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What is this cognition that is supposedto be embodied?Ken AizawaPublished online: 30 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Ken Aizawa (2014): What is this cognition that is supposed to be embodied?,Philosophical Psychology, DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2013.875280

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What is this cognition that is supposedto be embodied?

Ken Aizawa

Many cognitive scientists have recently championed the thesis that cognition is embodied.

In principle, explicating this thesis should be relatively simple. There are, essentially, only

two concepts involved: cognition and embodiment. After articulating what will here be

meant by ‘embodiment’, this paper will draw attention to cases in which some advocates of

embodied cognition apparently do not mean by ‘cognition’ what has typically been meant

by ‘cognition’. Some advocates apparently mean to use ‘cognition’ not as a term for one,

among many, causes of behavior, but for what has more often been called “behavior.”

Some consequences for this proposal are considered.

Keywords: Behavior; Chemero; Chomsky; Clark; Cognition; Dennett; Embodied

Cognition; Haugeland; Maturana; Skinner

1. Introduction

Many cognitive scientists have recently argued that cognition is embodied. In principle,

explicating this thesis should be relatively simple. There are, evidently, only two concepts

involved: cognition and embodiment. Despite the modesty of this expository burden,

there remains a striking ambiguity on these topics. Many of the ambiguities concerning

‘embodiment’ and ‘cognition’ are likely to be familiar to those working in the area, hence

not surprising at all. Nevertheless, there is one bold proposal that has surfaced with

considerable regularity that has essentially passed without comment in the literature.

This is the proposal that we understand cognition as a type of behavior.1 What is

surprising about this proposal is that cognition has widely been supposed to be different

from behavior. It has typically been assumed to be among the causes of behavior.The proposal merits attention for three reasons. First, it is sometimes unclear what

advocates of embodied cognition take to be the relationship between cognition and

behavior. Insofar as there is confusion about this relationship, it will be helpful to

dispel it. Insofar as the relationship is only implicit, it will be helpful to make it

q 2014 Taylor & Francis

Ken Aizawa is Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, Newark.Correspondence to: Ken Aizawa, 404 Conklin Hall, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University, 175 University

Avenue, Newark, NJ 07102, USA. Email: ken.aizawa@gmail.com

Philosophical Psychology, 2014http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2013.875280

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explicit. Second, insofar as one really does mean to identify cognition with a type ofbehavior, we will be in a better position to appreciate what one means by the phrase

‘cognition is embodied’. Perhaps there is less to this surprising claim than one mightexpect. Third, insofar as one does not really wish to identify cognition with a type of

behavior, one can then be clear about that. Moreover, there will be an additionalconstraint on what one takes cognition to be. If cognition is not a type of behavior,

but, say, a cause of behavior, then this limits the sort of thing that cognition might be.If cognition is a cause of behavior, one can better appreciate why it might be

something realized in the brain alone. If cognitive processes were among the causes ofbehavior, then they would be among the many other causal factors occurring within anorganism—processes such as digestion and respiration—that manifest themselves in

the behavior of the organism.It should be emphasized that this examination of the proposal that cognition is a

type of behavior is not intended to discredit research on embodied cognition. Thescope and diversity of hypotheses that go under the heading of “embodied cognition”

is far too great for any so simplistic an attempt at a “refutation.” Further, althoughthere will be some indications of the negative consequences of the identification or

conflation of cognition and behavior, the principal goal here is not even critical.Instead, the principal point is to get the proposal that cognition is behavior out in theopen for critical examination. Thus, rather than offering a challenge to embodied

cognition or even one form of embodied cognition, the overarching goal is clarityabout what cognition is hypothesized to be in the context of embodied cognition.

The paper will begin with a brief exposition of one sense of ‘embodiment’ that is tobe found in the literature. This exposition, in section 2, is not an attempt to give the

“correct” usage of ‘embodiment’; it is merely an attempt to fix terminology. Section 3will recall one long-standing assumption about the relationship between cognition

and behavior, namely, that cognition has been supposed to be one, among many,putative causes of behavior. While this assumption is far less than a worked out theory

of cognition or of behavior, it does have two virtues: it provides a relatively clear basisfor a distinction between cognition and behavior and it avoids the complexities in thecurrent debate on the “mark of the cognitive.”2 Sections 4–7 will review cases in which

cognition has apparently been treated as a type of behavior, along with some of theconsequences of this identification. They will consider proposals by Maturana

(1970/1980), Chemero (2009), Dennett (1997), Clark (2008, 2010), Haugeland(1998), and Rowlands (2009a, 2009b).

2. What is “Embodiment”?

In “Mind embodied and embedded,” Haugeland rejects what he takes to be a residual

Cartesianism found in much of contemporary cognitive science. Haugeland maintainsthat cognitive states and processes are not realized merely by the brain, but by the

brain, body, and world. In the place of this residual Cartesianism, he proposes an“intimacy of the mind’s embodiment and embeddedness in the world” (1998, p. 208).

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By this “intimacy” he intends “a kind of commingling or integralness of mind, body,and world” (1998, p. 208).

In Out of our heads, Noe identifies the same Neo-Cartesianism as does Haugelandand also rejects it:

It isn’t surprising to be told that there is a thing inside each of us that thinks andfeels and wants and decides. This was the view of the seventeenth-centuryphilosopher Rene Descartes, who held that each of us is identical to an interiorsomething whose essence is consciousness; each of us, really, is an internal rescogitans, or thinking thing. . . . Of course, . . . Descartes himself, didn’t teach thatthat thing inside us that thinks and feels is a part of our body, a bit of flesh, suchas the brain. [He] supposed that it was something immaterial or spiritual, and so,in that sense, that it was something unnatural. How could mere matter—meremeat—achieve the powers of thought and feeling? Such a possibility boggles themind. (2009, p. 5)

Like Haugeland, Noe maintains that one’s mental life is not realized in one’s brain. It is

realized in one’s physical activities in the world: “consciousness is not something thebrain achieves on its own. Consciousness requires the joint operation of brain, body,

and world. Indeed, consciousness is an achievement of the whole animal in itsenvironmental context” (Noe, 2009, p. 10) and “my consciousness now . . . depends

not only on what is happening in my brain but also on my history and my currentposition in and interaction with the wider world” (Noe, 2009, p. 4).

