
Richard MenaryMacquarie University · Department of Philosophy
Richard Menary
PhD
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47
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
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July 2011 - present
Publications
Publications (47)
Generative AI (GenAI) grading and tutoring systems are rapidly entering higher education, promising increased efficiency and personalized learning experiences. However, particularly in the case of philosophy, we believe this technology should be viewed with caution. In this article, we first outline the nature and purported benefits of these system...
We agree with Bruineberg and colleagues' main claims. However, we urge for a more forceful critique by focusing on the extended mind debate. We argue that even once the Pearl and Friston versions of the Markov blanket have been untangled, that neither is sufficient for tackling and resolving the question of demarcating the boundaries of the mind.
We propose an account of cognitive tools that takes into account the process of enculturation by which tools are integrated into our cognitive systems. Drawing on work in cultural evolution and developmental psychology, we argue that cognitive tools are complex entities consisting of physical objects, representational systems, and cognitive practic...
This book evaluates the potential of the pragmatist notion of habit possesses to influence current debates at the crossroads between philosophy, cognitive sciences, neurosciences, and social theory. It deals with the different aspects of the pragmatic turn involved in 4E cognitive science and traces back the roots of such a pragmatic turn to both c...
Abstract: In this chapter we assess the role that Markov blankets can play in the debate concerning the boundaries of the mind. We distinguish between two different ways in which Markov blankets can be construed: The first is a purely heuristic and instrumental version of Markov blankets derived from the work of Judaea Pearl. The second is an ontol...
The chapter begins with an evolutionary account of tracking systems, from simple detection systems to complex decoupled and highly flexible tracking systems. The important mediator is the role of the environment in providing the complexity, translucency, and hostility that produces the evolutionary pressures that result in more complex tracking sys...
If cognitive systems are hybrid, composed of heterogeneous components spread out over brain, body and environment, then how are they integrated into coherent functioning systems? Rather than take a synchronic view of integration, this chapter will investigate the evolutionary history of integrated systems and ask: how did such systems evolve? The a...
Experts from a range of disciplines assess the foundations and implications of a novel action-oriented view of cognition.
Cognitive science is experiencing a pragmatic turn away from the traditional representation-centered framework toward a view that focuses on understanding cognition as “enactive.” This enactive view holds that cognition does not...
A unique interdisciplinary collection of papers and commentaries by leading researchers and rising scholars, representing the latest research on consciousness, mind, and brain. This collection offers the most comprehensive collection on consciousness, brain, and mind available. It gathers 39 original papers by leaders in the field followed by comme...
Cognitive science is experiencing a pragmatic turn away from the traditional representation-centered framework toward a view that focuses on understanding cognition as “enactive.” This enactive view holds that cognition does not produce models of the world but rather subserves action as it is grounded in sensorimotor skills. In this volume, experts...
The action-oriented approach in cognitive science emphasizes the role of action in shaping, or constituting, perception, cognition, and consciousness. This chapter summarizes a week-long discussion on how the action-oriented approach changes our understanding of consciousness and the structure of experience, combining the viewpoints of philosophers...
This chapter examines the pragmatist approach to cognition and experience and provides some of the conceptual background to the “pragmatic turn” currently underway in cognitive science. Classical pragmatists wrote extensively on cognition from a naturalistic perspective, and many of their views are compatible with contemporary pragmatist approaches...
Regina Fabry has proposed an intriguing marriage of enculturated cognition and predictive processing. I raise some questions for whether this marriage will work and warn against expecting too much from the predictive processing framework. Furthermore I argue that the predictive processes at a sub-personal level cannot be driving the innovations at...
Most thinking about cognition proceeds on the assumption that we are born with our primary cognitive faculties intact and they simply need to mature, or be fine-tuned by learning mechanisms. Alternatively, a growing number of thinkers are aligning themselves to the view that a process of enculturation transforms our basic biological faculties. What...
In Reading in the Brain , Stanislas Dehaene presents a compelling account of how the brain learns to read. Central to this account is his neuronal recycling hypothesis: neural circuitry is capable of being ‘recycled’ or converted to a different function that is cultural in nature. The original function of the circuitry is not entirely lost and cons...
Expertise is extended by becoming immersed in cultural practices. We look at an example of mathematical expertise in which immersion in cognitive practices results in the transformation of expert performance.
The argument of this paper is that we should think of the extension of cognitive abilities and cognitive character in integrationist terms. Cognitive abilities are extended by acquired practices of creating and manipulating information that is stored in a publicly accessible environment. I call these cognitive practices (2007). In contrast to Pritc...
This article examines the pragmatic conception of self. It describes the views of classical pragmatists Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead on the concept of self. It explains the pragmatic concept of self reinforces the agentive idea that what we do makes us who we are. It suggests that there is no pre-establ...
In their papers for this issue, Sterelny and Sutton provide a dimensional analysis of some of the ways in which mental and
cognitive activities take place in the world. I add two further dimensions, a dimension of manipulation and of transformation.
I also discuss the explanatory dimensions that we might use to explain these cases.
KeywordsCogniti...
