Witold Wachowski

The purpose of this article is to present Andrzej Lewicki’s account of cognition as orientation in the environment, comparing it with James J. Gibson’s ecological psychology. To do so, we conduct a comparative analysis of the former’s theory of indicators and the latter’s theory of affordance. The theoretical frame for our study is cognitive ecology, a research tradition characteristic of various studies of cognition, including contemporary ones. This allows us to show that, despite differences in the backgrounds and methodologies of these researchers, Lewicki can be considered one of the pioneers of contemporary ecological trends in cognitive science, although his influence has not been as widespread as that of Gibson. Our analysis proceeds in several steps. We begin with an overview of the biographies, backgrounds, and interests of the two researchers, as well as a brief introduction to cognitive ecology and related terms. Next, we discuss action/value indicators theory and affordances theory. We then compare Lewicki’s and Gibson’s approaches in more detail in terms of their use of similar research heuristics. The article ends with conclusions that go beyond historical issues.

The purpose of this article is to present Andrzej Lewicki’s account of cognition as orientation in the environment, comparing it with James J. Gibson’s ecological psychology. To do so, we conduct a comparative analysis of the former’s theory of indicators and the latter’s theory of affordance. The theoretical frame for our study is cognitive ecology, a research tradition characteristic of various studies of cognition, including contemporary ones. This allows us to show that, despite differences in the backgrounds and methodologies of these researchers, Lewicki can be considered one of the pioneers of contemporary ecological trends in cognitive science, although his influence has not been as widespread as that of Gibson. Our analysis proceeds in several steps. We begin with an overview of the biographies, backgrounds, and interests of the two researchers, as well as a brief introduction to cognitive ecology and related terms. Next, we discuss action/value indicators theory and affordances theory. We then compare Lewicki’s and Gibson’s approaches in more detail in terms of their use of similar research heuristics. The article ends with conclusions that go beyond historical issues.

Artykuł ten ma celu zaakcentowanie i uzupełnienie wybranych wątków książki Witolda Wachowskiego Poznanie rozproszone. Od heurystyk do mechanizmów (2022). W tekście uwzględniono aktualną sytuację, w jakiej znajdują się nauki poznawcze, z perspektywy koncepcji poznania rozproszonego i związanych z nią badań. Podczas gdy książka koncentruje się bardziej na strukturze tej koncepcji i jej osadzeniu w tradycjach badawczych, w artykule nacisk kładzie się na przedstawienie wciąż niedocenianego potencjału poznania rozproszonego jako uniwersalnego rozumienia poznania, faktycznych konsekwencji badawczych tej perspektywy, przy jednoczesnym doprecyzowaniu relacji z mechanicyzmem, jak i potencjału integracyjnego – wszystko to w świetle aktualnej kondycji kognitywistyki. ----------------------------------------- Zgłoszono: 31/12/2023. Zrecenzowano: 10/04/2024. Zaakceptowano do publikacji: 13/05/2024.

My basic research question – well beyond the scope of this book – is what the relationships between cognitive processes and cultural structures and practices are. Here, I get closer to answering this question in the following five steps: (1) I present cognitive ecology as a research tradition in cognitive science, characteristic of the approaches to wide cognition, i.e., embodied, embedded, extended, ecological psychology, enactivism, etc. (2) I distinguish two dimensions of the distributed cognition approach: as a theoretical framework and as a task model, focusing on the former. This distinction has so far eluded cognitive science theorists, and this approach has not been sufficiently analysed as a potential theory of cognitive science in general and the basis for its integration, being reduced to the dimension of the task model. (3) I discuss approaches in research on interactions in distributed cognitive systems, focusing more on the notion of external representations, and mostly on the notion of affordance. When assessing the potential of the latter, I look for consistency in what is crucial for understanding the interactions, between ecological psychology and design research. (4) I analyze the up to now underestimated potential of the distributed cognition approach in the dispute over the bounds of cognitive processes. (5) I identify and assess the analogies between the distributed cognition approach and the neo-mechanistic model of explanation that has become popular in cognitive science, and indicate possible benefits for the integration of the latter. As one can see, I am not trying to fully answer the question about the relationship between cognition and culture, but rather assess to what extent cognitive science in its current form is capable of.

