Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/34.2161

AUTHOR: Robert D. Rupert
TITLE: Ten Lectures on Cognition, Mental Representation, and the Self
SERIES TITLE: Distinguished Lectures in Cognitive Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Brill
YEAR: 2023

REVIEWER: Belén Extremera Pérez

SUMMARY

Ten Lectures on Cognition, Mental Representation and the Self is a compendium of ten talks given by Professor Rupert at the 21st China International Forum on Cognitive Linguistics, which took place from October 25 to November 5, 2021. In these lectures, the author offers a detailed explanation of various aspects related to cognition, such as mental representation and theories to understand it, as well as the levels of thought or conscience. The intended audience would be specialized readers in cognitive science, as the author aims to create a space for technical discussion, as he proposes new developments or hypotheses for theories relating to very concrete aspects of cognition.

The first lecture, “The Personal and Subpersonal Level: Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Mind,” consists of an argument against the existence of a particular personal level in the mind. Professor Rupert emphasizes that the main idea of all his lectures is the rejection of the opposition of personal and subpersonal level in the philosophy of cognitive science. In this way, the author explains the distinction between the personal level and the subpersonal level. The first refers to rationally coherent thinking, to agents and actions that happen for a reason, therefore it is related to the conscious being. On the contrary, the second, the subpersonal level, includes those processes about behavior, action, and mere causation. However, Professor Rupert points out that actions are performed for reasons that are at the personal level (Rupert 2023: 15). Thus, the author shows data and experimental results to prove that the personal and subpersonal levels appear on the same level (Rupert 2023: 30). For example, De Houwer et al. (2013) distinguish between a functional level of analysis and a cognitive level of analysis (Rupert 2023: 30). Indeed, there have been arguments in recent years against separating the two levels of cognition. In conclusion, the author suggests that scientists should work on a philosophical hypothesis for this topic. As the author states, this first lecture is the most philosophical. This may be why it is placed at the beginning of the book.

In this second lecture, “What Is Mental Representation?”, the author aims to explain “what makes something a natural representation” (Rupert 2023: 40). Professor Rupert distinguishes between ontological naturalism and methodological naturalism. The former contends that "the universe contains no supernatural entities or forces" (Rupert 2023: 41), as long as everything can be justified in terms of physics. That is, we believe in spiritual content and we do not need a science of it because it can be grounded in physics. The second, methodological naturalism, emphasizes the role of scientific methods (Rupert 2023: 43). In linguistics, this is demonstrated by the study of sentence meaning, the use of sentences, the application of controlled experiments, the analysis of corpora, and computational methods. In this way, the methods of the natural sciences are put into practice to study mental representations. Following methodological naturalism, some authors, such as Miller and Cohen (2001), have localized the representation in the prefrontal cortex. Such experiments lead to the question of whether the brain is a mapmaker. In this sense, the following questions arise: What are mental representations like? Are mental representations considered a neurological state similar to a motor representation? The author also warns that if we use language to describe the world, we would have to find an answer to mental representation modeled after external language. In this sense, there are various approaches, such as syntactic structures, as defended by Chomsky, or bodily experience. In the author's words, “there is a danger of relying too heavily on language as a model for internal, cognitive representations” (Rupert 2023: 47). Regarding the properties of model representations, it is noteworthy that the author states “I don't want to take a stand on this issue” (Rupert 2023: 58). What is clear is that the author offers different explanations of the topic, as he includes the visual mechanism model of Eagan (2013) and the skeptical view of Ramsey (2007).

