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Article 5204 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rangarajan-anand@CS.YALE.EDU (Anand Rangarajan)
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Subject: A review of ``The Embodied Mind'' by F. Varela, E. Rosch and E.
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Thompson
Keywords: Cognitivist, Emergent, Enactive, Buddhist meditation

``The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience''
{\em Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch}
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991. xx + 308  pp.  $25.00.
ISBN 0-262-22042-3. 


``The Embodied Mind'' starts with the examination of a fundamental
circularity in the relationship between cognitive science and human 
experience. The authors take the position that any scientific 
description of behavior is itself a product of the structure of our 
collective cognitive apparatus. Too often, they claim, when an abstract,
theoretical attitude is taken towards the study of the mind, this 
fundamental circularity gets ignored leading to a belief that our 
self-understanding which is based on experience is false and will 
someday be replaced by a calculus of behavior. The tension between the 
abstract attitude and experience is heightened in a field where the mind 
itself is the focus of investigation, namely, cognitive science.

The authors review the current state of cognitive science.
They classify all of cognitive science into three categories;
{\em cognitivist\/}, {\em emergent\/} and {\em enactive\/}. 
Cognitivism is described as ``no computation without representation.''
The world is pregiven with fixed objects and properties. The self
in turn carries around an internal representation which is used in 
perception and in action. The emergent school is based on the paradigm 
of {\em self-organization\/}. Here, the self is constantly adapting and 
changing its internal representation in the face of a non-stationary 
environment. The authors claim that both the emergent and cognitivist 
schools are operating on tacit beliefs about the self and the world. 
They argue that the basic idea of a world with a fixed set of properties 
and a self which has an internal representation of these properties is 
common to both schools. The authors plight their troth with the enactive 
school which dispenses with the assumptions of a world with fixed 
properties and with a self which is a constant reference point for 
representation. The main point stressed here is that there is no ground 
to be found in the world or in the self.  Unlike arguments by Searle and 
Dreyfus which are strongly humanistic, the authors do not retreat into a 
solipsistic viewpoint from which cognitive science is criticized. 
Instead, mutually structured coupling between organism and environment 
now holds the key to understanding perception and action. 
All foundationist theories of mind and nature are strongly criticized
including the belief that there are no foundations, namely, nihilism.
The authors refer to the craving for  ultimate realist foundations of 
self and world as ``the Cartesian anxiety'' since without foundations, 
we would drown in a morass of skepticism, nihilism, insanity, 
depression, darkness and chaos. The alternative offered is enaction as 
embodied cognition. Meaning spontaneously emerges via a history of 
structured coupling between an organism and an environment. The authors
cite Rod Brooks as paradigmatic of enactive cognitive science. 


After describing enactive cognitive science as meeting human experience
half way, the authors then take up the task of the investigation of 
human experience itself. Buddhist mindfulness/awareness meditation 
is offered as a way of experiencing the  examination of  experience.
The authors point out that a key insight arising from the practice of
meditation is the extent to which our minds are occupied in unmindful,
and disembodied reflection on experience. They equate this abstract 
activity with the general abstract attitude which is so pervasive in 
approaches to cognitive science. The method of mindfulness/awareness 
is described in detail along with several pointers to the Buddhist 
tradition and doctrine of no self. 

An example of the mindfulness/awareness approach to the examination of 
experience can be seen by a three-way review of the book: 
cognitivist, emergent and enactive.
In what is to follow, the three positions have been caricatured.
The cognitivist review is disembodied. The book is treated as an object
in the ``real'' world with  fixed ideas and properties which can be 
objectively described. The simplistic three-way distinction of 
approaches to cognitive science follow from this standpoint.
The emergent review is describing the book as a deep object which has 
resulted from a historical process. Likewise, the reviewer (also the 
result of a long process) is reviewing the book with unavoidable bias. 
The enactive review is not a review of the book but a view of the book 
in the process of embodied reflection. 


Cognitivist:

``The Embodied Mind'' starts with the examination of a fundamental
circularity in the relationship between cognitive science and human 
experience. The authors take the position that any scientific 
description of behavior is itself a 
product of the structure of our collective cognitive apparatus.........

Emergent:

This book is an important collaboration between veterans Francisco 
Varela and Eleanor Rosch and newcomer Evan Thompson. For about two and
a half decades now, Varela has been arguing for a mature phenomenology.
This book is a passionate and richly detailed argument warning us
that the fate of human experience might be in the hands of people who 
ignore the fundamental circularity between cognitive science and human
experience. While it is not easy for me to see the progression of Eleanor
Rosch (not having read her Buddhist papers), it's clear that Varela has 
achieved a personal synthesis of phenomenology, cognitive science and 
Buddhism.......


Enactive:


.......Varela, Thompson and Rosch seem to be intent on smashing the myth
of representation. ``I'' like it but it's too aggressive.
Maybe Varela is tired of not getting his message
across. After all, ``we'' are trying to find a formalism for perception
and action into which ``we'' can bury ourselves. Looking for a formalism 
is half the fun. The enactive approach seems to be not amenable to a 
formalism but that might be because the examples like Brooks are 
quasi-formalism free. Takes potshots at the transcendental self like 
atman, the soul etc. Very radical and ``I'' like it but makes ``me'' 
uneasy. Formalisms are not closed, cognitivism yields quite
gracefully to emergent. Emergent to enactive becomes difficult if 
prior sense of independent self and world are taken as absolute. 
Instead, why not focus on self-organization which is common to enactive 
and emergent? Wonder if these guys realize how radical they are. After 
all, with no self {\em and world\/}, shouldn't their
enactive cognitive science actually be enactive science with a closed 
loop between physics and perception.......


Notice that the enactive review is a view of the thoughts of the reviewer
in the process of reviewing the book. I decided to review the book and
then sat down and wrote down the thoughts as they occurred. 
Consequently, the enactive review does not break the review down into
first person or third person. Hence, it is possible to extract an
objectivist or subjectivist review from the enactive review but 
not vice-versa.


