Course description

Early modern philosophers were bold reformers; they planned to change the world in substantial and durable ways. Historians talked about these plans in terms such as ‘The Scientific Revolution,’ ‘the reformation of thought’, or ‘the origins of the modern mind.’ Each of these reconstructions tells us as much about the fashions and models of the twentieth century thought as about the primary texts they attempted to interpret. It is only natural that 21^st century will bring in its own models and fashion(s) into the discussion of early modern projects, seeing them in terms of epistemic cultures, cognitive ecologies, conceptual engineering or distributed cognition.

This course aims to put old texts in a novel perspective, encouraging students to read and reconstruct classical early modern philosophical texts in a context that takes into considerations some of the new trends in cognitive science and the philosophy of AI. We will particularly look at early modern projects of correcting or improving the mind from the current perspective of active externalism and the 4E (embodied-embedded-extended-enacted) models of cognition. We will see that many of the early modern projects involved various ways of “supersizing the mind” (Clarke 2008) and used, to achieve this goal, projects that can be translated in terms of conceptual (or even actual, technical) engineering.

“Supersizing the mind” meant different things for different natural philosophers. Some focused-on supersizing the sense (especially vision). Descartes imagined a prosthetics telescope/microscope attached to the eye; Galileo, Bacon and Hooke devised ‘acousticons’ for enhancing the sense of hearing. Others aimed to enhance and externalize the memory. Others, yet, invented artificial languages and ‘philosophical algebras’ to enhance the computational powers of thought. Many conceived the human imagination, and sometimes even thought and consciousness, as emerging from the collaboration of body and soul, bodily states and processes and interactions with a complex environment, or from an intersubjective ‘contact’ (Lenz, 2022). Some even developed projects of extending the mind throughout ideal communities of researchers who use each-other’s measurements and records, achieving forms of distributed (or perhaps collective) knowledge (Jalobeanu, 2021). To date, very few of these projects were discussed in conjunction with each other; and recent attempts of writing the history of philosophy of mind are still following the traditional path of the emergence and development of the ‘mind-body’ problem (Copenhaver, 2019, Pecere 2020). The twentieth century history of supersizing the mind awaits to be written.

To date, very few of these projects were discussed in conjunction with each other; and recent attempts of writing the history of philosophy of mind are still following the traditional path of the emergence and development of the ‘mind-body’ problem (Copenhaver, 2019, Pecere 2020). The twentieth century history of supersizing the mind awaits to be written.

Aims and objectives

This is a research driven course, based, in part, on my own investigations of Francis Bacon’s projects of supersizing the mind. It reflects on the recent substantial literature on Descartes’ embodied cognition, on recent and less recent literature on Spinoza on embodied mind and consciousness, on recent attempts to make sense of classical and Renaissance thought in terms of distributed cognition, on debates over the representationist (vs. non-representationst) accounts of perception, on Descartes’ transhumanism and its seventeenth-century’ reflection in experimental philosophy, on thinking bodies and thinking machines in the works of Cavendish, Hobbes and Leibniz.

The course aims to offer a novel and inter-disciplinary way of looking at some classical texts. It encourages students to engage with primary and secondary literature, to ask questions still relevant today and learn how to look for new answers. It aims to give an introductory, yet comprehensive picture, while emphasizing both the advantages and the limitations of reading seventeenth century philosophy through presentist lenses.

Methods of teaching and learning

The course will involve no traditional lecturing. Instead, the teacher will function as a ‘resource person’, offering information when required, and providing constant feedback in discussions and to written assignments. Other ‘resource persons’ can be brought in the seminar discussions at the special request of the students.

The group will work as a team, in a reading-group and seminar format. Each meeting will contain at least one hour of slow-reading and discussing a primary text, set within the framework of two conflicting modern interpretations (a more traditional one, in terms of substance-metaphysics and old theories of mind, an a more recent one, formulated in terms of cognitivism and active externalism). The group will be asked to provide arguments pro and con for each of them and students will be encouraged to come up with their own interpretations. The teacher will function, before, during and after these meetings, as a provider of ‘missing information.’ In preparing for the seminar, students are expected to ask questions the teacher will answer. To facilitate communication and the transfer of information, we will use a blog. All the course-materials will be uploaded on the blog. Students can upload their questions at any time. The teacher will provide written answers and reading materials (also uploaded on the blog), as well as comprehensive explanations during the seminar meetings. The principle is simple: the more you ask, the more you know.

