Seeking chances : from biased rationality to distributed cognition / Emanuele Bardone.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bardone, Emanuele.

Series:

Cognitive systems monographs ; v. 13.

Cognitive systems monographs, 1867-4925 ; 13

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Probabilities.

Cognition.

Errors.

Physical Description:

xx, 168 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Berlin : Springer, 2011.

Summary:

The Cognitive Systems Monographs (COSMOS) publish new developments and advances in the fields of cognitive systems research, rapidly and informally but with a high quality. The intent is to bridge cognitive brain science and biology with engineering disciplines. It covers all the technical contents, applications, and multidisciplinary aspects of cognitive systems, such as Bionics, System Analysis, System Modelling, System Design, Human Motion, Understanding, Human Activity Understanding, Man-Machine interaction, Smart and Cognitive Environments, Human and Computer Vision, Neuroinformatics, Humanoids, Biologically motivated systems and artefacts Autonomous Systems, Linguistics, Sports Engineering, Computational Intelligence, Biosignal Processing, or Cognitive Materials as well as the methodologies behind them. Within the scope of the series are monographs, lecture notes, selected contributions from specialized conferences and workshops, as Well as selected Phd theses.

One of the most distinguishing abilities that human beings display is the ability of turning almost everything into a clue to make a problem affordable in relation to what one knows and, most of all, to what one does not know. That is what characterizes humans as chance seekers. A poor pattern of reasoning and even our ignorance may help us make a decision, and eventually solve a problem. This is the rationale of biased rationality. However, not everything leads us always to a good decision. Some-people are not satisfied with weak arguments or it-is-just-so strategies. They want something better. This second attitude points to a different form of rationality that takes advantage of the idea of distributed cognition. Basically, human beings improve their survival strategies by building cognitive niches capable of delivering potentially ever more symptomatic information. It is through various manipulations of the environment that we gain new and more reliable chances which can be used to de-bias our rationality. Through the laborious activity of cognitive niche construction, we come up with situations in which we are better afforded by our environment, and thus biases or fallacies cease to be appealing. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Fallacies and Cognition: The Rationale of Being Fallacious 1

