Distributed cognition, as it considers how technologies augment cognition, informs technology integration in education. Most educational technologists interested in distributed cognition embrace a representational theory of mind. As this theory assumes cognition occurs in the brain and depends on the internal representation of external information, it is informed by a mind/body dualism that separates the individual student from material things. Alternatively, the theory of the extended mind describes the mind as a dynamic system of interactions inclusive of human agents, technologies (...) and other material things. Refusing the mind/body dualism, if one element is removed, the quality of cognitive activity declines. Across the cognitive sciences, there are debates between these representational and extended theories that have implications for what it means to be a student and for technology integration. However, distributed cognition research in educational technology ignores these debates. Instead, this research is conditioned by the discursive practices of a neoliberal assemblage of political, commercial and pedagogical institutions. In this era of high stakes testing, as the individual student is measured, evaluated and otherwise made subject through these practices, this assemblage expresses a tacit commitment to, and is productive of, the subjectivity of the individual student and thus benefits from the representational theory of mind. In this way, regardless of the recognized legitimacy of the theory of the extended mind, sustained by neoliberalism the field of educational technology will not soon question the veracity of the representational theory of mind or the mind/body dualism upon which it depends. (shrink)

The argument of this paper is that we should think of the extension of cognitive abilities and cognitive character in integrationist terms. Cognitive abilities are extended by acquired practices of creating and manipulating information that is stored in a publicly accessible environment. I call these cognitive practices (2007). In contrast to Pritchard (2010) I argue that such processes are integrated into our cognitive characters rather than artefacts; such as notebooks. There are two routes to cognitive extension that I contrast in (...) the paper, the first I call artefact extension which is the now classic position of the causal coupling of an agent with an artefact. This approach needs to overcome the objection from cognitive outsourcing: that we simply get an artefact or tool to do the cognitive processing for us without extending our cognitive abilities. Enculturated cognition, by contrast, does not claim that artefacts themselves extend our cognitive abilities, but rather that the acquired practices for manipulating artefacts and the information stored in them extend our cognitive abilities (by augmenting and transforming them). In the rest of the paper I provide a series of arguments and cases which demonstrate that an enculturated approach works better for both epistemic and cognitive cases of the extension of ability and character. (shrink)

I offer a preliminary defense of the hypothesis of extended emotions (HEE). After discussing some taxonomic considerations, I specify two ways of parsing HEE: the hypothesis of bodily extended emotions (HEBE), and the hypothesis of environmentally extended emotions (HEEE). I argue that, while both HEBE and HEEE are empirically plausible, only HEEE covers instances of genuinely extended emotions. After introducing some further distinctions, I support one form of HEEE by appealing to different streams of empirical research—particularly work on music and (...) emotion regulation. However, I register skepticism about a second and more radical form of HEEE. (shrink)

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 (...) especially the complementarity approach suffers from a similar sort of dilemma as first-wave EC: an inability to justify just what entails the ontological claim of EC over the scaffolding claim of weaker approaches in cognitive science. In this paper I show that two much more promising explanations by which to ground the ontological claim of EC are available, both starting from an exploration of the coordination dynamics between environmental resources and neural resources. On the one hand, I argue that second-wave EC based on cognitive integration, with its focus on bodily manipulations constrained by cognitive norms, is capable of resolving the coupling-constitution fallacy. On the other hand, I argue that the framework of cognitive integration can be supplemented by philosophical accounts of mechanistic explanation, because such accounts enable us to explain the emergence of higher-level cognitive properties due to a system's organization-dependent structure. (shrink)

