective implications for the conjectured relationship between group size (~social complexity) and individual brain size (~cognitive complexity). Second, I probe the relationship between distributed (collaborative) and extended (exploitative) cognition in contexts where our anthropomorphic understanding of this distinction begins to fade.
Roundtable with Steve Fuller: The Development of Modern Science and Technology, and its Implications for Christian Anthropology. Villanova University, February 2016.
Research Interests:
We extend Smaldino’s approach to collaboration and social organization in cultural evolution to include cognition. By showing how recent work on emergent group-level cognition can be incorporated within Smaldino’s framework, we extend... more
We extend Smaldino’s approach to collaboration and social
organization in cultural evolution to include cognition. By showing how recent work on emergent group-level cognition can be incorporated within Smaldino’s framework, we extend that framework’s scope to encompass collaborative memory, decision making, and intelligent action. We argue that beneficial effects arise only in certain forms of cognitive interdependence, in surprisingly fragile conditions.
Is there such a thing as a collective mind? Can groups act in the unified manner of a plural subject? Can a collection of human beings as a whole think, act, and feel in ways that are roughly analogous in kind to the mental life we... more
Is there such a thing as a collective mind? Can groups act in the unified manner of a plural subject? Can a collection of human beings as a whole think, act, and feel in ways that are roughly analogous in kind to the mental life we attribute to individual people? In ordinary parlance, we speak of what a corporation intends, what a jury decided, what a people hold sacred, or what a research team discovered. Should we take these expressions merely as useful shorthand for what all or most people do; or do they reveal a genuinely collective layer of cognition that outstrips the mental capabilities of individuals? If the latter, in what ways can or should we hold groups responsible for their actions (or inactions)? What unique psychological infrastructure allows humans to collaborate and commune in flexible and open-ended ways distinct from other animals, and what principles of organizational design can be harnessed from it to build better ways of living and working together? What is the relationship between natural and artificial (corporate) persons? In this seminar, we draw on a wide variety of philosophical and scientific perspectives to make sense of the notion that groups (understood broadly to include human and non-human animals, ecologies, artifacts, AI, etc.) can exhibit mentality in a non-summative way. Along the way, we will distinguish importantly different varieties of group cognition, question received understandings of the individual vs. collective binary, and examine outrageous claims such as the idea that all intelligence is collective.
In this interdisciplinary course, we reflect on a variety of philosophical issues surrounding the engineering of artificial and human intelligence. These include the dynamic interactions between AI and HI, how human-computer-interfaces... more
In this interdisciplinary course, we reflect on a variety of philosophical issues surrounding the engineering of artificial and human intelligence. These include the dynamic interactions between AI and HI, how human-computer-interfaces affect humanity, how humans outsource thinking to computers and other related technologies, how digital technologies transform the production, dissemination and validation of knowledge, and how ethical values translate into technological and social decisions that affect who we are and who we are capable of being. The course is held in tandem with a cross-disciplinary speaker series, "Ethics and Empirics of Engineering Humanity" (3EH), and features class visits by its speakers.
In this seminar, we explore the idea that mind and cognition are not (merely) inside the head but "distributed" across brain, body, and the wider world such as tools, artifacts, language, media, cultural practices, norms, group... more
In this seminar, we explore the idea that mind and cognition are not (merely) inside the head but "distributed" across brain, body, and the wider world such as tools, artifacts, language, media, cultural practices, norms, group structures, and social institutions. The first part of our course is organized around Andy Clark's flagship presentation of the "extended mind" thesis, introducing contemporary debates over "distributed cognition" (DC) as part of a larger trend to regard mental phenomena as embodied, embedded, extended, enactive, and affective (4EA). The DC framework offers an opportunity to integrate sciences and humanities through illuminating accounts that combine biologically and culturally situated aspects of mind-and thus erode traditional separations between "inner vs. outer", "nature vs. nurture", and "active mind vs. inert matter". We engage this approach in the middle part of our course by working, selectively, though a 4-volume series on the history of distributed cognition ranging from antiquity to the 20 th c. (http://www.hdc.ed.ac.uk/). In the final part, we use DC as a platform to drill more deeply into speculative questions about the role technology plays in the formation of the human condition, such as its increasing "cyborganization" and potential transition into a post/transhuman era. For example, is it an apt variation on the "homo faber" theme to say we make "things" as much as they make us? And will posterity consider the "mind-technology" problem as a historical successor to the early modern "mind-body" problem?
Research Interests:
The topic of this interdisciplinary cross-college seminar, which will be taught in the Villanova Law School, are ethical, philosophical, and empirical issues surrounding the engineering of artificial and human intelligence. Those include... more
The topic of this interdisciplinary cross-college seminar, which will be taught in the Villanova Law School, are ethical, philosophical, and empirical issues surrounding the engineering of artificial and human intelligence. Those include the dynamic interactions between AI and HI, how human-computer-interfaces affect humanity, how humans outsource thinking to computers and other related technologies, how digital technologies transform the production, dissemination, and validation of knowledge, and how ethical values translate into technological and social decisions that affect who we are and who we're capable of being. The seminar is organized around presentations given by these six distinguished scholars:

Adam Alter (NYU Stern School of Business)
Robert Epstein (American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology)
Cailin O’Connor (Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, UC Irvine)
Matthias Scheutz (Cognitive and Computer Science, Tufts)
Susan Schneider (NASA/Blumberg Chair, Library of Congress)
Shoshana Zuboff (Harvard Business School)
Research Interests:
“Posthuman” has become an umbrella term to refer to a variety of different movements and schools of thought, including philosophical, cultural, and critical posthumanism; transhumanism (in its variations of extropianism, liberal and... more
“Posthuman” has become an umbrella term to refer to a variety of different movements and schools of thought, including philosophical, cultural, and critical posthumanism; transhumanism (in its variations of extropianism, liberal and democratic transhumanism, among others); the feminist approach of new materialisms; and the heterogeneous landscape of antihumanism, metahumanism, metahumanities, and posthumanities.  The struggle over the meaning of “posthuman” can be seen as a way of coping with an urgency for the integral redefinition of the notion of the human, following the onto-epistemological as well as scientific and bio-technological developments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Research Interests:
This seminar will introduce students to the critical interdisciplinary study of techno-social engineering of humans. Many science fiction stories pit humans against machines. Sometimes, the machines remain tools of powerful humans that... more
This seminar will introduce students to the critical interdisciplinary study of techno-social engineering of humans. Many science fiction stories pit humans against machines.  Sometimes, the machines remain tools of powerful humans that oppress everyone else. Sometimes, the machines develop their own agendas and oppress us.  Often, humans unwittingly sow the seeds of their own destruction or subservience by madly rushing down a technological path attracted by the siren’s call of efficiency, optimization, and perfection--only to learn too late, that along the way, they’ve lost something important, perhaps even their humanity. What if the latter scenario was real and not merely fodder for entertaining and cautionary stories? Can we confidently say we’d recognize exactly when our society started rushing down an ill-advised path and pinpoint the fundamental reasons why it might end in collective tragedy? 

