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Intellectica, 2013/2, 60, pp. 137-159
© 2013 Association pour la Recherche Cognitive.
Neuropragmatism and the Culture of Inquiry:
Moving Beyond Creeping Cartesianism
Tibor SOLYMOSI
#
&
John SHOOK
A
BSTRACT
. Recent work in psychology by Daniel Kahneman on system 1 and
system 2, recent interest in revitalizing representationalism in cognitive science, and
recent use of the concept of information in the science of consciousness all suffer
from a creeping Cartesianism that blocks the road to inquiry. Neuropragmatism offers
a way through this hurdle by emphasizing the contextual situation in which inquiry
develops. The neuropragmatic sketch of experience, habit, mind, consciousness, and
inquiry provided here is used as a framework to reconstruct the important data we
consider from psychology, cognitive science, and the science of consciousness. The
shortcomings of these empirical studies are overcome by system 3, which is the dual-
process of enculturation that situates systems 1 and 2 and provides the means of their
further transformation through the work of creative intellectuals, whose task it is to
imagine and discover new possibilities for lived experience. The introduction of
system 3 is a philosophical hypothesis intended to effect further philosophical
discussion and scientific consideration.
Keywords: Systems 1 and 2, neuropragmatism, representationalism, information,
consciousness, culture, inquiry, Cartesianism, Daniel Kahneman.
Résumé. Le neuropragmatisme et la culture de l’enquête : dépasser le
cartésianisme rampant. Le travail récent en psychologie de Daniel Kahneman sur le
système 1 et le système 2, l’intérêt récent pour une reconsidération du
représentationnalisme en sciences cognitives, et l’usage récent du concept
d’information dans les sciences de la conscience souffrent tous d’un cartésianisme
rampant qui entrave la voie de la recherche. Le neuropragmatisme propose une
manière de surmonter cet obstacle en insistant sur le contexte de développement de
l’enquête. L’esquisse neuropragmatiste de l’expérience, de l’habitude, de l’esprit, de
la conscience et de l’enquête que nous proposons ici sert de base théorique pour
reconsidérer des données importantes obtenues en psychologie, en sciences
cognitives, et dans les sciences de la conscience. Les défauts de ces études empiriques
sont dépassés par le système3, c’est-à-dire par le double processus d’acculturation qui
contextualise les systèmes 1 et 2 et qui fournit les ressources de leur transformation
par le travail d’intellectuels créatifs, dont la tâche est d’imaginer et de découvrir de
nouvelles possibilités pour l’expérience vécue. L’introduction du système 3 est une
hypothèse philosophique ; elle vise à susciter d’autres discussions philosophiques et
une prise en compte scientifique.
Mots-clés : Systèmes 1 et 2, neuropragmatisme, représentationnalisme, information,
conscience, acculturation, cartésianisme, Daniel Kahneman.
#
Department of History and Government, Bowie State University Bowie, Maryland, USA.
tibor<at>neuropragmatism.com
Philosophy and Science Education, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, USA.
Jshook<at>pragmatism.org.
138 Tibor SOLYMOSI
& John SHOOK
I
NTRODUCTION
Pragmatism is explicitly anti-representational, emphatically anti-Cartesian,
and undeniably experimental. These characteristics and the history shared with
early psychology, psychobiology, cognitive science and the cognitive,
behavioral, and social neurosciences have led many to recognize pragmatism
as the defining trait of contemporary mind science. For some, like Jerry Fodor,
this is not only lamentable but (practically) suicidal for the future of cognitive
science. For most, the pragmatism at work in the mainstream cognitive
sciences is adequate. However, we contend that this embryonic pragmatism is
at risk of becoming still-born, thereby risking the vitality of the sciences of
mind. We neuropragmatists are the few who recognize the situation as such.
For all the talk of pragmatism, much more of it needs to be worked explicitly
through scientific research. As things stand, too many questions – and worse,
time and resources – deal with the creeping Cartesianism underlying much of
the cognitive science enterprise itself.
William James and John Dewey anticipated many of the current ideas about
the mind put forth in connectionism, embodied, enactive, and extended mind
theories, and ecological psychology (cf. Dalton, 2002; Freeman, 2005;
Rockwell, 2005; Chemero, 2009; Johnson, 2007; Schulkin, 2009). We have
taken the liberty of naming such thinkers neuropragmatists and have written
on several core issues (Solymosi, 2011a, b; Shook & Solymosi, 2013). In this
essay, we take a further step in articulating a philosophical – viz., proto-
scientific – hypothesis that results from what we believe is a neglect within
cognitive science of the radical nature of pragmatism. Fodor may have well
been correct when he expressed worry about the pragmatism in cognitive
science; he was simply wrong to think it was too much: the problem is that
there is not enough.
Our hypothesis is that once the Cartesianism underlying the psychological
constructs of systems 1 and 2 (as recently popularized by Daniel Kahneman),
1
the debate over what to do about so-called “mental representations,” and the
import of the nebulous concept of information is eradicated, we contend that a
reconstruction of the two systems, of representations, and of information yields
a third system that resolves the difficulties faced by cognitive scientists
suffering from creeping Cartesianism.
In other words, system 3 is chronologically the most recent of the systems,
the most fragile, and the most important for understanding the mental life of
the individual yet social human animal. The stereotypical Cartesian and
Humean concerns over intentionality and the “external” world are shown to be
more properly conceived as socio-cultural events and not strictly
(neuro)biological “things” of individual brains (or minds). So conceived
1
Kahneman has given a forceful presentation of these so-called systems of cognition in his recent work,
Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011). System 1 is characterized as the automatic, quick response – habits,
instincts, etc. – that humans have that allow them to act without deliberation in time-sensitive situations.
System 2 is the slow, deliberative, and conscious attention humans sometimes engage in to override the
impulsiveness of system 1. We elaborate these two systems in a later section.
Neuropragmatism and the Culture of Inquiry 139
system 3 is cultural insofar as it produces the means by which the first two
systems are capable of doing their work in a specific situation.
Our approach is piecemeal but cumulatively constructive. We present
critical summaries of systems 1 and 2, of recent discussion over the status of
representationalism, especially with regard to dynamic systems theory (DST);
and of the ubiquity of information, specifically its role in the three systems and
in representationalism. Throughout each of these steps, we offer a pragmatist
reconstruction so that much of the important experimental data is retained and
available for further work. We conclude with the introduction of culture as
system 3. We also begin with culture in some prefatory remarks about some
key neuropragmatic terminology.
N
EUROPRAGMATIC
T
OOLS FOR
I
NQUIRY
Familiarity with the tools one has at hand always well serves the inquirer.
Reminding oneself and one’s fellow inquirers of the uses of familiar and
integral tools not only expedites their regular use, it also affords the
opportunity to more readily anticipate and create novel uses of these tools.
Intelligence and innovation go hand-in-hand when such hands are well
informed. Here we sketch a brief account of how the general pragmatist view
of the culture and experience of inquiry occurs, with which we also introduce
other terms taken from recent scientific literature. The classical terms we
introduce here are: experience, habit, mind, culture, consciousness, and
inquiry. The new terms are the symbol Œ, and the regulatory mechanisms,
homeostasis and allostasis.
For pragmatism and science alike, experience is a prominent concept that
carries considerable authority. Prima facie, the appeal to experience may not
seem problematic in itself. However, when it comes to the science of the mind,
experience is both that which is to be explained and the means by which an
explanation gains some authority. This circularity is even more troubling when
we consider that the conception of experience at hand is vague and often an
equivocation between what the Germans refer to as Erfahrung and Erlebnis.
