Distributed cognition and integrational linguistics

Language Sciences 26 (2004) 497–501 www.elsevier.com/locate/langsci

Editorial

Distributed cognition and integrational linguistics

The papers collected here are, with two exceptions, based on presentations made at the first conference of the mind AND world working group, held in Durban, South Africa in March 2003. (Not all of the papers read at the conference led to publications appearing here.) The two exceptions are the pieces by Andy Clark and Roy Harris: both had planned to be at the conference but were ultimately unable to attend. Their contributions here are each occasioned by papers selected from the others in the issue. The conference itself was an attempt to bring together researchers in various aspects of Ôdistributed cognitionÕ with avowed ÔintegrationalÕ linguists, or researchers sympathetic to the integrationalist project. The original call for papers put the motivation for the conference as follows: ÔIntegrational linguisticsÕ stands in roughly the same kind of relationship to much traditional (e.g. Chomskyan) linguistics as Gibsonian psychologists stand to the Helmholtzian tradition regarding perception. As was once the case with the Gibsonians, wariness about information processing and computation impedes interaction between integrationalists and cognitive scientists. As the Gibson case shows, though, fruitful exchange can be made possible, to the benefit of cognitive science. The aim of this conference is to bring together a number of integrational linguists, people working in cognitive science, and philosophers, and to attempt to initiate such an exchange. If Sutton (this volume) is correct, then the conference was an attempt to bring together two programmes each viewed as Ômarginal and implausibleÕ by the majority in their respective fields. I disagree with at least half of SuttonÕs admittedly playful assessment: while some remain suspicious of distributed cognition, it is not in general a marginal and implausible view—the view that cognitive processes, especially in living systems, exploit and are interconnected with bodily and environmental resources is widely held. Indeed it is nearly consensual among those working in a number of major centres of cognitive research. The same cannot be said of integrational linguistics. It is striking, though, that one area where distributed views have made relatively

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Editorial / Language Sciences 26 (2004) 497–501

little headway is that of language. There internalist views of cognitive processing, armed with their supposed trump card, the poverty of the stimulus argument, seem to hold strong. And so perhaps it is in the case of language that distributed cognition could look marginal and implausible, and perhaps also there where fruitful exchange with integrational linguists might be expected. I will not use this short editorial to urge, let alone defend, a single overall assessment of the success of the conference, either as an event or through the papers appearing here. Not all of the papers concern themselves with both conference themes, which is unsurprising, since part of the point of the conference was that there were very few qualified to say much about both approaches. Every paper does make some contact with all of the others, although in some cases the links are by means of a series of overlaps. A conversation of sorts does seem to have started. There are, furthermore, clear grounds for both optimism and pessimism about the value of that conversation. In this editorial I make a few observations about both. On the optimistic front Clark concludes, after picking up some key threads from the papers by Christensen, Love, Ross, and Wheeler, that language is ÔspecialÕ, and that it is special (partly) because it is able to ‘‘stabilize, anchor and scaffold individual thought and interpersonal co-ordination’’. This could well seem to suggest that ÔintegrationalÕ study (that is, contextual, action-centred, concerned with embodiment and the details of interpersonal co-ordination) of language seems appropriate to at least one prominent exponent of distributed cognition. Sutton sketches some further reasons for optimism, albeit tempered with grounds for caution. In fact, Cowley, Love and Sutton all suggest that the distributed cognition research programme can usefully incorporate integrational linguistics, or at least key insights from it. Benson et al. seem to me, at least, to present a particularly promising example of what IÕd want to call Ôintegrational linguisticsÕ. They describe detailed and careful work in which different ÔstrataÕ of analysis (context, semantics, lexicogrammar, phonology and phonetics) are overlaid in order to provide a framework for the scientific study of the interaction between different systems of discrimination that may well function largely independently. Although their discussion is not framed in explicitly strategic terms, what they say is ripe for integration with something like the analytic framework developed by Ross (this issue) for making sense of how some strategic interactions can have among their upshots the transformation of the identities of the players of the games. Whether read alongside Ross or not, the work of Benson et al. seems concerned with exactly what Clark suggests makes language special, while at the same time not taking it for granted that thoughts are self-stabilising, or interpersonal co-ordination automatic and unproblematic. Although I donÕt reciprocate HarrisÕs (this issue) gloomy assessment of the value of the terminology associated with distributed cognition in the case of integrational linguistics, I do share his caution about employing a jargon that is not (yet) my own. So I grant that I could be mistaken about whether what Benson et al. have done really is Ôintegrational linguisticsÕ at all. This brings me to the grounds for pessimism, which are if anything more striking than those for optimism. Roy Harris is of the view that proponents of distributed cognition, or as he calls them ÔdistributorsÕ, are the victims (or perpetrators) of a cat-


