Traversing the 4E landscape one rises from the lowlands of weakly embodied and embedded cognitive science to the giddy heights of strong embodiment and embedding. Embodied cognition is the thesis that at least some of our cognitive states and processes are constituted by bodily processes that are not brain-bound. Embedded cognition is the thesis that our cognitive systems are located in and interact with the surrounding physical and social environment. Enactive and extended approaches to cognition inhabit the rarefied atmosphere of the strongly embodied and embedded peaks. However, there are important differences between enaction and extension and between those variants and CI. To determine where CI and enculturation sit in the 4E landscape, I will use a dimensional analysis I first introduced in Menary (2010).
Embodied mind
Embodied mind weak: the mind/brain is embodied (compatible with internalism/individualism Smart 1959; Stich 1983)
Embodied mind moderate: some of our mental and cognitive processes and states depend[1] upon our non-neural body (Gallagher 2005; Gallese 2008)
Embodied mind strong: some of our mental and cognitive processes and states are constituted by processes of the body acting in and on the environment (compatible with enactivism Varela et al. 1991, and CI Menary 2007)
Embedded mind
Embedded mind weak: All the perceptual inputs to and behavioural outputs from cognitive systems are found in the environment (compatible with internalism/individualism Adams & Aizawa 2008; Rupert 2009)
Embedded mind moderate: Mental and cognitive states and processes are scaffolded or causally depend upon the environment (Sterelny 2003; Wheeler 2005)
Embedded mind strong: Some mental and cognitive processes and states are integrated with environmental states and processes into a single system (compatible with extended mind Clark 2008, this collection; Menary 2007; Rowlands 2010)
Weakly embodied mind is just the old thesis that the mind is identical to the brain. One can be an individualist and hold to this form of embodiment, and I won’t consider the implications of the view here. The work of some[2] embodied cognition researchers will fall under the moderate sense of embodiment. For example, those who attempt to show that concepts or word-meanings are causally dependent upon sensori-motor areas of the brain (Glenberg 2010; Gallese 2008) commit to a moderate sense of embodiment. The strong sense of embodiment focuses on how cognition is constituted by bodily interaction with the environment, and I shall focus on the discussion here. CI and enactivism occupy this region of the environment, but with different emphases on the nature of the interaction and the evolutionary continuity of simple and complex cognitive systems. CI also occupies the strongly-embedded region, but I shall deal with the relation between CI and cognitive extension in the next sub-section.
Enactivism (excluding its radical variant)[3] allows that even simple living systems are cognitive. Enactivists are committed to the continuity of life and mind and so they propose cognitive and even mental states and processes[4] for much simpler biological systems than would CI (Varela et al. 1991).[5] Whilst I am sympathetic with the commitment to continuity between simple cognitive systems and complex cognitive systems, it is questionable whether we should argue that simply being a living organism provides sufficient cognitive complexity for conscious experience and sense (or meaning) making.
CI does not require us to think that complex cognitive and mental phenomena, such as conscious experience, are shared by all living organisms whatever their complexity or simplicity. This is to assume that the properties of complex cognitive systems will be found even in very simple cognitive systems. According to CI, this gets things the wrong way round: there is a continuity from very simple systems that interact with their environments, by having mechanisms that track or detect salient features of their environments, to complex systems that have a wider range of cognitive capabilities (traits) including memory, inference, communication, problem solving, social cognition, and so on. By contrast a phylogeny of cognitive traits would show the distribution of those traits (across species) and help us to understand both the evolutionary pressures that produce more complex kinds of cognitive systems and the innovations that bring about new traits.[6]
CI provides a phylogenetic and ontogenetic basis for when bodily interactions are cognitive processes. Along with niche constructionists (Laland et al. 2000), CI maintains a phylogeny of hominid cognition in terms their active embodiment in a socially constructed cognitive niche. Ontogentically, neonates acquire cognitive abilities to create, maintain, and manipulate the shared cognitive niche, including tools, practices, and representational systems. Cognitive processing often involves these online bodily manipulations of the cognitive niche, sometimes as individuals and sometimes in collaboration with others. CI has a unique position on the 4E landscape, because it is the first framework to propose that the co-ordination dynamics of integrated cognitive systems are jointly orchestrated by biological and cultural functions. What, though, are the cultural functions in question?