2
The latter refers to the sensationalistic empiricism of David Hume and,
subsequently, the logical positivists and empiricists. On this conception of
experience, there are mental or experiential states, each of which is easily
discernible from another. The philosophical and the scientific literature
abounds with talk of states of blue or red, cold or hot, etc. This classical view
of experience is faced with the problem of representing the world external to
the experiencing mind. This view relies on an ancient distinction between
sensation and perception. Briefly, sensation consists in the bodily sense organs
(i.e., eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin) sensing the external world and transmitting
its data about the world to the mind, where it is then perceived. Dewey called
this view the spectator theory of knowledge (LW4), and Daniel Dennett has
christened it the Cartesian Theater (1991). The central epistemological and
metaphysical issue here is that the mind is a thing that passively receives sense
2
Here we follow the useful distinction made by neopragmatist Robert Brandom (2004). Despite the
utility of the description of classical pragmatism in the first part of Brandom’s article, the second part
on semantics is extremely problematic, as Larry Hickman has critically addressed (2007).
140 Tibor SOLYMOSI
& John SHOOK
data about the world and that this is how the mind knows about that world.
Among the several problems with this conception of experience is what is
known as the veil of ideas or appearances. This veil divides the world in two,
into the mental and inner world and the physical and external world. Somehow
these sense data of which the veil is made connect with the external world and
thereby represent that world to the inner world. This indirectness of experience
presents the problem of knowing anything with certainty about the world,
which raises further questions about how scientific knowledge is reliable
enough for human action to depend upon.
3
In light of Darwinism, the classical pragmatists found good reasons for
rejecting this duality between mind and world. Instead of conceiving of
experience as Erlebnis (i.e., sensationalistic), they promoted the conception of
experience as Erfahrung. Experience of this variety is at play when someone
asks if you have experience with a skill, like skiing. It is another way of asking
if you have familiarity. And just as the etymology suggests, there is no real
divide – mind and world are of the same source, just as siblings are of the same
parents. This intimacy of experience also provides the means of knowing about
the world. Instead of experience being a sequence of atomistic states, the
pragmatists considered it a continual process of learning. Education occurs
through a familiarization – an ongoing transaction between the learner and that
which is learned. There are differences but not divides. Of the experiences had,
the differences that prove to make a difference in future experience are
particularly important. As James put it, consider the “cash value” of our claims
in terms of differences that make a difference. Dewey echoed the sentiment in
his emphasis on the consequences for lived experience.
For pragmatism, there is no underestimating the import of this conception
of experience. For James, experience was the underlying metaphysical
category – a world of pure experience. Dewey modified James’s radical
empiricism by first prioritizing the experiential situation – the contextual
whole in and through which experience occurs. From this priority of the
situation, the phase of experience we know as inquiry is able to make the
functional distinction between organism and environment. This distinction
between organism and environment – while often made at the skin – must be
functional and not ontological because the two are inseparable: if there is an
organism, then there is an environment; if an environment, then an organism.
Consider the etymology of “environment”: it is that which “environs,”
surrounds, something – in this case, the organism.
4
Recent work in
3
Indeed, by the time of Kant, the problem of knowledge had become how knowledge was even possible
in the first place.
4
Some readers may contend that this co-defining of organism and environment is misleading because
organism is a biological or natural category that presupposes the third-person perspective, whereas
environment is a phenomalistic or “experiential” category that presupposes the first-person perspective.
Our use of these two terms together is not idiosyncratic. For Darwin, adaptation was a matter of the
relationship between an organism and its environment – a matter that remains influential today as
Griffiths & Grey (2001) indicate. With regard to Dewey specifically, the very divide between the third-
person perspective as biological or natural and the first-person perspective as phenomalistic or
experiential is the very dualism of modern philosophy he sought to destroy from the evolutionary
perspective taken in Experience and Nature. In short, the first-person perspective – the so-called
Neuropragmatism and the Culture of Inquiry 141
evolutionary biology and developmental systems bears this out. Griffiths and
Grey (2001) have argued that this coupling of organism and environment is so
tight that the proper unit for evolution is the single unit of organism-
environment, or as Griffiths and Grey suggest, the symbol Œ. From here,
Dewey’s conception of experience as organism-environment transaction can be
restated as Œ-transaction. This conception implies that experience is old: it has
a long evolutionary history, most of which is a series of events that are simply
had – experiences involved with knowledge are a much more recent affair.
5
Experience as Œ-transaction implies that any attempt to localize experience
in any part of the transaction is doomed to failure. Furthermore, experiencing
and the products of experience are not exclusively found inside the organism.
This transactionalism requires that experience modify both the organism and
the environment. Dewey referred to this joint modification as adjustment. This
is a dual process of the organism’s adapting to the environment and the
organism’s alteration of the environment (Hickman, 2001, p. 21). Among the
consequences of these adjustments is the development of habits, the
dependable and regular behavioral dispositions to act without foresight or
deliberation. Given the time pressures within Œ-transactions, the development
of habits comes as no surprise. Some habits become so good at keeping life
and limb together they become generic traits in a species. One such trait is
plasticity, an individual organism’s ability to learn new habits through its
interaction with its environment.
Another habit is the active organization of one’s environment so that one’s
habits are more effective. For Dewey, this ecological niche construction
develops a niche filled not just with transient and fleeting gestures and sounds
that communicate the here and now but also with signs and symbols that
persist beyond the momentary use. This phase of experience Dewey conceived
as minding. Instead of mind being some sort of individual ephemeral thing that
somehow interacts with a physical body, the body minds its environment.
Minding on this view is the dynamic organization of habits of the organism
and of its environment that afford meaningful behavior. While dynamic, this
privacy of mind – grows out of the public transactions of the third-person perspectives, just as
experience grows out of nature. These claims will become clearer as this sketch develops.
5
To be clear, this recognition does not imply that only cognitive experience is of value; rather, that
there are far more varieties of experience than that which is known, that such experiences are often
significant, and that without them there can be no cognitive experience in the first place. On this point,
specifically within Dewey’s thought, see Hickman, 2001, pp. 17-20.
A reader may further retort that putting experience in phylogenetic terms is unorthodox because it
leaves no obvious space for the subject of experience: it seems odd if not absurd to place the subject in
the species and not in its members. Yet this way of talking about experience, as though there must first
be a subject who is capable of undergoing experience in the first place, prior to any experience
whatsoever, is a non-starter. Pragmatists from James and Dewey to Rorty and Dennett reject this
conception of experience as presupposing a subject. Rather, the individual subject or self develops out
of experience as Œ-transaction. Integral to this achievement of being able to talk to oneself without
others’ hearing it is an ecological niche in which others talk to each other first and foremost. For more
on this point, see Dewey, 1925/LW1, p. 135, and Dennett, 1991, p. 195. Lastly, it would behoove the
reader to remember that for Cartesians consciousness, mind, self, and subject are conceived as one and
the same thing. We deny such equivocation and consider each of these terms as specific phases within
the process of experience.
142 Tibor SOLYMOSI
& John SHOOK
scaffolding has far greater stability than does conscious activity, which occurs
when the regular flow of habitual activity becomes disturbed and thereby
uncertain.
