Chemero (2009), Chapter 5: Guides to Discovery

The dynamical stance laid out by Chemero in the previous chapter has a potential flaw (besides being a bit weak-ass) - it's not clear how it can serve as a guide to discovery. How do you do productive science taking this approach? Chemero is going to make two suggestions, only one of which I think works: first, he's going to suggest dynamical models such as the Haken-Kelso-Bunz (HKB) model can serve to stimulate empirical work even when they are entirely phenomenological. This approach is, I think, entirely incorrect, and this chapter is full of serious problems (only some of which are unique to Chemero). Second, he's going to suggest that Gibsonian ecological psychology can actually solve the problem much more robustly anyway, by serving as an underlying theory of behaviour. This will work better, and I would advocate Bingham's model of coordination as an exemplar of this, more promising route.

But first, the HKB model as guide to discovery (this chapter is largely the material from Chemero, 2000; I intend to turn this post into a paper to rebut that paper and point to the Bingham model as an alternative, so comments are especially welcome on this one). Time to get a little critical, I'm afraid.

Chemero (2009), Chapter 4: The Dynamical Stance

The problem with the theory of representation Chemero settles on in the previous chapter, as we shall see, is that it makes representation unavoidable. If there are representations, then RECS fails to get off the ground (remember, the radical bit is anti-representationalism). In this chapter, Chemero identifies a path past this problem (the 'dynamical stance'), explains why it works, but then concludes with a new problem, that of how to guide future discovery.

Chemero (2009), Chapter 3: Theories of Representation

The radical part of 'radical embodied cognitive science' is anti-representationalism. Simply put, the claim is that the brain does not internally represent states of the world in any way, nor are these the basis for our experience. It's radical because to a typical cognitive scientist, the mere suggestion is ludicrous: like suggesting you do biology without genes or particle physics without Large Hadron Colliders. But this indignation is hiding a dirty little secret: mental representations are generally just assumed to exist, because of assumptions about the poverty of stimulus we supposedly face. They are theoretical entities designed to solve a problem which, frankly, might not exist. There has been a lot of theoretical work on what it means to be a representation, but most of this has occurred in philosophy and most modern experimental cognitive psychologists don't ever engage with the issue. Sabrina has talked about this a bit already here and here and here and it's likely to keep cropping up.

Chemero's third chapter lays out some basics about what a theory of representation has to look like. If you're going to be anti-representational you need something to be against that isn't a straw man. This is unfortunately difficult because the concept of representation is a moving target: if I had a dollar for every conversation I've had that included the phrase 'Oh, that's not what I mean by representation' (even when it really is), I wouldn't need to submit the grant I should be working on just now. This chapter is therefore going to look for a 'minimal case' of representation that doesn't bug too many people but that isn't too easy a target.

Strap in, this chapter's busy.

Chemero (2009), Chapter 2: Embodied Cognition

Chemero spent Chapter 1 creating space for himself and his book in the marketplace of ideas about how we should do our cognitive science. Chapter 2 is about situating his theory in amongst the competition, with the goal of establishing exactly what a radical embodied cognitive science (RECS) is, and that it is a perfectly respectable competitor. He reviews a little history and an example study using dynamical systems that explains a  'representationally hungry' cognitive task to set things up. This is still quite preliminary work, but time well spent I think.

Chemero (2009), Chapter 1: Hegelian Arguments in Cognitive Science

The basic thesis of RECS is that cognitive science should give up on representations (the radical bit) and focus on explaining the embodiment of cognition in a complex, perceiving-acting dynamical system. Chemero spends Chapter 1 heading off the likely initial line of resistance to this thesis; namely, the argument that 'your thesis got ruled out in the 80s by [insert name here]'. Chemero labels arguments of this type 'Hegelian' and makes a case that a) they're mostly a sign of the immaturity of modern cognitive science, but most importantly b) they don't really need to convince anyone to stop trying to develop a radical, embodied cognitive science (and that the rest of the book is therefore still worth a read). I basically agree with this analysis; in fact, we started this blog to try and address the immaturity issue in (a) (in favour of some form of (b)). So we're off to a good start!

New Reading Group: Chemero (2009), Radical Embodied Cognitive Science

I thought it was time to pick up the next book I have on my list to go through here on the blog. This is Tony Chemero's book, Radical Embodied Cognitive Science (hence RECS). I've read through it once, and it inspired me to write on affordances here, here and here. My goal now is to take things a little more slowly and think about the detail.

Tony is a philosopher who's been actively engaged in things ecological for quite a while now. The goal of RECS is to lay out a) what radical embodied cognitive science is, b) propose a methodological stance in the form of dynamical systems, and then c) lay out how ecological psychology is the key theoretical structure that gives this approach it's methods for 'discovery', i.e. the ability to make predictions and do normal science. (Still curious? Check out the Wordle of the book!) Chemero's going to invoke what he describes as 'shored-up ecological psychology'; this refers to his ideas on the ontology of affordances and on information. I'm not currently all that convinced by the changes, but I'll leave the details until we get there. I'll try and entice Tony into stopping by, hopefully we can have a dialogue on some of this material (especially the later chapters on his 'shored up' version of Gibson).

I've been preparing posts on chapters for the last few months, actually, but I've waited to start posting so that I could be well ahead before I got going. This is going to let me tweak the posts with later information in mind, as well as post updates fairly regularly without crushing my schedule. I'm really enjoying this extended process, I'm coming to grips with what Tony is up to and it's been an excellent way to really study the book. My optimistic plan is to stay ahead like this, and move onto other books in the future.

I'll post on the first chapter as next Tuesday's update; I'd love it if people were reading along and commenting.

Reference

Chemero, A. (2009). Radical Embodied Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, MIT Press e-book

F*cking affordances - how do they work?

Over on Bounds of Cognition, Ken has been doggedly pursuing what he thinks is a critical problem with the concept of affordances as described by Gibson (1979) and expanded on by Turvey, Shaw, Reed & Mace (1981; hence TSRM). I feel the need to spend some time consolidating my responses and some ideas in one place; every time I try to lay out why the problem is ill-posed or a potential route out, Ken just says I'm clouding or avoiding the issue or throwing out red herrings.

I actually think Ken has identified one very useful critique of the affordance concept: the lack of care with which we attach '-able' to words. But Ken isn't just making a methodological point; he thinks he's shown that affordances cannot structure light in a way that can specify the affordance, and that's the argument that needs to be tackled.

Saddle up: this is going to take some time, and I'm not going to solve everything. But to get a little ahead of myself, the answer to the problem is that it's complicated.