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Organism-Environment Codetermination: the Biological Roots of Enactivism

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Organism-Environment Codetermination: the Biological Roots of Enactivism Organism-Environment Codetermination: The Biological Roots of Enactivism A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy of the College of Arts and Sciences by Amanda B Corris June 2020 M.A. University of Cincinnati M.A. University of Sussex Committee Chairs: A. Chemero, Ph.D., A. Potochnik, Ph.D. Abstract Traditional approaches to cognition take it to be a fundamentally brain-based phenomenon. On this view, the brain functions as a type of information processing center, making cognition a matter of computational processing and representational symbol manipulation. In contrast, embodied, enactive approaches to cognition emphasize the role of the body in cognition and non- representational perception-action dynamics. While the embodied and enactive paradigm has been gaining in popularity, it has yet to adequately engage with complementary approaches in biology that aim to define the organizational structure of organismal life. In this dissertation, I argue that an enactive approach to cognition in nature can be enriched by incorporating the central tenets of both developmental systems theory and extended interpretations of evolutionary biology. This framework, which I term biological enactivism, defines organisms as cognizing systems structured by both their internal dynamics and their dynamic relations with environmental features corresponding to their sensorimotor capacities, developed as a result of their coupled interactions with their environments over both developmental and, on a population scale, evolutionary time. i Copyright © 2020 Amanda B Corris All rights reserved. ii “Go, thou sluggard, learn arts and industry from the bee, and from the ant! Go, proud reasoner, and call the worm thy sister!” Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia iii Acknowledgments I have been met with surprisingly little resistance with regard to my philosophical pursuits, and for that I am thankful. Here are the people who are responsible for this, and of whom I am wholly appreciative. Ron McClamrock instilled in me the confidence needed to stay afloat in the raging sea that is academic philosophy. Thank you, Ron. Tony Chemero made me feel like I am famous since the day I met him. I am not sure why, especially considering he is the famous one. But it is a very nice ego boost. Angela Potochnik, nearly singlehandedly, made me into the professional philosopher I am (slowly becoming) today. Any errors I have made along the way were due to me not asking her for advice first. Tom Polger inspired me to work hard now to save myself from extensive scrutiny later- in a good way, of course! Nate Morehouse welcomed me into a stimulating, resourceful, and happy environment, and deeply enriched my understanding of biology along the way (especially the weird stuff). Bob Richardson made me love philosophy even more. Rob Skipper drove me to do philosophy well. The philosophy faculty at UC are excellent people. The Morehouse Lab regularly entertained my ‘armchair biology’, and showed me that it is possible to be an academic and have fun at the same time. Imagine that! My family never gave me the “So when are you going to get a real job?”, which is appreciated. Brad and Lisa put up with endless musings on what could possibly be going on in the mind of every animal (and sometimes plant) that I have come across. Thank you for your patience, friendship, and love. And I think it is only natural to acknowledge the forms of life that have inspired me along the way, for even the “minirobots” enact a world of their very own. iv A portion of Chapter 4: Making Sense of the Environment will be published as Corris A. (2020). Defining the Environment in Organism–Environment Systems. Frontiers in Psychology, 11:1285. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01285. This research was supported in part by the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center. v Table of Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgments .................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ..................................................................................................... vi List of Figures .......................................................................................................... ix Chapter 1: Introduction ..............................................................................................1 1.1 The path that leads here .................................................................................................... 1 1.2 A sketch of the project ..................................................................................................... 3 Chapter 2: A Biological Approach to Cognition ....................................................... 6 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 6 2.1 Life and mind ................................................................................................................... 7 2.1.1 Bringing forth a world through living ....................................................................... 8 2.1.2 Varieties of enactivism ........................................................................................... 10 2.2 Development and evolution on the enactive view ......................................................... 18 2.2.1 Evolution as natural drift ........................................................................................ 18 2.2.2 Enactive evolution .................................................................................................. 21 2.3 Enaction in a developmental system .............................................................................. 24 2.3.1 Biological enactivism: a synthesis and expansion .................................................. 26 2.3.2 Integrating DST with the enactive approach .......................................................... 29 vi Chapter 3: The Role of Cognition in Evolution .......................................................32 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 32 3.1 An alternative synthesis ................................................................................................. 36 3.1.1 Extending evolutionary theory ................................................................................ 39 3.1.2 Interdisciplinary opportunities from the EES ......................................................... 43 3.2 Parallels in cognitive science ......................................................................................... 46 3.2.1 The epigenesis of behavior ..................................................................................... 46 3.2.2 Causal directionality and information flow ............................................................ 48 3.2.3 Shared commitments ............................................................................................... 52 3.3 Cognition as evolutionary ‘bootstrapping’ ..................................................................... 57 3.3.1 Inheritance beyond the gene ................................................................................... 59 3.3.2 Plasticity and the shaping of evolutionary trajectories ........................................... 64 3.3.3 Speeding up evolution............................................................................................. 69 Chapter 4: The Organization of Cognizing Systems ...............................................74 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 74 4.1 The organization of living systems ................................................................................ 76 4.1.1 Self-organization as autopoiesis ............................................................................. 78 4.1.2 Order from chaos: autocatalysis and dissipative structures .................................... 80 4.1.3 Self-organization over ontogenetic time ................................................................. 83 4.2 Plasticity as structural flexibility .................................................................................... 88 4.2.1 An array of possibilities .......................................................................................... 89 4.2.2 Relations between traits: integration and modularity ............................................. 93 4.2.3 Controls and constraints .......................................................................................... 97 4.3 Acting on flexibility ..................................................................................................... 100 4.3.1 Modulating coupling with the environment .......................................................... 102 vii 4.3.2 Assessment of environmental conditions.............................................................. 105 4.3.3 Structural modification as cognitive strategy ....................................................... 108 Chapter 5: Making Sense of the Environment .......................................................113 Introduction ............................................................................................................................
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