Reading for October: The Extended Mind

I downloaded it and will read it tonight.

I'll get to it this weekend. I need a refresher. Great idea.

I have Sunday off, I'll try to get to reading it then.

One of my favorite papers, am keen to contribute when I can :)

One of the things that occurred to me in reading this time was how much the paper is definitely not aimed at me. I agree with the moral of the paper. But I don't believe the second argument works because the notebook is actually more reliable than a belief or a memory. We construct our memories, they aren't deposited in a box for us to look up. There are cues for us to do so -- which is why, if we are studying for a test, we should listen to the same music each time and have a unique tactile object to associate our studies with [and then bring both to the test].

So I wonder if the notebook could count as a belief because it seems too reliable to count.

But, clearly, this objection isn't going to sink the moral of the paper -- that cognition, and the mind [if memory counts as part of the mind] extend outside the boundaries of the skull and skin.

But, clearly, this objection isn't going to sink the moral of the paper -- that cognition, and the mind [if memory counts as part of the mind] extend outside the boundaries of the skull and skin.

What if the purpose of memory isn't to be a faithful recording, but rather a tool for future action?

Reply to Marchesk In that case, given the functional approach of the paper, perhaps my objection is off the mark.

My general reaction to the paper was that I didn't see why one must commit to the idea that cognition occurred outside the mind simply because a problem could be more easily solved by reorganizing it in a more solvable way.

For example, I can determine that a particular Tetris piece will fit into the larger puzzle by manipulating the piece on the screen. I'm not thinking through the screen; I'm just simplifying the problem by moving the piece in a way that visibly and more obviously fits.

[quote=Hanover]My general reaction to the paper was that I didn't see why one must commit to the idea that cognition occurred outside the mind simply because a problem could be more easily solved by reorganizing it in a more solvable way.[/quote]

From what I remember of it, it doesn't say that cognition occurs outside the mind; it says that the mind extends beyond the brain.

Reply to Hanover Because the only difference between cognition in the head and the manipulation of something in the environment is that one occurs inside the skull and the other one doesn't, since some part of the brain is coupled with another part of the brain in what is traditionally thought of as cognition, and some part of the brain is coupled with the screen in the other case. Since they are similar in all other ways -- the mental manipulation of a tetris piece to find how it should fit being identical [functionally] to the manipulation of a tetris piece on the screen, aside from its location -- to not include the tetris piece on the screen is just to beg the question in saying that cognition only occurs within the brain.

Reply to Yahadreas True. Good catch. They actually state that the mind is outside of the brain -- not that cognition happens outside of the mind.

Kind of weird how they keep talking about brain augmentations, and stuff...

Reply to Moliere If we're simply saying that the mind includes activity outside the brain but we admit that the extra-brain activity is non-cognitive, then the thesis becomes somewhat trivial, simply offering a novel definition of "mind." If, however, we adhere to a definition of "mind" that requires a cognitive (or at least conscious) aspect, then it seems my objection would hold, namely that what occurs outside the brain is fundamentally different than what occurs internally.

Reply to Hanover The argument is for both -- first for cognition, and then for the mind. Consciousness is mentioned as something which isn't necessary for cognition, though -- that's very different from cognition, because we aren't always conscious of our cognition. It's more than terminological, though -- at least, according to the paper -- because it's also backed up by empirical work in cognitive science [as they reference it]. [[this is just how the argument works]]

I agree with you that what occurs outside the brain is different than what occurs internally -- but the paper, by "internal", only means "inside of the skin and skull", not interiority or some such [which is what your use of internal makes me think of here]. Which is primarily what they are speaking against, I think, given the examples they start out with. They aren't speaking against interiority. I don't think they're speaking about that much at all. They're speaking against mind-brain identity theories more than anything, and at a minimal level, that even if the mind-brain identity holds, that cognition is wider than what happens inside the skull.

Quoting Hanover

the thesis becomes somewhat trivial, simply offering a novel definition of "mind."

They anticipate the objection that their thesis is merely arbitrarily terminological:

... in seeing cognition as extended one is not merely making a terminological decision; it makes a significant difference to the methodology of scientific investigation. In effect, explanatory methods that might once have been thought appropriate only for the analysis of "inner" processes are now being adapted for the study of the outer, and there is promise that our understanding of cognition will become richer for it.

What I find exciting about this area of philosophy is that here, philosophy really does make a direct, noticeable difference. Research in psychology, cognitive science and robotics is actually guided by philosophical positions in quite a clear way. And when an agent's cognition (and it is still the agent's cognition, not the system's) is treated as distributed through an agent-environment system, the experiments are very different from what they're like under an internalist paradigm, and progress is made where before it was not.

Quoting Hanover

... what occurs outside the brain is fundamentally different than what occurs internally.

This is not denied in the paper. But what exactly do you mean? The question is one of relevance: is this fundamental difference relevant to what we call cognition or mind? After all, petroleum is fundamentally different from rubber but driving a car involves both.

Anyway, I will try to write a longer post when I get the time.

I created a thread at the former site on this same subject;
http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/the-extended-mind-71029.html

If the mind is extended beyond the skull into, say your cell phone, then if your cell phone is stolen, is that theft or assault?

The reason we outsource our mental processing to external devices is to conserve energy. Processing information (thinking) requires energy.

Reply to Harry Hindu I missed that one Harry! Oh well, let's hope we get some similarly good responses here.

Quoting Harry Hindu

The reason we outsource our mental processing to external devices is to conserve energy. Processing information (thinking) requires energy.

It's also because external devices are often more reliable than our internal cognition. Writing something down on paper makes it easier to retain.

Thoughts on rereading the paper:

It strikes me that the paper is somewhat incongruously named with respect to the actual analysis that takes place in it. On a close reading, what seems to stand out is that Chalmers and Clark might have better named the paper: The Arbitrary Mind. After all, what is at issue in the paper is the fact that any attempt to institute a divide between outside and inside is in fact an arbitrary one. In the analysis of the the role of memory in Otto and Inga for example, the whole point is that they cannot in fact locate a dividing line which would be 'categorically' placed. There is, in other words, a seeming arbitrariness with respect to where both 'inside' and 'outside' might be located (their 'deconstruction' of such a line is, interestingly enough, a move right out of the Derrida playbook... but that's something else entirely).

Anyway, part of the problem here, it seems to me, has to do with the implicit and unstated ontology that actually underpins the terms of the paper. In a word, the paper presupposes what we might call a static ontology. A static ontology deals in parts and wholes. In such an ontology, the identity of a given 'unit' - say, Otto or Inga - is presupposed as an already constituted entity. Otto has an identity, and the notebook forms part of this identity. Taken together, Otto and the notebook constitute a 'whole' identity. But as the paper itself demonstrates, this talk of wholes and parts is hopelessly confused. Any attempt to demarcate a part over and against a whole - and correlatively an inside and an outside - inevitability falls into arbitrariness. Chalmers and Clark end the paper by proposing that such a consequence calls for a renewed understanding of the mind as extended - extended, precisely, from the 'skull and skin.'

But such a proposal ultimately names a problem, and not a solution: the fact that the mind must be 'extended' out from the skull and skin designates an issue with the very manner in which the very notion of 'extension' is posed in the first place. Ultimately, the problem lies with the static ontology that underlies the the paper's argument. What is needed is a revision of the very terms in which the problem is posed, one which would do away with the idea of already-constituted entities, and instead conceive of identities as a matter of becoming. What is needed is a dynamic ontology which recognizes an individuating process by which 'inside and outside' are continually and unceasingly forged without calcifying into static borders. To nick a passage from Renaud Barbaras:

"The individuality of the thing [In our case, someone like Otto - SX] makes sense only to the extent that it is situated just short of or beyond every principle that would gather it together. The sensible thing is between quantity and quality or, rather, beyond this distinction; its individuality is actual only if it does not go all the way to the numerical nor all the way to the specific. The individual exists, then, only as pre-individual, general, in the course of or on the way to individualization. Individuality is essentially next to the point where one seeks to fix it: always already beyond the atom, yet never essence; it sustains itself only by escaping identification." (Barbaras, The Being of the Phenomenon).

--

One way to think about this is to note a curious fact about the examples of 'the extended mind' that Chalmers and Clark use: all of them in fact involve memory. There is, in other words, a temporal dimension to each of the examples used to argue for the extended mind. Although implicit in all of them, the authors pass over this and construe 'extension' almost entirely in spatial terms: as a matter of inside and outside, "biological organism and external resources." They briefly speak about socially extended cognition - and thus open the door to the entire realm of narrative, myth, culture, history and evolution - as well as role of language (itself a diachronic system) - but quickly resort to spatial terms in speaking about them anyway: "Words and external symbols are thus paramount among the cognitive vortices which help constitute human thought" (emphasis mine).

Now, the importance of memory - and thus temporal extension - is that in a dynamic ontology, identity must be understood as that which takes place across time. An identity must be unified not only in space but also in time. An identity must be a ongoing activity of unification. Now, by (implicitly) acknowledging memory as the vector that in fact places the mind 'outside of itself', Chalmers and Clark - in an equally implicit manner - recognize that the process of identity in fact takes place according to a circuit that runs between self and world, one that in fact constitutes the very demarcation between self and world in the process of crossing it. To put it programmatically: memory is a vector of individuation. It is not the case that a self-contained and already fully-formed identity reaches out in order to 'recall' a memory 'stored' somewhere in the brain/environment/body. Rather, the very act of memory recall feeds-back upon the identity of very person who called upon it in the first place, contributing to his or her individuation in time (which, we recalls, never reaches anything like an 'end point').

Another symptom of the static ontology that underlies the paper is, in fact, in the treatment of memory as itself a static 'thing', an object to be retrieved or discarded at will. Despite recognizing the cognition takes places 'outside' of the brain, the authors, curiously enough, do not make the same concessions for memory, which itself is always 'local': memory 'resides' 'in the brain' or 'in the notebook', and is not treated as an event that itself takes place. Yet a phenomenology of memory will recognize that memory always belongs to the order of an encounter: memories impose themselves upon us as we encounter events and occasions in the world. Even the most fleeting of daydreams are brought about wandering trains of thought sparked, perhaps, by subtle modulations in the smell of the cafe about one, a certain sheen or glint of familiar light, even only subconsciously recognized.

When the authors write that Inga's belief regarding the location of the museum "was sitting somewhere in memory, waiting to be accessed", one has to wonder if, had Inga's friend not mentioned the exhibition, whether or not 'memory' would have come into it at all. Anyway, the point is that by construing extension in wholly spatial terms, Chalmers and Clark more or less foreclose even the possibility of rethinking the static ontology that underlies their paper. In keeping memory as a localized 'unit' of data - and thus also construed in spatial terms - they further shut down any attempt to introduce a temporal dimension into their analysis, and with it, any thought of individuation as a process.

Nonetheless, the merit of the paper - and it is still one of my favorite papers ever written - is to show, more clearly than ever, the problems encountered when conceiving cognition in a static manner - even if they don't necessarily recognize the fact that they're pulling the rug out of under themselves, and leaving a space for much more interesting approaches to take it's place. The paper's failure, is, in some sense, it's very success. Anyway, I wish I could say more about memory, but a study of memory is something I've been sorely lacking; these thoughts are more provocations to myself than anything, and I thought it'd be fun to throw them out there for a bit of provocation and feedback.

Yes, I was also dissatisfied with the somewhat complacent treatment of memory. Here's Louise Barrett writing from the standpoint of a psychology and ethology heavily influenced by Gibson and embodied cognition:

[quote=Louise Barrett, Beyond the Brain]A storehouse metaphor leads to storehouse experiments, which lead to storehouse memory.

So, just as with experiments on robots and other animals, there is also our frame of reference to consider with respect to experiments on other humans—what looks like a stable structure to an observer from the outside may, from the perspective of the person performing the task, be a more dynamic process of re-creation (or even simply creation). Rolf Pfeifer and Josh Bongard give the example of a fountain: the shape of the water as it sprays out is not stored anywhere as a structure inside the fountain, but results from the interaction of the water pressure and surface tension, the effects of gravity, and the shape and direction of the jets. This gives the fountain structure—not a static, stable structure, though, but one that is continuously created. It is quite possible that memory could have this kind of “structure” and be completely different from our everyday idea of memory.

This is especially likely to be so given that the conscious recall of words is a very specialized human activity. Most of our everyday activities that involve memory are not like this (driving or walking to work; preparing a meal), and it certainly doesn’t capture aspects of the daily experience of other animal species. We also learn and memorize many things implicitly—we have no conscious awareness that we have done so, but our behavior changes in ways that refl ect our experience—and this kind of implicit memory is undoubtedly common to other animals as well.

What we call memory may be much more like the activity of the robot mouse in its maze environment: a process of sensorimotor coordination distributed across animal and environment, in which the animal actively engages, and not simply the storage and retrieval of (explicit) internal representations. [/quote]

In the last line she could have said "not simply the storage and retrieval of (explicit) representations", leaving out the "internal", because a more dynamic account of memory goes against storage and retrieval as such, whether inside or out.

However, if we take Clark and Chalmers to be referring merely to conscious recall rather than memory in general, I think their argument is at least a piece of the puzzle, despite your concerns. (Again, I'm still trying to find the time to say more about this).

Reply to Marchesk Pen and paper are not information processing devices like brains, calculators and computers. They don't use energy to process information, so we aren't conserving energy by writing things down. It is more likely that we are using pen and paper to expand our limited memory, not to process information, like a calculator does. I could use pen and paper to solve a math problem, but I'd still be using my mental energy to solve the problem. The symbols on the paper simply help me to keep from losing my place in the process. Calculators do all the work for me and are therefore more preferable.

