Abstract
This paper reformulates some of the questions raised by extended mind theorists from an enactive, life/mind continuity perspective. Because of its reliance on concepts such as autopoiesis, the enactive approach has been deemed internalist and thus incompatible with the extended mind hypothesis. This paper answers this criticism by showing (1) that the relation between organism and cogniser is not one of co-extension, (2) that cognition is a relational phenomenon and thereby has no location, and (3) that the individuality of a cogniser is inevitably linked with the question of its autonomy, a question ignored by the extended mind hypothesis but for which the enactive approach proposes a precise, operational, albeit non-functionalist answer. The paper raises a pespective of embedded and intersecting forms of autonomous identity generation, some of which correspond to the canonical cases discussed in the extended mind literature, but on the whole of wider generality. In addressing these issues, this paper proposes unbiased, non-species specific definitions of cognition, agency and mediation, thus filling in gaps in the extended mind debates that have led to paradoxical situations and a problematic over-reliance on intutions about what counts as cognitive.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
E.g., bio-chemist Andrew Ellington has recently made such a pronouncement at a keynote address at the 11th International Conference on Artificial Life in August, 2008, Winchester, UK.
As it will become clear in the following, unlike the implicit human scope that EM reserves for what counts as cognitive, non-species specific for the enactive view means something more general than accepting as cognitive functionally equivalent implementations of mindful (human) capabilities in non-biological processes. It also means broadening the notion of cognition to encompass that of non-human species. EM is still human-chauvinist at the functional, if not implementational, level.
I find the image of a reduction in the multiplicity of dimensions of a physical coupling somehow more accurate than that of an augmentation as implied in the phrase “a surplus of signification” used by Varela (1991, 1997). The implication that something is added by the organism to the encounter with the world downplays the richness of this encounter and the organism-making aspects of the world at the expense of the worldmaking aspects of the organism. As a consequence, the latter’s role may be conceived unnecessarily as too active or cognitive. A narrowing down of the dimensionality of the encounter may also ultimately be an inaccurate metaphor, but it is more neutral with respect to the roles of organism and world.
It should be noted that this definition is meant to be quite general. Systems that are adaptive in this sense can come in many variations (adaptive to only a few perturbations, but not to others, adaptive only in reaction to a harmful event or able to foresee and prevent its occurrence, adaptive in a highly reliable manner or adaptive in a rough statistical sense, etc.). The definition also implies that in practice observers can agree on a metric or at least sufficient topological properties of the viability set as well as on what counts as the appropriate granularity and timescale of observation and that this agreement reflects well the notion of risk or danger for the organism.
Life would not be better off without precarious conditions; it simply would not be life at all. It would be indifferent permanence. In contrast, precariousness presents us with a view of life as inherently restless more fitting to our experience of life; a sort of “frustrated suicide”, never fully safe and constantly buying time for itself. Notably, it is here that the enactive project most clearly departs from any form of functionalism including the extended functionalism proposed for the EM: by its appeal to an aspect of materiality which is inescapable and nevertheless still required for a theory of life and mind that can account for autonomy and normativity.
Thanks to Susan Oyama for providing this example.
The intention behind the distinction between domains should be clear: to prevent any attempt at reducing phenomena across these domains. Given that one domain is established by the presence of a whole unity and its relations to its environment, there are good systemic reasons to distinguish those relations from the constitutive processes that give rise to the unity. To reduce phenomena across these domains is to ignore the alternative perspectival positions one may take on a given system: that of a whole unity in relation and that of a multiplicity of components that make up the unity. Such confusion would lead us to search for the speed of the car inside its engine (or to describe our memories as represented in neural patterns). This is a strong point that should be preserved. The damage, however, is done by the term “non-intersecting”. This connotes strict separability, whereas in fact we can certainly maintain a relation of non-reducibility without isolating the phenomena between domains. In this way, it is indeed possible for explanations in domain A to depend on phenomena in domain B, but not exclusively so; a powerful engine conditions the possibilities for explaining the speed of the car even if we cannot deduce the latter exclusively from the former. Where we must be careful is in the form that such dependence takes, since any relation across domains will always be a relation of modulation or constraint, and not of determination.
And yet, we must repeat that the relational and operational domains, while irreducible to each other, are still able to condition and constraint each other. The twin case, strictly valid for identical twins, reminds us of a rare but perfectly consistent illustration. It may happen that dizygotic twins show chimerism in their blood. During gestation blood cells from the opposite twin can be acquired in utero and they can initiate a successful, but genetically different lineage that can persist throughout a lifetime (Booth et al. 1957). While not a definitive proof (maternal blood cells could also be acquired in this way, or indeed the embryo’s blood cells be acquired by the mother in the case of microchimerism), blood chimerism in an individual would lead us to suspect her relational condition as a (non-identical) twin. A history of relations can indeed leave a mark in the constitution of a system.
