35.3285, Review: Cognitive Linguistics; Ten Lectures on Cognition, Mental Representation, and the Self: Extremera Pérez (2024)

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Subject: 35.3285, Review: Cognitive Linguistics; Ten Lectures on Cognition, Mental Representation, and the Self: Extremera Pérez (2024)

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Date: 20-Nov-2024
From: Belén Extremera Pérez [belnextremera at gmail.com]
Subject: Cognitive Linguistics; Ten Lectures on Cognition, Mental Representation, and the Self: Extremera Pérez (2024)


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.



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