The Philosophical Problems Of The Bounds Of Cognition

For over ten years, the problem of the bounds of cognition, especially on the relationship between human cognition and environment has been the point at issue between cognitive intracranialism and extended cognitivism. The former claims that there are causal links between human cognition and environment, based on which we can reduce mental activity to the computing and manipulating symbol-representations of the brain. Hence, for the intracranialist, skin and skull define the boundary of the cognition. This approach has been served as a major paradigm for traditional cognitive science, and has a stable philosophical foundation.But for extended cognitivists, they disagree with the relationship between human cognition and environment set by the intracranialist. They maintain that we should give cognitive activity a constitutional explanation, namely we should take the active role of the environment into consideration.Over the very concept of the’ constitution’, however, the embodied cognitivist provides a similar way in their explanatory approach, which may somehow undermine the legitimacy of the extended cognitivism. Nonetheless there are crucial differences between the two. The former focuses on the mechanism from which the cognition of organism is produced, while the later on the active role intelligent device plays in cognitive activity.Since we have identified three distinct claims above, in three aspects will the paper continue to discuss the problem of the bounds of cognition:What’s the boundary of the cognition, and is it causal or constitutional?Firstly, what’s at issue? The paper maintains that the debate is over the relationship between the mind and the tools we use. In this part, the paper briefly outlines varies accounts made by traditional cognitive science and mental theories, the fundamental claims of the cognitive intracranialism and extended cognitivism, and distinctions between extended cognitivism and embodied cognitivism.Secondly, the differences between their ontological presumptions. The author adopts a holistic approach to defend the two principles which extended cognitivist advocates and are always misread, namely’couple constitute principle’ and ’parity principle’. Such strategy is due to if we take the causal principle of reductivism which the cognitive intracranialsim adopts, we could not make a good explanations to the cognitive agent interact with environment. Further, the paper discuss the dilemma within the version of radical embodied cognition so-called the anti-reductivism, with this discuss I’ll contend that extended cognitivism is not a strong anti-reductivism and strong anti-computationalsim or anti-representational ism. Hence for the extended cognitivist, they should stick to the concept of’constitution’, or otherwise they will face these two dilemmas themselves. Finally, the paper will illustrate the pattern of the cognitive and mind that extended cognitivism so-called bio-tech mind.Thirdly, the realization of the constitution. The paper contends that such discussion involves brain-body-environment interaction mechanism and cognitive channels. For cognitive intracranialsim and embodied cognition (enactive approach), they have their own explanation, each has its own flaws respectively. The former refuted the constitution and falling into the isolationism, the latter emphasize the nature of brain of biological and falling into the some biological chauvinism. So, viewing from the cognitive turn, I attempt to adopt the instrumentalism of Dewey to draw a clear distinction boundary of them, and fix up the former problem, then go straight to re-construct the explanations of the extended approach. At this level, I’ll discuss the real situation about human cognition and environment interaction in our intelligent age, and appeal to the cognitive technology to explain the extended cognitive approach.