A minding organism goes about its environment with expectations of how
this transaction will go. For this reason, pragmatists conceive of belief as a
habit of action – not a representation or reflection of how the world is
independently of human activity, viz., of a reality behind the veil of
appearances. When an organism’s habits are conducive to activity that
maintains life and limb, there is no need for adjustment of the organism nor its
environment. However, when this dynamic equilibrium of Œ-transaction is
disrupted, some adjustment is necessary. One common means of adjustment –
and the one that receives a significant amount of attention by neuroscientists –
is homeostasis. This is the regulatory mechanism that reacts to the disruption
by modifying the organism until the dynamic equilibrium is re-attained. A
simple example is the body’s either sweating or shivering to return to a specific
internal temperature. Another means of adjustment is the lesser discussed
allostasis. This regulatory mechanism is anticipatory of a likely disruption to
the Πequilibrium. This anticipation, to be clear, is not conscious nor cognitive
(i.e. not having to do with knowing, though it may very well have to do with
the brain). It is anticipatory in that it is a preparatory habit aimed at modifying
the body to ready for further disruptions of equilibrium and to bring it to a new
dynamic equilibrium. An example is the release of cortisol and/or testosterone
prior to sex or battle. After a provocative discussion of regulatory mechanisms,
Dewey evoked his 1896 characterization of Œ-transition as an organic circuit
that is a system of tensions, concluding that “This wariness [characterized by
anticipatory modification] is the organic prefiguring of the tension that
constitutes awareness in the case of human beings” (2012, p. 212) – a
noteworthy observation that plays a recurring theme in our argument.
Jay Schulkin has noted that this pattern of allostasis – of stress and relief –
follows Dewey’s rhythm of life, of anticipation and consummation (2003,
p. 38).
6
Furthermore, the regulatory dynamic between equilibrium,
homeostasis, and allostasis shares a parallel with Dewey’s and Peirce’s basic
pattern of belief, doubt, and inquiry. So strong is this parallel, these regulatory
mechanisms should be seen as precursors to and continuous with the fixation
of belief. The pragmatist process of inquiry only gets going when our actions
and the beliefs that guide them fail to cohere with our expectations and
interactions with the environment, thus bringing about a felt difficulty. This
feeling may be very brief, such as when you are asked to order at a restaurant
without yet having decided. As Peirce noted, there are four general ways of
resolving this difficulty, the methods of tenacity, authority, a priority, and
science (1877). These first three seem to resist any sense of fallibilism or an
openness to change according to the circumstances. The power of tradition in
each is indicative of homeostasis – do what it takes to regain stability as it has
always been. Change is to be resisted. Like allostasis, the method of science
seeks to modify the situation such that it is new, having grown, however, from
6
Schulkin has written extensively about homeostasis and allostasis along pragmatist lines. See
Schulkin, 2003, 2011a, and 2011b.
Neuropragmatism and the Culture of Inquiry 143
the old. A new equilibrium is reached when a new set of beliefs is fixed as a
result of inquiry. Dewey’s emphasis on the importance of cultivating an
experimental attitude in life is key. The flexibility of mind determines the
ability of the organism – and its community – to deal with problems in an ever
more intelligent fashion. The better a group of organisms can anticipate
problems likely to arise, the better chance it has in preparing for such
problems.
This anticipation, however, differs from allostasis in that it requires
conscious deliberation on the part of the community members. It is one thing
for a felt difficulty to be had and resolved without one’s recognizing it. It is
quite another to name the difficulty, to name the exigency, and to put effort
forth to resolve it, or even evade it in the first place. This style of anticipation
requires consciousness – or, in an effort to overcome or resist the unfortunate
hypostatization of adverbs as committed by Cartesianism, conscious activity.
Where minding is the relatively stable scaffolding that makes Œ-transaction
meaningful, it is insufficient for deliberate, and especially scientific, inquiry.
Minding is a necessary condition for consciousness, but the two are not
identical. Dewey recognized that the basis of conscious attention is in the
wariness an organism faces when the Πequilibrium is sufficiently disrupted
that the beliefs, habits of mind and action, and other bodily regulatory
mechanisms are inadequate for the task of resolution (2012). So a culture of
inquiry evolves to provide the symbolic significance, cultural instrumentation,
and worldly – viz., inquisitive, if not yet experimental, though distinctly
technical – orientation that is necessary for the conscious attention and
deliberate intervention into the situation in order to create from the resources at
hand
7
a new situation that is no longer problematic but consummatory and
ameliorative.
Dewey, late in life, regretted his use of the term experience because so
many of his fellow philosophers confused his Erfahrung with the Humean
Erlebnis. For instance, Dewey wrote that he should have titled Experience and
Nature as Culture and Nature. In light of recent advances in our understanding
of non-human animal life, especially in its continuity with human life, we
reserve experience as a larger category than culture. Experience as Œ-
transaction is deep, going back millions of years. Culture refers to the
idiosyncratic Œ-transactions that define symbolic and sapient – viz., human –
life. Some species are communicative and have just those sorts of experiences,
but they do not know it. Others communicate through symbols and signs and
not just gestures and sounds; but they are not aware of their semiotics, nor can
they inquire into them. Culture grows out of such populations when its
instrumentation becomes deliberatively innovative and thus consciously
selective.
Recall that adjustment is a dual process that modifies organism and
environment alike. This general phase of Œ-transaction develops into a
powerful process with the evolution of culture. The introduction of cultural
artifacts affords humans the means of deliberate innovation, specifically in
using them to discover new strategies for getting about the natural and cultural
7
Viz., the raw materials, intermediate stock parts, and skill and tool sets (Hickman, 2001).
144 Tibor SOLYMOSI
& John SHOOK
environment and for transmitting the successful strategies to the rest of the
culture, thereby reforming it. This process of discovery is undertaken by a
small number of inquirers. These researchers have a greater disposition toward
fallibilism and stronger attention spans. They have developed a set of habits
that are conducive to performing cutting-edge inquiry. The projects taken up
by artists and scientists alike – the creative intellectuals – demand an openness
and willingness to be self-critical, not only to develop new solutions to
problems but to reconsider both the solutions proposed and the articulation of
the problems addressed. This degree of critical reflection not only requires
above average conscious attention to the complex situation but also a
community that encourages and effects this highly sophisticated sort of
inquiry.
8
Over time, however, this imbalance between experimentalists and those
who just benefit from experimentation has changed. Our culture has slowly but
surely become more experimental. From the days of Homo erectus, when
hominins spent millions of years using the same process to manufacture the
same tools, hominins today are regularly if not constantly developing new
tools, skills, and strategies, and passing these developments to the rest of the
population. Culture is a dual-process system that actively promotes discovery
via experimentation and deliberately modifies the cultural environment in light
of these discoveries.
9
From this pragmatic sketch, a reconstruction of these key concepts or
themes in contemporary cognitive science is possible. Our reconstructive
sketch situates Kahneman’s systems 1 and 2 within the just described view of
habits, conscious mind, and culture. This provides the framework for
addressing concerns about representationalism, and consequently clarifying
uses of the term information. Through this our hypothesis for the postulation of
system 3 and the call for further inquiry into it becomes clearer.
S
ITUATING
S
YSTEMS
1
&
2
Kahneman’s recent book (2011) elaborates a dual-process theory of human
cognition. He takes up the nomenclature of Stanovich & West that
distinguishes between a fast response, system 1, and a slow one, system 2
(Kahneman & Frederick, 2005; Stanovich & West, 2002). Even though
Kahneman is careful to note that systems 1 and 2 are umbrella terms covering
several different subsystems, he nevertheless sets them in nearly perfect
dichotomous opposition. Where 1 is fast, automatic, effortless, and always
operating, 2 is slow, lazy, and rarely operating. Plus, system 1 is metabolically
efficient, whereas system 2 drains energy. The metabolic contrast is well
illustrated by the commonsensical descriptions of each system. System 1 is the
set of habits or intuitions or instincts that quickly respond to immediate
problems a person may face. Usually, the system does a good enough job at
8
To appreciate the disproportionality, consider that all humans are familiar with the problem of thirst
and its easy resolution. But most humans lack the unique traits required for experimental inquiry
performed by a research team in a laboratory.
9
This feedback serves to modify the upbringing of the next generation of creative intellectuals, for the
problems and the resources available for inquiry will have been modified and expanded as well.
Neuropragmatism and the Culture of Inquiry 145
reacting, but mistakes are made regularly enough that a fail safe is beneficial.
System 2 evolved to be what Kahneman describes as the conscious self that is,
on occasion, capable of pushing back against habit or instinct. This tension is
perhaps better assuaged when a person is not in a situation that demands
immediate response. That is, system 2 is capable of modifying system 1
through the deliberate intervention into one’s lived experience that is intended
to change a person’s habits. Take, for example, an overweight person who
wants to lose weight. His system 1 readily accepts offers of food or simply
directs him to get food that is delicious, calorie-rich, and readily accessible.
Because of such habits (and other cultural factors to be discussed later) such an
individual does not realize that he has eaten more than he needs until it is too
late for maintaining the goal of not gaining weight. System 2 intervenes by
making it more difficult for system 1 to react to temptation. Such tricks to aid
intervention might include keeping junk food out of the house, shopping for
food on a full stomach, changing one’s daily route to work to avoid fast food,
or even seeking therapeutic help to address any possible issues underlying
one’s relationship with food. But such long-term tricks do a person no good if
he is incapable of resisting temptation when directly faced with it. System 2
takes the most effort to be successful under such conditions. If the direct
temptation is too strong for too long, system 2 fails, and system 1 takes over. A
successful dieter must take great pains to cultivate a new set of habits to resist
temptation. As some recent research suggests, it could be as many as three
years of diligence before system 2’s efforts to adjust system 1 take hold,
rendering moot the need of the conscious self to intervene (Dreifus, 2012).
Two more examples of how systems 1 and 2 work and interact are in order.
Unlike the dieter, these examples are Kahneman’s and illustrate the need for
system 3. The first is a word puzzle involving simple arithmetic. Before
introducing the puzzle, Kahneman instructs his readers to “not try to solve it
but listen to your intuition:
- A bat and ball cost $1.10.
- The bat costs one dollar more than the ball.
- How much does the ball cost?” (2011, p. 44).
He contends most people would answer that the ball costs 10¢. But that
intuitive answer is simply incorrect. A dollar more than 10¢ is $1.10 for the
bat, making the ball and bat together $1.20. It takes only a moment’s reflection
to realize that the ball must be 5¢, making the bat $1.05 and the sum identical
to the first premise of the puzzle. What Kahneman believes is going on here is
an illustration of the laziness of system 2 in its monitoring of system 1. If
system 2 was not so lazy, it would have done its job and intervened in
system 1, keeping it from blurting out what seemed to be the right answer.
A similarly apparent and similar faux pas occurs with the second example.
Kahneman shares the popular story told in the book The Invisible Gorilla by
Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simons (2010). Kahneman describes the
experiment as follows:
“[Chabris & Simons] constructed a short film of two teams
passing basketballs, one team wearing white shirts, the other
wearing black. The viewers of the film are instructed to count
146 Tibor SOLYMOSI
& John SHOOK
the number of passes made by the white team, ignoring the
black players. This task is difficult and completely absorbing.
Halfway through the video, a woman wearing a gorilla suit
appears, crosses the court, thumps her chest, and moves on.
The gorilla is in view for 9 seconds. Many thousands of people
have seen the video, and about half of them do not notice
anything unusual. It is the counting task – and especially the
instruction to ignore one of the teams – that causes the
blindness. No one who watches the video without that task
would miss the gorilla. Seeing and orienting
10
are automatic
functions of system 1, but they depend on the allocation of
some attention to the relevant stimulus. The authors note that
the most remarkable observation of their study is that people
find its results surprising.” (2011, pp. 23-24)
Kahneman concludes that this “study illustrates two important facts about our
minds: we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness”
(ibid., p. 24).
What both of these examples illustrate to us is not so much the laziness or
the blindness of the so-called mind (recall the pragmatist framework
introduced in the previous section), but the need to recognize the artificial
situations in which such results occur. Consider the following questions: How
often are people in a store faced with doing the sort of arithmetic Kahneman
describes? Moreover, would people be so careless – so lazy – if they were
actually spending their own money? Besides the cost of sporting equipment is
not so cheap these days; five cents is simply not much to most Westerners. Yet
if the formality of the puzzle was retained but the cultural context was altered
to reflect a major financial transaction, we contend that most people would
simply ignore Kahneman’s imperative not to solve the puzzle. This disparity is
not accounted for by systems 1 and 2 alone. In similar fashion, Kahneman
seems oblivious to the fact that people are quite good at following instructions,
like “Count the number of times the white team passes the basketball.” So
good we are at following instructions that we are not interested in and therefore
not likely to observe the cultural and biological anomaly of a dancing gorilla’s
making an unannounced and unanticipated appearance.
To relate these two systems (and our general criticism) to the
neuropragmatic sketch of Œ-transactional inquiry, let us state first the obvious,
and second an evolutionary perspective that draws on DST. The obvious
connection is that system 1 is informed by the pragmatists’ emphasis on habits
and their role in fixing beliefs about how to interact with the world. System 2,
as the reluctant monitor and control system, roughly corresponds to the
conscious phase of inquiry. However, Kahneman’s characterization of it as
lazy is somewhat disingenuous. Our discussion of system 3 in the final section
of this essay will expand our concern; here it suffices to say that this sense of
10
To be clear, our claim that system 3 is responsible for orientation is not the same claim here. In fact,
what we see with this example is the recognition that something gets systems 1 and 2 going. In this
case, like the ball and bat example, it is the instruction given by the experimenter. What we propose is
that system 3 as culture accounts for and relates this important part of the situation. Ideals or goals (or
what the next section will call, at times, representations) are cultural guidance parameters that orient
systems 1 and 2 toward specific variables or sub-routines, like the one described here.
Neuropragmatism and the Culture of Inquiry 147
laziness is both endemic to a culture and not applicable to all persons to the
same degree – or in the same situation. For now, consider the stereotypes of the
unathletic scholar and the book-dumb athlete. One is at home in the library or
the laboratory, but utterly disinterested in what goes on on the football field;
the other just the contrary. Arousing conscious interest takes greater effort
depending on the situation at hand.
11
From meager beginnings, Œ-transaction has taken a form (one of a vast
plethora) in organisms with nervous systems with neocortexes in environments
rich with cultural symbols and signs that are continuous with and often
amplifications of the non-human ecological affordances of the ancestral past.
Recent work in DST has gained significant attention from neuropragmatists,
drawing insights from both connectionism (Rockwell 2005) and ecological
psychology (Chemero, 2009). Central to these views has been Dewey’s
criticism of James’s stimulus-response mechanism for learning (see James,
1890; Dewey, 1896; Solymosi, 2011b). With regard to systems 1 and 2, we
emphasize this dynamic pattern as an ongoing one within the pattern of Œ-
transaction. As such a pattern, the dynamics of Œ-transaction accounts for the
tension between the systems, and, especially, their resolutions through the
guiding parameters of a dynamic system. To appreciate just what we mean by
guiding parameters, we turn to an ongoing debate over representations in a
cognitive system.
Before we do, we reiterate that there is a need for system 3 to orient the
processes of not just the two systems but of the Œ-transaction as well.
System 1 operates often in tension with system 2; the immediate and habitual
responses often conflict with the interests of the conscious self. Yet
Kahneman’s account finds this self to be lazy and often blind to what is really
going on, making mistakes of its own. His illustrations of this laziness and
blindness are not defaults of system 2 but products of its conflict with another
system, the cultural situation. In these experimental illustrations of laziness and
11
The import of our use of the concept of situation cannot be underestimated. To appreciate this,
consider the evolution, in broad strokes, of Œ-transaction. Drawing from proteonomics and genomics,
Ryan and Grant (2008) have provided a sketch of the origins of the protosynapse and ursynapse.
Discovering similarities across three different species – yeast, choanoflagellates, and sponges – all of
which lack neurons, they found the components of animal nervous systems. These components are
significantly involved in the response to the environment. Other components were found to be involved
in the plasticity of cells – an important aspect for neural activity, without which adjustment and learning
would be impossible. The continuities across species, from yeast to humans, illustrates not only the
similarities but the differences as well. For what changed to effect more specific uses of these
components was the situation – the contextual whole – in and through which Œ-transaction operates.
The evolutionary developmental (evo-devo) perspective further adds to the import of continuity
between species, their evolution, and development, and to the significance of the situation in the
understanding of such continuity. As Rakic argues, the human neocortex evolved to maintain neural
patterns that have been most conducive to keeping not only life and limb together but also the regular-
enough achievement of goals (2009). This addition illustrates the significant continuity between habits
of reacting to the environment (what would become system 1 in humans) and the pattern of deliberate
adjustment of habits (system 2). This continuity is vital for appreciating the contextual whole of a
situation because these systems’ working – sometimes together, sometimes in tension – cannot be
isolated to the organism (or one of its parts, like a brain) without losing the integral role of the
environment (which itself, we emphasize, is dynamic and evolving).
148 Tibor SOLYMOSI
& John SHOOK
blindness, however, the culture is artificially constructed for the purpose of
effecting what Kahneman finds to be absurd responses. Yet if the cultural
situation changes, the results are likely to be different; the absurdity, in other
words, is not a result of system 2 but of system 3 in tension with system 2
(especially when we consider that the particular test subjects’ system 2
developed within a different system 3 than the artificially constructed one of
the experimental model). The parameters of system 3 shape the nature of the
Œ-transaction. This shaping of the trajectory helps elucidate how Œ-dynamic
systems anticipate without relying on representations within the brain/mind, as
the Erlebnis conception of experience requires.
R
ECONSIDERING
R
EPRESENTATIONS
Kahneman admits that he focuses more on system 1 than on system 2. What
is lacking more so is how system 2 can anticipate the future. Indeed it is
unclear whether such a task is in the purview of system 2. Though it seems
reasonable enough, at least to our commonsensical view, the conscious self is
capable of anticipation. Many cognitive scientists take it as a matter of
commonsense that our mental activity is representational and that if there is
any doubt about this, the clear fact that we anticipate future events requires that
we presently represent that future. This intuitive claim is shared by so many
that Giovanni Pezzulo (2008) believes it is worth saving the concept of
representation as part of a cognitive science of anticipation. What is most
striking about his argument is that his use of the word representation appears
to shift throughout his argument – moving between Erlebnis and Erfahrung.
12
Regardless of the charge of equivocation, we argue that the pragmatist
rejection of representationalism as a theory of mind (and therefore of meaning
and of truth) does not imply a rejection of conscious activity (i.e.,
intentionality, traditionally, the mark of consciousness) as proposed by
eliminativists,
13
and that there are better because safer words for several of his
uses of representation.
14
12
Here is a review of Pezzulo’s uses of representation: “an internal representation of the world” is
produced “to select and guide” the conduct of an organism toward a goal (p. 179); as Gibsonian
affordances “as ways for setting up indications of further interactive potentialities” (p. 181); as
pragmatist ideals or Deweyan ends-in-view, “representation originates from anticipatory mechanisms
for the sake of action control…” (p. 183); as information states (pp. 194-195); as beyond information
states in their capacity to be detached from the present but be about the future (p. 195); as the basis of
an organism’s inner life, “an internalization of external representation-making can be the basis of an
‘inner life’ for an agent, including inner dialogs and mental imaging” (p. 202); as situated and embodied
symbolic and/or bodily schematic structures (p. 203); as cultural artifacts (i.e. signs and symbols) that
are internalized (p. 204 and 210); as an instrument that “is for and usable by the embodied agent” (204);
as means toward a goal – but distinct from the goal, “A cue for understanding what representations are
for? is the notion of a goal” (p. 208 and 210); and as models in the sense of maps or blueprints about
how to produce novelty (p. 214). There is a theme across these varieties of representation, namely that
representations are internal “things” for anticipating ways the world could be. The difficulty we see is
that there is no need to continue the internal/external distinction on which this view of representations
continues from the older conception of simply presenting the world to an inner spectator. In other
words, Pezzulo’s uses of representation conflate Erlebnis with Erfahrung.
13
At least, as Pezzulo sees ontological eliminativism (p. 198) as proposed by Paul and Patricia
Churchland. What is puzzling by his view here is that the American Pragmatists are eliminativists of
Neuropragmatism and the Culture of Inquiry 149
Pezzulo’s argument, if not provocative, does provide the service of setting
representationalism within the plurality of theories and perspectives within
cognitive science. He nicely summarizes the main failures of the
representationalist theory of mind and concisely illustrates why approaches like
DST make representationalism unnecessary. He nevertheless contends that due
to the inability so far of DST to produce a plausible model of anticipation
without representation, the only remaining and viable option is to return to
representationalism. But these representations are not the atomistic states of
modern sensationalistic empiricism (viz., full-blown Erlebnis) as found in a
Fodorian language of thought. Despite Pezzulo’s attempt to resurrect
representationalism, all he succeeds in doing is saving the word as a synonym
for words like imaginings, musements, ideals, or, perhaps best for our present
purposes, ends-in-view – words which have a rich pragmatist heritage.
Pezzulo is inadvertently correct to request a role for ends-in-view in
cognitive science. Of course, he does not intend to do so, as a careful reading
of a few key selections of his article indicate. First, his appeal to James (1890)
and Dewey (1896) misses the main criticism Dewey made of James on the
reflex arc concept (Pezzulo 2008, p. 182). Moreover, Pezzulo’s description of
James more aptly fits Dewey’s criticism (ibid., p. 185 and 209). Regardless of
these exegetical matters, Pezzulo makes two subtle but nevertheless important
conceptual claims. First, he recapitulates the ancient – indeed atavistic – divide
between knowledge and action – episteme over techne, theoria over praxis –
when he writes, “anticipatory representations… permit to coordinate with the
future and to act goal-directed [sic.]. Note also that our emphasis on goals and
goal-directedness indicates that ‘representation’ has not (always) been intended
as a synonym of ‘knowledge’ but it is deeply related to (potential or actual)
action” (ibid., p. 202, emphasis in original). The shift from knowledge to
action, some may argue, is a move toward pragmatism, given its emphasis on
praxis. However, all Pezzulo has done is invert the old opposition with regard
to representations. Representations no longer have anything to do with
this variety but are emphatic that lived experience is very much real. Simply rejecting the role of
representations in one’s ontology does not necessarily imply that one must rid oneself of ways of
speaking about mental – viz., meaningful – life. Such a view about eliminativism, however, is the
consequence of conceiving of science as representing True Reality and not as the best way humans have
of getting about with the world. Paul Churchland, despite pragmatist overtones, rejects this view of
science and truth (see, Rockwell 2011 and Churchland, 2012; also see Solymosi, 2011a on the
consequences of Œ-transactionalism for understanding scientific activity).
