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List of contents
- Preliminaries: Ants and Robots, Parlour Games and Steam Drills
Background
Outline
I Informational Environments
- Resurrecting Dretskean Information
Information, Behaviour, and Probability
The Content of Natural Information, and Some Discontent
Alternative Information
Natural Information and the Roots of Intentionality
- Varieties of Perception
Perception as Information Processing: The Computational View
Information Specifies Affordances: The Ecological View
Perceptual Illusions vs. Misperception: The Empirical Strategy
- The Domains of Natural Information
Natural Information and Reference Classes
Informational Domains
Resurrection at Last
- Making an Environment
History, Ecology, Environment
Adapting Ecological Niches
Construction and Constitution
- What is an Informational Environment?
Environmental Information and the Use of Cognition
What Informational Environments Are
How Informational Environments Change
II Environments of Intelligence
- The Extension of the Extended Mind
The Extension of Functional Histories
The Constitution of Cognitive Extensions
Constitutional Matters
The Art of Coupling, Basic and Advanced
- The Nature of Cognitive Artefacts
Being Guided by Pictures
Cognitive Artefacts and Informational Environments
Convergence and Isomorphism
- The Intelligence of Environments
Evolutionary and Cognitive Robotics
Embodied Conversational Agents and Social Robotics
Second Life
Mixed Reality Games
Augmented Reality
Naturalising the Artificial
10 Afterthoughts on Conceptual Analysis and Human Nature
A Domain for Conceptual Analysis
A Naturalist’s View of Human Nature and Machines
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Hajo Greif teaches at the Munich Center for Technology in Society (MCTS), Technical University of Munich, Germany, and the Department of Philosophy, University of Klagenfurt, Austria. His research interests cover the philosophy – and some of the history and the social studies – of science and technology, as well as the philosophy of mind.
Summary
What is the role of the environment, and of the information it provides, in cognition? More specifically, may there be a role for certain artefacts to play in this context? These are questions that motivate '4E' theories of cognition (as being embodied, embedded, extended, enactive).
