Philosophical interest in situated cognition has been focused most intensely on the claim that human cognitive processes extend from the brain into the tools humans use. As we see it, this radical hypothesis is sustained by two kinds of mistakes, confusing coupling relations with constitutive relations and an inattention to the mark of the cognitive. Here we wish to draw attention to these mistakes and show just how pervasive they are. That is, for all that the radical philosophers have said, the mind is still in the head.

Excerpt: This brief chapter will focus on two types of arguments for extended cognition inspired by Clark and Chalmers (1998). First, there has been the thought that cognition extends when processes in the brain, body, and world are suitably similar to processes taking place in the brain. We might describe these as cognitive equivalence arguments for extended cognition. Second, there has been the thought that, when there is the right kind of causal connection between a cognitive process and bodily and environmental processes, cognitive processes come to be realized by processes in the brain, body, and world. We might describe these as coupling arguments for extended cognition. What critics have found problematic are the kinds of similarity relations that have been taken to be applicable or suitable for concluding that there is extended cognition and the conditions that have been offered as providing the right kind of causal connection.

Upshot: The “Extended Mind Thesis” claims that cognitive processes are situated, embodied and goal-oriented actions that unfold in real world interactions with the immediate environment, cultural tools and other persons. The body and the “outside” world, undoubtedly, have a crucial influence, driving human beings’ cognitive processes. In his book, Andy Clark goes slightly further by claiming that the mind is often extended into the body and the world.

Whilst the usefulness of the computational metaphor in many areas of psychology and neuroscience is clear, it has not gone unchallenged and in this article I will review a group of philosophical arguments that suggest either such unequivocal optimism in computationalism is misplaced – computation is neither necessary nor sufficient for cognition – or panpsychism (the belief that the physical universe is fundamentally composed of elements each of which is conscious) is true. I conclude by highlighting an alternative metaphor for cognitive processes based on communication and interaction. Relevance: This paper argues against computational accounts of mind and cognition, discussing Searle, Bishop and Penrose and suggesting a new metaphor for cognition based on interactions and communication. The new metaphor is sympathetic to modern post-symbolic, anti-representationalist, embodied, enactive accounts of cognition.

One of the most popular tacks taken to explain cognitive processes likens them to the operations of a digital computer. Indeed, the tasks for the cognitive scientist and the artificial intelligence scientist are often seen as indistinguishable: to understand how a machine or a brain “can store past information about the world and use that memory to abstract meaning from its percepts” (Solso, 1979, p. 425). The fact that there are machines that appear to do this, to varying degrees of success, is often taken to imply, almost by default, that cognition would have to embody the same steps in order to achieve the same results. In what folIows, we outline our objections to this attitude and briefly consider some alternatives.

Embodied Cognition represents the most important news in cognitive psychology in the last twenty years. The basis of its research program is the idea that cognitive processes depend, mirror, and are influenced by bodily control systems. A whole class of novel perspectives entered into the psychologists’ agenda only after the emergence and success of EC. In the paper we will deal with some of the main topics debated within EC, from the discussion on the role of representation, to the relationship with enactivism, with functionalism and with the extended mind view. Against an interpretation according to which EC is simply an evolution of the classical cognitivist program, we will focus on the aspects that highlight crucial discontinuities with it, suggesting instead that the EC perspective is indebted to previous theoretical traditions such as American pragmatism, ecological psychology and phenomenology. In the present paper we will discuss some of the most important achievements of EC in different areas of experimental research, from the study of affordances to that of the bodily experience, from the investigation on emotions to that on language. Our aim is to force the Italian public, particularly recalcitrant to EC, to critically reflect on the debts to previous traditions. Relevance: The paper reviews embodied theories with a special focus on enactivist approaches.

This article focuses on a scientific approach to the study of cognition that Warren McCulloch introduced in the era of cybernetics as “experimental epistemology.” In line with recent attempts to highlight its contribution to cognitive science and AI, our article intends to draw attention to its unexplored influence on contemporary embodied approaches to the investigation of mind and consciousness. To this end, we will survey a series of models of cognitive systems genealogically related to the McCulloch-Pitts networks-based modeling approach, i.e., von Foerster’s model of the biological computer, the Maturana-Varela model of the autopoietic system, and Varela’s model of emergent selves. Based on examination of the relevant aspects of these models, we will argue that they offered the McCulloch-Pitts “cybernetic of networks” a coherent methodological and theoretical line of development, complementary to the well-known computationalist one. As we will show, this alternative evolutionary line empowered the biological orientation of McCulloch’s experimental epistemology, laying foundations for contemporary “radically embodied” approaches to mind and consciousness – in particular the Thompson-Varela approach. We will identify the heritage of this tradition of inquiry for future research in cognitive science and AI by proposing guidelines that synthetize how its methodological and theoretical insights suggest taking into account the role(s) played by the biological body in cognitive processes – consciousness included.

Key words: autonomy, autopoiesis, constructivism, cybernetics of networks, (radical) embodiment, enaction, experimental epistemology, synthetic modeling

This review article argues that “situated cognition” is a manifestation of a broadly shared perspective on the nature of causality in complex systems. Crosscutting disciplinary themes reveal that human cognitive processes are inherently social, interactive, personal, biological, and neurological, which is to say that a variety of systems develop and depend on one another in complex ways. The concepts, perspectives, and theoretical frameworks that influenced the situated cognition of the 1980s are still alive in potential for thoughtful reconsideration in tomorrow’s cognitive research.

This brief commentary has three goals. The first is to argue that “framework debate” in cognitive science is unresolvable. The idea that one theory or framework can singly account for the vast complexity and variety of cognitive processes seems unlikely if not impossible. The second goal is a consequence of this: We should consider how the various theories on offer work together in diverse contexts of investigation. A final goal is to supply a brief review for readers who are compelled by these points to explore existing literature on the topic. Despite this literature, pluralism has garnered very little attention from broader cognitive science. We end by briefly considering what it might mean for theoretical cognitive science.

Can the sciences of the artificial positively contribute to the scientific exploration of life and cognition? Can they actually improve the scientific knowledge of natural living and cognitive processes, from biological metabolism to reproduction, from conceptual mapping of the environment to logic reasoning, language, or even emotional expression? To these kinds of questions our article aims to answer in the affirmative. Its main object is the scientific emergent methodology often called the “synthetic approach,” which promotes the programmatic production of embodied and situated models of living and cognitive systems in order to explore aspects of life and cognition not accessible in natural systems and scenarios. The first part of this article presents and discusses the synthetic approach, and proposes an epistemological framework which promises to warrant genuine transmission of knowledge from the sciences of the artificial to the sciences of the natural. The second part of this article looks at the research applying the synthetic approach to the psychological study of emotional development. It shows how robotics, through the synthetic methodology, can develop a particular perspective on emotions, coherent with current psychological theories of emotional development and fitting well with the recent “cognitive extension” approach proposed by cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind.