This volume is intended to redress an imbalance that the editors find in
the study of the mind stemming from the work of Rationalists such as Descartes
and Leibniz and from Kant’s transcendental idealism. Such writers, the editors
claim in the introduction, attempted the ‘mathematization of the mind’ and
sought to replace Aquinas’ account of intentionality with the doctrine of
‘representationalism’ (p. x). On such an account, the immediate objects of
perception are representations internal to the mind rather than objects in
the external world, these representations being the result of a process in
which both mind and world play a role. The representations are then manipulated
by the mind ‘in accordance with the laws of logic, induction, statistical
inference and mathematical deduction’ (p. xi).

It is this picture of the mind as a system that manipulates internal representations
on rule-governed lines that the various contributors wish to challenge. The
picture suggests that the functions and operations of the mind can be adequately
characterized without making any essential reference to either the subject’s
body or his/her environment. The mind is essentially self-contained in this
respect. One consequence of such a picture, labeled ‘cognitivism’ here, is
that the operations of the mind and brain can be studied, either singly or
jointly, in isolation from considerations concerning the subject’s place
in the world. It would not be much of an exaggeration to suggest that this
is the received view in much recent cognitive science.

In place of such a picture, an account of the mind as essentially embodied
and environmentally embedded is proposed, although the particular details
of such an account is a matter of some dispute amongst the various philosophers,
psychologists, physiologists, cognitive scientists, neurologists, biologists,
and mathematicians who contribute to the volume. As suggested by the volume’s
subtitle, though, there is some consensus amongst those hostile to the standard
account that a full description of the mind cannot succeed without taking
on board the fact that the subject is an agent, actively and intentionally
interacting with his/her environment and objects therein. Studies of the
mind should proceed with this crucial fact securely in place.

The volume comprises four sections:

• The Editors’ Introduction
• Embodied, Evolving and Ecological Minds
• Mathematics and Neurobiology
• Philosophy of Action, Intention and Emotion

Let us touch briefly upon each of these in turn.

Given the diversity of the papers contained in the volume, one might hope
that the introductory essay would go some way to providing a cohesive account
of the various relations between the papers. However, this is not the case.
Instead, the introduction offers an account of the historical development
of the standard cognitivist view, tracing its route from Plato to Descartes
to contemporary functionalism. While this is undoubtedly an interesting read,
there are at least two ways in which it might have been profitably developed.

Firstly, any account of the development of cognitive science that draws
solely upon the Rationalist enlightenment tradition is missing a large part
of the story. The influence of the Empiricists, primarily John Locke and
David Hume, in this context should not be overlooked. Indeed, it is hard
to look at the rough characterization of the standard account of the mind
on offer without recalling Hume’s Newtonian story of the mind’s operations
and Locke’s account of the mind as essentially passive. Furthermore, the Baconian
methodology favored by Locke and Hume finds echoes in today’s standard scientific
practice, cognitive science being no exception. The Empiricist approach certainly
looks like a precursor of the current view of the mind as disengaged from
both body and environment and apt for scientific study.

Secondly, it is unfortunate that there is no attempt to draw out the interconnections
between the various papers. Given that these share a somewhat broad agenda,
the reader would have significantly benefited from an overview that identified
the various common threads and dissimilarities between the papers, or at
least outlined the different meanings that the evocative terms ’embodied’
and ’embedded’ might have. After all, the wider debate is not between two
fully developed theories; it is between two rough approaches to the study
of the mind, and as such we should expect to find numerous disputes internal
to each general school. Significant advances will only be made when researchers
in different areas are able to identify commonalities with the work of others,
a task that can be made all the more difficult through the confusing and
often contradictory use of semi-technical terms such as those above.

The first paper in the following section, by Andy Clark, attempts just
such a task, albeit of a limited nature. He argues that ‘cognition can be
embodied and action-oriented in two distinct ways’ (p. 1). These ways are
(or, at least, can be) complementary to each other. It is just such comparative
discussions that are vital to the future progress of the new approach, I
would argue.

The remaining papers in this section are an interesting mixture of theses
and approaches, covering topics such as the connection between and development
of language and bodily gestures, a ‘cognitive linguistic’ study of the concept
of time flow, and an argument to the effect that cognitivism cannot give
an adequate account of concepts. Alternative accounts of perception and cognition,
drawing on the likes of J. J. Gibson, close the section.

The section on Mathematics and Neurology is broadly centered around traditional
or cognitivist attempts to use mathematical models to capture the neurological
facts relating to perception and action. This section is something of a mixed
bag, with an unusually disparate range of topics discussed. These include
the standard input – output metaphor found in traditional accounts of behavior,
the account that we should give of agent causation given the facts about
the operation of the brain, and whether relativity theory requires a revision
of the ways in which we conceive of space and time in everyday practical
thought.

Finally, the papers in the Philosophy section also form a rather unusual
collection. The centerpiece is surely the two interesting discussions of emotion
contained here. One, by Valerie Gray Hardcastle, concerns its misrepresentation
by much neurophysiology and neuropsychology through oversimplification to
the point of caricature; the second, by Maxine Sheets-Johnstone concerns the
ways in which it is related to bodily movement. The other papers, coming from
different approaches outside the mainstream Anglo-American philosophical tradition,
consist of a call for the revision of the notion of the self and reality
in order to allow science to capture the facts concerning subjective phenomenal
experience, and a feminist discussion of the role of social theory in stressing
the importance of feeling in consciousness.

On the whole, this is certainly a worthwhile, if rather disparate, collection
of essays. Given that this collection first appeared as a double issue of
the Journal of Consciousness Studies this is probably to be expected. On
cannot, however, help feeling that a bit more work might have been done to
clarify the main aims of the collection. This might well have transformed
this collection from an interesting special issue of a journal to an important,
self-contained call-to-arms against the dominant cognitivist tradition of
modern times.

© 2001 Chris Lindsay

Chris Lindsay, Ph.D.
teaches philosophy at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. His research
interests include conceptual spatial awareness and agency.

Categories: Philosophical

Tags: Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences