Switch to: References

Citations of:

Defending the bounds of cognition

In Richard Menary (ed.), The Extended Mind. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press (2010)

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. (1 other version)Cognitive Spread: Under What Conditions Does the Mind Extend Beyond the Body?Zed Adams & Chauncey Maher - 2012 - European Journal of Philosophy 23 (3):420-438.
    The extended mind hypothesis (EMH) is the claim that the mind can and does extend beyond the human body. Adams and Aizawa (A&A) contend that arguments for EMH commit a ‘coupling constitution fallacy’. We deny that the master argument for EMH commits such a fallacy. But we think that there is an important question lurking behind A&A's allegation: under what conditions is cognition spread across a tightly coupled system? Building on some suggestions from Haugeland, we contend that the system must (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Semantic inferentialism as (a Form of) active externalism.Adam Carter, James H. Collin & Orestis Palermos - 2017 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 16 (3):387-402.
    Within contemporary philosophy of mind, it is taken for granted that externalist accounts of meaning and mental content are, in principle, orthogonal to the matter of whether cognition itself is bound within the biological brain or whether it can constitutively include parts of the world. Accordingly, Clark and Chalmers (Analysis 58(1):7–19, 1998) distinguish these varieties of externalism as ‘passive’ and ‘active’ respectively. The aim here is to suggest that we should resist the received way of thinking about these dividing lines. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Extended Cognition and the Internet: A Review of Current Issues and Controversies.Paul Smart - 2017 - Philosophy and Technology 30 (3):357-390.
    The Internet is an important focus of attention for those concerned with issues of extended cognition. In particular, the application of active externalist theorizing to the Internet gives rise to the notion of Internet-extended cognition: the idea that the Internet can form part of an integrated nexus of material elements that serves as the realization base for human mental states and processes. The current review attempts to survey a range of issues and controversies that arise in respect of the notion (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  • Common-sense functionalism and the extended mind.Jack Wadham - 2016 - Philosophical Quarterly 66 (262):136-151.
    The main claim of this paper is that Andy Clark's most influential argument for ‘the extended mind thesis’ (EM henceforth) fails. Clark's argument for EM assumes that a certain form of common-sense functionalism is true. I argue, contra Clark, that the assumed brand of common-sense functionalism does not imply EM. Clark's argument also relies on an unspoken, undefended and optional assumption about the nature of mental kinds—an assumption denied by the very common-sense functionalists on whom Clark's argument draws. I also (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Extended Sex: An Account of Sex for a More Just Society.Saray Ayala & Nadya Vasilyeva - 2015 - Hypatia 30 (4):725-742.
    We propose an externalist understanding of sex that builds upon extended and distributed approaches to cognition, and contributes to building a more just, diversity-sensitive society. Current sex categorization practices according to the female/male dichotomy are not only inaccurate and incoherent, but they also ground moral and political pressures that harm and oppress people. We argue that a new understanding of sex is due, an understanding that would acknowledge the variability and, most important, the flexibility of sex properties, as well as (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Active Content Externalism.Holger Lyre - 2016 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (1):17-33.
    The aim of this paper is to scrutinize active externalism and its repercussions for externalism about mental content. I start from the claim that active externalism is a version of content externalism that follows from the extended cognition thesis as a thesis about cognitive vehicles. Various features of active content externalism are explored by comparison with the known forms of passive externalism – in particular with respect to the multiple realizability of the relevant external content-determining components and with respect to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Reasons, Causes, and the Extended Mind Hypothesis.Daniel Pearlberg & Timothy Schroeder - 2016 - Erkenntnis 81 (1):41-57.
    In this paper we develop a novel argument against the extended mind hypothesis. Our argument constitutes an advance in the debate, insofar as we employ only premises that are acceptable to a coarse-grained functionalist, and we do not rely on functional disanalogies between putative examples of extended minds and ordinary human beings that are just a matter of fine detail or degree. Thus, we beg no questions against proponents of the extended mind hypothesis. Rather, our argument consists in making use (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Outsourced cognition.Mikkel Gerken - 2014 - Philosophical Issues 24 (1):127-158.
