Environments of Intelligence: From natural information to artificial interaction / Edition 1

by Hajo Greif

Overview

What is the role of the environment, and of the information it provides, in cognition? More specifically, may there be a role for certain artefacts to play in this context? These are questions that motivate "4E" theories of cognition (as being embodied, embedded, extended, enactive). In his take on that family of views, Hajo Greif first defends and refines a concept of information as primarily natural, environmentally embedded in character, which had been eclipsed by information-processing views of cognition. He continues with an inquiry into the cognitive bearing of some artefacts that are sometimes referred to as 'intelligent environments'. Without necessarily having much to do with Artificial Intelligence, such artefacts may ultimately modify our informational environments.

With respect to human cognition, the most notable effect of digital computers is not that they might be able, or become able, to think but that they alter the way we perceive, think and act.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781315401867, has been made available under a Creative Commons CC-BY licence

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367348717
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/05/2019
Series:	History and Philosophy of Technoscience
Pages:	230
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Hajo Greif teaches at the Munich Center for Technology in Society (MCTS), Technical University of Munich, Germany, and the Department of Philosophy, University of Klagenfurt, Austria. His research interests cover the philosophy – and some of the history and the social studies – of science and technology, as well as the philosophy of mind.

Table of Contents

1. Preliminaries: Ants and Robots, Parlour Games and Steam Drills

Background

Outline

I Informational Environments

2. Resurrecting Dretskean Information

Information, Behaviour, and Probability

The Content of Natural Information, and Some Discontent

Alternative Information

Natural Information and the Roots of Intentionality

3. Varieties of Perception

Perception as Information Processing: The Computational View

Information Specifies Affordances: The Ecological View

Perceptual Illusions vs. Misperception: The Empirical Strategy

4. The Domains of Natural Information

Natural Information and Reference Classes

Informational Domains

Resurrection at Last

5. Making an Environment

History, Ecology, Environment

Adapting Ecological Niches

Construction and Constitution

6. What is an Informational Environment?

Environmental Information and the Use of Cognition

What Informational Environments Are

How Informational Environments Change

II Environments of Intelligence

7. The Extension of the Extended Mind

The Extension of Functional Histories

The Constitution of Cognitive Extensions

Constitutional Matters

The Art of Coupling, Basic and Advanced

8. The Nature of Cognitive Artefacts

Being Guided by Pictures

Cognitive Artefacts and Informational Environments

Convergence and Isomorphism

9. The Intelligence of Environments

Evolutionary and Cognitive Robotics

Embodied Conversational Agents and Social Robotics

Second Life

Mixed Reality Games

Augmented Reality

Naturalising the Artificial

10 Afterthoughts on Conceptual Analysis and Human Nature

A Domain for Conceptual Analysis

A Naturalist’s View of Human Nature and Machines

BibliographyIndex

Editorial Reviews

"An absorbing volume that integrates an extraordinarily wide area of work, with interesting observations and new twists right to the end."

Ruth Millikan, University of Connecticut, USA

From the Publisher