The word ‘depends’—used in the last passage by Noe—is, of course, ambiguous.There are many sorts of dependency relations. Most notably, there are causaldependencies and various constitutive or compositional dependencies. Essentially

everyone in contemporary cognitive science accepts that what one is conscious of attime t is causally dependent upon, or causally influenced by, one’s history and current

position and (causal) interaction with the wider world. One may be conscious of anafterimage at time t due to the flash of a camera in one’s visual field at a prior moment

and a current absence of other bright lights. Noe, however, envisions a much moreradical dependency between mind and world. His view is evidently that one’s mind—

what one is conscious of at a time t—is realized by, constituted by, or supervenes uponone’s history and current position and causal interactions with the world. This is whathe means when he claims that you are not your brain.3

So, for the present, let ‘embodiment’ mean something like the view that cognition isrealized by, constituted by, or supervenes upon parts of the body other than just the

brain.4 This is clearly not the only sense of ‘embodiment’ to be found in the literature.To reinforce this point, there is the important strand of thought found in Lakoff and

Johnson’s 1999 book, Philosophy in the flesh. Early on, they write:

Reason is not disembodied, as the tradition has largely held, but arises from thenature of our brains, bodies, and bodily experience. This is not just the innocuousand obvious claim that we need a body to reason; rather, it is the striking claim thatthe very structure of reason itself comes from the details of our embodiment. Thesame neural and cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive and move aroundalso create our conceptual systems and modes of reason. Thus, to understand reasonwe must understand the details of our visual system, our motor system, and the

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general mechanisms of neural binding. In summary, reason is not, in any way, atranscendent feature of the universe or of disembodied mind. Instead, it is shapedcrucially by the peculiarities of our human bodies, by the remarkable details of theneural structure of our brains, and by the specifics of our everyday functioning inthe world. (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, p. 5)

In this passage, the embodiment of reason, or cognition, is not a matter of the

realization base, or the supervenience base, of cognition.5 Instead, cognition isembodied in the sense that reason is shaped by—is causally influenced by—the natureof one’s brain, body, and experience. Cognition is embodied in the sense that the

mechanisms for perception and action are the same as the mechanisms for conceptmanipulation and reasoning. These are important themes in the embodied cognition

literature, but they just happen not to be the themes to be examined here.6

3. Cognition as a Putative Cause of Behavior

While philosophy and psychology have witnessed abundant disagreement about thenature of cognitive processes, there has nevertheless remained at least one simple,

widely shared presupposition about them, namely, that they are different frombehaviors. More specifically, cognitive processes have been supposed to be among the

mechanisms that drive behavior. This is something about which Cognitivists andBehaviorists can agree. Where they will disagree, of course, is whether cognition in fact

plays the causal role it is traditionally supposed to have. Cognitivists believe that itdoes; Behaviorists believe that it does not.

At the risk of a bit of anachronism, we might see that even B. F. Skinner and Noam

Chomsky shared a view of the putative role of cognition in behavior, although theydiffered in their views of the actual role of cognition. Recall that, in Verbal behavior,

Skinner wrote:

It has generally been assumed that to explain behavior, or any aspect of it, one mustattribute it to events taking place inside the organism. In the field of verbal behaviorthis practice was once represented by the doctrine of the expression of ideas.An utterance was felt to be explained by setting forth the ideas which it expressed.If the speaker had had a different idea, he would have uttered different words orwords in a different arrangement. (1957, p. 5)

In proximity to these claims, Skinner labeled ideas ‘explanatory fictions’. He claimedthat “the difficulty is that ideas for which sounds are said to stand cannot beindependently observed” (1957, p. 6). Further:

There is obviously something suspicious in the ease with which we discover in a setof ideas precisely those properties needed to account for the behavior whichexpresses them. We evidently construct the ideas at will from the behavior to beexplained. There is, of course, no real explanation. (Skinner, 1957, p. 6)

Chomsky’s review of Verbal behavior makes clear that he shares with Skinner thepicture of the cognitive as among the putative causes of behavior. Chomsky writes:

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It is important to see clearly just what it is in Skinner’s program and claims thatmakes them appear so bold and remarkable. It is not primarily the fact that he hasset functional analysis as his problem, or that he limits himself to study of‘observables’, i.e., input-output relations. What is so surprising is the particularlimitations he has imposed on the way in which the observables of behavior are to bestudied, and, above all, the particularly simple nature of the ‘function’ which, heclaims, describes the causation of behavior. One would naturally expect thatprediction of the behavior of a complex organism (or machine) would require, inaddition to information about external stimulation, knowledge of the internalstructure of the organism, the ways in which it processes input information andorganizes its own behavior. These characteristics of the organism are in general acomplicated product of inborn structure, the genetically determined course ofmaturation, and past experience. (1959, p. 27)

Here Chomsky does not use the word ‘cognition’, but cognitive processing hasstandardly been thought to be a form of information processing that depends on theinternal structure of the organism. Later in his review, he adds a bit more:

It is not easy to accept the view that a child is capable of constructing an extremelycomplex mechanism for generating a set of sentences, some of which he has heard,or that an adult can instantaneously determine whether (and if so, how) a particularitem is generated by this mechanism, which has many of the properties of anabstract deductive theory. Yet this appears to be a fair description of theperformance of the speaker, listener, and learner. If this is correct, we can predict thata direct attempt to account for the actual behavior of speaker, listener, and learner,not based on a prior understanding of the structure of grammars, will achieve verylimited success. The grammar must be regarded as a component in the behavior ofthe speaker and listener which can only be inferred, as Lashley has put it, from theresulting physical acts. (Chomsky, 1959, p. 57)

Here again, Chomsky does not use the word ‘cognition’, but cognition has often beenthought to have an inferential character that figures into the behavior of both speakers

and listeners. Insofar as this mechanism or grammar is what we have come tounderstand as cognitive machinery, we can see this as an instance of the view that

cognitive mechanisms are among the causes of behavior. So, evidently, Skinner andChomsky shared the view of cognition as among the putative causes of behavior.

Skinner rejected the need for cognitive causes of behavior, whereas Chomskyembraced them. It was the acceptance of the need for cognitive causes that was amongthe defining features of the cognitive revolution during the second half of the

twentieth century.7

While the distinction between cognition and behavior—with cognition being

among the putative causes of behavior—has been a central feature of cognitive science,there are certain parts of the embodied cognition literature in which the distinction

has not so much been rejected as it has been lost. It is not as though the recent critics ofmainstream cognitive science we will discuss have drawn attention to the distinction

between cognition and behavior in order to argue that the distinction is untenable.They have not noted the idea that cognition has generally been proposed to be a cause

of cognition, then provided reasons or evidence against it. Instead, many discussionssimply ignore the long-standing distinction.

