Chapter 37: Language and Learning from a 4E Perspective

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Okay, let's unpack this.

We are diving into what is, I think you'd agree, arguably the most dynamic and challenging area of contemporary cognitive science.

Oh, absolutely.

The 4E paradigm.

Embodied, embedded, inactive, and extended cognition.

It's a complete revolution in how we think about the mind.

The core message is, you know, it's so clear.

The architecture of human thought isn't just confined to the brain.

Right, it's not locked in the skull.

Not at all.

It spreads out.

It spreads into the body, the actions we take, and the environment we inhabit.

Cognition is this fundamentally dynamic process.

And that reframing, that shift in perspective has delivered some phenomenal empirical results.

But, and this is the big but, it throws up a huge conceptual challenge for philosophers.

A massive one.

Because if our starting point is the body and its immediate environment, how do we build the bridge to the most sophisticated abstract human phenomena?

I mean, the things that truly define us.

Complex abstract concepts.

Exactly, or the full scope of sophisticated language and the structure of moral and social rules, what we call normativity.

That is the critical tension.

And it's really the subject of our deep dive today.

We're looking at a crucial piece of philosophical commentary written by Hans Johan Glock.

It was published as Chapter 37 in the Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition.

And this isn't a chapter offering a new experiment.

No, not at all.

It's a critical note.

Think of it as a philosophical sharpening tool designed to help 4E researchers avoid conceptual pitfalls as they build out their framework.

So our mission today is to unpack this commentary section by section following Glock's logical progression.

He moves from concepts, then to language, then social cognition, and finally, to that really thorny issue of normativity.

And in each area, he shows how the 4E approach needs to be more precise about its foundational definitions.

We are aiming for those, you know, those aha moments where these complex philosophical terms suddenly clarify the empirical work that's being done.

It's such a crucial exercise.

Because 4E can't just offer better causal explanations explaining how the brain and body enable thinking.

It also has to be philosophically sound on what the cognitive phenomena actually are.

What constitutes concepts, meaning, and understanding?

Exactly.

This analysis is all about providing that necessary conceptual bedrock for the science to stand on firmly.

All right.

Let's start with language, then, and the critique aimed at Mark Johnson's work, specifically his chapter arguing for the embodiment of language.

Johnson's core thesis seems to align perfectly with the 4E worldview.

It really does.

Johnson's argument is that language, meaning,

concepts, understanding,

all of it is shaped pervasively and profoundly by our physical bodies.

It all emerges from our bodily interactions.

Yes.

Not just with things, with inanimate objects, but with other beings.

It's an approach that really tries to unify cognition and experience.

It makes so much intuitive sense.

I mean, when we talk about understanding, we often gesture or we use these spatial metaphors like grasping an idea.

And Johnson's work provides a scientific grounding for those everyday experiences, indeed.

And Glock, to his credit, starts with significant praise, which I think is important for understanding the nuance of the critique later on.

Glock applauds Johnson for skillfully summarizing decades of research, a lot of it pioneered by, like, often Johnson themselves.

On how the fundamental features of our bodies find expression in these universal conceptual metaphors.

The classic example being, UP is good and down is bad.

Of course.

We are in high spirits.

We look down on bad behavior.

We climb the social ladder.

Exactly.

These aren't just arbitrary linguistic choices.

They reflect our physical experience of gravity and orientation.

And that is a powerful insight.

Okay.

So that's the first point of praise.

Glock also praises Johnson for recognizing that modern embodied accounts of concepts, like those of Laurence Barcellou, are only minimally representationalist.

Okay.

What does that mean in practice?

That sounds a little jargony.

It means they reject the old model, the sort of traditional AI model where cognition involves manipulating abstract, a modal symbols.

Symbols that don't look or feel like the world they represent.

Instead, these accounts suggest that while neural processes enable the grasping of concepts, those processes are fundamentally tied to our sensory and motor systems.

The representations are often perceptual simulations, not just arbitrary codes.

Well, it's a middle ground.

It's a crucial middle ground.

It rejects those heavy, formal, symbolic systems.

And finally, Glock applauds Johnson for defying what he calls Chomskyian views, the idea that syntax, semantics and pragmatics are all separate, isolated modules.

Johnson shows the deep connections between them.

And if you treat language as just a set of rules, isolated from meaning or semantics and use pragmatics,

well, you miss the boat entirely on the embodied aspects.

Johnson's great strength is integrating these levels of linguistic analysis.

But this is where the conversation pivots, isn't it?

Because Johnson's attempt to establish his embodied view relies on tearing down its predecessor, which he labels disembodied views of language.

And Glock argues this attack is both unfair and ultimately uncompelling.

Johnson applies that label really indiscriminately.