    Recent developments in technologically enabled social cognition call for a rethinking of many aspects of human cognition. According to the hypothesis of extended cognition, we must revise our psychological categories by eliminating allegedly superficial distinctions between internal cognition and external processes. As an alternative to this proposal, I outline a hypothesis of outsourced cognition which seeks to respect distinctions that are operative in both folk psychology and the social and cognitive sciences. According to this hypothesis, the cognitive states and processes (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Extending the extended mind: the case for extended affectivity.Giovanna Colombetti & Tom Roberts - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (5):1243-1263.
    The thesis of the extended mind (ExM) holds that the material underpinnings of an individual’s mental states and processes need not be restricted to those contained within biological boundaries: when conditions are right, material artefacts can be incorporated by the thinking subject in such a way as to become a component of her extended mind. Up to this point, the focus of this approach has been on phenomena of a distinctively cognitive nature, such as states of dispositional belief, and processes (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   69 citations  
  • Belief May Not Be a Necessary Condition for Knowledge.Katalin Farkas - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (1):185-200.
    Most discussions in epistemology assume that believing that p is a necessary condition for knowing that p. In this paper, I will present some considerations that put this view into doubt. The candidate cases for knowledge without belief are the kind of cases that are usually used to argue for the so-called ‘extended mind’ thesis.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Is mind extended or scaffolded? Ruminations on Sterelney’s extended stomach.Jennifer Greenwood - 2013 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14 (3):629-650.
    In his paper, in this journal, Sterelney claims that cases of extended mind are limiting cases of environmental scaffolding and that a niche construction model is a more helpful, general framework for understanding human action. He further claims that extended mind cases fit into a corner of a 3D space of environmental scaffolds of cognitive competence. He identifies three dimensions which determine where a resource fits into this space and suggests that extended mind models seem plausible when a resource is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • The “New Mind” revisited, or minding the content/vehicle distinction: a response to Manzotti and Pepperell.Andreas Elpidorou - 2013 - AI and Society 28 (4):461-466.
    I argue that Manzotti and Pepperell’s presentation of the New Mind not only obfuscates pertinent differences between externalist views of various strengths, but also, and most problematically, conflates a distinction that cannot, without consequences, be conflated. We can talk about the contents of the mind and/or about the vehicles of those contents. But we should not conflate the two. Conflation of contents and vehicles comes with a price. In Manzotti and Pepperell’s case, it undermines claims they make about the implications (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Memory, Natural Kinds, and Cognitive Extension; or, Martians Don’t Remember, and Cognitive Science Is Not about Cognition.Robert D. Rupert - 2013 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 4 (1):25-47.
    This paper evaluates the Natural-Kinds Argument for cognitive extension, which purports to show that the kinds presupposed by our best cognitive science have instances external to human organism. Various interpretations of the argument are articulated and evaluated, using the overarching categories of memory and cognition as test cases. Particular emphasis is placed on criteria for the scientific legitimacy of generic kinds, that is, kinds characterized in very broad terms rather than in terms of their fine-grained causal roles. Given the current (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  • (1 other version)Cognitive Spread: Under What Conditions Does the Mind Extend Beyond the Body?Zed Adams & Chauncey Maher - 2012 - European Journal of Philosophy 20 (4):420-438.
    The extended mind hypothesis (EMH) is the claim that the mind can and does extend beyond the human body. Adams and Aizawa (A&A) contend that arguments for EMH commit a ‘coupling constitution fallacy’. We deny that the master argument for EMH commits such a fallacy. But we think that there is an important question lurking behind A&A's allegation: under what conditions is cognition spread across a tightly coupled system? Building on some suggestions from Haugeland, we contend that the system must (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Sketch this: extended mind and consciousness extension.Victor Loughlin - 2013 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12 (1):41-50.
    This paper will defend the claim that, under certain circumstances, the material vehicles responsible for an agent’s conscious experience can be partly constituted by processes outside the agent’s body. In other words, the consciousness of the agent can extend. This claim will be supported by the Extended Mind Thesis (EMT) example of the artist and their sketchpad (Clark 2001, 2003). It will be argued that if this example is one of EMT, then this example also supports an argument for consciousness (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Scientific cognition: human centered but not human bound.Ronald N. Giere - 2012 - Philosophical Explorations 15 (2):199 - 206.
