Yes. I think what I'll do is turn on admin approval for new sign-ups when it becomes clear that we need it, but leave things open for now.

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. — Hanover

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?

Total transcendence was never a condition for membership here but I'm happy if we've facilitated it when the need was great.

I can ask support for the fucking head-bang smilie.

As a general comment, since jamalrob brought up my favorite cantankerous bachelor from Frankfurt, I would be willing to admit that what is called "conceptual art" (and literally everything) theoretically has the possibility to affect the aforementioned transportative experience, but all I'm saying is that it doesn't do this for me and that it is a mistake to call it art. — Thorongil

Just a quick note to again emphasize that abstract painting and sculpture, including the examples in the OP, are not conceptual art and have very little in common with it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_art

The closest thing I can do to that, I think, is set things up so that new sign-ups have to be approved. But that makes things a lot less open than I would prefer. I don't know, what do you think?

Pre-moderation of all posts is an option too, but we'll never go down that route.

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

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.

Well, feel free to do that. Several philosophers have given thought to the problem. I was just asking why you think one must define art before judging an artwork. If the answer is that you personally find it hard to judge artworks without an explicit definition of what constitutes an artwork, then go ahead and pursue the "what is art?" question. But in doing so you sabotage your own discussion, which is not about defining art but about judging it—and many great critics, curators, art historians and writers know very well how to tell good from bad art without knowing or caring what precisely art is.

Go back to my original comment in the other thread and it should be clear. I'm not comparing a chair with art. I'm comparing two artefacts: a chair and a work of art.

My stance is one would first have to define 'art' before being able to judge its quality. — Sentient

Why? Do you have to first define 'chair' before judging the quality of a chair? If something can count as a chair, then it's a chair, and the same with art.

Check it out: http://thephilosophyforum.com/page/useful-hints-and-tips

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?

You can paint a picture badly just as you can make a chair badly. Judgment takes a bit more effort though, because unlike bad chairs, there are no practical consequences, at least not in the relevant way. But I'm going to chicken out of answering more fully. It would be better as a separate discussion, so go ahead and create one if you feel like it.

I think so, because I think there is such a thing as bad art, and that a lot of art is bad because of the way it is done, so that the way it is done can be described as bad too.

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.

Welcome, SoS. What kind of evidence would satisfy you?

What happened then? Did things get worse before they got better?

When did you find out you had epilepsy? — darthbarracuda

I have a strange narrative about this, which I don't trust despite its being how I remember things. When I was about 12 years old I had a seizure on the beach. I was temporarily away from my friends so nobody noticed. I woke up basically drunk, and missing large chunks of language--this is just what happens after a seizure--and staggered home with my friend (as it happens the brother of the guy who recently died), who thought I was play-acting, just being silly.

I didn't know this was an epileptic seizure and didn't think anything of it. I was unaware that I had--as now seems likely--lay on the sand convulsing for at least a few seconds. And yet when my physics teacher a couple of years later asked if there was anyone in the class who had epilepsy, I hesitatingly put up my hand. Nothing else had happened since that first episode, and I hadn't told my parents or been to the doctor.

Not long after, I had a seizure in front of my parents and I was diagnosed.

I don't want to say that "I just knew" or any of that mystical crap. Maybe I was just insightful. However I don't remember even knowing what epilepsy was or thinking about it at all.

Note that Malevich, Kandinsky and others went abstract well before 1920.

Whatever one uses to call the predominant forms of "art" after about 1920 is what I am almost universally repelled by. Is there a term for that or is it just "conceptual art" as you mentioned above? — Thorongil

No, or only if it's actually conceptual art as I described, in which artistry is unimportant. This is certainly not the case with Rothko and Pollock. I think maybe you should rethink your 1920s cut-off. I'm not sure it corresponds to anything. You'd be better off identifying conceptual art, which you will say--and I will only very partially and mildly dispute--is wholly crap, and not even art; and distinguishing it from completely abstract painting and sculpture, which, though you can recognize a certain artistry, you just don't like.