The article presents the interdisciplinary approach of Edwin Hutchins, analyzing his conception of distributed cognition as probably the most important and lasting contribution of anthropology to the repertoire of theoretical tools in cognitive science. At the same time, this conception resulted in one of the most interesting relationships between cognitive science and social sciences. These relationships are made possible by the assumptions of Hutchins’ conception, which directly contribute to interdisciplinary collaboration. His account of distributed cognition has enormous potential, allowing the integration of research into cognitive and social processes. This is also because it breaks with methodological individualism.

This study aims to show the socio-cognitive engineering of the pickpocket craft from the point of view of cognitive ecology. Being a pickpocket has a wider, existential status; studying it goes beyond the field of cognitive sciences. My ambitions are more modest: I try to show that the question about what it is like to be someone like a pickpocket is also a question about the cognitive structure of his or her activity space. In this light, I analyze some aspects of the reality presented in the movie Pickpocket by Robert Bresson. From the ecological point of view, scenes from the old movie present pickpocketing techniques in the context of the opportunities and constraints of a given environment. I claim that studies like this require integrating certain conceptual tools, like distributed cognition approach, ecological psychology, and cognitive studies of design.

Title - Gender in distributed cognitive systems: Possible conceptualizations. Abstract - There is a mismatch between social and biological approaches in the studies on sex and gender. Neurofeminist researchers critically examine gendered impacts of research in neuroscience and cognitive science, as well as develop more adequate and gender‑appropriate neuroscientific studies. However, they still seem to be focused on the brain and its relationship with the environment. Moreover, there are a little ‘science‑phobic’ feminist approaches based on actor‑network theory, and social science and technology studies. In this context, I would like to suggest another account of gender. My account is not centered on individual selves, minds or brains, but it is based on concept of distributed cognitive system and cultural ecosystem developed in the cognitive science. The potential integrational role of the approach seems worthy of attention. On the one hand, there are no contradictions between more important assumptions of distributed cognition theory and social studies. On the other hand, it is not necessarily limited to human beings and their minds. I pay particular attention to distinction between the distributed cognition theory and the extended mind theory. Ones of the most important elements of the ‘gender‑sensitive’ distributed system are artifacts and their affordances, most of all — cultural and canonical ones. In this light, the gender relations seem not only distributed, but also able to be designed.

The organization of the cyclical open-air festival Night of Culture in Lublin in cooperation with a research group works on two levels. The first is the level of an offer of experiences and reflections for the audience of the Night of Culture. The second is the level of research – social and other – on the design, implementation and effects of the first level. On both levels, a phenomenon plays an important role that can be described from the perspective of cognitive ecology with the term "affordance." A systematic analysis of this can lead to the third level: a meta-analysis of the street festival under discussion. I will not undertake such a complex task in this text, which is partly a review and then a "report", but I will make a brief reconstruction of the conceptual and design work of the Affordances Activity, in which I participated significantly and regularly, as well as will consider the stage of the production of designed objects and their subsequent operation during this year's (2023) edition of the Night of Culture, in which a group of volunteers (students of the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University) played an important role. Remarks of the aforementioned meta-research dimension of the project constitute a wide margin of the article.

Artykuł ten jest recenzją książki Mechanizmy predykcyjne i ich normatywność, skoncentrowaną na trzech zakresach tej publikacji. Pierwszy zakres obejmuje kontekst wydawniczy, czyli kwestię zapotrzebowania na taką pracę, biorąc pod uwagę język publikacji, jej dostępność itd. Drugi zakres dotyczy akademickiego potencjału tej książki jako obszernego opracowania koncepcji przetwarzania predykcyjnego. Trzeci zakres natomiast wiąże się z główną ambicją Autora książki i jednocześnie najbardziej wymagającym wątkiem tej pracy, jako studium problemu normatywności w ujęciu koncepcji przetwarzania predykcyjnego i wyjaśniania (neo)mechanistycznego.

