Some Ground Rules for a Theory of Psychology

by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists

Add psychology to the listA fairly common response to our theory post was 'here's my theory, which is designed to replace and fix all the others'. However, it's more a symptom of the problem I was discussing than a solution for everyone to have their own entirely separate theory which doesn't talk to any other work in the field (see above). One of my personal goals in science is to not be that guy. I want to see cognitive science become more integrated, not more fragmented. We have also been asked, however, and quite sensibly, what we think the solution to our problem is. The question then is how to propose a theoretical approach for psychology and cognitive science where we don't just reinvent the wheel. Sabrina and I have been working on this for, well, the entire blog. It has been a place for our "brave attempt to think out loud about theories of psychology until we get some" since day one; we've been identifying problems but, just as importantly, solutions the whole time. The theory post identified the big picture problem we see in psychology; time to lay out some solutions.Step one is to present a map of the blog, organised thematically to guide new readers to work we've already done here. This should also help map out the gaps in the approach, so we can focus on things to do next; feel free to point us to problems we can't yet address! (And yes, we know about episodic memory and language - we're working on it.) This post is not a comprehensive summary of past work - it's a map for you to use to find what we've done so far.To summarise: in essence, and some minor details aside, we are advocating for Chemero's (2009) radical embodied cognitive science, with the addition of some elements he was missing (network science & task specific devices). Cognition is embodied, extended and held together by the direct perception of affordances and events; the result is a complex, nonlinear dynamical system that must be analysed as such. The brain is not the sole source of our behaviour, nor is it representing the world; it clearly plays a critical role in this system, though, and we propose that we'll need the tools of network science to describe what it's actually up to (Sporns, 2010). Methodologically, we must carefully characterise the task, the resources available to solve the task (which include brain, body and environment) and the information these resources create which can sustain the formation and control of an embodied solution. This method is Bingham's (1988) task specific device approach (the main piece Chemero was missing, I think).This approach applies to all and any behaviour you want to explain, including the hard stuff like episodic memory and language.Critically, this approach, while new (and uncommon in insisting on a role for Gibson's ecological approach) isn't just something we invented: all these elements are active parts of modern cognitive science. The only new part is bringing it all under one roof, with the goal of getting on and getting some decent normal science under our belts.Here's what we've covered so far. If you want more details on any point, click on the links!Cognition is embodiedThe first claim we want to defend is that cognition is embodied. Embodied cognition is not the hypothesis that the contents of cognition can be affected a bit by our bodies (as implied in this study). Embodied cognition is actually the fairly radical hypothesis that the brain is not the sole resource we have available to us to solve problems. We perceive and act in very particular ways so as to generate information and solve problems non-computationally (for example, fielders catch fly balls by moving in such a way as to cancel out either the optical curvature or acceleration of the ball's motion, which happens to bring you to the right place at the right time). The bodies we move are built in very specific ways; our hands, for example, are built as if they are implementing certain computations that are required to control them. This 'morphological computation' isn't actually computation, it's more like the Watts governor (van Gelder, 1995). A great example of this idea in action is Big Dog, one of the many awesome robots built by Boston Dynamics.Embodiment changes what 'cognition' will end up looking like. By changing the job description (e.g. what resources we have available to solve problems) we end up proposing entirely different solutions to tasks. An excellent recent book on this topic is Barrett (2011), Beyond the Brain: How body and environment shape animal and human minds. If you allow yourself bodies, behaviour and perception, then you typically don't end up needed complex computational solutions being implemented in the brain.Cognition is extended A logical extension to embodied cognition is the claim that cognition is extended (Clark & Chalmers, 1998). This is the claim that things in the environment literally form part of the cognitive process. This can be summarised in Clark & Chalmers' 'parity principle':If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognizing as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is (so we claim) part of the cognitive process.Clark & Chalmers, 1998, pg. 2There is still debate about how well this idea works, mostly coming from Adams & Aizawa (2010). They believe that the hypothesis is grounded in a confusion between coupling and constitution; while we are, indeed, coupled to things in the world, they need not then constitute part of our cognition. We've had various arguments with Ken Aizawa about this (summarised here); I think the main problem with their argument is that there is no need for all the parts of a cognitive system to have 'the mark of the cognitive' if we're happy the system as a whole is cognitive. This works, I think, because of the nature of the coupling that goes on when we interact with the world: objects literally become part of us when we interact with them, and the kind of ongoing perception-action loops that support this run deep.In order to solve a given task, then, we use a wide variety of resources; some of these are neural, but not all. Some of the resources are our bodies (our visual system is composed of mobile eyes in a mobile head on a mobile torso equipped with legs, for example), while some are objects and other people in our environments. A theory of psychology must therefore include all these resources. The role of perceptionExtended, embodied cognition requires impressive perception. Typically, perception is seen as the end point of a complex process, taking impoverished input and enriching it until it is good enough to be useful. Cognition then becomes a computational process of adding knowledge and structure to our experience. If, however, cognition is to be the solving of problems using resources distribute... Read more »