Environments of Intelligence

Front matter

“An absorbing volume that integrates an extraordinarily wide area of work, with interesting observations and new twists right to the end.”’ Ruth Millikan, University of Connecticut, USA

What is the role of the environment, and of the information it provides, in cognition? More specifically, may there be a role for certain artefacts to play in this context? These are questions that motivate “4E” theories of cognition (as being embodied, embedded, extended, enactive). In his take on that family of views, Hajo Greif first defends and refines a concept of information as primarily natural, environmentally embedded in character, which had been eclipsed by information-processing views of cognition. He continues with an inquiry into the cognitive bearing of some artefacts that are sometimes referred to as “intelligent environments”. Without necessarily having much to do with Artificial Intelligence, such artefacts may ultimately modify our informational environments.

With respect to human cognition, the most notable effect of digital computers is not that they might be able, or become able, to think but that they alter the way we perceive, think and act.

Contents

Preface Acknowledgements

Preliminaries: ants and robots, parlour games and steam drills Background 2

Outline 8

PART II Environments of intelligence

The extension of functional histories 110 The constitution of cognitive extensions 116 Constitutional matters 122

The art of coupling, basic and advanced 124 Notes 128

Being guided by pictures 131

Cognitive artefacts and informational environments 136 Convergence and isomorphism 141

Evolutionary and cognitive robotics 151

Embodied conversational agents and social robotics 155 Second Life 160

Mixed Reality Games 163

Augmented Reality 167

Naturalising the artificial 173

Afterthoughts on conceptual analysis and human nature A domain for conceptual analysis 181 A naturalists view of human nature and machines 187

Bibliography Author Index Subject Index

195 210 214