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82Superpositional connectionism: A reply to Marinov (review)Minds and Machines 3 (3): 271-81. 1993.Marinov''s critique I argue, is vitiated by its failure to recognize the distinctive role of superposition within the distributed connectionist paradigm. The use of so-called subsymbolic distributed encodings alone is not, I agree, enough to justify treating distributed connectionism as a distinctive approach. It has always been clear that microfeatural decomposition is both possible and actual within the confines of recognizably classical approaches. When such approaches also involve statisti…Read more
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132Sensorimotor chauvinism?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5): 979-980. 2001.O'Regan and Noe present a wonderfully detailed and comprehensive defense of a position whose broad outline we absolutely and unreservedly endorse. They are right, it seems to us, to stress the intimacy of conscious content and embodied action, and to counter the idea of a Grand Illusion with the image of an agent genuinely in touch, via active exploration, with the rich and varied visual scene. This is an enormously impressive achievement, and we hope that the comments that follow will be taken …Read more
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64Representational trajectories in connectionist learningMinds and Machines 4 (3): 317-32. 1994.The paper considers the problems involved in getting neural networks to learn about highly structured task domains. A central problem concerns the tendency of networks to learn only a set of shallow (non-generalizable) representations for the task, i.e., to miss the deep organizing features of the domain. Various solutions are examined, including task specific network configuration and incremental learning. The latter strategy is the more attractive, since it holds out the promise of a task-in…Read more
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800Reasons, robots and the extended mindMind and Language 16 (2): 121-145. 2001.A suitable project for the new Millenium is to radically reconfigure our image of human rationality. Such a project is already underway, within the Cognitive Sciences, under the umbrellas of work in Situated Cognition, Distributed and De-centralized Cogition, Real-world Robotics and Artificial Life1. Such approaches, however, are often criticized for giving certain aspects of rationality too wide a berth. They focus their attention on on such superficially poor cousins as
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181Re-inventing ourselves: The plasticity of embodiment, sensing, and mindJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 32 (3). 2006.Recent advances in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience open up new vistas for human enhancement. Central to much of this work is the idea of new human-machine interfaces (in general) and new brain-machine interfaces (in particular). But despite the increasing prominence of such ideas, the very idea of such an interface remains surprisingly under-explored. In particular, the notion of human enhancement suggests an image of the embodied and reasoning agent as literally extended or augment…Read more
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352Pressing the flesh: A tension in the study of the embodied, embedded mindPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (1). 2008.Mind, it is increasingly fashionable to assert, is an intrinsically embodied and environmentally embedded phenomenon. But there is a potential tension between two strands of thought prominent in this recent literature. One of those strands depicts the body as special, and the fine details of a creature’s embodiment as a major constraint on the nature of its mind: a kind of new-wave body-centrism. The other depicts the body as just one element in a kind of equal-partners dance between brain, body…Read more
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145Précis of Supersizing the mind: embodiment, action, and cognitive extension (Oxford University Press, NY, 2008) (review)Philosophical Studies 152 (3). 2011.Précis of Supersizing the mind: embodiment, action, and cognitive extension (Oxford University Press, NY, 2008) Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11098-010-9597-x Authors Andy Clark, Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, Dugald Stewart Building, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD Scotland (UK) Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116.
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367Putting concepts to work: Some thoughts for the twenty first centuryMind and Language 19 (1): 57-69. 2004.Fodor’s theory makes thinking prior to doing. It allows for an inactive agent or pure reflector, and for agents whose actions in various ways seem to float free of their own conceptual repertoires. We show that naturally evolved creatures are not like that. In the real world, thinking is always and everywhere about doing. The point of having a brain is to guide the actions of embodied beings in a complex material world. Some of those actions are, to be sure, more recondite than others. But in ev…Read more
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330Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human IntelligenceOxford University Press. 2003.In Natural-Born Cyborgs, Clark argues that what makes humans so different from other species is our capacity to fully incorporate tools and supporting cultural ...
