Key concepts of the new cognitive sciences

1. Key concepts of the new cognitive sciences Diplomado Medicina y Complejidad Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Septiembre 2, 2015 Tom Froese IIMAS-UNAM

2. Overview • An introduction to the key concepts of enaction • The enactive challenge of higher-level cognition • Human cognition as second-order sense-making • Concluding remarks

3. Enactive Cognitive Science An Introduction to the Foundational Concepts

4. What precisely is ‘enaction’? • “A living organism enacts the world it lives in; its effective, embodied action in the world actually constitutes its perception and thereby grounds its cognition.” • Stewart, Gapenne, and Di Paolo (2010:vii) • Thompson (2007) • Weber & Varela (2002) • Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (1991) • …

5. Sensorimotor Approach • “We propose that seeing is a way of acting. It is a particular way of exploring the environment. • Activity in internal representations does not generate the experience of seeing. The outside world serves as its own, external, representation. • The experience of seeing occurs when the organism masters what we call the governing laws of sensorimotor contingency.” • O’Regan and Noë (2001: 939)

6. Embodied Robotics Approach • After building a series of autonomous mobile robots Brooks came to an “unexpected conclusion”: • “When we examine very simple level intelligence we find that explicit representations and models of the world simply get in the way. • It turns out to be better to use the world as its own model.” • Brooks (1991: 140)

7. Examples of Embodied Robotics “Genghis” (AI Lab, MIT) “Puppy” (AI Lab, University of Zurich)

8. Reform or Revolution? • “The trouble is that once we try to extend Brooks’ interesting and important message beyond the simplest of critters (artificial or biological), we can be quite sure that something awfully like representation is going to have to creep in like the tide, in large waves. • Will our Enactive Enlightenment lead us to say different sorts of things about these sorts of cognitive states, events and processes? Probably. • Very different—revolutionarily different? It is too soon to say, so we won’t know for awhile whether we need, or are in the midst of, a revolution in cognitive science.” • Dennett (1993: 125)

9. Dynamical Systems Approach “A dynamical perspective on a situated, embodied agent. The nervous system, body and environment of an agent are each conceptualized as dynamical systems that are in constant interaction. From this viewpoint, an agent’s behavior arises from this interaction between these subsystems and cannot properly be attributed to any one component in isolation from the others.” Beer (2003: 211)

10. Enactive Perception TVSS (Bach-y-Rita et al., 1969) Enactive Torch (Froese and Spiers, 2007)

11. Beyond Embodied Robotics • Current embodied robotics fails to satisfy the necessary conditions of enactive perception (Froese and Ziemke, 2009) • The notion of enaction involves a set of intertwined concepts: • Embodiment • Emergence • Autonomy • Sense-making • Experience • (Di Paolo, Rohde, and De Jaegher, 2010: 37)

12. Beyond Dynamical Systems • “In order to distinguish an emergent process from simply an aggregate of dynamical elements, two things must hold • (1) the emergent process must have its own autonomous identity, and • (2) the sustaining of this identity and the interaction between the emergent process and its context must lead to constraints and modulation to the operation of the underlying levels.” • Di Paolo, Rohde, and De Jaegher (2010: 40)

13. Beyond a Sensorimotor Account • “Autonomous agency goes even further than the recognition of sensorimotor couplings as dynamical and emphasizes the role of the agent in constructing, organizing, maintaining, and regulating those closed sensorimotor loops. • In doing so, the cognitive agent plays a role in determining the norms that it will follow, the ‘game’ that is being played.” • (Di Paolo, Rohde, and De Jaegher, 2010: 39)

14. Toward a New Framework Froese and Di Paolo (2011)

15. Autonomy Escher’s (1948) “Drawing Hands”

16. Autopoiesis Varela (1997: 75)

17. Intrinsic Teleology • Autopoiesis enables us to naturalize the concept of intrinsic purpose (Weber and Varela, 2002). Following Kant: • “In such a product of nature every part, as existing through all other parts, is also thought as existing for the sake of the others and that of the whole, i.e. as a tool (organ); … • an organ bringing forth the other parts (and hence everyone bringing forth one another)…; • and only then and because of this such a product as an organized and self-organizingbeing can be called a natural purpose.” • (Kant, KdU§ 65, 373, Kant’s emphasis)

18. Domain of Interactions Varela (1997: 74)

19. Adaptivity • Living requires more than the co-constitution of an identity and its context. • It requires the regulation of the interactions in order tomaintain that identity. • This is the idea of adaptivity (Di Paolo, 2005). • Adaptivity can be metabolic, interactive, cognitive, etc. Maturana and Varela (1987)

20. Existential Biology • “Our first observation is that Organisms are things whose existence is their own achievement. That means that they only exist because of what they are doing. Therefore the statement, that the existence of organisms is their own achievement simply means: their activity as such is their being.” • (Jonas 1992, p. 82). • “The fundamental point of departure is that life says “Yes!” to itself. In wishing itself to continueit declares itself as a value… May we thus say that mortality is the narrow door through which value – the thing addressed by “yes” entered the otherwise indifferent universe?” • (Jonas 1992, p. 87).