14
One might respond (perhaps adamantly) that “My experience is representational, that is, insofar as
what I think, imagine, and know, it is all about the world that exists independently of me and my
experiences.” Indeed, many of us do have such experiences. Our point, however, is that Erlebnis is itself
a cultural product. Westerners’ system 2 operates this way because our system 3 has promoted it. The
sense that science “maps” the world has been the outcome of a specific cultural matrix in which
scientists were brought up and it has been the model encouraged since the rise of modern science
because of its success in the physical sciences. We contend that in light of Darwinism and what we are
learning about human cognition, from neuroscience to anthropology, the very conception and use of
science as a map-making activity becomes beneficially modified. Specifically, the representing that
goes on with map using is a cultural activity in the dual sense of system 3 described above; and, as such,
Erfahrung is the superior conception of experience to underlie this view and to ameliorate human life
generally.
150 Tibor SOLYMOSI
& John SHOOK
knowledge because they are involved in action: the divide between knowledge
and action is maintained – and that is the divide pragmatism adamantly rejects.
The second claim is indirectly related to the first. When describing the
extended mind conception held by DST advocates, Pezzulo writes, “As argued
in the literature about dynamical systems, mind, body and environment form an
unique coupled system” (ibid, p. 205, emphasis ours). While we grant the
possibility that this is an overlooked typo, it nevertheless exemplifies the
creeping Cartesianism that regularly goes unnoticed in cognitive science.
Though it is true that much of the literature in DST speaks in terms of
coupling, the standard motif is not a unit of mind, body, and environment but
of brain, body, and world. Indeed that nexus is what neuropragmatists conceive
as minding.
15
Pezzulo’s ignorance of pragmatism comes in at least the three following
forms. First, there is the simple negligence of the means-end dynamic of
Dewey’s instrumentalism (as suggested by Pezzulo’s lack of discerning
between James and Dewey). Second is the (plausible, but surely convenient for
our larger point) misconception of the DST unit as a coupling of mind, body,
and environment, when the nexus that constitutes the process of mentation is
between brain, body, and world. To be fair, a corollary of this misconception
that is not unique to Pezzulo is the term coupling; but this is better addressed
momentarily. Finally, Pezzulo perpetuates the atavistic divide between
knowledge and action.
The divides between means and ends, between mind/brain, body, and
environment/world, and between knowledge and action are all anathema to
pragmatism. As the opening sketch of the pragmatist conception of experience
and inquiry states, any distinction between organism and environment is
functional and not ontological, thereby rendering moot any need for coupling.
16
Furthermore, knowing is an active phase of Œ-transactions for the sake of
action – to use Robert Brandom’s slogan for describing the classical
pragmatists’ conception of experience, “No experience without experiment”
(2004, 14).
17
The means-end dynamic is not one in which the operations of Œ-
transactions are divorced from their goals, that is, to paraphrase Brandom, No
experiment without knowledge, no knowing without experimenting – in other
words, the means inform the ends as much as the end informs the means. What
is attainable is determined by the resources at hand (i.e. the supplies, skills,
tools, etc.); and what is aimed at will shape the selection, organization, and
implementation of the means available.
15
There is an important affinity between Œ-transaction and the nexus of brain, body, and world.
Specifically, the analogy is between organism as brain and body, and environment as world. The anti-
Cartesianism of enactivists who endorse the nexus are not concerned with questions of internal or
external worlds, such as which would construe organism as part of the external world (or having to do
with the third-person perspective) and environment as internal (or having to do with the first-person
perspective), as discussed in a previous note. More important is the difference between Œ-transaction
and brain, body, world nexus: namely the role of coupling to be discussed momentarily.
16
See Rockwell, 2010 on the fallacy of the so-called coupling-constitution fallacy.
17
As stated in note 1 above, Brandom provides a concise and useful paraphrase of classical
pragmatism’s main themes, but he misunderstands much of the consequences of these themes, as the
second part of his essay illustrates.
Neuropragmatism and the Culture of Inquiry 151
To connect our criticisms of Pezzulo’s failures with regard to pragmatism
to his uses of representation, let us consider briefly the role of intentionality.
Pezzulo begins his argument by discussing the classical notion of a mental
representation in terms of its intentionality. When a person thinks, she thinks
about something. If she is thinking about something that is presently in her
world or environment, then she already has access to that thing and need not
represent it “in her mind,” so to speak. But if she is thinking about the future
(i.e., anticipating), then she clearly does not have immediately present access to
those future events – as they are, by definition, not here and now. Pezzulo
believes that only representations can account for this phenomena. But in his
several definitions of the term, we get nothing like the classical notion, but we
do get varieties on a pragmatist theme. Yet Pezzulo’s ignorance of pragmatism
and the creeping Cartesianism in his ontology and epistemology prevent him
from seeing how his concern for “coordinating with the future” is handled from
a pragmatist perspective.
From the DST perspective, the dynamic pattern is the Œ-transaction that
moves through a state space following a trajectory from attractor basin to
attractor basin. When the equilibrium of a state space in an attractor basin
becomes too uncertain, too chaotic, then a new trajectory of adjustment to the
Πunit occurs until a new basin is attained in which a new equilibrium is set.
Whenever a trajectory is taken, the Πunit is entering a conscious phase of
inquiry. System 2, so to speak, becomes operative. This conscious activity is
not so much interested in mirroring the world as it is interested in modifying it
through interacting with it. Intentionality is not so much concerned with the
world as it is in a specific state, because it is the process of taking aim toward a
new way the world could be. This conception of intentionality not only fits
well with the pragmatist conception of experience as Œ-transaction, it also
harkens back to the word’s etymology in Aquinas. As neuropragmatist Walter
J. Freeman has reminded us (2005, 2008),
18
there is a similarity between taking
aim at a target and thinking about something. When an archer takes aim with a
bow and arrow, her sight is aimed at the target, just in the way that when she
thinks about winning the archery competition, her thoughts are “aimed” at
what victory would be like.
If we are to continue to use the word representation with regard to
Erfahrung, it makes little sense to talk about representational states qua
Erlebnis. For this conception of experience (as Erfahrung) is not one in which
states have a role. The best way of using this word then, is as a re-presentation
of the world, in that the present world is presented anew for the precise purpose
of effecting such a world out of the present world – a taking aim at a new
world. In order to anticipate, an organism needs information about the world’s
regularities, patterns of change, etc., so that appropriate action may be taken to
bring about the re-presented – or, better still, imagined – world.
Conscious intervention in the habits of Œ-transaction is integral to this sort
of anticipatory adjustment of body and world. However, we still lack an
account of how or why representations as ideals (or ends-in-view) could help
guide system 2’s operations. Neither Kahneman nor Pezzulo recognize (at least
18
See also Dennett, 1996.