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4. Maturana on Cognition and Behavior

The current interest in embodied cognition has many diverse sources. Among these is

“The biology of cognition,” first published by Humberto Maturana in 1970. In it,

Maturana claims that:

A cognitive system is a systemwhose organization defines a domain of interactions inwhich it can act with relevance to the maintenance of itself, and the process ofcognition is the actual (inductive) acting or behaving in this domain. Living systemsare cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statementis valid for all organisms, with and without a nervous system. (1970/1980, p. 13)

Many will find it surprising to be told that all organisms are cognitive systems, that

living systems are cognitive systems. This surprise, however, stems from a likely

misunderstanding of Maturana’s view. Maturana does not mean by this what one

might think he means. Maturana does not mean by a “cognitive system” what

Cognitivists mean by a “cognitive system.” Maturana explicitly equates cognition and

behavior: the process of cognition is acting or behaving in a domain.There are details of the interpretation of Maturana’s view that remain unclear.

For one thing, the foregoing passage may be meant merely to offer a stipulation of

what he means by ‘cognitive system’ and by ‘cognitive process’. (This stipulation will be

misleading to many, since many cognitive psychologists suppose that cognition is

distinct from behavior.) Alternatively, the foregoing passage may be meant to offer

some sort of theoretical identity between two prima facie distinct kinds of things,

namely, cognition and behavior. Here the model might be something like the proposal

that water is H2O or that electrical phenomena and magnetic phenomena are distinct

manifestations of a single underlying force, namely, electromagnetism. In favor of the

idea that Maturana is offering a stipulative definition of what he means, there is

the fact that Maturana offers no argument in support of the identification. If he were

reporting an empirical conjecture, one might expect some argumentation in support

of the conjecture. Yet, Maturana offers none. This observation, however, is not

above challenge. Much of what Maturana writes has an oracular tone which simply

tells the readers how specific empirical things are. The identification of cognition and

behavior could be another of Maturana’s pronouncements on the nature of the world.

Suppose, however, that we grant Maturana his (misleading) stipulation about how

to use the terms ‘cognitive system’ and ‘cognitive process’, or that we accept (merely for

the sake of argument) the idea that cognitive processes and living processes are one

and the same thing in the actual world. If we adopt Maturana’s way of thinking, we can

see that “all organisms are cognitive systems” is much less bold when Maturana says it

than when Cognitivists say it. Maturana means only that all organisms are behaving

systems. Maturana is not claiming that all organisms have cognitive processes that

contribute to the production of their behavior. Moreover, once we see clearly what

Maturana is claiming, we can also see that cognition, construed as behavior, is

typically embodied. Perhaps not all behaviors are embodied, but the paradigmatic

cases of behavior certainly are. Once we adopt Maturana’s understanding of

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‘cognition’ or his theoretical identification of cognition and behavior, then it falls outquite trivially that cognition is embodied.

5. Chemero on Cognition and Behavior

One might suggest that Maturana did not mean to challenge mainstream Cognitivist

and Behaviorist views. His work was neither directed toward nor informed by thattradition. So, it is, perhaps, understandable that his terminology or his theoretical

proposals do not mesh well with the assumptions of Cognitivism or Behaviorism.Nevertheless, other philosophers, such as Chemero, do wish to exploit at least some of

the ideas advanced by Maturana in an effort to offer a scientific rival to Cognitivism.Moreover, Chemero encounters much the same problems regarding cognition and

behavior.In a footnote dedicated primarily to the question of what cognition is supposed to

be, Chemero writes, “I take it that cognition is the ongoing, active maintenance of a

robust animal-environment system, achieved by closely co-ordinated perception andaction” (2009, p. 212, note 8). Note that, here, Chemero seems to be doing something

like “stating his terms,” telling us what he means by ‘cognition’. But, notice as well thatthis proposal sounds like a decision to use ‘cognition’ to mean what many cognitive

scientists have meant by ‘behavior’. Here is why it at least sounds this way. Presumably,mere thinking doesn’t typically maintain a robust animal-environment system. Merely

thinking doesn’t get an organism food, mates, freedom from predation, etc. Thinkingmust typically be linked to behavior to achieve these ends. As Cognitivists woulddescribe things, cognition is among the causal factors that might guide behavior in

ways that (stereotypically?) help sustain an organism, but bare cognitive processingrarely does this.

Insofar as Chemero is simply introducing a new way to use ‘cognition’, he willmislead any number of his readers. The confusion is likely to be greater, since he does

not make it all that clear that this is his proposal and that he is knowingly and willinglydiverging from common usage. But, worse than that, the usage marks no theoretical

advance. Suppose we follow Chemero in deciding to call behavior ‘cognition’. Thissimply reformulates one of the core issues separating Behaviorists and Cognitivists,

namely, the extent to which “unobservable” structures internal to an organismcontribute to the production of behavior. Chemero’s proposal would reformulate theissue to be one of a disagreement over the causal contribution that structures internal

to an organism make to the production of “cognition.” This, however, leaves thesubstance of the issue just as it was. Grant Chemero his (misleading) terminology, so

that we should no longer claim that cognitive processes realized in the brain contributeto the production of behavior. Nevertheless, following Chemero, we can still ask how

the processes that are realized in the brain contribute to the production of “cognition.”Presumably, the brain has something to contribute to the production of what Chemero

calls “cognition,” but what is this? Perhaps the brain processes information,manipulates symbols, or transforms representations. If it does that, then very little

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indeed has been changed. On the other hand, maybe the brain does not contributeinformation processing or symbol manipulation or the transformation of

representations. But, if not, then what does it do? What emerges is that we have a(misleading) terminological shift that threatens simply to reformulate the debates of

the last half-century without advancing them.As a second problem for Chemero’s terminological shift, notice that it threatens to

trivialize the thesis that cognition is embodied. If one understands ‘cognitiveprocesses’ as behavioral processes, then of course, “cognitive processes” are typically

realized in the brain, body, and world. Behavioral processes are typically realized in thebrain, body, and world. That is just the consensus twentieth-century view. It is quitefar from offering a radical embodied cognitive science; by itself, it is completely

pedestrian twentieth-century cognitive science. What would be radical would be theconclusion that cognition understood as a particular kind of computation over

representations is embodied.8 What would be surprising would be to find that what hascommonly been thought to occur only within the brain in fact occurs in an

unexpectedly larger space.9

Yet, perhaps all of this is too unsympathetic a reading of Chemero. Perhaps, what he

is offering is not a fixing of terms or a definition of what he means by ‘cognition’.Indeed, in the footnote cited above, Chemero writes:

