This collection of readings serves as a resource for a module in Post-Cognitivist Approaches to Cognitive Science, taught at University College Dublin.  It aims to provide an interesting sample of topics and papers, but does not try to be comprehensive.  Feel free to make use of it as you see fit. 

Joint Action

A recent issue of the new journal Topics in Cognitive Science had many papers grouped around the theme of Joint Action.  A sampling:

• K. Shockley, D. C. Richardson and R. Dale (2009) "Conversation and coordinative structures", Topics in Cognitive Science 1(2), 305-319.
• K. L. Marsh, M. J. Richardson and R. C. Schmidt (2009) "Social connection through joint action and interpersonal coordination", ibid, 320-339
• J. Call (2009) "Contrasting the social cognition of humans and nonhuman apes: The shared intentionality hypothesis", ibid, 368-379
• M. Carpenter (2009) "Just how joint is joint action in infancy?", ibid, 380-392

Embodiment 

• From the stable of Fred Keijzer, from whom so many thought provoking contributions come, here is an essay on Robotics, Biological Grounding and the Fregean Tradition
• A developmental perspective from Linda Smith and Mike Gasser (2005): "The Development of embodied  cognition: Six lessons from babies", Artificial Life 11 (1-2), 13-29.
• A bird's eye view: M. Anderson (2005) "How to study the mind: An introduction to embodied cognition,"  Chapter 5 of Embodied Cognition and Perceptual Learning in Adaptive Development
• Aaron Sloman and Jackie Chappell have food for thought on The Altricial-Precocial Spectrum for Robots.  That whole discussion should serve to change the way you think about the grossly simplistic notion of "innateness" that has preoccupied many in Cognitive Science.

The Extended Mind

Clark, A. and D. Chalmers (1998). “The Extended Mind.” Analysis 58(1): 7-19. and Andy Clark again, this time on Language. Chapter from his recent book "Supersizing the Mind". [pdf] and Some recent informal discussion in the wild. To think about:

• Where is the mind?
• Do you talk about the mind as if it were inside the head? Why?
• Does there have to be any answer to the question of "where"?
• Does this change the way you think of the notion of "representation"?
• How does language act as a scaffold?

Here is a counter-argument expressing a popular point of view: F. Adams and K. Aizawa, (2004?) "Defending the bounds of cognition" In Menary, R., The Extended Mind, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  And Andy Clark's response: Memento's Revenge, from the same volume.  This discussion ain't over yet.

Bubbles of Experience

• Thomas Nagel's famous 1974 essay: What is it like to be a bat
• von Uexküll, Jakob (1934) A stroll through the worlds of animals and men: A picture book of invisible worlds. A scan is available in two parts: Part1, Part2. 
• Following on from the von Uexküll article, is Ziemke and Sharkey (2001). A stroll through the worlds of robots and animals: Applying Jakob von Uexküll's theory of meaning to adaptive robots and artificial life. Semiotica 134, 701-746.
• Perhaps also this: Garzón, P. C. and Keijzer, Fred (????) Cognition in Plants. In Baluska, F. (Ed) Plant-environment interactions: Behavioral perspective, Elsevier.
• And an unpublished manuscript of my own: F. Cummins (2009) On the origin of the phenomenal.

Coordination Dynamics

• Chapter 2 of Scott Kelso's 1995 book on Dynamic Patterns, in 2 parts. [part 1] [part 2]
• Kelso, J. (2008). An Essay on Understanding the Mind. Ecological Psychology, 20(2):180–208.

Ecological Psychology

• Chapter 6 of Tony Chemero's recent book Radical Embodied Cognitive Science
• Warren, W. H. and Robert E. Shaw (1985) Events and Encounters as Units of Analysis for Ecological Psychology, Chpt 1 of "Persistence and Change: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Event Perception", Erlbaum.
• Lee, David (1980), The Optic Flow Field: The Foundation of Vision, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, vol. 290, no. 1038, pp. 169-179, July 1980.
• For those wanting to go further, a more complete account of (one view of) perception as understood within the Ecological tradition is available in this book: Michaels, C.F., & Carello, C. (1981). Direct perception. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
• Some samples of ecological approaches to audition: 
  • W. H. Warren and R. R. Verbrugge (1984) "Auditory perception of breaking and bouncing events: A case study in ecological acoustics", J. Exp. Psych. 10(5), 704-712
  • W. W. Gaver (1993) "How do we hear in the world?  Explorations in ecological acoustics." Ecological Psychology 5(4), 285-313

