Cognition Wars

On Monday 7 April 2014, Professor Fred Adams (Department of Philosophy, University of Delaware), Dr David Kaplan (Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University), and Dr Karola Stotz (Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University) will present three papers at a workshop entitled '*Cognition Wars*'. The workshop will take place at the Department of Cognitive Science [ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (CCD)], Macquarie University. Professor Fred Adams (http://udel.edu/~fa/); Dr. David Kaplan (http://www.ccd.edu.au/people/profile.php?memberID=1066) and Dr. Karola Stotz (http://paul.representinggenes.org/Stotz/) are prominent philosophers of mind, biology, and cognition.


Attendance to the workshop is free and registration is not required.


*Time*: Monday April 7th, 2014, from 2:30 PM until 4:30 PM

*Venue*: Room 3.610, Level 3, Australian Hearing Hub, 16 University Avenue, Macquarie University, NSW 2109.


Abstract of the talks (in alphabetical order) available below:

* Title*: 'Cognition Wars'
*Speaker*: Professor *Fred Adams *(Delaware)
*Date and Time*: Monday, 7 April 2014, 2:30PM until 3:15 PM
*Location*: Australian Hearing Hub (AHH), room 3.610, Macquarie University

 *Abstract*
In case you missed it, there is a war going on over what counts as cognition. Luckily, it is a war among academics, so likely no one will get hurt, but it is a war nonetheless. It started with challenges to the traditional conception of human cognition holding that cognition takes place in the brain after perception and before motor processing. On the
traditional view, perception was to get information into the brain, then concepts and reasoning take over, and finally the motor system is employed to do the mind's bidding. Embodied cognitivists have been challenging this view of cognition at least since the late 1990s and probably since long before among continental philosophers. On the embodied view, cognition literally takes place in the perceptual and motor systems. On the traditional view, that was never believed to be the case. On the embodied view, the body itself plays a much larger and more constitutive role in cognition than on the traditional view of cognition. The war spread to include theories of extended cognition. These theories claim that the boundary of the body and brain is an arbitrary one and there is no principled reason why cognition does not spread out into the environment in the form of perceptual-motor interaction, tool uses, and other forms of cognitive off-loading or scaffolding. This view too started in the late 1990s, but has continued to pick up steam ever since. On this view, cognition is not a process that takes place inside the brain alone anymore. So for example, if cognition extends, then physically rotating a jigsaw puzzle piece might count as cognizing. In addition, when using pencil and paper to do a long division problem, the manipulation of numerals on the paper would count as cognizing (and not just an aid to cognizing) on the extended view. Finally, plant scientists and bacteriologists (Garzon 2007, Garzon & Keijer, 2009, Keijer & Lyon, forthcoming, Ben-Jacob, 2009) now are telling us that there is cognition in plants and in bacteria. As one of us
(Adams) has addressed the issues with respect to embodied and extended cognition before, in this paper we turn our attention to the claims that there is cognition in plants and in bacteria. We hope to get to the bottom of this and understand why people are saying these things and to evaluate the plausibility of the claims.


* Title*: 'Re-envisioning the debate over extended cognition'
*Speaker*: Dr *David Kaplan* (Macquarie)
*Date and Time*: Monday, 7 April 2014, 3:30PM until 4:00PM
*Location*: Australian Hearing Hub (AHH), room 3.610, Macquarie University



*Abstract *The debate over extended cognition -- now well over a decade old -- is one in which interesting and important issues have become enmeshed in a framework that obstructs their productive exploration. Participants on all sides of the debate have largely proceeded under the assumption that there must be some plausible proprietary criterion for demarcating the boundaries of cognition -- that is, some answer exclusive to the subject
matter of cognition. I contend that this starting point for the debate is misguided and in need of re-envisioning. As an alternative, I argue that we should instead be searching for a generic boundary demarcation criterion adequate not just to the task of demarcating cognitive boundaries but also the boundaries of mechanisms or systems more generally. To this end, I propose one such criterion -- the mutual manipulability criterion -- and discuss some of its main advantages over other competing criteria defended in the literature including its close connections to the primary strategies that scientists use to test boundary claims

 *Title*: 'Towards a biologically basic cognition: from developmental plasticity to higher learning'
*Speaker*: Dr *Karola Stotz* (Macquarie)
*Date and Time*: Monday, 7 April 2014, 4:00PM until 4:30 PM
*Location*: Australian Hearing Hub (AHH), room 3.610, Macquarie University


*Abstract *
The question of the material or biological basis of cognition, of the mark of the cognitive, of 'what cognition is', 'what it does', and 'how it works', was always of interest to cognitive scientists. More than two decades ago, however, there would at least likely have been a consensus that the answers will be found somewhere within the brain. Since then the
cognitive sciences have began to look beyond 'what is inside your head' to the old Gibsonian question of 'what is your head inside of'. It is no longer heresy to believe the mind to be embodied, embedded, enacted and even extended. In this paper I will among other things, analyse the boundaries between inner and outer cognitive resources, between the natural and the artificial.  I will be questioning the origin and emergence of
socalled 'natural', internal resources and attempt to show an allegedly profound and rigid dichotomy between internal and external cognitive resources to rather be a fluid, dynamic, and fragile *developmental achievement*. To some the last idea of cognitive systems as on-linearly coupled brain-body-niche system is as yet the most radical position held.
However, one may even question to what extend there needs to be any kind of brain to produce a cognitive system. I go on by asking what are the basic, common problems organisms encounter that require a cognitive solution? Cognition enables a living system to continually and actively maintain itself and further its existential goals in an ever-changing environment. Cognition is central to setting and meeting existential and other goals by
integrating information from the sensory periphery to solve adaptive problems like getting by, getting around and getting away. A working toolkit of basic cognitive constructs that will scale across phyla would enable a diverse set of researchers to benefit from research in diverse model organisms and thereby assist in the development of general principles. Only from such a basis it makes sense to inquire at what point organisms were to come up with more complete solution, like the requirement of a specialized subsystem, namely the central nervous system, dedicated to these problems.