Pragmatics & Cognition - Volume 18, Issue 2, 2010

Based on an endorsement of the hypothesis of extended cognition (and, more broadly, of distributed cognition), this paper proposes a criticism of the representationalist assumptions that still pertain to these contemporary models of cognition. I first rehearse some basic problems akin to any representationalist model of cognition, before proposing some more specific arguments directed against the necessity, the plausibility, and the coherence of the marriage between extended cognition and contemporary representationalism (not necessarily a symbolic one). Extended and distributed models of cognition have the resources to get rid of representationalism, and they should better do it. Their adherence to representationalism might be an (illusory) by-product of the extended character of the scientific study of cognition.

Understanding the relationship between concepts and experience seems necessary to specifying the content of experience, yet current theories of concepts do not seem up to the job. With Peter Gärdenfors’s conceptual spaces theory as a foundation and with enactivist philosophy as inspiration, we present a proposed extension to conceptual spaces theory and use it to outline a model of the emergence of concepts and experience. We conclude that neither is ultimately primary but each gives rise to the other: i.e., that they co-emerge. Such a model can then serve as the anchor to a theory of concepts more generally. Concepts are most naturally understood in symbolic and representational terms, while much of experience, in contrast, is non-symbolic and non-representational; yet the conflict between the two will, herein, be shown to be more apparent than real. The main contribution of this paper is to argue for, by means of this account of co-emergence, a continuum between “low-level” mental content that is more appropriately understood in highly context-sensitive and directly sensorimotor-based terms, and “high-level” mental content that is more appropriately understood in context-free and representational or symbolic terms. In doing so we conclude that the extreme positions of representationalism and anti-representationalism are fatally flawed.

Recent experiments show video games have a range of positive cognitive effects, such as improvement in attention, spatial cognition and mental rotation, and also overcoming of cognitive disabilities such as fear of flying. Further, game environments are now being used to generate scientific discoveries, and bring about novel phenomenological effects, such as out-of-body experiences. These advances provide interesting interaction design possibilities for video games. However, since the cognitive mechanisms underlying these experimental effects are unknown, it is difficult to systematically derive novel systems and interaction designs based on these results. We review the emerging cognitive mechanism known as common coding (which proposes a common neural representation connecting execution, perception and imagination of movements), and outline how this mechanism could provide an integrated account of the cognitive effects of video games. We then illustrate, using two ongoing projects, how novel video game interaction designs could be derived by extending common coding theory.

Relative gradable adjectives (“tall”, “big”) raise serious problems in semantics. First, I explore a few intuitions about relative gradable predicates and clarify some points. Second, I propose a multipropositionalist, Perry-inspired, perspective on relative gradable predicate utterances. Perry’s version of multipropositionalism introduces many different propositions or contents, including indexical content, referential content, and designational content, which are carried by the utterance of a single sentence. It also offers a new approach to relative gradable predicates, and suggests an explanation for the way relative predicates work in linguistic communication and for the divergent intuitions about these predicates. My approach focuses on the cognitive significance of relative gradable sentence utterances.

In this paper we show how some reasoning, though fallacious, can appear to be attractive and useful for beings-like-us. Although they do not provide conclusive evidence to support or reject a certain claim the way scientific statements do, they tell us something interesting about how humans build up their arguments and reasons. First of all, we will consider and investigate three main types of fallacies: argumentum ad hominem (argument against person), argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to authority), and argumentum ad populum (appeal to popularity or bandwagon). These three fallacies are traditionally considered as examples of a broader category called ignoratio elenchi. Secondly, we show how people who commit these fallacies rely on information about other human beings in their reasoning. That is, they do not follow certain logical procedures that eventually lead them to correct conclusions. But they simply make use of others as social characters. For example, being an authority, being an expert, being part of a class, etc., become the substitutes for more direct evidence to support a certain claim or to make an argument more appealing.

Irony is acknowledged to be usually critical: the ironic speaker tends to exhibit an apparent positive attitude in order to communicate a negative valuation. The reverse is considered to be also possible though: the ironic speaker can praise by apparent blaming, although it seldom happens. This unbalance between the two sorts of ironic examples is the so-called asymmetry issue of irony. Here I shall deny the possibility of being ironic without criticizing — hence the asymmetry issue is an illusion. By claiming that irony is always critical I suggest an even stronger claim: criticism is what distinguishes irony from the similar phenomenon of metaphor.

In Why We Cooperate (2009), Tomasello addresses the problem of human uniqueness, which has become the focus for a lot of recent research at the frontier between the Humanities and the Life Sciences. Being both a developmental psychologist and a primatologist, Tomasello is especially well suited to tackle the subject, and the present book is the most recent one in a series of books and papers by himself and his colleagues (see below). Tomasello’s basic position is squarely a dual-inheritance account, in which human uniqueness is explained both through genetics and through culture (in other words, both through natural and through cultural evolution). The main idea is that the phylogenetic specificity of humankind rests in its species-specific adaptation for sociability. The account offered by Tomasello contrasts human cooperation and altruism with nonhuman primate competition, and proposes that human altruism leads to shared intentionality (the ability to share attention to a third object and, more generally, to share beliefs and intentions). The evolutionary explanation Tomasello offers is that human ancestors were led through some kind of selection pressure to common foraging leading to collaboration and sharing. After outlining Tomasello’s position as it is described in the book, as well as the comments by Dweck, Spelke, Silk, and Skyrms which follow, I discuss Tomasello’s thesis, noting a few problems with his approach. These criticisms are based on his own work and on a number of his own other books and papers, as well as on other relevant work in the domain.

Ever since David Lewis’s publication of Convention: A Philosophical Study (1969) his definition of a convention has been widely accepted and marginally challenged. Andrei Marmor’s book Social Conventions: From Language to Law (2009) is both a continuation and a critical response to Lewis’s work. “Convention”, alongside “rule” and “norm”, is one of the most important and fundamental philosophical concepts. We tend to think of our behavior as human beings, of our linguistic and social actions, as largely conditioned by conventions. Marmor examines the role and significance of conventions in language, in the moral sphere, and in the legal system. His definition of convention renders language less conventional than we had thought it is and morality more so. In this review article I present Marmor’s concept of convention and follow the book’s main arguments. I then point to what I think is amiss in his account of convention, namely, the idea that some norms are conventional, which yields a conflation of norms and conventions.