I, and it seems a lot of philosophers do as well, have a great deal of trouble with getting a handle on what Cognition is. René Descartes states that the mind is ultimately the bit that thinks about thinking, his oft quoted “I think therefore I am” is a case in point. I also think that to have cognition one must also have intentionality, in that something must drive or exist in the conscious that supports the thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes. This is what is missing from the aids to thought or mental states which is extended cognition.
The central tenets of extended cognition are that cognition extends out of the mind and body. This is taking cognition beyond just embodied cognition where the body also plays a part in cognition. Philosophers …show more content…
This fascination is due to computer systems becoming more integrated with our lives. Technological society is coming to the point where personal information assistance is becoming more and more evident.
But to argue the extended is part of cognition one must show that cognition is at least partly constituted in the extended. I will look at some of the articles dealing with this subject and show that what is presented in of itself has no intentionality. The trait of all living things is that they have some form of intentionality in their consciousness whether it be just intentionality of survival or intentionality of reproduction. External objects regardless of how long you wait, do not have this trait.
I will show that although I believe that consciousness exists only in our mental states, there has been much mental processing we have offloaded to external states, and discuss whether software agents are blurring the location of …show more content…
There are many things he sees that although casual are not constitutional. His example is the difference between beating the cake mixture compared to baking it. Both are casual but having a cake at the end requires baking as a constituent but not beating the mixture would end up with cake, perhaps lumpier. Also some facts like historical events may be casual (his example of the assignation of Archduke Ferdinand) compared to constitutional part of WW1 (the Austro-Hungarian army). He argues that it is the constituents of cognition that is the mental cognitive processing. So the pen and paper in the previous example are not constitutional parts of cognition, just a possible casual or an aid.
Clark responds with pen and paper we formulate more than what we can do with just our brains. Writing essays, ordering thoughts and handling abstract reasoning. From a folk philosophy view point this seems reasonable as for example I can’t even do the Sudoku without scribbling down the possible numbers. That it is not the paper doing the conscious thought is shown in Adams and Aizawa joke (paraphrased) “the pencil thinks it knows maths because it is coupled to a mathematician” which shows the
The central tenets of extended cognition are that cognition extends out of the mind and body. This is taking cognition beyond just embodied cognition where the body also plays a part in cognition. Philosophers …show more content…
This fascination is due to computer systems becoming more integrated with our lives. Technological society is coming to the point where personal information assistance is becoming more and more evident.
But to argue the extended is part of cognition one must show that cognition is at least partly constituted in the extended. I will look at some of the articles dealing with this subject and show that what is presented in of itself has no intentionality. The trait of all living things is that they have some form of intentionality in their consciousness whether it be just intentionality of survival or intentionality of reproduction. External objects regardless of how long you wait, do not have this trait.
I will show that although I believe that consciousness exists only in our mental states, there has been much mental processing we have offloaded to external states, and discuss whether software agents are blurring the location of …show more content…
There are many things he sees that although casual are not constitutional. His example is the difference between beating the cake mixture compared to baking it. Both are casual but having a cake at the end requires baking as a constituent but not beating the mixture would end up with cake, perhaps lumpier. Also some facts like historical events may be casual (his example of the assignation of Archduke Ferdinand) compared to constitutional part of WW1 (the Austro-Hungarian army). He argues that it is the constituents of cognition that is the mental cognitive processing. So the pen and paper in the previous example are not constitutional parts of cognition, just a possible casual or an aid.
Clark responds with pen and paper we formulate more than what we can do with just our brains. Writing essays, ordering thoughts and handling abstract reasoning. From a folk philosophy view point this seems reasonable as for example I can’t even do the Sudoku without scribbling down the possible numbers. That it is not the paper doing the conscious thought is shown in Adams and Aizawa joke (paraphrased) “the pencil thinks it knows maths because it is coupled to a mathematician” which shows the