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Re-assessing ecology of tool transparency in epistemic practices

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Abstract

In this paper, the radical view that transparent equipment is the result of an ecological assembly between tool users and physical aspects of the world is critically assessed. According to this perspective, tool users are normally viewed as plastically organized hybrid agents. In this view, such agents are able to interact with tools (artefacts or technologies) in ways that are opportunistic and fully locked to the local task environment. This intimate and flexible interaction would provide grounds for the thesis that cognitive agents and tools constitute literal extended cognitive systems. By contrast, a revised understanding of tool use transparency will be attempted. In this perspective, the interplay between on-line and off-line thinking is understood in terms of a socially reified cognitive delegation that subsumes the advantages normally associated to the so-called ‘open-ended ecological controllers.’ Thus, the notion of transparent technologies can be explored on the basis of a derived or mediated cognitive delegation. This view will be complemented by the notion of communities of practice (CoP). Special sorts of CoP will be proposed as suitable and flexible cognitive environments for the development of tool transparency.

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Notes

  1. Nontrivial Causal Spread, and the PEA are clearly presented and contextualized in Clark (2008).

  2. This intends to suggest that, in connection with the HEM, the characterization of epistemic tool use has not incorporated a well-balanced account of the relation between certain ecologically-coupled/decoupled processes.

  3. This process refers to how domain-specific minds of certain archaic primates may have evolved into modern human mind. The term is characterized in Mithen 1996 and 2000.

  4. This process refers to the actual material externalization of internal representations.

  5. This process refers to the re-internalized neural codification of external representations.

  6. Wilson (2010) also summarizes the varied research background that is normally related to these kinds of arguments.

  7. Manipulative abduction and epistemic mediators are introduced and illustrated in Magnani 2001a, b.

  8. Supposedly in a real sense, Clark (2008), and others, considers language to be our best tool.

  9. E.g.: Familiar teaching strategies that need to suit new learning objectives; or workplaces that need to be further engineered to accommodate new tasks.

  10. I am using this notion in the terms presented by Richard Cooper (1996).

  11. Following Sterelny’s argument that our ability to use epistemic artefacts depends on mental representations whose elaboration is based, precisely, on the use of this kind of artefacts (Sterelny 2004) as discussed in Sect. 2.1.

  12. In the case of multi-purpose rules of action (M-P RA), a certain commitment to their application in special contexts of occurrence will be necessary. This point will be elaborated in forthcoming sections.

  13. See Kirsh and Maglio (1994) and reference to “epistemic actions” in Sect. 2.1.

  14. Especially along the lines of what Sterelny refers to as “cumulative downstream epistemic engineering”, a process by means of which humans modify their epistemic environment and “affect information structures and opportunities presented to each subsequent generation.” (cited in Clark 2008, p. 66).

  15. A grammar model developed by the Australian linguist M.A.K. Halliday. See Halliday and Hasan (1976) for a comprehensive view of the model.

  16. See Dourish (2001) and Wheeler (2005). This point will not be further pursued in this paper. In connection with this symbiotic relationship, suffice it to highlight the relatively explicit ontological commitment to a naturalized notion of experience. I take this project to be one important motivation behind the reactive view of cognition I critically address in this paper.

  17. This is, for example, the sort of capacities that Clark (2006) considers to initially support the appeal to complex, distributed coordination dynamics that takes place when language is understood as an artefact. Language, in this view, is actually understood as the ultimate artefact or a “cognitive super-niche”, in that it allows us to construct an open-ended sequence of other cognitive niches.

  18. Clark (2003) provides and discusses plenty of examples.

  19. See Wenger et al. (1998) for relevant empirical findings.

  20. i.e. the sort of tools/artifacts/technologies without which such constellations do not seem to be recognized as being interrelated to one another.

  21. This is something that can also be supported by the findings connected with the relevance of highly structured training environments informed by recent studies on primate cognition (Iriki and Sakura 2008).

  22. In this paper, I have characterized this space in terms of the notion of CoP.

  23. See, for example, Magnani et al. (1999), Magnani and Nersessian (2002), Magnani (2006b) and Magnani and Li (2007) .

  24. Inferential reasoning can be understood as both sentential and model-based, where the cognitive character of external representations in MBR is based on semiotic disembodiment of mind.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Lorenzo Magnani for his helpful comments and criticisms of all the drafts of the present paper, and especially for his generous and hospitable support during my stay in Pavia as a research intern at the Department of Philosophy and Computational Philosophy Laboratory, University of Pavia. To the other members of the CPL academic community, I would also like to extend my gratitude for their unwavering support and encouragement. Errors in this paper are my responsibility. This paper is part of a research project sponsored by FONDECYT (Government of Chile). Project No. 1095020. It is also a further development of my research internship at the University of Pavia. This postgraduate internship was made possible thanks to the awarded scholarship “Beca 2008 de estadías cortas de investigación para estudiantes tesistas de magíster y doctorado de la Vicerrectoría de Asuntos Académicos, Universidad de Chile”.

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  1. Centro de Estudios Cognitivos, Universidad de Chile, Av. Capitán Ignacio Carrera Pinto 1025, 7750000, Santiago, Chile

    Bernardo Pino

  2. Department of Philosophy and Computational Philosophy Laboratory, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

    Bernardo Pino

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Pino, B. Re-assessing ecology of tool transparency in epistemic practices. Mind Soc 9, 85–110 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11299-010-0071-4

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