As physicalisms of various kinds have faced difficulties in recent years, the time has come to explore possible alternatives, one of which is yinyang ontology. A yinyang theorist is expected to provide a plausible acc...As physicalisms of various kinds have faced difficulties in recent years, the time has come to explore possible alternatives, one of which is yinyang ontology. A yinyang theorist is expected to provide a plausible account of causation to replace the traditional notion of causation. The present paper is critical of the Humean tradition, which understands the relata of causal relations in terms of passive materiality so that humans use referential terms to describe causal relations constructively. But an alternative notion of reference is available according to which causal relata are active processors of the information with which they interact. On this latter view, humans use referential language to describe the structure in which the relata interrelate themselves so that the structure can be understood hermeneutically. Reference on this view is naturalized. In this article, I advance two arguments for this thesis, one concerning the informationality of states and the other related to the essentiality of properties.展开更多
Extended cognition is the thesis that vehicles realizing cognitive systems can possibly extend beyond traditional boundaries of brain, skin, or skull. It is a popular thesis because of its counterintuitive consequence...Extended cognition is the thesis that vehicles realizing cognitive systems can possibly extend beyond traditional boundaries of brain, skin, or skull. It is a popular thesis because of its counterintuitive consequence that coupled systems of vehicles of very different entities could form a realizer of one cognitive systems. Popular examples consist of human-handy-systems or human-notebook-systems, and it is a thesis that could non-dogmatically decide what individuates the realizers of cognitive systems. But the thesis is in need for individuation-criteria： How could we individuate a coupled system of different systems of vehicles？ We inspect some of the usually handled candidates for individuation-criteria and argue that in principal there will be no successful candidate due to methodological problems. We aim to show this by using a cookbook theory of extended cognition and add different types of candidates. No candidate is non-arbitrary or non-intrinsic, which leads the proponent to the forced selection between arbitrary or intrinsic candidates. We argue that without criteria, the talk about extended cognition is a bottomless pit that should only serve as an example for bottomless theory-building.展开更多
文摘As physicalisms of various kinds have faced difficulties in recent years, the time has come to explore possible alternatives, one of which is yinyang ontology. A yinyang theorist is expected to provide a plausible account of causation to replace the traditional notion of causation. The present paper is critical of the Humean tradition, which understands the relata of causal relations in terms of passive materiality so that humans use referential terms to describe causal relations constructively. But an alternative notion of reference is available according to which causal relata are active processors of the information with which they interact. On this latter view, humans use referential language to describe the structure in which the relata interrelate themselves so that the structure can be understood hermeneutically. Reference on this view is naturalized. In this article, I advance two arguments for this thesis, one concerning the informationality of states and the other related to the essentiality of properties.
文摘Extended cognition is the thesis that vehicles realizing cognitive systems can possibly extend beyond traditional boundaries of brain, skin, or skull. It is a popular thesis because of its counterintuitive consequence that coupled systems of vehicles of very different entities could form a realizer of one cognitive systems. Popular examples consist of human-handy-systems or human-notebook-systems, and it is a thesis that could non-dogmatically decide what individuates the realizers of cognitive systems. But the thesis is in need for individuation-criteria： How could we individuate a coupled system of different systems of vehicles？ We inspect some of the usually handled candidates for individuation-criteria and argue that in principal there will be no successful candidate due to methodological problems. We aim to show this by using a cookbook theory of extended cognition and add different types of candidates. No candidate is non-arbitrary or non-intrinsic, which leads the proponent to the forced selection between arbitrary or intrinsic candidates. We argue that without criteria, the talk about extended cognition is a bottomless pit that should only serve as an example for bottomless theory-building.