References
Ashby WR (1960) Design for a brain: the origin of adaptive behaviour, 2nd edn. Chapman and Hall, London
Barandarian X (2008) Mental life: a naturalized approach to the autonomy of cognitive agents. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of the Basque Country, Spain
Barandiaran X, Di Paolo EA (2008) Artificial mental life (Abstract). In: Bullock S, Noble J, Watson RA, Bedau MA (eds) Proceedings of the 11th international conference on artificial life, Alife XI, Winchester, UK, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Boden MA (1999) Is metabolism necessary? Br J Philos Sci 50:231–248
Booth PB, Plaut G, James JD, Ikin EW, Moores P, Sanger R, Race RR (1957) Blood chimerism in a pair of twins. Br Med J 1(5033):1456–1458
Bourdieu P (1990) The logic of practice. Polity Press, Cambridge
Bourgine P, Stewart J (2004) Autopoiesis and cognition. Artif Life 10:327–346
Clark A (2007) Curing cognitive hiccups: a defense of the extended mind. J Philos 104:163–192
Clark A (forthcoming) Memento’s revenge: the extended mind, extended. In: Menary R (ed) The extended mind. Aldershot, Ashgate
Clark A, Chalmers D (1998) The extended mind. Analysis 58(1):7–19
De Jaegher H, Di Paolo EA (2007) Participatory sense-making: an enactive approach to social cognition. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 6(4):485–507
Di Paolo EA (2003) Organismically-inspired robotics: homeostatic adaptation and natural teleology beyond the closed sensorimotor loop. In: Murase K, Asakura T (eds) Dynamical systems approach to embodiment and sociality. Advanced Knowledge International, Adelaide, pp 19–42
Di Paolo EA (2005) Autopoiesis, adaptivity, teleology, agency. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 4:97–125
Di Paolo EA (forthcoming) Overcoming autopoiesis: an enactive detour on the way from life to society. In: Magalhaes R, Sanchez R (eds) Autopoiesis in organizations and information systems. Elsevier, New York
Di Paolo E, Rohde M, De Jaegher H (2008) Horizons for the enactive mind: values, social interaction, and play. In: Stewart J, Gapenne O, Di Paolo E (eds) Enaction: towards a new paradigm for cognitive science. MIT Press, Cambridge
Fleischaker GR (1988) Autopoiesis: the status of its system logic. BioSystems 22(1):37–49
Heidegger M (2001) The fundamental concepts of metaphysics: world, finitude, solitude (translated by McNeill W, Walker N). Indiana University Press, Bloomington
Jonas H (1966) The phenomenon of life: towards a philosophical biology. Northwestern University Press, Evanston
Malafouris L (2004) The cognitive basis of material engagement: where brain, body and culture conflate. In: DeMarrais E, Gosden C, Renfrew C (eds) Rethinking materiality: the engagement of mind with the material world. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, pp 53–61
Maturana H (2002) Autopoiesis, structural coupling and cognition: a history of these and other notions in the biology of cognition. Cybern Human Knowing 9:5–34
Maturana H, Varela FJ (1980) Autopoiesis and cognition: the realization of the living. D. Reidel Publishing, Dordrecht
Moreno A, Ruiz-Mirazo K (1999) Metabolism and the problem of its universalization. BioSystems 49:45–61
Rupert R (2004) Challenges to the hypothesis of extended cognition. J Philos 101(8):389–428
Stewart J (1995) Cognition = life: implications for higher-level cognition. Behav Processes 35(1–3):311–326
Thompson E (2001) Empathy and consciousness. J Conscious Stud 8:1–32
Thompson E (2007) Mind in life: biology, phenomenology and the sciences of mind. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Thompson E, Stapleton M (this issue) Making sense of sense-making: reflections on enactive and extended mind theories
Thorpe WH (1950) Plastron respiration in aquatic insects. Biol Rev 25:344–390
Varela FJ (1979) Principles of biological autonomy. Elsevier, New York
Varela FJ (1991) Organism: a meshwork of selfless selves. In: Tauber AI (ed) Organism and the origin of the self. Kluwer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands, pp 79–107
Varela FJ (1997) Patterns of life: intertwining identity and cognition. Brain Cogn 34:72–87
Varela FJ, Thompson E, Rosch E (1991) The embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press, Cambridge
Weber A, Varela FJ (2002) Life after Kant: natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 1:97–125
Wheeler M (in press) Mind, things and materiality. In: Renfrew C, Malafouris L (eds) The cognitive life of things: recasting the boundaries of the mind. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research Publications, Cambridge
Wheeler M (forthcoming) Extended X: recarving the biological and cognitive joints of nature. Book manuscript. http://www.philosophy.stir.ac.uk/staff/m-wheeler/ExtendedX.php. Last accessed 22 Sept 2008
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Julian Kiverstein, Michael Wheeler, Hanne De Jaegher, Matthew Egbert, Arantza Etxeberria, Giovanna Colombetti, Tom Froese, and Evan Thompson for their helpful comments on this paper and to participants of the Life and Mind Seminars (http://lifeandmind.wordpress.com) where some of the ideas expressed here have been discussed.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Di Paolo, E. Extended Life. Topoi 28, 9–21 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-008-9042-3
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-008-9042-3