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Key research themes
1. How do cognitive artifacts function as external representations that mediate and extend human cognition in scientific and everyday contexts?
This theme investigates the role of cognitive artifacts—external physical or symbolic objects—in supporting, extending, and transforming human cognitive performance. It focuses on how scientific knowledge representations (theories, models, tools) and everyday artifacts (e.g., road signs, traffic lights) serve as external cognitive resources that not only assist but constitute parts of distributed cognitive systems, influencing reasoning, memory, and scientific practice. Understanding this functional role addresses theoretical debates about the boundaries of cognition, the extended mind, and the nature of cognitive representation outside the brain.
Key finding: This paper establishes a functional taxonomy of cognitive artifacts prevalent in scientific practice, framing scientific theories, models, toolboxes, and hypotheses as representational artifacts that extend and transform... Read more
Key finding: The author critiques Clark's extended mind thesis for retaining an 'inside–outside' dualism, despite aiming to overcome it, and instead proposes the 'artifactual mind' where cognition unfolds through and is continuously... Read more
Key finding: This paper identifies and analyzes a specific class of artifacts, 'deontic artifacts,' physical objects intentionally designed to regulate human behavior normatively (e.g., traffic lights, road signs). It argues that such... Read more
Key finding: Through an experiment comparing three external representations (propositions, Euler circles, and a novel valence-based representation grounded in mental model theory), this study empirically shows that artifacts designed... Read more
2. How can theories of cognition (e.g., enactivism, mechanistic explanations, and representation-hungry cognition) address the challenges of extending cognition beyond internal representations?
This theme addresses theoretical frameworks that reconceive cognition to either include or reject internal symbolic representations, and how they deal with cognition involving absent, abstract, or counterfactual content ('representation-hungry' cognition). It engages debates between enactivist/ecological approaches and mechanistic models, tackling how cognition extends into environments via artifacts and affordances without necessarily invoking internal representation. This inquiry clarifies foundational issues about the nature and boundaries of cognition and the explanatory power of different cognitive science models.
Key finding: This article addresses the challenge posed to non-representational enactive cognitive science by 'representation-hungry' domains—cognitive activities like imagination, memory, and planning about absent or abstract entities.... Read more
Key finding: This paper demonstrates that mechanistic explanations of cognition, traditionally associated with reductive, neural-level models, can be congruent with enactivist perspectives emphasizing dynamic, embodied agent-environment... Read more
Key finding: This paper critiques contemporary defenses of the extended cognition thesis that address the problem of 'cognitive bloat'—the risk of overly permissive criteria that include too much as cognitive. It specifically challenges... Read more
3. How can cognitive archaeology and interdisciplinary approaches reconstruct and understand human cognitive evolution and the emergence of complex cognition?
This theme explores methodologies and findings in cognitive archaeology that apply cognitive science frameworks to archaeological artifacts to infer cognitive capacities and evolution. It focuses on interpreting prehistoric material remains (e.g., stone tools, figurines) to shed light on cognitive milestones like symbolic thought, working-memory enhancements, and cumulative culture, thereby bridging disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience. This interdisciplinary approach helps reconstruct how cognitive artifacts and practices contributed to human cognitive development.
Key finding: The paper argues for cognitive archaeology as an interdisciplinary science applying cognitive science concepts to prehistoric archaeological remains to infer past cognitive capacities. It identifies major evolutionary... Read more
Key finding: This essay collection evidences how cognitive archaeology can explicate hominin cognitive evolution through psychological and cognitive models applied to artifacts like stone tools and art. Diverse contributions explore... Read more
Key finding: This article critically analyzes the underdefined concept of symbolic cognition often proposed as the basis of human cognitive uniqueness, parsing three distinct senses of the term with different psychological and... Read more
