End Game

EXTENDED COGNITION: GESTURES IN THE DIRECTION OF AN END GAME 1. Introduction Do mental processes occur purely inside the heads of creatures that instantiate them? Or are they partly constituted by processes that occur in the bodies or even the wider environments of such creatures. In recent years, the claims that (some) mental processes are embodied, and that (some) are even environmentally extended, have become progressively more popular. The terms of the debate between proponents and opponents of embodied and/or extended cognition have, however, become curious. At first glance, one might suppose that the debate is one that will be decided at the traditional level of philosophical, perhaps even conceptual, analysis. What sorts of things are mental processes? Are they the sorts of things that are likely to extend beyond the brain? If the debate were to occur at this level, then one might think that traditional philosophical accounts of the mental might figure quite heavily. What is the mark of the mental? Is it intentionality? Is it consciousness? And so on. This is not, however, the way things turned out. Instead, the debate has become widely regarded as one that should be fought and decided at the level of philosophy of cognitive science.1 The focus has largely been on sub-personal cognitive processes – the vehicles of cognition. And the interest in the debate has largely been conceived in term of its ramifications for the future development of cognitive science. How are the kinds of this science to be individuated? What kinds of explanatory mechanisms will this science 1 Robert Rupert has, I think, played a significant role in pushing the debate in this direction. See his (2004) and 1 postulate? The possibility that the debate might, instead, be conducted at another – rather more philosophical – level has scarcely been acknowledged. In The New Science of the Mind (henceforth NSM) I attempted to relocate the debate to this more abstract, philosophical, level. At the logical core of this attempt was an analysis of intentionality. The theses of embodied and extended cognition are generally thought to be recherché doctrines, at odds with common sense. I argued that this sense of oddity was grounded in a particular, uncritically accepted, conception of intentional directedness – a conception that it was the task of the book to unseat. In this paper, I shall attempt to develop this case further. I shall argue that, given the conception of intentionality defended in NSM, and rehearsed again in this paper – a conception that, broadly speaking, has its roots in the phenomenological tradition – we are in a position to see at the least the general outlines of an end game: the sort of game that is going to have to be played in order to settle the dispute between proponents and opponents of the extended/embodied view of mental processes. 2. What is Extended Cognition? I shall use the expression ‘extended cognition’ (henceforth EC) is a slightly tendentious way. Often, one finds extended cognition distinguished from embodied cognition. The concept of extended cognition employed in this paper, following on from NSM, subsumes both views. Cognitive processes are amalgamations of neural processes, bodily processes, and environmental processes. Amalgamations: There are two things wrong with the commonly used expression, ‘the extended mind’. First, there is the word ‘mind’, which suggests that the issue concerns the nature of the 2 mind. It does not. The issue pertains to mental processes, usually cognitive processes. Secondly, there is the word ‘extended’, which suggests that the issue pertains to the location of mental items. It does not. From the idea of mental processes as amalgamations, it might be possible to deduce various claims about where cognitive processes are not. But it is, in general, not possible to deduce, with any useful level of precision, where they are. One of the more sensible deductions is that cognitive processes often do not have any clear location. Processes: According to the thesis of amalgamated cognition, cognitive processes can be, in part, made up of the manipulation, transformation or exploitation of certain appropriate structures in the environment (including the body). ‘In part’ is important – there is always a non-eliminable neural component. But the whole process – the amalgamation – counts as cognitive, not just the neural component. I do not identify external structures with cognitive states. So, I would deny, for example, that the entries in Otto’s notebook count as beliefs. Otto’s manipulation of his notebook can count as part of his process of remembering. But the sentences are not his beliefs. I think there is good reason for denying this, but I won’t go into that here. Existential Quantifier, not Universal: Some cognitive processes are amalgamations of neural, bodily and environmental processes. Some are amalgamations of neural and bodily. Some are purely neural. I do not want to claim that all cognitive processes are amalgamations. Only that some are. Therefore, I’m quite comfortable with brains in vats, etc. Contingent: The idea of cognitive processes as amalgamations is a contingent claim about the way (some) cognitive processes, in fact, turned out, not a necessary claim about the way they have to be. As a matter of contingent fact, some cognitive processes are amalgamations of neural, bodily and environmental processes. 