Studies on human–artifact interaction stimulate reflection on the bounds of cognition, agency, and even morality (e.g. Floridi and Sanders, 2004). Richard Heersmink (2017) compares distributed cognition (DCog) and distributed morality theory and claims that some artifacts, depending on their use, have cognitive and moral status but lack cognitive and moral agency. According to him, an extended cognitive system (ECS) has agency when artifact(s) included in the system are fully transparent and densely integrated into the cognitive processes of the user, whereas a distributed cognitive system (DCS) without central control lacks agency. My doubts do not concern Heersmink's main claim. Irrespective of the final assessment of the moral status of distributed systems, I argue that the assumption that the assessment of the degree to which humans and artifacts are cognitively integrated is not always feasible and distorts our understanding of DCog.EXTENSION AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE COGNITIVEHeersmink (2017) sums up the well-known concepts of “wide” cognition: cognitive states and processes may go beyond individual minds to involve people and artifacts; human agents and artifacts form integrated systems performing information-processing tasks. Cognitive activity sometimes extends beyond the brain to non-neuronal parts of the body and elements of the environment. Two famous examples are: a navigation team on board of a surface vessel at sea (Hutchins 1995), and a man with Alzheimer’s disease who supports his biological memory by means of a notebook (Clark and Chalmers 1998). As Heersmink writes: “Clark’s extended cognition theory focuses on single agents interacting with artifacts, whereas Hutchins DCog theory typically (though not exclusively) focuses on larger systems with more than one agent interacting with artifacts. In such wider cognitive systems, there are thus one or more individuals interacting and coupling with cognitive artifacts” (2017).Heersmink recognizes the significant difference between the two concepts, relying on Hutchins’s comments (2014): extended cognition is just a special case of DCog opening up a much broader view of the different types of cognition. Among them, „[s]ome systems have a clear center while other systems have multiple centers or no center at all’’ (Hutchins, 2014, p. 37).So far, Heersmink’s summary is not controversial. What is problematic is his view that it “is better to conceive of system membership in terms of the degree of cognitive integration of humans and artifacts” (2017). This integration depends on different dimensions including the kind and intensity of information flow between human and non-human components, accessibility of the scaffold, durability of the coupling, amount of user trust, degree of transparency-in-use, ease of interpretation of the information and the amount of personalization or cognitive transformation (2017; 2015). Hence, cognitive artifacts can be integrated more or less deeply.COGNITIVE SYSTEM AS A MECHANISMLet's go back to the way Hutchins defines DCSs. For him, distribution means interaction (2006, p. 376–377). When we take the DCog perspective, we do not “make any claim about the nature of the world. Rather, it is to choose a way of looking at the world, one that selects scales of investigation such that wholes are seen as emergent from interactions among their parts” (Hutchins, 2014, p. 36). DCog is not a kind of cognition, but a perspective on all of cognition. “[T]he notions of centralized and distributed are always relative to some scale of investigation. (...) The boundaries of the unit of analysis for DCog are not fixed in advance; they depend on the scale of the system under investigation, which can vary (…)” (Hutchins, 2014, p. 36).DCS—to which ECSs belong—doesn’t constitute any more or less integrated agent “casing”. Hutchins shows that DCSs may have different scales (the brain is one example), and the large systems he studied offer something like Gulliver's perspective in the land of giants: an opportunity for direct observation of cognitive processes in the macroscale occurring in an environment (1995, p. 128–129).Therefore, the assumption that it is always possible to grade the cognitive integration between an agent and artifact may fail in the case of some complex DCSs. Artifacts are not “attached” to the “genuinely” cognitive part of the system but are its equally important components. It is only the system as such that can have agency potential or can be the center for something else.DCS should be viewed as a mechanism (e.g. Bechtel and Abrahamsen, 2005; Ylikoski, 2015). A mechanism is a structure that performs a function by means of its organized component parts and operations. It is responsible for one or more phenomena. Mechanisms can occur in nested hierarchies and can work cyclically, but they can also be responsible for one-off events only. Mechanisms can also be computational (Miłkowski, 2013; Piccinini, 2015). Thus, in the DCS it is the interaction of active components and time coordination that is important for its mechanism(s), whilst the components themselves can be physically separated and coordinated only temporarily. At the same time, mechanisms may be more or less durable, and more or less tightly organized. In other words, Heersmink’s claims can be better stated in the mechanistic framework without distorting the original idea of DCog.CONCLUDING REMARKSFor Heersmink, an ECS has agency when an artifact is fully transparent and densely integrated into the cognitive processes of its user; for this reason (according to Heersmink’s criterion for being an agent and having agency), a distributed system without central control lacks agency because it is not a system whose intentions are being realized. My doubts do not concern Heersmink's main claim, but a minor one, although important for understanding DCog. In complex cases, it is meaningless to ask about the degree of cognitive integration of humans and artifacts in DCSs. Demanding such an integration brings to mind the anthropomorphic fallacy. The ECS in which a person can fully control the operation of her/his artificial extensions is only a special simple case of DCog. Wider cognitive systems are not added to “genuine” cognitive systems, but they themselves are “genuine” systems: their components interact in a coordinated manner, as in the case of any mechanism.