@jamalrob: that's an excellent quote actually. I've been struggling over trying to frame the idea that memory is created in real time - while still respecting the specificity and 'pastness' of memory - and that fountain metaphor is a really nice way to think about it.

I printed this out and started annotating it. Hopefully I'll be able to join the discussion within a day or two.

I like this paper a lot, but in the end I think it's a small piece of the puzzle and doesn't go far enough. I'll say at the outset that I agree with them that the mind is not bound by the skull or the skin. But in common with other critics, including @StreetlightX in this discussion, I'm critical of the paper's reluctance to go beyond spatial location and the inside-outside dichotomy, which is apparent from the very first sentence:

Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?

One might expect them to question the question—e.g., what if the mind is an activity or a kind of worldly engagement, like dancing, rather than a thing in space?—but I'm not sure they ever really do. They argue that the mind doesn't stop at the skull or the skin, but goes beyond it to a definite if uncertain extent. In a nutshell, their answer to the question is that the mind stops a bit further out, depending on the functional role of certain things we happen to use (indicating that we're dealing with a kind of functionalism, which might lead us to wonder if this is another representationalist theory of mind a la computationalism, rather than a more interesting and radical theory of dynamic embodiment). And note the dichotomy between the mind and the rest of the world. It almost seems—but it's possible this is unfair—to be taken for granted already that the mind and the rest of the world form exclusive contiguous spaces. But surely they envelop each other? Surely "the rest of the world", i.e., that which is not mind, does not "stop" or "begin" at all?

I'll post more when I can, when I hope to cover more than just one sentence.

Reply to jamalrob One can still talk about where the dance stops and the rest of the world begins. The dance happens within the ballroom, for example (and to be more specific, within this ever-changing space within the ballroom).

Reply to Michael I half-expected that objection. The point is that the way we treat thing concepts is importantly different from the way we treat activity concepts. In Street's terms, static and dynamic ontology. Maybe a clearer example is walking. To understand walking, how relevant is it to ask where the walking is?

Quoting jamalrob

One might expect them to question the question—e.g., what if the mind is an activity or a kind of worldly engagement, like dancing, rather than a thing in space?—but I'm not sure they ever really do. They argue that the mind doesn't stop at the skull or the skin, but goes beyond it to a definite if uncertain extent. In a nutshell, their answer to the question is that the mind stops a bit further out, depending on the functional role of certain things we happen to use (indicating that we're dealing with a kind of functionalism, which might lead us to wonder if this is another representationalist theory of mind a la computationalism, rather than a more interesting and radical theory of dynamic embodiment).

I agree with this. It seems pretty clear that Chalmers and Clark are working within a broadly functionalist/comutationalist paradigm, and that the "radicalism" of their thesis is therefore hamstrung or confined by the limits of that paradigm. Personally, I'm not convinced that functionalism/computationalism can tell us what cognition "really" is. Functionalist theories seem more like an elaborate heuristic device that can be used to help determine whether or not to treat a given system as if it were cognizant (i.e. bascially an elaborate Turing test), rather than a theory of mind per se. It's been interesting to watch the analytic tradition slowly move away from functionalism, and toward more dynamical system/embodied approaches over the the last couple of decades. There's significant overlap between the work of, say, Rosen, Juarrero, Deacon, Thompson, etc. on the analytic side and the work of, say, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, Delanda, Derrida, etc. on the continental side. I think the Chalmers/Clark paper could have been more interesting had it tapped more deeply into some of those other theoretical currents.

One thing to note in all this, though, is that the paper doesn't propose any theory of consciousness. Consciousness is a different topic from the paper. They utilize a functionalist account of mind in order to get at a particular notion -- that cognition, and by extension the mind, is not limited to the brain.

So the target seems squarely to be on mind-brain identity theories. (Also, interesting to note that the authors were listed by degree of commitment -- since Chalmers certainly doesn't believe that functionalism can account for consciousness, though he seems to believe that it can account for most of the mind)

Reply to Moliere You're right, Chalmers and Clark are indeed concerned with cognition rather than consciousness, I should have used the words "mind" and "cognition" rather than "consciousness" (i've updated my post). My apologies for the confusion.

In any event, the main point was really to agree with Jamalrob's assessment and to also say that I find that functionalism offers a rather limited set of explanatory resources with which to approach the particular question being inquired into, and frankly I'm not convinced it's up the task. In that regard I find the paper to be much less ground-breaking and insightful that it could have otherwise been had it brought some other, more powerful explanatory resources to bear on what is certainly a very interesting question. That being said, the paper was written in the late 1990's from a predominantly analytic point of view, so perhaps that criticism is unfair to some degree.

Thoughts?

If these people are right, then we can no longer claim somebody is "out of his mind." "Out of his brain" perhaps, but this wouldn't be quite the same.

Despite this obvious drawback, I find nothing surprising or new, or objectionable, in the thrust of the article as it's described to the extent it's a recognition of the fact that our lives and our thoughts are the result of our interaction with the rest of the world of which we're a part and a rejection of the tendency to separate ourselves from the world. I'm not sure about the claim that there exists a "complete cognitive system" though, being suspicious of the tendency to treat concepts of this sort as if they were things floating about somewhere.

I should also say, though, that I think the authors distinction between epistemic and pragmatic is inappropriate, as it preserves the distinction between cognition and action. This seems odd, as I think much they have to say is reminiscent of Dewey, especially his Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, who felt that thought involved the active interaction with and manipulation of the environment in which we live.

Rather than continue with my critique, I want to say something in support of the paper. Much of the criticism levelled at it so far in this thread—including my own—is coming from even further to the Left, so to speak, and thus might seem a bit esoteric to your old-fashioned dyed in the wool Cartesian or empiricist to whom these ideas are entirely alien. The fact is that the paper's thesis remains bold and exciting, because it goes against the philosophy of mind which in the twentieth century became common sense, held unquestionably by many if not most educated people and certainly most people working in cognitive science. That I am my brain, that my head is the locus of my mind, that my body parts are appendages to the all-controlling soul-in-the-head: this is what Clark and Chalmers are up against. And even if they're limited by their own commitment to cognitivism, they manage to question some of the most fundamental prejudices operating within it.

There's a moment in the paper that reminded me of Merleau-Ponty's admission that empiricism—for which perception is just the result of the physiological processing of raw sense inputs—could not be decisively refuted, his phenomenological re-descriptions always being open to being explained away in empiricist terms:

By embracing an active externalism, we allow a more natural explanation of all sorts of actions. One can explain my choice of words in Scrabble, for example, as the outcome of an extended cognitive process involving the rearrangement of tiles on my tray. Of course, one could always try to explain my action in terms of internal processes and a long series of "inputs" and "actions", but this explanation would be needlessly complex. If an isomorphic process were going on in the head, we would feel no urge to characterize it in this cumbersome way. In a very real sense, the re-arrangement of tiles on the tray is not part of action; it is part of thought.

