MindPapers: 2.2j. The Extended Mind

Adams, Fred & Aizawa, Ken (forthcoming). Why the mind is still in the head. In P. Robbins & M. Aydede (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition. Cambridge University Press. (Google | More links)

Abstract: Philosophical interest in situated cognition has been focused most intensely on the claim that human cognitive processes extend from the brain into the tools humans use. As we see it, this radical hypothesis is sustained by two kinds of mistakes, confusing coupling relations with constitutive relations and an inattention to the mark of the cognitive. Here we wish to draw attention to these mistakes and show just how pervasive they are. That is, for all that the radical philosophers have said, the mind is still in the head

Adams, Frederick R. & Aizawa, Kenneth (manuscript). Andy Clark on intrinsic content and extended cognition. (Google)

Adams, Frederick R. & Aizawa, Kenneth (forthcoming). Challenges to active externalism. In P. Robbins & Murat Aydede (eds.), Cambridge Handbook on Situated Cognition. Cambridge. (Google)

Adams, Frederick R. & Aizawa, Kenneth (2005). Defending non-derived content. Philosophical Psychology 18 (6):661-669. (Google | More links)

Abstract: In ‘‘The Myth of Original Intentionality,’’ Daniel Dennett appears to want to argue for four claims involving the familiar distinction between original (or underived) and derived intentionality

Adams, Frederick R. & Aizawa, Kenneth (forthcoming). Defending the Bounds of cognition. In Richard Menary (ed.), The Extended Mind. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate. (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)

Abstract: That about sums up what is wrong with Clark’s extended mind hypothesis. Clark apparently thinks that the nature of the processes internal to a pencil, Rolodex, computer, cell phone, piece of string, or whatever, has nothing to do with whether that thing carries out cognitive processing.[1] Rather, what matters is how the thing interacts with a cognitive agent; the thing has to be coupled to a cognitive agent in a particular kind of way. Clark (20??) gives three conditions that constitute a rough or partial specification of the kind of coupling required

Adams, Frederick R. & Aizawa, Kenneth (2001). The Bounds of cognition. Philosophical Psychology 14 (1):43-64. (Cited by 34 | Google | More links)

Abstract: Recent work in cognitive science has suggested that there are actual cases in which cognitive processes extend in the physical world beyond the bounds of the brain and the body. We argue that, while transcranial cognition may be both a logical and a nomological possibility, no case has been made for its current existence. In other words, we defend a form of contingent intracranialism about the cognitive

Adams, Frederick, & Aizawa, Kenneth (2008). The Bounds of Cognition. Blackwell. (Google)

Aizawa, Kenneth (manuscript). Clark's conditions on extended cognition are too strong. (Google)

Abstract: In “Memento’s Revenge: The Extended Mind, Extended,” Andy Clark provides further analysis of a thought experiment for the extended mind. In this thought experiment, Otto suffers from a mild form of Alzheimer’s Disease which motivates him to record important information in a notebook he carries with him at all times. When, for example, he hears of an interesting exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, he retrieves the museum’s address from his notebook, then heads on his way. Clark maintains that the information that the museum is on 53th Street stored in the notebook constitutes one of Otto’s beliefs, a belief he had prior to consulting his notebook. Generalizing, Clark suggests that use of an external physical object, such as a notebook, constitutes part of an individual’s cognitive processing if it meets three conditions

Bradley, Francis H. (1895). In what sense are psychical states extended? Mind 4 (14):225-235. (Google | More links)

Campbell, John (1993). The role of physical objects in spatial thinking. In Naomi M. Eilan, R McCarthy & M.W Brewer (eds.), Problems in the Philosophy and Psychology of Spatial Representation. Blackwell. (Cited by 73 | Google)

Case, J. (2004). Offloading memory to the environment: A quantitative example. Minds and Machines 14 (3):387-89. (Google | More links)

Abstract: R.W. Ashby maintained that people and animals do not have to remember as much as one might think since considerable information is stored in the environment. Presented herein is an everyday, quantitative example featuring calculation of the number bits of memory that can be off-loaded to the environment. The example involves ones storing directions to a friends house. It is also argued that the example works with or without acceptance of the extended mind hypothesis. Additionally, a brief supporting argument for at least a form of this hypothesis is presented

