Pragmatism and Embodied Cognitive Science: From Bodily Intersubjectivity to Symbolic Articulation

313 Pages·2016·16.75 MB·English

by  Roman Madzia

Pragmatism and Embodied Cognitive Science
HUMANPROJEKT
Interdisziplinäre Anthropologie
Im Auftrag der Berlin-Brandenburgischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften
herausgegeben von Detlev Ganten, Volker Gerhardt,
Jan-Christoph Heilinger und Julian Nida-Rümelin
Band 14
Pragmatism
and Embodied
Cognitive Science
From Bodily Intersubjectivity to Symbolic Articulation
Edited by
Roman Madzia and Matthias Jung
ISBN 978-3-11-047889-1
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-048023-8
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-047893-8
ISSN 1868-8144
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A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
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Contents
Roman Madzia and Matthias Jung
Introduction: What a Pragmatist Cognitive Science Is and What It Should
Be 1
Part I: Pragmatism as a Philosophical Foundation
of Cognitive Science
Shaun Gallagher
Pragmatic Interventions into Enactive and Extended Conceptions of
Cognition 17
Joshua A. Skorburg
Pragmatism, Embodiment, and Extension 35
Anthony Chemero and Stephan Käufer
Pragmatism, Phenomenology, and Extended Cognition 57
Pierre Steiner
Embodied Cognitive Science, Pragmatism, and the Fate of Mental
Representation 73
Part II: Embedding Embodied Cognitive Science: A Larger
Picture
Mark Johnson
Pragmatism, Cognitive Science, and Embodied Mind 101
Erkki Kilpinen
Why It’s Better Be Pragmatism: Assembling Some Philosophical Foundations
for Future Cognitive Science 127
Tibor Solymosi
Recovering Philosophy from Cognitive Science 145
VI Contents
Teed Rockwell
The Embodied “We”: The Extended Mind as Cognitive Sociology 167
Guido Baggio
Sympathy and Empathy: G. H. Mead and the Pragmatist Basis of
(Neuro)economics 185
Part III: The Pragmatists as Pioneers of Situated Cognition:
Embodied Language, Reasoning, and Feeling
Roman Madzia
Mind, Symbol and Action-Prediction: George H. Mead and the Embodied
Roots of Language 213
Matthew Crippen
Dewey, Enactivism, and Greek Thought 233
Tullio Viola
Peirce on Abduction and Embodiment 251
Rebekka Hufendiek
William James and John Dewey on Embodied Action-Oriented
Emotions 269
Ling Zhu
Feeling as the Force Dynamics of Thought. The Role of Feeling in the
Jamesian Stream of Thought 289
Index of persons 301
Index of subjects 303
Roman Madzia and Matthias Jung
Introduction: What a Pragmatist Cognitive
Science Is and What It Should Be
1 The paradigm shift to embodied cognition
Overthelasttwodecades,cognitivesciences,aswellashumansciencesingen-
eral, have witnessed a considerable paradigm shift with regardtotheir outlook
onthenatureofthehuman mind,cognition,perception andaction.Traditional
cognitive sciences have,without adequate critical examination, inherited their
conceptual frameworkand theoretical outlook onwhatcognition is from repre-
sentatives of the early modern philosophical tradition such as René Descartes,
John Locke and/or David Hume.Within the early modern framework,the mind
was understood as a peculiar sort of an object that could be characterized by
specific properties. From the Cartesian perspective, the mind was perceived as
an organ for thinking (Rowlands 2003). In a similar manner as the stomach di-
gestsandeyessee,accordingtoearlyModernthinkers—“themindthinks”.With-
in that philosophical perspective,the mind,beinga specific kind of organ,was
allegedly contained in the brain (internalism). Unlike other bodily organs that
are situated entirely in the physical world and are, hence, governed by purely
mechanicalprinciples,themindwastakentobegovernedprimarilybytheprin-
ciples of reason (intellectualism).
In avery similar manner to the early Modern outlook on the mind as a ca-
pacitygoverned by the principles of reason,the so-called “first-generation cog-
nitivescience”(cognitivismandcomputationalism[seeLakoff&Johnson1999])
understandsthehumanmindassomesortofanabstractprogramofthebrain,
governedbytherulesofformallogic.Withinsuchaconceptualframework,cog-
nitionisviewedexclusivelyasaprocessofcomputationoverformalsymbols(in
the early Modern rendition—assembling and re-assembling of ideas), taking
placeinourheads.Hence,seenfromtheperspectiveofthefirst-generationcog-
nitive science (but also first-generation artificial intelligence and robotics), the
human mind and cognition are:
1. Disembodied—thestructureofthebody,itssensorimotorcapacitiesandbod-
ily skills add nothing to the nature of the processes in question.
2. Formal—cognitive processes are instantiations of formal sets of rules (pro-
grams).Mentalrepresentationsare,inthemselves,meaninglessformalsym-
bols that acquirecontenteither a)on thebasisoftheir mutual relations,or
b) by virtue of representing somethingoutside the formal system.
2 RomanMadziaandMatthiasJung
3. Internal—cognition is something that happens in our brains by means of
representing the external environmental objects and events. Hence,
humanbeingsare,inprinciple,cutofffromtheworld—theycanonlybeac-
quainted with its “copy” but can never achieve a direct contact with that