They ought to have written books, then. — Thorongil

Yes, I agree. What they're doing is, I often feel, a bad way of doing philosophy as well as a bad way of doing art.

Epilepsy, but free of seizures for several years. A friend of mine, also with epilepsy, who had it under control for ten years, died during a seizure two weeks ago after his drugs suddenly stopped working.

Broken arm, healing.

Worried about heart attacks now that I'm in my 40s and still eating butter and bacon. Stopped smoking a few weeks ago.

I drink too much and get horribly depressed and ashamed when I'm hungover.

I get extremely dry cracked heels from wearing flipflops all the time.

I've always had tinnitus.

But generally good and, unlike TGW, loving life.

I'm not sure philosophy has made me feel better in any way. If anything I think being exposed to certain kinds of philosophies, like antinatalism, has dented my optimism. I'm quite impressionable. I'm not into philosophy for the self-help though, so that's okay.

I suppose I am casual when I feel it's appropriate, and more erudite when I feel similarly. Sometimes it's nice to "let your hair down" -- even in a serious discussion. — Moliere

Yes, I'm the same, or at least try to be. It's very welcome as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, that's been noted. I don't hold out much hope for MathJax as a feature request, to be honest, but I'll add it to the list.

Yes, I agree. It's a fallacy that inadequate technology is somehow good for that very reason. And that's why my "distraction-free mode" idea (above) could work: we're not forcing people to use it. It would be a button next to "Preview", and people would use it because it'd be a pleasure to use.

Yes, but this is about what people are used to. That a slow process involving several full page loads might force people to take their time is not a recommendation of that functionality--it is an indication that people haven't got used to the faster way of doing things.

Actually I don't think that's the whole story. I think the functionality could be improved so as to make a discussion less like a quick-fire comments thread. Personally I'd like to be able to expand the compose box to a larger "distraction-free" mode. Imagine the preview popup but with editing ability. I think I might add that to the list of feature requests.

One reason it's a bit less formal is the technology. The posting functionality works like Facebook comments. It's almost too easy to post, but things may settle down. Maybe it's up to us all right now to discipline ourselves a little bit; how the (ex-)PFers post in this forum is really what will influence the posting habits of newcomers.

But I would like to know if the formality has changed or not. — darthbarracuda

Not sure what you're asking here.

The best possible future for humanity, in my view, is one where we collectively agree to cease reproduction and live our lives for as long as we desire to. We would be abstaining from forcing people into existence while pursuing our dreams for as long as we can sustain them.

I suppose it was only a matter of time.

Yes, very good points. Trying to find the time.

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:

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. — Louise Barrett, Beyond the Brain

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).

Welcome!

Notice that in saying "welcome!" I am not referring to anything :D

I don't see why it would be deflationary realism. It's just deflationary. It has nothing to do with realism (or antirealism). — Michael

I see what you mean.

I don't find it at all problematic for an anti-realist to accept the truth of "chairs exist" and "chairs are not experiences, ideas, or words" (e.g. by arguing for the coherence theory of truth and showing that these two statements cohere with some other set of specified sentences). The fact that one is arguing for a non-correspondence account of truth is why it is not realist. — Michael

Put like that, it looks like a matter of taste whether you want to call that position anti-realism or merely something like deflationary realism. What makes the difference is when you say that objects are ontologically dependent on experiences, ideas, or words.

Welcome. You're just in time to join our Sein und Zeit reading group.

andrewk and Nagase. What's taking them so long?

It's the end of an era. Want a new job?

Cheers darth, welcome to the party.

* Numbering of posts, so that yours would read "1" and mine would read "2" — Moliere

Added to the OP for the next round of requests.

Thanks shmik, it's in the works and we'll let everyone know when things are set up.

Welcome Harry :)

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

Welcome Ying.