Chemero, Tony & Silberstein, Michael (manuscript). Defending extended cognition. (Google | More links)

Abstract: In this talk, we defend extended cognition against several criticisms. We argue that extended cognition does not derive from armchair theorizing and that it neither ignores the results of the neural sciences, nor minimizes the importance of the brain in the production of intelligent behavior. We also argue that explanatory success in the cognitive sciences does not depend on localist or reductionist methodologies; part of our argument for this is a defense of what might be called ‘holistic science’

Clark, Andy (2007). Curing cognitive hiccups: A defense of the extended mind. Journal of Philosophy 104 (4). (Google)

Clark, Andy (2005). Intrinsic content, active memory, and the extended mind. Analysis 65 (285):1-11. (Cited by 12 | Google | More links)

Clark, Andy (2006). Memento's revenge: The extended mind, extended. In Richard Menary (ed.), Objections and Replies to the Extended Mind. Ashgate. (Cited by 11 | Google | More links)

Abstract: In the movie, Memento, the hero, Leonard, suffers from a form of anterograde amnesia that results in an inability to lay down new memories. Nonetheless, he sets out on a quest to find his wife’s killer, aided by the use of notes, annotated polaroids, and (for the most important pieces of information obtained) body tattoos. Using these resources he attempts to build up a stock of new beliefs and to thus piece together the puzzle of his wife’s death. At one point in the movie, a character exasperated by Leonard’s lack of biological recall, shouts

Clark, Andy (2003). Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies and the Future of Human Intelligence. Oxford University Press. (Cited by 181 | Google | More links)

Clark, Andy (2001). Reasons, robots and the extended mind. Mind and Language 16 (2):121-145. (Cited by 49 | Google | More links)

Abstract: A suitable project for the new Millenium is to radically reconfigure our image of human rationality. Such a project is already underway, within the Cognitive Sciences, under the umbrellas of work in Situated Cognition, Distributed and De-centralized Cogition, Real-world Robotics and Artificial Life1. Such approaches, however, are often criticized for giving certain aspects of rationality too wide a berth. They focus their attention on on such superficially poor cousins as “adaptive behaviour”, “ecologically sound perception-action routines”, “fast and frugal heuristics” and “fast, fluent real-time real-world action control”2. Is this robbery or revelation? Has 'embodied, embedded' cognitive science simply lost sight of the very phenomena it was meant to explain? Or are we finally seeing rationality aright, as fully continous with various forms of simpler, ecologically situated, adaptive response?

Clark, Andy & Chalmers, David J. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis 58 (1):7-19. (Cited by 320 | Google | More links | Annotation)

Abstract: Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? The question invites two standard replies. Some accept the demarcations of skin and skull, and say that what is outside the body is outside the mind. Others are impressed by arguments suggesting that the meaning of our words "just ain't in the head", and hold that this externalism about meaning carries over into an externalism about mind. We propose to pursue a third position. We advocate a very different sort of externalism: an _active externalism_ , based on the active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes

Dartnall, Terry (2005). Does the world Leak into the mind? Active externalism, "internalism", and epistemology. Cognitive Science 29:135-43. (Cited by 5 | Google | More links)

Fulda, Joseph S. (1998). "The extended mind"- extended. Computers and Society 28 (3):33-34. (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)

Abstract: We review the argument made by Clark and Chalmers in _Analysis_ for a limited externalism and extend their argument from declarative knowledge to procedural knowledge

Gertler, Brie (2007). Overextending the mind? In Brie Gertler & Lawrence Shapiro (eds.), Arguing About the Mind. Routledge. (Google | More links)

Haugeland, John (1993). Mind embodied and embedded. In Yu-Houng H. Houng & J. Ho (eds.), Mind and Cognition: 1993 International Symposium. Academica Sinica. (Cited by 49 | Google | Annotation)

Hurley, Susan L. (1998). Active perception and vehicle externalism. In Susan L. Hurley (ed.), Consciousness in Action. Harvard University Press. (Google)

Abstract: Certain empirical results suggest a way of challenging two natural and widespread assumptions about the mind. One assumption is about the relations between perception and action. This shows up in the widespread conception of perception and action in terms of input and output, respectively. Perception is conceived as input from world to mind and action is conceived as output from mind to world. The other assumption is about the relations between mind and world. It influences various opposed views about whether the contents of the mind are in principle independent of the outside world