3 3. The Argument of The New Science of the Mind In NSM I argued that cognition is revealing activity that conforms to the mark of the cognitive. The argument is made up of two connected strands (a) the analysis of intentionality as revealing activity, and (b) the criterion of cognition. The cornerstone of the entire book is the analysis of intentionality. For reasons that are unclear to me, almost all commentators and reviewers have focused on the mark of the cognitive and completely ignored the analysis of intentionality. This is unfortunate. The mark of the cognitive cannot be understood independently of the analysis of intentionality: without the analysis, the mark of the cognitive is (and was intended to be) incomplete. A. The Analysis of Intentionality The analysis assumes a certain model of intentionality that has its roots in the phenomenological tradition and, despite some lean years, is still widely enough accepted to be dubbed the standard model. According to this, intentionality has a tripartite structure, comprising act, object, and mode of presentation. The mode of presentation connects act and object. The general idea is the act has a content, expressible in the form of a description, and the mode of presentation is that in virtue of which the object satisfies that description.2 The core argument of NSM begins by showing that the idea of a mode of presentation is ambiguous. In any intentional act, we find two different sorts of mode of presentation. Empirical modes of presentation (aspects): Often, indeed typically, the notion of a mode of presentation is understood as the way objects appear to subjects. If the tomato appears red and 2 For those who dislike description theories, there is a non‐description‐theoretic version of this model available (in fact, there are several of them). This is irrelevant to current concerns, since these are unaffected by which version of the standard model we adopt. I shall henceforth ignore this complication. 4 shiny, then redness and shininess is the mode of presentation of the tomato. In this sense, the mode of presentation is an intentional object – it is the sort of thing of which I can become aware if my attention is suitably engaged. I can attend not only to the tomato, but also to its redness and shininess. An empirical mode of presentation is an intentional object. As such, it is identical with what is sometimes called an aspect of an object. Transcendental modes of presentation: The standard mode of intentionality has a clear, if curiously overlooked, implication. In any intentional act, there must be more than an empirical mode of presentation. There must also be a transcendental mode of presentation. The mode of presentation is supposedly what fixes reference – determines the intentional object of a mental act. So, whenever the object of an intentional act is an empirical mode of presentation, there must be another mode of presentation – a transcendental mode of presentation – that fixes reference to the empirical mode of presentation. The transcendental mode of presentation is that component of the intentional act that permits the object to appear under empirical modes of presentation (or aspects). If we want to understand the intentionality – the directedness – of an act, we will look in vain to the objects of this directedness. The directedness of an intentional act towards the world consists in its transcendental mode of presentation. The transcendental mode of presentation is the intentional core of an act. That is, the directedness of an intentional act consists in its permitting objects to appear under aspects. Therefore, in this sense, intentional directedness is a form of revealing or disclosing activity. I distinguished two forms of disclosing activity: causal and constitutive. Constitutive disclosure takes the form of a logically sufficient condition for the world to fall under an 5 empirical mode of presentation. What it is like to have an experience provides a logically sufficient condition for the world to fall under an empirical mode of presentation. Causal disclosure takes the form of a physically sufficient condition for the world to fall under an empirical mode of presentation. Cognitive processes typically supply only a physically sufficient condition for the world to fall under an empirical mode of presentation. For example, if correct, David Marr’s account of the computational processes that progressively transform the retinal image into a 3D object representation would provide a physically, but not logically, sufficient condition for an object to appear a certain way. Constitutive disclosure is disclosure by way of content. Causal disclosure is disclosure by way of