Thus they admit that they're not setting out a refutation (and since when did the most interesting philosophy consist of mere refutation?) but offering a simpler, more fitting concept of mind. This passage also shows that their thesis is an attack on the tradition: even if they achieve it with a "wide computationalism", i.e., a computationalism extended into the agent's environment, this is still revolutionary, because the computational theory has traditionally been overwhelmingly neurocentric and dependent on an input-output model, with symbolic manipulation going on in between.

Thus while it's true that they seem still wedded to a representational, computational theory of mind, their thesis is at the same time anti-Cartesian, because it helps us get beyond the mind-body, or mind-world distinction, and asserts that what is important in conceiving of the mind is not just what's in the head.

One thing I'd like is to see someone clarify the distinctions they make between cognition, mind and consciousness.

Quoting Hanover

My general reaction to the paper was that I didn't see why one must commit to the idea that cognition occurred outside the mind simply because a problem could be more easily solved by reorganizing it in a more solvable way.

For example, I can determine that a particular Tetris piece will fit into the larger puzzle by manipulating the piece on the screen. I'm not thinking through the screen; I'm just simplifying the problem by moving the piece in a way that visibly and more obviously fits.

As I noted above, the authors admit that you can always fall back on this kind of description if you want to, but it's arbitrary and unnecessarily complex. I think you have to justify it in response to the central principle of the paper:

If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognizing as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is (so we claim) part of the cognitive process.

Your answer, it seems to me, is just: well, thinking is in the head isn't it?

A less jarring example than thinking through a screen is thinking through speech or writing. We do not develop fully formed thoughts internally before typing them out; it is much more dynamic than that. It feels intuitively right to me to say that I think in or through typing or speech. I don't know what I want to say until I am in the swing of saying it. My writing and my speech is my thought.

As the authors say:

Language appears to be a central means by which cognitive processes are extended into the world. Think of a group of people brainstorming around a table, or a philosopher who thinks best by writing, developing her ideas as she goes. It may be that language evolved, in part, to enable such extensions of our cognitive resources within actively coupled systems.

To set aside the brain's role in this, as being the exclusive locus of thinking, is arbitrary. What goes on in the brain doesn't go on outside the brain, but why say that the former is what thinking is? The idea of thought is not one that came out of considerations about what goes on in the brain; rather, it is one that has been part of culture for millennia, describing an activity that involves an environment. Certainly you might object that you can close your eyes, shut yourself off and think, but how much thinking is like this?

@Jamalrob: I think you're right that what's interesting about the paper is that while it ultimately ends up laying the groundwork to undermine the functionalist perspective that underpins it, it does so nonetheless from within that very perspective. That is, without invoking any sort of 'external' thesis, it sort of performs an immanent critique of it's own foundations - albeit without acknowledging this 'deconstruction' so performed. I wasn't entirely joking when I said that the authors come very close to the spirit of Derrida in their approach to the mind here.

@jamalrob: The problem is the assumption that there is (must be) a location in which thinking takes place, isn't it? A location beyond, that is, the environment in which the interaction takes place. Human thought requires a human, of course, but never involves a human in isolation, apart from the world. We wouldn't think if there was nothing to think about. But why assume the thinking takes place inside us or outside us, as if thinking was a thing instead of an interaction, an activity, engaged in by humans as part of what humans do in the world?

I find it surprising that this conception is apparently believed to be something new or unusual. But I may be misinterpreting what's being said.

Reply to Ciceronianus the White I agree Cicero. I'm curious to read Dewey on this sort of thing. Any recommendations?

@jamalrob: I would say , Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, Studies in Logical Theory and Experience and Nature.

Be warned, though; Dewey's a hard read. Not a master of style, I'm afraid.

Reply to Ciceronianus the White Ah yes, I just remembered I had a go at Experience and Nature a while back. It put me to sleep.

Quoting jamalrob

One thing I'd like is to see someone clarify the distinctions they make between cognition, mind and consciousness.

I'll take a stab. First, it might be worth briefly reviewing the way that Chalmers makes the distinction. For Chalmers, the distinction between consciousness and cognition is basically the distinction between the qualitative and the functional aspects of "mind" respectively. We've probably all read his "Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness" article where he basically defines the qualitative aspect of experience as that which can't be described in functional/physicalist terms, and we're probably all familiar with how he has leveraged the "philosophical zombie" and "qualia" concepts in order to motivate that thesis. He has put forward many complex and nuanced arguments in support of his claims and I certainly don't mean to trivialize all of the work that he has done in that regard, but at base I think his consciousness/cognition distinction boils down to the qualitative/functional distinction.

For my part, I'm not convinced that the qualitative can't be reduced to the functional. I personally don't find Chalmers's zombie and qualia based arguments convincing. Not only are there too many holes in those arguments, but I find that Metzinger has argued persuasively for the reduction of the qualitative/phenomenal to the functional/representational in his book "Being No One" by actually performing the reduction. That being said, I'm actually not convinced that functional descriptions themselves can be naturalized. That's because functional descriptions are fundamentally dependent on normative concepts (e.g. "error", "correctness") that can't be reduced to the strictly counterfactual logic that undergirds naturalistic descriptions of the world. The upshot, in my opinion, is that functional descriptions of consciousness and cognition are normative rather than naturalistic descriptions, even if they can be mapped onto naturalistic models of physical systems. Whether or not any given causal system satisfies the requirements of some functional schema is always, to some extent, a matter of subjective evaluation, and therefore, I would not consider functional descriptions to be descriptions of the real (i.e. are not descriptions of what consciousness and cognition really are).

So where should we look to find descriptions of what consciousness and cognition really are? In my opinion we should look to the intersection of dynamical systems theory and the biological sciences, shorn of any and all normative content in order to achieve maximal objectivity. On this view, the regional ontology of consciousness and cognition becomes a species of the formal ontology of dynamical systems in general, and questions regarding the essential features of consciousess, the spatio-temporal boundaries of consciousness, and the distinction between consciousness, cognition and mind are to be answered by reference to the explanatory resources available within that framework. That said, it's not clear to me at this point whether or to what degree the categories of "cognition" and "consciousness" are still applicable, or whether it might make any sense to talk about the precisely delineated spatio-temporal boundaries of either consciousness or cognition within the context of that framework. My hunch is that the words "consciousness" and "cognition" will continue to be used, and that the class of "cognizant" systems will in some sense be understood to be a subset of the class of "conscious" systems, but I suppose that remains to be seen. I think that much of the work that is currently being done within this field is still heavily tinged with the vestiges of normativity. For example, I recently read Terrence Deacon's "Incomplete Nature", which I found to be brilliant in many respects, but also (in my opinion) needlessly committed to the prospect of finding a place for normativity within the causal fabric of nature. Digging deeper one finds that what he is really making room for is something like a causal role for "possibility" or "virtuality", which (in my opinion) he merely equivocates into an account of normativity by draping it in heavily normative language.