    While agreeing that cognition in the sciences is usefully thought of as involving processes encompassing both humans and artifacts, I object to attributing cognitive states to extended systems. I argue that cognitive states, such as ?knowing?, should be confined to the human components of cognitive systems. My argument appeals to the large dimensions, both spatial and temporal, of many scientific cognitive systems, the existence of epistemic norms, and the need for agents in science.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • Two Versions of the Extended Mind Thesis.Katalin Farkas - 2012 - Philosophia 40 (3):435-447.
    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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • Can Internalism and Externalism be Reconciled in a Biological Epistemology of Language?Prakash Mondal - 2012 - Biosemiotics 5 (1):61 - 82.
    This paper is an attempt at exploring the possibility of reconciling the two interpretations of biolinguistics which have been recently projected by Koster(Biolinguistics 3(1):61–92, 2009). The two interpretations—trivial and nontrivial—can be roughly construed as non-internalist and internalist conceptions of biolinguistics respectively. The internalist approach boils down to a conception of language where language as a mental grammar in the form of I-language grows and functions like a biological organ. On the other hand, under such a construal consistent with Koster’s (Biolinguistics (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • The cure for the cure: Networking the extended mind.Michele Merritt - 2011 - Philosophical Psychology 24 (4):463 - 485.
    The hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC), or the claim that cognitive processes are not entirely organism-bound and can extend into the world, has received a barrage of criticism. Likewise, defenders of HEC have responded and even retreated into more moderate positions. In this paper, I trace the debate, rehearsing what I take to be the three strongest cases against HEC: nonderived content, causally natural kinds, and informational integration. I then argue that so far, the replies have been unsatisfactory, mainly because (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Extended cognition, personal responsibility, and relational autonomy.Mason Cash - 2010 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9 (4):645-671.
    The Hypothesis of Extended Cognition (HEC)—that many cognitive processes are carried out by a hybrid coalition of neural, bodily and environmental factors—entails that the intentional states that are reasons for action might best be ascribed to wider entities of which individual persons are only parts. I look at different kinds of extended cognition and agency, exploring their consequences for concerns about the moral agency and personal responsibility of such extended entities. Can extended entities be moral agents and bear responsibility for (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • The holy grail of cognitivism: a response to Adams and Aizawa. [REVIEW]Richard Menary - 2010 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9 (4):605-618.
    Adams and Aizawa (2010b) define cognitivism as the processing of representations with underived content. In this paper, I respond to their use of this stipulative definition of cognition. I look at the plausibility of Adams and Aizawa’s cognitivism, taking into account that they have no criteria for cognitive representation and no naturalistic theory of content determination. This is a glaring hole in their cognitivism—which requires both a theory of representation and underived content to be successful. I also explain why my (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • Introduction: Mind embodied, embedded, enacted: One church or many?Julian Kiverstein & Andy Clark - 2009 - Topoi 28 (1):1-7.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   35 citations  
  • Extended cognition & constitution: Re-evaluating the constitutive claim of extended cognition.Michael Kirchhoff - 2014 - Philosophical Psychology 27 (2):258-283.
    This paper explores several paths by which the extended cognition thesis may overcome the coupling-constitution fallacy. In so doing, I address a couple of shortcomings in the contemporary literature. First, on the dimension of first-wave EC, I argue that constitutive arguments based on functional parity suffer from either a threat of cognitive bloat or an impasse with respect to determining the correct level of grain in the attribution of causal-functional roles. Second, on the dimension of second-wave EC, I argue that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • Extended emotions.Joel Krueger & Thomas Szanto - 2016 - Philosophy Compass 11 (12):863-878.
    Until recently, philosophers and psychologists conceived of emotions as brain- and body-bound affairs. But researchers have started to challenge this internalist and individualist orthodoxy. A rapidly growing body of work suggests that some emotions incorporate external resources and thus extend beyond the neurophysiological confines of organisms; some even argue that emotions can be socially extended and shared by multiple agents. Call this the extended emotions thesis. In this article, we consider different ways of understanding ExE in philosophy, psychology, and the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   70 citations  
  • New Ontological Foundations for Extended Minds: Causal Powers Realism.Charles Lassiter & Joseph Vukov - 2022 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences:1-19.