He uses it to sweep up almost the entire analytic philosophical tradition of the last century, from Frege all the way to contemporary thinkers, implying that they either deny that language depends causally on embodied agents or that their theories are just fundamentally incompatible with 4E insights.

And that sounds less like a careful philosophical analysis and more like, you know, a necessary rhetorical move to establish a new paradigm.

To a bit of a straw man.

Precisely.

Glock pushes back hard on this sweeping generalization.

He defends what he calls the loosely speaking pragmatist strand of analytic philosophy people like Wittgenstein, Austin, Brandam, Strossen.

And this tradition treats language primarily as an intersubjective practice.

Meaning it's something we do to each other socially, following rules and norms.

Well, if they define language as a social practice, why would they be hostile to embodiment?

The body is the primary tool of social interaction after all.

That's the point.

This tradition is not inherently antibody.

Glock points out that they can and often do allow for the bodily dimension.

In fact, some analytic philosophers actively explored it decades ago.

Really?

Who?

Think of Strossen in 1959, or later Evans and Campbell.

They dove into how the semantic operation of reference, the act of pointing out, labeling or locating something, absolutely requires the speaker to situate their own body within a spatiotemporal framework.

Wait, so the body is a prerequisite for making a successful reference.

If I say it's over there, the meaning of there only makes sense relative to where my body is located right now.

Yes.

And that's a highly sophisticated analysis of how the body constitutes meaning.

Originating right in the middle of this supposedly disembodied analytic tradition.

So for a philosopher like Austin or Brandom, who might have ignored the body?

Glock concludes that this is a lacuna.

It's a gap, an omission.

It's not a principal fundamental incompatibility with Fourier.

That subtle distinction is everything.

An omission can be filled.

An incompatibility means the entire theory has to be thrown out.

And Glock really drives this point home by focusing on Johnson's critique of the historical figure of Friege, who's often seen as the father of modern analytic philosophy.

And he says Johnson gets it wrong.

He notes that Johnson commits several historical and conceptual inaccuracies.

For example, Johnson confuses Friege and Gdankin with mere sentences.

Can you break down Gdankin for us?

What was the technical definition Friege was working with?

Gdankin are typically translated as thoughts or propositions.

For Friege, they are objective abstract entities.

The timeless content of a sentence.

So they are what is expressed by a sentence and they can be true or false.

Right.

They're the objective content we can all share and think about.

Johnson, by treating them as if they were just sentences themselves, completely misses their abstract objective role in Friege's system.

So it's not just a translation issue.

It's a structural misunderstanding of the philosophical architecture.

And the most important error, the one Glock calls the howler,

concerns the distinction between the sense of a word and understanding it.

Johnson claims Friege thought the sense of a word was an abstract meaning or understanding grasped.

What's wrong with that?

Isn't the sense what you grasp?

It is, but confusing the two conflates the object of cognition with the act of cognition.

For Friege, the sense or meaning, the Gdanka, is the objective abstract thing out there waiting to be understood.

It's the object.

Okay.

Understanding is the subjective mental act of grasping that objective sense.

If you confuse the object, the sense with the act, the understanding, you just muddy the waters about the fundamental nature of meaning.

Is it subjective or objective?

Friege was arguing for its objectivity.

This level of precision brings us to what feels like the most vital corrective in Glock's entire critique.

This distinction that Johnson and many Fourier theorists fail to make clearly.

This is the pivotal moment.

The problem is failing to distinguish the causal explanation project from the constitutive explanation project.

Let's start with the how, causal explanation.

The causal explanation is all about the how.

It explains the mechanisms,

the evolutionary emergence of language, the developmental stages of language acquisition,

the historical change of languages over time, or the specific physical vehicles, the neural and computational means that let an individual speak right now.

And Fourier cognitive science is great at that.

It's outstanding at delivering causal explanations with its focus on neural loops, sensory motor systems, and environmental interaction.

And then we have the what?

The constitutive explanation.

This project determines what language, meaning, or understanding consists in.

It's fundamental essence.

What is the necessary structure of understanding?

What counts as a meaningful expression?

So this is about defining the phenomenon itself.

Exactly.

The analysis is either ontological, so determining the essence in all possible worlds, or it's conceptual, determining what the relevant terms actually mean.

The constitutive story determines the rules of the game.

So the constitutive explanation sets the rules, what counts as meaning, and the causal explanation explains how the player's body and environment allow them to execute those rules.

Perfect analogy.

And Glock's crucial conclusion here is that Johnson's discussion of body part projections and image schematic affordances offers invaluable insights into how we conceptualize the causal means, but it consistently fails to tell us what it is to conceptualize.

The constitutive definition.