This seminar takes seriously the idea that many technologies currently deployed and being developed deserve more careful attention because they have the potential to (re)construct humans and society on an unprecedented scale and scope. While the course isn’t guided by the gloomy determinist presumption that dystopia is inevitable, we nevertheless will consider critical arguments that allege humans are being engineered to behave like simple machines.  Looking at the present and to the near future, one thing seems clear:  interconnected sensor networks and big data-enabled automation of systems around, about, on and in human beings promise to significantly expand the scale and scope of our surveillance and programming.

The five central themes that will guide our inquiry are:

- What makes us human?
- When does technology replace or diminish our humanity?
-  When and how do humans become programmable?
-Can we detect when these processes happen?  If so, how?
- What’s the best means for assessing techno-socially induced change?
Research Interests:
In the 1960s and 1970s, philosophers and theorists of assorted stripes (e.g., Kuhn, Foucault, Rorty, and proponents of the "Strong Programme" in the sociology of science) converged in their attacks on traditional epistemology, intent on... more
In the 1960s and 1970s, philosophers and theorists of assorted stripes (e.g., Kuhn, Foucault, Rorty, and proponents of the "Strong Programme" in the sociology of science) converged in their attacks on traditional epistemology, intent on supplanting its "rationalist" focus on truth and objectivity by emphasizing the social, historical, and material dimensions of knowledge. However, "social epistemology" as a term was not in wide circulation until 1987, when – for a special issue of the journal Synthese – Alvin Goldman and Steve Fuller both appropriated the label for their respective visions of what this emerging field might be. Steeped in the analytic tradition, Goldman conceived of social epistemology as an extension of traditional "veritistic" epistemology, but concerned specifically with social epistemic evaluation (e.g., testimony, peer disagreement). In contrast, Fuller's "constructivist" vision of social epistemology, based on the "Science and Technology Studies" (STS) model, heralded a new synthesis among interdisciplinary approaches to knowledge. The discord between these competing programs regarding methods and aims – hardened through the Science Wars – led to a state of mutual neglect if not outright hostility. Moreover, in the wake of Bruno Latour's turn to ontology (e.g., Actor-Network Theory), STS became increasingly indifferent to epistemological matters and concerns. In our seminar, we examine the interruption of the relationships between these approaches, and explore avenues to their rapprochement. Those include recent work in social moral epistemology and the epistemology of extended and socially distributed cognition.
The goal of this course is to engage students in contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. The course is divided into five modules. In the first module, which lays the foundation, we survey a variety of... more
The goal of this course is to engage students in contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. The course is divided into five modules. In the first module, which lays the foundation, we survey a variety of attempts to characterize the relationship between mind and body. In the second module, we consider the ‘self-model’ theory of subjectivity, a multi-level framework for studying conscious experience, the phenomenal self, and the emergence of the first-person perspective from objective brain processes. In the third module, we revisit the ‘nature-nurture’ debate in light of scientific findings which point to the myriad ways in which culture and experience shape the human mind. In the fourth module, we challenge the individualistic assumption that ‘who you are’ is confined to your brain, or even body, with insights from the cognitive and life sciences which suggest an expanded notion of the self that may include other people, artifacts, nonhuman life and even inanimate matter. In the fifth and final module, we explore the nexus between science and religion in the context of transhumanism, a growing movement which advocates the use of advanced technologies to direct the future evolution of our species beyond current forms of embodiment.
The topic of this interdisciplinary seminar, which will be co-taught in the Villanova Law School, are ethical, philosophical, and empirical issues surrounding the engineering of artificial and human intelligence. Those include the dynamic... more
The topic of this interdisciplinary seminar, which will be co-taught in the Villanova Law School, are ethical, philosophical, and empirical issues surrounding the engineering of artificial and human intelligence. Those include the dynamic interactions between AI and HI, how human-computer-interfaces affect humanity, how humans outsource thinking to computers and other related technologies, how digital technologies transform the production, dissemination, and validation of knowledge, and how ethical values translate into technological and social decisions that affect who we are and who we're capable of being.
In this course, we survey recent work in social metaphysics within the analytic tradition, with the goal of gaining deeper insight into the ontology of the social world – conceived broadly to include facts about social objects (United... more
In this course, we survey recent work in social metaphysics within the analytic tradition, with the goal of gaining deeper insight into the ontology of the social world – conceived broadly to include facts about social objects (United Nations, #MeToo Movement), kinds and properties (mayor, unemployed), events and processes (Olympic Games, Brexit), states and relations (groupthink, oppression), institutions (family, prison), practices (helicopter parenting, potlucks), actions and attitudes (class-action lawsuits, collective intentionality), and artifacts (money, peer-to-peer networks). The metaphysical investigation of these facts is unified by a common theme: how exactly are individual people related to the social world? In what sense do they depend on one another, and the material and symbolic environments which they inhabit? In recent years, philosophers in the analytic tradition have developed a variety of frameworks and tools for thinking about these questions. In the first half of the course, we sneak up on our theme by considering two widely held “standard” views about social ontology: a) the view that social entities are “made up” of interacting people, in possibly emergent ways, much like traffic being made up of cars; and b) the view that social entities are rooted in “collective projections” of our attitudes onto the non-social world, such as certain pieces of paper being treated as dollar bills. After raising a host of problems for these views, we then work through an alternative “non-anthropocentric” view of social ontology as proposed by Brian Epstein and others.

In the second half of the course, we turn our attention to the ontology of social construction. Over the past few decades, the list of things that have been said to be “socially constructed” has expanded tremendously. Although these claims are made in different contexts, and different disciplines, a central thrust of social-constructionist explanations is to call into question the presumption that “the way things are” – e.g., concerning gender, race, disability – is fixed by the natural world, including human nature. By revealing how certain seemingly “natural” categories and distinctions are in fact produced by unacknowledged parts of the social world, social constructionists aim to show that they are not exempted from critique, and identify levers for ameliorative social change. Despite yielding important insights, the sheer diversity in how the term “social construction” is used, and what it is taken to imply, has produced much confusion and heated debates over the import and scope of social-constructionist claims (cf. the “science wars”). In our course, we strive to disentangle some of these conceptual knots, first by considering the vexed history of the term, and by distinguishing types and grades of social construction. We then examine the thesis – defended by Sally Haslanger, Ron Mallon, and others – that important varieties of social constructionism, without losing their critical edge, are compatible with significant forms of realism, objectivism about social kinds, and philosophical naturalism. In doing so, we also draw on extant work in psychology, cognitive science, and the philosophy of language to shed light on the plurality of mechanisms by which socially constructed kinds are produced and sustained. This will prompt a general reflection on the relationship between (what one might call) explanation-driven and justice-driven social metaphysics.
In philosophy of mind and cognitive science, enactivist approaches view mind and cognition as arising from the dynamic interplay between the living organism and its environment, as it unfolds through the activities and experiences of... more
In philosophy of mind and cognitive science, enactivist approaches view mind and cognition as arising from the dynamic interplay between the living organism and its environment, as it unfolds through the activities and experiences of situated lived bodies interacting with the world, alongside each other. Understood in this context, Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (1991) coined the term ‘enaction’ in their seminal work The Embodied Mind to “emphasize the growing conviction that cognition is not the representation of a pre-given world by a pre-given mind but is rather the enactment of a world and a mind on the basis of a history of the variety of actions that a being in the world performs”. Today, enactivism is a key player in a cluster of related theoretical paradigms known as the ‘4E’s’, for their commitment to study mind and cognition as embodied, embedded, extended, enacted phenomena. The goal of this seminar is to understand the central ideas and tenets of enactivism, its main theoretical strands, how it differs from neighboring and rival accounts, and what it has to offer to specific areas of study in biology, psychology, neuroscience, sociology, culture, linguistics, art, performance, and human-computer interaction.

