Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? The question invites two standard replies. Some accept the demarcations of skin and skull, and say that what is outside the body is outside the mind. Others are impressed by arguments suggesting that the meaning of our words "just ain't in the head", and hold that this externalism about meaning carries over into an externalism about mind. We propose to pursue a third position. We advocate a very different (...) sort of externalism: an _active externalism_, based on the active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes. (shrink)

Is consciousness all in the head, or might the minimal physical substrate for some forms of conscious experience include the goings on in the (rest of the) body and the world? Such a view might be dubbed (by analogy with Clark and Chalmers’s ( 1998 ) claims concerning ‘the extended mind’) ‘the extended conscious mind’. In this article, I review a variety of arguments for the extended conscious mind, and find them flawed. Arguments for extended cognition, I conclude, do not (...) generalize to arguments for an extended conscious mind. (shrink)

Animate vision systems have gaze control mechanisms that can actively position the camera coordinate system in response to physical stimuli. Compared to passive systems, animate systems show that visual computation can be vastly less expensive when considered in the larger context of behavior. The most important visual behavior is the ability to control the direction of gaze. This allows the use of very low resolution imaging that has a high virtual resolution. Using such a system in a controlled way provides (...) additional constraints that dramatically simplify the computations of early vision. Another important behavior is the way the environment “behaves‘. Animate systems under real-time constraints can further reduce their computational burden by using environmental cues that are perspicuous in the local context. A third source of economy is introduced when behaviors are learned. Because errors are rarely fatal, systems using learning algorithms can amortize computational cost over extended periods. Further economies can be achieved when the learning system uses indexical reference, which is a form of dynamic variable binding. Animate vision is a natural way of implementing this dynamic binding. (shrink)

There is a traditional conception of sensory experience on which the experiences one has looking at, say, a cat could be had by someone merely hallucinating a cat. Disjunctivists take issue with this conception on the grounds that it does not enable us to understand how perceptual knowledge is possible. In particular, they think, it does not explain how it can be that experiences gained in perception enable us to be in ‘cognitive contact’ with objects and facts. I develop this (...) challenge to the traditional conception and then show that it is possible to accommodate an adequate account of cognitive contact in keeping with the traditional conception. One upshot of the discussion is that experiences do not bear the explanatory burden placed upon them by disjunctivists. (shrink)

Different cognitive functions recruit a number of different, often overlapping, areas of the brain. Theories in cognitive and computational neuroscience are beginning to take this kind of functional integration into account. The contributions to this special issue consider what functional integration tells us about various aspects of the mind such as perception, language, volition, agency, and reward. Here, I consider how and why functional integration may matter for the mind; I discuss a general theoretical framework, based on generative models, that (...) may unify many of the debates surrounding functional integration and the mind; and I briefly introduce each of the contributions. (shrink)

The emulation theory of representation is developed and explored as a framework that can revealingly synthesize a wide variety of representational functions of the brain. The framework is based on constructs from control theory (forward models) and signal processing (Kalman filters). The idea is that in addition to simply engaging with the body and environment, the brain constructs neural circuits that act as models of the body and environment. During overt sensorimotor engagement, these models are driven by efference copies in (...) parallel with the body and environment, in order to provide expectations of the sensory feedback, and to enhance and process sensory information. These models can also be run off-line in order to produce imagery, estimate outcomes of different actions, and evaluate and develop motor plans. The framework is initially developed within the context of motor control, where it has been shown that inner models running in parallel with the body can reduce the effects of feedback delay problems. The same mechanisms can account for motor imagery as the off-line driving of the emulator via efference copies. The framework is extended to account for visual imagery as the off-line driving of an emulator of the motor-visual loop. I also show how such systems can provide for amodal spatial imagery. Perception, including visual perception, results from such models being used to form expectations of, and to interpret, sensory input. I close by briefly outlining other cognitive functions that might also be synthesized within this framework, including reasoning, theory of mind phenomena, and language. Key Words: efference copies; emulation theory of representation; forward models; Kalman filters; motor control; motor imagery; perception; visual imagery. (shrink)