And crucially, it doesn't tell us how advanced conceptual thinking differs from less sophisticated cognitive achievements, like basic association or conditioned responses.

And if 4E can't supply a clear constitutive definition, what's the consequence for the science?

It leads to what philosophers call deflation.

If you define meaning or cognition too broadly, based only on the causal means, so just the body, you risk equating high level human conceptual thought with basic animal reflexes or even non -cognitive processes.

So if everything is meaning, then the term meaning loses its distinct philosophical and scientific utility.

It can't demarcate human thought anymore.

Exactly.

It's a major intellectual risk.

If they can't distinguish conceptual thought from basic bodily processes,

then they lack a framework for understanding complex things like truth, justice, or mathematics, which are decoupled from immediate bodily necessity.

It really restricts the scope of 4E.

It suggests that while embodiment is absolutely necessary as a causal prerequisite for human thought, it may not be sufficient to constitute the essence of that thought.

And we need that conceptual rigor to avoid confusing a prerequisite for the essence.

Okay.

Moving on to Johnson's own definitions, Glock focuses on how Johnson defines meaning.

It seems he defines it so broadly that it includes almost all experience.

He does.

Johnson defines meaning as, and I'm quoting here, any experiences enacted or suggested by various affordances in our surroundings, any aspect or quality of a situation means what it hauls forth by way of experience.

Okay.

Let's ground that.

If I'm thirsty and I see a glass of water, the water affords drinking.

Is the meaning of the water simply the experience of that affordance?

Under Johnson's definition, yes.

It means the causal consequences of perceiving something are equated with its meaning.

And Glock argues this definition is just way too wide for any established philosophical or linguistic use.

It equates meaning with just undergoing experience.

Yes.

When a mouse sees a shadow that means danger, cause it calls for the flight response, that's not linguistic or conceptual meaning.

And this broad definition, it seems to conflict with Johnson's own terminology.

It creates a real tension with his discussion of meaning making.

Glock points out that if meaning is just the causal consequence of an affordance, subjects don't actively make meaning, they just undergo experiences often passively.

Active meaning making like interpreting a text or agreeing on a definition implies intentional agency and choice.

Which is lost when meaning is defined so broadly.

And this issue of agency comes back when Glock critiques Johnson's theory of how we form abstract concepts.

Johnson offers a neo empiricist proposal.

Abstract concepts are constructed directly from purely sensory experience via body -based metaphor.

And Glock finds this highly contentious for two big reasons.

Okay.

What's the first?

First,

if abstract concepts are just built up from common bodily interactions,

like spatial orientation or force dynamics, it leaves it a total mystery why only humans possess complex abstract conceptual capacities.

Other primates, other mammals, they share similar bodies and interactions with gravity and space.

Why don't they develop concepts of justice or time?

That's a great point.

And the second reason challenges the actual structure of the concepts themselves.

It argues that the essential complex inferential patterns are missing from the metaphors.

Precisely abstract concepts are defined by the inferences they license.

If I understand justice, I can make complex deductions about related concepts like fairness and equity.

Glock argues these inferential patterns are just not captured by the primary metaphors alone.

The metaphors are too shallow.

Can you walk us through those specific examples, the ones that demonstrate the limitation of relying solely on physical projections?

Sure.

Think about the metaphor.

Small is unimportant versus UP is good.

If we rely entirely on the physical grounding, then small things should logically always be unimportant.

But that's obviously not true.

Of course not.

Our abstract concepts allow us to argue that small things can be profoundly important.

A small virus, a small adjustment to a quantum formula, a small gesture of kindness.

This abstract inference completely transcends the physical metaphorical mapping.

Or the concept of difficulty.

Yes.

Johnson might ground the concept of difficulty in metaphors of physical impedance, like digging is impeding motion.

But Glock notes that we can talk about a break failure being a major difficulty, and yet a break failure does the opposite of impeding motion.

It accelerates you undesirably.

Right.

The concept of difficulty is defined by the inference it licenses, a state that prevents achieving a goal, not merely the physical sensation of obstruction.

This really shows that the abstract structure of human thought includes this inferential complexity that requires cognitive decoupling from the immediate bodily interaction.

And Glock is constructive, however.

He acknowledges that Johnson himself proposed expanding the standard 4E framework,

embodied, embedded, and active, extended with three additional Es.

Right.

Emotional, evolutionary, and exaptative.

Exaptation is an interesting idea.

A trait that evolved for one purpose is co -opted for another, like bird feathers evolving for insulation, and then being co -opted for flight.

A biological side effect.

Yes.

But Glock suggests that Johnson's list still underestimates the critical importance of the social, cultural, and normative dimensions of cognition, especially for language.

How so?