The third lecture, “A causal-developmental theory of representational content,” could be considered much more technical, as the author himself notes. This chapter presents a very specific theory of representational content: the Best Test Theory. This is articulated by three preliminaries: 1) it is a solution for the representation of non-existent individuals, 2) it eliminates the distinction between the personal and subpersonal level since it talks about subpersonal representations such as actions and traits, and 3) it states that social practice explains language use. This theory is based on the idea that content is historically determined by causal interactions. Thus, the vehicles of mental representations are also constructed through historical interactions; this is how they have become functional over time. This statement includes bodily experience: "interaction with the environment introduces and shapes the attractors most plausibly identified with the vehicles of mental representations" (Rupert 2023: 97). The theory provides a linear argument for finding the properties of a subject in its representation: 1) Choose a representational vehicle of interest for a subject, such as a horse. 2) List all the features and characteristics. 3) Take a property and find the percentage that comes from the subject, the horse; this is the representation of interest. The theory has an important mathematical aspect as it is related to the theory of probability.

In the fourth lecture, “Embodied Cognition and Its Discontents,” the author discusses various approaches to embodied cognition. For example, Professor Rupert offers a compendium of experiments showing that cognition involves sensory and motor processing. Thus, language processing would also require a motor or bodily response. Some of the tests that have proven this theory are those of Chen and Bargh (1999), who examine the recognition and judgment of a word. Also, Casasanto (2011) analyzes the effect of handedness when it comes to the processing of action verbs performed with the dominant hand. Finally, Broaders et al. (2007) conduct research on children's learning and expression through gestures, which is related to the embodiment of cognition. The author goes on to present critiques of certain areas that study the embodiment of cognition, such as functionalism or computationalism. Functionalism identifies mental states with types of neural processes. It is related to computationalism because early functionalists were inspired by computer science and associated the human mind with software. However, the author points out some misunderstandings in this area. For example, embodiment theorists have criticized functionalism because it doesn't take into account the material of which the mind is made. However, functionalist metaphysics does take physical material into account, such as neuroimaging to study functional states.

At the beginning of the fifth lecture, “The Massively Representational Mind,” the author again emphasizes the need to reject the idea of two different, separate levels of cognition. Instead, it should be a single model that can provide an answer to language production within a given set of data. In this lecture, the author also refers to previous lectures, so it is understood that the lectures should be read in a linear order. In this way, the author argues, following Casasanto's experiments explained earlier, that a subject can experience different representations of the same environment, object, or situation; some of these representations could be physical, that is, they could be localized in a certain part of the brain. With this argument, the author introduces the idea of the massively representational mind, which can be defined as “an architectural hypothesis, the gist of which is that the number of co-referring representations contributing to the production of behavior is an important quantity in cognitive science” (Rupert 2023: 185). This hypothesis would be articulated in four ways: 1) there is a massive number of representations, 2) there is an extensive redundancy in the mental representations that subjects hold, 3) there is a strong connection of different content-determining relations and vehicles with the body, and 4) as there is a variation of “active redundant representations” (Rupert 2023: 189), there is a variation of behaviors. The author concludes, again, with a strong recommendation to find a cognitive science based on philosophical reasoning, as some researchers, such as Lakoff, have managed to do.

In the sixth lecture, “Extended Cognition and the Boundaries of the Mind,” the author proposes a necessary distinction between a theory of extended mind and extended cognition. Professor Rupert returns to the philosophy of cognitive science to note that the roots and foundations of cognitive science have changed since the new millennium. It could be argued that extended cognition has developed because of new technologies. For example, people process beyond their skulls and bodies because of their dependence on smartphones. In terms of extended mind, people feel, desire, believe, and fear beyond their organism. In our opinion, this thesis lacks some explanation in the lecture, as it would have been better to elaborate with some examples. In fact, it is essential to distinguish between spirit and cognition. The author effectively completes this opposition with various examples. Thus, mind refers to the understanding of human beings, including their consciousness and thinking, while cognition refers to the scientific process. Therefore, there is an undeniable connection between the two. With this theoretical context, Professor Rupert offers various approaches that support the theories of extended cognition, such as Clark and Chalmers’ Parity Principle (1998). Professor Rupert uses this literature to defend the existence of a human cognitive system: “there is an integrated, persistent cognitive system within the organism” (Rupert 2023: 262). The author also discusses an alternative to the extended view of cognition: embedded cognition. This argues that cognitive processes depend on human context and location; this approach resonates with Dana Ballard’s project (Ballard et al. 1997: 274): “Our central thesis is that intelligence has to relate interactions with the physical world.”

