20.11 WORKSHOP ON EXTERNALISM AND INTERNALISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

Forum for the theory of science (Vitforum) in conjunction with Philosophy Department's project 'Mind in a material culture':

Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Dragvoll campus, Tuesday November 20th 2007, Auditorium D152 (Nybygget), 0915-1700

The traditional mind-body problem in philosophy has been viewed as how the brain, a purely physical organ, can give rise to conscious, meaningful thought in humans and possibly other animals. In recent years philosophers have questioned whether it is right to think of the mind as first and foremost a product of the brain – as completely ’in the head’, as it is often put. This question first came to the fore in relation to referential or semantic properties of mental states. Most recently it has concerned the location of cognitive and mental states themselves, giving rise to views variously known as vehicle externalism, active externalism and the extended mind thesis. These ideas promise to cast new light on the age old problems of philosophy of mind and open up new avenues of enquiry for cognitive science – but they are also controversial. This seminar seeks to explore the debate between so-called internalists and externalists on the nature of mental states and mentally endowed organisms.

Programme:
0915-1045 Ken Aizawa (Centenary College of Louisiana): Three Challenges for Extended Cognition
1045-1115 Coffee
1115-1215 Asle H. Kiran (NTNU): The Constitution of the Mind
1215-1315 Lunch (in the 'Rød kantina')
1315-1445 Mark Sprevak (Cambridge University): Vehicle Externalism and Functionalism
1445-1500 Coffee
1500-1600 Ronny Myhre (NTNU): Development and the Epigenesis of Form
1600-1700 Jonathan Knowles (NTNU): Vehicle externalism: Some deflationary remarks

The seminar is open to all interested. Registration for coffee and lunch (free of charge) by Sunday 18th November to Jonathan.Knowles@hf.ntnu.no.


Abstracts of the talks

Ken Aizawa: Three Challenges for Extended Cognition
The hypothesis of extended cognition is a radical view of the locus of cognition. It maintains that cognitive processes sometimes extend beyond the boundaries of the brain into an organism’s body and environment. In other words, it maintains that cognitive processes are sometimes constituted or realized by processes in the brain, body, and environment. This hypothesis, however, faces three principal challenges. First, it is commonly believed that the mind causally interacts with the body and environment. Multiple assertions in the extended cognition literature notwithstanding, however, this fact, by itself, does not suffice to show that the mind is constituted, even in part, by the body and environment. The mind may causally depend on the body and environment, but it does not thereby come to constitutively depend on the body and environment. Second, if one is to maintain that cognitive processes extend into the body and environment, one needs at least a plausible sketch of what distinguishes cognitive processes from non-cognitive processes. One does not find such a sketch in the extended cognition literature. Third, the hypothesis that cognitive processes extend into the body and environment needs to be distinguished from the hypothesis that cognitive systems extend into the body and environment. The former appears to impose more stringent demands than the latter, insofar as a given type of process need not pervade the whole of a system. For example, computing process need not be found in the whole of a computing system. So, one can have an extended cognitive system without extended cognitive processes.

Asle H. Kiran: The Constitution of Mind
In “The Extended Mind” Clark and Chalmers claim that humans have a general tendency to “lean heavily on environmental supports.” They proceed to investigate what this implies for the concepts of cognition and mind, famously arriving at the notion of active externalism. Their examples in this regard suggest that the technologies involved, pen, paper, computer, pocket calculator and so on, are transparent – that is, utilised for a pre-determined purpose; their function in cognition. In this sense, a piece of technology as described by Clark and Chalmers is constituted by a person’s intentions in the cognitive action. On this view, we could say, the meaning of the technology is projected from the user-end. My claim is that this is an untenable perception of technology, and in two ways. First of all, it is mistaken, and secondly, active externalism gets confined to a subjectivism that is at odds with the externalism the authors attempt to formulate: The mind remains described as autonomously constituted, in isolation from the lifeworld (in general) and technology (in particular). In my paper I will argue that active externalism will gain from a more satisfying concept of technology, and that this entails to perceive a cognitive action as co-constituted by the affordances of the technological items involved in the action. In fact, it is precisely because this is the case that we are able to rely on external items in our cognitive actions. Further, I will argue, on closer analysis this reveals that the mind is extended, not merely because we are able to “stretch” out into the environment (which is a secondary function), but because the mind itself, through the human tendency to “lean heavily on environmental support,” is co-constituted by the lifeworld and lifeworld technologies.

Mark Sprevak: Vehicle externalism and functionalism
Adams & Aizawa (2001) and Rupert (2004) criticise Clark & Chalmers (1998)'s hypothesis of mind (HEM). I argue for two claims: (1) HEM is a harder target than those critics have supposed; HEM is entailed by functionalism, a commonly held view in philosophy of mind. (2) The version of HEM entailed by functionalism is more radical than the version that Clark and Chalmers suggest. The version is so radical as to form a counterexample to functionalism. The conclusion of the paper is against both HEM and functionalism.

Ronny Myhre: Development and the Epigenesis of Form
It seems that commitment to local supervenience – the doctrine that systems supervene on the intrinsic properties of its fundamental parts – is prevalent in the philosophy of the behavioural and cognitive sciences. This paper addresses the metaphysical underpinnings of two contemporary research programs in developmental systems biology which exhibits failure of local supervenience. Moreover, the failure of local supervenience in physics puts additional pressure on the whole-part eliminativism that perhaps fuels the dominant internalist framework in the behavioural and cognitive sciences.

Jonathan Knowles: Vehicle externalism: Some deflationary remarks
In this paper I develop two lines of thought that seek to undermine the significance of the recent internalism/externalism debate in relation to vehicles of content. Firstly, I stress that though vehicle externalism, in rejecting the identification of mental states with brain states, is typically viewed as opposing a Cartesian view of the mind as something wholly ’interior’, a more straightforward and common sensical replacement for Cartesianism is the idea that talk of the location of mental states – here, there or anywhere in particular – is simply misconceived. A study of things in space and time could only amount to an account of the physical implementation or underpinnings of the mind, but it is very hard to conceive of any meaningful such study being of anything other than the brain (albeit in context). Secondly I argue, in light of the gulf between our conception of the mind and its physical implementation, that even if we might hold out hope for a more substantive cognitive science based on functionalist view of mental states, we are in our full right to beg the question against externalism – to assume that external factors are explanatory irrelevant to this project – so long as the latter seems to offer little promise of solving any of the age old problems of philosophy of mind – something which I argue, contrary to some recent suggestions, is the case.