I disagree that proponents of radical embodied cognitive science actually require adefinition of ‘cognition’. That aside, I will say a few things about what I mean by‘cognition’. I take it that cognition is the ongoing, active maintenance of a robustanimal-environment system, achieved by closely co-ordinated perception andaction. This understanding of the nature of cognition is intended to reflect claims byradical embodied cognitive scientists in philosophy, psychology, AI, and artificiallife. (2009, p. 212, note 8)

Perhaps, therefore, he intends to make an empirical claim. After all, Chemero later

claims that the models found in Beer (2003) and van Rooij, Bongers, and Haselager(2002) “show how radical embodied cognitive science can explain cognition as the

unfolding of a brain-body-environment system, and not as mental gymnastics”(Chemero, 2009, p. 43). It appears that these models are supposed to provide evidence

for the view that “cognitive scientists ought to try to understand cognition asintelligent behavior” (Chemero, 2009, p. 25). Notice that by “explain[ing] cognition as

the unfolding of a brain-body-environment system,” Chemero seems to mean thatcognition is the unfolding of a brain-body-environment system. Further, we shouldreject the idea that cognition is (to be explained as) “mental gymnastics.” But, the

unfolding of a brain-body-environment system sounds like a metaphoricaldescription of what cognitive scientists have agreed to call “behavior.” Moreover,

“mental gymnastics” would seem to be the kind of thing that cognitive scientistswould have called “cognition.”10

So, suppose that Chemero is offering an empirical proposal that cognition isbehavior. The problem for this interpretation, surprisingly, is that Chemero does not

give any arguments to support the conclusion. Chemero describes the Beer model andthe van Rooij, Bongers, and Haselager model, but he says nothing that ties these

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descriptions to the issue of understanding cognition as behavior. Consider thesemodels and their descriptions in turn. Chemero reports that:

Randy Beer’s 2003 target article in Adaptive Behavior gives a good sense of whatradical embodied cognitive science is all about: it utilizes dynamical systems theoryto describe and explain behavior of a simulated robot controlled by an evolved,artificial neural network. (2009, p. 33)

Notice that, by Chemero’s own reporting, Beer’s model describes and explains the

behavior of a simulated robot.11 Nor does the foregoing description seem to representa mere infelicity on Chemero’s part. In later describing the model, he reports that:

It is important to realize three things about this [model’s] behavior: First, thebehavior on each trial is both a discrimination and an action, but these are notseparate. . . . Finally, it is important to notice that the model is of an individualagent, not of a collection of agents. This focus on individuals is a common feature ofdynamical analyses, which take behavior and, especially, development to be theunfolding of a particular brain in a particular body in a particular environment, andnot the playing out of a neural or genetic program. (Chemero, 2009, pp. 34–35)

Again, Chemero reports that Beer’s model is a model of behavior. Moreover, note the

last sentence very carefully. It claims that behavior is the unfolding of a particular brainin a particular body in a particular environment. There is nothing in this discussion ofBeer’s model that supports the view that cognition is behavior. Chemero simply seems

to see no difference between the claim that cognition is the “unfolding” of a brain-body-world system and the claim that behavior is the “unfolding” of a brain-body-

world system.What, then, of the van Rooij, Bongers, and Haselager model? Their goal is to

develop a model with two features. First, it should engage in some behavior or performsome task that prima facie requires representations. (Such a task is one that Clark &

Toribio, 1994 would describe as “representation-hungry.”) Second, it should not infact use representations. Now concede, if only for the sake of argument, that van Rooij,

Bongers, and Haselager succeed in developing a model with both of these features.How does that “show how radical embodied cognitive science can explain cognition asthe unfolding of a brain-body-environment system, and not as mental gymnastics”?

How is this model even relevant? We might put a sharper point on these questions byasking why we should reject van Rooij, Bongers, and Haselager’s interpretation of their

model as a model of behavior in favor of Chemero’s interpretation of their model as amodel of cognition. Why, more pointedly still, should we reject van Rooij, Bongers,

and Haselager’s interpretation of much of dynamical system theory (DST) in favor ofChemero’s interpretation? van Rooij, Bongers, and Haselager offer the following

analysis:

According to some (but not all) proponents of DST, a non-representational accountof behavior is possible and in many cases more fruitful for understanding theunderlying causal processes . . . Within DST, the behavior of a system is analyzed asan emergent property of the interactions between its subsystems.

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During the last decade, the tools of DST have proven to be valuable assets forunderstanding behavior emerging out of multiple interacting components. Thisbehavior ranges from rhythmic movements of fingers and hands . . . to the temporalpatterns of social interaction. (2002, pp. 345–346)

The issue is, thus, not merely a matter of critics of dynamical systems theory havingone understanding of it versus supporters having another understanding. The matteris one that looks to divide proponents of dynamical systems models. Advocates of

dynamical systems theory differ among themselves over the goals and interpretation ofdynamical systems theory. van Rooij, Bongers, and Haselager seem to have the

standard cognitive science conception of behavior being the product of a number ofunderlying causal processes and that among them are cognitive processes, where

Chemero does not. Moreover, Chemero gives no reason in support of his revisionaryinterpretation.

The reader who is sympathetic to Chemero may well believe that something hasbeen overlooked here. There must be arguments for the view that cognition isbehavior somewhere in the text. Unfortunately, aside from the analysis just provided,

the sympathetic reader will simply have to review that whole of the relevant text to seethat no argument has been omitted. There really is no argument there. What may have

happened is that Chemero became focused on other features of the Beer and vanRooij, Bongers, and Haselager models and lost sight of the thesis that cognition is

behavior. Regarding Beer’s model, Chemero was concerned to point to behaviors thatare both discriminations and actions and that the model is of an individual agent, not

of a collection of agents. Regarding van Rooij, Bongers, and Haselager’s model, he wasinterested in its putative capacity to solve a “representation-hungry” task without

using representations. The models might well have these features, but those areirrelevant to the thesis that cognition is behavior. That thesis and any arguments for itseem to have been lost.