So I guess what I am really saying here is that the distinctions between "cognition", "consciousness" and "mind" may not make much sense outside of a theoretical framework that allows for their clear seperation (such as the qualitative/functional paradigm that Chalmers works within). That said, I doubt that those words will ever fall out of usage insofar as they are conceptually wedded to the idea of subjectivity as a normative status that we grant to certain systems in virtue of their satisfying certain behavioral criteria that prompt us to interact with them in certain ways (namely, as subjects). Beyond that, I'm not really sure what place those words might have within our descriptions of the ontological or metaphysical structure of reality.

Reply to Aaron R Great post Aaron.

Reply to jamalrob Thanks!

Reply to jamalrob With respect to cognition, I think Kant's philosophy gets a good grasp on a theory of cognition. Whenever concepts are placed within space-time to make sense of the world we have cognition. This is why I would say that consciousness differs considerably from cognition. Consciousness is just the what-it-is-likeness of experience. There is something it is like to see red. There is something that it is like to eat pizza. We can describe these experiences, but there's a holstic experience that it feels like. It's this feel-y aspect of experience that I mean by consciousness. At that point it should be clear why cognition differs from consciousness -- since cognition [the application of concepts to the real] is not always felt. We often learn things from our environment without having some kind of associated what-it-is-likeness.

I don't know how to define the mind. It's sort of implicitly understood in conversations about the mind -- and any definition, I think, would become contentious in the very philosophical debates about the mind. But hopefully I don't have to in order to draw the distinction out. I think that an easy distinction between mind and the other two terms is that of whole and parts -- consciousness and cognition are parts of the mind, but are not themselves the mind.

Reply to Moliere I quite like Kant on consciousness as well as on cognition, not only in the transcendental deduction—where consciousness is at the same time self-consciousness, the I think—but also in the refutation of idealism, where self-consciousness is made to utterly depend on the external world.

For those who may be interested, here's a link to an article discussing how Dewey anticipated (and I think effectively dealt with) many of the issues being addressed, though he's been largely ignored by those who subsequently addressed them: http://home.ieis.tue.nl/kvaesen/Dewey_ONLINE.pdf

Reply to StreetlightX

I wasn't entirely joking when I said that the authors come very close to the spirit of Derrida in their approach to the mind here.

Derrida, as the father of deconstructionism, does with language what neuroscience and theoretical physics do with consciousness.

As far as the territorial mapping and demarcation between 'cognition', 'mind' and 'consciousness', I am not of the opinion that anyone has succesfully or conclusively done so. It's chasing an invisibility cloak. Maybe the answer lies not in (biological) separation of the whole but in their unity.

Reply to Ciceronianus the White Excellent, very useful.

Andy Clark, one of the authors of the paper under discussion, may have finally caught on to Dewey's pioneering work by the time he came to write his 2010 book, Supersizing the Mind, which begins with a quotation:

John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic:Hands and feet, apparatus and appliances of all kinds are as much a part of it [thinking] as changes in the brain. Since these physical operations (including the cerebral events) and equipments are a part of thinking, thinking is mental, not because of a peculiar stuff which enters into it or of peculiar nonnatural activities which constitute it, but because of what physical acts and appliances do: the distinctive purpose for which they are employed and the distinctive results which they accomplish.

I'd like to give some anecdotal evidence that for me lends weight to the thesis that the mind is not bound by the skin and skull. As some of you know, I broke my left arm two weeks ago. I'm right-handed so I haven't been as disabled as I could have been, but it's still been difficult, and in interesting ways.

The worst thing has been typing, because not only am I a web developer, but I've also been setting up and trying to participate in this new forum. It's difficult not merely in the physical sense, but in the way it seems to block my entire being-as-developer or being-as-writer. I open up a forum discussion with the intention of contributing, but I find I cannot think about it without my hands at the ready in the normal way. Similarly with my work, I can keep on top of the small everyday tasks that come up, but I cannot bring my self to bear on the meatier problems. I've got bugs to fix and new features to implement, but I can't get in the zone. When I'm in the zone I'm constantly switching between various windows and using special key strokes to manipulate code. My cognition, normally, seamlessly involves my brain, hands, keyboard, and the objects on my computer screen.

I can achieve these things, given time, but the extra effort degrades the quality of the work, I feel like I only have a superficial hold on the problem, and I feel like I'm not in control. More importantly, I most often struggle to get going in the first place.

It is not that I know what to do--have it all planned out "in my head"--and feel frustrated that my body is not in a fit state to cooperate. This is not how it is at all. I actually cannot plan or think well without my familiar powers of movement. When I'm in the zone, I pounce on the computer and throw myself into a problem, and these words are not merely metaphorical--there is a real sense in which I move physically, however slightly, in postures of attack or careful exploration (it's not just my hands).

All of which is not to say that I couldn't retrain myself were I to lose the use of my arm permanently.

Reply to jamalrob I second that "feel", though with different activities.

I often prefer to write by hand because the way I think is different when I write by hand. I prefer to edit on the computer, but the original work I prefer to do by hand (if it is a labor of love, at least).

My thoughts are often more crisp and clear when I go for walks, or even more intensive exercise as well.

Reply to jamalrob I forgot about Essays in Experimental Logic. Dewey's essays are more readable than his longer works. Perhaps his writing style is responsible for the fact he's been ignored and underrated by more recent philosophers. But I'm always surprised by the extent to which philosophers of the past 100 years or so have purportedly new insights which he had and wrote of before them. When someone had him read something by Heidegger, Dewey is said to have commented that "Heidegger reads like a Swabian peasant trying to sound like me."

One thing I'd like is to see someone clarify the distinctions they make between cognition, mind and consciousness.
— jamalrob

These words are mostly what throws us off the scent of what is really going on. Yet, there is a reason for these words in our language and it does us good to try and translate the words into what is happening in the brain. Making a distinction is where you will waste your time.

Embodied cognition, or extended, or en-worlded cognition, as treated in this paper is almost naive. It's far more pervasive and extensive than using notebooks. The qualitative aspect of consciousness discussed by Chalmers and the like is the part most extended in the world. When you look at some scene there is a dynamical coupling between your body and what's outside it's putative boundaries. Your primary sensory cortices are strongly linked to whatever is going on in the world. Beyond that this information is processed along channels that the world had over time 'carved' in the networks of your brain, on the harder stone of what the world carved by it's work on the evolution of your genome.

The quality comes from the sum of all of this. Not just some cognitive or functional aspect appearing after 'processing' at the front of your brain. The whole dynamic is what you experience. There is no unconscious part unless you want to consider things in the visual scene that are hidden from view.

