Environments of Intelligence

Environments of Intelligence “An absorbing volume that integrates an extraordinarily wide area of work, with interesting observations and new twists right to the end.” Ruth Millikan, University of Connecticut, USA What is the role of the environment, and of the information it provides, in cognition? More specifically, may there be a role for certain artefacts to play in this context? These are questions that motivate “4E” theories of cognition (as being embodied, embedded, extended, enactive). In his take on that family of views, Hajo Greif first defends and refines a concept of information as primarily natural, environmentally embedded in character, which had been eclipsed by information-processing views of cognition. He continues with an inquiry into the cognitive bearing of some artefacts that are sometimes referred to as “intelligent environments”. With- out necessarily having much to do with Artificial Intelligence, such artefacts may ultimately modify our informational environments. With respect to human cognition, the most notable effect of digital computers is not that they might be able, or become able, to think but that they alter the way we perceive, think and act. Hajo Greif teaches at the Munich Center for Technology in Society (MCTS), Technical University of Munich, Germany, and the Department of Philosophy, University of Klagenfurt, Austria. His research interests cover the philosophy – and some of the history and the social studies – of science and technology, as well as the philosophy of mind. History and Philosophy of Technoscience Series Editor: Alfred Nordmann For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com 1 Error and Uncertainty in Scientific Practice Marcel Boumans, Giora Hon and Arthur C. Petersen (eds) 2 Experiments in Practice Astrid Schwarz 3 Philosophy, Computing and Information Science Ruth Hagengruber and Uwe Riss (eds) 4 Spaceship Earth in the Environmental Age, 1960–1990 Sabine Höhler 5 The Future of Scientific Practice ‘Bio-Techno-Logos’ Marta Bertolaso (ed.) 6 Scientists’ Expertise as Performance: Between State and Society, 1860–1960 Joris Vandendriessche, Evert Peeters and Kaat Wils (eds) 7 Standardization in Measurement: Philosophical, Historical and Sociological Issues Oliver Schlaudt and Lara Huber (eds) 8 The Mysterious Science of the Sea, 1775–1943 Natascha Adamowsky 9 Reasoning in Measurement Nicola Mößner and Alfred Nordmann (eds) 10 Research Objects in their Technological Setting Bernadette Bensaude Vincent, Sacha Loeve, Alfred Nordmann and Astrid Schwarz (eds) 11 Environments of Intelligence: From Natural Information to Artificial Interaction Hajo Greif Environments of Intelligence From natural information to artificial interaction Hajo Greif First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Hajo Greif The right of Hajo Greif to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Greif, Hajo, 1968– author. Title: Environments of intelligence : from natural information to artificial interaction / Hajo Greif. Description: New York : Routledge, 2017. | Series: History and philosophy of technoscience | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016049348 | ISBN 9781138222328 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315408101 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Cognition. | Nature and nurture. Classification: LCC BF311 .G74 2017 | DDC 153—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016049348 ISBN: 978-1-138-22232-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-40810-1 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents Preface vii Acknowledgements x 1 Preliminaries: ants and robots, parlour games and steam drills 1 Background 2 Outline 8 Notes 11 PART I Informational environments 13 2 Resurrecting Dretskean information 15 Information, behaviour and probability 15 The content of natural information, and some discontent 20 Alternative views of information 25 Natural information and the roots of intentionality 28 Notes 32 3 Varieties of perception 34 Perception as information processing: the computational view 35 Information specifies affordances: the ecological view 39 Perceptual illusions vs. misperception: the empirical strategy 46 Notes 55 4 The domains of natural information 56 Natural information and reference classes 57 Informational domains 65 Resurrection at last 74 Notes 75 vi Contents 5 Making an environment 76 History, ecology, environment 77 Adapting ecological niches 81 Construction and constitution 87 Notes 91 6 What is an informational environment? 92 Environmental information and the use of cognition 92 What informational environments are 96 How informational environments change 103 Note 106 PART II Environments of intelligence 107 7 The extension of the extended mind 109 The extension of functional histories 110 The constitution of cognitive extensions 116 Constitutional matters 122 The art of coupling, basic and advanced 124 Notes 128 8 The nature of cognitive artefacts 130 Being guided by pictures 131 Cognitive artefacts and informational environments 136 Convergence and isomorphism 141 Notes 148 9 The intelligence of environments 149 Evolutionary and cognitive robotics 151 Embodied conversational agents and social robotics 155 Second Life 160 Mixed Reality Games 163 Augmented Reality 167 Naturalising the artificial 173 Notes 178 10 Afterthoughts on conceptual analysis and human nature 180 A domain for conceptual analysis 181 A naturalist’s view of human nature and machines 187 Bibliography 195 Author Index 210 Subject Index 214 Preface This is a book about machines, intelligence and environments, but it is not a book about intelligent machines inhabiting some environment. Nor is it a book about machine intelligence as conceived of under the paradigm of Artificial Intelligence. Let alone is it a book about environments as intelligent agents of sorts. Instead, it is a book about human intelligence, how it is shaped by its environments and what role some kinds of artefacts play in that shaping. It sets out as an endeavour to defend and refine a concept of information as primarily natural, environmentally embedded information, which had been eclipsed by the notions of information processing that came to the fore with the rise of the computer. The argument continues with an inquiry into the cognitive bearing of some technologies that happen to be computational by design and are sometimes referred to as “intelligent environments” – and that do not necessarily have much to do with Artificial Intelli- gence. This work aims at a somewhat unconventional perspective on technologies whose relationship to human cognition may have been misrendered by the notion of intelligent machines and, vice versa, it aims at a somewhat unconventional perspective on human cognition whose nature may have been misrendered by models that rely on that same notion. If one looks for a banner under which my project sails, that banner should read, in the naturalist spirit of a robust cognitive externalism: “Reasoning [. .] is done in the world, not in one’s head” (Millikan 1993b, 12). If reasoning commences from direct interaction with the world, it might be worthwhile to begin with tak- ing a closer look at what that world does to and with our thinking rather than starting from a rather traditional, cognitivist or ‘Cartesian’ image of the mind in order to criticise it and then move on to claim that our thinking is situated in and extends into the world. (Anyway, that Cartesian image usually seems to serve as a convenient myth rather than being treated as a serious philosophical position worthy of serious critique.) The variety of externalism endorsed in what follows will be roughly in line with the views of extended, embedded, embodied and enactive cognition, also known by the family name “4E cognition”. Even though not all of the following authors would agree to be subsumed under this rubric, and even though they would not all agree with my arguments, the closest match between what is presented here and other contemporary work in philosophy and cognitive science is, on my opinion, to be found in Chemero (2009), Clark (1997), viii Preface Godfrey-Smith (1996a) and Sterelny (2003), with Dretske (1981), Gibson (1979) and Millikan (1984) as the relevant proximate and the American naturalists as the historically more distant precursors. Some readers may be struck by the lack of a clear distinction between the con- cepts of cognition and perception in what follows. However, there is a method to this apparent confusion: as some of the authors referred to in this book, and unlike the advocates of what is inelegantly called “cognitivism”, and certainly unlike a great deal of philosophical tradition (which, I am told, was even more scrupulous in distinguishing among sensation, perception and cognition), I believe that there

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