1.1 The Appeal of Being-Fallacious 2

1.1.1 The Agent-Based Perspective 4

1.1.2 Proportionality and Relativity of Errors 5

1.2 How to Make Use of Social Characters 7

1.2.1 Argumentum ad Verecundiam 7

1.2.2 Argumentum ad Hominem 9

1.2.3 Argumentum ad Populum 10

1.2.4 The Question of Irrelevancy and Fallacy Evaluation 11

1.3 Gossip, Reasoning, and Knowledge 13

1.3.1 Ignorance and Knowledge 13

1.3.2 Reasoning through Gossiping 15

1.4 Concluding Remarks 18

2 Bounded Rationality as Biased Rationality: Virtues, Vices, and Assumptions 21

2.1 Laying Down the Main Assumptions of the Bounded Rationality Model 22

2.2 Getting in the Dirty: Major Constraints and Problems 24

2.2.1 Procedures and Results 25

2.2.2 Explaining Successful Outcomes 26

2.2.3 The Notion of Heuristics 28

2.2.4 Emotions 29

2.3 Biasing Rationality 30

2.3.1 Introducing the Homo Heuristicus 30

2.3.2 Easy to Use: The Rationale of Biased Rationality 32

2.3.3 Appealing to Ignorance and Its Cognitive Virtue 33

2.4 The Vices of Biased Rationality 35

2.4.1 Competence-Dependent Information and Competence-Independent Information 36

2.4.2 Having Poor Information and Having No Information at All 38

2.5 Appealing to Knowledge: De-biasing Rationality 39

2.5.1 Plastic Behaviors and the Lens Model 40

2.5.2 Competence-Dependent Information Is Ecologically Delivered 41

2.6 When Biased Rationality Is Cognitive Ochlocracy 42

2.6.1 The Case of the Bandwagon 42

2.6.2 The Two Main Consequences of Cognitive Ochlocracy 43

2.7 Concluding Remarks 46

3 Moving the Bonds: Distributing Cognition through Cognitive Niche Construction 47

3.1 Humans as Chance Seekers 48

3.1.1 Incomplete Information and Chance-Seeking 48

3.1.2 The Externalization Process 49

3.2 Bounds Moved: Prom Bounded to Distributed Cognition 51

3.2.1 Internal and External Resources 51

3.2.2 The Role of External Representations 52

3.2.3 Broad Cognitive Systems 54

3.2.4 The Extended Model 56

3.3 Cognitive Niche Construction: Distributed Cognition Evolving 59

3.3.1 Niche Construction: The Neglected Side of Evolution 60

3.3.2 The Notion of Cognitive Niche 61

3.3.3 Cognitive Niches and Distributed Cognition 62

3.4 The Future Enrichment of Cognitive Niches: The Case of Ambient Intelligence 64

3.5 Cognitive Niche Maintenance and Group-Selection 68

3.5.1 Cognitive Niche Maintenance 68

3.5.2 Finding Room for Group-Selection in Evolution 69

3.5.3 Group-Projecting Behaviors, Assortment, and the Stallation Hypothesis 71

3.5.4 An Eco-Cognitively Mediated Conception of Group Assortment 73

3.6 Concluding Remarks 74

4 Building Cognitive Niches: The Role of Affordances 77

4.1 Cognitive Niche as a Set of Affordance 78

4.1.1 The Notion of Affordance 78

4.1.2 Affordances as Action Opportunities 79

4.1.3 Affordances as Ecological Facts 79

4.1.4 Affordances as Distributed Representations 79

4.1.5 Affordances as Evolving Interactional Structures 80

4.2 The Two Views on Affordance: The Ecological and the Constructivist Approach at Stake 81

4.2.1 The Two Views 81

4.2.2 Confronting the Evidences 83

4.3 The Breadth of Abductive Cognition 85

4.4 Affordances as Abductive Anchors: Going beyond the Two Views 88

4.5 Adapting Affordances and Cognitive Niche Enrichment 91

4.5.1 Adapting Affordances 92

4.5.2 Ambient Intelligence and Adapting Affordances 93

4.6 Why and When We Are Not Afforded 96

4.6.1 Hidden, Broken, and Failed Affordances 96

4.6.2 Not Evolved and Not Created Affordances 98

4.7 Concluding Remarks 100

5 The Notion of Docility: The Social Dimension of Distributing Cognition 101

5.1 Altruism and Social Complexity 102

5.2 From Altruism to Docility 105

5.3 Docility, Learning, and Knowledge 107

5.3.1 Developing Docility: The Active Side 107

5.3.2 Docility, Learning, and Competence-Dependent Information 110

5.4 Who Is Undocile? 112

5.4.1 Bullshitting and Undocility 112

5.4.2 The Ostrich Effect: The Limits of Docility 115

5.5 The Open Source Model as a Case in Point 119

5.5.1 A Matter of Cognitive Reliability 119

5.5.2 The Docile Hacker 120

5.6 Concluding Remarks 123

6 Seeking Chances: The Moral Side 125

6.1 Moral Proximity as a Leading Factor for Moral Understanding 126

6.1.1 What Is Moral Proximity? 126

6.1.2 Some Evidence on the Relevance of Moral Proximity for Moral Engagement 128

6.1.3 Moral Proximity Can Be Extended and So Can Our Moral Understanding 129

6.2 The Morality of Everyday Things 130

6.2.1 The Idea of Distributed Morality: A Cognitive Framework for Ethics 132

6.2.2 Epistemic and Pragmatic Actions: The Moral Side 135

6.2.3 Moral Mediators and External Representations 138

6.3 A Case in Point: The Internet as a Moral Mediator 140

6.3.1 Information as Democratic Resources 141

6.3.2 The Internet as a Community Builder 142

6.4 Concluding Remarks 143.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

3642196322

9783642196324

OCLC:

725092522