Enactivism is a colorful tapestry of interwoven and mutually supporting ideas, methods, and perspectives drawn from a variety of fields, notably psychology and cognitive science, phenomenology, and systems biology and neuroscience.  Historically, it traces its roots to phenomenological and existentialist traditions (esp. Merleau-Ponty, Jonas, Husserl, and Schütz), and has strong affinities with the pragmatism of James and Dewey, constructivist epistemologies, Gestalt psychology, ecological psychology, and the cybernetics movement.  In our course, we shall discuss several themes that are central and distinctive to enactivism as a paradigm: (1) its attention to the fine details of (non-neurally) embodied cognition, such as bodily morphology and physiology, sensorimotor and homeodynamic organization, temporality and movement, habits and historicity, posture and expressivity; (2) its relational ontology of the mental, promoting the view that cognition, agency, experience, and the self are not ‘within’ but ‘between’ properties that emerge from complex entanglements between brains, bodies, material culture, and environmental scaffolds and affordances; (3) the centrality of lived experience for a scientific study of the mind, embracing a variety of first-person methods and techniques for the exploration of consciousness; (4) the mutual dependence and complementarity between third-person scientific accounts of the living body and first-person accounts of lived experience, an enterprise sometimes glossed as ‘naturalized phenomenology’; and (5) the deep continuity of life and mind, a thesis according to which mind shares the same basic organizational properties with life, which assures that living things, even in their most basic form, are already ‘mind-like’ and minds, even in their richest forms, always remain ‘life-like’.
Research Interests:
Logic, parts of which form a branch of philosophy and parts of which form a branch of mathematics, is the study of reasoning. Since arguments are the basic units of reasoning, logic is concerned with the analysis and evaluation of... more
Logic, parts of which form a branch of philosophy and parts of which form a branch of mathematics, is the study of reasoning. Since arguments are the basic units of reasoning, logic is concerned with the analysis and evaluation of arguments. To distinguish correct from incorrect forms of reasoning, logicians have developed symbolic languages that capture the logical form of arguments. The goal of this skills-based course is to teach students the basic concepts and techniques of symbolic logic. We first work with the restricted language of 'sentential' logic, and then extend our inventory to 'predicate' logic. Students learn how to 'translate' English into our symbolic language, and how to draw correct inferences by constructing step-by-step proofs. Throughout the course, we keep in mind the intended application of symbolic logic to everyday reasoning as well as to classical and contemporary philosophical debates.
Research Interests:
To many people, it seems natural to conceive of the mind as a kind of ‘sandwich’ (Hurley) with cognition as the inner filling, wedged between action and perception. According to this model, mental states and activities are intimately tied... more
To many people, it seems natural to conceive of the mind as a kind of ‘sandwich’ (Hurley) with cognition as the inner filling, wedged between action and perception. According to this model, mental states and activities are intimately tied to what’s going on inside the head, but only indirectly related to our bodies, our interactions with other people, and the world around us. In this course, we consider a loosely knit family of alternative approaches which study human agency and cognition as embodied, embedded, extended, and enacted (‘4E’) phenomena. In particular, we take as our focal point the ‘extended mind’ thesis, which asserts that our minds are ‘hybrid’ entities that emerge from the dynamic interplay between brains, bodies, and environmental resources such as symbols, tools, artifacts, cultural practices, norms, group structures, and social institutions.

In the first part of the course, we take our cue from Clark’s (2008) flagship presentation of the ‘extended mind’ thesis. By comparing Clark’s thesis with related developments, we explore its implications for understanding human cognition, affect, knowledge, rationality, and education. In the second part of the course, we examine Malafouris’s (2013) cross-disciplinary framework (‘material engagement theory’) for studying the human predisposition to reconfigure our bodies and minds by means of artifacts, tools, and material culture. Importantly, technologies are not simply ‘neutral instruments’ that facilitate our existence, but actively give shape to what we do, how we experience the world, and how we live our lives. To analyze the moral significance of technology, we take as our starting point Verbeek’s (2011) ‘post-phenomenological’ approach to moral agency as a property of human-technology associations rather than, as traditionally conceived, an exclusively human affair. In the third and last part of the course, we reflect on emergent scientific, technological, socio-economic, and political developments that (further) blur the boundaries between the traditional category of the human and its various ‘others,’ such as animals and machines, and that seem to be on a path to take us beyond human beings as we currently know them. Coming to terms with the potential displacement of ‘humanity’ as the shared reference point of our identity presents a formidable challenge. In our course, we contrast two strikingly different projections of what it means to be ‘human’ into the future: the ‘post-humanist’ framework outlined by Braidotti (2013), versus the ‘trans-humanist’ project advocated by Fuller (2010).
Research Interests:
Philosophy of Mind, Complex Systems Science, Philosophy of Technology, Posthumanism, Actor Network Theory, and 51 more
In this course, we survey contemporary treatments of collective intentionality. Situated amidst discussions of agency and intentionality in a social context, collective intentionality broadly refers to the kind of intentionality that... more
In this course, we survey contemporary treatments of collective intentionality. Situated amidst discussions of agency and intentionality in a social context, collective intentionality broadly refers to the kind of intentionality that allows people to experience, act, or think about something together, or as a group. Collective intentionality is manifested in a variety of phenomena. For example, joint attention is a basic form of intersubjective awareness of the world as perceptually available in the pursuit of shared engagements. Shared intentions allow people to carry out collaborative activities and tasks in a coordinated and cooperative manner. Collective acceptance is a key mechanism for the creation and maintenance of symbolic realities such as language, institutions, and power relations. Collective beliefs provide a common ground of normative commitments to regulate shared deliberative and evaluative practices. The power of collective emotions to fuel social conflicts, or to unite people, is evident from the history of mass gatherings, public rituals, and political movements. It is hard to exaggerate the extent to which collective intentionality permeates the social and cultural fabric of our lives. But what exactly does it mean to ascribe intentionality to people 'as a group' – provided that collective intentionality is not just a shorthand for the ‘summative’ or ‘aggregate’ intentionality of individuals?

