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Epilogue: Discussion, Evaluation and Future Research
Published in Harald Maurer, Cognitive Science, 2021
A further rapprochement takes place between the dynamic system theory and (embodied) connectionism in "Cognitive Robotics", "Evolutionary Robotics", and "Developmental Robotics" (chap. 3.2.6, 7.3, 11.3). This raises the question as to what extent this progress towards a hybrid embodied approach made by robotics researchers can contribute new insights in solving the binding problem in embodied cognitive science (Barsalou 1999, Franklin 2013), with special consideration to these neurocognitive integrative mechanisms which have been implemented in robots and androids acting as agents in complex (developmental and social) situations.
Introduction
Published in Yulia Ustinova, Divine Mania, 2017
Every historian will readily agree that our mind is ‘embedded,’ meaning that cognition, that is, the way the mind represents and processes information and defines accordingly thoughts and actions, is dependent on historical context.170 Many scholars tend to disregard the fact that our mind is also moulded by its being embodied, i.e. shaped by bodily experiences, limitations of the body, and physical factors of the surrounding world influencing various physiological processes.171 However, it has been compellingly demonstrated that cognition is ‘embodied and embedded’172 or even ‘embrained, embodied, encultured, extended and distributed.’173 The debate between the embodied cognitive science and the conservative view of mind and cognition is beyond the scope of my study. Remaining in the boundaries of mainstream cognitive psychology, I adopt the most basic assumption that various factors acting on the human body influence the person’s mind and may alter his or her consciousness.174 The practical corollary is that a student of any culture, ancient Greek culture included, cannot regard human agents as solely cultural entities.175 Our cognitive functions, through the brain and the nervous system, are affected by a plethora of bodily processes: manipulation of the body influences our mental states.176 We have to be aware of the factors affecting human cognition, and be particularly attentive to the mental states of people engaged in potentially mind-altering practices. Only seldom have we found accounts of such practices, but even allusions to their elements (sometimes by mere choice of words and metaphors) may be indicative.
Donation, Control and the Ownership of Conscious Things
Published in AJOB Neuroscience, 2022
In relation to ownership, Sawai and colleagues ask the question of who owns a brain organoid, or an animal transplanted with a brain organoid, that has acquired “some form of consciousness which confers it moral status” [italics added] (Sawai et al. 2022, 88). The ownership issue, however, does not turn on whether an organoid or chimeric animal has some form of consciousness and thereby some moral status, but on whether it has full moral status or something approaching full moral status. Most legal systems have no issue with ownership of conscious entities per se. There is no legal uncertainty about pet owners owning their pets or farmers their livestock, even though all mammalian pets and farm animals are undoubtedly conscious in the phenomenal sense. This position on ownership may well be wrong, and we may decide to have a wholesale re-appraisal of the legal ownership of animals. However, until that happens, we have no good reason to treat an organoid with consciousness similar to that of, for instance, a pig differently in terms of the possibility of ownership than the pig itself. Pigs and organoids are both biological entities, although only one of them is an actual self-sustained organism. Now, it may be argued that the fact that the organoid is made from human cells makes a difference because it is a human organoid and, therefore, somehow special. There is, however, a great risk of equivocation concerning the term “human” here. The fact that an organoid is, to a certain degree, biologically human does not, at least in any straightforward way, support the conclusion that its particular consciousness must also be qualitatively human. A merely sentient human organoid is still just merely sentient and to say this is a specifically human sentience, that is, a sentience produced by an organized assembly of human cells as opposed to a consciousness that experiences the world in a qualitatively human way, adds nothing. Relatedly, Sawai and colleagues state that they are primarily concerned with phenomenal consciousness and that “it would be prudent to proceed under the assumption that the entity has consciousness for the time being by applying a precautionary principle” (Sawai et al. 2022, 85). The issue here, however, is that we have good reasons to be skeptical in relation to whether the phenomenal content of the consciousness of an in vitro organoid is likely to be similar to the phenomenal content of the consciousness of a human. For example, as argued on different grounds by a number of phenomenologically oriented theorists and researchers working in embodied cognitive science, if human consciousness is an embodied phenomenon, then we cannot ignore the role of the human body in determining the phenomenological content of a specific type of consciousness, that is, human consciousness (Clark 2008; Damasio 1994; Gallagher 2005; Lakoff and Johnson 1999; Merleau-Ponty 1962).