152 Tibor SOLYMOSI
& John SHOOK
in print) the need for this. We believe this is due to the creeping Cartesianism
at play, in at least two ways here. First, Pezzulo’s concern about the inability of
DST to model anticipation without drawing on representations presumes that
representations are to be found strictly internally to the organism or mind;
whereas the pragmatist emphasis on the dynamic transaction of organism and
environment does not consider representations qua ideals (or ends-in-view) as
being neither internal nor external but transactional. This transactional
conception of experience implies that all inquiry must take place within a
situation, within a cultural context. Thus we see the second way in which
Cartesianism creeps its way in. The Cartesian ideal of pure inquiry outside of a
cultural context is not only impossible to attain, it also blocks the road to
inquiry – a cardinal sin, if there ever was one, for pragmatism.
19
This blockage
can be overcome by recognizing the need for system 3 as that which provides
symbolic affordances, shared aims in action and in inquiry, and, in short, the
creative means for anticipating novel ways of living. The final step is now
upon us. Before we elaborate a full hypothesis of system 3 as culture, we need
to show that information works not only in a person’s systems 1 and 2 but also
in the cultural situation in and through which Pezzulo’s representations as
ideals (or ends-in-view) affect and effect.
P
RAGMATISM AND
I
NFORMATION
As James Gleick’s recent tome (2011) tells us, information has a long and
complex history. Noting the important theoretical relations between evolution,
thermodynamics and information, Gleick writes, “Evolution itself embodies an
ongoing exchange of information between organism and environment” (2011,
p. 9). Despite this nod towards informational-Œ-transaction, Gleick does not
mention the early contributions Charles Sanders Peirce made to what would
become information theory. Nor does he mention the influence of pragmatism
on cybernetics as Harold Sackman saw at the birth of cybernetics and
information theory (1967).
20
One can speculate about the reasons for Gleick’s
neglect of pragmatism. What we are interested in is a view of information that
is richer than the one provided by the hero of Gleick’s story, Claude Shannon.
Recent work in ecological psychology has drawn on J. J. Gibson’s work on
visual perception and the conception of affordances it presents (1979; see
Chemero 2009 for details over the debate within ecological psychology). Our
hope is that further work on pragmatism and information augments, if not
significantly transforms, Gleick’s story.
The basic conception of information put forth by Gibson is that it is
ubiquitous throughout the situation. It only affords itself, however, through the
relationship between organism and environment. Affordances, so conceived,
are opportunities for behavior or action. For example, a set of stairs presents
itself to an average human as an easy means of moving up or down, but, to an
ant, that same set of stairs is a difficult climb – perhaps even an obstacle better
19
See Peirce (1898).
20
More recent work on information that draws on pragmatism is scarce, however, see Weinberger,
2002, and Goldkuhl, 2004. Much more work needs to be done on the history, philosophy, and future of
pragmatism and information.
Neuropragmatism and the Culture of Inquiry 153
evaded. Information is a relational concept through which a pattern of activity
may be discerned by that which is to be informed, i.e. the Πdynamic pattern.
That our characterization thus far of information sounds so pragmatist is due in
part to our larger purpose, but it is also the result of Gibson’s being influenced
by James’s radical empiricism.
The Jamesian influence carries through to our elaboration of information
now considered. Despite the ubiquity of use of the term information throughout
much scientific literature, it is rarely explicitly defined. We find this lack of
definition problematic because it lends itself to abuses of creeping
Cartesianism. For instance, information is often said to be represented by a
specific thing or event, like a brain state or pattern. On such a view, it is all too
easy to fall back into the sensationalistic empiricism in which the mind/brain
somehow represents the external world. Such a move explains why Pezzulo
can refer to the body and image schemes of Lakoff and Johnson as
representations, despite Lakoff and Johnson’s being pragmatists and anti-
representationalists (Pezzulo 2008, p. 203).
The need for a pragmatist conception of information is even clearer when
we consider that system 1 is an information processor that works at a fast
speed, and that system 2 must not only process that information but other
information in order to monitor, control, and intervene in the first place. Since
information is mutually entailed with evolution and thermodynamics, the
opening pragmatist sketch of the evolution and regulation of Œ-transaction is
notably informational. Finally, our hypothesis of system 3 requires such an
explicit conception of information as a means of effecting a confluence of the
several themes of this essay.
In his provocative, though ultimately flawed, work on consciousness, PHI
(2012, see also 2008), Giovanni Tononi offers a definition of information as “a
difference that makes a difference” (2012, p. 172). Here he is following
Gregory Bateson, but he is not exactly accurate. For Bateson, information is
that which is measured in bits, where a bit is the difference that makes a
difference (1987, p. 200 and 229). Recall that James saw the pragmatic method
as a basic call for the cash value for experience, viz., for the difference that
makes a difference in Œ-transaction. Furthermore, James argued, via Papini’s
pragmatist motel, that this method worked regardless of subject-matter. This
neutrality extends to information: There is no such thing as information qua
information; it is not distinct from or separable from the situation in which it is
said to be ubiquitous.
21
On our view, information is the difference that makes a difference in action.
The effect of information is transformative of Œ-transaction. For the Œ unit is
a dynamic pattern of organized differences – rhythms – of information. The
process of inquiry – as the very pattern of experience affords – is the
cultivating of differences that make a difference. But, as anyone who has
attempted to cultivate can attest, the process is not guaranteed to succeed.
Progress is not promised; information can be deleterious as much as it can be
ameliorative. The key is to orient experience toward a larger goal, via guiding
21
A noteworthy consequence is that if there is no such independent entity that is information, the notion
that information can be represented is non-sensical outside of a cultural context.
154 Tibor SOLYMOSI
& John SHOOK
parameters that affect and are effected by the system variables such that
consummation of the resolution of the problematic and uncertain situation is
attainable. This call for orientation is especially important for thinking about
information in pragmatist terms. As Tononi, Bateson, and Gleick all agree, the
mutual entailment of information with evolution and entropy means that a
chaotic situation is one in which uncertainty has increased, and that the only
way to reduce uncertainty is through the increase of information via adaptation
and learning. This increase of differences that make a difference is produced by
the phase of Œ-transaction that is inquiry. Through that trajectory, the
Πpattern moves, through adjustments, from a chaotic attractor to a basin of
attraction that affords equilibrium.
The reduction of uncertainty through the cultivation of information is what
conscious activity (system 2) strives towards. System 1 lacks the information
required for resolving new problems that arise in unorthodox situations. The
means by which information is cultivated is not a strictly or exclusively
individual act as the Cartesian conceives it. The cultivation of information –
what Dewey called education – is a social activity that aims at the production
of healthy inquirers. The overproduction of information, as alluded to above,
does not guarantee success; too much information overwhelms. It stresses the
inquirer; too much stress does irreparable harm. To put it in the terms of
allostasis, described in our pragmatist framework, Œ-transaction can reach an
allostatic overload
22
when the situation is too informative. There is no clear
trajectory out of the uncertainty, for there are too many options from which to
choose. System 2, on its own accord, cannot resolve the problematic situation.
Guidance is required and is provided by the larger system 3, the cultural
landscape that provides the values and ideals that orient an individual to the
world such that one’s interactions with one’s environment can be more
meaningful than the experiences that have come before – experiences that are
not simply unique to the individual but experiences shared through tradition
and education as well.
23
,
24
22
On allostatic overload, see Schulkin, 2003, 2011a, and 2011b.