Adams and Aizawa (2010b) define cognitivism as the processing of representations with underived content. In this paper, I respond to their use of
this stipulative definition of cognition. I look at the plausibility of Adams and Aizawa’s cognitivism, taking into account
that they have no criteria for cognitive representation and no naturalistic theo...
Keywords4E Cognition-Traditional cognitivism-Enactivism-Embodied cognition-Extended cognition
Leading scholars respond to the famous proposition by Andy Clark and David Chalmers that cognition and mind are not located exclusively in the head.
Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? In their famous 1998 paper "The Extended Mind," philosophers Andy Clark and David J. Chalmers posed this question and answered it provocatively...
This chapter delves deeper into the two “waves” of arguments for EM as discussed in the last chapter. The first wave focuses on questions of functional parity between internal and external processes and focuses mainly on the functional role of causal coupling between internal and external vehicles. The second wave, on the other hand, focuses on que...
This book explores and examines the nature and study of mind and cognition as presented in an essay by Andy Clark and David Chalmers published in Analysis in 1998. Provoking much debate about the subject, the essay’s main theories are presented in the following chapters, together with their criticisms and developments. Clark and Chalmers propose an...
Intentionality is usually defined as the directedness of the mind toward something other than itself. My desire for a cold beer is directed at the cold beer in front of me. Much of consciousness is intentional, my conscious experiences are usually directed at something. However, conscious experiences typically have a phenomenal character: there is...
Naturalistic philosophers ought to think that the mind is continuous with the rest of the world and should not, therefore,
be surprised by the findings of the extended mind, cognitive integration and enactivism. Not everyone is convinced that all
mental phenomena are continuous with the rest of the world. For example, intentionality is often formul...
Is the self narratively constructed? There are many who would answer yes to the
Cognitive Integration argues that thinking is bounded by neither the brain nor the skin of an organism. Cognitive systems function through integration of neural and bodily functions with the functions of representational vehicles. The integrationist position offers a fresh contribution to the emerging embodied and embedded approach to the study of...
In this paper I aim to show that the creation and manipulation of written vehicles is part of our cognitive processing and, therefore, that writing transforms our cognitive abilities. I do this from the perspective of cognitive integration: completing a complex cognitive, or mental, task is enabled by a co-ordinated interaction between neural proce...
InCognitive Integration: Attacking The Bounds of Cognition Richard Menary argues that the real pay-off from extended-mind-style arguments is not a new form of externalism in the philosophy of mind, but a view in which the 'internal' and 'external' aspects of cognition are integrated into a whole. Menary argues that the manipulation of external vehi...
What would we be without our cognitive webs? Like the spider, we create, maintain and manipulate our cognitive webs. Unlike the spider, we also share these webs and learn how to fine-tune them in all sorts of ways. There are webs that are primarily iconic and linguistic ones that are primarily symbolic, and although the webs help us achieve cogniti...
Recently internalists (Adams and Aizawa 2001, 2007, forthcoming, Rupert 2004, 2007) have mounted a counter-attack on the attempt to redefine the bounds of cognition. Their counter-arguments are aimed at the extended mind framework, but are also relevant to the integrationist framework. Cognitive integration can be defended against the internalist c...
Cognitivism represents the major shift in the study of cognition after behaviourism and underpins the main theories and methodologies of cognitive science. In contrast to behaviourism, which focuses on observable behaviour, cognitivism posits internal representations. The explanatory focus turns to the processing of these representations to explain...
The ideas and arguments of this chapter are the most open to further investigation, both conceptual and empirical, of any so far broached. My aim is to provide a framework in which further work could begin to be done and to show how cognitive practices are dependent upon the manipulation thesis and hybrid mind thesis, as developed in the previous t...
It is through our bodies that we primarily engage with the world and through this engagement the body is constantly integrating with the environment. When body and environment co-ordinate, the environment becomes part of the resources the organism has for acting, thinking or communicating. How, though, ought we to understand the co-ordination, or r...
The story so far: I have argued for the manipulation thesis and the hybrid mind thesis. I have also shown that the manipulation of external vehicles requires enforcement by social and cognitive norms (see the previous chapter).
In this chapter we shall look at the biological basis for cognitive integration. I aim to show that the manipulation thesis and the hybrid mind thesis both have a biological and evolutionary basis. This is because our biological understanding of organism-environment relations does not respect the standard boundaries between what is “internal” and “...
In this chapter, I outline the dynamical approach that informs the notion of reciprocal coupling/causation. Especially important, for cognitive integration, is the way that two reciprocally coupled systems are treated as components of a larger system. I then go on to discuss the important difference reciprocal coupling makes to cognitive integratio...
Recently internalists have mounted a counter-attack on the attempt to redefine the bounds of cognition. The counter-attack is aimed at a radical project which I call ''cognitive integration,'' which is the view that internal and external vehicles and processes are integrated into a whole. Cognitive integration can be defended against the internalis...
There are many areas of Peirce and Wittgenstein"s thought
which have great affinity for one another such as: the
impossibility of a private language, the distinction between
believing and knowing, and the role of doubt and certainty
in our epistemic practices. I shall focus on the affinity
between Peirce and Wittgenstein"s thought on the role of
do...