21. Autonomy + Adaptivity = Agency Robotics Agency Autonomy Di Paolo (2009: 15)

22. Sense-Making • “With respect to the environment, this means that the environment is never, for the living system, a neutral world awaiting to be internally represented and evaluated in order to become meaningful. • Rather, the world is directly encountered as meaningful by the concerned living system. • The world is always the living system’s own meaningful Umwelt.” • (Colombetti, 2010: 148)

23. Enactive Perception = Sense-Making Barandiaran, Di Paolo, and Rohde (2009)

24. Beyond Functionalism • Sense-making is an answer to the question: • Why does the world show up for us? • It is an explanation of consciousness (Noë) • Sense-making is a powerful concept: • What is the action of “action in perception”? • Why are we susceptible to inattentional blindness? • Why are the dynamics of sensorimotor loops insufficient? • Sense-making resists a functionalist appropriation because it depends on the co-constitution of an identity and its context. It depends on mortality.

25. Scaling Up Sense-Making • If embodied robotics had a scalability problem (Clark, 2003), what about the enactive approach? • Can the notion of sense-making be scaled up? • What about non-metabolic values? • What about abstract human cognition? • Dennett’s return of inner mental representations?? • Not necessarily! • Perhaps there are other ways of scaling up sense-making, e.g. by social interaction. • (Froese and Di Paolo, 2009)

26. A brief history of cognitive science Enactive Embodied / Embedded Connectionist Cognitivist Today 1990s 1980s 1970s computational dynamic - emergent embodied - embedded living - lived Froese (2010)

27. Stage 1: Cognitivism • Fodor (1975):Computational theory of mind • Wants to explain: human cognition • Paradigmatic example: psychology student under experimental conditions • Relevance to the human mind: • ??? (Von Neumann architecture)

28. Stage 2: Embodied cognitive science • Brooks (1991): Cambrian intelligence • Wants to explain: human cognition • Paradigmatic example: robots inspired by insect life (e.g. a cockroach) • Relevance to the human mind: • 350 million years ago

29. Stage 3: Enactive cognitive science • Varela (1997): Life = cognition • Wants to explain: human cognition • Paradigmatic example: single-cell organism in a nutrient gradient • Relevance to the human mind: • 3.5 billion years ago (!!)

30. How relevant is your theory? Enactive Embodied / Embedded Connectionist Cognitivist Today 1990s 1980s 1970s Today 350 m.y.a. 3.5 b.y.a. computational dynamic - emergent embodied - embedded living - lived

31. Today autopoiesis, tomorrow man? • Already Brooks’ approach had a ‘scaling up’ problem with his insect intelligence (e.g. Kirsh). • The life-mind continuity thesis holds that mind is prefigured in life and that mind belongs to life (e.g. Thompson). • How can the same explanatory framework that accounts for basic phenomena of living cells be extended to incorporate the highest reaches of human cognition? • The enactive approach must develop a systematic response to this‘cognitive gap’! (Froese and Di Paolo, 2009)

32. Development and Sociality • A human being can overcome the ‘cognitive gap’ between single-cell and psychology student in about 18 years. • This calls for an enactive developmental perspective. • An important area for future research! • Perhaps the scalability problem of embodied robotics only appeared insurmountable because of the prevalent focus on the individual agent alone? • The problem may be resolved by an appreciation of the constitutive role of sociality. Froese and Di Paolo (2009); De Jaegher & Froese (2009)

33. Individual Agency “The relationship between constitute autonomy and adaptive agency: the autonomous system self-constitutes an identity which is conserved during structural coupling with its environment (full arrows); adaptive agency requires additional regulation by the system which is aimed at adjusting this coupling relationship appropriately (dotted arrows).” (Froese and Di Paolo, 2011: 10)

34. Social Interaction “The relationship between two adaptive agents sharing the same environment: the manner in which one agent’s movements affect the environment can result in changes to sensory stimulation for the other agent, and vice versa, creating the basis for a multi-agent recursive interaction.” (Froese and Di Paolo, 2011: 11)

35. Interactional Mediation “It is possible that when two adaptive agents who share an environment begin to engage in mutual sensorimotor coupling, that their activities become entwined in an interaction process that is itself characterized by an autonomous organization.” (Froese and Di Paolo, 2011: 12)

36. Social Cognition: Decentralization • “The meaning of sense-making and adaptive behavior is strictly related to the viability range of the autonomous identity by which they are enacted. This limits the adaptive organism’s normativity to self-related values that are based on the individual’s metabolic requirements alone. • However, in order to make sense of another agent as another agent it is a necessary for there to be a capacity of sense-making based on non-metabolic other-related values: • the presence of the other agent must be perceivable as a foreign locus of goal-directed behavior, i.e., as another self with its own self-related values. • The necessary conditions for adaptive agency are by themselves not sufficient to accomplish such a decentralization of significance.” • (Froese and Di Paolo, 2011: 16-17)