The upshot of this discussion is that there appear to be two ways to read Chemero’sclaim that cognition is the “unfolding” of a brain-body-world system, namely, as

something like a stipulative definition or as something like an empirically motivatedidentification. If we read Chemero as offering a stipulative definition, then his account

is misleading, it marks no theoretical advance, and it trivializes the hypothesis thatcognition is embodied. If we read Chemero as offering a theoretical identification,

then we have been given no reason in its support. Clearly this is a case in which greaterattention to the distinction between cognition and behavior is in order.

6. Dennett on Cognition and Behavior

Maturana is not, we have presumed, concerned to address the mainstream cognitive

science picture of cognition and behavior. By contrast, Chemero is concerned to dothis. He wishes, in some fashion, to displace the common view of cognition as “mental

gymnastics.” Neither of these projects, however, is on Dennett’s agenda in Kinds ofminds. Dennett is not stalking what either Maturana or Chemero is. Dennett does not

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so much propose to identify cognition and behavior as he simply conflates them. Thismanifests itself in two discussions: Dennett’s treatment of the putative intellectual

superiority of humans over other organisms and an argument for embodied cognition.

6.1. Of Human Intelligence

Regarding the roots of greater human intelligence, Dennett offers the following:

Our brains are modestly larger than the brains of our nearest relatives (although notlarger than the brains of some dolphins and whales), but this is almost certainly notthe source of our greater intelligence. The primary source, I want to suggest, is ourhabit of off-loading as much as possible of our cognitive tasks into the environmentitself—extruding our minds (that is, our mental projects and activities) into thesurrounding world, where a host of peripheral devices we construct can store,process, and re-represent our meanings, streamlining, enhancing, and protectingthe processes of transformation that are our thinking. This widespread practiceof off-loading releases us from the limitations of our animal brains. (1996,pp. 134–135)

In this passage, and through much of the chapter that contains it, Dennett runs

roughshod over the distinction between intelligence or cognitive capacity, on the onehand, and behavioral performance, on the other. He begins with the view that we have

greater cognitive capacity (greater intelligence) than other organisms, but immediatelyturns to the idea that we intellectually accomplish more than other organisms by

means of our use of tools.It is, of course, plausible to suppose that using tools does make us smarter, that it

might make us more intelligent, that it might increase our cognitive capacities.

Learning to use a personal computer with a mouse, for example, might enhancecertain cognitive capacities. Figuring out how to use an iPhone might require a

flexibility and adaptability of thought that fosters creativity. But, that is not howDennett argues that tools “make us smarter.” Instead, he notes how the use of tools

facilitates performance. So, for example, he notes howmarking the boundaries of one’sterritory enables one to reduce one’s cognitive load on perception and memory. This is

a kind of case where performance is improved, not where one is smarter in the sense ofhaving one’s cognitive capacities enhanced. As a second example, he considers the taskof finding a key hidden in one of many shoeboxes. One way in which to avoid looking

in the same box twice, hence searching inefficiently, is to have two stacks of boxes, the“searched” stack and the “unsearched” stack. After searching a box, one simply moves

the searched box from one stack to the other. Clearly this method enables one toaccomplish the task more efficiently, namely, by eliminating redundant examinations

of individual boxes, but this is far from being a matter of improving the quality of thecognitive processes that cause behavior. Instead, it is a matter of improving the efficacy

of behavior.Here is perhaps another way of viewing the issue.12 We might take guarding the

boundaries of one’s territory and finding a key in a shoebox to be problems to besolved. Dennett apparently takes problem solving to be a kind of cognition, so

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improved problem solving (guarding the boundaries more effectively, finding the keymore reliably) is improved cognition. The reply to this is that the phrase ‘problem

solving’ is ambiguous between engaging in cognitive processes and engaging inbehavior. This ambiguity masks the difference between improving in cognitive or

intellectual capacities, on the one hand, and improving in behavior or performance,on the other. We can see this, perhaps, by noting that marking one’s territory is a

means of helping guard one’s territory that reduces cognitive load. It is a way ofguarding one’s territory that does not involve thinking about where the boundaries

are. One can simply, say, smell them as they are approached. Turning to Dennett’sother example, we can see this by noting that using the stacking procedure, one canfind the key without thinking about whether one has already searched a given box or

not. One might even be tempted to say that one can solve the problem without evenreally thinking about it. So, to repeat the moral above, it is one thing to improve

behavior or performance; it is another to improve cognitive capacities.Notice that once one becomes aware of Dennett’s conflation of cognition and

behavior, then one can see, first of all, that it leaves untouched the initial question aboutwhy humans are cognitively superior to other organisms. Why are we smarter than

chimpanzees? Why are our cognitive capacities superior to those of chimpanzees?Granting that tools enable us to perform better leaves untouched the question of ourcognitive superiority. We could perform better without increased cognitive capacities.

We could, in theory, perform better even with decreasing cognitive capacities. Maybeusing a calculator enables us to perform better (solve arithmetical problems more

quickly and more reliably), while diminishing our cognitive capacities through lack ofpractice. Second of all, notice that it is unsurprising that tools often enable us to

accomplish things that we could not otherwise accomplish or that they generally enableus to accomplish things more efficiently or reliably than we could otherwise. That’s an

entirely pedestrian observation. So, rather than offering a bold conjecture about whatmakes us smarter, Dennett ends up reminding us why tools are useful. Once we note the

long-standing cognition/behavior distinction, the apparent interest of Dennett’s analysisfades.

6.2. Dennett’s Argument for Embodied Cognition

Noticing the cognition/behavior conflation highlights another problem for Dennett.In the same chapter in which he makes the case that tool use makes us smarter, he alsoargues that cognitive processes are realized in the body and in one’s environment.

He observes that many elderly people appear to be quite demented in hospital settingsaway from the usual environmental cues they find in their familiar homes, but that, in

truth, their minds are not as disturbed as their behavior might lead us to believe. Whathappens in these cases is that the elderly perform less well in hospital settings than they

do in their home settings, because the cognitive routines on which they previouslyrelied involved environmental cues that are not available in the hospital. All this is

unassailable, but from it Dennett concludes: “taking them out of their homes isliterally separating them from large parts of their minds—potentially just as

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devastating a development as undergoing brain surgery” (1996, pp. 138–139). Fromthe case, Dennett concludes that we have an example of embodied cognition.

Here again, Dennett conflates cognition and behavior. Recall Dennett’s claim thatmany elderly people in nursing homes are not as disturbed as their behavior might

lead one to believe. Couch this with explicit reference to the distinction betweencognition and behavior. Dennett’s claim is that these elderly patients are not as

cognitively impaired as they might appear to be on the basis of their behavior. Thecapacities realized in their brains are not as diminished as their behavior suggests.