Cognition too is a reactive system across time that is shaped by the world and world/organism history of the world. We humans though are remarkable in what we can do with extended metaphors and internals markers for metaphor and we are so remarkable that we have confused ourselves horribly about what we are.

When you see and think about this visual scene your mind is in the scene, equally if not more so, than it is inside of your skull. Draw a lopsided infinity symbol, with the small loop around your brain, and the large loop around body and world and you have a handy diagram. One could argue though that the body/brain part of the system is somehow hotter and denser as living organisms are. What's 'out there' is condensed and reacted to 'in here' to generate that rich poetic and creative sense of being human. One could also, more pertinently, argue that the brain side of the loop accumulates history in a remarkable symbolism of substance and potential.

We are most amazing gobs of creature goo and hopefully we aren't the only ones that would see it that way.

Reply to Ciceronianus the White

Are you able to provide some actual examples of Heidegger's ideas that were preempted by Dewey?

Reply to John I don't know what you mean by "preempted." A more accurate word would probably be "anticipated." I doubt either directly influenced the other, though if that took place it's most likely Dewey influenced Heidegger as he was years older and had published significant work by the time Heidegger was a university student. If Heidegger's vile treatment of his mentor and friend Husserl is any indication, however, he would never have acknowledged he was influenced by Dewey even if he was.

But if you would read the article I linked to a few posts ago, you'd see mentioned there that Dewey rejected the belief that the mind is disassociated from the body and the world, and instead took the position that mind body and world were interwoven, long before Heidegger did. He also rejected the subject object distinction and did pioneering work in the philosophy of technology long before Heidegger did.

I certainly don't think they were similar thinkers or men. I would never compare Dewey as a man to the nasty, odious Heidegger. Dewey championed democracy and civil liberties; Heidegger was a Nazi. Philosophically, Dewey's work was always grounded in the world, not in mystic speculations regarding Being and of course the Nothing (which as Heidegger would say "itself nothings"), and though he recognized the danger in technology he didn't succumb to romanticism and confabulations regarding the past as did Heidegger.

Larry Hickman has written books and articles concerning Dewey and the relationship between his work, that of Heidegger and continental philosophy in general if you want to delve into that further or seek more specific examples.

Reply to Ciceronianus the White

When you write of "philosophers of the past hundred years having purported new insights that ( by implication) you claim were already had by Dewey, that sounds more like purported 'preemption' than 'anticipation' to my ears.

All I was asking for was some examples of some of Heidegger's significant ideas, and some examples of Dewey's preemptive, or even anticipatory, ideas. Do you have any well documented evidence that Heidegger was at all aware of Dewey's work?

Spinoza, Hume, Hegel and others in Europe and Peirce (if I am not mistaken) already rejected the 'subject/object' duality as it is thought substantively. Heidegger didn't reject the distinction (it is a perfectly valid logical distinction) he rejected the idea that it is ontologically primary. It is the phenomenology that he worked out as an alternative to the substantive subject/object dyad, that makes him arguably the most important philosopher of the 20th Century. I am not very familiar with Dewey's work, but I am very skeptical of any claim that he could have significantly anticipated Heidegger's elaborate (and brilliant) hermeneutic phenomenology.

You obviously don't like Heidegger, but I don't think it is a good idea to conflate your personal feelings against him for a cogent argument against his philosophical importance.

Reply to John No, by saying "purported new insights" I mean insights thought to be wholly new, which are, in fact, not new.

I have already said that I don't think Dewey directly influenced Heidegger or that Heidegger directly influenced Dewey, so I'm not sure why you ask if I have "well documented evidence" that Heidegger was aware of Dewey's work. If I did, you may be sure I wouldn't have said that I don't think there was a direct influence. And I make no argument at all about Heidegger's significance as a philosopher. He certainly thought he was significant, and clearly thought his work not only new but essential to our well being. So, according to him: "The future of the West depends upon the proper understanding of metaphysics as presented in my thought." Not, you see, a proper understanding of anybody else's thought.

I merely disagree with his assessment of himself, and that of others. I think several philosophers were thinking along similar lines at the turn of the 19th century and into the 20th, contra traditional metaphysics and epistemology. There are similarities between Dewey and Wittgenstein as well. I simply think Dewey isn't given the credit he is due.

Quoting Ciceronianus the White

If Heidegger's vile treatment of his mentor and friend Husserl is any indication, however, he would never have acknowledged he was influenced by Dewey even if he was.

On the basis of this I read into your post a suggestion, if not a contention, that Heidegger was influenced by Dewey, despite your caveat that there was "probably no direct influence". My mistake then.

As to insights being "wholly new" I don't believe there are any such things, and if just that was your point then I agree. But there is a vast difference between "wholly new" and merely "original" insights. Of course, I mean 'original' in a more modest sense than as the kind of "absolute origin" of the "wholly new".

Have you actually read Heidegger? Because if you have read (and understood) him I don't see how you could sustain an opinion that his philosophy was not, up until its own time, the most radical departure by far from traditional Western metaphysics. Heidegger's radical philosophy is arguably also pivotal to most, if not all, of the even more radical departures subsequent to it.

No, by using the words "would never" and "even if he was" my intent was to indicate what I felt would have been likely had there been influence, not what was the case.

I have, alas, read some things by Heidegger, yes. Specifically, the Question concerning Technology and Letter on Humanism and his addresses when he was Rektor at Freiburg.

Did I understand what I read? Well, the intent of his speeches while he was Rektor was quite clear, I think. I think I understood them, certainly, and suspect those hearing them and reading them did as well.

The Question concerning Technology was clear enough also, in my opinion, so I think I understood it. I thought his reference to the "monstrous" hydroelectric plant and other horrifying modern technology and their juxtaposition with good, simple peasants placing seeds in Nature's loving bosom was rather silly, though, and felt the essay was more an expression of romantic sentiment and hyperbole than anything else.

As to the Letter on Humanism, reading it was a trial. Let me say at once that I think discussions of Being (or being) and essence should have ended long ago. I remember reading Aquinas' De Ente et Essentia as part of a tutorial on Medieval philosophy and hoping that it would be the last time I'd have to encounter such concepts. It pretty much was the last time, as my reading of philosophy usually involved philosophers who were seemingly unconcerned with these hoary, ancient ideas, or in any case didn't address them in the works I read.

So it may be that I tend to become irritated when I see these words. Frankly, I don't think they're at all enlightening or even useful. Contemplating what it means to exist, or why we exist, or what our essence is, as a separate inquiry, strikes me as an academic exercise at best; at worst as an invitation to mere speculation and even mysticism.

This attitude may seem to indicate that I'm against all metaphysics to begin with, but I don't think that's the case, as I don't think metaphysics need involve the consideration only of Being and essence, or be based or be in response to ancient, probably mostly Aristotelian, metaphysics. In any case, I don't think the use of such terminology is required.

