Mind, Body, World- Foundations of Cognitive Science, 2013a

For example, consider the work of Edward Tolman (1932, 1948). Tolman
appealed to representational concepts to explain behaviour, such as his proposal
that rats navigate and locate reinforcers by creating and manipulating a cognitive
map. The mentalistic nature of Tolman’s theories was a source of harsh criticism:
Signs, in Tolman’s theory, occasion in the rat realization, or cognition, or judgment,
or hypotheses, or abstraction, but they do not occasion action. In his concern
with what goes on in the rat’s mind, Tolman has neglected to predict what the
rat will do. So far as the theory is concerned the rat is left buried in thought; if he
gets to the food-box at the end that is his concern, not the concern of the theory.
(Guthrie, 1935, p. 172)
The later successes, and current dominance, of cognitive theory make such criticisms
appear quaint. But classical theories are nonetheless being rigorously reformulated
by embodied cognitive science.
Embodied cognitive scientists argue that classical cognitive science, with its
emphasis on the disembodied mind, has failed to capture important aspects of
thinking. For example, Hutchins (1995, p. 171) noted that “by failing to understand
the source of the computational power in our interactions with simple ‘unintelligent’
physical devices, we position ourselves well to squander opportunities with
so-called intelligent computers.” Embodied cognitive science proposes that the
modern form of dualism exhibited by classical cognitive science is a mistake. For
instance, Scribner hoped that her studies of mind in action conveyed “a conception
of mind which is not hostage to the traditional cleavage between the mind and the
hand, the mental and the manual” (Scribner & Tobach, 1997, p. 307).
5.8 The Extended Mind
In preceding pages of this chapter, a number of interrelated topics that are central
to embodied cognitive science have been introduced: situation and embodiment,
feedback between agents and environments, stigmergic control of behaviour,
affordances and enactive perception, and cognitive scaffolding. These topics show
that embodied cognitive science places much more emphasis on body and world,
and on sense and action, than do other “flavours” of cognitive science.
This change in emphasis can have profound effects on our definitions of mind
or self (Bateson, 1972). For example, consider this famous passage from anthropologist
Gregory Bateson:
But what about ‘me’? Suppose I am a blind man, and I use a stick. I go tap, tap,
tap. Where do I start? Is my mental system bounded at the handle of the stick? Is it
bounded by my skin? (Bateson, 1972, p. 465)
230 Chapter 5