The Brain Abstracted by M. Chirimuuta

Author:M. Chirimuuta
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIT Press

21. Adherents of dynamical systems theory (DST) who propose to eliminate representation-talk, such as Hutto and Myin (2014), might object to my account that their framework is equally well placed to model nonproximal interactions. Dynamicists in fact model neural systems in terms of relationships between variables that need not be causally contiguous, so they also have resources to depart from the proximality principle. However, the dynamical approach, which views cognitive systems through a perspective—a set of modeling techniques—developed in the study of physical systems would not be so able to account for these kind of robust and plastic responses that are never demonstrated in the world of physics. Consider the Watt governor and steam engine system, famously presented by van Gelder (1995) in his argument that cognitive systems could be dynamical rather than computational systems. What a physical artifact like the governor+engine lacks is robustness and plasticity to restore function after damage. The better analogy for the cognitive system is not the governor+engine alone, but governor+engine+engineer. If a weight falls off the spindle arm, disturbing the relationship between arm angle, valve opening, and engine speed, the engineer will come along with a new part to restore the relationship. It is this kind of counterfactual occurrence that is not accounted for in dynamical models.

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