This creates problems with reading Heidegger's Letter and presumably other works, obviously. Heidegger seems to refer to Being constantly, and I think unhelpfully. References to humans as "shepherds of Being (or being)" and language as "the house of Being (or being)" do nothing for me, I'm afraid, and make me wonder just what is being said, and why it's being said in what I think is an unnecessarily unclear manner.

My inability to understand the varied mysteries of Being may prevent me from understanding Heidegger, or it may be that Heidegger is indulging in bullshit. Some I've read believe the latter; I really don't know. It may be that he insists on addressing in detail what can't usefully be addressed by language. It may be that one must be an initiate to the mysteries, or brought up in an environment where Being and essence are the concerns of philosophy, to understand him.

For all I know, Heidegger beats up old Aristotle better than anyone else ever has, though.

Quoting Ciceronianus the White

The Question concerning Technology was clear enough also, in my opinion, so I think I understood it. I thought his reference to the "monstrous" hydroelectric plant and other horrifying modern technology and their juxtaposition with good, simple peasants placing seeds in Nature's loving bosom was rather silly, though, and felt the essay was more an expression of romantic sentiment and hyperbole than anything else.

It's been a while since I read the LCT, so I returned to it, to try to find any reference to 'horrifying technology" or "good,simple peasants", or the "monstrous hydroelectric plant". I couldn't find any. The "monstrousness" Heidegger refers to is not the plant itself, but what it represents; the purely instrumental attitude towards nature; made possible by the uniquely modern 'safe distance' we have achieved due to our 'energy wealth', and which is potentially both destructive and trivializing ( the latter is seen in the "vacation industry" reference).. Heidegger is calling us to become intelligent witnesses to our own situation. Here is the passage concerning the hydroelectric plant:

[i]"The hydroelectric plant is set into the current of the Rhine. It sets the Rhine
to supplying its hydraulic pressure, which then sets the turbines turning. This
turning sets those machines in motion whose thrust sets going the electric cur-
rent for which the long-distance power station and its network of cables are set
up to dispatch electricity.In the context of the interlocking processes per-
taining to the orderly disposition of electrical energy, even the Rhine itself
appears as something at our command. The hydroelectric plant is not built into
the Rhine River as was the old wooden bridge that joined bank with bank for
hundreds of years. Rather the river is dammed up into the power plant. What
the river is now, namely, a water power supplier, derives from out of the essence
of the power station. In order that we may even remotely consider the mon-
strousness that reigns here, let us ponder for a moment the contrast that speaks
out of the two titles, “The Rhine” as dammed up into the power works, and
“The Rhine” as uttered out of the artwork, in Hölderlin’s hymn by that name.
But, it will be replied, the Rhine is still a river in the landscape, is it not?
Perhaps. But how? In no other way than as an object on call for inspection by a
tour group ordered there by the vacation industry."[/i]

Heidegger's concern seems to be with revealing the essential difference between ancient and modern technology, as is shown in the following passage:

[i]"The revealing that rules throughout modern technology has the character of
a setting-upon, in the sense of a challenging-forth. That challenging happens in
that the energy concealed in nature is unlocked, what is unlocked is transformed,
what is transformed is stored up, what is stored up is, in turn, distributed, and
what is distributed is switched about ever anew. Unlocking, transforming, stor-ing, distributing, and switching about are ways of revealing. But the revealing never simply comes to an end. Neither does it run off into the indeterminate.The revealing reveals to itself its own manifoldly interlocking paths, through regulating their course. This regulating itself is, for its part, everywhere secured.
Regulating and securing even become the chief characteristics of the challeng-ing revealing."[/i]

For me, Heidegger's essay is a prescient foreshadowing of the contemporary ecological issue of sustainability, and nowhere is it an exercise in ludditism or a call to return to pre-modern agrarianism. It seems to me that any "romantic sentiment " has been projected by you into your own interpreted version of the essay, and that it is you, not Heidegger, who is guilty of indulging in hyperbole.

I don't want to enter into any extensive exchange concerning the importance of the notions of 'being' or 'existence' because the question is simply too vast and concerns the entire history of philosophy. The question of being is central, in other words, regardless of whether Heidegger's interpretation of the question is 'correct'.

Reply to John It's been some time since I read the Question concerning Technology as well. I just took a quick look at it again.

I don't see how you get the impression that the "monstrousness which reigns here" doesn't refer to the hydroelectric plant, but instead to what it represents. It seems to me clear he isn't referring to "what it represents" whatever that's supposed to mean, as monstrous. It's the plant, which he seems to deny is even built into the river though the bridge somehow was. I think Heidegger is often interpreted as saying, or meaning, something he doesn't actually say (perhaps because of the limitations of language, which must be a poorly built house of being in some respects).

The bit about "challenging" is interesting as well. According to Heidegger, a tract of land is "challenged into the putting out of coal and ore." I assume he refers to mining. Different from this challenging is the act of the peasant "putting seeds" into the forces of growth and watching over its increase.

I must assume Heidegger was aware of the fact that mining has been going on for thousands of years. Slave labor was used by the Greeks and Romans for this purpose. Were they challenging the land into putting out coal (more likely tin) and ore? I also must assume he was aware of the fact that irrigation was practiced, rivers and lakes damned, channeled, rivers used to produce the energy required for grinding grain (the wind too) and other purposes, peat challenged out of the ground and firewood challenged from trees, both then stored for future use, all by the ancients. This sort of thing then was not monstrous, presumably, though it is now.

Heidegger is obviously employing metaphor in making these largely unexplained assertions. That's fine I suppose, but I would prefer a clear expression of a thought rather than emotive expressions. I'm reminded of the comment I think was made by Carnap regarding Heidegger, concerning his writing possibly being poetry. That's merely my recollection, though. But I for one am not looking for poetry from philosophers.

Reply to Ciceronianus the White

Yeah, I guess the plant could be thought to be "monstrous" just in the aesthetic sense that it is incongruously ugly in relation to the Rhine landscape. But I think Heidegger means to say the plant is monstrous, because of the monstrous disposition (the attitude that sees nature as merely 'standing reserve') it embodies.

I have no doubt Heidegger was well aware that mining has an ancient history. But in relation to pre-modern man-powered mining exploits I think Heidegger would say there was a kind of innocence, linked perhaps to a kind of understanding of nature as 'providential bounty'. The interpretation of nature as 'standing reserve' only becomes possible with the modern techniques of ever higher energy extraction and utilization, and the distance from nature this allows us to achieve. I think Heidegger was brilliantly prescient, in a way that no one preceding him had been, of this phenomenon.

I think the suggestion that Heidegger's philosophy is closer to poetry than to propositional logic and science is probably correct. This is just to say it is more of a "continental" rather than "analytic' style of philosophy, (and I know which I, for the most part, prefer). I don't believe, on the other hand, there is any convincing textual evidence to suggest that Heidegger did not accept the modern scientific understanding of the world, as far as it goes, or that he hated science. He did believe that scientific understanding (understanding of the vorhanden or 'present at hand') is secondary to, and derivative of, the everyday understanding (understanding of the zuhanden or 'ready to hand').

