tesfatsi AT iastate.edu
Syllabus for Econ 308
Basic Concepts
Key Issues
(Clark, p. 14): "This image of multiple, special-purpose problem solvers orchestrated by environmental inputs and relatively simple kinds of internal signaling is, I shall argue in a later chapter, a neuroscientifically plausible model even of more advanced brains."
(Clark, p. 21): "The ingenious strategies and tricks that enable embodied systems to maintain coherence while exploiting multiple, special-purpose, quasi-independent problem-solving routines (addressed in later chapters) shed light on the roles of language, culture, and institutions in empowering human cognition."
(Clark, pp. 22-23): "Taken only as an injunction to beware the costs of central, integrated, symbolic models, the criticism (by the New Robotocists regarding internal model representations of learning) is apt and important. But taken as a whole-sale rejection of inner economies whose complexities include multiple action-centered representations and multiple partial world models, it would be a mistake for at least two reasons. First, there is no doubt that the human brain does at times integrate multiple sources of information. ... Second, the presence of internal models intervening between input and output does not always constitute a time-costly bottleneck. Motor emulation provides a clean and persuasive example."
(Clark, pp. 23-26): "Carefully considered, the first moral of embodied cognition is thus to avoid excessive world modeling, and to gear such modeling as is required to the demands of real-time, behavior-producing systems. ... The second moral follows closely from the first. It concerns the need to find very close fits between the needs and lifestyles of specific systems (be they animals, robots, or humans) and the kinds of information-bearing environmental structures to which they will respond. ... The last and most speculative of our short list of morals suggests ... that our daily perceptual experiences may mislead us by suggesting the presence of world models more durable and detailed than those our brains actually build."
(Clark, p. 32): "The first is a problem of discovery. If we avoid the easy image of the central planner cogitating over text-like data structures, and if we distrust our intuitions concerning what types of information we are extracting from sensory data, how should we proceed? How can we even formulate hypotheses concerning the possible structure and operation of such unintuitive and fragmentary minds? ... The second problem is one of coherence. ... The puzzle is how to maintain coherent behavior patterns as the systems grow more and more complex and are required to exhibit a wider and wider variety of behaviors."
(Clark, pp. 32-33): In the chapters that follow, we shall unearth a surprising number of further tricks and strategies that may induce global coherence. Most of these strategies involve the use of some type of external structure or `scaffolding' to mold and orchestrate behavior. Obvious contenders are the immediate physical environment ... and our ability to actively restructure that environment so as to better support and extend our natural problem-solving abilities."
(Clark, p. 33): "The Rational Deliberator turns out to be a well-camouflaged Adaptive Responder. Brain, body, world, and artifact are discovered locked together in the most complex of conspiracies. And mind and action are revealed in an intimate embrace."