The distinctive focus of the philosophical analysis of collective intentionality rests on the conceptual, metaphysical, psychological, and normative features which underlie the 'joint' or 'shared' character of experiences, actions, and attitudes, and the related question of how these features help constitute the social world. The resurgence of interest in collective intentionality began in the late 1980s, and substantially expanded in the 1990s, thanks mostly to the pioneering work of John Searle, Margaret Gilbert, Michael Bratman, and Raimo Tuomela. Today, collective intentionality is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary area of philosophical research which draws on, and has left its mark on, social ontology and epistemology, phenomenology, psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, sociology, political science, economics, legal theory, and cultural and evolutionary anthropology. Our goal in this course is to compare and contrast leading theories of collective intentionality by delving into specific debates over the nature of joint attention, collective intentions and beliefs, collective acceptance and shared evaluative attitudes, collective emotions, collective knowledge and rationality, as well as collective agency and responsibility.
What does it mean for a group of people to do something together – to act as a group? In particular, can groups come to hold beliefs, form intentions, and become unified agents over and above the individuals who compose them? The goal of... more
What does it mean for a group of people to do something together – to act as a group? In particular, can groups come to hold beliefs, form intentions, and become unified agents over and above the individuals who compose them? The goal of this seminar is to understand the ascription of mental attributes to groups of human beings in a variety of contexts. For example, how can potential group agents such as firms, parties, states, unions, or expert panels achieve the required agential unification despite divergent sets of beliefs, desires, and interests among their members? What organizational principles do group agents have to satisfy in order to ensure their epistemic coherence, incentive compatibility, and responsiveness to their members? Are group agents persons that should be accorded at least some of the rights and responsibilities which we associate with individual agents? Can collective responsibility be distributed among group members, and if so, by which criteria? In what sense can cognitive processes be distributed among the members of a group, and under which conditions can the integration of distributed resources produce emergent cognitive outcomes at the group level? What exactly does it mean to say that communities have a collective memory, that crowds experience collective emotions, or that Web 2.0 technologies can be used to harness collective intelligence? Answering these questions with an open mind requires that we tackle an eclectic range of issues in social ontology, action theory, philosophy of mind, psychology, cultural anthropology, and social and political philosophy.
The goal of this course is to survey central themes in the philosophy of mind, with an emphasis on topics that allow us to explore the intricate relationship between minds, brains, and bodies. In particular, we shall consider what... more
The goal of this course is to survey central themes in the philosophy of mind, with an emphasis on topics that allow us to explore the intricate relationship between minds, brains, and bodies. In particular, we shall consider what underlies our capacity for having meaningful thoughts and engaging in intentional actions, the special nature of self-knowledge and first-person experience, the question of whether machines can think, the nature of the self and its connection to personal identity, the place of consciousness in a physical universe, and recent accounts of the situated and embodied nature of cognition. A thorough examination of these issues will not only expose us to a particularly vibrant area of current philosophical research, but at the same time shed new light on our self-understanding as human beings.
The aim of this course is to engage students in contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind. The course is divided into four modules. In the first segment, which lays the foundation, we survey a variety of attempts to clarify the... more
The aim of this course is to engage students in contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind. The course is divided into four modules.  In the first segment, which lays the foundation, we survey a variety of attempts to clarify the relationship between mind and body.  In the second segment, we consider the ‘self-model’ theory of subjectivity as a framework for studying conscious experience, the phenomenal self, and the emergence of the first-person perspective.  In the third segment, we challenge the assumption that mind and consciousness are confined inside the boundaries of the brain, and learn about alternative approaches that highlight the embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive (‘4e’) character of cognition. In the last segment, we deal with the question of whether machines can think, and ponder how the creation of different forms of ‘superintellligence’ might affect the future of the human condition.
Within contemporary philosophy of mind, to say that mind, self, and cognition are embodied is to claim that mental phenomena are constituted not only by what’s going on inside a person’s brain, but depend intimately on the person’s body... more
Within contemporary philosophy of mind, to say that mind, self, and cognition are embodied is to claim that mental phenomena are constituted not only by what’s going on inside a person’s brain, but depend intimately on the person’s body beyond the brain and, more inclusively, the world in which the person is situated. The goal of this seminar is to understand the significance of this claim, and to articulate the nature of the suggested dependence relation.

Acting as a dis-embodied foil for our discussion will be a narrowly circumscribed mechanistic approach to cognition which forms the core of classical cognitive science. According to this approach, thinking is a form of computation operating on symbolic representations that are physically realized solely inside the brain. Despite its commitment to physicalism, classical cognitive science epitomizes a broadly Cartesian vision of cognition as an inner, solitary, ratiocinative, detached, and general-purpose mechanism that is wedged between action and perception, and can be studied without regard to one’s body and environment.

Over the past three decades, the once-dominant cognitivist paradigm has increasingly come under attack by a loosely-knit family of research programs emphasizing the embodied, embedded, extended, and/or enactive character of cognition (“4E-cognition”). Advocates of 4E-cognition span a large network of research communities (including philosophy, psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, robotics, sociology, anthropology, science studies, gender studies, and informatics), taking their cues from disparate sources such as Continental philosophy (esp. Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Wittgenstein), American Pragmatism (esp. James, Dewey, and Mead), pioneers in psychology (from Vygotsky to Gibson) and biology (from Uexküll to Varela). (At this point, one is tempted to cite Fodor’s quip that in intellectual history, everything happens twice: first as philosophy and then as cognitive science). Because of the sheer diversity of sources and evidence on which proponents of 4E-cognition have drawn, it is often difficult to determine whether they belong to one church or many.

The main task in our seminar will thus be to compare and contrast the intellectual enterprises which are grouped together under the banner of 4E-cognition. In what ways do they depart from the Cartesian paradigm, and how exactly does each of them conceive of the role which embodiment and situatedness play for mind and cognition? How do they differ in their ontological commitments and methodological practices? Are there any unifying themes that go beyond a shared opposition to traditional “dis-embodied” approaches; and if so, what are they? What is the relationship between philosophical and scientific approaches to 4E-cognition more generally? Finally, how does all of this matter for our understanding of what kinds of beings we are?
To many people, it seems natural to conceive of the mind as a kind of ‘sandwich’ (Hurley) with cognition as the inner filling, wedged between action and perception. According to this model, mental states and activities are intimately tied... more
To many people, it seems natural to conceive of the mind as a kind of ‘sandwich’ (Hurley) with cognition as the inner filling, wedged between action and perception. According to this model, mental states and activities are intimately tied to what’s going on inside the head, but only indirectly related to our bodies, our interactions with other people, and the world around us. In this course, we consider a loosely knit family of alternative approaches which study human agency and cognition as embodied, embedded, extended, and enacted (‘4E’) phenomena. In particular, we take as our focal point the ‘extended mind’ thesis, which asserts that our minds are ‘hybrid’ entities that emerge from the dynamic interplay between brains, bodies, and environmental resources such as symbols, tools, artifacts, cultural practices, norms, group structures, and social institutions.