This paper explores several paths a distinctive third wave of extended cognition might take. In so doing, I address a couple of shortcomings of first- and second-wave extended cognition associated with a tendency to conceive of the properties of internal and external processes as fixed and non-interchangeable. First, in the domain of cognitive transformation, I argue that a problematic tendency of the complementarity model is that it presupposes that socio-cultural resources augment but do not significantly transform the brain’s representational capacities (...) during diachronic development. In this paper I show that there is available a much more dynamical explanation—one taking the processes of the brain’s enculturation into patterned practices as transforming the brain’s representational capacities. Second, in the domain of cognitive assembly, I argue that another problematic tendency is an individualistic notion of cognitive agency, since it overlooks the active contribution of socio-cultural practices in the assembly process of extended cognitive systems. In contrast to an individualistic notion of cognitive agency, I explore the idea that it is possible to decentralize cognitive agency to include socio-cultural practices. (shrink)

Clear statements of both extended and enactive conceptions of cognition can be found in John Dewey and other pragmatists. In this paper I'll argue that we can find resources in the pragmatists to address two ongoing debates: in contrast to recent disagreements between proponents of extended vs enactive cognition, pragmatism supports a more integrative view—an enactive conception of extended cognition, and pragmatist views suggest ways to answer the main objections raised against extended and enactive conceptions—specifically objections focused on constitution versus (...) causal factors, and the mark of the mental. (shrink)

Many of our cognitive capacities are the result of enculturation. Enculturation is the temporally extended transformative acquisition of cognitive practices in the cognitive niche. Cognitive practices are embodied and normatively constrained ways to interact with epistemic resources in the cognitive niche in order to complete a cognitive task. The emerging predictive processing perspective offers new functional principles and conceptual tools to account for the cerebral and extra-cerebral bodily components that give rise to cognitive practices. According to this emerging perspective, many (...) cases of perception, action, and cognition are realized by the on-going minimization of prediction error. Predictive processing provides us with a mechanistic perspective that helps investigate the functional details of the acquisition of cognitive practices. The argument of this paper is that research on enculturation and recent work on predictive processing are complementary. The main reason is that predictive processing operates at a sub-personal level and on a physiological time scale of explanation only. A complete account of enculturated cognition needs to take additional levels and temporal scales of explanation into account. This complementarity assumption leads to a new framework—enculturated predictive processing—that operates on multiple levels and temporal scales for the explanation of the enculturated predictive acquisition of cognitive practices. Enculturated predictive processing is committed to explanatory pluralism. That is, it subscribes to the idea that we need multiple perspectives and explanatory strategies to account for the complexity of enculturation. The upshot is that predictive processing needs to be complemented by additional considerations and conceptual tools to realize its full explanatory potential. (shrink)

This paper attempts to show how the “big data” paradigm is changing science through offering access to millions of database elements in real time and the computational power to rapidly process those data in ways that are not initially obvious. In order to gain a proper understanding of these changes and their implications, we propose applying an extended cognition model to the novel scenario.

Many cognitive scientists have recently championed the thesis that cognition is embodied. In principle, explicating this thesis should be relatively simple. There are, essentially, only two concepts involved: cognition and embodiment. After articulating what will here be meant by ‘embodiment’, this paper will draw attention to cases in which some advocates of embodied cognition apparently do not mean by ‘cognition’ what has typically been meant by ‘cognition’. Some advocates apparently mean to use ‘cognition’ not as a term for one, among (...) many, causes of behavior, but for what has more often been called “behavior.” Some consequences for this proposal are considered. (shrink)

This paper pursues two lines of thought that help characterize the differences between some versions of virtue epistemology and the hypothesis that cognitive processes are realized by brain, body, and world.

