Scaffolded Minds And The Evolution Of Content In Signaling Pathways

• Authors: Tomasz Korbak
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Hutto and Myin (2013) famously argue that basic minds are not contentful and content exists only as far as it is scaffolded with social and linguistic practices. This view, however, rests on a troublesome distinction between basic and scaffolded minds. Since Hutto and Myin have to account for language purely in terms of joint action guidance, there is no reason why simpler communication systems, such as cellular signaling pathways, should not give rise to scaffolded content as well. This conclusion remains valid even if one rejects the view of language as mediated through public symbols and embraces global antirepresentationalism. Content evolves spontaneously in complex regulatory systems, such as human, animal, and cellular communication.

Keywords

EN

philosophy of cognitive science; content; Hutto and Myin; Hard Problem of Content; representation; cell signaling; the distributed view of language

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 41
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 89-103

Dates

published

2015-06-01

online

2015-07-24

Contributors

author

Tomasz Korbak

• University of Warsaw, Poland

References

• Alksnis, N., (forthcoming). A review and reply to Radicalizing Enactivism: How scaffolding fails to solve the hard problem of content. Retrieved from:
• Barandiaran, X. E., & Egbert, M. D. (2013). Norm-establishing and norm-following in autonomous agency. Artificial Life, 1–33. doi:10.1162/ARTL_a_00094[Crossref][WoS]
• Bickhard, M. H. (2009). The interactivist model. Synthese, 166(3), 547–591. doi:10.1007/s11229-008-9375-x[WoS][Crossref]
• Block, N. i Kitcher, P. (2010). Misunderstanding Darwin: Natural selection’s secular critics get it wrong. Boston Review (March-April).
• Brooks, R. A. (1991). Intelligence without representation. Artificial Intelligence, 47, 139–159. doi:10.1016/0004-3702(91)90053-M[Crossref]
• Chemero, A. (2000). Anti-representationalism and the dynamical stance. Philosophy of Science, 67(4), 625–647. doi:10.1086/392858[Crossref]
• Chemero, A. (2011). Radical embodied cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Clark, A., & Toribio, J. (1994). Doing without representing? Synthese, 101(3), 401–431.[Crossref]
• Cowley, S. J. (2011). Distributed language. In S. J. Cowley (Ed.), Distributed language (pp. 1–14). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Cuffari, E. C., Di Paolo, E., & De Jaegher, H. (2014). From participatory sense-making to language: there and back again. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. doi:10.1007/s11097-014-9404-9[Crossref]
• Fodor, J. (2008). Against Darwinism. Mind Language, 23(1), 1–24. doi:10.1111/j.14 68-0017.2007.00324.x[Crossref][WoS]
• Davidson, D. (1967). Truth and meaning. Synthese, 17, 304–23.[Crossref]
• De Jaegher, H., & Di Paolo, E. (2007). Participatory sense-making: An enactive approach to social cognition. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 6(4), 485–507. doi:10.1007/s11097-007-9076-9[Crossref]
• Dretske, F. (1981). Knowledge and the flow of information. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
• Gauker, C. (2011). Words and images: An essay on the origins of ideas. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Grice, H. P. (1957). Meaning. Philosophical Review, 66, 377–388.[Crossref]
• Hockett, Ch. F. (1960). The origin of speech. Scientific American, 203, 89–97.
• Harvey, M. I. (2015). Content in languaging: why radical enactivism is incompatible with representational theories of language. Language Sciences, 48, 90–129. doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2014.12.004[Crossref][WoS]
• Hutto, D., & Myin, E. (2013). Radicalizing enactivism: Basic minds without content. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
• Hutto, D. (2008). Folk psychological narratives: the socio-cultural basis of understanding reasons. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press
• Korbak, T. (2015). Radykalny enaktywizm a konserwatywna kognitywistyka. Analiza i Egzystencja, 29, 123–133.
• Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Maturana, H. R. (1978). Biology of language: the epistemology of reality. In G. A. Miller & L. Elizabeth (Eds.), Psychology and biology of language and thought: Essays in honor of Eric Lenneberg (pp. 27–63). New York, NY: Academic Press.
• Millikan, R. G. (1989). Biosemantics. Journal of Philosophy, 86(6), 281–297. doi: 10.2307/2027123[Crossref]
• Milkowski, M. (2015). Satisfaction conditions in anticipatory mechanisms. Biology & Philosophy, (February). doi:10.1007/s10539-015-9481-3[Crossref]
• O’Regan, J. K., & Noë, A. (2001). A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(5), 939–973 [discussion 973–1031].
• Pattee, H. (1969). How does a molecule become a message? Developmental Biology Supplement, 3, 1–16.
• Pattee, H. (1985). Universal principles of measurement and language functions in evolving systems. In J. Casti & A. Karlqvist (Eds.), Complexity of language and life: Mathematical approaches (pp. 268–281). Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
• Rączaszek-Leonardi, J. (2012). Language as a system of replicable constraints. In H. H. Pattee & J. Raczaszek-Leonardi, Laws, Language and Life: Howard Pattee’s classic papers on the physics of symbols (pp. 295–333). Dordrecht: Springer.
• Skyrms, B. (2011). Signals: Evolution, learning, and information. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Solomon, E. P., Martin, D. W., Martin, C., & Berg, L. R. (2014). Biology (10th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
• Thelen, E., Schöner, G., Scheier, C., & Smith, L. B. (2001). The dynamics of embodiment: A field theory of infant perseverative reaching. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(1), 1–34 [discussion 34–86]. doi:10.1017/S0140525X01003910[Crossref]
• Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in life: Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Thompson, E., & Stapleton, M. (2009). Making sense of sense-making: Reflections on enactive and extended mind theories. Topoi, 28(1), 23–30. doi:10.1007/s11245-008-9043-2[WoS][Crossref]
• Weber, A., & Varela, F. J. (2002). Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1, 97–125.
• Williams, M. (2010). Blind obedience: The structure and content of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. London: Routledge.

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/slgr-2015-0022