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egory mistake, and that everything that they say ‘‘about the brainÕs engagement with the rest of the body and the local environment’’ could have been accepted without difficulty by Descartes. This is a very bad start. It is correct that Descartes could have accepted a great deal about the engagement of the brain with the body and local environment. The interactions between those three were, after all, among his most central preoccupations. But the claim that cognition is distributed is not just one about ÔengagementÕ—it concerns, among other things, the division of cognitive labour. Start by drawing a line around Ôthe brain.Õ 1 Then, the distributors maintain, when you set out to find the processes that implement the control of some behaviour or other, youÕll at least sometimes find that the processing takes place on both sides of that line. In those cases, they say, the cognition is ÔdistributedÕ. Distribution in this sense is relative to some specified boundary, and it is supposed to be an empirical question whether the implementation of any particular cognition is distributed, just as it is an empirical question how much of the work takes place on either side of the line, and whether and how the processes would run differently if things on one or the other side were changed. If we think that the ÔmindÕ is to be found where the processing that implements it is to be found, a thought that was presumably part of any original motivation to put it in the skull in the first place, then why not think, when we find the processing going beyond the skull, that the mind can be on both sides of the line too? (Part of the reason why not, for Harris, seems to be the merits of the Ôvulgar concept of mindÕ, a point to which I return below.) Two features of HarrisÕs other remarks seem to me, though, to provide better grounds for pessimism. The first concerns what he calls the ‘‘current vogue for computational rhetoric’’. He says that ‘‘talk about computation makes most sense when applied to computers. When applied to anything else it rapidly loses credibility and obfuscates both practical and conceptual issues’’. Especially when stripped from their original context these sentences can seem like assertions of an uninteresting truism (Ôtalk about circulation makes most sense when applied to circulatorsÕ, etc.). I take it that they arenÕt supposed to be asserting an uninteresting truism, but rather that Harris takes there to be a fairly definite fact of the matter about what things in the world are computers and what arenÕt, and thinks further that cognitive scientists are in the habit of following a ‘‘vogue for computational rhetoric’’ even when talking about things that arenÕt computers. There is admittedly a danger of that sort of creeping jargon. IÕm told that the tendency of architects to refer to some spaces in their designs as, for example, Ôcirculation zonesÕ dates back to the celebrity of HarveyÕs seventeenth century work on the blood, when ÔcirculationÕ became a very fashionable thing to talk about. Most people in foyers, on plazas, and so forth do not, of course, circulate in that sense, unless they are lost. 1

This apparently simple starting point isnÕt easy in practice. Is the surface of the retina part of the brain? Is the spinal cord? If they are, then it may prove difficult to deny the status of being parts of the brain to sub-systems that are Ôfurther outÕ, like other parts of the anatomy of the eye. And if they arenÕt, then fair portions of what is inside the skull seem of questionable status. For present purposes it doesnÕt matter that much where one draws the line.

