The extended mind thesis claims that a subject’s mind sometimes encompasses the environmental props the subject interacts with while solving cognitive tasks. Recently, the debate over the extended mind has been focused on Markov Blankets: the statistical boundaries separating biological systems from the environment. Here, I argue such a focus is mistaken, because Markov Blankets neither adjudicate, nor help us adjudicate, whether the extended mind thesis is true. To do so, I briefly introduce Markov Blankets and the free energy principle (...) in Section 2. I then turn from exposition to criticism. In Section 3, I argue that using Markov Blankets to determine whether the mind extends will provide us with an answer based on circular reasoning. In Section 4, I consider whether Markov Blankets help us track the boundaries of the mind, answering in the negative. This is because resorting to Markov Blankets to track the boundaries of the mind yields extensionally inadequate conclusions which violate the parity principle. In Section 5, I further argue that Markov Blankets led us to sidestep the debate over the extended mind, as they make internalism about the mind vacuously true. A brief concluding paragraph follows. (shrink)

Is the mind flat? Chater (2018) has recently argued that it is and that, contrary to traditional psychology and standard folk image, depth of mind is just an illusory confabulation. In this paper, we argue that while there is a kernel of something correct in Chater’s thesis, this does not in itself add up to a critique of mental depth per se. We use Chater’s ideas as a springboard for creating a new understanding of mental depth which builds upon findings (...) in contemporary cognitive science. First, we rely on the predictive processing framework in order to determine a proposed neural contribution to mental depth, specifically in hierarchical predictive knowledge. Second, drawing from an embodied approach to cognition, we argue that mental depth results from the depth of our embodied skills and the situations in which we are embedded. This allows us to introduce to a new realist notion of mental depth, one which can only be explained once we attend to the dense patterns of skillful interaction within a rich artefactual and social environment. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 363-387, April 2022.

The extended mind thesis claims that a subject’s mind sometimes encompasses the environmental props the subject interacts with while solving cognitive tasks. Recently, the debate over the extended mind has been focused on Markov Blankets: the statistical boundaries separating biological systems from the environment. Here, I argue such a focus is mistaken, because Markov Blankets neither adjudicate, nor help us adjudicate, whether the extended mind thesis is true. To do so, I briefly introduce Markov Blankets and the free energy principle (...) in Section 2. I then turn from exposition to criticism. In Section 3, I argue that using Markov Blankets to determine whether the mind extends will provide us with an answer based on circular reasoning. In Section 4, I consider whether Markov Blankets help us track the boundaries of the mind, answering in the negative. This is because resorting to Markov Blankets to track the boundaries of the mind yields extensionally inadequate conclusions which violate the parity principle. In Section 5, I further argue that Markov Blankets led us to sidestep the debate over the extended mind, as they make internalism about the mind vacuously true. A brief concluding paragraph follows. (shrink)

The role of the body in cognition is acknowledged across a variety of disciplines, even if the precise nature and scope of that contribution remain contentious. As a result, most philosophers working on embodiment—e.g. those in embodied cognition, enactivism, and ‘4e’ cognition—interact with the life sciences as part of their interdisciplinary agenda. Despite this, a detailed engagement with emerging findings in epigenetics and post-genomic biology has been missing from proponents of this embodied turn. Surveying this research provides an opportunity to (...) rethink the relationship between embodiment and genetics, and we argue that the balance of current epigenetic research favours the extension of an enactivist approach to mind and life, rather than the extended functionalist view of embodied cognition associated with Andy Clark and Mike Wheeler, which is more substrate neutral. (shrink)

Mathematical cognition is widely regarded as the epitome of the kind of cognition that systematically eludes enactivist treatment. It is the parade example of abstract, disembodied cognition if ever there was one. As it is such an important test case, this paper focuses squarely on what Gallagher has to say about mathematical cognition in Enactivist Interventions. Gallagher explores a number of possible theories that he holds could provide useful fodder for developing an adequate enactivist account of mathematical cognition. Yet if (...) the analyses of this paper prove sound, then some of the central approaches he considers are simply not fit for such service. That said, in the final analysis, if crucial additions and subtractions are made, there is a real chance of fashioning a promising enactivist account of mathematical cognition. (shrink)

For several decades, research on situated cognition and affectivity has neglected cases in which environmental features in the niche have a negative impact on agents’ cognitive and affective wellbeing. Recently, however, a new research cluster has emerged that explores how things, technologies, and organisational systems across corporate, healthcare, and educational sectors wrongfully harm certain kinds of agents. This article contributes to this research cluster by integrating work on negative niche construction, structural oppression, enculturation, and self-narration. It thereby offers a new (...) perspective on the negative, structurally oppressive impact of the socio-culturally shaped niche on enculturated self-narration. The main argument is that master plots, understood as narrative arrangements that dominate in the socio-culturally shaped niche, contribute to the structural oppression of enculturated self-narrators with systematically undermined socio-cultural identities. An analysis of the influence of pronatalist master plotting on enculturated self-narration serves to illustrate and strengthen the overall argument. (shrink)