    In this paper, we describe causal powers realism as a conjunction of four claims: causal powers are not reducible to counterfactuals; they are empirically-discoverable; they manifest effects in conjunction with partners; and their manifestations empower further manifestations. We describe four challenges to extended mind theory and for each show how an ontology of causal powers realism either avoids or dissolves the problem. We close by suggesting that causal powers realism isn’t a competitor with extended mind theory but rather a new (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Dynamics of Group Cognition.S. Orestis Palermos - 2016 - Minds and Machines 26 (4):409-440.
    The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the postulation of irreducible, distributed cognitive systems is necessary for the successful explanatory practice of cognitive science and sociology. Towards this end, and with an eye specifically on the phenomenon of distributed cognition, the debate over reductionism versus emergence is examined from the perspective of Dynamical Systems Theory. The motivation for this novel approach is threefold. Firstly, DST is particularly popular amongst cognitive scientists who work on modelling collective behaviors. Secondly, DST (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   32 citations  
  • Interaction and extended cognition.Somogy Varga - 2016 - Synthese 193 (8).
    In contemporary philosophy of the cognitive sciences, proponents of the ‘Hypothesis of Extended Cognition’ have focused on demonstrating how cognitive processes at times extend beyond the boundaries of the human body to include external physical devices. In recent years the HEC framework has been put to use in cases of “socially” extended cognition. The guiding intuition in this paper is that exploring the cognitive incorporations of genuinely social elements may advance HEC debates. The paper provides an analysis of emotion regulation (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • The artifactual mind: overcoming the ‘inside–outside’ dualism in the extended mind thesis and recognizing the technological dimension of cognition.Ciano Aydin - 2015 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14 (1):73-94.
    This paper explains why Clark’s Extended Mind thesis is not capable of sufficiently grasping how and in what sense external objects and technical artifacts can become part of our human cognition. According to the author, this is because a pivotal distinction between inside and outside is preserved in the Extended Mind theorist’s account of the relation between the human organism and the world of external objects and artifacts, a distinction which they proclaim to have overcome. Inspired by Charles S. Peirce’s (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • How to demarcate the boundaries of cognition.David Michael Kaplan - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 27 (4):545-570.
    Advocates of extended cognition argue that the boundaries of cognition span brain, body, and environment. Critics maintain that cognitive processes are confined to a boundary centered on the individual. All participants to this debate require a criterion for distinguishing what is internal to cognition from what is external. Yet none of the available proposals are completely successful. I offer a new account, the mutual manipulability account, according to which cognitive boundaries are determined by relationships of mutual manipulability between the properties (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   59 citations  
  • Extended Virtues and the Boundaries of Persons.Robert J. Howell - 2016 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 2 (1):146--163.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Mark Rowlands, The new science of the mind: from extended mind to embodied phenomenology: MIT Press, Bradford Books, 2010, 249 pages, ISBN 978-0-262-01455-7, £20.24. [REVIEW]Victor Loughlin - 2013 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12 (4):891-897.
    Andy Clark once remarked that we make the world smart so we don’t have to be (Clark, 1997). What he meant was that human beings (along with many other animals) alter and transform their environments in order to accomplish certain tasks that would prove difficult (or indeed impossible) without such transformations. This remarkable insight goes a long way towards explaining many aspects of human culture, ranging from linguistic notational systems to how we structure our cities. It also provides the basis (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Belief-Forming Processes, Extended.Spyridon Orestis Palermos - 2011 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 2 (4):741-765.
    We very often grant that a person can gain knowledge on the basis of epistemic artifacts such as telescopes, microscopes and so on. However, this intuition threatens to undermine virtue reliabilism according to which one knows that p if and only if one’s believing the truth that p is the product of a reliable cognitive belief-forming process; in an obvious sense epistemic artifacts are not parts of one’s overall cognitive system. This is so, unless the extended cognition hypothesis (HEC) is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   44 citations  
  • James bond and the barking dog: Evolution and extended cognition.Lawrence Shapiro - 2010 - Philosophy of Science 77 (3):400-418.
    Prominent defenders of the extended cognition thesis have looked to evolutionary theory for support. Roughly, the idea is that natural selection leads one to expect that cognitive strategies should exploit the environment, and exploitation of the right sort results in a cognitive system that extends beyond the head of the organism. I argue that proper appreciation of evolutionary theory should create no such expectation. This leaves open whether cognitive systems might in fact bear a relationship to the environment that leads (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • The extended mind.Mark Rowlands - 2009 - Zygon 44 (3):628-641.