The seventh lecture, “A Systems-Based View of Cognition,” revisits the idea of the previous discourse, as Professor Rupert continues the argument about extended mind and cognition. Thus, the main goal of this lecture would be to further discuss and defend the idea of systems-based cognition. According to the author, by establishing a cognitive system, it would be possible to delimit the boundaries of the cognitive self. The author also clarifies a misconception about the cognitive system, which consists of “a single cognitive being - the subject of cognitive states, the thing that develops, learns, and acquires new abilities” (Rupert 2023: 283). In order to characterize cognitive systems, the author presents the Conditional Probability Co-contribution, with seven steps to recognize behaviors that come from cognitive systems throughout the data. In this way, Professor Rupert argues that plants and humans show a similar type of cognitive system, even though plants do not develop the same behaviors as humans (such as talking). In this sense, the author refers to Lecture 8 to continue the discussion of cognition, mind, and behavior.

Professor Rupert begins the eighth lecture, “Group-Level Cognition: Do Groups Have Minds of Their Own?”, by alluding to the “liberal turn in the philosophy of cognitive science” (Rupert 2023: 330), i.e., there is a wide range of different topics around cognitive science, such as memory, decision making, and intelligence in "non-standard" systems, such as plants, which is an element of analysis that the author also pointed out in the previous lecture. In this way, in this lecture, Professor Rupert focuses on explaining the nature of cognition as a common characteristic of all cognitive systems (humans, plants). Thus, cognition can be understood as a structural-organizational kind or as a truly natural kind, i.e., as a "scientific property" (Rupert 2023: 333-334). The author also follows the approach of List (2018), who argues that cognition occurs as a social phenomenon and is “supported by social science research, by game theory or decision-theoretic modeling of group behavior” (Rupert 2023: 366). Furthermore, List and Pettit's (2011) research supports the theory of social choice: each individual judgment is aggregated to “effect social coordination or ground the functioning of social institutions” (Rupert 2023: 366). The discussion in this paper clearly differs from the view of others in that it enters the social context as influenced by cognition.

In the ninth lecture, “Self-Knowledge in the Flattened Mind,” the author initiates the discussion of the self and self-knowledge. This topic is placed at the end of the Compendium because it has a solid background in other discussions, such as the rejection of the personal level (Lecture 1), the massively representational mind (Lecture 5), and the nature of the cognitive system (Lecture 8). In fact, the author recovers content from these lectures in order to discuss the self from the perspective of cognitive science. As a result, this lecture covers some specific concepts related to the self. For example, it treats propositional encoding vs. information carrying, dual processing models, coordination of self-knowledge, and immediacy and authority. Finally, the author describes the self as an integration of various mechanisms that produce intelligent behavior.

As Professor Rupert himself points out, the tenth lecture (“Cognitive Psychology and the Subpersonal Justification of Belief”) discusses the question of knowledge more directly from an epistemological point of view: what it is to know something. In fact, the lecture begins with a philosophical approach: the contrast between truth and knowledge. The author offers metaphors and comparisons to show the difference between truth and knowledge. In this way, justification is the key point to confront these two: knowledge offers justification. But truth seems to swamp the value of justification. This question, the problem of swamping, will mark the development of the lecture. In his argument, the author makes a defense of the subpersonal level, where the justification of knowledge can be located, against the beliefs of the personal level, which are incapable of recognizing reliable sources of knowledge. Thus, the book ends in the same way that it began: by contrasting the personal and subpersonal levels, and by pointing to the subpersonal level as the more reliable structure for processing and creating knowledge.