In the first part of the course, we take our cue from Andy Clark’s (2008) flagship presentation of the ‘extended mind’ thesis. We compare and contrast Clark’s thesis with related developments, and explore its implications for our conception of education and human knowledge. In the second part, we examine Lambros Malafouris’ (2013) attempt to weave evidence from anthropology and cognitive archeology into the fold of 4E-cognition, by proposing a cross-disciplinary framework for studying the distinctively human predisposition to reconfigure our bodies and our senses by using tools and material culture. In the third part of the course, we turn to Steve Fuller’s (2010, 2013, 2014) wide-ranging assessment of how the convergence of artificial intelligence with nano-, bio-, and information technologies may impact the future of humanity (‘Humanity 2.0’). Fuller argues that these developments bring to the forefront perennial questions about what it means to be human, and considers the ethical, social, political, theological, and philosophical dimensions of the decisions we will have to face.
In a letter to René Descartes (1643), Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia famously maintained that „[…] it would be easier for me to concede matter and extension to the soul, than the capacity of moving a body and of being moved, to an... more
In a letter to René Descartes (1643), Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia famously maintained that „[…] it would be easier for me to concede matter and extension to the soul, than the capacity of moving a body and of being moved, to an immaterial being”. Few things strike us as more intuitively obvious than the fact that mind and body interact – e.g. that bodily injuries cause us to experience pain, and that we act on the basis of certain intentions, beliefs and desires. But once we submit our commonsensical notion of mind-body interaction to close scrutiny, a number of philosophical puzzles arises. For instance, interactionist dualism has been claimed to be inconsistent with conservation laws expressing the causal closure of the physical world. On the other hand, if we accept the causal closure of the physical, what room does that leave for the mental to make a non-redundant impact on how we act? Are we compelled to abandon either the ontological distinctness of the mental and the physical, the causal closure of the physical, or the very idea that mind and body interact?
The problem of mental causation has played a key role in recent analytic philosophy of mind, which has been characterized by an ontological turn. In this course, we will study the contemporary version of Descartes’ problem from a systematic metaphysical perspective, and survey various solutions that have been proposed. That will force us to get a handle on fundamental ontological concepts such as identity, modality, causation, reduction, supervenience, and emergence. However, our debates will not proceed in a theoretical vacuum, as we shall pay constant attention to the role of mentalistic explanations in current scientific practice as well as our conception of human agency.
There is a wide-spread picture of the mental as something inner—a view whose influence on our thinking about the mind is so pervasive and tenacious that it often goes unnoticed. Even though its impact goes well beyond any explicit... more
There is a wide-spread picture of the mental as something inner—a view whose influence on our thinking about the mind is so pervasive and tenacious that it often goes unnoticed. Even though its impact goes well beyond any explicit statement or doctrine, we shall broadly call it Cartesian internalism. Cartesian internalism can be regarded as the combination of two distinct, but closely connected individualist theses: the location claim, that any mental state is spatially located inside the boundaries of the subject that undergoes it; and the possession claim, that the possession of a mental property by a subject does not depend on any feature that is external to the boundaries of that subject. Externalist views have in common their rejection of at least one of the two central pillars of the internalist orthodoxy. But they differ importantly in terms of what theoretical role they assign to the physical and social environment in understanding mental phenomena. In this seminar, we shall discuss the nature and plausibility of three representative strains of recent externalist theorizing in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science: linguistic externalism, content externalism, and vehicle externalism.
Artificial Intelligence is the focus of much public attention today, both of hope and of concern. Even among active researchers and those closely affiliated with the field, there is widespread intellectual disagreement about its scope and... more
Artificial Intelligence is the focus of much public attention today, both of hope and of concern. Even among active researchers and those closely affiliated with the field, there is widespread intellectual disagreement about its scope and future prospects. In this course, we will address that topic from two different major perspectives. On the one hand, we will conceive of artificial intelligence as an effort to make build machines able to perform tasks that would require intelligence if done my humans. That will confront us right away with the problem of having to define what human intelligence consists in – a question which has occupied a central place in the history of Western philosophy. Classical artificial intelligence research owes much to the traditional conception of human beings as rational creatures being able to engage in significant, deliberative thought. But it has provided us with a novel method of implementing such processes of reasoning in machines, in a purely mechanical fashion. Thus our first goal is to understand the basic notion of computation, and explore the idea of computation as rule-governed manipulation of discrete representations (data structures) in a machine. We will look at some of the undeniable accomplishments of symbol-based artificial intelligence, and survey some of its applications designed to solve practical problems.

At that point, we will also realize the inherent limitations and shortcomings of the classical approach, and try to discover the causes as well as implications of those failures. From there, we will delve into alternative computational paradigms meant to overcome those difficulties. In particular, we will jump into the world of artificial neural networks, and further into the emerging sub-field of evolutionary computation. As we go along, we will constantly bear in mind the divergent conceptions of intelligence underlying those approaches. That leads us to the second major perspective of this course: the claim that artificial intelligence aims to produce machines with minds, in the genuine and literal sense. That ambitious goal is based on the bold theoretical consideration that we are, at root, computers ourselves. Throughout the course, we will try to determine the philosophical and scientific credentials of that claim, and discuss its ethical implications.

Students will approach those two perspectives from many directions. We will read and discuss a number of seminal papers in computer science, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. Short writing assignments and problem sets will help students to analyze and evaluate the main arguments. Problem sets and frequent computer lab sessions will allow them to master key concepts by exploring various computational models on their own. We will even enact a recently developed algorithm as a group, to demonstrate the emergence of swarm intelligence. In addition, students will give short group presentations on course-relevant topics, where they can learn how to express their thoughts effectively. They will also have the chance of interacting with a distinguished guest speaker from Duke's philosophy department.

Research in artificial intelligence, just like in every other field, proceeds on the basis of certain theoretical and methodological assumptions that constitute its foundations. As students become acquainted with some of the predominant approaches currently utilized, they will be able to identify what the main foundational questions are in this captivating and rapidly progressing field. Getting a grip on these deeper issues will lead to a critical understanding of artificial intelligence in terms of both its technical aspects, as well as within its wider historical and conceptual context.
Many philosophers share the strong intuition that mental or cognitive properties should be attributed at exactly one level of organization: the individual organism. In particular, individual human beings are considered to be the... more
Many philosophers share the strong intuition that mental or cognitive properties should be attributed at exactly one level of organization: the individual organism. In particular, individual human beings are considered to be the paradigmatic subjects of mental properties. However, many highly prized activities in our species are accomplished only when we think and act together in groups. Can a group constitute a cognitive system—a mind—in its own right?