vehicles of content. It is causal disclosure that is relevant to extended cognition (since this is a thesis about cognitive vehicles). Revealing activity often – not always, certainly not necessarily – straddles neural processes, bodily processes, and processes of manipulating or transforming environmental structures. This is why cognitive processes are often amalgamations of all three. Intentionality is revealing activity. Cognition is a specific form of intentional activity – revealing activity that conforms to the mark of the cognitive. This brings us to the second strand of the argument in NSM: the criterion of cognition. B. The Mark of the Cognitive A process P is a cognitive process if: (1) P involves information processing—the manipulation and transformation of informationbearing structures. (2) This information processing has the proper function of making available either to the subject or to subsequent processing operations information that was (or would have been) prior to (or 6 without) this processing, unavailable. (3) This information is made available by way of the production, in the subject of P, of a representational state. (4) P is a process that belongs to the subject of that representational state. I argued that (1)-(3) are fairly straightforward, and are derived from an examination of paradigmatically internalist examples of cognitive scientific practice (I employed Marr’s theory of vision as a canonical example of internalist cognitive science). It is crucial to understand that the criterion of cognition cannot be understood in isolation from the analysis of intentionality. The criterion and the analysis are linked through condition (4). The ownership of cognitive processes is ultimately a matter of the fact that they are disclosing activity; and disclosure is always disclosure to someone (broadly construed). The ownership of a cognitive process is, therefore, understood in terms of disclosure. 4. Aside: On the Development of my Mark of the Cognitive In a recent paper, Fred Adams has been spinning the contribution that he and his colleague Ken Aizawa have made to the development of my thought.3 (AS is traditional, I shall henceforth refer to the collective as A&A). The spin goes something like this: thanks to our valiant efforts, Rowlands has finally come around to accept the need for a mark of the cognitive. This spin, however, seems to overlook the fact that I was always working with a mark of the cognitive – certainly as far back as 1999 (maybe 1995). In The Body in Mind (henceforth BIM) or example, this was the criterion of cognition I employed: 3 Adams (2010). I am not the only one to whose development they have contributed in this respect. Adams also mentions other benighted souls such as Mike Wheeler. 7 1. Cognitive task: defined by ostension. 2. Cognitive process: information processing operations (understood as the manipulation and transformation of information bearing structures) 3. Where this makes previously unavailable information available. 4. And this information is relevant to the solution of the cognitive task. The principal argument of BIM was that processes extending outside the skin counted as cognitive because they satisfied this criterion of the cognitive. I no longer believe this criterion is adequate – this is what has prompted my return to this subject in recent years. But an inadequate criterion of the cognitive is, nevertheless, a criterion of the cognitive. Adams (2010) also mentions a conference (Extended Mind II: Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back in The Head) held at the University of Hertfordshire in 2006. He laments: To our great surprise, almost all of the proponents of extended mind vehemently objected to the call for a mark of the cognitive by Adams & Aizawa. Even Rob Rupert was warming slowly, if at all to the need. There seemed to be a wealth of opinion that one doesn’t need a mark of the medical to practice medicine, or a mark of the biological to do biology, or a mark of the psychological to do psychology, etc. The list of skeptics about the need included: Clark, Chalmers, Keijzer, Menary, Hurley, Gallagher, Ross, Rowlands, Shapiro, Sutton, among others.4 On a brighter note, he adds in a footnote: 4 Fred Adams (2010), p. 325. 8 I’m happy to report that Rowlands, Shapiro, and Wheeler (at least) have now come around and see the need for a mark of the cognitive in connection with this dispute.5 I’m a little puzzled by this, and I suspect Fred must be misremembering. At the 2006 conference in question, I presented a paper that outlined and defended a criterion of the cognitive. This was an earlier version of my (2009) version, and looked like this: P is a cognitive task if: 1. P involves information processing – the manipulation and transformation of information bearing structures 2. This manipulation and transformation makes available information – to a subject or subpersonal processing operations – that was previously unavailable. 