Abstract
This thesis offers positive reasons for thinking that, at its core, cognition is interactive in character. In making room for this possibility, it however challenges the widespread assumption that cognition is fundamentally theoretical in character. Analytic philosophers of cognition and cognitive scientists tend to model all forms of cognition on theorising of some kind or other: they assume Cognition is Essentially Theoretical, or CET. CET, as a thesis about cognition, is inspired by the idea that we always and everywhere take an intellectual, theoretical stance towards the things we deal with in the world, whatever they may be. Standard views inspire the picture of what adopting such a theorising stance involves in the philosophy of science. Scientific theorising is the basis of predictions and explanations, where this is typically assumed to involve making inferences, and forming and testing hypotheses about various subject matters. To assume that cognising is always so
Abstract
We present a multiscale integrationist interpretation of the boundaries of cognitive systems, using the Markov blanket formalism of the variational free energy principle. This interpretation is intended as a corrective for the philosophical debate over internalist and externalist interpretations of cognitive boundaries; we stake out a compromise position. We first survey key principles of new radical (extended, enactive, embodied) views of cognition. We then describe an internalist interpretation premised on the Markov blanket formalism. Having reviewed these accounts, we develop our positive multiscale account. We argue that the statistical seclusion of internal from external states of the system entailed by the existence of a Markov boundary can coexist happily with the multiscale integration of the system through its dynamics. Our approach does not privilege any given boundary (whether it be that of the brain, body, or world), nor does it argue that all boundaries are eq