EVALUATION

Professor Rupert succeeds in presenting an in-depth discussion of mental representation, cognitive processes, self-representation, and knowledge. However, it should be noted that the discourse is best suited for a highly specialized audience, as the various theories presented in each lecture are contextualized by concrete details. The references to specific experiments related to particular topics within cognition make this book a great resource for literature on cognitive science research. The deep theoretical digressions make it a good fit for a resource on frameworks for very specific aspects of cognitive science.

Considering the highly specialized level of each lecture, the tenth lecture could have been placed at the beginning of the Compendium, since it is a generalized discussion of knowledge. However, this last lecture includes the contrast between the two concepts introduced in the first lecture and dealt with in various lectures: the personal and the subpersonal levels. Nevertheless, the first lecture on the personal and subpersonal levels consists of a very specific area of knowledge that begins the book without further context. Therefore, Lecture 2, "What is Mental Representation," could have been set as the first lecture, since it also provides a general overview of the main thrust of the book: mental representation. Lectures 6, 7, and 8, in turn, present a coherent series of topics and discussions.

In any case, the author fulfills the goal of this compendium, which is to provide a space for specialized discussion of the topic, as he did in the conference lecture forum. Moreover, in each chapter, the slides of the original lectures are included, which helps to process the deep content presented. The transcription and transposition of the lecture style to written speech could have been adapted to a monograph or chapter book, with the inclusion of subparagraphs or epigraphs to make the reading rhythm smoother. In addition, the edition is quite accessible, as each chapter/lecture includes a QR code at the beginning to access audio recordings and other resources from the lectures, such as handouts.

REFERENCES

Ballard, Dana H., Hayhoe, Mary M., Pook, Polly K., Rao, Rajesh. 1997. Deictic codes for the embodiment of cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20(4): 723-743.

Broaders, Sara C., Cook, Susan W., Mitchell, Zachary, and Goldin-Meadow, Susan. 2017. Making Children Gesture Brings Out Implicit Knowledge and Leads to Learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 136(4), 539-550.

Casasanto, Daniel. 2011. Different bodies, different minds: The body specificity of language and thought. Current Directions in Psychological Science 20: 378-383.

Chen, M., and Bargh, J. A. 1999. Consequences of automatic evaluation: Immediate behavioral predispositions to approach or avoid the stimulus. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 25(2): 215–224.

Clark, Andy and Chalmers, David. J. 1998. The extended mind. Analysis 58: 7-19.

De Hower, Jan, Gawronski, Bertram, and Barnes-Holmes, Dermot. 2013. A functional-cognitive framework for attitude research. European Review of Social Psychology 24, 1: 252-287.

Eagan, Frances. 2013. How to think about mental content. Philosophical Studies 170: 115-135.

List, Christian and Pettit, Philip . 2011. Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

List, Christian. 2018. What is it like to be a group agent? Noûs 52: 295-319.

Miller, Earl K. and Cohen, Jonathan D. 2001. An integrated theory of prefrontal cortex function. Annual Review of Neuroscience 24: 167-202.

Ramsey, William M. 2007. Representation Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rupert, Robert D. 2023. Ten lectures on cognition, mental representation and the self. Leiden / Boston: Brill.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Belén Extremera Pérez has a Ph.D. in Linguistics. She is a Hispanic philologist from the University of Granada (Spain), and she also holds a Master's degree in Management of Spanish Literary and Linguistic Heritage (University of Málaga) and a Master's degree in Spanish (University of Wyoming, USA). For her doctoral thesis, she has done research on categorization and lexical association tests. Her interests also include the critical analysis of the influence of linguistic issues on society. In addition, she has worked abroad (USA) as a Spanish college instructor for 2 years and as a Spanish teacher in bilingual immersion programs for three years. She is passionate about education (both mother tongue and second language), as evidenced by her training (Teacher Certification and Preparation Program), which is currently being expanded with the completion of a Master's Degree in Teacher Training in Secondary Education, Vocational Training and Language Teaching.