Hurley, Susan L. (1998). Vehicles, contents, conceptual structure and externalism. Analysis 58 (1):1-6. (Cited by 19 | Google | More links)

Keijzer, Fred A. & Schouten, Maurice K. D. (2007). Embedded cognition and mental causation: Setting empirical Bounds on metaphysics. Synthese 158 (1). (Google | More links)

Abstract: In this paper, we challenge Jaegwon Kim’s version of neural reductionism according to which the causal powers of mental properties are pre-empted by those of neural properties. Using empirical and theoretical developments from the field of embedded cognition, we articulate and defend a notion of process externalism that extends Clark and Chalmers’ notion of an extended mind. We argue that process externalism undermines one of Kim’s key premises leading to the alternative conclusion that mental causation cannot be reduced to neural causation. Instead, mental properties have their own new causal powers just like other scientifically established macroproperties

Kirsh, David & Maglio, P. (1995). On distinguishing epistemic from pragmatic action. Cognitive Science 18:513-49. (Cited by 246 | Google | More links)

Levy, Neil (2007). Rethinking neuroethics in the light of the extended mind thesis. American Journal of Bioethics 7:3-11. (Google)

Marsh, Leslie (2005). Review of Andy Clark's Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence. Cognitive Systems Research 6:405-409. (Google)

Marsh, Leslie & Onof, Christian (2008). Stigmergic epistemology, stigmergic cognition. Cognitive Systems Research 9 (1-2). (Google)

Menary, Richard (2006). Attacking the Bounds of cognition. Philosophical Psychology 19 (3):329-344. (Cited by 4 | Google | More links)

Abstract: Recently internalists have mounted a counter-attack on the attempt to redefine the bounds of cognition. The counter-attack is aimed at a radical project which I call "cognitive integration," which is the view that internal and external vehicles and processes are integrated into a whole. Cognitive integration can be defended against the internalist counter arguments of Adams and Aizawa (A&A) and Rupert. The disagreement between internalists and integrationists is whether the manipulation of external vehicles constitutes a cognitive process. Integrationists think that they do, typically for reasons to do with the close coordination and causal interplay between internal and external processes. The internalist criticisms of the manipulation thesis fail because they misconstrue the nature of manipulation, ignore the hybrid nature of cognition, and take the manipulation thesis to be dependent upon a weak parity principle

O'Brien, Gerard (1998). The mind: Embodied, embedded, but not extended. Metascience 7:8-83. (Google | More links)

Abstract: This commentry focuses on the one major ecumenical theme propounded in Andy Clark's Being There that I find difficult to accept; this is Clark's advocacy, especially in the third and final part of the book, of the extended nature of the embedded, embodied mind

O'Regan, Kevin J. (1992). Solving the "real" mysteries of visual perception: The world as an outside memory. Canadian Journal of Psychology 46:461-88. (Cited by 359 | Google | More links)

Parsell, Mitch (2006). The cognitive cost of extending an evolutionary mind into the environment. Cognitive Processing 7 (1): 3-10. (Cited by 1 | Google | More links)

Abstract: Clark and Chalmers (1998) have argued that mental states can be extended outside an organism’s skin. In response to some worries about the availability, reliability and portability of such extended states, Clark (forthcoming) offers a set of rough criteria that non-biological objects must fulfil to be mental. One such criterion is that the information retrieved from these non-biological sources be (more or less) automatically endorsed. But Sterelny (2003 & forthcoming) has persuasively argued that the extended sphere is epistemologically opaque: a domain of contested truth and deliberate deception. As such, retrieving information from this domain requires the deployment of social guards for the information to remain reliable. But deploying such guards would seem to endanger endorsability by increasing cognitive load. Here I demonstrate that deploying social guards does not increase cognitive load if the guards are implemented in a high-distributed connectionist economy or off-loaded to the external environment

Rupert, Robert D. (2004). Challenges to the hypothesis of extended cognition. Journal of Philosophy 101 (8):389-428. (Cited by 13 | Google)

Rupert, Robert D. (web). Representation in extended cognitive systems: Does the scaffolding of language extend the mind? In Richard Menary (ed.), The Extended Mind. Ashgate. (Cited by 2 | Google)

Abstract: forthcoming in R. Menary (ed.), The Extended Mind

Shapiro, Larry (web). Functionalism and mental boundaries. Cognitive Systems Research 9 (1-2). (Google)

Sterelny, Kim (2004). Externalism, epistemic artefacts and the extended mind. In Richard Schantz (ed.), The Externalist Challenge. De Gruyter. (Cited by 15 | Google | More links)

Abstract: A common picture of evolution by natural selection sees it as a process through which organisms change so that they become better adapted to their environment. However, agents do not merely respond to the challenges their environments pose. They modify their environments, filtering and transforming the action of the environment on their bodies A beaver, in making a dam, engineers a stream, increasing both the size of its safe refuge and reducing its seasonal variability. Beavers, like many other animals, are ecological engineers. They act to modify the physical challenges posed by their environment. Nests, burrows and other shelters reduce the impacts of adverse weather and of other agents. Animal also modify their exposure to biological risks. Hygienic behaviour reduces the impact of disease. Intensive grooming; moving to new roosts; using a “latrine burrow”; disposing excrement in faecal sacs; these all improve an animal's prospects of avoiding disease. So many organisms are like the beaver; they partially construct their own niches. They are ecological engineers, and, as John Odling-Smee and Kevin Laland have shown, niche construction is often of great evolutionary significance, transforming the effects of natural selection on both the ecological engineers and their descendants.¹

Sutton, John (2006). Introduction: Memory, embodied cognition, and the extended mind. Philosophical Psychology 19 (3):281-289. (Cited by 21 | Google | More links)

Abstract: I introduce the seven papers in this special issue, by Andy Clark, Jérôme Dokic, Richard Menary, Jenann Ismael, Sue Campbell, Doris McIlwain, and Mark Rowlands. This paper explains the motivation for an alliance between the sciences of memory and the extended mind hypothesis. It examines in turn the role of worldly, social, and internalized forms of scaffolding to memory and cognition, and also highlights themes relating to affect, agency, and individual differences

Weiskopf, Daniel A. (2008). Patrolling the mind's boundaries. Erkenntnis 68 (2). (Google | More links)

Abstract: Traditional materialism claims that mental states are located in the brain and body, if anywhere. In recent years, however, some materialists have argued for an apparently radical claim about where we should draw the mind-world boundary. They suggest that, in many cases, the boundary should be pushed outward to include parts of the extrabodily environment within the mind itself. As John Haugeland puts the point, “intelligence itself abides ‘out’ in the world, not just ‘inside’—contra cognitive science, classical or otherwise” (1998, p. 232). According to this _extended mind thesis_, at least some mental states may be partially or wholly constituted by states outside of the brain and body. Laptop computers, notebooks, and maps—not to mention calculators, slide rules (Hutchins, 1995), the road signs by which we steer, even natural language itself (Dennett, 1996)—may literally realize parts of our minds

Wilson, Robert A. (2005). Collective memory, group minds, and the extended mind thesis. Cognitive Processing 6 (4). (Cited by 12 | Google | More links)

Abstract: nantly as an individual capacity in the cognitive and psychology and the cognitive sciences, with cognitive biological sciences, the social sciences have most com- agents permeating both the biological and social monly construed memory as a collective phenomenon

Wilson, Robert A. (2005). Meaning making and the mind of the externalist. In Richard Menary (ed.), The Extended Mind. Ashgate. (Cited by 2 | Google | More links)

Abstract: This paper attempts to do two things. First, it recounts the problem of intentionality, as it has typically been conceptualized, and argues that it needs to be reconceptualized in light of the radical form of externalism most commonly referred to as the extended mind thesis. Second, it provides an explicit, novel argument for that thesis, what I call the argument from meaning making, and offers some defense of that argument. This second task occupies the core of the paper, and in completing it I distinguish _active _ _cognition_ from _cyborg fantasy arguments_ for externalism, and develop the analogy between the extended mind thesis in the cognitive sciences and developmental systems theory in developmental biology. The rethinking of the problem of intentionality on offer leads not so much to a solution as to a dissolution of that problem, as traditionally conceived

Wilson, Robert A. (2000). The mind beyond itself. In Metarepresentations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. (Cited by 6 | Google)

Wilson, Robert A. (1994). Wide computationalism. Mind 103 (411):351-72. (Cited by 39 | Google | More links)

Search tips