Artykuł ten jest recenzją książki „Mechanizmy predykcyjne i ich normatywność”, skoncentrowaną na trzech zakresach tej publikacji. Pierwszy zakres obejmuje kontekst wydawniczy, czyli kwestię zapotrzebowania na taką pracę, biorąc pod uwagę język publikacji, jej dostępności itd. Drugi zakres dotyczy akademickiego potencjału tej książki jako obszernego opracowania koncepcji przetwarzania predykcyjnego. Trzeci zakres natomiast wiąże się z główną ambicją Autora książki i jednocześnie najbardziej wymagającym wątkiem tej pracy, jako studium problemu normatywności w ujęciu koncepcji przetwarzania predykcyjnego i wyjaśniania (neo)mechanistycznego.

W artykule rozważa się, na ile normatywność jest usytuowana w ludzkich ekosystemach biologicznych i kulturowych, z naciskiem na rolę artefaktów. Podstawowe pytanie dotyczy tego, czy afordancje – różnie konceptualizowane – mogą mieć charakter normatywny. Tekst krótko wprowadza do ekologii poznawczej oraz psychologii ekologicznej, po czym przedstawia możliwość zastosowania klasycznej teorii afordancji do normatywności wraz z krytyką, a następnie – próbę modyfikacji tego ujęcia przez odwołanie się do afordancji społecznych i kulturowych. Przegląd ten i płynące z niego wnioski uzupełniono oryginalną propozycją wzbogacenia badań nad normatywnością afordancji o analizę ich struktur oraz roli projektowania interakcji człowiek–artefakt.

Cognitive ecology as a research tradition in cognitive science: The article presents cognitive ecology as a research tradition in cognitive science, under which studies on embodied cognition and various forms of situated cognition are conducted. At the same time, the basic heuristic of cognitive ecology and its relationship to methodological individualism are identified. The paper includes the history of the concept of “cognitive ecology”, historical approaches preceding this research tradition, as well as an outline of contemporary research related to it. At the end of the article, the role of the ecological heuristic is summarized.

In these reflections, we want to prove a thesis whereby normativity of rules and norms may be linked to the domain of artefacts which we understand as social things. We claim that some norms and rules are situated in human socio-material ecosystems especially when it comes to the role played by affordances. The thesis advanced in this article will also enable us to indicate one of the potential interpretations of Wittgenstein’s ‘forms of life’ concept, demonstrating that some solutions suggested by the author of Philosophical Investigations are still relevant today. We will relate the issue of the normativity of artefacts to the problem of rule recognition which Wittgenstein also raises in some of his later studies. We will demonstrate that the problem of normativity recognition is linked to relational properties of objects, that is affordances; structured nature of the world of human communities; and the ability to recognise affordances related to the ability to create predictions about future states of affairs. The analyses presented herein will show that it is possible to link the perspectives of cognitive ecology, design practice and philosophical analyses focused on the problem of normativity.

In this paper, we argue that several recent ‘wide’ perspectives on cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive, and distributed) are only partially relevant to the study of cognition. While these wide accounts override traditional methodological individualism, the study of cognition has already progressed beyond these proposed perspectives towards building integrated explanations of the mechanisms involved, including not only internal submechanisms but also interactions with others, groups, cognitive artifacts, and their environment. The claim is substantiated with reference to recent developments in the study of “mindreading” and debates on emotions. We claim that the current practice in cognitive (neuro)science has undergone, in effect, a silent mechanistic revolution, and has turned from initial binary oppositions and abstract proposals towards the integration of wide perspectives with the rest of the cognitive (neuro)sciences.

Philosophical hermeneutics, understood as the theory of nterpretation, investigates some questions that are also asked in the cognitive sciences. The nature of human understanding, the way that we gain and organize knowledge, the role played by language and memory in these considerations, the relations between conscious and unconscious knowledge, and how we understand other persons, are all good examples of issues that form the intersection of hermeneutics and the cognitive sciences. Although hermeneutics is most often contrasted with the natural sciences, there are some clear ways in which hermeneutics can contribute to the cognitive sciences and vice versa.