Cognitive Integration and the Extended Mind

This book argues that thinking is bounded by neither the brain nor the skin of an organism. Cognitive systems function through integration of neural and bodily functions with the functions of representational vehicles. The integrationist position offers a fresh contribution to the emerging embodied and embedded approach to the study of mind.

Nous

Extended cognition theorists argue that cognitive processes constitutively depend on resources that are neither organically composed, nor located inside the bodily boundaries of the agent, provided certain conditions on the integration of those processes into the agent's cognitive architecture are met. Epistemologists, however, worry that in so far as such cognitively integrated processes are epistemically relevant, agents could thus come to enjoy an untoward explosion of knowledge. This paper develops and defends an approach to cognitive integration-cluster-model functionalism-which finds application in both domains of inquiry, and which meets the challenge posed by putative cases of cognitive or epistemic bloat.

Shaun Gallagher presents an interesting case for the social extension of mind. I argue that there is one way in which Gallagher can argue for social extension, which is continuous with an enculturated model of cognition, such as cognitive integration. This way requires us to think of the mind as extended by social/cultural practices that are specifically targeted at cognitive tasks. The other way in which Gallagher argues for social extension is that social institutions -such as museums or the law -are literal constituents of our minds. This second way involves a number of problems and objections and is inconsistent with an enculturated or practice based approach. I conclude by urging Gallagher to endorse the first way.

2010

Introduction to the Extended Mind Volume.

We now welcome submissions for a special section "Extended Mind and Extended Cognition" in the December 2018 issue of Philosophy and Society, a peer-reviewed, open access academic journal published by the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade.

2013

In this seminar, we explore the idea that mind and cognition are not (merely) inside the head but "distributed" across brain, body, and the wider world such as tools, artifacts, language, media, cultural practices, norms, group structures, and social institutions. The first part of our course is organized around Andy Clark's flagship presentation of the "extended mind" thesis, introducing contemporary debates over "distributed cognition" (DC) as part of a larger trend to regard mental phenomena as embodied, embedded, extended, enactive, and affective (4EA). The DC framework offers an opportunity to integrate sciences and humanities through illuminating accounts that combine biologically and culturally situated aspects of mind-and thus erode traditional separations between "inner vs. outer", "nature vs. nurture", and "active mind vs. inert matter". We engage this approach in the middle part of our course by working, selectively, though a 4-volume series on the history of distributed cognition ranging from antiquity to the 20 th c. (http://www.hdc.ed.ac.uk/). In the final part, we use DC as a platform to drill more deeply into speculative questions about the role technology plays in the formation of the human condition, such as its increasing "cyborganization" and potential transition into a post/transhuman era. For example, is it an apt variation on the "homo faber" theme to say we make "things" as much as they make us? And will posterity consider the "mind-technology" problem as a historical successor to the early modern "mind-body" problem?