Up to this point, Dennett’s analysis relies on the familiar twentieth-century picture,shared by Behaviorists and Cognitivists, according to which cognition and behavior

are distinct and cognition is a putatively brain-bound cause of behavior. But, theadoption of this picture contradicts the embodied/extended view of cognition to

which Dennett moves. By adopting the view that environmental tool manipulationis cognitive processing, he contradicts the view that environmental tool

manipulation is merely behavior that is sometimes a misleading indicator ofcognitive capacities.13

The morals from our review of Dennett’s two discussions might be organizeddifferently. Suppose, on the one hand, that we accept the familiar understanding of

intelligence/cognition as a cause of behavior. First, recall the discussion of humanversus non-human animal intelligence. The improvement of human performance with

tool use does not, by itself, suffice to explain the putative superiority in cognitivecapacities. In principle, human performance can be improved without cognitive

capacities being modified. Second, recall Dennett’s argument for embodied cognition.The fact that elderly people with Alzheimer’s disease can cope better with the familiar

tools of their home does not provide a reason for thinking that their cognition isembodied in those tools. Again, behavior and performance can be constituted by tool

use and cognitive processes can be causally influenced by tool use, without cognitiveprocessing being embodied in those tools. The mainstream cognitive science view is

that cognitive and non-cognitive factors can contribute to performance or theproduction of behavior. Dennett gives no reason to suppose that the causal

contribution of tool use is cognitive.14

Suppose, on the other hand, that we understand intelligence/cognition as behavioror performance. First, recall the discussion of greater human intelligence. Now, the

observation that tool use makes humans more intelligent amounts to the claim thattool use enables humans to perform tasks that they could not perform otherwise or

enables us to perform more reliably or efficiently. That is not a bold conjecture; it is apedestrian observation. Moreover, it is one that leaves untouched the question of why

humans have what the Cognitivists have taken to be greater human cognitivecapacities. More concretely (and simplistically), what are the (synchronic) capacities

that enable humans to use a greater variety of tools so much more effectively than cannon-human animals?15 Second, recall the discussion of embodied cognition. If one

agrees with Maturana and Chemero (on at least one understanding of their views) that‘cognition’ should be used to speak of behavior, then it is trivial to propose that

behavior is embodied and extended. No one has ever doubted that.

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7. Cognition Operationalized

In the preceding sections, we have seen how embodied cognition is sometimes tacitlyunderstood to be what Skinnerian Behaviorists and Chomskyan Cognitivists would

typically understand as embodied behavior. One variant on this idea, however, is topropose that it is “operationalized cognition” that is embodied. Like behavior,operationalized cognition is also obviously embodied.

What is “operationalizing” cognition? This is away of “defining” or articulating whatis cognitive. This approach begins with a putative cognitive task, and then proposes that

anything involved in the accomplishment of that task is cognitive. So, the Turing test iswidely treated as an operationalization of the concept of being cognitive or of having

human cognition. If a computer cannot be distinguished from a real human being bymeans of a series of questions and answers, then that computer has (human) cognition.

Another famous operationalization maintains that intelligence just is what intelligencetests measure. To give an example from the embodied cognition literature, there is thecomputer simulation discussed in Beer (2003) (mentioned above in the discussion of

Chemero’s views). In this case, the task is to distinguish simulated falling diamondsfrom simulated falling circles. If a simulated device can perform this task, then that

device is capable of categorical perception. So, to repeat, the general strategy of theoperational approach is to specify a task, then allow that anything involved in the

accomplishment of this task is a cognitive processor. Note well that this sort ofoperationalizing is not merely a matter of articulating a test or method for finding

cognition; instead, performance on a particular task is taken to be definitive ofpossessing or exercising a particular cognitive capacity.

It is unclear to what extent the advocates of embodied cognition genuinely wish toembrace operationalism, for in several cases we find that those who embrace theoperationalist approach at one point will also embrace alternatives at other points. The

following subsections will document this with discussions fromClark, Haugeland, andRowlands. What this shows is that each of these philosophers may intend to offer more

than one type of argument for embodied cognition. One argument would be based onoperationalized cognition, another on a non-operationalized cognition. So, in

principle, the rejection of operationalized cognition need be of only minor importanceto their overall view. These philosophers can remain committed to embodied

cognition by the force of their other arguments.

7.1. Clark: Operationalist and Non-Operationalist

In one paper, Clark proposes that “what makes a process cognitive, it seems to me, is

that it supports genuinely intelligent behavior . . . To identify cognitive processes asthose processes, however many and varied, that support intelligent behavior may be

the best we can do” (2010, p. 93). This is clearly the operationalist understanding ofcognitive processes. Yet, Clark does not uniformly adhere to this approach. Consider,

as one example, his invocation of conditions of “trust and glue” as a basis for claimingthat cognition is embodied.

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We [Clark and Chalmers] then offered a rough-and-ready set of additional criteriato be met by nonbiological candidates for inclusion into an individual’s cognitive

system. They were

1. That the resource be reliably available and typically invoked . . . .2. That any information thus retrieved be more or less automatically endorsed. It

should not usually be subject to critical scrutiny (e.g., unlike the opinions ofother people). It should be deemed about as trustworthy as something retrievedclearly from biological memory.

3. That information contained in the resource should be easily accessible as andwhen required.

4. That the information . . . has been consciously endorsed at some point in the pastand indeed is there as a consequence of this endorsement. (Clark, 2008, p. 79)

In this account, Clark departs from a pure operationalism regarding the cognitive byimplicitly limiting embodied cognition to some sort of information processing.

So, contrary to what Clark (2010), proposed, it is not that literally any causalcontributor to performance realizes cognition. Instead, it is only causally relevant

informational contributions to performance that realize cognition.An example might help to illustrate the point. Consider Nigel who bakes cakes by

using recipes he has collected in a book in the way Otto uses his notebook to navigateto the MoMA.16 Per conditions 1 and 3, Nigel keeps the book in a convenient place in

the kitchen where it is easily and reliably available and typically invoked at bakingtime. Per condition 2, he more or less automatically follows the instructions in hiscookbook, not usually subjecting them to critical scrutiny. He deems the information

in the recipe book to be about as trustworthy as something retrieved clearly frombiological memory. Finally, he consciously endorsed the information at the time in

which he entered it into his book. So, Nigel’s use of his cookbook constitutesembodied cognition, by Clark’s analysis. By contrast, consider Nigel’s use of his oven.