In the thesis I offer an analysis of the metaphysical underpinnings of the extended cognition thesis via an examination of standard views of metaphysical building (or, dependence) relations. -/- In summary form, the extended cognition thesis is a view put forth in naturalistic philosophy of mind stating that the physical basis of cognitive processes and cognitive processing may, in the right circumstances, be distributed across neural, bodily, and environmental vehicles. As such, the extended cognition thesis breaks substantially with the still (...) widely held view in cognitive science and philosophy of mind, namely that cognitive processes and cognitive processing take place within the skin-and-skull of individual organisms. The standard view of metaphysical building relations can be expressed as the conjunction of two theses. First, that a metaphysical building relation – such as composition, constitution, realization, supervenience or emergence – is a relation of ontological dependence, because if a metaphysical building relation holds between X (or the Xs) and Y, then it is in virtue of X (or the Xs) that Y exists. Second, metaphysical building relations are synchronic (durationless) relations of ontological dependence. In the thesis, I propose an alternative diachronic framework by which to extend the standard synchronic accounts of metaphysical dependence relations, and by which to reformulate the metaphysical foundation of the extended cognition thesis. The project fills an important gap between analytical metaphysics (in particular, the metaphysics of dependence relations) and naturalistic philosophy of mind (especially the extended cognition thesis). To my knowledge there has been no attempt to establish a robust diachronic account of metaphysical building (or, dependence) relations such as, e.g., composition and constitution. However, this is precisely what I argue is required to properly advance and ground the metaphysics of extended cognition. Ultimately, my aim of reformulating the metaphysics of extended cognition consists in taking several steps toward a third-wave of extended cognition. (shrink)

Technological artefacts have, in recent years, invited increasingly intimate ways of interaction. But surprisingly little attention has been devoted to how such interactions, like with wearable devices or household robots, shape our minds, cognitive capacities, and moral character. In this thesis, I develop an embodied, enactive account of mind--technology interaction that takes the reciprocal influence of artefacts on minds seriously. First, I examine how recent developments in philosophy of technology can inform the phenomenology of mind--technology interaction as seen through an (...) enactivist lens. Second, I show how an enactive account of remembering can improve operationalizations of the memory palace mnemonic through virtual reality devices. Third, I draw on virtue ethics to argue that an enactivist approach allows us to better grasp the morally shaping aspects of artefacts by looking at social robots. Fourth, I fend off an underlying metaphysical concern about enactivism by arguing that an embodied, enactive account is compatible with the multiple realization of cognitive processes. This principle is often seen as a crucial test favouring accounts such as extended functionalism over enactivism and I argue that some forms of enactivism pass this test as well. Finally, I conclude by considering what the future relationship between enactivism and functionalism may have in store for the study of mind--technology interaction. (shrink)

La plupart des auteur-es ayant abordé le problème de l'extension du cognitif, tel qu'il a émergé des débats autour de la thèse de l'esprit étendu, ont supposé que cette extension devait prendre la forme d'un espace régulier, qui peut être ceint par des frontières. Cependant, la littérature en question ne traite pas explicitement de cette supposition, de sorte que, malgré son influence, il n'y a pas d'évaluation de sa véracité ou de sa légitimité. Dans ce mémoire, cette hypothèse est remise (...) en question, et nous prenons sa contrepartie pour hypothèse de recherche, à savoir que, malgré l'assurance des auteur-es qui l'épousent, il est tout à fait légitime d'explorer des propositions de caractérisation du cognitif qui aboutissent à d'autres formes d'extension. Pour démontrer notre hypothèse (H1), nous posons deux autres hypothèses : (H2) les auteur-es qui épousent la supposition selon laquelle l'esprit doit s'étendre sur un espace ceint par des frontières le font sur la base de l'intuition individualiste, et (H3) l'intuition individualiste, malgré certaines apparences, ne permet pas de justifier cette supposition. Nous démontrons H2 à l'aide d'une analyse de texte faite sur le corpus des auteur-es ayant abordé la question de l'extension du cognitif dans la foulée des débats sur l'esprit étendu, et nous montrons que la littérature en sciences cognitives et en philosophie de l'esprit nous donne des raisons de croire que H3 est vraie. Ensemble, H2 et H3 justifient H1. (shrink)

It is becoming ever more accepted that investigations of mind span the brain, body, and environment. To broaden the scope of what is relevant in such investigations is to increase the amount of data scientists must reckon with. Thus, a major challenge facing scientists who study the mind is how to make big data intelligible both within and between fields. One way to face this challenge is to structure the data within a framework and to make it intelligible by means (...) of a common theory. Radical embodied cognitive neuroscience can function as such a framework, with dynamical systems theory as its methodology, and self-organized criticality as its theory. (shrink)