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1177Material symbolsPhilosophical Psychology 19 (3): 291-307. 2006.What is the relation between the material, conventional symbol structures that we encounter in the spoken and written word, and human thought? A common assumption, that structures a wide variety of otherwise competing views, is that the way in which these material, conventional symbol-structures do their work is by being translated into some kind of content-matching inner code. One alternative to this view is the tempting but thoroughly elusive idea that we somehow think in some natural language…Read more
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542Memento’s revenge: The extended mind, extendedIn Richard Menary (ed.), The Extended Mind, Mit Press. pp. 43--66. 2010.In the movie, Memento, the hero, Leonard, suffers from a form of anterograde amnesia that results in an inability to lay down new memories. Nonetheless, he sets out on a quest to find his wife’s killer, aided by the use of notes, annotated polaroids, and (for the most important pieces of information obtained) body tattoos. Using these resources he attempts to build up a stock of new beliefs and to thus piece together the puzzle of his wife’s death. At one point in the movie, a character exaspera…Read more
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524Minimal rationalismMind 102 (408): 587-610. 1993.Enquiries into the possible nature and scope of innate knowledge never proceed in an empirical vaccuum. Instead, such conjectures are informed by a theory (perhaps only tacitly endorsed) concerning probable representational form. Classical approaches to the nativism debate often assume a quasi-linguistic form of knowledge representation and deliniate a space of options (concerning the nature and extent of innate knowledge) accordingly. Recent connectionist theorizing posits a different kind of r…Read more
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207Parallel distributed processing is transforming the field of cognitive science. Microcognition provides a clear, readable guide to this emerging paradigm from a cognitive philosopher's point of view. It explains and explores the biological basis of PDP, its psychological importance, and its philosophical relevance.
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30Moving minds: Situating content in the service of real-time successPhilosophical Perspectives 9 89-104. 1995.
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17Making Moral Space: A Reply to ChurchlandCanadian Journal of Philosophy 30 (sup1): 307-312. 2000.Like those famous nations divided by a single tongue, my paper and Professor P.M. Churchland's deep and engaging reply offer different spins on a common heritage. The common heritage is, of course, a connectionist vision of the inner neural economy- a vision which depicts that economy in terms of supra-sentential state spaces, vector-to-vector transformations, and the kinds of skillful pattern-recognition routine we share with the bulk of terrestrial intelligent life-forms. That which divides us…Read more
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154Parallel distributed processing is transforming the field of cognitive science. Microcognition provides a clear, readable guide to this emerging paradigm from a cognitive philosopher's point of view. It explains and explores the biological basis of PDP, its psychological importance, and its philosophical relevance.
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386Language, embodiment, and the cognitive nicheTrends in Cognitive Sciences 10 (8): 370-374. 2006.Embodied agents use bodily actions and environmental interventions to make the world a better place to think in. Where does language fit into this emerging picture of the embodied, ecologically efficient agent? One useful way to approach this question is to consider language itself as a cognition-enhancing animal-built structure. To take this perspective is to view language as a kind of self-constructed cognitive niche: a persisting though never stationary material scaffolding whose critical rol…Read more
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9Linguistic anchors in the sea of thought?Pragmatics and Cognition 4 (1): 93-103. 1995.Language, according to Jackendoff, is more than just an instrument of communication and cultural transmission. It is also a tool which helps us to think. It does so, he suggests, by expanding the range of our conscious contents and hence allowing processes of attention and reflection to focus on items which would not otherwise be available for scrutiny. I applaud Jackendoff s basic vision, but raise some doubts concerning the argument. In particular, I wonder what it is about public language tha…Read more
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13In Memoriam: Susan HurleyIn Lawrence Weiskrantz & Martin Davies (eds.), Frontiers of consciousness, Oxford University Press. pp. 2008. 2008.
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114Intentionality and informationAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 65 (3): 335-341. 1987.This Article does not have an abstract
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266Finding the Mind: Book Symposium on Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (review)Philosophical Studies 152 (3). 2011.Finding the Mind Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11098-010-9598-9 Authors Andy Clark, Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, Dugald Stewart Building, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD Scotland, UK Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116.