3. It does this by the production in the subject of a representational state. Ron Chrisley, in conversation, convinced me that (2) needed to be amended to incorporate the idea of proper function. And a useful objection by Richard Samuels – it was actually a version of the bloat objection – convinced me that I needed a further condition. This became condition (4) of my criterion I defended in NSM.6 My thanks to Chrisley and Samuels. But I suspect the significance of A&A in the development of my thought might have been somewhat overestimated. 5. Adams and Aizawa’s Objections to my Mark of the Cognitive Adams (2010) raises several objections to my mark of the cognitive. Here is the first: 5 Adams (2010), p 325. And also earlier my (2009) version (which was scarred by an ‘iff’ when there should only have been an ‘if’. His was a typo. I’m a sloppy proofreader). 6 9 Now, of course, all of the action is in (4). If “belongs to the subject” means cognitive subject, then the account is circular and helps not at all. If it does not mean cognitive subject, then my computer satisfies all four conditions and my computer is not a cognitive agent—believe me…it is not! So his conditions are hardly sufficient for cognition.7 In a similar vein, Aizawa has claimed that my criterion of the cognitive is satisfied by Chatterbots, Look up Tables, and CD Players.8 This objection is an obvious example of the fallacy of false dilemma (Aizawa grasps one horn of this false dilemma). Underlying this fallacy is a failure to understand condition (4) and the analysis of intentionality that underwrites it. The project is, of course, not to explain cognition in terms of cognition, but to explain it in terms of intentionality.9 Cognition is explained as a specific form of intentional activity. Intentional activity is understood in terms of the idea of a transcendental mode of presentation. This, in turn, is understood in terms of the idea of revealing or disclosing activity. Disclosure is primitive, although different forms of this are distinguishable. You may not like the analysis of intentionality. You may positively hate it. But you can hardly accuse me of trying to explain the cognitive in terms of the cognitive, thus ruling out the first horn of the dilemma. Moreover, this account has one clear implication: cognition can occur only in subjects of intentional states (subjects to whom there is disclosure), thus ruling out the second horn. 7 Adams (2010),p. 330. See, for example, his blog, The Bounds of Cognition. http://theboundsofcognition.blogspot.com/search/label/Rowlands th See the entry dated Saturday, April 10 , ‘Problems for Rowlands MoTC’) 9 To be fair to Fred, however, he was critiquing the (2009) version of the mark of the cognitive that did not come with attached analysis of intentionality. I did, however, make more than a few noises in that paper about the notion of ownership being both complicated and crucial, which might perhaps have given him pause. 8 10 Adams continues with his objections to my mark of the cognitive: Rowlands’ condition (1) is just an information processing condition. Everyone and her mother thinks that cognition involves information processing. So Rowlands puts that in. But the important issue is the kind of information processing. It has to be processing of semantic content. Trees and plants process information (in the mathematical or communication theoretic sense of information), but no one thinks they are cognitive. So (1) is surely not sufficient and, in my view, not specific about whether it is mere information or semantic content that is being processed and only that latter rises to the level of the cognitive. Yes, that must be it. Everyone and her mother thinks that cognition involves information processing: that’s why I put it in. More seriously, the first point to note is that is that the content processed certainly doesn’t have to be semantic in the sense of truth-evaluable. Mental models don’t contain semantic content in this sense. Most cognitive processing is not processing of semantic content. Semantic content is bound up, for familiar Davidsonian reasons, with the logical connectives. But mental models – cognitive maps, etc – do not stand in the same sort of relation to the connectives. The negation of a sentence is another specific sentence; but the ‘negation’ of a map is not another map. The disjunction of two sentences is another sentence. But the ‘disjunction’ of two maps is not another map. Most importantly, however, this objection is the result of a failure to understand the way in which (1)-(3) relate to each other. Information processing – the manipulation and transformation of information bearing structures – counts as information processing only because it has the proper function of making available information that was previously unavailable. It 11 achieves this function by way of the production in a subject of a representational state. So, the sort of information processed will be the sort of information contained in the representational state. That is an entailment of (1)-(3) taken together. And, as I say when developing the criterion, pick any sort of representation