23
This guidance occurs both in the process of discovery (namely through the paradigm and specific
research program), and in the process of transmission and reformation (in the forms of educational
practices and institutions).
24
Some may wonder how different our use of cultivation of information is from Tononi’s provocative
view that consciousness is integrated information, as presented in his so-called Integrated Information
Theory. Prima facie, there is a similarity insofar as the relating of differences that make a difference to
other differences that make a difference that thereby increase the amount of information in the system
such that novel information is created (i.e., this “relating” is the means by which information emerges in
the whole system though the sum of the information of the system’s parts is less than the information of
the whole). But the similarity stops there. Tononi’s choice of word, “integrated”, is indicative of the
pre-Darwinian desire for finality and fixity in nature – a view that is further corroborated in Tononi’s
explicitly Galilean-Cartesian philosophy of science. The pragmatist counter to “integrated” is to
reconstruct the “thing” (i.e. consciousness or information) into a process, so a better approach would be
to say that conscious activity is the integrating of information. But to evade any confusion between
integrated and integrating, we choose cultivation, especially since it shares its etymology with culture,
to tend or to grow. This view of consciousness as nothing more than a functional process is rejected by
Tononi who clearly hypostatizes the integration into a thing unto itself when he sees a friendly voice in
Neuropragmatism and the Culture of Inquiry 155
Pezzulo’s concern that DST cannot model anticipation without
representation seems to be based on the view that information is not ubiquitous
and only within the organism (or perhaps only the brain – or the neocortex).
Kahneman’s examples, such as the invisible gorilla, seem to illustrate
something absurd to him about human perception and cognition for the same
reason: that the only information that matters is the immediate (in the brain).
Indeed, on his view, humans simply miss the readily available information that
there is suddenly a dancing gorilla. What both these views suffer from is the
need for a pragmatist conception of experience in which information is both
ubiquitous and situated.
Pezzulo (and perhaps DST researchers as well, given their thinking in terms
of coupling instead of holism) believes representations can convey the
information necessary for anticipation. But he provides no reason to believe
that representation or information need to be limited to the brain. Kahneman
fails to see that his examples situate or frame the inquiries he asks of his
subjects in such a way that they are simply not ready for doing awkward
financial arithmetic nor ready for anticipating something absurd to happen
while focusing on a very specific task. Change the conditions, and the
experience will change. How then are we to understand the role of information
with regard to systems 1 and 2, and representations and intentionality? We
propose that a third system, culture, is the best way to orient ourselves.
I
NTRODUCING
S
YSTEM
3,
A
H
YPOTHESIS
Our focus has thus far been on cognitive systems and dynamic systems with
the occasional mention of the cultural. We have argued that Kahneman’s
conclusions that specific human acts are absurd is the result of his failing to see
how the specific cultural situation orients the test subjects in such a way that
their behavior is not all that absurd. In other words, the creeping Cartesianism
(itself a form of culture) that drives scientists to see reality as devoid of context
or perspective leads to absurdity. But a Darwinian and pragmatist view easily
anticipates and accounts for these purported absurdities. Furthermore, what we
see here between the Cartesian (Erlebnis) and the pragmatist (Erfahrung) are
different orientations that guide the monitoring and controlling performed by
system 2. As neither Kahneman nor the Cartesian can account for this
guidance, and yet the fact that there is such guidance is hard to deny, there
appears to be a third system at work.
This third system is the situational context through which a dynamic
system, such as a conscious human, can anticipate by using previously learned
skills, previously learned data (from facts to tropes), and previously learned
methods of inquiry, to create novel ways of living and doing. These ways, of
course, do not appear ex nihilo. They grow out of and are thus continuous with
the previous ways. Such ways, however, are not so clearly available to a
researcher who seeks to strip away culture and context.
the James of the Principles of Psychology (1890) but dismisses the James of “Does Consciousness
Exist?” (1904), see Tononi, 2012, pp. 157-172.
156 Tibor SOLYMOSI
& John SHOOK
Kim Sterelny has done valuable work in the philosophy of nature
25
that
argues that humans are unique among primates because we have evolved to be
learners, specifically apprentices to each other (2012). Our socio-cultural
organizations, our scientific and religious institutions – even neonate curiosity
– reflect this uniquely human feature. Sterelny has much to say from the
perspectives of evolutionary biology and anthropology, specifically about our
development of tool use and innovation. But where his account is lacking is in
the neural means of apprenticeship (to be clear, this is not the only means
either). Bill Bywater has started this work, from an explicitly neuropragmatist
standpoint (2012). He situates recent work on mirror neuron systems with
Sterelny’s conception of apprenticeship. Take this view with similar work by
neurosociologist David Franks (2010) (who is working from the pragmatist
perspective of George Herbert Mead), and we have the basic tools and methods
for bridging the work of Kahneman and DST with anthropology in order to
overcome or evade the concern of Pezzulo regarding representationalism.
With the pragmatist sketch of information introduced here, we hypothesize
that system 3 is the means by which human experience qua Œ-transaction
becomes oriented to the world and thereby appropriates information in a
plurality of ways. From the general traits of systems 1 and 2 as components of
the human dynamic system of Œ-transaction, we believe further research along
these lines can help elucidate questions about how different cultures learn, how
information is selected and passed down through various traditions, and how to
resolve tensions between the three systems. Just as system 1 can conflict with
system 2 – remember our example of the dieter, whose system 1 wants pie but
whose system 2 says spinach is better – system 3 conflicts with system 2. In
the case of the dieter, the culture may be one in which delicious but calorie-
laden food is everywhere to be had, making the goal of spinach eating quite
difficult, if not impossible. But system 3 could also be one in which spinach is
easily available, but the cultural ideals – the guiding parameters – emphasize
an extremely thin body type that is biologically and psychologically unhealthy.
Our hope is that by investigating the import of culture in this fashion, we
not only resolve or evade theoretical difficulties in the cognitive sciences, but
that we also offer a way for utilizing the results of these sciences, along with
other inquiries, especially the arts, to address practical concerns for achieving
25
Sterelny draws on Peter Godfrey-Smith’s “helpful distinction between philosophy of science and
philosophy of nature. The intellectual target of philosophy of science is science itself… The intellectual
target of philosophy of nature is nature itself; the world in which we live (which, of course, includes
humans and their practices, including science)” (2012, xi). Godfrey-Smith writes, “When we export a
picture of the world from the immediate context of science into a broader discussion, the features of
scientific description that have their origin in these practicalities become potentially misleading… Work
of this sort will also often aim at synthesizing the results of a number of different scientific fields,
working out how they fit together – or fail to fit – into a coherent package,” before concluding “So
philosophy of nature refines, clarifies, and makes explicit the picture that science is giving us of the
natural world and our place in it. Calling it ‘philosophy’ does not mean that only philosophers can do it.
Many scientists… undertake this kind of work. But it is a different kind of activity from science itself.”
(2009, 3). He also notes that the philosophy of nature is “an old term” – indeed, it was just what
pragmatists like Dewey were doing (Dewey’s influence here on Godfrey-Smith should not be
underestimated as many of the latter’s writings make use of the former’s ideas).
Neuropragmatism and the Culture of Inquiry 157
the ever tenuous democratic culture, so well imagined by James, Dewey, and
Rorty. What such a democratic orientation looks like in a neuroscientific age,
however, is another story.
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank Bill Bywater for his helpful remarks on earlier
drafts, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their useful feedback.
R
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