8/7/2019 Poster Barcelona (Workshop on Embodied, Distributed and Extended Cognition)

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ntal states & cognitive functions have beengued to extend beyond the skin of the organismh biological and environmentally locatedments entering into a partnership that enablesxible thinking and acting.

EMT and Complementarity

We defend acomplementarity

version of theextended mind

according to whichexternally located

resources and internalbiological elementsmake a different but

complementary

causal contribution tobringing about

intelligent behaviour

SSDs and Plasticity

lasticity and Culture: the Magic Duo

t is the activities we participate in the world thattermine which neural circuits get to survive in our

brains. Circuits that are often used duringdevelopment get reinforced, while those that lie

dormant are simply abandoned and theirconnections die off.

Synaptic pruning therefore unfoldsaccording to the “use it or lose it” principle 

Mind Enhancing Tools?

a result of repeated engagements in cultural tasks,vant brain pathways undergo substantial rewiring.tical plasticity therefore allows us to self-engineerr minds and our brains become geared to work in

partnership with external props.

Slaying the ChimeraSSDs thus exploit theremarkable opportunism

afforded by neural plasticityto give rise to augmentedprocesses of deep bio-technological symbiosis

We have two mappings.

First mapping: Vision - >Audition/Touch. Second

mapping: Audition/Touch - >New Sensory Mode of Access.

Extended Cognition or ExtendedCognitive Systems ?

We explain this acquired perception in terms of production ofnovel law-like relations between actions and associated

changes in sensory input. Through these active couplings weacquire a new sense, which might give rise to what could be

called a kind of “artificial synaesthesia”

SSDs augment our perception in a qualitativeway. These devices become mind enhancing

tools and therefore different but complementaryparts of our cognitive repertoire 

xtending our minds enhances our capacities andows us to transform and augment our cognitivecesses in a way that wouldn’t be possible without

rporating the external resources into our cognitiveroutines 

Do SSDs merely replace one sensory modality withanother? Or are they delivering us a new form of

perceiving and experiencing?

Can the use of SSDs be explained purely internallyin terms of cross-modal mappings within the brain?

We discuss sensory substitution devices(SSDs) as an example of a tool that gets

incorporated into a cognitive routine in a waythat extends the mind

The active user is the agent + tool working together an entangled system of cognitive analysis

A cognitive system mayhave among its parts,components that are

located in the externalenvironment. However idoesn’t follow that the

contribution these

components are makingto the overall cognitive

system is a cognitive on

SSDs are causally necessary for augmentedperception but do they count as cogntiive?

Can SSDs establish anything stronger thancausal necessity?

The loss of a sensory input induces an invasion of thedeprived cortical area by inputs originating from other

modalities

In sensory substitution, informationacquired with one sensory modality is usedto accomplish a task which is normally sub-

served by another sensory modality

This happens because of the plasticity of ourbrains. Cortical Plasticity, we argue, is a

precondition for extended cognition

Our brains do not have a fixed functionalarchitecture, but are sculpted and given form

by the practices we repeatedly engage in

The intermodal connections that arise result from aphenomenon called cross-modal plasticity. The capacity ofthe brain to form these inter-modal connections is exploited

by SSDs. When we actively use SSDs our plastic brainsfactor them into the processing of perceptual information

In SSD perception,sensorimotor

contingencies(SMCs)from vision, touch andaudition are mergedtogether to form a

robust and coherentpercept

Crucially, thiscross-modal

perception differsfrom any kind wenormally enjoy

when we are notusing an SSD.

We then have an active agent+ tool working together to

deliver something new. What isdelivered is the mastery of

novel SMCs that yield a newmode of access to the world. Amode that provides the users

with a new sense.

We only get cross-modal mapping when brain

and tool work in partnership together

This is what we find in the case ofinactive user [where the agent and

tool are detached]. This isn'thowever sufficient for cross-modal

mapping!

This is a case of extended cognition,not just an extended cognitive system.

Causal dependence suggests thatSSD perception is just the agent +

tool without agent and tool forming asingle system.

We argue that only active users can experience thisform of augmented perception. Inactive users just ge

stimulation from the device but no cross-modalmapping.

If perceivers using SSDs count as extendedcognitive systems why the experiences they

enjoy shouldn’t be counted as extended

conscious experiences?