you like. Knock yourself out – EC still follows. Adams continues: Rowlands’ second condition brings up the matter of proper function … The problem here as well is that it is not just any functions that make up a mind, but the cognitive teleological functions. So, unless we know which functions are at issue, this won’t much help as part of a set of sufficient conditions for cognition. If the previous objection was the result of a failure to understand the relations between (1)–(3), this objection seems to result from a failure to even properly read condition (2). For, there, I say exactly what function is involved: the function of making available, either to a subject or to subsequent processing operations, information that was previously unavailable. Adams accuses me of presupposing the notion of a cognitive function. I find this charge mystifying. Conditions (1)-(3) collectively specify what a cognitive function is: the function of making available previously unavailable information through the production in a subject of a representational state (where subject is understood, along the lines of the analysis of intentionality, as an intentional agent. Adams continues: Condition (3) also is not going to fill the bill. Of course there have to be representations in a cognitive system, but as I pointed out above, representations exist in the circulatory system, in the digestive system, in the control of blood sugar levels and thermoregulation in the brain. So, just as referring to mere information rather than semantic content, 12 talking about representations rather than representations that can be true or false is the wrong level to be part of a set of sufficient conditions for cognition. First of all, once again, the restriction to truth and falsity would rule out a staple of cognitive scientific practice – postulation of cognitive maps, mental models and the like. These cannot be true or false, only accurate or inaccurate. But, far more importantly, as I say when developing the criterion, you can help yourself to whatever conception of representation you want. Insert in condition (3) any restrictions on representation you prefer, EC still follows. Adams concludes with the final condition: Condition (4) as I pointed out earlier, just begs the whole question. If we have a true subject, a person, then we already have a cognitive agent. This can’t be a necessary part of a set of sufficient conditions for a cognitive system…it would be sufficient all by itself. For this, I need only refer you to the response to the first objection. The project is to explain cognition as a form of intentional activity, not to explain cognition in terms of itself. 6. Adams’ Mark of the Cognitive Adams (2010) presents his own mark of the cognitive; one made up, purportedly, of four conditions. 1. Cognitive processes involve states that are semantically evaluable Again, I should note that if semantic evaluation is understood in its customary sense. Models and maps are neither true nor false. Nothing much turns on this; we can broaden the notion to that of 13 accuracy-conditional, rather than truth-conditional. More importantly, note that this entailed by my condition (3) – especially since I am willing to allow my opponent to understand the notion of representation in whatever way he wants. Far from denying it, I endorse this claim. There is nothing in, however, that precludes EC. 2. The contents carried by cognitive systems do not depend for their content on other minds This is also compatible with EC. It is entailed by condition (3) of my criterion of the cognitive. 3. Cognitive contents can be false or even empty, and hence are detached from the actual environmental causes Here, Adams is running two things that are typically distinguished – misrepresentation and decouplability. I actually think there is a deeper connection between the two than is commonly acknowledged, and so applaud his instincts if not his clarity. But this is also entailed by condition (3) of my mark of the cognitive. For any case of representation, you have to have the possibility of misrepresentation. If you want decouplability too, that’s fine with me. Let’s build it into condition (3) that the representation it invokes must be decouplable. Finally these representational states must: 4. Cause and explain in virtue of their representational content Yes, this is fine too. Let’s build this into condition (3) of my mark of the cognitive. I have presented a mark of the cognitive that, I have argued is compatible with EC. Adams claims his criterion is incompatible with EC. But his criterion is entailed by mine – or, more accurately, by an interpretation of mine that I am more than willing to accept. Clearly, one of us is going to be very disappointed. 