Yong-Hong Xia

4E cognition emphasizes the active role of environmental resources in cognitive processes. However, how to define this role has been a source of intense debate within 4E cognition. By examining typical cases from embedded cognition, extended cognition, socially extended cognition, and extended agency, I argue that environmental resources that perform different cognitive roles operate on distinct time scales. To account for this phenomenon, drawing on the Vygotskian tradition, I distinguish four time scales of environmental resources, namely microgenetic, ontogenetic, sociogenetic, and phylogenetic, and relate them to four cognitive roles: indexes, vehicles, schemas, and enablement. I further propose that the mechanisms that explain why environmental resources at these time scales serve their respective cognitive roles are best understood through four forms of cognitive niche construction. This framework provides an integrative perspective for clarifying theoretical differences within 4E cognition.

Mind uploading involves two technological approaches: brain simulation and brain replacement. To achieve immortality, these approaches must metaphysically satisfy the requirements of phenomenal consciousness and personal identity. This paper finds that to meet these requirements, brain simulation presupposes the truth of role functionalism for mental states and ultra-role-functionalism for identity, while brain replacement presupposes the truth of realizer functionalism for both mental states and identity. To adjudicate these functionalist theories based not only on a priori considerations but also on empirical evidence, this paper introduces a confirmation process that moves from empirical observation (i.e., sensory substitution) to science (i.e., sensorimotor enactivism) and then to metaphysics. It finds that realizer functionalism aligns better with empirical observation than role functionalism. If realizer functionalism is a more reasonable theory, it would imply that brain simulation is impossible, while brain replacement remains a possibility. However, realizer functionalism is an empirically constrained metaphysics. While it commits to the metaphysical possibility of brain replacement, our analysis, based on relevant neuroscientific research, argues that it is unlikely to possess such a nomological possibility. Therefore, whether through brain simulation or brain replacement, it is unlikely that humans could achieve immortality through mind uploading.

The rise of automation, such as artificial intelligence, has significantly reduced human agency in artifact-involving actions, thereby giving rise to a moral dilemma known as the responsibility gap. In this dilemma, moral undesirable consequences arise from technology, yet no one is held accountable because individuals lack control over their actions and their outcomes, as well as the ability to predict these outcomes, rendering them morally blameless. This paper proposes a framework based on externalist agency and distributed responsibility, aiming to address this problem by assigning accountability to artifacts. Externalist agency holds that agency is a gradient concept rather than an all-or-nothing one. Between fully autonomous agency and non-agency, there are three intermediate gradients: distributed agency, constrained agency, and derivative agency. Distributed responsibility holds that responsibility should be allocated according to these gradients of agency. For both humans and artifacts: if an agent possesses derivative agency, forgiveness is warranted; if it possesses distributed agency, punishment is justifiable. This paper further suggests that punishment for artifacts can take the form of punishment for technological lineage—that is, modifying the design of technologies to guide their evolution toward safer and more ethical directions.