Exploring the Undermind
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Rob Rupert (Colorado), Morning Talk: “Individuals as Group Minds, Groups of Minds as Individuals: What Can a Model-based Theory of Natural Kinds Tell Us about Group Cognition?”
In this talk, I address the question, “What is required for a group of individual humans to be the collective subject of a single cognitive state?” The talk consists of three primary sections. First, I argue in favor of a systems-based view of cognition, that the boundary between the relatively persisting and integrated architecture and what lies beyond that system offers the most plausible grounds for the distinction between what is genuinely cognitive and what is not. Second, I argue that we’re justified in thinking that two processes (and thus their component states) that appear dissimilar are of the same natural kind if and only if successful models of the two processes exhibit the right sort of structural similarity. These two conclusions introduce both a possibility (viz. that groups with decentralized control systems are not thereby disqualified as subjects of cognitive states) and a daunting challenge (because models of actual-world group processes don’t exhibit a high enough degree of similarity to models of cognition in humans). In the third portion of the talk, I argue that this tension might be resolved – the possibility realized and the challenge defeated – but only if we can identify models of the right sort, which I explore briefly.
Rob Rupert (Colorado) Afternoon talk: “The Meta-Extended Mind: Environmental Control and the Organism-based Continuity of the Self”
If the bodily criterion of personal identity were paramount, ridiculous results would seem to follow. One could be Socrates by day and Plato by night, psychologically speaking, yet still be the same person (as Locke suggests), simply in virtue of being the same organism over time. In this talk, I argue to the contrary, that the only reasonable response to the frequent, significant (but nonclinical) differences in cognitive profiles attached to the same organism is to endorse a bodily criterion of personal identity over time. I argue as follows: (1) that the central theoretical construct of cognitive science is the cognitive system, (2) that the cognitive system is the best cognitive-science approved candidate for a psychological self, (3) that cognitive systems are best characterized in broadly functionalist terms, (4) that partly as a result of our interaction with the environment, our bodies house many different cognitive systems – and thus many different psychological selves – at different times, and thus (5) that unless we accept a bodily criterion for personal identity, we are faced with an unacceptable proliferation of selves.
Julian Kiverstein (Amsterdam): "Is grip the new (action-oriented) representation?"
In recent work we have been arguing that predictive processing in the brain is best understood as taking place within a larger agent-environment system (Bruineberg, Kiverstein and Rietveld forthcoming; Bruineberg and Rietveld 2014). We've suggested that prediction-error might be thought of as a measure of the disattunement between internal dynamics (on the side of the agent) and external dynamics (in the environment). The process of prediction-error minimisation so-understood takes place within an agent-environment system as a whole with the aim of improving the "grip" of the agent on its environment. Must this process of prediction-error minimisation be described in representational terms? One might think so based on the role of generative models that carry information about long-term stable regularities in the environment. Prediction-error is computed relative to such long-term models of the environment, which look to have the status of representations if anything does. In this talk I will attempt to defend a non-representational interpretation of grip. This will require offering an alternative theory of how generative models work in dynamical, ecological terms.
Carrie Figdor (Iowa): "The Fallacy of the Homuncular Fallacy"
Homuncular functionalism is a leading philosophical framework for naturalistic psychological explanation. It shares commitment to a decompositional style of explanation with recent articulations of mechanistic explanation, but is distinguishable from the latter due to its restrictions on permissible explanantia: subpersonal parts cannot perform the same functions as the personal wholes of which they are part. This restriction is motivated by the homuncular fallacy, according to which an explanation of intelligence that posits intelligent components is no explanation at all. I argue that the homuncular fallacy is not a fallacy: there is no epistemic justification for the restrictions, and the need to “discharge” homunculi is an artifact of the homunculus metaphor.