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Locked-in syndrome: a challenge for embodied cognitive science

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Abstract

Embodied approaches in cognitive science hold that the body is crucial for cognition. What this claim amounts to, however, still remains unclear. This paper contributes to its clarification by confronting three ways of understanding embodiment—the sensorimotor approach, extended cognition and enactivism—with Locked-in syndrome (LIS). LIS is a case of severe global paralysis in which patients are unable to move and yet largely remain cognitively intact. We propose that LIS poses a challenge to embodied approaches to cognition requiring them to make explicit the notion of embodiment they defend and its role for cognition. We argue that the sensorimotor and the extended functionalist approaches either fall short of accounting for cognition in LIS from an embodied perspective or do it too broadly by relegating the body only to a historical role. Enactivism conceives of the body as autonomous system and of cognition as sense-making. From this perspective embodiment is not equated with bodily movement but with forms of agency that do not disappear with body paralysis. Enactivism offers a clarifying perspective on embodiment and thus currently appears to be the framework in embodied cognition best suited to address the challenge posed by LIS.

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Notes

  1. In his review of recent approaches to embodiment Gallagher has referred to extended functionalism as “embodied functionalism” (Gallagher 2011). Here we stick to “extended functionalism” since it is the term originally used by Clark.

  2. An anonymous reviewer pointed out that the extended functionalist is not restricted to a substitution only strategy. The extended functionalist could argue that given the criteria of “trust and glue” (automatic endorsement, reliability etc.) are met, a tool realizes a cognitive process independent from the question whether or not that same cognitive process is already realized by a brain or body. Accordingly, one could maybe argue that the BCI extends the LIS patient’s cognition if the “trust and glue” criteria are met. However, while we agree that there could be a case of an external tool counting as part of cognition, even though it does not substitute a cognitive process—it could for example augment a cognitive process —such a story is not suitable for the present context of LIS and BCI usage. BCIs are usually not considered to augment a patient’s “normal” cognitive capacities. BCIs are so relevant for the patient precisely because they allow for cognitive processes (such as communication) the patient would be otherwise unable to realize. In other words, BCIs replace a usually otherwise realized capacity. Such a claim entails a claim about substitution and this holds independent from whether the capacity in question was originally bodily or neuronal based.

  3. Nutrition is constitutive of metabolism in the standard biological sense of metabolism as the exchange of material and energy with the environment and their transformation into cellular components and energy. More technically, the enactive approach defines the living process as autopoiesis and the latter as a form of material autonomy (Di Paolo 2005, 2009; Thompson 2007; Di Paolo and Thompson forthcoming). The essence of metabolism is precarious operational closure in the space of molecular transformations, which involves a relation towards energy and material resources with the world. This is in line with Hans Jonas’ characterization of the essence of life as metabolism, i.e., as a dynamical form made out of ongoing material flux: “This ontological individual, its very existence at any moment, its duration and its identity in duration is, then, essentially its own function, its own concern, its own continuous achievement. In this process of self-sustained being, the relation of the organism to its material substance is of a double nature: the materials are essential to specifically, accidental individually; it coincides with their actual collection at the instant, but is not bound to any one collection in the succession of instants, “riding” their change like the crest of a wave and bound only to their form of collection which endures as its own feat. Dependent on the availability of materials, it is independent of their sameness as these; its own, functional identity, passingly incorporating theirs, is of a different order. In a word, the organic form stands in a dialectical relation of needful freedom to matter”, (Jonas 1966, p.80). This relation is of its essence, which is why the nutrient analogy works; the organizational requirements that define the class identity of metabolising systems includes nourishment, while the temporal spread of actual acts of nourishment depends on various material and energy budgeting scenarios according to the species.

  4. An interesting parallel can be drawn to the work of Merleau-Ponty here. He says that “sometimes, finally, the meaning aimed at cannot be achieved by the body’s natural means; it must then build itself an instrument” (Merleau-Ponty 2002/1945, ibid., p. 169). In order to relate to something we usually rely on biological bodily structures, such as our eyes or hands for example. Originally non-bodily objects become appropriated by our habit body and thus cease to exist for us as independent objects. Merleau-Ponty illustrates this famously with the stick of the blind person that allows substituting visual feedback of the person’s position with a tactile one. The stick is no longer an external object to the blind person but “has become an area of sensitivity…providing a parallel to sight” (ibid., p. 165). The enactivist might suggest that if our embodied existence can change by “appropriating fresh instruments”, then BCI should count as an example of such a non-biological instrument (Merleau-Ponty 2002/1945, p. 166). Having learned how to reliably produce distinct activation patterns to control an artificial limb or a cursor on a screen could be seen as having acquired a new habit. Crucially, BCIs do not extend a pre-existing mind as one might argue from an extended functionalist perspective. Just like the stick for the blind person they are “incorporate[d] into the bulk of our own body”. They hence provide an additional structuring element that allows the patient to create a new domain of significance and thus continuously enact her conscious and directed existence in the world (ibid., p. 166).

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Mike Beaton, Athena Demertzi, Marek McGann, and Shaun Gallagher for helpful comments. This work is supported by the Marie-Curie Initial Training Network, “TESIS: Towards an Embodied Science of InterSubjectivity” (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-ITN, 264828).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IAS-Research Centre for Life, Mind, and Society, Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country, San Sebastián, Spain

    Miriam Kyselo & Ezequiel Di Paolo

  2. Ikerbasque - Basque Foundation for Science, San Sebastián, Spain

    Ezequiel Di Paolo

  3. Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics, and Centre for Research in Cognitive Science, School of Life Sciences, Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Ezequiel Di Paolo

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  1. Miriam Kyselo
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Correspondence to Miriam Kyselo.

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Kyselo, M., Di Paolo, E. Locked-in syndrome: a challenge for embodied cognitive science. Phenom Cogn Sci 14, 517–542 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-013-9344-9

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