Society of Mind 2.0

Talun Huang (Academia Sinica, Taiwan)
How does the human mind emerge from distributed brain processes? Classical cognitive science posits central cognitive mechanisms to control and coordinate between perceptual and motor mechanisms. Proponents of embodied cognitive science, skeptical of the existence of central mechanisms, often assume that integrated sensorimotor processes can self-organize in the production of intelligent behaviors. While embodied cognitive scientists reject classical central mechanisms, they have not adequately addressed how self-organized control works.
 My paper will contribute to a better conceptual understanding of how self-organized control works. By analyzing the insights of recent neuroscientific models of decision-making and action-selection through the lens of formal social decision theory, I suggest that the basal ganglia, a set of subcortical structures, contribute to the production of coherent and intelligent behaviors through implementing “democratic" procedures”. Unlike the classical architecture’s central system, which is a micro-managing “neural commander-in-chief” constantly privy to all information and controlling other neural mechanisms with rich commands, the basal ganglia are a “central election commission”. They delegate control of habitual behaviors to other distributed control mechanisms. Yet, when complex problems arise, the basal ganglia engage and determine the result on the basis of simple information (the votes) from across the system and the principles of Neuro-Democracy, as well as control other neural mechanisms with simple commands of inhibition and disinhibition. By actively managing and taking advantage of the wisdom-of-the-crowd effect, these democratic processes enhance the intelligence of the mind’s final "collective" decisions. 

Michael Anderson (University of Western Ontario)
This paper will examine some of the evidence that global neural function is the result of the formation of dynamic coalitions of diverse neural elements, at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Against a specifically Cartesian or modular framework, I will argue that the dynamic functional architecture of the brain is best understood *not* in terms of neural units with fixed input-output mappings (i.e. "modules"), but instead in terms of neural partners with complex functional profiles that interact via mutual constraint, selecting some and suppressing other capacities to form temporarily assembled, task-specific synergies.

Robert Rupert (University of Colorado, Boulder)
In domains ranging from vision to social cognition to logical inference, cognitive scientists often model behavioral data as the output of multiple processing streams. Many philosophers of mind marginalize this trend, claiming that it reveals only the quirkiness and complexity of the processes that implement what is — at a higher, personal level — a unified, rationally coherent mind. In this talk, I argue that we have no reason to believe in such a personal level and that, to the contrary, the mind is a loosely integrated collection of processes that encompass a teeming swarm of often redundant representations.

Julia Haas (Rhodes College)
An agent exercises instrumental rationality to the degree that she adopts appropriate means to achieving her ends. Adopting appropriate means to achieving one’s ends can, in turn, involve overcoming one’s strongest desires, that is, it can involve exercising synchronic self-control. However, contra standard approaches (Kennett and Smith 1996, Mele 2002, Sripada 2012), I deny that synchronic self-control is possible. Specifically, I draw on models from reinforcement learning and empirical evidence from cognitive neuroscience to describe a naturalistic, multi-system model of the mind. But this model precludes synchronic self-control. Must we, then, give up on a meaningful conception of instrumental rationality? No. A multi-system view still permits something like synchronic self-control: an agent can control her very strong desires. Adopting a multi-system model of the mind thus places limitations on our conceptions of instrumental rationality, without requiring that we abandon it.