Title: A reply to Radicalizing Enactivism: how
scaffolding fails to solve the hard problem of content
Extended Abstract: In their new book, Radicalizing Enactivism (RE), Hutto and Myin present
compelling arguments for why basic minds do not have content. In particular, they introduce the Hard
Problem of Content (HPC) i.e.: that “informational content is incompatible with
explanatory naturalism” (RE, p. xv).
By reviewing a range of theories, the pair demonstrate the futility of
recent attempts to distinguish content from covariance. Content is information within a system,
whereas a covariant system can be explained purely by way of causal
interactions. However, in spite of
these arguments, Hutto and Myin do not present a theory of mind that is
content free. Instead, they label
a total rejection of content as really radical enactivism (RRE), which they claim is a bridge
too far. They conclude that while
basic minds do not have content, highly intelligent minds, such as human minds,
do trade in content and that this content is made possible due to our
linguistic abilities. In this
paper I will challenge Hutto and Myin's conclusion and show how their appeal to
language is at odds with the arguments employed by RE to deny contentful
cognition. Hutto and Myin themselves
fail to make the choice in the dilemma that they claim HPC presents: either
solve how content arises from covariance (even though it does not seem possible
to rectify with naturalism) or give up content altogether.
Firstly, I
will explicate why an appeal to content is seen as necessary to account for
intelligent minds. For this we
must go back to Hutto’s earlier work in which he argues that linguistic minds
necessarily have content.[1] Hutto relies on the Davidsonian model of language,
which involves propositional attitudes, such as believing that it is raining
outside, or desiring a piece of cake.
These attitudes are contentful because they are about things. We can
know this aboutness because propositions have a truth value. For
example, the statement “it is raining outside right now,” can be true or false
depending on the state of the world.
This idea is then used by Hutto[2]
to conclude that any language user must have propositional attitudes and
therefore content. In other words,
as language is necessarily propositional, any language user must have
propositional states in order to be able perform linguistic tasks.
Where Hutto and Myin diverge from a traditional propositional
approach[3]
is that they insist that the linguistic cognition is only possible through social
practices. This is predicated on
the idea of scaffolding, i.e. that the ability to perform certain actions is
necessarily linked to an agents' interaction with, and development alongside,
elaborate tools and structures in the agent's environment.[4] This idea of scaffolding appears to be
an extremely useful one in terms of understanding the development of human
capabilities.
However, what it does not do is solve the HPC, in particular,
how the learning of linguistic social practices leads to the creation of
content. This could be contrasted
to non-linguistic practices that, supposedly, would not lead to content; for
example, learning to use utensils to eat with (forks in some cultures and
chopsticks in others). While there
is no doubt that the idea of scaffolding does seem to fit within a naturalistic
framework, it does not actually answer the question of how content arises
within cognitive systems. The idea
that language is propositional is not validated by the claim that language
arises due to social practices.
All it tells us is something about how we learn language, not the
constitution of language itself (contentful or not). To solve the HPC in favor of content, a plausible
naturalistic account for the emergence of content is requisite. At best, Hutto and Myin’s appeal to
languages as being contentful could be seen as falling back on the Default Linguistic
Mind (as opposed to the Default Internal Mind, see RE, p.137). This position assumes content is involved
in linguistic cognitive practices without reflecting on how it arises within a
causal, naturalistic world.
With this assumption exposed, we can see how it works
against Hutto and Myin’s particular approach. For the majority of the book, the authors employ a bottom-up
strategy that is at the heart of enactivism: the development of a theory of
cognition based on the low-level mechanics of cognition systems. This is precisely what leads them to conclude
that content is often mistaken for covariance and it is covariance that
explains cognition at this level.
However, while Hutto and Myin use a bottom-up approach to dismiss other
contentful theories of cognition, their statement that language must involve content
is driven purely from the top-down received view that language is necessarily
contentful. The bringing together
of these two approaches does not make the neat fit that the authors seem to believe
it does.
While a bottom-up/top-down switch is common to other
enactivist theories, [5] Hutto
and Myin’s position relies so heavily on showing that content does not easily
emerge from within a naturalistic framework (if at all), the fact that they
posit content without specifically tackling the HPC is puzzling. Moreover, it undermines their critique of
other appeals to content: if radical enactivism can simply ignore the HPC when
it is convenient, then surely any other theory can too. The insistence that language must
involve content is no different from the insistence that basic minds must
involve content if neither side is backed by an account of how content arises.
In light of these concerns, I will conclude that RE presents
a strong case for why cognition should be understood as contentless. The only mistake the authors make is
that they view their own work as pushing back the location of content (outside
of basic minds), when they should instead view their work as ultimately
rejecting content altogether. Their
appeal to language in order to introduce content seems more like a traditional philosophy
of language reflex than a thoroughly thought out position. Only by removing this reflex does the book
become a radical work at all.
[1] Hutto,
D. D. 2008. Folk Psychological Narratives: The Socio-Cultural Basis of
Understanding Reasons. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
[2] Hutto is not alone in
making this step , for a very similar combination of language and cognition see
Clark, Andy (1997). Being There: Putting
Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[4] Sterelny, Kim (2010).
Minds: extended or scaffolded? Phenomenology
and the Cognitive Sciences 9 (4):465-481.
[5] Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and
human experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.