Johnson might explain our sense of fairness by referring only to our sense of bodily balance, which just ignores the demands of human cooperative culture.

So Glock offers a counter -proposal for the seventh E.

He suggests substituting exaptative with inculturated.

Why is inculturated philosophically and scientifically superior for explaining human language?

Because human language, and our uniquely complex conceptual capacities, they aren't just side effects of purely biological adaptations.

That's exaptation.

They're often the result of cumulative cultural development and intentional innovations.

Things we built together.

Exactly.

The specific shared rules of a language, its grammar, its vocabulary, and the social structures that enforce them.

These are functional requirements for cooperative language wielding primates.

That reframes the entire acquisition problem.

Language isn't just something we evolved the capacity for.

It's a tool we actively built together over millennia.

Precisely.

It foregrounds the social and normative dimensions.

An inculturated approach ensures that 4E doesn't just look at the individual body interacting with physics, but the socialized body interacting with a complex, historically developed web of human practices and rules.

That sets a very high bar for conceptual rigor.

Let's move now to the second section of Glock's critique, focusing on concepts and how they fit into the 4E model, specifically engaging with the chapter by Van Elk and Beckering.

Right.

They propose a hybrid embodied view of concepts.

What's their approach?

Their approach is to move beyond the simple dichotomy of fully embodied, where concepts are just sensory motor simulations, or fully disembodied, where concepts are abstract symbols.

They adopt a hybrid embodied view.

Meaning concepts integrate multi and supermodal associations, linking basic perception to higher cognitive functions.

Yes.

And they enhance this hybrid view by integrating the theory of predictive processing, or PP, which has really become the dominant theoretical framework in much of cognitive science.

The integration is powerful, isn't it?

It is.

In the PP framework,

concepts are central because they're defined as prior models.

If you think of the brain as a machine constantly trying to minimize prediction error,

the difference between what it expects and what it actually perceives, then concepts are the stored expectations.

So concepts are dynamic, hierarchical expectations, not static filing cabinets.

Exactly.

They are acquired and constantly updated through Bayesian learning, which is the mathematical way the brain updates probabilities based on new evidence.

Every time you perceive an exemplar of a concept, say you see a new kind of dog, the brain processes a prediction error signal.

Which travels up and down the hierarchical network, refining the dog model.

Yes.

And this enables greater precision in anticipating and perceiving the world.

I can see the appeal for 4E.

I mean, PP is inherently active and inactive.

The brain isn't passively receiving input.

It's actively trying to predict the consequences of its engagement with the environment.

Van Elk and Bechering also provide a really comprehensive taxonomy of concept theories, which Glock praises.

However, Glock takes issue with how they frame the distinction between philosophical and psychological approaches to concepts.

They claim philosophers define concepts by what enables propositional attitudes.

So beliefs, desires, intentions, focusing on the boundary conditions of intentionality.

While psychologists, they say, focus on concepts enabling cognitive processes like categorization and induction.

And Glock thinks this distinction is misleading.

He does because at the end of the day, cognitive processes necessarily result in intentional states.

When a child performs the cognitive process of categorization and concludes that thing is a chair, they are immediately in the intentional state of believing that the object is a chair.

You can't cleanly separate the process from the resulting attitude.

It's a false separation that just muddies the definition.

But Glock identifies a more fundamental error they make.

He says they're asking the wrong primary question.

Right.

They distinguish concept theories based on whether concepts are unitary or heterogeneous.

So how many types of concepts there are?

Perceptual, abstract, functional, and so on.

And Glock says this is putting the cart before the horse.

He argues that before you ask about the species or types of concepts, you have to address the genus question.

What are concepts to begin with?

What is the underlying nature that makes them all concepts?

And what do Van Elk and Bechering implicitly assume as the genus?

They assume the prevailing orthodoxy, the Fedorian view, that concepts are mental representations.

They're particulars residing within individual minds or brains.

And this orthodoxy, Glock notes, faces a major philosophical stumbling block.

It fails to account for the fact that concepts, just like intentional states, must be shared between different subjects.

Right.

If the concept of tree is just a specific token representation in my particular brain, how can it possibly be the same concept of tree in your brain?

Precisely.

Fodor tried to fix this by distinguishing between representation tokens, the individual, unshared neurological events, and representation types, which are the universal shared content.

But that just kicks the can down the road.

It does.

And it reintroduces the very abstract, non -embodied universals that 4e theorists are often trying to avoid.

So if concepts aren't just mental representations, what's the alternative definition that Glock suggests?

Glock suggests alternative views fare better.

He proposes that concepts can be regarded as principles or rules that guide higher cognitive operations, specifically classification and inference.

So you define the concept by its functional role, what it allows us to do.