14 Why does Adams think his criterion is incompatible with EC? The reason is that he has smuggled in a fifth, tacit, condition: Yes there are states that satisfy these conditions within the body and brain of the “coupled” agent. But no, there are no good reasons yet to think there is cognition going on everywhere along the causal chain. There are as yet no good reasons to think that cognitive processing is occurring anywhere outside the head of the agent coupled to the environment.10 That is: 5. Conditions (1)-(4) must apply everywhere in the process for the process to count as cognitive. And at last the general contours of the end game become visible. 7. End Game I have advanced a view according to which cognitive processes are amalgamations of neural, bodily, and environmental processes. Adams argues that states which satisfy his criterion of the cognitive never occur outside the skull. But, it is the contribution of condition (2) that is the decisive. The entries on Otto’s notebook are semantically evaluable (1), can be false or empty and detached (3), and play a role in explaining Otto’s behavior (4). It is (2) and only (2) that precludes the sentence from counting as cognitive according to Adams’ criterion. So, it all comes down to non-derived content. A&A argue that non-derived representation never extends beyond 10 Adams (2010), p. 328. 15 the neural. Therefore, everything outside that is scaffolding – it facilitates but does not constitute cognitive processes. My first entry into the game will look something like this. Have you forgotten the arguments I developed in my 2006 book, Body Language? I argued that non-derived content does extend out into the world: the operations that we perform on the world when we manipulate information bearing structures are representational – in the sense that they satisfy the usual naturalistic criteria of representation – and where this representational status is non-derived. So, I would simply deny A&A’s central claim. We do, in fact, find things with non-derived representational status out in the world when we engage in the manipulation and transformation of external information bearing structures. A&A will, I suspect, have a likely response: this is not enough. This non-derived representationality, if it is indeed real, attaches only to processes of manipulation, and not to the structures manipulated. But that is what you need to satisfy our conditions: the structures manipulated must have non-derived content. My response will be obvious enough: why? I do not accept this response, since I do not see that it has been grounded in any argument they have given. If parts of the external process can have non-derived representational status, then why must the states or structures implicated have this too? But I don’t want to stop playing the game yet. So, I henceforth propose to ignore my own work. My follow up will be along entirely more familiar lines: a charge of questionbegging. Would A&A be so confident in their claim when it applies to a neural process? Suppose, for example, that we identify a neural process that involves the manipulation of non-derived 16 representations. Further on downstream, we identify another process of the same sort. But in between, causally connecting these two processes, is a section of processing that does not involve representations. We might think of it as a non-representational portion of the processing stream. Would we really be so confident in the assertion that this portion of the stream is, therefore, non-cognitive? It is causally shaped by the initial processing stream, and goes on to causally shape, perhaps in important ways, the later processing stream. But it does not involve representations and is, therefore, non-cognitive. I can see no basis for confidence in this assessment. Certainly there is nothing in cognitive scientific practice that would yield any degree of confidence. Yes there is, A&A might respond: the rules and representations approach (which we have assumed without argument and which therefore might leave us open to another charge of question-begging), mandates that anything that is cognitive must be an operation performed on a representation. And our criterion of cognition mandates that this representation must be nonderived. This, I think is an interesting stage of the game. As far as I can see, the rules and representations approach mandates nothing of the sort. In fact, the rules and representations approach has the opposite implication: not every structure operated on by rules can be a representation – and so the issue of whether it is derived or non-derived does not apply. This follows from the intimate relation between rules and representations. The retinal image, for example, is not a representation. It is not a representation because there is no difference between what causes a pattern of light intensity values distributed over the retina and what should cause it. The image is simply caused by whatever causes it. The image, 17 therefore, makes no normative claim on the world; and normativity is essential to representation. Nevertheless processes operating on the image are, in classical (i.e. rules and representations) approaches regarded as cognitive. For example, to use the sort of example familiar from the work of Fodor, the same pattern of intensity values can be caused by (a) a horse, (b) a donkey-in-the-distance. There