Both CI and extended mind (EM) occupy the strong embedding region, but they do so in different ways. Here I will differentiate CI as a thesis of enculturation from Clark’s organism-centred approach to EM. Cognitive integration is a model of how our minds become enculturated. Enculturation rests in the acquisition of cultural practices that are cognitive in nature. The practices transform our existing biological capacities, allowing us to complete cognitive tasks, in ways that our unenculturated brains and bodies will not allow. Cultural practices are patterns of action spread out across cultural groups (Roepstorff 2010; Hutchins 2011; Menary 2007, 2010, 2012). Cognitive practices[7] are enacted by creating and manipulating informational structures[8] in public space. This can be by creating shared linguistic content and developing it through dialogue, inference, and narrative; or it can be by bodily creating and manipulating environmental structures, which might be tools or public and shared representations (or a combination of both). Examples of linguistically mediated action include self-correction by use of spoken (or written) instructions, co-ordinating actions among a group, or solving a problem in a group by means of linguistic interaction. Examples of creating and manipulating public and shared representations include using a graph to represent quantitative relationships; using a diagram to represent the layout of a circuit or building; using a list to remember a sequence of actions; or to solve an equation, to mathematically model a domain, to make logical or causal connections between ideas, and so on. Practices can be combined into complex sequences of actions where the physical manipulation of tools is guided by spoken instructions, which are updated across group members. A simple example of a group brainstorming with one member writing out the answers would be an example of a complex of collaborative cognitive practices.[9] Cognitive practices are culturally endowed (bodily) manipulations of informational structures.
Practices govern how we deploy tools, writing systems, number systems, and other kinds of representational systems to complete cognitive tasks. These are not simply static vehicles that have contents; they are active components embedded in dynamical patterns of cultural practice. Practices are public, and they are also embodied and enacted.[10] We embody practices: they become the ways in which we act, think, and live. They structure our lifeways (although not exclusively).
CI does not deny that much thinking takes place offline in the brain, but it does take the online and interactive mode of thought to be adaptive. Again, this line of thought has precursors,[11] but CI, uniquely, takes interactive thought as a basic category,[12] which is then scaffolded by culturally evolved practices. Practices stabilise and govern interactive thought across a population of similar phenotypes. The stable patterns of action can then be inherited by the next generation, because the practices have become settled and are part of the developmental niche in which the minds of the next generation grow. Our brains co-adapted to the stable spread of practice and its role in ontogeny—resulting in the slow evolution of the cultural brain.
The focus upon practice and culture marks cognitive integration out from variants of extended cognition, such as Clark’s organism-centred approach to extension (2008). Clark’s organism centred approach takes the assembly of extended cognitive systems to be controlled by the discrete organism, and brain, at the centre of it. He thereby reduces the role of cultural practices in large or small groups of organisms in the explanation of cognitive assembly. “Brains are special, and to assert this need mark no slippery-slope concession to good old-fashioned internalism as an account of mind. It is fully consistent with thinking (as I do) that Hutchins is absolutely right to stress the major role of transmitted cultural practices in setting the scene for various neurally-based processes of cognitive assembly” (Clark 2011, p. 458). On Clark’s view, cultural practices only set the scene for the real work of integration to be done by the brain. Whilst it is arguable whether Clark’s position is a return to “good old fashioned internalism,” he certainly does not give cultural practices a central role in assembling and orchestrating cognitive systems.[13] Hutchins, by contrast, is committed to a full-blooded enculturated approach:
[t]he ecological assemblies of human cognition make pervasive use of cultural products. They are always initially, and often subsequently, assembled on the spot in ongoing cultural practices. (2011, p. 445)
CI is the only variant of strong embedding (including EM) to explain the role of cultural practices in assembling integrated cognitive systems. Cognitive practices are inherited as part of the developmental niche and have profound transformative effects on our cognitive abilities. This leads us to the main concepts required to understand these transformations as a process of enculturation.