Yes, without identifying it with the specific neural or mental ability used to perform that function.

The concept is the rule.

The use is the ability.

This moves us into what Glock identifies as the key refinement 4e must adopt to handle human complexity, the concept of decoupling.

This is so vital, a hallmark of truly sophisticated conceptual cognition.

The kind involving complex beliefs, logical inference, and hypothetical thought is that it is decoupled.

Meaning it's removed from immediate reflexive reactions to the environment and from pure canative states like desires.

Can you give us an analogy for decoupling?

What's the difference between coupled and decoupled thought?

Okay.

Think about a coupled system, like a knee jerk reflex.

If the doctor hits your patellar tendon, your leg kicks.

The stimulus is immediately and mechanically tied to the reaction.

There's no cognitive space, no deliberation.

Now consider decoupled thought.

You're playing chess, looking six moves ahead.

You see a clear aggressive move, but you pause and you think, if I make that move, my opponent will believe I'm trying to bait him.

And he will respond by sacrificing his rook.

That second scenario requires complex beliefs about future possibilities and the mental states of another agent.

And it inhibits the immediate aggressive desire to capture the piece.

The thought process is decoupled from the immediate urge, the conative state, and the immediate sensory input.

This capacity for decoupling is essential for conceptual thought because it lets us engage in mental activity that's independent of the here and now.

Hypothetical reasoning, complex logic, defining abstract truths.

All of it.

And this addresses the grounding problem head on that challenge for 4E to explain how concepts translate into behavior.

How so?

Well, if conceptual knowledge is decoupled, it means that while it provides reasons for behavior, the chess player reasons that move X is better than move Y, it does not reduce to the specific behavior it enables.

Ah, I see.

If concepts reduce entirely to immediate bodily action, they would just be the action.

And so they couldn't serve as reasons for the action.

Exactly.

The knowledge exists in a sort of virtual space, independent of its immediate application.

This is essential for a truly hybrid account that respect the insights of embodiment while preserving the distinctiveness of human rationality.

The separation is the true dividing line between conceptual cognition and less advanced, more reactive forms of cognition.

And if 4E can accommodate this decoupling, it can explain why embodiment is necessary for the development and execution of concepts, but not sufficient for their definition as objective, shareable rules.

This philosophical clarification defining concepts as guiding principles that can be decoupled, it seems to elegantly solve some empirical tensions that Van Elk and Beckering discussed, particularly around concept abstractness.

It does.

From this perspective, it's not at all puzzling that some concepts are highly abstract and independent of current perceptual experience.

The abstractness simply depends on the properties used for classification.

We classify physical objects based on properties we get through our senses.

Right, multimodal, but we classify abstract objects, like legal concepts, based on properties that are purely inferential or defined by consensus.

So the modality -specific findings, the empirical discovery that thinking about a hammer activates the motor cortex, aren't puzzling.

They just reflect that classifying certain objects depends on the kind and number of sense modalities involved.

Yes, the sense modality is merely the vehicle we use to employ the concept.

But the essential nature of the concept is defined by the properties according to which we classify and infer.

So the essential property of a hammer is its function as an implement, not the specific set of motor commands I use to pick it up.

Precisely.

This allows for a much more flexible and powerful hybrid theory.

Finally, let's address that Homeric struggle between the nativists who stress innate core knowledge systems, and empiricists who stress acquisition through experience.

Glock argues this conflict is largely unnecessary.

The nativists are correct that basic innate capacities, dispositions, foundational equipment must be in place for any learning to occur.

You have to have the ability to perceive and to classify based on sensory input.

Of course.

But the empiricists are equally correct that acquisition of complex concepts still requires experience and learning.

So there's no contradiction?

None at all.

You need the inherent capacity to learn, but learning still requires input from the environment.

The conflict dissolves when you see both sides as describing different stages of the process.

Nativism describes the innate structure, and empiricism describes the process of experience driven acquisition.

And that actual acquisition process, Glock concedes, may very well conform beautifully to the mechanics described by the predictive processing account.

That, however, is ultimately an empirical question for the scientists to figure out, not a philosophical matter of definition.

We've established the need for conceptual precision in language and abstract thought.

Now we turn to how these capacities actually emerge in human development, the ontogenesis of social cognition.

This takes us to Liskowski's chapter.

Yes, which scrutinizes the interplay between linguistic communication and social understanding in infancy.

Liskowski centers his work on a classic debate in developmental psychology.

Which comes first,

the ability to understand others' minds, or the ability to communicate meaningfully.

He addresses two views.

First, the theory of mind first view.

This view holds that linguistic communication grows out of prior non -linguistic communication, which must be based on an existing social cognitive understanding of others' intentions.