The so-called “group mind” thesis was a popular fixture in the intellectual landscape of the late 19th and early 20th century (Wilson, 2004). It crystallized the idea of a group as a collective agent, and its gestalt as an emergent whole that is more than the sum of its parts. To its own detriment, many traditional formulations of this idea remained highly speculative and often bordered on the occult. As a result, the “group mind” concept quickly fell out of favor with the rise of behaviorism in psychology, since it remained unclear where the “group mind” was supposed to reside, and how we could measure it (Wegner, 1986). One way to summarize the precarious ontological status of group minds is in the form of the following dilemma. If the group mind is nothing over and above the collection of individual minds and
their interactions, an appeal to group minds appears to be redundant. However, if the group mind is something over and above all these things, it appears to imply a collective version of mind-body dualism. This raises the familiar question of how the group mind exercises its causal influence on group members. Some bizarre answers were suggested in response to this problem, such as the putative mediation of a genetic “ectoplasm” (Jung, 1922) or telepathic communication (McDougall, 1920). In sum, neither horn of the dilemma makes the idea of group minds seem very attractive.

However, roughly fifty years after the “cognitive revolution” in psychology, the idea that groups can have cognitive properties of their own has gained new ascendancy in a wide range of disciplines concerned with group behavior. Rather than engaging in abstract arguments about the possibility of “group minds,” contemporary appeals to group cognition have typically tied their claims to particular kinds of psychological predicates. For instance, social psychologists studying memory, problem-solving, and decision-making in small groups have based their work on a view of groups as adaptive information-processing systems in their own right (Wegner et al., 1985; Cicourel, 1990; Larsen & Christensen, 1993; Hinsz et al., 1997; Propp, 1999; Stasser, 1999; Mohammed & Dumville, 2001; Lewis, 2003; Goldstone & Gureckis, 2009). Organizational scientists have studied the memory and learning processes of firms and organizations (Sandelands & Stablein, 1987; Walsh & Ungson, 1991; Argote, 1999). Sociologists, anthropologists, and historians have found it useful to express generalizations about social groups in terms of their collective memory (Burke, 1989; Le Goff, 1992). Economists and political scientists continue to explore the relationships between individual and group rationality in the arena of judgment aggregation (Pettit, 2003; List, 2003, 2010). Evolutionary biologists have revived the idea that groups can evolve into adaptive units of cognition as a result of group-selection (D.S. Wilson, 1997, 2002; D.S. Wilson, van Vugt, & O’Gorman, 2008). Recent studies of animal behavior have revealed a number of collective decision-making mechanisms that are shared across a wide range of group types such as swarming ants, schooling fish, flocking birds, and also humans (Hölldobler & E.O. Wilson, 1990; Seeley, 1995; Bonabeau, Dorigo, & Theraulaz, 1999; Couzin, 2009). The framework of distributed cognition has been used to study the dynamics of collaborative work practices which are socially, technologically, and temporally distributed, and whose coordination is mediated by rich situational, material, and organizational constraints. (Hutchins, 1995a, 1995b; Hollan, Hutchins, & Kirsh, 2000). The framework of distributed cognition has recently been embraced by some philosophers of science as a unifying framework to overcome the present hiatus between “rationalist” and “social-constructionist” approaches to scientific cognition (Giere, 2002, 2005; Giere & Moffat, 2003; Nersessian, 2006). The term “crowdsourcing” has been coined to describe ways of leveraging Web 2.0 technologies for the purposes of mass collaboration (Howe, 2006; Shirky, 2008). Finally, philosophers seeking a conceptual analysis of collective intentionality—such as collective beliefs, intentions, and responsibilities—have tied their accounts to the recognition of groups as intentional subjects in their own right (Gilbert, 1989; Velleman, 1997; Schmitt, 2003; Tollefsen, 2004; List, 2010).
Social metaphysics is the study of the existence and nature of sociality—of social actions, relations, roles, rules, norms, conventions, practices, customs, and collectives. The systematic investigation of these issues is unified by a... more
Social metaphysics is the study of the existence and nature of sociality—of social actions, relations, roles, rules, norms, conventions, practices, customs, and collectives. The systematic investigation of these issues is unified by a common theme: how are individual human beings and their properties related to the social realm? Individualist positions hold that social entities and relations can somehow be reduced to individuals and their properties. Collectivist positions argue against this reduction, typically on the grounds that individuals and their properties are somehow constituted by their membership in the social realm. Charting the logical geography of these positions will be our key to the contemporary Analytic debate. The dialectical structure of our seminar is to assume an audience prejudiced in favor of individualism, then to bring forth and investigate a variety of considerations against individualism, and finally to see where we end up. We shall watch this dialectic unfold in three areas of inquiry: first, the more general question of what exactly it would mean to reduce social entities and relations to individuals and their properties; second, the question of whether we have to resort to collective intentionality for a complete account of joint action; and third, the explanatory significance of recent appeals to socially distributed cognition in the social, behavioral, and psychological sciences.
The goal of this course is to provide an introduction to central themes in contemporary philosophy of language, with an emphasis on topics that allow us to explore the relationship of language to mind, experience, and reality. In... more
The goal of this course is to provide an introduction to central themes in contemporary philosophy of language, with an emphasis on topics that allow us to explore the relationship of language to mind, experience, and reality. In particular, we shall focus on theories of how we use words to talk about things, the relationship between language and thought, the social and psychological basis of linguistic understanding, the role of language in communicative exchanges, the theory of speech acts, and the role of language in the construction of social and institutional realities.
The goal of this course is to survey some central debates in the philosophy of language. It is organized around three main themes: (1) the relationship between language and reality, (2) the relationship between language and thought, and... more
The goal of this course is to survey some central debates in the philosophy of language. It is organized around three main themes: (1) the relationship between language and reality, (2) the relationship between language and thought, and (3) the relationship between language and people.

During the first part, we shall discuss some classical theories of meaning that have had a profound influence on the development of philosophy over the past 100 years. In particular, we will look at some proponents of the “linguistic turn” in philosophy, understood broadly as the programmatic idea that the goal of philosophy is to understand the structure of our conceptual schemes, and that philosophical questions could be resolved, or laid to rest, by a careful examination of language in order to disentangle conceptual confusions.

In the second part, we turn to the psychological basis of linguistic understanding, in particular to theories of concepts, the building blocks of thoughts. We shall survey some of the leading theories of concepts, and compare their respective strengths and weaknesses in explaining what underlies our capacities for abstraction, intentionality, categorization, analogical inference, and conceptual combination. This will allow us to explore different conceptions of the relationship between language and thought.

Finally, we shall reflect on the role which language plays for our communicative practices. Starting with the theory of speech acts, and “how to do things with words” (Austin), we shall then move on to consider the place of language in the construction of social and institutional realities.
In this course, we shall undertake a careful study of three influential texts that have significantly shaped contemporary philosophy of language: Alfred Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic (1936), Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity (1980),... more
In this course, we shall undertake a careful study of three influential texts that have significantly shaped contemporary philosophy of language: Alfred Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic (1936), Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity (1980), and Jesse Prinz’s Furnishing the Mind (2002). Our three authors advocate very different views of the relationship between philosophy and language. By examining their main ideas, and putting them into a historical context, we will be able to learn a lot about how analytic philosophy of language has developed over the past 100 years.

