Abstract
It is easy to give a list of cognitive processes. They are things like learning, memory, concept formation, reasoning, maybe emotion, and so on. It is not easy to say, of these things that are called cognitive, what makes them so? Knowing the answer is one very important reason to be interested in the mark of the cognitive. In this paper, consider some answers that we think do not work and then offer one of our own which ties cognition to actions explained via the having of reasons.
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Notes
We discuss these cases below.
Noe (2010, p. 42) talks as though he attributes mind to bacteria, but it is not clear to us whether he maintains that bacteria think.
Everyone agrees and knows that memory, perception, reasoning, and perhaps emotion are cognitive processes, but what we are asking is what makes them cognitive? In virtue of what are these processes of the same type—cognitive? Most practicing scientists presume there is an answer to this question but few try to give it.
For more, see Adams (2010).
For examples and arguments that cognition requires embedding in an environment and use of that environment as a type of “scaffolding” see Clark (2008). We are not sure there is opposition to this view, if the scaffolding is not considered constitutive of mind.
We are not suggesting so-called “agent” causation, but differentiating two schemas for individuating actions.
See Parker (2001). Our claim is not that if some behavior has a chemical explanation it is not cognitive. Rather it is that if it has a chemical explanation that does not constitute being a reason or representation, then it is not cognitive. Reasons and representations themselves no doubt have chemical constitutions.
See Saigusa et al. (2008).
Of course this is not too surprising given the tendency of slime mold to be sensitive to properties such as heat and cold, oxygen and ammonia gradients, light and dark (Bonner 2009). Intermittent introduction of cold bursts could result in changes to internal chemical reactions. The periodicity could mimic memory (Ball 2008) and be explained in terms of the physics of well-understood oscillators.
We think having concepts and having reasons are related in this way. To have a reason one needs concepts, but having reasons extends beyond the mere having of concepts. Nonetheless, concepts are featured in reasons. If Herbert gathered coke cans for the reason that he wanted to keep the office tidy, he’d have both concepts of coke cans and reasons to collect them.
Herbert can’t do anything intentionally or purposefully. He has no reasons. He does not know what a soda can is. He has no beliefs or desires. He has no desire to retrieve the can, nor beliefs about retrieval. Herbert is not a cognitive agent despite the fact that his motions mimic those of a cognitive agent. It is on the basis of this mimicry of motion that Brooks deems Herbert’s behavior to be “intelligent.” Brooks claims that his robots “have goals,” “make predictions,” and “do things,” using the language of the intentional idiom, as if they were purposive, intentional agents. But there is no good reason to think any of this is true precisely because purposive, intentional agents act for reasons (just what Brooks denies of his robots). Someone might claim that if Herbert revises his behavior until the can is picked up successfully then this shows he does have the desire to pick up the can. To us, this would be a rampant form of behaviorism, long abandoned for good reasons.
There are, of course, theorists who do attribute cognition to plants based on the activity that plants engage in which is behaviorally similar to the behavior of reasoning creatures. See (Calvo and Keijzer 2008).
Another reason to think that Rowlands may be willing to include artifact function is that, in the end, he thinks the processes of a person (Otto) using a notebook to help remember his way around New York City count as cognitive processing (2010, p. 208) and the processing includes processing language and languages are clearly human artifacts.
See Adams and Aizawa (2008).
It is sometimes hard to know exactly what to make of Rowlands’ view. For instance, at one point to diffuse worry about what “person” means in “personal level” cognitive processing, he says: “‘Person’ in this context, approximates to ‘organism capable of detecting changes in the environment and modifying its behavior accordingly (p. 146).” The problem of course is that bacteria, plants, and even slime-mold can do this. So, surely there is more to being a person or subject than this, and the problem Rowlands faces is saying what that is without circularity among his conditions of the mark of the cognitive.
So we continue to find Rowlands’ attempt to shrug off circularity unpersuasive. He spends an entire chapter (6) on what “ownership” comes to, but we find this explanation even less clear or persuasive.
We suspect Rowlands will try to evade these objections by invoking a “vehicle/content” distinction or “causal/constitutive” distinction. But what he has to say about these things in the relevant pages of the book are far from clear or persuasive (see chapter 8). What is more, as far as we can see, our examples fit the letter of his marks of the cognitive. As far as we can see, even if walking is only a vehicle, it is still a vehicle in a cognitive process of disclosing information about the world and will count as a cognitive process on his conditions, despite his protest to the contrary. Notice that his response to “walking around the corner” was not about vehicles or contents or causation or constitution but about proper function. So, we think he went with his best shot and we think it still is not good enough.
We are not saying that in principle a robot could not be built which operates with reasons, just that this is not what is happening with Herbert.
We are not saying that evolution cannot supply a creature with reasons. When it does, there must be some internal structure that constitutes a representation of a goal or desire that grounds the truth of the statement that the individual does something for a reason (its reason). Naturally, we also do not claim that reasons have to be consciously entertained.
We are not saying this is a mechanism to which minds have conscious access.
See also Sterelny (2003) who suggests that “de-coupled” representations are a key ingredient in the evolution of cognition.
Of course not all sensory neurons are transducers. Amacrine cells in the retina are an example. But these would not be examples of neurons playing the role described in the termite mound. One may also object that sensory neurons themselves can be falsely tokened. But one must solve the “disjunction” problem for them, as well. Do they falsely indicate their usual cause or truly indicate a broader set of disjunctive causes? If the latter, they are still just information transducers. We suspect that the analogy to the termites is of the latter variety.
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Acknowledgments
We want to thank all those who attended the University of Delaware Cognitive and Neuroscience Workshop in September 2011 for helpful comments. Additional thanks to Ken Aizawa, Gary Fulller, and John A. Barker for helpful suggestions. We thank two anonymous referees for helpful comments. We also thank the University of Delaware's Office of Undergraduate Research for support for this project.
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Adams, F., Garrison, R. The Mark of the Cognitive. Minds & Machines 23, 339–352 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-012-9291-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-012-9291-1