Identifying and individuating cognitive systems: a task-based distributed cognition alternative to agent-based extended cognition.
Jim Davies, Kourken Michaelian
Cognitive Processing August 2016 DOI: 10.1007/s10339-016-0759-4 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Cognitive systems Distributed cognition Extended cognition Visual re-representation |
| Key points | Argues that a task-based variant of distributed cognition can identify and individuate cognitive systems across sub-individual and supra-individual scales while avoiding cognitive bloat, advantages illustrated through parallel case studies of re-representation in the human visual system and a biomedical engineering laboratory. |
Abstract
This article argues for a task-based approach to identifying and individuating cognitive systems. The agent-based extended cognition approach faces a problem of cognitive bloat and has difficulty accommodating both sub-individual cognitive systems ("scaling down") and some supra-individual cognitive systems ("scaling up"). The standard distributed cognition approach can accommodate a wider variety of supra-individual systems but likewise has difficulties with sub-individual systems and faces the problem of cognitive bloat. We develop a task-based variant of distributed cognition designed to scale up and down smoothly while providing a principled means of avoiding cognitive bloat. The advantages of the task-based approach are illustrated by means of two parallel case studies: re-representation in the human visual system and in a biomedical engineering laboratory.
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