Culture and Cultural Evolution

• Ingold, T. (1990). An Anthropologist Looks at Biology. Man(London), 25(2):208–229.
• Donald, Merlin. (1993) Precis of Origins of the modern mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16:737-791.
• Strimling, P., M. Enquist and K. Eriksson. (2009) Repeated learning makes cultural evolution unique, PNAS.
• A comprehensive set of resources on Cognition and Culture is provided at the eponymous blog.
• Moss, Lenny (2009) ‘Detachment, Genomics, and the Nature of Being Human’  in New Visions of Nature:  Complexity and Authenticity, Drenthen, Keulartz, Proctor (Eds), Springer International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics

Development and Language

• Please see Andrew's post about Liz Spelke's work, and also Robert's recent post.  We may view a lecture by Liz Spelke in class.  The suggestions Spelke makes for the role of language are worth comparing  to Clark's view we encountered earlier.  Here is a very short article by Spelke on language, and here is a more comprehensive article on the Origin of Knowledge.

Enaction 1

The enactive literature can be confusing.  We will split our coverage into two distinct sets of readings.  First up is the dynamic sensori-motor account most closely associated with Noe and O'Regan:

• See Alva Noe's contribution to this interdisciplinary online conference on enaction.  Kevin O'Regan, who is a long time collaborator with Noe, is also represented here, and skimming the other contributions will give you a feel for the work in this variety of "enaction-ism".
• A fuller account of O'Regan and Noe's theory of sensory-motor correspondence is available in this BBS article: JK O’Regan, A Noë. A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2001.
  
• Jesse Prinz provides a dissenting view in Putting the brakes on enactive perception, Psyche, 2006.
• See also my blog post on sensory substitution.  Also, Sensory substitution and the human-machine interface, by Paul Bach-y-Rita and Stephen Kercel (2003).
• Freeman, Walter J. and Christine A. Skarda (1990) Representations: Who Needs Them? From: Brain Organization and Memory Cells, Systems, & Circuits. Edited by: James L. McGaugh, Norman Weinberger, Gary Lynch, page: 375–380

Enaction 2

Now we focus on the rather different approach, grounded in both biology and phenomenology, and most closely associated with, Firstly, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, and then, with the 1991 book The Embodied Mind, with Varela Thompson and Rosch. It is hard to find appropriate summary readings here, and I will cobble a few diverse sources together.

• Marek McGann provides some helpful handholds here.
• A short anecdotal paper on Varela, the man is here.
• A tutorial introduction to Maturana and Varela's theories is here (not easy going)
• A recent paper of mine, presenting ideas you have already met, that may be relevant in this context is here.

There is some convergence here in widely disparate fields.  Once we stop thinking of the brain/nervous system as an input driven device, its own activity appears in a new light.  Constructivism is one way of emphasizing the primacy of endogeneous activity:

• Heinz von Foerster, influential cybernetician and all round genius, gave a lecture at the opening of the 4th Intl Conf on Environmental Design Research in 1973.  An abbreviated version is provided here in On Constructing a Reality.

while neuroscience has recently become interested in endogenous activity, often expressed with regard to one or more default network(s):

• Bechtel, W. and Abrahamsen, A. "Understanding the brain as an endogenously active mechanism", Proc Cog Sci 2010.

Misecllaneous (but that might be of interest)

• Scholl, B. J. and Tremoulet, P. D. (2000). Perceptual causality and animacy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4:299–309.
• Wagemans, J., R. van Lier, and B. J. Scholl (2006). Introduction to Michotte's heritage in perception and cognition research. Acta psychologica 123 (1-2), 1-19.
• Butz, Martin V. (2008) How and why the brain lays the foundations for a conscious self Constructivist Foundations Volume 4 Number 1. Also, the associated commentaries.
• Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine (1994) Precis of The Roots of Thinking Psycoloquy.