is no sense that can be given the claim that the retinal image should have been caused by a horse. We can’t say, for example, that the retinal image should have been caused by a horse, because a horse is, in fact, there? If so, what retinal image should the donkey have caused? The horse and the donkey produce the same retinal image: that is why it is difficult to distinguish them. Normativity does not enter the picture at this stage. There is no sense that we can give to the claim that the horse should have produced one retinal image and the donkey another. The retinal image is not a representation because there is no possibility of its misrepresenting – and without the possibility of misrepresentation there is no representation. Normativity, hence the possibility of misrepresentation, comes in only downstream. But, I can imagine A&A saying, (because the second A did, in fact say this to me),11 the retinal image is so too a representation. I am, in effect, looking for normativity in all the wrong places. The retinal image can make a normative claim with respect to simpler quantities? For example: Shape. Color. Brightness. Suppose, to take Aizawa’s example, there is something wrong with the eye and as a result levels of illumination that would normally produce activation levels of quantity Q only produce activation levels of 0.5Q. (In the visual subject, the world 11 See our altogether‐far‐too‐friendly‐to‐be‐really‐entertaining‐debate on Philosophy TV. http://www.philostv.com/kenneth‐aizawa‐and‐mark‐rowlands/ 18 appears dim). Can we not say that the eye should have registered activation level Q and not 0.5Q? My response is that this is exactly the same situation as that of the horse/donkey. Normativity can only emerge downstream. What we have here is only the illusion of normativity. We might think there is normativity here because we have some sort of idea of the proper function of the eye: it is supposed to register Q in the presence of ambient light of a certain level of illumination. However, its proper function in this regard cannot be disentangled from the nature of the downstream processing. If this were suitably different – for example, if there were an augmentation function applied to the input values at a give stage of processing – then the eye might have the proper function of registering 0.5Q in these circumstances, and not Q. The moral is the exactly the same: the retinal image is caused by whatever causes it. Normativity emerges only later, after processing has begun. Normativity enters the picture in this way. After the causal impingements responsible for the retinal image, the brain makes various ‘guesses’ about the sort of thing that might have produced the image. On the Marrian account, for example, these guesses take the form of the application of principles such as good continuation, closure, common fate, and so on. If the world turns out contrary to these guesses, then the brain has guessed wrong. Now we have normativity and, consequently, the possibility of misrepresentation. Therefore, the retinal image is not a representation. In itself, it makes no normative claim on the world. Normativity arises only through subsequent processing operations. There is a more general point that underlies this example, more valuable than the example itself. It is the application of transformational rules to a structure that transforms this 19 structure from one that merely carries information to one that represents. This is because the application of rules transforms the structure from one that does not make a normative claim to one that does. This connection between representation and rules is crucial. It is the application of rules that creates representations. Therefore, these rules must, initially, operate on things that are not representations. Therefore, the claim that cognitive processes must operate only on non-derived representations cannot be sustained. Cognitive processes operate on representations, but they also operate on things that are not representations. To put the same point another way: the architecture of cognition must consist in more than vehicles of content. At this point in the game, there are, it seems two options available to A&A. The first option is to try an identify something that the retinal image shares with genuine representations, in virtue of which we could (i) legitimately regard operations formed on both as cognitive, and (ii) rule our EC. Seemingly the only candidate here is non-derived information. Both the retinal image and representations carry non-derived information. The recommended modification would be this: cognitive processes must act only on structures that carry non-derived information. This, however, would concede the case to EC. It might rule out cases of EC like Otto’s notebook, but it concedes many other cases of EC. For example, manipulation of the optic array in order to make available invariant information is compatible with this condition – for the optic array carries non-derived information. So, too is the probing of visual