world as such.
Since its formation as a discipline that aims for a naturalistic account of the
mental, cognitive science has been dominated by a view of cognition as repre-
sentedin1–3.Thisclassicalparadigmhasbeenpartlyfruitfulandhasstimulat-
ed important research in the earlydecades of cognitive science. However, start-
ing two decades ago, significant criticisms have been raised with regard to
variousinsufficienciesofthefirst-generationcognitivescienceinprovidingavia-
ble and empirically responsible account of the nature of cognition, mentality
and human experience in general (e.g.Varela et al. 1991; Dreyfus 1992; Clark
1997; Lakoff & Johnson 1999, etc.). As an alternative,the so-called “embodied”
(Lakoff & Johnson), “embedded” (Rupert), “enactive” (Varela), “extended”
(Clark) approaches to cognition were introduced. Although these approaches
sometimesdifferfromoneanotherquitesignificantly,theircommondenomina-
tor is the belief that cognition is not to be understood as a formal capacity for
derivingworld-modelsbutrather,ithasbeenemphasizedthatcognitiveprocess-
es aresocloselyintertwinedwith actionthat they wouldbebest understoodas
the exercise of skillful bodily know-howof organisms engagingwith their envi-
ronments. According to the proponents of “4EA” (embodied,extended,embed-
ded, enactive, affective) approach, cognition is not a process of creating repre-
sentational models of the world, but rather models bodily interaction with the
world. In the 4EA approach, the mind is not a disembodied and self-sufficient
computingdevicebutisunderstoodasaneverfullyformalizablesetofpractical
skills (strategies) by means of which physicallyembodied and environmentally
embedded agents negotiate their worlds.The criterion for the success of cogni-
tive operations is not to recover pre-existing features or to construct averidical
representationoftheenvironment—astheclassical,first-generationcognitivesci-
encewouldhavehadit.Accordingto4EA,cognitionisnotaprocessthatunfolds
exclusively in our heads.The cognitive feedback loops between organisms and
their environments are so dense and continuous that, for scientists studying
the nature of cognitive activity, the isolated brain is not a meaningful unit of
analysis. Cognition, as more and more cognitive scientists are ready to admit,
takesplaceontheentirebrain-body-worldchainwithoutthepossibilitytoindi-
catewhichoneoftheseelementsconstitutesitssubstance.AsAndreasK.Engel
etal.(2013)writeintheirrecentarticle“Where’stheaction?Thepragmaticturn
incognitivescience”:“Cognitionisaformofpractice”.Thefunctionofthemind
Introduction:WhataPragmatistCognitiveScienceIsandWhatItShouldBe 3
is to guide action, and cognitive mechanisms such as perception and memory
mustbeunderstoodintermsoftheirultimatecontributiontosituation-appropri-
atebehavior(Wilson2002).Situation-appropriateness,however,wouldbemisun-
derstood if taken to refer only to the immediate physical surrounding of the
humanorganism.Humanbeingsdeveloplong-termplans,engageinvariousac-
tivitiesdecoupledfromimmediateresponsetosituations(cognitivescienceitself
beingacompellingexample),andtendtoframetheircopingbehaviorbydevel-
oping and adhering to comprehensive world views. The ultimate situation in
which the embodied mind shapes action is thus nothing less than the conditio
humana in general.This is one important reason, amongothers,why American
pragmatismoughttoenterthepicturesketchedsofar.Pragmatism,keenlyaware
ofthefactthatcognitionisfor action,butactiontranscendsspecificsituations,
is embedded in a culture and ultimately refers to the place of human beings in
theworld,isapotentantidoteagainstatoonarrowidentificationofactionwith
situated coping.
2 Pragmatism as the philosophical foundation of
embodied cognition
Many contemporary representatives of the “4EA” develop their theories mostly
byelaboratingonworksbyphenomenologistslikeMauriceMerleau-Ponty(Gal-
lagher2005;Dreyfus1979;1991;2005;2013;Noë2004;2009;2012)and/orMartin
Heidegger (Wheeler 2005). Although phenomenology and even hermeneutics
(Kurthen 1994) have been highly inspiringas a conceptual sourcein the debate
onembodimentbothinphilosophyandcognitivescience,itsAmericancounter-
part,thetraditionofAmericanpragmatism(forwhichthenotionofcognitionas
an ongoingorganism-environment coupling was the founding idea),by far still
has not received the attention it undoubtedlydeserves. Although especially the
viewsonconsciousnessbyJohnDeweyhavesignificantlyenteredthedebatein
the work of certain authors (Johnson 2007; Rockwell 2005; Solymosi 2011), the
importantvoicesofotherpragmatistphilosophers,suchasGeorgeH.Mead,Wil-
liamJames,andCharlesS.Peirce,haveyettobeheard.Theeditorshopethatthis
volume,largelytheoutcomeofaconferenceonthetopicattheUniversityofKo-
blenz-Landauin 2015,willhelp to changethis unsatisfyingsituation. Morespe-
cifically, our wish is to encourage discussions not only about the appropriate
philosophical foundations of cognitive science, but also about the ‘greater pic-
ture’, the relation of science to the pressing questions of social life and
human self-understanding. Antidualism, as the pragmatists saw it, not only