Liskowski favors this logically at the fundamental level.

He argues that some cognitive basis must enable one to engage in and benefit from social interaction.

Right.

And the second view is the interaction first view.

This suggests that initial social activity doesn't require a full blown mental theory, but that this early activity itself underlies the acquisition of both theory of mind and language.

We learn about minds by interacting, not because we already have a fully formed theory.

But Glock is skeptical of Liskowski's strong theory of mind first logical point.

He is.

Glock grants that learning always presupposes some innate cognitive capacity.

However, if Liskowski's point is conceptual, it seems to presuppose a cognitively loaded understanding of what it means to engage in interaction.

It assumes that interaction is already a full fledged mental negotiation, which leaves open the possibility that is much more appealing to 4E.

It leaves open the theory of mind and meaningful communication emerge as consequences of social interactions, but that these interactions rely only on capacities shy of a full theory of mind.

They rely on capacities that are more basic, embodied and focused on shared attention and goal directed action rather than internal belief states.

Despite that conceptual quibble, Liskowski's strength really lies in his empirical evidence.

He demonstrates that children understand and influence the mental states of others through meaningful non -linguistic communication before they achieve linguistic competence.

And the centerpiece of this evidence is infant pointing.

This simple embodied act provides a wealth of information.

What kind of information?

Liskowski argues convincingly that infants, when pointing, demonstrate they have and understand communicative, referential and social intentions.

They point to request help, to share attitudes about an object with an adult or to inform the adult about something relevant in the environment.

It's a powerful illustration of the inactive aspect of cognition.

That meaning emerges through coordinated action in a shared environment.

It connects action directly to social motivation.

However, this is where Glock provides a necessary philosophical terminology alert.

About the description of these acts.

Liskowski describes these pre -linguistic acts like pointing to inform as having illicutionary force.

And why is that term illicutionary force technically incorrect for non -linguistic pointing?

In the philosophy of language, specifically speech act theory pioneered by J .L.

Austin, illicutionary force attaches to particular expressions like a promise or a

matter of general linguistic rules or conventions.

OK.

So when I say I promise,

the very act of saying it is the promising guaranteed by the conventions of the English language.

Exactly.

An infant's point, however, doesn't rely on language or convention.

So what term is more accurate for the infant's intention?

Glock notes that the infant's intention is closer to achieving a perlicutionary effect.

Let's clarify that distinction with a simple example.

Imagine you say, I believe the window is open.

The illicutionary force of that is a statement or assertion governed by the rules of language.

Right.

The perlicutionary effect you might achieve by saying it is convincing the listener to close the window or maybe alarming them if it's snowing.

The perlicutionary effect is the consequence you aim to achieve in the hearer or the world.

And the key difference is that a perlicutionary effect is specific to the situation and not guaranteed by convention.

Exactly.

The infant pointing to a toy wants to achieve the effect of getting the toy.

Their intention is specific and directed at an outcome of the world, not governed by a system of formal linguistic rules.

Glock's correction ensures that we use terminology that accurately reflects the non -linguistic nature of the act, even if the act is communicative.

Lyskowski then attempts to bridge the divide between theory of mind and interaction.

He suggests that the social cognitive understanding that presupposes and compels interaction is a form of practical knowledge, perhaps better described as a theory of action.

It's a nuanced middle ground, but Glock immediately questions if the term theory is appropriate for a capacity that primarily enables skillful performance.

Practical knowledge is typically characterized as knowing how, the ability to skillfully execute an action.

Whereas a theory implies knowing that a systematic propositional understanding.

And while knowing how implies some minimal level of knowing that, it's highly dubious that the early developmental stages involve constructing a systematic,

abstract theory of mind.

A chess master doesn't need a formal theory of physics to know how to move the pieces skillfully.

So if theory is too strong for this capacity, what is the preferable term?

Glock suggests that it is preferable to speak of mind reading, the ability to register or infer the immediate mental states of others.

But then we face another refinement.

Are we reading minds or reading actions?

The answer, Glock suggests, is a based on embodied principles.

Infants and even chimpanzees read intentions by reading actions.

They register intentions in action.

A term borrowed from John Searle.

Yes.

And it implies that intention is not some hidden internal abstract state that must be inferred from behavior.

Rather, the intention is inherently visible in the goal directed flow of the action itself.

That shifts the focus away from abstract simulation, the internal modeling of another person's brain to external observable goal directed behavior that's profoundly for E.

It is.

And it supports Laskowski's overall anti -Chonskyian conclusion, which is that the development of communication starts not with an abstract syntax or symbolic reference.

But with the infant's deeply ingrained, embodied and emotional urge to engage and belong with others.