Ayer’s book, which he wrote as a 24-year old, is viewed by many as the epitome of “Logical Empiricism” in the Anglo-Saxon world. In his book, Ayer clarifies and defends the “verification principle,” according to which a statement, in order to be meaningful, must be either true as a matter of logic or definition (“analytic”), or capable of being verified on the basis of experience (“synthetic”). Ayer argues that philosophical statements purporting to express metaphysical, religious, ethical, or aesthetic truths satisfy neither of the two conditions; hence they ought to be considered as meaningless. Rather than engaging in nonsensical metaphysical disputes, philosophers should thus concern themselves with the logical analysis of language (“linguistic turn”). In our seminar, we will look into the history of the verification principle, and examine a number of influential criticisms that eventually led to the demise of good-old-fashioned Logical Empiricism.

Kripke’s book, which is widely considered as a cornerstone of 20th century analytic philosophy, is concerned with the deceptively simple question of how linguistic terms like ‘Aristotle,’ ‘water,’ or ‘red’ refer to things in the world. Kripke’s answer to this question has surprising ramifications for a wide range of philosophical issues, such as: are all statements that are knowable on a priori grounds necessarily true, and are all statements that are knowable on a posteriori grounds only contingently true? What does it mean for an object to have essential properties? What is the nature of identity and other ontological categories such as natural kinds? Are mental states identical with brain states? Kripke’s discussion has been hailed by many for bringing about a “metaphysical turn” in analytic philosophy, including a rejection of the view that philosophy is nothing more than the analysis of language. By exploring the nature and impact of Kripke’s arguments, we will get a better sense of whether such a view is justified.

Prinz takes up the long-standing dispute between empiricists and rationalists over the nature of concepts, understood as the mental representations we use to think about the world. He approaches the topic from a “naturalistic” perspective that draws heavily on empirical research in psychology and neuroscience. Over the past few decades, mainstream research on concepts in cognitive science has been dominated by rationalist themes with its emphasis on innateness and the purely symbolic, amodal nature of conceptual representations. In his book, Prinz attempts to swing the pendulum back toward empiricism. According to Fiona Cowie, “Furnishing the Mind is the most important work on concepts to have been written since Locke’s Essay. It explains what Locke saw to be true but was unable satisfactorily to articulate – that concepts are constructs out of lower-level perceptual representations.” In our course, we shall first survey some of the main psychological theories of concepts, including imagism, definitionism, prototype theory, exemplar theory, the theory theory, and informational atomism. Then we take a close look at Prinz’ renewed, sophisticated version of concept empiricism (“proxytype theory”). Our leading question will be whether proxytype theory has the resources to solve a number of problems that have traditionally plagued empiricist accounts of abstraction, intentionality, and conceptual combination.
In most fields of study, people set out to acquire knowledge about the world. But in philosophy, we take a step back and probe into knowledge itself – by asking questions about the sources of knowledge, its nature and limitations, and... more
In most fields of study, people set out to acquire knowledge about the world. But in philosophy, we take a step back and probe into knowledge itself – by asking questions about the sources of knowledge, its nature and limitations, and what methods we have for arriving at true knowledge. Philosophers have thought hard about these questions, with the hope of thereby gaining a more reflective understanding of the nature of reality and the capacities of the knowing self. To illustrate the virtues of philosophical inquiry, and how it differs from both science and religion, we will first look at a range of influential theories and arguments proposed by Plato, Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, and Hume. In the second half of the course, we turn to the emerging area of consciousness studies, in which philosophers collaborate with psychologists and brain scientists to examine puzzling topics such as how subjective experiences can arise from objective brain processes, the nature of free will, the unity of the self, dreams and meditation, and the possibility of machine consciousness.
Every day, you face decisions about what to believe. Should you accept a newspaper editorial’s demand to ban smoking from all public places? Should you alter your attitude towards abortion if a friend of you claims that it is not... more
Every day, you face decisions about what to believe. Should you accept a newspaper editorial’s demand to ban smoking from all public places? Should you alter your attitude towards abortion if a friend of you claims that it is not consistent with other beliefs that you hold? Suppose that no ghosts are vampires, and that some philosophers are ghosts, does it follow that at least some philosophers are not vampires? We are entitled to believe a claim when we have good reasons for believing it. But what constitutes good reasoning? In this class, you will learn reliable methods to recognize, analyze, and critically evaluate various kinds of arguments, the basic units of reasoning.
Every day, you face decisions about what you ought to believe. Should you accept a newspaper editorial’s demand to ban smoking from all public places? Should you alter your attitude towards abortion if a friend of you claims that it is... more
Every day, you face decisions about what you ought to believe. Should you accept a newspaper editorial’s demand to ban smoking from all public places? Should you alter your attitude towards abortion if a friend of you claims that it is inconsistent with other beliefs you hold? Suppose you believe that no ghosts are vampires, and that some philosophers are ghosts, should you also believe that at least some philosophers are not vampires? When encountering such episodes of reasoning, you want to be able to determine whether they justify taking a particular position on the issue or not. This is exactly what you can expect to learn in this class: to identify, analyze, and evaluate arguments, the basic units of reasoning.

To get a better handle on the logical structure of arguments, we will spend most of the course familiarizing ourselves with a fragment of symbolic logic known as sentential logic. We will learn how to translate statements and arguments from plain English into our symbolism, and how to use formal methods (such as truth tables, natural deduction, tableaux system) to establish the validity of the argument in question. In the remainder of the course we will mostly investigate arguments whose structure requires us to augment our fragment by introducing a system of predicate logic. Furthermore, we will briefly discuss how to evaluate the strength of inductive arguments.
The ‘extended mind’ thesis asserts that cognitive processes are not bound by the skull or even skin of biological individuals, but actively incorporate environmental structures such as symbols, tools, artifacts, media, cultural practices,... more
The ‘extended mind’ thesis asserts that cognitive processes are not bound by the skull or even skin of biological individuals, but actively incorporate environmental structures such as symbols, tools, artifacts, media, cultural practices, norms, groups, or institutions. By distributing cognition across space, time, and people in canny ways, we circumvent or overcome the biological limitations of our brains. Human beings are creative, albeit opportunistic experts in cognitive ‘self-transcendence.’ This entry surveys discussions of EM in philosophy of mind and cognitive science which point to this overarching theme.
Research Interests:
This interdisciplinary speaker series will cover ethical, philosophical and empirical issues surrounding the engineering of artificial and human intelligence. These include the dynamic interactions between artificial intelligence and... more
This interdisciplinary speaker series will cover ethical, philosophical and empirical issues surrounding the engineering of artificial and human intelligence. These include the dynamic interactions between artificial intelligence and human intelligence, how humancomputer-interfaces affect humanity, how humans outsource thinking to computers and other related technologies, how digital technologies transform the production, dissemination and validation of knowledge, and how ethical values translate into technological and social decisions that affect who we are and who we are capable of being.
Research Interests:
4th AVANT Conference 2019 24 - 26 Oct 2019 Porto, PORTUGAL Web: http://avant.edu.pl/trends4/#/ #avantconference2019 Extended submission deadline: June 20, 2019 This year’s conference is devoted to the increasingly interdisciplinary... more
4th AVANT Conference 2019
24 - 26 Oct 2019
Porto, PORTUGAL
Web: http://avant.edu.pl/trends4/#/
#avantconference2019