b>: In this article I outline, apply, and defend a theory of natural representation. The main consequences of this theory are: i) representational status is a matter of how physical entities are used, and specifically is not a matter of causation, nomic relations with the intentional object, or information; ii) there are genuine (brain-)internal representations; iii) such representations are really representations, and not just farcical pseudo-representations, such as attractors, principal components, state-space partitions, or what-have-you;and iv) the theory allows us to (...) sharply distinguish those complex behaviors which are genuinely cognitive from those which are merely complex and adaptive. (shrink)

To have a fully integrated understanding of neurobiological systems, we must address two fundamental questions: 1. What do brains do (what is their function)? and 2. How do brains do whatever it is that they do (how is that function implemented)? I begin by arguing that these questions are necessarily inter-related. Thus, addressing one without consideration of an answer to the other, as is often done, is a mistake. I then describe what I take to be the best available approach (...) to addressing both questions. Specifically, to address 2, I adopt the Neural Engineering Framework (NEF) of Eliasmith & Anderson [Neural engineering: Computation representation and dynamics in neurobiological systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003] which identifies implementational principles for neural models. To address 1, I suggest that adopting statistical modeling methods for perception and action will be functionally sufficient for capturing biological behavior. I show how these two answers will be mutually constraining, since the process of model selection for the statistical method in this approach can be informed by known anatomical and physiological properties of the brain, captured by the NEF. Similarly, the application of the NEF must be informed by functional hypotheses, captured by the statistical modeling approach. (shrink)

In Being There, Andy Clark weaves these several threads into a pleasing whole and goes on to address foundational questions concerning the new tools and..

In treating cognition as problem solving, Andy Clark suggests, we may often abstract too far from the very body and world in which our brains evolved to guide...

This is a charming and engaging book that combines careful attention to the phenomenology of experience with an appreciation of the psychology and neuroscience of perception. In some of its aimsfor example, to show problems with a rigid version of a view of visual perception as an inverse optics process of constructing a static 3-D representation from static 2-D information on the retina--it succeeds admirably. As No points out, vision is a process that depends on interactions between the perceiver and (...) the environment and involves contributions from sensory systems other than the eye. He is at pains to note that vision is not passive. His analogy with touch is to the point: touch involves skillful probing and movement, and so does vision, although less obviously and in my view less centrally so. This much is certainly widely accepted among vision scientistsalthough mainstream vision scientists (represented, for example, by Stephen Palmers excellent textbook²) view these points as best seen within a version of the inverse optics view that takes inputs as non-static and as including motor instructions (for example, involving eye movements and head movements).³ The kind of point that No raises is viewed as important at the margins, but as not disturbing the main lines of the picture of vision that descendswith many changesfrom the pioneering work of David Marr in the 1980s (and before him, from Helmholtz). But No shows little interest in mainstream vision science, focusing on non-mainstream ideas in the science of perception, specifically ideas from the anti-representational psychologist J.J. Gibson, and also drawing on Wittgenstein and the phenomenology tradition. There is a sense throughout the book of revolution, of upsetting the applecart. This is a review from the point of view of the applecart. (shrink)

There is a definite challenge in the air regarding the pivotal notion of internal representation. This challenge is explicit in, e.g., van Gelder, 1995; Beer, 1995; Thelen & Smith, 1994; Wheeler, 1994; and elsewhere. We think it is a challenge that can be met and that (importantly) can be met by arguing from within a general framework that accepts many of the basic premises of the work (in new robotics and in dynamical systems theory) that motivates such scepticism in the (...) first place. Our strategy will be as follows. We begin (Section 1) by offering an account (an example and something close to a definition) of what we shall term Minimal Robust Representationalism (MRR). Sections 2 & 3 address some likely worries and questions about this notion. We end (Section 4) by making explicit the conditions under which, on our account, a science (e.g., robot- ics) may claim to be addressing cognitive phenomena. (shrink)