As spelled out in conditions 1 and 3, his oven is easily and reliably available andtypically used when baking cakes. As spelled out in condition 2, it is more or less

automatically turned to when it is time to bake. Moreover, Nigel was quite confident ofthe quality and reliability of the oven when he purchased it two years ago.17

Nevertheless, Nigel’s use of the oven is not an instance of embodied cognition, by

Clark’s lights, since the oven does not constitute an informational resource for Nigel.So, while Clark at times endorses operationalism, at other times he apparently does

not. Given the much greater attention Clark has invested in the “trust and glue”conditions, as opposed to the operationalist condition, it is plausible to read him as

more committed to the former than to the latter. So, in principle, he might simplyabandon the operationalism and defend embodied cognition on the basis of his

conditions of trust and glue.

7.2. Haugeland: Operationalist and Non-Operationalist

Haugeland (1998) also invokes operationalized cognition, although not by name. In alate section of his paper, he invites us to think about the ability to go to San Jose.

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He notes that going to San Jose is a task that requires coping with something that isout of view, a feature he suggests is indicative of cognition. Surely there are

paradigmatic cases where humans travel to San Jose and employ cognitive processes tohelp them get there. So, this method of delimiting the cognitive enjoys some prima

facie plausibility. But, Haugeland also draws attention to more unusual cases, such asretaining a horse that is trained to go to San Jose or picking a road that leads to San

Jose. His implicit point is that these uses of environmental resources do not involvedata-structure-like representations, but should still count as instances of (embodied)

cognition. To get this argument to work, however, he must rely on the operationalistidea that going to a place out of view is a cognitive task and that any way ofaccomplishing this task is cognitive.18

Despite his apparent commitment to operationalism for the space of the “San JoseArgument,” Haugeland also turns to other resources later. His paper ends by claiming

that:

As our ability to cope with the absent and covert, human intelligence abides in themeaningful—which, far from being restricted to representations, extends to theentire human world. Mind, therefore, is not incidentally but intimately embodiedand intimately embedded in its world. (1998, p. 237)

One way of reading this last part is as offering a theory of what intelligence orcognition is: cognition is trafficking in the meaningful. Such an account, however, is

not necessarily an operationalist account. And, indeed, if Haugeland had simplyembraced this theory from the outset, he might not have had to appeal tooperationalism in the “San Jose Argument.” If cognition really were a matter of

abiding in the meaningful, then it would indeed be plausible to conclude that mind isintimately embodied and embedded in its world. As with Clark, it is plausible to read

Haugeland as more strongly committed to this latter view of intelligence than tooperationalism.

7.3. Rowlands: Operationalist and Non-Operationalist

Rowlands makes an appeal to operationalism:

For the liberal functionalist, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it is a duck.How it manages to walk and talk like a duck is not directly relevant. To this, theextended mind simply adds: Nor does it matter where it walks or talks like a duck.(2009a, pp. 632–633)

Rowlands’ proposal constitutes a very liberal functionalism. Although he couches hisdiscussion in terms of functionalism, one must bear in mind that operationalism is a

kind of functionalism wherein functional equivalence is articulated in terms ofbehavior or input-output functions.19 What is the standard for being a duck? Walking

like a duck and talking like a duck or, more generally, behaving like a duck. It ispresumably operationalism to say that if it behaves like a duck, then it is a duck. Non-

operationalists are free to say that, even though it behaves like a duck, it is not a duck.Perhaps it is a brilliantly designed robot. So, Rowlands has his operationalist moments.

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Then again, Rowlands, like Clark, will sometimes throw in some restrictions on whatsort of operations will count as cognitive, namely, that they must be operations

involving information processing. In another recent paper, Rowlands proposes that

A process P is a cognitive process if and only if:

(1) P involves information processing—the manipulation and transformation ofinformation-bearing structures.

(2) This information processing has the proper function of making available eitherto the subject or to subsequent processing operations information that was(or would have been) prior to (or without) this processing, unavailable.

(3) This information is made available by way of the production, in the subject ofP, of a representational state.

(4) P is a process that belongs to the subject of that representational state.

This criterion is understood as providing a sufficient condition for a process tocount as cognitive: if a process satisfies these conditions, it counts as cognitive.Whether it also provides a necessary condition is an issue that I shall leave aside(although, for what it’s worth, I suspect that it does not). (2009b, p. 8)20

So, it is plausible that, while Rowlands has his operationalist moments, he also

conjectures a more “mechanical” approach to cognition. He conjectures a theory ofcognition that places restrictions on the mechanisms by which behavior is produced.21

After drawing attention to these operationalist moments from Clark, Haugeland,and Rowlands, no argument has been given here that operationalism is mistaken.22

The principal point, however, has not been to discredit operationalism or to challengethe overall views of Clark, Haugeland, or Rowlands on embodied cognition. Instead,

the point is to draw attention to the very idea of cognition operationalized and someof its implications. One can see the allure of cognition operationalized for the advocate

of embodied cognition. If cognition is operationalized, then such cognition isbehavioral, and behavior is obviously embodied. Behavior is obviously realized bybrain, body, and world. So, the thesis of embodied operationalized cognition should

not be controversial. Who would doubt it? What would surprise most twentieth-century cognitive scientists is the idea that cognition—construed perhaps as a

computational cause of behavior—is realized by brain, body, and world.

8. Conclusion

It is important to bear in mind that the embodied cognition movement encompasses

many distinct ideas and tendencies. This paper is meant to draw attention to just onetheme that emerges from time to time in the embodied cognition literature. This

strand proposes—sometimes tentatively and without maximal explicitness—that“cognition” is behavior. This is a strand we have found in Maturana (1970/1980),

along with Chemero (2009), Clark (2010), Dennett (1996), Haugeland (1998), andRowlands (2009a).23 The primary goal has, therefore, been to urge greater clarity

regarding what various approaches to embodied cognition have had to say regardingthe relationship between cognition and behavior. This goal, however, is more than an

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exercise in pedantry. This paper also draws attention to ways in which the relationshipbetween cognition and behavior evidently matters for our evaluation of the hypothesis

of embodied cognition and some of the arguments that have been given to support it.Most notably, if we adopt the unorthodox view that ‘cognition’ applies to types of

behavior—and it is not clear that many, if any, advocates of embodied cognition reallywant this—then among the consequences is that such embodied “cognition” is not a

proposal that cognitive science should resist. It is, instead, a proposal that has been alargely unchallenged mainstay of cognitive science since its inception.

