Mirko Farina

farinamirko@gmail.com

University of Edinburgh
Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Sydney

“Bodies of Thought: Fleshy Subjects,

Embodied Minds, and Human Natures”.
June 9-10th, Edinburgh
EMT is a view about the
physical mechanisms of
mind and cognition that
envisions the emergence
of extended cognitive
systems through the
coupled combinations of
externally located
resources, bodily
manipulations and in-
the-head processing
 Parity Based – Consistently relies on
Functionalism [Wheeler and Clark]

Complementarity Based – Stresses the

Complementary contribution of Inner and
Outer [Sutton, Menary, Rowlands, Clark]
 Complementarity
defences of EMT
stress the different
contributions made by
internal and externally
located items and
argue that it is
precisely these
differences that allow
for the environment to
play a transformative
role in cognition
The “Second Wave” in
Action …
I defend a
Complementarity
version of EMT
and develop an
argument for it
based on the
enmeshing of
organisms and
their cognitive
developmental
niches.
What’s the Plan? 1. Present a series of cases involving
neural and cognitive development in
which this enmeshing is realised via
brain‟s plasticity

2. Move on to niche construction

and show how we get something
like complementarity out of
developmental niches

IDEA – Connect 1. and 2. through

Ecological inheritance – to be
understood in a developmental context

GOAL – Developmental
argument for Complementarity
from a phylogenetic standpoint
Pointing Out the Enemy
“Enemies” are those views that
describe functional organisation as
pre-specified and our nature as fixed
and constrained

“Integrated Model” – Cosmides/Tooby

Culture is based on a universal
human nature and is constrained by it
Brain is a collection of highly
modular, domain-specific processors
 NO! - Functional Specialisation is
Experience-Dependent

Pascual-Leone and Hamilton (2001) -

Study on blindfolded subjects

After a prolonged period of

sensory deprivation, visual
cortex tends to take on new
functions

Plasticity isn‟t confined to

childhood but persists into
adulthood!
Cognitive Functions are Experience-
Dependent too
Studies on language acquisition in
children show that the capacity to
distinguish sounds narrows with age

It narrows because brain functions

get specialised in accordance with
socio-cultural activities and specific
environmental stimulation

The on-board neural machinery

comes to be dovetailed to fit with the
particular socio-cultural environment
in which our brains grow
 The loss of a sensory modality
induces an invasion of the
deprived cortical area by inputs
originating from other modalities

SSDs exploit the plasticity of our

brains and with training supply a
novel perceptual modality that
compensates for loss or impaired
sensory channel

This transform our cognitive

skills and give rise to
augmented processes of deep
bio-technological symbiosis
Cognitive Development via Brain
Plasticity

The dovetailing of neural circuitry

with the external environment
moulds our cognitive functions

Our brains learn to treat external

structures as reliable resources,
that shape the kinds of on board
cognitive routines they support

External structures become

complementary parts of our
cognitive repertoire
 Niche Construction and Ecological
Inheritance
The reliance on external structures
leads us straight to Niche
Construction

CORE IDEA - organisms can alter

their environments in ways that
may sometimes change their
fitness landscape

Animals engineer the selective

environments of the constructors but
also alter the environs of the
constructor‟s descendants
Genetic VS Ecological Inheritance
[Downstream Epistemic
Engineering]

Wheeler and Clark attack “Strong

Instructionism” and Modularity

Neuroconstructivist Perspective
and “Emergent Modularity”

Model that accounts for brain

neural specialisation without the
involvement of excessive pre-
determination
 Culture and Biology …
Downstream emphasises Analogy between
the importance of niche cultural transmission of
construction for human knowledge and physical
evolution & development niche construction

The latter generates selection impacting feedback cycles in

evolutionary time, the former changes the fitness landscape
for individual lifetime learning
 ….(With a Concern)!
Wheeler & Clark are right to
criticise modularity – they are right
to emphasise the analogy between
culture and biology too

However, there is perhaps a more

powerful context in which one can
understand this bond

I propose to resituate ecological

inheritance from an evolutionary to
a developmental context
Parity in the context of development
→ Life Cycle is the unit of evolution

Interactive Construction and

Co-evolution

Biological structure takes the

form of „soft constraints‟

Evolution is understood as a change

in the spectrum of developmental
resources
Ecological Inheritance in Development

(NOT!) Genetic + Ecological

Inheritance (BUT) Extended
Inheritance

Extended or Exogenetic
Inheritance of developmental
resources

Necessary genetic resources are

complemented by equally necessary
and reliably reproduced epigenetic,
bodily, social, ecological, epistemic
and symbolic resources for
development [Stotz (2010)]
 From DST to Ontogenetic Niche
Construction

The developmental approach thus

conceptualises the niche as part of the
developmental system

The developmental niche is the set of

(complex) legacies inherited by offspring
as necessary developmental resources

BENEFICIAL MOVE for both biology

and the cognitive sciences
Reliable Info and Learning

Ontogenetic niche construction

makes the transmission of crucial
information more reliable

Because learning processes are

involved in the development

Extended inheritances are

inherited, but they are also learned
via behavioural and developmental
plasticity
Ontogenetic niche grounds nature in
development and development in
mechanisms of exo-genetic
inheritance

Genetic and Exo-genetic

factors interact to modify the
life cycle of the organism.

Development thus changes the

dynamics of the cognitive system
in a way that opens up new
cognitive possibilities
New Understanding of “Human Nature”
Our “Nature” is defined through
Development! It is out of this multi-
layered process that the capacities
of living beings emerge

Biology and Culture are not

separate much less
antagonistic

They are rather instrumental for

organisms to achieve biological
fitness in the long run

Culture makes
humans as much as
the reverse!
A Revival of the SSS Model…(?)
"The accepted view that mental
functioning is essentially an
intracerebral process, which can
only be secondarily assisted or
amplified by the various artificial
devices which that process has
enabled man to invent, appears to
be quite wrong … [T]he human
brain is fully dependent upon
cultural resources for its very
operation; and those resources are,
consequently, not adjuncts to, but
constituents of, mental activity"

[Clifford Geertz, The Growth of

Culture and the Evolution of Mind]
 John Sutton
MACCS Sydney

Julian Kiverstein
ILLC Amsterdam Andy “Bowie” Clark 
University of Edinburgh

Karola Stotz
University of Sydney
….Once we see how our brains are
sculpted and nurtured to work in
partnership with our cultural
surroundings, this substantially
weakens the case for thinking of
the brain of a single individual as
the container of the mind
[Kiverstein and Farina (2011a)]