    The extended mind is the thesis that some mental—typically cognitive—processes are partly composed of operations performed by cognizing organisms on the world around them. The operations in question are ones of manipulation, transformation, or exploitation of environmental structures. And the structures in question are ones that carry information pertinent to the success or efficacy of the cognitive process in question. This essay examines the thesis of the extended mind and evaluates the arguments for and against it.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • Intentionality, cognitive integration and the continuity thesis.Richard Menary - 2009 - Topoi 28 (1):31-43.
    Naturalistic philosophers ought to think that the mind is continuous with the rest of the world and should not, therefore, be surprised by the findings of the extended mind, cognitive integration and enactivism. Not everyone is convinced that all mental phenomena are continuous with the rest of the world. For example, intentionality is often formulated in a way that makes the mind discontinuous with the rest of the world. This is a consequence of Brentano’s formulation of intentionality, I suggest, and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  • Embedded cognition and mental causation: Setting empirical Bounds on metaphysics. [REVIEW]Fred Keijzer & Maurice Schouten - 2007 - Synthese 158 (1):109 - 125.
    We argue that embedded cognition provides an argument against Jaegwon Kim’s neural reduction of mental causation. Because some mental, or at least psychological processes have to be cast in an externalist way, Kim’s argument can be said to lead to the conclusion that mental causation is as safe as any other form of higher-level of causation.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • From Notebooks to Institutions: The Case for Symbiotic Cognition.Marc Slors - 2020 - Frontiers in Psychology 11:532742.
    Cognition is claimed to be extended by a wide array of items, ranging from notebooks to social institutions. Although the connection between individuals and these items is usually referred to as “coupling,” the difference between notebooks and social institutions is so vast that the meaning of “coupling” is bound to be different in each of these cases. In this paper I argue that the radical difference between “artifact-extended cognition” and “socially extended cognition” is not sufficiently highlighted in the literature. I (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • The Meaning of Embodiment.Julian Kiverstein - 2012 - Topics in Cognitive Science 4 (4):740-758.
    There is substantial disagreement among philosophers of embodied cognitive science about the meaning of embodiment. In what follows, I describe three different views that can be found in the current literature. I show how this debate centers around the question of whether the science of embodied cognition can retain the computer theory of mind. One view, which I will label body functionalism, takes the body to play the functional role of linking external resources for problem solving with internal biological machinery. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Contingent transcranialism and deep functional cognitive integration: The case of human emotional ontogenesis.Jennifer Greenwood - 2013 - Philosophical Psychology 26 (3):420-436.
    Contingent transcranialists claim that the physical mechanisms of mind are not exclusively intracranial and that genuine cognitive systems can extend into cognizers' physical and socio-cultural environments. They further claim that extended cognitive systems must include the deep functional integration of external environmental resources with internal neural resources. They have found it difficult, however, to explicate the precise nature of such deep functional integration and provide compelling examples of it. Contingent intracranialists deny that extracranial resources can be components of genuine extended (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • New Ontological Foundations for Extended Minds: Causal Powers Realism.Charles Lassiter & Joseph Vukov - 2024 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 23 (4):777-795.
    In this paper, we describe causal powers realism as a conjunction of four claims: causal powers are not reducible to counterfactuals; they are empirically-discoverable; they manifest effects in conjunction with partners; and their manifestations empower further manifestations. We describe four challenges to extended mind theory and for each show how an ontology of causal powers realism either avoids or dissolves the problem. We close by suggesting that causal powers realism isn’t a competitor with extended mind theory but rather a new (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Locked-in Syndrome and BCI - Towards an Enactive Approach to the Self.Miriam Kyselo - 2011 - Neuroethics 6 (3):579-591.
    It has been argued that Extended Cognition (EXT), a recently much discussed framework in the philosophy of cognition, would serve as the theoretical basis to account for the impact of Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) on the self and life of patients with Locked-in Syndrome (LIS). In this paper I will argue that this claim is unsubstantiated, EXT is not the appropriate theoretical background for understanding the role of BCI in LIS. I will critically assess what a theory of the extended (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations