Online research in philosophy

Cognition is thinking; it feels like something to think, and only those who can feel can think. There are also things that thinkers can do. We know neither how thinkers can think nor how they are able do what they can do. We are waiting for cognitive science to discover how. Cognitive science does this by testing hypotheses about what processes can generate what doing (“know-how”) This is called the Turing Test. It cannot test whether a process can generate feeling, hence thinking -- only whether it can generate doing. The processes that generate thinking and know-how are “distributed” within the heads of thinkers, but not across thinkers’ heads. Hence there is no such thing as distributed cognition, only collaborative cognition. Email and the Web have spawned a new form of collaborative cognition that draws upon individual brains’ real-time interactive potential in ways that were not possible in oral, written or print interactions.

It is argued that in approaching the issue of Canada's competitiveness in finished products and services internationally, a singular focus on productivity may be but a symptom of more serious underlying problems. Examples of such problems are provided and the implications and ethical concerns resulting from the probable technical solutions utilized to improve productivity are explored.

Much of the debate about the ethics of enhancement has proceeded according to two framing assumptions. The first is that although enhancement carries large social risks, the chief benefits of enhancement are to those who are enhanced (or their parents, in the case of enhancing the traits of children). The second is that, because we now understand the wrongs of state-driven eugenics, enhancements, at least in liberal societies, will be personal goods, chosen or not chosen in a market for enhancement services. This article argues that both framing assumptions must be rejected, once it is understood that some enhancements— especially those that are most likely to garner resources and become widespread— will increase human productivity. Once one appreciates the productivity-increasing potential of enhancements, one can begin to see that enhancement need not be primarily a zero sum affair, that the social costs of forgoing enhancements may be great, and that the state may well take an interest in facilitating biomedical enhancements, just as it does in facilitating education and other productivity-increasing traditional enhancements. Appreciating the productivity-increasing potential of enhancements also makes it possible to view the enhancement debate in a new light, through the lens of the ethics of development.

Both cognitive science and phenomenology accept the primacy of the organism-environment system and recognize that cognition should be understood in terms of an embodied agent situated in its environment. How embodiment is seen to shape our world, however, is fundamentally different in these two disciplines. Embodiment, as understood in cognitive science, reduces to a discussion of the consequences of having a body like ours interacting with our environment and the relationship is one of contingent causality. Embodiment, as understood phenomenologically, represents the condition of intelligibility of certain terms in our experience and, as such, refers to one aspect of that background which presupposes our understanding of the world. The goals and approach to modeling an embodied agent in its environment are also fundamentally different dependent on which relationship is addressed. These differences are highlighted and are used to support our phenomenologically based approach to organism-environment interaction and its relationship to brain function.

I argue against a growing radical trend in current theoretical cognitive science that moves from the premises of embedded cognition, embodied cognition, dynamical systems theory and/or situated robotics to conclusions either to the effect that the mind is not in the brain or that cognition does not require representation, or both. I unearth the considerations at the foundation of this view: Haugeland's bandwidth-component argument to the effect that the brain is not a component in cognitive activity, and arguments inspired by dynamical systems theory and situated robotics to the effect that cognitive activity does not involve representations. Both of these strands depend not only on a shift of emphasis from higher cognitive functions to things like sensorimotor processes, but also depend on a certain understanding of how sensorimotor processes are implemented - as closed-loop control systems. I describe a much more sophisticated model of sensorimotor processing that is not only more powerful and robust than simple closed-loop control, but for which there is great evidence that it is implemented in the nervous system. The is the emulation theory of representation, according to which the brain constructs inner dynamical models, or emulators, of the body and environment which are used in parallel with the body and environment to enhance motor control and perception and to provide faster feedback during motor processes, and can be run off-line to produce imagery and evaluate sensorimotor counterfactuals. I then show that the emulation framework is immune to the radical arguments, and makes apparent why the brain is a component in the cognitive activity, and exactly what the representations are in sensorimotor control.

The actual approaches of Cognitive Science offer a partial explanation of cognition. In this paper, our main point is to catch some key elements from these approaches, that can be taken together in a future perspective for a better explanation of cognition. The key elements (levels of analysis, primitives, processes, structures, threshold,self-organisation, bidirectionality, emergency, habituation, tasks, theinteraction between levels and also the interactions between the elements of the cognitive system and the environment) help us to stress the need of the representations. Then, we arediscussing the following dichotomies: procedural-declarative,consciousness-unconsciousness, implicit-explicit. Finally, we will try to motivate the necessity of an abstract theory of representation in Cognitive Science. ``The sensitive things aren't, but the ideas are''.

Contrary to prevailing views, productivity and propositional construal are not problematic for perceptual views of representation. Glenberg's embodied representations contribute to our understanding of how these two important processes might be implemented perceptually.

Many cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, and philosophers of science consider it uncontroversial that the brain processes information. In this work we broadly consider the types of experimental evidence that would support this claim, and find that although physical features of specific brain areas selectively covary with external stimuli or abilities, there is no direct evidence supporting an information processing function of any particular brain area.

A case study in historical cognitive science, this paper addresses two claims made by radical proponents of new dynamical approaches. It queries their historical narrative, which sees embodied, situated cognition as correcting an individualist, atemporal framework originating in Descartes. In fact, new Descartes scholarship shows that 17th-century animal spirits neurophysiology realized a recognizably distributed model of memory; explicit representations are patterns of spirit flow, and memory traces are changes left by experience in connections between brain pores. This historical sketch supports the second dynamicist claim, that connectionists' stress on the cognitive importance of pattern-recreation needs supplementing by dynamicists' real-time focus and attention to the active roles of body and environment. Animal spirits theory exhibits just the 'continuous reciprocal causation' between brain, body, and environment which Andy Clark sees as dynamicism's central contribution, and allows for the embedding of brains in culture as well as the physical world.

Yet this is precisely what I intend to do. As a way of conferring some initial legitimacy Perhaps the most fundamental axiom of upon this enterprise, I would like to start out modern economic science is that there simply by appealing to the “no free lunch” is no such thing as a free lunch. It is principle. To adopt productivity growth as a this axiom that gives us the concept of opporsocial priority is to set aside other objectives tunity cost, an idea that has led to enormous that we might like to pursue. Therefore, one gains in the clarity of our understanding of cannot maintain rational adherence to a proindividual and societal choice. But while congram of increased productivity without a clear tinuing to endorse this fundamental axiom, sense of what the benefits of such a program many economists have also been extremely are likely to be, compared to the other things attracted by the appeal of increased economic that we might choose to do. The bulk of this efficiency. Efficiency gains are often treated, paper consists of an attempt to evaluate the if not exactly as a free lunch, certainly about size and scope of these benefits. More controas close to a free lunch as one can get in this versially, I will try to show that these benesublunar realm. As a result, economists often fits are often exaggerated. react with a certain incredulity when some- The conclusion that I draw on the basis one questions the need for such gains. It is of this survey will strike many as complacent. tempting to suppose that the critic simply But it is a principled complacency. I argue misunderstands the relevant concepts, or else that we have good reason, as a society, to strive fails to grasp the full set of constraints under for productivity gains, but that there is nothwhich economic activity occurs. ing urgent about this objective. Furthermore, Productivity growth is widely regarded we should not strive to maximize productivity as a subset of the efficiency gains that can be gains, nor should we be overly concerned realized in our economy..