Remarks on Smalligan Marusic’s Comments

On the basis of two argumentative examples plus their 'parity principle', Clark and Chalmers argue that mental states like beliefs can extend into the environment. I raise two problems for the argument. The first problem is that it is more difficult than Clark and Chalmers think to set up the Tetris example so that application of the parity principle might render it a case of extended mind. The second problem is that, even when appropriate versions of the argumentative examples can be constructed, the availability of a second, internalist parity principle precludes the possibility of inferring that the mind extends. Choosing which parity principle we ought to wield would involve deciding beforehand whether or not the mind can extend. Thus Clark and Chalmers beg the question by employing their parity principle rather than the internalist one. I conclude that they fail to provide an argument to support the extended mind thesis.

Journal of Modern Philosophy, 2022

Berkeley's likeness principle states that only an idea can be like an idea. In this paper, I argue that the principle should be read as a premise only in a metaphysical argument showing that matter cannot instantiate anything like the sensory properties we perceive. It goes against those interpretations that take it to serve also, if not primarily, an epistemological purpose, featuring in Berkeley's alleged Representation Argument to the effect that we cannot reach beyond the veil of our ideas. First, in section 1, I raise some concerns about the traditional narrative concerning the likeness principle's role in Berkeley's argumentation. In section 2, I delineate an alternative narrative, arguing that there is no 'missing premise' in his alleged Representation Argument we need to explain simply because he advances no argument like that in the first place. In section 3-4, I provide a close reading of the relevant passages--first from the Principles, then the Dialogues--and their contexts, supporting textually a purely metaphysical interpretation of the likeness principle arguments. In section 5, I address some possible objections, based on the phrasing of the likeness principle passages and some related texts. http://doi.org/10.32881/jomp.180

Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 2013

In the debate around the extended mind, the special alliance that the extended thesis often has with functionalism usually plays in favor of the former, with functionalism providing support for the extended thesis. Here I want to consider this alliance in the opposite direction: does the extended thesis provide support for functionalism by promoting the need of a level of explanation that is independent of implementational (in particular neural) details? In spite of a seemingly promising line of reasoning for an affirmative answer, I show here that a commitment to the extended thesis or any version of externalism neither paves the way for a functionalist (or any other anti-reductionist) position nor is incompatible with an explanatory reductionism about the mind. I arrive to that conclusion after analyzing an argument by van Eck et al. (2006) meant to conclude the opposite, and showing why it is unsound.

This article is a critical approach to the main ideas of the paper "The Extended Mind", published by Clark and Chamers and to some further comments on it. It begins by highlighting the differences between Otto and Inga (Otto's beliefs differ from those of Inga) that tend to cancel the extended mind thesis, in the version supported by the authors, the analysis of these differences leading us to the conclusion of a difference in cognitive status e between information "from the brain "and information of "brain externalization". The journal is a tool, the understanding of the role that it plays in the life of Otto being dependent on the indication of the place of utensils in the world. Further, the fact that in case of Inga information is directly accessible while in the case of Otto it can be accessed only through mediation generates significant differences in terms of convictions, including differences in the widely held belief that the thesis of the reality of the world constitutes. Reducing the mind to skin and skull is wrong, the authors being right about the fundamental thesis of the article. We agree with the thesis of the extension of the mind but we show that not all arguments in "The Extended Mind" are appropriate to the assertion, threatening to lead research in the wrong direction. We suggest that Clark and Chalmers miss a necessary ontological difference between the mind and utensils that can realize the nature and limits of mind extension. The problem could be caused by the reductionist perspective on consciousness, to which the authors are tributary. To speak of an extended mind we must triangulate a "where?" of the mind, to identify a place from which it extends (or is extended). The analogy with the computer is one of the ways in which we show a slip to "a form of ubiquity of mind" and indicate its strong connection with society. We believe that this relationship may be approached in a more appropriate way by its appeal to consciousness. Not the world is part of the cognitive processes, but we give such use to it by the very way in which we build it. From this perspective the term of extended consciousness is more appropriate than that of extended mind. The "Paradox" extended mind suggests the dependence of the understanding of the mind on the choice of the manner in which to define it. In this respect, the definition of the mind can be considered the symbol of one or other of the ways of understanding the world.

For Descartes, minds were essentially immaterial, non-extended things. Contemporary cognitive science prides itself on having exorcised the Cartesian ghost from the biological machine. However, it remains committed to the Cartesian vision of the mental as something purely inner. Against the idea that the mind resides solely in the brain, advocates of the situated and embodied nature of cognition have long stressed the importance of dynamic brain-body-environment couplings, the opportunistic exploitation of bodily morphology, the strategic performance of epistemically potent actions, the generation and use of external representations, and the cognitive scaffolding provided by artifacts and social-cultural practices. According to the extended mind thesis, a significant portion of human cognition literally extends beyond the brain into the body and its environment. This book aims to clarify the nature and the scope of this thesis, and to defend its central insight that cognition is not confined to the boundaries of the biological individual.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2009

Cognitive Systems Research, 2010

Axiomathes, 2007

2010

"According to the Extended Mind thesis, the mind extends beyond the skull or the skin: mental processes can constitutively include external devices, like a computer or a notebook. The Extended Mind thesis has drawn both support and criticism. However, most discussions – including those by its original defenders, Andy Clark and David Chalmers – fail to distinguish between two very different interpretations of this thesis. The first version claims that the physical basis of mental features can be located spatially outside the body. Once we accept that the mind depends on physical events to some extent, this thesis, though not obvious, is compatible with a large variety of views on the mind. The second version applies to standing states only, and has to do with how we conceive the nature of such states. This second version is much more interesting, because it points to a potential tension in our conception of minds or selves. However, without properly distinguishing between the two theses, the significance of the second is obscured by the comparative triviality of the first. Keywords: extended mind, functionalism, vehicle externalism, standing states "