When I do not know the answer, we will discuss together whom to approach to find out more. The team of students (plus teacher) will then approach colleagues working in that particular subject, asking questions. Again, the teacher will work as a resource person, helping with information, making suggestions, offering feedback on how to get in touch with experts.

Gradually, and especially from meeting 8 onwards, the role of the resource person will be transferred to the students themselves. For each seminar, one or two of the students will play this role, helping their colleagues with the contexts, explanations, names of experts, supplementary reading materials that will help them understanding better the required readings. 

The students will also have a say in shaping and further improving the syllabus. What you see below is a tentative syllabus organized in four modules: embodied cognition, embedded cognition, extended cognition and enacted cognition. Each of the modules contain three seminars that are well-designed and a list of further topics from which the group can organize seminars-on-request, with external resource persons (i.e., invited speakers) or seminars in which the students will act as resource persons, taking the lead to find further readings and offer the information necessary to prepare the discussion.  

Assignments

There will be two written assignments, one to be performed in collaboration, other to be written individually.

Collaborative assignment: Write a Wikipedia entry on a particular subject (see the list of subjects below).

Students will work in groups of three, with the teacher as a resource person. The first purpose of this assignment is to learn to distinguish between kinds of information (i.e., reference and encyclopaedia articles, academic papers, academic vs. popular books, talks and oral communications etc.) and to learn how to evaluate, select and cite these sources. The second purpose of the assignment is to learn to what extent human cognition is better/different than what AI can do. Students will be allowed to use ChatGTP as a starting point in writing their entry, and will work to correct the resulting text, purging errors, adding information, learning to write more academically (leaving room to questions, further information, using tentative and provisional language and open questions), and learning (on the way) the difference between human writing and machine writing. They might learn quite quickly that it is more economically to write on their own, with the teacher as a resource person, than via ChatGTP, but no intervention will be made to stop them trying].

Individual assignment: a research paper

The second assignment will be optional. Students will be told that they can write a research paper if they want, but that this paper is not compulsory. The writing of the research paper will be presented as a ‘prize’/supplementary benefit of going through the course – they can present their own ideas and get feedback on them, with the condition that they write a research paper (using what they have learned in the first assignment about the distinctions between the research papers and the encyclopaedia entries). For those willing to write, the teacher will provide a time-schedule, and a break-down of the task in ways that facilitate the actual process of writing, working with them on two drafts of the paper (first draft, and a second, cleaner and clearer draft). The purpose of this assignment is to learn what academic writing entails, what are the stages of writing a paper, how important is to have a schedule, in what way one does select from the resources available, what is a claim/thesis, how do we organize an argument, what is the difference between the first and the second draft.

Evaluation

Seminar participation 50 %

Participation in writing the collaborative assignment: 30 % (Mark that the points will be given to the team and that the students will have to divide among themselves according to what they evaluate was each other’s contributions)

Research paper (optional) 20 %

Syllabus

Introduction: the 4E approach and history of philosophy

The introduction will be given under the form of an interdisciplinary discussion in which I will invite colleagues from other Departments of the University, or colleagues from other universities, with expertise on cognitive science, AI and/or the philosophy of AI. The discussion can have a hybrid or online-only format, and it is meant to explain the background project of rewriting history of philosophy (of mind) from the perspective of current research in what mind/intelligence/cognition is and how it works. Students will participate as an audience in this discussion (which can be organized either live or recorded) and will be asked to comment and ask questions (which will be then forwarded to the appropriate experts). After the discussion, teacher and students will get together for an evaluative session in which they will summarize, together, the main points of the discussion, identifying questions, gaps and further points of debate. The teacher will use this framework to describe the objectives, syllabus and main activities of the course.