The primary driver is social motivation, which confirms the importance of Johnson's suggested emotional E and provide strong developmental support for the inactive perspective.

OK, we've saved the most philosophically loaded topic for last normativity,

the human concept of standards and rules, the world of should and ought.

This feels like the ultimate test for any theory grounded in the physical world.

Absolutely.

And we're reviewing the critique of the chapter by Schmidt and Rokasi.

This chapter demonstrates how complex normative cognition, our sense of rules, is intimately related to social cognition from a very, very early age.

And the authors highlight that normativity is a uniquely human phenomenon.

It requires a sophisticated psychological capacity.

What evidence do they present for this early grasp of norms?

They cite really compelling research showing that even very young children demonstrate a robust grasp of normativity.

They even engage in selective and rational third party enforcement of norms.

So a child who didn't even witness a transgression but just sees its consequences will still correct another child who broke the rule.

Exactly.

This indicates they understand the core features, standards of correctness, normative force, generality and context relativity.

They aren't just reacting to a broken expectation.

They're enforcing a generalized rule for correctness.

And the authors propose a unique conjecture to explain this.

They suggest that our singular norm psychology devolves in close tandem with our equally unique forms of shared intentionality.

Shared intentionality being the ability to engage in collaborative actions with shared goals and commitments.

And Schmidt and Rokasi stress that this shared intentionality links the cognitive, the conative which is desire, and the effective or emotional dimensions.

So for instance the emotional reaction of indignation when you see a norm transgression is crucial for driving the enforcement.

Yes.

This integrated view aligns perfectly with the need to incorporate the emotional dimension into 4E.

They are also praised for their methodological focus which is crucial for this topic.

They stress the importance of considering norm transgressions.

This is such a deep philosophical insight applied to developmental psychology.

To understand a rule you have to study the boundaries of the system.

What happens when things go wrong and what corrective reactions follow.

The existence of third party enforcement is a key diagnostic for demonstrating genuine normative comprehension not just conditioned obedience.

Precisely.

Schmidt and Rokasi then try to capture the distinctiveness of normative force.

The power of the ought by defining it this way.

Crucially we could do otherwise but we think we should adhere to the norm.

And here is where Glock introduces a fundamental philosophical distinction that prevents 4E from being unnecessarily weighed down by metaphysical baggage.

What's the problem with that definition?

He argues that this definition is unnecessarily restrictive because it requires the ability to do otherwise.

A concept known in philosophy as liberty of indifference.

That sounds like the classic traditional definition of free will.

It is.

Liberty of indifference is the very demanding metaphysical idea that at the moment of decision the subject possesses the radical power to choose A or B.

Such that even if the entire universe were rewound to that exact moment they could truly choose differently.

That's a huge burden to put on developmental and cognitive science.

It is.

If normative force requires this indifference then the entire structure of human morality hinges on whether determinism is false.

And if we can't prove radical free will the normativity is undermined.

So what's the alternative?

Glock argues that normativity does not require such a strong condition.

It only requires the weaker condition known as liberty of spontaneity.

What is liberty of spontaneity?

Liberty of spontaneity is simply the power to act in accordance with one's own wants decisions or reasons to act without coercion.

If a subject wants to follow a norm say the norm of honest reporting they can do so.

And even if that want that desire to adhere to the rule was predetermined by the laws of physics and biology the subject is still acting spontaneously based on their own internal commitment to the rule.

So normativity demands that you align your action with a rule or a reason.

It doesn't demand the metaphysical possibility of defying fate.

Precisely.

The normative force compels action if the subject accepts the norm but it doesn't require the existence of an alternative unwilled outcome.

By adopting the sufficient condition of liberty of spontaneity Glock removes the requirement for radical metaphysical free will which makes the grounding of normativity far less philosophically precarious for a scientific paradigm like Fourier.

Let's look at how the authors define normativity in the narrow sense norms that set standards of correctness come with normative force and are general and context relative.

Glock agrees with the standard of correctness part but he notes that this at best demarcates normativity since a lot of so normativity in the loose broad sense the standard of correctness is too broad to capture the sense of what we usually mean by a moral or social norm for Glock true normativity exists only where there is a standard against which actions or beliefs must be adjusted.

This implies a need for correction prescription or prohibition.

It's about a demand for compliance.

So what does he call the phenomenon that sets a standard but fall short of a demand for correction.

He introduces a crucial intermediate category one that's often neglected in philosophical studies of normativity values values constitute an intermediate layer that falls between pure descriptive facts and strict corrective norms.

So values give rise to assessment or evaluation.

Exactly.

How does that look in a real world scenario.

OK if you see someone dressed in wildly clashing colors you might assess them as dressed badly.