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With respect to computation, though, we need a principled way of deciding what to count as a computer in order to distinguish fashionable rhetoric from sensemaking application. Note that a great deal of what passes for progress in a wide range of sciences has been achieved by extending the range of phenomena that yield to ÔcomputationalÕ study, understood as quantitative study that attempts to discover the significant quantities in a given domain and mathematically precise and empirically accurate statements of the relations between those quantities under different conditions. Harris seems to grant as much when celebrating Einstein as the perpetrator of an ‘‘outstanding metacognitive feat’’ near the end of his (HarrisÕs) contribution, rather than as an example of a muddle-head who thought that the universe was a computer. Perhaps the question about what things really are computers and which arenÕt is a red herring, and instead the question at issue concerns the proper scope of computational methods of study. Harris is, it seems, of the view that the proper scope does not include the mind, and (correctly) notes that the opposite view is an admission criterion for the ÔdistributorÕ club. IÕd go further and say that it is probably a criterion for the club of scientists in general as presently understood, and hence that Harris may be putting his finger on a deep divide between integrational linguistics and science generally. If the position really is constitutive of integrational linguistics then prospects for fruitful collaboration with any science at all are slim indeed. The second reason for pessimism is related to the first. Harris declares his support for the Ôvulgar concept of mindÕ, and notes that he is ‘‘yet to be convinced of the value of any rival approach’’. I share SuttonÕs (this issue) bewilderment on this point. It seems to me that one useful way of organising much of the history of science is as series of disconfirmations of Ôcommon senseÕ, adding up to a powerful inductive argument that if thereÕs some way that things generally seem to us folk, then thereÕs a good chance that weÕre wrong. Ask almost any group of people whether they think that this weekÕs lottery numbers are less likely to come up next week than any other set of numbers, and theyÕll typically agree that they are indeed less likely. This is, though, simply false. Ask whether they think it is possible for you to produce a person who successfully calls ten coin-tosses in a row, and theyÕll typically say that it isnÕt possible. It is, though, and trivially so—all you need do is run a direct elimination coin-tossing tournament with 1024 entrants (Dennett, 1995: 53–54). Most people initially deny the existence of their retinal blind spots, and when forced to confront them often go on to offer Ôcommon senseÕ theories of what must be going on that are neurologically and conceptually preposterous. I regularly find students, smart and ÔcommonsensicalÕ ones, who initially deny that some well documented empirical phenomenon that I describe to them is possible at all, in part because admitting that it is would do violence to their vulgar concept of themselves. This vulgar concept seems, let us remember, to be the very one that finds no serious difficulty with entertaining the notion that an individual personÕs whole psychology could leave their body and inhabit the body of another individual, that of an animal, or even an inanimate object such as a totem or a teapot. The fact that many people have false beliefs about probabilities (in the lottery case) does not seem like a good reason for rejecting standard theoretical accounts


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of probability. It seems, rather, like a good reason to add on to the list of things for cognitive science to explain just why it is that people have such quirky beliefs in this domain. Many who would grant that much, though, think that the same doesnÕt go for cases where the beliefs we have are about ourselves. ThereÕs a fork in the road here: either we think science can tell us that weÕre wrong about how things are with us (so that our distinctive personal psychology really canÕt inhabit a teapot no matter what possibilities we are able to entertain), even to the extent of showing our common sense, or vulgar, self-conception to be deeply mistaken, or common sense is holding some sort of trump that means it always beats science, or even that it never has to pay attention to science. Most cognitive science goes down the one branch, and it seems like Harris is committed to the other. If that is indeed the case, then the first mind AND world working group conference, and this volume should have been called Ôdistributed cognition or integrational linguistics.Õ Please remember, though, that I started with some of the grounds for optimism. Whether an exchange, fruitful or otherwise, that outlasts the conference and the publication of the present collection of papers has indeed been initiated remains, then, to be seen. The conference and the papers that have grown out of it do at least suggest that integrationists wary of some ways of talking about computation, representation, cognitive processing etc., need not regard all cognitive scientists as foes, and that not all of them do. Similarly, cognitive scientists whose work leads them to be suspicious of some positions (including some very powerful ones) in contemporary linguistics need not be opposed to linguistics in general, and not all of them are. In closing IÕd like to record my thanks to all who participated in the original conference, especially Stephen Cowley who shares responsibility for the themes of the event and the event itself, and to all the contributors to this special issue of Language Sciences.

Reference Dennett, D., 1995. DarwinÕs Dangerous Idea. Simon and Schuster. New York.

David Spurrett Department of Philosophy University of KwaZulu-Natal Durban 4041 South Africa E-mail address: [email protected]