Unit A: The Embodied Mind

1. Soul, body and spirit(s) in early modern thought
   1. Short fragments from Pico Della Mirandola Oratio and Marsilio Ficino’s De triplici vita
   1. Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum, short fragments (on the spirits/pneumatics vs. tangible bodies and their interactions, and on the actions of spirits upon imagination, passions)

Secondary bibliography:

D.C.Rusu, Animal spirits: Bridging mind and body in early modern philosophy in Jalobeanu, Wolfe, Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences, Springer 2022

D.P. Walker, Medical spirits and God and the Soul, in Marta Fattori, U. Bianchi, eds. Spiritus, Editione del Ateneo, 1985.

Fabio Tutrone, “The body of the soul. Lucretian echoes in the Renaissance theories on the psychic substance and its organic repartition.” Gesnerus 71.2 (2014): 204-236.

2. Francis Bacon’s embodied mind and the distorted intellect. Idols, corrective epistemology and the theory of ‘helps’ and ‘instruments’ for enhancing the mental powers

Francis Bacon, Novum organum (fragments from book I and II).

Secondary bibliography : Dana Jalobeanu, Superstition, Idolatry and the Advancement of Learning.: From the Brotherhood of Light to the Solomon’s House, Lexicon Philosophicum: International Journal for the History of Texts and Ideas 9 (2021): 11-32; Peter Harrison, Francis Bacon, natural philosophy, and the cultivation of the mind, Perspectives on Science 20.2 (2012): 139-158.

3. Supersizing vision: Descartes and Hooke

Descartes, Dioptrics, Discourse X, Hooke, A general scheme… in Posthumous works (fragments)

Secondary bibliography: Neil M. Ribe, Cartesian optics and the mastery of nature,  Isis 88.1 (1997): 42-61, Boris Jardine, Microscopes, in Lightman, A  Companion to History of Science, Willey, Blackwell, 2016

4. Supersizing memory: from the art of memory to artificial memory projects (Bacon & Hooke)

• Robert Hooke, Posthumous works (fragments)

Secondary bibliography: Felicity Henderson, Material thoughts: Robert Hooke’s theory of memory, in Manning (ed) Testimonies. States of Mind and States of Body in Early Modern Period, Springer, 2020, Pieters Present,  ‘‘The adding of artificial organs to the natural’: Extended and Distributed Cognition in Robert Hooke’s Methodology’, in Miranda Anderson, and Michael Wheeler (eds), Distributed Cognition in Medieval and Renaissance Culture, Edinburgh University Press, 2019,  Richard Yeo,  “Before Memex: Robert Hooke, John Locke, and Vannevar Bush on External Memory.” Science in Context 20.1 (2007): 21-47.

Seminars to be further designed (at the request and with the participation of the students), subject to choice (we will do maximum 2 out of the following three themes)

• Intellect restored? (1) Intuitions, clear and distinct ideas & the Cartesian method
  • Descartes, Discourse on method, I-III
• Integrating the embodied mind: Perception, sensation and reflection in Leibniz
  • Leibniz, On the soul of animals (G VII 330), New Essays (Preface, II, xxi, 4., 72)
• Embodied mind and the problem of consciousness in Spinoza
  • Secondary bibliography: Steven Nadler, Spinoza on Consciousness, Mind (2008)

Unit B: Mind embedded: artefacts, cultures and artificial environments

5. The ‘world’ of the New Atlantis. Artefacts, natural history and the production of (collective) knowledge

Francis Bacon, New Atlantis

6. Seeing, drawing and engineering: Galileo’s telescope and Hooke’s Micrographia

Secondary bibliography: Owen Gingerich and Albert Van Helden, From occhiale to printed page: the making of Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 34.3 (2003): 251-267, Dana Jalobeanu,  Elements of natural history in Sidereus Nuncius, Revue Roumaine de Philosophie 58.1 (2014): 55-78.

Seminars to be further designed with the collaboration of the students (on request) [chose two out of three]

• Model societies, scientific utopias and the Republic of Letters (from Bacon’s Solomon’s House to Leibniz’s projects of scientific societies)

Bibliography (Reference):

Jalobeanu, Baconianism in the Royal Society, entry in the Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences

Audrey Borowski, Republic of Letters, entry in the Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences

• Forms of scientific life: collaborative knowledge vs. distributed knowledge (Bacon vs. Descartes)

Bibliography (Reference):

Miranda Anderson, Distributed cognition in early modern era, entry in the Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences (edited by Dana Jalobeanu and Charles Wolfe)

• Forms of philosophical life: the salon, the academy, the club and the network

Bibliography (Reference)

J.D. Campbell, A.R. Larsen, Early Modern Women and French Secular Networks, entry in the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing, Springer, 2023

Karen Green, Early Modern Women: Society and Sociability, entry in the Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences (Edited by Dana Jalobeanu and Charles Wolfe), Springer, 2022

David S. Lux, Harold J. Cook, Closed circles or open networks?: Communicating at a distance during the scientific revolution, History of science 36.2 (1998): 179-211.

Unit C: The extended mind: cognitive artefacts and social machines. Environmental engineering (and self-engineering)

7. Thinking with objects: maps, diagrams, cognitive metaphors (Galileo, Dialogue, Day I)

8. Artificial languages and philosophical algebras in the Royal Society (Hooke and Wilkins)

Seminars to be further designed with the collaboration of the students (on request) [chose two out of three]

• Perception, mind and the world in Margaret Cavendish
• Environmental engineering in Hobbes’s Leviathan
• Socializing minds: the contact problem and the linguistic model of John Locke
  • Martin Lenz, Socializing minds. Intersubjectivity in Early Modern Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2022. Chapter 2.

Unit D: Enacted cognition

9. Paper laboratories: books, libraries and other cognitive artefacts

Secondary literature:

Angus Vine, Note-taking and the Organization of Knowledge, entry in the Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences, 2022.

Robert Bunning, Reading practices in Early Modern Europe, in the Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences, 2022

10. Small fragments of recipes and experimental recordings (by the same authors)

Cesare Pastorino, “Beyond recipes: The Baconian natural and experimental histories as an epistemic genre.” Centaurus 62.3 (2020): 447-464, Arianna Borelli, “Giovan Battista Della Porta’s construction of pneumatic phenomena and his use of recipes as heuristic tools.” Centaurus 62.3 (2020): 406-424.

11. Enacting recipes and the emergence of experimental records. The maker’s knowledge tradition.

Francis Bacon, fragments from the Sylva Sylvarum, Henry Power, Experimental philosophy – fragments (optical experiments), Newton, fragments from the first paper on light (1672)

Secondary literature: Dana Jalobeanu, Enacting recipes: Giovan Battista Della Porta and Francis Bacon on technologies, experiments, and processes of nature, Centaurus 62.3 (2020): 425-446.

Seminars to be further designed with the collaboration of the students (on request, maximum 2 out of 4)

• In search of an artificial language. From Bacon to Wilkins and Hooke

Claudia Dumitru, Artificial languages, entry in the Encyclopedia of early modern philosophy and the sciences, Springer, 2022.

Luca Olivieri, Universal language in Early Modern Philosophy. Between Naturalistic and Artificial Language Schemes, entry in the the Encyclopedia of early modern philosophy and the sciences, Springer, 2022.

• Leibniz’s thinking machines

D. Rabouin, Introduction, to Leibniz, Characteristica universalis

Dumas Primbauld Simon,  An Ink–and–Paper Automaton: The Conceptual Mechanization of Cognition and the Practical Automation of Reasoning in Leibniz’s De Affectibus (1679),  Societate si politica 13.2 (2019): 87-113.

• The language of nature and the ‘laboratory’ of the Novum organum

Dana Jalobeanu. “On Metaphysics and Method, Or How to Read Francis Bacon’s Novum organum.” Epistemology & Philosophy of Science 58.3 (2021): 98-119.

• The art of memory and memory theatres: Bacon’s New Atlantis and Margaret Cavendish’ The Blazing World.