That's an evaluation based on a value like aesthetic taste or fashion that evaluation provides a reason to change but it doesn't really warrant a public demand for correction or coercion.

Right.

The standard is flexible but if you are dressed incorrectly at a mandatory corporate event or graduation ceremony that's different.

That is a norm.

That's a norm norms warrant a pro tanto demand for correction a demand that holds all else being equal the context relative norm demands adjustment the normative fact being dressed incorrectly provides an intrinsic reason to change your behavior unlike the merely evaluative fact of being dressed badly.

This critical distinction clarifies the conceptual hierarchy of social rules.

It really does.

And this hierarchy brings us to the nature of reasons themselves.

Glock expresses skepticism about the widespread conviction that reasons are inherently normative.

He prefers an objectivist account where reasons are simply facts or states of affairs that provide justification.

These facts concern the world not just the subject's internal mental state.

So under this view any fact including purely descriptive ones can furnish reasons.

Yes for example the descriptive fact it is raining furnishes a reason to take an umbrella.

So if descriptive facts furnish reasons what makes normative and evaluative facts special.

The distinction is that normative and evaluative facts provide intrinsic diffusable reasons.

They provide reasons that stand on their own independent of further empirical facts though they can be overridden.

So they're diffusable.

OK.

An example the evaluative fact that a meal tastes wonderful provides an intrinsic reason to finish the normative fact that I promised to do the dishes provides an intrinsic corrective reason to clean them.

This connects back to the idea of a standard of correctness even descriptive expectations like the belief that the earth is round have a standard of correctness.

Absolutely the standard of fitting the mind to world direction of fit the etymology of Norma and Regula is all about adjustment and fitting the difference between violating a descriptive standard and violating a normative standard lies in what violating the standard amounts to violating the descriptive standard means your belief is false.

So it requires cognitive correction and violating a normative standard means your action is prohibited or incorrect in the social context requiring behavioral correction.

And this leads us to the overarching general moral of the entire critique which applies across language concepts and normativity.

Glocks conclusion is that the key to genuinely understanding complex human systems lies in focusing on infringements.

What happens when things go wrong.

If we only study cases of successful performance when the rule is followed the concept is used correctly the communication is successful.

We miss the mechanisms that define the structure and boundaries of the system.

It is the study of error correction and enforcement that reveals the necessary conceptual rigor by analyzing how children react to a broken rule or how we correct an inaccurate description.

We diagnose the underlying structure that dictates the rules of correctness.

This is where for you can find its strongest conceptual grounding in the dynamics of corrective social practice.

What stands out across this entire philosophical deep dive is just how necessary conceptual clarification is for the advancement of any scientific paradigm especially one as ambitious as for recognition.

Glocks critique is really a conceptual roadmap.

We've synthesized those crucial refinements across four major areas.

In the realm of language we clarified the massive difference between causal explanation how the body enables language and constitutive explanation what language fundamentally is showing why confusing the two led to these unfair attacks on analytic philosophy for concepts.

We stress the need to define the genus before the species.

We saw that concepts to be truly conceptual must be viewed as principles guiding inference defined by their necessary ability to be decoupled from immediate bodily reactions allowing them to provide reasons for action in social cognition the debate over theory of mind was refined the operative capacity in defense is better described as mind reading or registering intentions in action a process tied directly to embodied goal directed action rather than an abstract internal theory.

And finally with normativity we stripped away unnecessary metaphysical requirements demonstrating that normative force requires only the practical condition of liberty of spontaneity not radical free will.

We also established that crucial distinction between mere values which allow for assessment and corrective norms which warrant a demand for adjustment.

So what does this all mean for you the listener looking at the big picture of 4E the promise of 4E is enormous.

It's dynamic it's holistic it's grounded in biology but for it to fulfill that promise it has to stop merely explaining how the body enables cognition and start defining with philosophical precision what cognition meaning and norms fundamentally are.

And as we learned the map to that definition often lies in studying the landscape of failures which leads to our final provocative thought.

If the ultimate test of a complex system is how it handles its own failures what key human abilities may be memory retrieval emotional regulation or complex problem solving.

Are we currently misunderstanding because our research disproportionately focuses on successful typical performance ignoring the moments when things profoundly break down what seemingly simple human ability might be hiding its true complex multilayered structure in the very moment it goes wrong.

It seems the future of cognitive science and 4E in particular is paved with the need for conceptual precision and a keen eye for error and correction.

Indeed.

It requires us to look past the successful achievement and into the dynamics of adjustment and critique.

Thank you for joining us for this deep dive into the conceptual foundations and necessary refinements of 4E cognition.

We hope this has equipped you with a clearer more rigorous lens through which to view the relationship between our bodies the world and our most complex human abilities.