Distributed Cognition without Distributed Knowing

Abstract

In earlier works, I have argued that it is useful to think of much scientific activity, particularly in experimental sciences, as involving the operation of distributed cognitive systems, as these are understood in the contemporary cognitive sciences. Introducing a notion of distributed cognition, however, invites consideration of whether, or in what way, related cognitive activities, such as knowing, might also be distributed. In this paper I will argue that one can usefully introduce a notion of distributed cognition without attributing other cognitive attributes, such as knowing, let alone having a mind or being conscious, to distributed cognitive systems. I will first briefly introduce the cognitive science understanding of distributed cognition, partly so as to distinguish full‐blown distributed cognition from mere collective cognition. ¹

Keywords:

• Distributed Cognition
• Distributed Cognitive System
• Collective Cognition
• Distributed Knowledge

Notes

[1] The present article is adapted from chapter 5 of my Scientific Perspectivism (Giere 2006). See also (Giere 2002).

[2] I have not been able to find these claims about mind in Cognition in the Wild. I did, however, personally hear Hutchins make these claims in a richly illustrated plenary lecture at the Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society in Boston, MA, 31 July–2 August 2003.

[3] Here I discount the idea that some sort of linguistic or conceptual analysis could demonstrate that irreducibly collective knowledge either does or does not exist.

[4] For a detailed critique of the idea of extended minds from the standpoint of analytical philosophy of mind, see Rupert (2004).

[5] The latest and best I know on this topic is due not to a philosopher but to a psychologist, Daniel Wegener (2002).

[6] My argument would be similar, although less dramatic, if we leave out the use of gravitational lensing in the Hubble system and regard the system as extending only from Earth orbit to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland. There is no denying that the system is at least that large.

[7] Among Anglo‐America philosophers, for example, “cognitive” has typically been associated with “rational” or “reasons”. Thus, a philosopher would distinguish between a person’s cognitive grounds (reasons) for a particular belief and mere causes of that belief.

[8] Here I am not claiming that the scientists who interpret the final images produced by the Hubble Telescope System need to know every detail of the system or could successfully perform most of the tasks required to keep the system operating. Knorr Cetina is surely correct about the distribution of expertise needed to operate large‐scale experimental systems. I question only her attribution of agency and self‐consciousness to the operations of such systems as a whole.

[9] I suspect that most historians of science and technology, for example, would have little difficulty with notions of distributed or collective cognition. But most, I think, would balk at the notion of extended minds and be very suspicious of talk about collective consciousness.