Notes

[1] For one recent exception to the silence on this issue, there is Shapiro (2013).[2] See, for example, Adams and Aizawa (2001, 2008), Adams and Garrison (2013), Clark

(2005, 2010), Menary (2006, 2010), Rowlands (2009b), and Rupert (2009).[3] For additional discussion of Noe’s view and of the issues of causation versus constitution,

see, for example, Adams and Aizawa (2008), Aizawa (2007, 2010), Block (2005), and Rupert(2009).

[4] The phrase ‘extended cognition’ is often, or even typically, used to describe this view. Forsimplicity, however, the discussion here will simply work with ‘embodied’.

[5] For present purposes, we may treat ‘reason’ and ‘cognition’ as interchangeable.[6] For other conceptions of embodiment, see Goldman and de Vignemont (2009).[7] As noted above, there is some risk of anachronism in interpreting Skinner and Chomsky as I

have. Perhaps there is some historical oversimplification as well. So, for one thing, Skinner’srejection is only of ideas, meanings, and images. For a second thing, the interpretation thatSkinner denies the existence of the cognitive is based on the assumption that fictions do notexist. It is also based on the assumption that Skinner adopts the principle that science shouldnot postulate unobservable, non-explanatory entities. Opposing this interpretation, however,is Skinner’s claim that “the objection to inner states is not that they do not exist, but that theyare not relevant in a functional analysis” (1953, p. 35). Perhaps it would be better to have amore contemporary statement of the view that cognition is a putative cause, such as,“according to functionalism, the essential or defining feature of any type of mental state is theset of causal relations it bears to (1) environmental effects on the body, (2) other types ofmental states, and (3) bodily behavior” (Churchland, 1984, p. 36). Of course, even this is aclaim about the mental, rather than the cognitive, and it is a statement of functionalism.Nevertheless, the basic picture of “inner goings on” that are distinct frombehavior and amongthe causes of behavior remains. This is the picture that is relevant for our current discussion.

[8] We find a view like this in Wilson (1994), and Wilson and Clark (2009).[9] One reviewer for this journal puts the point against Chemero more forcefully. It is not okay

for Chemero simply to use the word as he pleases. If an author claims to prove that Godexists, but then by ‘God’ means Dubuque, Iowa, then the author does not prove anythinginteresting. Similarly, if Chemero claims that cognition is embodied, but then by ‘cognition’he means behavior, then he does not claim anything interesting.

[10] This paragraph papers over some expository issues concerning the “empirical”interpretation of Chemero’s view. It is not entirely clear what it is to understand cognitionas behavior, that is, whether Chemero has in mind something like a reduction of cognitionto behavior or an identification of cognition and behavior or something else. He does notsay. Moreover, the idea is apparently unlike proposing to understand cognition as constraintsatisfaction (per some connectionist theories of cognition) or as symbol manipulation (percomputationalist theories of cognition). These latter proposals at least appear to be referringto the same thing, namely, cognition, but attributing to it a different character, namely, as

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either constraint satisfaction or symbol manipulation. By contrast, Chemero’s proposallooks to be offering the view that one thing, cognition, is really another thing, behavior. Oneof the fundamental assumptions of cognitive science has been that cognition and behaviorare distinct and that cognition is a non-behavioral cause of behavior. For present purposes,however, we might bracket these expository issues, since carefully reading throughChemero’s exposition of the Beer and van Rooij, Bongers, and Haselager models reveals noarguments for the view that cognition is behavior.

[11] Note that this description is perfectly consistent with the view that the evolved artificialneural network realizes cognitive processing that makes a causal contribution to thebehavior of the robot. So, this does not, by itself, undermine the traditional view ofcognition as a brain-realized causal contributor to the production of behavior. Onereviewer, however, notes that Chemero believes that nonlinearly coupled dynamical systemscannot be decomposed. They are intrinsically holistic. Chemero does, in fact, claim this sortof thing; however, he and Beer do isolate an internal neural network as a component of thelarger system. Evidently, the non-decomposability has limits. Pending some clarification, weshould not conclude that this non-decomposability prevents us from maintaining that theevolved artificial neural network realized cognitive processing. For further discussion, seeAdams and Aizawa (2008, pp. 107–112).

[12] This paragraph was prompted by comments from one reviewer.[13] Just to be clear, the point is not that the cognition/behavior conflation is intrinsic to the

hypothesis of embodied cognition. One might read much of the literature on embodiedcognition and find very few cognitive scientists or philosophers who are guilty of thisconflation.

[14] No reason unless, perhaps, one is an operationalist. For more on this, see the next section.[15] The question here is meant to ask, not for an evolutionary account of our tool using

capacities—that we can use tools because our ancestors used tools—but for a synchronicaccount of this behavioral capacity now.

[16] For the story on Otto, see, of course, Clark and Chalmers (1998).[17] One might think that this is a strained reading of Clark’s conditions. And, perhaps this is a

consequence of the implicit information resource assumption in the conditions of “trustand glue.”

[18] As Adams and Aizawa note:

A train on rails has the ability to go to San Jose from a point out of sight. An ICBM hasthe ability to go to San Jose from a point out of sight. These abilities require nointelligence, no cognition. There are lots of combinations of cognitive abilities thatone might deploy to get to San Jose, but not every way of getting to San Jose involvescognition. (2008, p. 80)

[19] This sort of functionalism seems to defeat one of the core respects in which functionalismwas thought to be superior to behaviorism, namely, that functionalism admitted theimportance of internal cognitive states and processes in the etiology of behavior.

[20] Just to be clear, the conditions are laid out with a biconditional, but Rowlands then claimsthat they are sufficient, but perhaps not necessary conditions on being a cognitive process.This is apparently a typographical error.

[21] The present point is not to defend or critique either of Rowlands’ approaches to cognition.However, the reader interested in the later account might examine Rowlands (2010), wherethe second approach is developed in greater detail. For a critique of this approach, seeAdams and Garrison (2013).

[22] A likely defense of Clark, Haugeland, and Rowlands would be that they are not seriouslycommitted to operationalism, so it is perhaps premature to invest time and effort trying todiscredit operationalism.

[23] Other possible cases include Beer (2003), Calvo and Keijzer (2008), and Thompson (2007).

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References

Adams, F., & Aizawa, K. (2001). The bounds of cognition. Philosophical Psychology, 14, 43–64.

Adams, F., & Aizawa, K. (2008). The bounds of cognition. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

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