structures more generally, etc – the sorts of things that enactivists get excited about. This relaxation of the condition permits much of what passes for extended cognition. In fact, since I understand EC in terms of the 20 existential claim explained earlier, you’ve already given me everything I want. We are no longer arguing about whether EC is true, but simply about its scope. The second option is to deny that the processing operations performed on the retinal image are cognitive processes. Now, this is where a charge of question-begging would hit really hard. The idea that the processes that transform the retinal image into the raw primal sketch – on the Marrian way of looking at things – are cognitive processes is a deeply engrained component of the classical rules and representations tradition. Cognitive processing starts with operations performed on the retinal image. It does not start with operations performed on the raw primal sketch. A significant part of the A&A case against EC turns on an appeal to what cognitive scientists do – they employ representations with non-derived content, etc, etc. Adams’ conditions (1)-(4) are based on an examination of cognitive scientific practice. It is worth noting that appeals to cognitive scientific practice are skirting with questionbegging at the best of times. In the dispute between EC and classical approaches, the nature of cognitive scientific practice is precisely what is in dispute. That, to some extent at least, is what is up for grabs. But imagine how much this problem would be compounded if it was felt we could ignore the appeal to cognitive scientific practice whenever it yielded conclusions we didn’t like. This, I strongly suspect, would make the A&A position untenable. 8. The Real End Game? I agree with A&A that understanding the nature of cognition is an important aspect of assessing the claims of EC and its detractors. However, it is extraordinarily doubtful that we can understand what cognition is in the absence of an account of a suitably worked out account of the mental. In particular, cognitive scientific practice and the philosophy of that practice will not be 21 able to tell us whether manipulation of non-derived representations counts as cognition. This is something that can be decided only by digging deeper. And ‘digging deeper’ involves providing an account of what makes something mental. Thus, the real source of the idea that cognition must involve non-derived representation lies not in a theory of cognition, but in a theory of the mental. It is non-derived intentionality that is the hallmark of the mental. To this extent, I suspect A&A would agree with me. However, they have chosen to interpret this idea in a way unjustified by any argument they have given and which seems to contradict the cognitive-scientific practice in which they claim to place such great store. From the claim, which I accept, that: (i) Unless you have non-derived intentionality, you don’t have anything mental. Non-derived intentionality is the hallmark of the mental. They have inferred: (i) Every part of a mental process must consist in operations performed on structures that are non-derived representations. The intuition expressed in (i) is a good one. Its interpretation as (ii) is a non sequitur. But how can we even assess these claims unless we know what intentionality is? In NSM I argued for an account of intentionality as revealing activity. EC – extended cognition – follows from this as an obvious, almost banal, consequence. As revealing activity, non-derived intentionality permeates our dealings with the world, including those dealings we classify as cognitive. Otto’s sentences may not have non-derived intentionality, but his manipulations of these sentences certainly do. My analysis may be wrong. But I suspect that it is that this level 22 that the debate is going to have to be fought – that the end game really starts to be played. This level is that of traditional philosophy of mind – which, for me at least, comes with a liberal sprinkling of phenomenological elements – and not philosophy of cognitive science. References Adams, Fred (2010) ‘Why we still need a mark of the cognitive’, Cognitive Systems Research 11, pp. 324-31. Adams, Fred and Aizawa, Ken (2008) The Bounds of Cognition (New York: Wiley-Blackwell). Rowlands, Mark (1999) The Body in Mind: Understanding Cognitive Processes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) Rowlands, Mark (2006) Body Language: Representation in Action (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press). Rowlands, Mark (2009) ‘Extended cognition and the mark of the cognitive’, Philosophical Psychology 22,pp. 1-20. Rowlands, Mark (2010) The New Science of the Mind: From Extended Mind to Embodied Phenomenology (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press). Rupert, Robert, (2004) ‘Challenges to the hypothesis of extended cognition’, Journal of Philosophy, 101, pp. 389-428. 23 Rupert, Robert (2009) Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind (New York: Oxford University Press). 24