37. Augmented Sense-Making • The decentralization required for social cognition may arise from autonomous bootstrapping in social interaction. • In the case of human development it may also arise from aspects of our socio-cultural context: • Language • Writing • Technology • Abstract human cognition is the ultimate form of decentralized, mediated sense-making. • But it is a secondary achievement! Froese, McGann, Bigge, Spiers, and Seth (i2012)

38. The Primacy of Sense-Making

39. An Example of Technological Mediation: Camera obscura

40. Problems of the Old Paradigm • Cognitivist perception takes abstract representation as its explanatory foundation. • It is true that enculturatedhuman beings are proficient at adopting a detached stance to abstract from their immediate experience. • However, to conceive abstract representation as the primary function of perception is misguided. • It misconstrues the perceptual worlds of human and non-human organisms, which are inherently meaningful and structured in relation to their sense-making.

41. Questions for the New Paradigm • Cognitivism thereby also insufficiently problematizes the abstraction abilities of human beings. • If all of life starts phylogenetically and ontogenetically with the sense-making of an Umwelt, where does the human ability of neutralizing the Umweltinto an abstract or objective medium come from? • Objects and symbols cannot be the starting point. • This is the enactive problem of human cognition: what is the basis of our capacity for meaning manipulation to constitute objects and symbols?

42. The enactive challenge of human cognition Two Illustrative Case Studies

43. Case 1: Thought Sequences • Thought sequences are trains of verbal-like expressions of thoughts that spontaneously pass through people’s minds. • One participant of Shanon’s (2010) study reported having had this thought sequence upon seeing a girl who was calling her agitated dog by the name of ‘‘Doni’’: • It is really frisky. • She should have called it ‘‘Shedoni’’ [in Hebrew, diminutive for devil]. • Or for short, ‘‘shed’’ [in Hebrew, devil]. • That has meaning in English too, ‘‘shed.’’ • What enabled the transition from thought 3 to 4?

44. Medium-Based Mediation • “Were thought conducted without a medium and governed only by considerations of content, one could think only of what one intends to, and would be confined to one’s already established repertory of knowledge and belief. • The articulation of thought in a specific medium and the introduction of aspects that are irrelevant from the perspective of content […] presents the possibility for the generation of novelty.” • (Shanon, 2010: 394–395) • This is the inverse of the classical concept of cognition!

45. Neutral Network Cognition • The main issue is that the world perceived by the organism is always ‘‘governed only by considerations of content’’, i.e., defined in terms of what is directly relevant from its own perspective. How to abstract the medium? • When starting in the context of a world of relevance, how is it possible for the organism also to consider those aspects that are patently irrelevant for it, given that by definition these do not appear as part of its perceptual world? • What the enactive approach to human cognition needs to explain, therefore, is how we are able to cast a neutral network onto our perceptual worlds, thereby giving us the ability to traverse the semantic space more freely.

46. Case 2: Embodied Metaphors • Nuñez (2010) shows that many conceptual metaphors are based on our biological embodiment, and that metaphors play a role in abstract cognition, including in mathematics. • Consider these exemplar linguistic expressions ‘‘The summer lies ahead of us’’ and ‘‘The big game is now behind us’’. • Taken literally, the expressions do not make any sense because ‘‘the summer’’ and ‘‘the game’’ do not refer to spatially localizable entities. • Taken metaphorically, we can use knowledge of our own spatial embodiment (a ‘‘source domain’’) and re-apply this knowledge to the non-spatial context of temporality (a ‘‘target domain’’).

47. Metaphorical Mediation • Nuñezargues that metaphors enable human thought to detach from its immediate situation: • “Human everyday language displays hundreds of thousands of these expressions, whose meaning is not literal—in any real physical sense—but metaphorical. • These expressions are linguistic manifestations of human everyday common sense and make human imagination possible by conveying precise meanings beyond physical reality.” • (Nuñez, 2010: 317)

48. Metaphorical Extension • Embodied metaphors are an unexpected finding from the perspective of orthodox cognitive science: • If cognition is computation, then cognition should be logically independent from the mind’s embodiment, especially in the case of highly abstract cognition such as mathematics. • However, the linguistic concept of metaphor also presents the enactive approach with a problem: • How can an organism that is directly locked into its own world of significance appreciate that some meaning is not to be taken literally?

49. The Case of Human Imagination • Whereas the results show that metaphors extend human imagination, Nuñezis not correct in asserting that they make human imagination possible in the first place. • Metaphors already require imagination to be in place before they can even be appreciated as such. • The bio-philosopher Jonas ([1966] 2001: 165–167), who considers the faculty of imagination to be a defining characteristic of the human mind, nicely illustrates this problem with the example of a scarecrow. • The birds who see it in the field presumably either perceive a threatening person or, if the deception fails, a convenient place on which to land and perch.

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