Evelyn Tribble, Memory in the Early Modern Context: Practices and Theories, entry in the Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences (edited by Jalobeanu & Wolfe), Springer, 2022

Helfer, R. (2024). “A Work of Fancy”: World-Making Imagination as an Art of Memory in Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World. In: Kaethler, M., Williams, G. (eds) Historicizing the Embodied Imagination in Early Modern English Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Bibliography:

Primary:

Francis Bacon, Instauratio Magna: Novum Organum and Related Texts, edited by Graham Rees and Maria Wakeley, volume XI of the Oxford Francis Bacon, Oxford University Press, 2000

Margaret Cavendish, Essential Writings, edited by David Cunning, Oxford University Press, 2019.

Francis Bacon, New Atlantis, edited by David Colclough, Volume XV of the Oxford Francis Bacon, Oxford University Press, 2024

Rene Descartes, A Discourse on Method, Edited by Ian McLean, Oxford University Press, 2006

G.W. Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, translated and edited by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett, Cambridge University Press, 1996

Reference

Dana Jalobeanu, Charles Wolfe (eds), Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences, 3 vols., Springer, 2022

Edwin Hutchins, Distributed cognition, entry in the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier Science 138 (2000): 1-10.

Miranda Anderson, M. Wheeler, M. Sprevak, Distributed Cognition in the Humanities, in M. Anderson, M.Wheeler, M. Sprevak, Distributed Cognition in Classical Antiquity, Edinburgh University Press, 2019

Secondary bibliography

Miranda Anderson and Michael Wheeler (eds), Distributed Cognition in Medieval and Renaissance Culture, Edinburgh University Press, 2019.

Andy Clark, Supersizing the mind. Embodiment, Action and Cognitive Extension, Oxford University Press, 2008.

Daniel Garber, Descartes embodied: Reading Cartesian philosophy through Cartesian science, Cambridge University Press, 2001.

R.N. Giere, Distributed Cognition without Distributed Knowling, Social Epistemology, 21 (2007) 313-320

Hajo Greif, Environments of Intelligence. From Natural Information to Artificial Interaction, Routledge, 2017.

R. Helfer,  “A Work of Fancy”: World-Making Imagination as an Art of Memory in Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World, in M. Kaethler, G. Williams, (eds) Historicizing the Embodied Imagination in Early Modern English Literature, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.

Edwin Hutchins, Enculturating the Supersized Mind, Philosophical Studies, 152 (2001), 437-446

Edwin Hutchins, Cognition in the Wild, MIT Press, 1995.

Edwin Hutchins, Enaction, Imagination and Insight, in John Stewart et. all., Enaction. Towards a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science, MIT Press, 2010.

Barnaby R. Hutchins, Christoffer Basse Eriksen, and Charles T. Wolfe, The embodied Descartes: Contemporary readings of L’Homme, in Delphine Antoine Mahut and Stephen Gaukroger, eds., Descartes’ Treatise on Man and its Reception Springer, (2016): 287-304.

Dana Jalobeanu, The Art of Natural History: Francis Bacon in Context, Zeta Books, Bucharest, 2015

Dana Jalobeanu, Superstition, Idolatry and the Advancement of Learning.: From the Brotherhood of Light to the Solomon’s House, Lexicon Philosophicum: International Journal for the History of Texts and Ideas 9 (2021): 11-32.

Martin Lenz, Socializing minds. Intersubjectivity in Early Modern Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2022

Rhodri Lewis, A kind of sagacity: Francis Bacon, the ars memoriae and the pursuit of natural knowledge,  Intellectual History Review 19.2 (2009): 155-175.

Steven Nadler, Spinoza and Consciousness, Mind 117 (2008) 575-601

Pieters Present,  ‘‘The adding of artificial organs to the natural’: Extended and Distributed Cognition in Robert Hooke’s Methodology’, in Miranda Anderson, and Michael Wheeler (eds), Distributed Cognition in Medieval and Renaissance Culture, Edinburgh University Press, 2019.

A Simmons, Changing the Cartesian Mind. Leibniz on Sensation, Representation and Consciousness, The Philosophical Review, 2001.

Manning, Gideon. “Descartes’ Healthy Machines and the Human Exception.” In Daniel Garber and Sophie Roux (eds.), The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy, 237-262. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013

D.P. Walker, Medical spirits and God and the Soul, in Marta Fattori, U. Bianchi, eds. Spiritus, Editione del Ateneo, 1985.

Richard Yeo, Before Memex: Robert Hooke, John Locke, and Vannevar Bush on External Memory, Science in Context 20.1 (2007): 21-47.

Lucilius îl salută pe Lucius ( Caro Lucio Lucilius salutem dat).

Mă bucur că mi te-ai destăinuit în scrisoarea anterioară și că încercările prin care ai trecut, de-a lungul călătoriei tale la Neapolis, ți-au oferit șansa de a medita asupra propriilor reacții naturale. Uneori încercările sorții vin cu numeroase împliniri pe care rareori avem abilitatea de a le identifica. De cele mai multe ori suntem copleșiți de neplăceri și suferințe care ne supără și ne orbesc rațiunea de-a binelea, așa cum tu bine ai sesizat în scrisoarea pe care mi-ai trimis-o – dar peste ele, un suflet puternic trebuie să treacă fără să șovăiască.

Că tot veni vorba de încercări, în aceste ultime zile am trecut și eu printr-o situație ca a ta, doar că eu m-am confruntat cu un altfel de obstacol, unul de gândire, meditativ, de înțelegere a lumii în totalitatea ei. În timp ce meditam la lucrurile înconjurătoare, mi-a răsărit în minte ideea următoare: ce înțelegem prin lucrurile abstracte, cum stau ele în raport cu ceea ce poate fi perceput prin simțuri? Mă refer aici la lucrurile care au o altă natură decât cele pe care le putem percepe prin simțuri, ce nu le putem atinge sau simți în mod direct, însă le înelegem și le conștientizăm într-o anumită măsură – sunt aceste lucruri insensibile mai importante decât cele corporale? Dacă răspunsul la această întrebare este unul pozitiv, atunci în ce constă importanța acestora? Aș merge și mai departe cu gândul, întrebând dacă putem identifica o singură entitate abstractă, exprimată printr-un cuvânt, pe care să se fundamenteze întregul cosmos, termen prin care să cuprindem tot ceea ce există? Din ce pot eu să înțeleg apar două lumi care până la urmă se suprapun, realizând această armonie a lumii – de pildă sufletul nostru este ceva imperceptibil, ceea ce dă viață trupului nostru – sufletul și trupul se întrepătrund pentru ca noi să putem exista ca ființe vii. Totuși, așa cum vei sesiza, întrebările mele nu vizează problemele morale de care ne ocupăm noi deseori în aceste scrisori, ci mai degrabă modul în care putem înțelege lumea așa cum ne este dată nouă, fie că o studiem cu ajutorul matematicii, fie că o contemplăm cu propria minte. Poate mă vei întreba ce legătură au aceste întrebări cu drumul pe care-l parcurgem noi? Ei bine, din nefericire nu pot să-ți răspund la o asemenea întrebare pentru că nu reușesc să întrevăd o legătură între dimensiunea morală și structura sau natura lumii (kosmos) – probabil că tu ești mult mai familiar cu operele grecești și poți găsi o parte din răspunsuri la întrebările mele, dacă nu toate răspunsurile. De un lucru sunt sigur, noi exprimăm tot ceea ce știm sau cunoaștem cu ajutorul cuvintelor, și ele ne ajută să formăm noi înțelesuri ale altor cuvinte sau chiar obiecte din lume. Un cuvânt ar putea să aibă mai multe înțelesuri atunci când ne referim la un singur obiect, la asta trebuie să le gândim atunci când vorbim despre lucruri care nu ne sunt tocmai la îndemână.

Iartă-mă că am epuizat o întreagă scrisoare pe un subiect atât de amplu și dificil. Sunt convins că vei avea răbdare să-mi descifrezi nelămuririle care au luat forma întrebărilor. Din păcate nu știu prea multe în această direcție, iar despre legătura dintre morală și ceea ce există în mod sensibil și non-sensibil, nu știu absolut nimic. Rămâi cu bine.

(Lucilius: Costel Cristian)