Extended submission deadline: June 20, 2019

This year’s conference is devoted to the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of research on cognition, but also within science in general, and invites reflections on the phenomenon of interdisciplinarity as such. Indeed, the term “interdisciplinarity” has become a buzzword and stands in serious danger of being overused, and thus of losing its explanatory power. In part, this is because it is frequently assumed that interdisciplinary research is inherently “more valuable” than traditional, purely disciplinary research; hence the term is strategically used to garner the attention of researchers, students, and grant agencies. To counter such almost reflex-like endorsement, we seek a renewed understanding of what the “added value” of interdisciplinarity might be, in particular with respect to research in the cognitive sciences, what obstacles and difficulties it faces, and how those might be overcome (both in theory and practice). Importantly, we are interested in understanding whether interdisciplinary approaches increase or decrease the current fragmentation of cognitive sciences.

Special sessions include: Predictive Processing; Feminist Theory & Science; Philosophy of Psychiatry; Dance
[Open Panel. Organized with Jim Collier, Virginia Tech] STS and social epistemology once traveled the same path. As a fellow traveler, social epistemology heralded both the "coming of" and a "new beginning for" STS. STS, in potential... more
[Open Panel. Organized with Jim Collier, Virginia Tech] STS and social epistemology once traveled the same path. As a fellow traveler, social epistemology heralded both the "coming of" and a "new beginning for" STS. STS, in potential collaboration with social epistemology, held the bright promise of a synthesis among interdisciplinary approaches to knowledge. However, the path to epistemic accord led through the Science Wars. In the war's aftermath, the promise of collaboration hardened into criticisms about methods and aims. Receding into a general indifference regarding epistemology, STS would yet again "turn"-this time to ontology. In keeping with conference themes, this open panel seeks participants interested both in examining the interruption of the relationship among STS, social epistemology, and analytic epistemology, and wishing to regenerate this relationship. Innovative paths that might be explored include-field philosophy; the narrative capture produced by potted disciplinary histories; the idea of science as a game; the concept of post-truth; issues related to the extend mind/extended cognition thesis; the ecology and governance of scholarly publication; and interpretations and applications of David Bloor's symmetry principle. In addition, as analytic epistemology has undergone something of a renaissance given developments related to "epistemic justice," we welcome participants who want to take up the future conduct of epistemology and, so, a potential rapprochement among the factions comprising social epistemology.
Understanding Social Cognition Within the social sciences, it is widely accepted that groups of people exhibit social properties and dynamics that emerge from, but cannot be reductively identified with the actions and properties of... more
Understanding Social Cognition Within the social sciences, it is widely accepted that groups of people exhibit social properties and dynamics that emerge from, but cannot be reductively identified with the actions and properties of individual members. However, psychology and cognitive science have only reluctantly embraced the idea that something similar might happen in the domain of mind and cognition. Contemporary research on the distinctively social aspects of human cognition, which has exploded over the past two decades, tends to fall somewhere along the following continuum. On the " conservative " side, the minds of individuals are currently being reconceived as socially situated, culturally scaffolded, and deeply transformed by our lifelong immersion and participation in group contexts. According to more " liberal " multi-level approaches, the informational integration of functionally interdependent and socially distributed individual cognitive processes can give rise to emergent group-level cognitive phenomena. We invite participants to explore the full spectrum of social cognition, running the gamut from elementary social-cognitive skills that allow people to think and act together, through embodied behavioral coupling and joint intentionality, mechanisms of mindreading and mutual understanding, all the way to group cognition.
Research Interests:
Understanding Social Cognition Within the social sciences, it is widely accepted that groups of people exhibit social properties and dynamics that emerge from, but cannot be reductively identified with the actions and properties of... more
Understanding Social Cognition

Within the social sciences, it is widely accepted that groups of people exhibit social properties and dynamics that emerge from, but cannot be reductively identified with the actions and properties of individual members. However, psychology and cognitive science have only reluctantly embraced the idea that something similar might happen in the domain of mind and cognition. Contemporary research on the distinctively social aspects of human cognition, which has exploded over the past two decades, tends to fall somewhere along the following continuum. On the “conservative” side, the minds of individuals are currently being reconceived as socially situated, culturally scaffolded, and deeply transformed by our life-long immersion and participation in group contexts. According to more “liberal” multi-level approaches, the informational integration of functionally interdependent and socially distributed individual cognitive processes can give rise to emergent group-level cognitive phenomena. We invite participants to explore the full spectrum of social cognition, running the gamut from elementary social-cognitive skills that allow people to think and act together, through embodied behavioral coupling and joint intentionality, mechanisms of mindreading and mutual understanding, all the way to group cognition.

Web: http://avant.edu.pl/trends3/

Relevant topics include (but are not limited to):
- Socially situated and scaffolded individual cognition
- Social cognition from an evolutionary, cultural-historical, and ontogenetic perspective
- Psychological underpinnings of social interaction (joint, multi-agent, collective)
- Collective intentionality and social ontology
- Technologically vs. socially extended cognition
- Distributed cognition and group minds
- Current debates on mindreading, empathy, social affordances, and the cognitive bases for intersubjectivity

Key speakers and Guests of special symposia
- Daniel Dennett (Tufts University, USA)
- Morana Alač (University of California San Diego, USA)
- Stephen Cowley (University of Southern Denmark)
- Arkadiusz Gut (Catholic University of Lublin, Poland)
- Robert Rupert (University of Colorado Boulder, USA)
- Judith Simon (University of Hamburg, Germany)
- Deborah Tollefsen (University of Memphis, USA)
- Robert Wilson (University of Alberta, Canada)

Deadlines
- Abstracts submission: July 31
- Notification of acceptance: August 30
- Registration fee: September 30

http://avant.edu.pl/trends3/
Research Interests:
Social Psychology, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science, Social Sciences, Empathy (Psychology), and 54 more
Fifth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities, to be held 5-7 June 2017 at Stony Brook University Web: http://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/cognitivefutures/CFP.html Panel Participants: Stephen Turner... more
Fifth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities, to be held 5-7 June 2017 at Stony Brook University

Web: http://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/cognitivefutures/CFP.html

Panel Participants:

Stephen Turner (University of South Florida)
Jacob Mackey (Queens College, CUNY)
Georg Theiner & Nikolaus Fogle (Villanova University)
Evelyn B. Tribble (Otago University) & John Sutton (Macquarie University)

“On the whole, what is familiar is precisely not understood because it is familiar” (Hegel, Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit)
Research Interests:
Cultural History, Cultural Studies, Social Theory, Cognitive Science, Social Psychology, and 55 more