But it is important to note that the scientific (present at hand) understanding, which made possible the disposition to see nature as a standing reserve, was itself made possible by the ready to hand everyday understanding, and that its "monstrousness" consists not so much in its seeing nature as merely present to hand but in its seeing of nature (including people) as radically ready to hand, that is as mere resources. I believe it is this kind of machinic disposition that Heidegger thinks is truly monstrous, and I think he might say that the seeing that trivializes nature as merely present to hand stuff to be consumed in the aesthetic sense (the tourist mentality and so on) is in itself merely trivializing and lamentable.

Well, I disagree, and think Heidegger's belief that we were once innocents relying on and relishing the providential bounty of nature is indicative of his Romanticism. We've long looked at the world and other creatures as merely a resource for our use, going back at least to Genesis and God's injunction there that we subdue the earth and have dominion over the animals. And I think his beloved Greeks thought much the same, with some few exceptions.

Reply to Ciceronianus the White

The tendentiously rhetorical way you frame the idea notwithstanding, are you claiming that the ancients and medieval people of Europe did not generally understand there to be a providence at work in nature, an understanding which we moderns no longer generally hold?

And are you also claiming that this shift has not been due to the rise of modern science predominately since the seventeenth century? Are you claiming that the rise of modern science and technology was not, at least in part, accelerated by the invention of steam power, and the consequently increasing discoveries of coal reserves and even more accelerated by the discovery of oil?

Do you disagree that this rapid increase in the availability of cheap energy, coupled with the rise of the pharmaceutical and electronics industries and modern agriculture (all of which would have been impossible without petrochemicals) has enabled us to achieve a distance from nature hitherto impossible?

Do you disagree that it is this distance from nature, coupled with the decline in the providential paradigm, has enabled us to view nature both human and non-human as a mere material resource? The idea expressed in Genesis that God created the earth and its animals for man, can just as well be interpreted as a call to stewardship as it can be interpreted as a license for exploitation.

In any case Heidegger says the fall away from an understanding of being that would integrate humanity with nature, and tend towards an attitude of reverence rather than disregard towards nature, was already well underway with Plato and Aristotle.

If you disagree with all these things then you disagree with Heidegger's understanding of the evolution of Western culture, an understanding which he was arguably the first to significantly elaborate. You haven't offered any textual evidence to support your reading of Heidegger as some kind of starry eyed, hopelessly romantic mystic, so why should anyone take your obviously biased opinion about Heidegger seriously?

I feel bad about hijacking this thread, but in for a penny...

Certain of the ancients and probably most of those living in the middle ages thought there was such a thing as Providence. They also thought, generally, that we humans held dominion over the world, and considered the world to be a resource for use in achieving various goals. Our dominion was ordained byProvidence. I personally think it's something of a stretch to maintain that when Genesis speaks of subduing the world and having dominion over its creatures, it refers to kindly stewardship.

Frankly, I think if we believe that there was a time that we didn't look upon the world as being available for our use, we fool ourselves. We necessarily use it, to live. We will do whatever is necessary in order to live. Certainly there have always been those who treated the world with reverence, but I doubt there was a time when all humans did so, just as I doubt there was a Garden of Eden. It's far more likely only a few were so enlightened. Any pantheistic view requires reverence for nature, and we know the Stoics to have been pantheists, for example. Otherwise, belief in providence or belief that certain powers or gods must be propitiated before making use of what we want to make use of doesn't amount to the kind of reverence I think is being referred to here.

If Plato and Aristotle were falling away from this reverential attitude, just when does Heidegger think we had it? Sometime prior to recorded history? Someone who makes such a claim has the burden to establish it, and Heidegger does nothing to do so, though it seems to be essential to his argument, such as it is. To say we were "closer to nature" or more reverent towards it sometimes in the distant past and therefore our technology at that time was better or less dangerous, or we had a better attitude, isn't much of an argument or in my opinion.

The problems we encounter with technology now don't arise from the fact our Being is out of joint. The problems result because we now have the capacity to use up resources very quickly and even lay waste to the world, there are a lot more of us than there has ever been, and we are greedy, thoughtless, and selfish That isn't being "more detached from nature." In fact, we've always been greedy, thoughtless and selfish. There's evidence that environmental degradation, soil exhaustion and deforestation were taking place in ancient Greece as the result of human activity. Studies indicate environmental degradation in Polynesia as a result of human colonization beginning about 1000 years ago; as a result of human activity in modern Turkey (Asia Minor) about 5000 years ago. The increase in population and trade and improvements in travel during the Roman Empire and resulting demands for food and commodities is said to have resulted in environmental degradation as well.

Claiming there was a time when all revered nature and that we must become as we were then doesn't strike me as an intelligent way to address the dangers of technology and the problems we face, nor is it helpful to claim that "only a god will save us."

You may of course think whatever you like regarding my views on Heidegger. But if you seek textual support, a better use of your time may be to try to find support in Heidegger's texts for the highly speculative claims he makes regarding humans and our evolution; that is to say, support from sources other than his own intuitions.

I haven't actually claimed that nature was universally revered prior to the technological age, and I don't believe that idea can be rightly imputed to Heidegger, either, it just gives him too little credit.

Despite your assertions I remain convinced that modern humanity has insulated its everyday life from the depredations of nature, and as far as possible it has domesticated nature, even if sometimes only within the imagination. I am not saying (and Heidegger does not say) that this is all bad either, or that humanity should return to a pre-industrial agrarian culture, the point is to be aware of what we are, and live accordingly.

For me that this step away from nature is a defining feature of the human condition today is far less questionable than the idea that we have "always been greedy, thoughtless and selfish". I think the past instances of environmental degradation you mention can be put down to ignorance. There is much of self-interest in maintaining what you understand yourself to be critically dependent upon, but you need to understand how you might be having a negative effect on it in order to act. We have the ecological knowledge now, but I don't believe that any sense of our critical dependence on nature is so tangible to us today, as to be compelling.

In any case, I think at this point, given that you feel guilty about hijacking the thread, we should simply agree to disagree; I can't see anything more of any value coming from this conversation.

Reply to Ciceronianus the White

Ciceronianus, since this exchange, your enthusiasm and my curiosity has led me to do some reading of and about Dewey, and I must say that I agree with you that both his philosophy and his influence are vastly underrated. I am particularly impressed by the way he avoids the realism/ anti-realism polemic. So, thanks for influencing me to explore some new territory.

Reply to John You're quite welcome. I've always been impressed with the way Dewey anticipated much that has been taken as "new" in philosophy. I think he's been ignored largely because pragmatism fell out of fashion, and because his writing style is uninspired, to put it kindly.