In this chapter, the embodied consciousness of clubbing and raving is considered through the theory of extended mind, according to which the mind is a distributed system where brain, body, and environment play equal parts. Building on the idea of music as affective atmosphere, a case is made for considering the vibe of a dance party as cognitively, socially, and affectively distributed. The chapter suggests that participating in the vibe affords primary musical consciousness—a kind of pre-reflexive state characterized by affective (...) and bodily knowledge—and speculates about the neural correlates of clubbing and raving by means of an analogy with brain research on psychedelic states. (shrink)

For some, the states and processes involved in the realisation of phenomenal consciousness are not confined to within the organismic boundaries of the experiencing subject. Instead, the sub-personal basis of perceptual experience can, and does, extend beyond the brain and body to implicate environmental elements through one’s interaction with the world. These claims are met by proponents of predictive processing, who propose that perception and imagination should be understood as a product of the same internal mechanisms. On this view, as (...) visually imagining is not considered to be world-involving, it is assumed that world-involvement must not be essential for perception, and thus internalism about the sub-personal basis is true. However, the argument for internalism from the unity of perception and imagination relies for its strength on a questionable conception of the relationship between the two experiential states. I argue that proponents of the predictive approach are guilty of harbouring an implicit commitment to the common kind assumption which does not follow trivially from their framework. That is, the assumption that perception and imagination are of the same fundamental kind of mental event. I will argue that there are plausible alternative ways of conceiving of this relationship without drawing internalist metaphysical conclusions from their psychological theory. Thus, the internalist owes the debate clarification of this relationship and further argumentation to secure their position. (shrink)

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 (...) of planning and calculation. In this paper, we aim to expand the scope of ExM by considering the case for extended affectivity. We begin by clarifying the central commitments of ExM, before investigating its applicability to a range of affective phenomena, both dispositional and occurrent. We argue that proponents of ExM should also accept that the vehicles of emotions, moods, sentiments, temperaments, and character traits can extend beyond skull and skin. (shrink)

Several studies demonstrated that children younger than 3 years of age, who consistently fail the standard verbal false-belief task, can anticipate others’ actions based on their attributed false beliefs. This gave rise to the so-called “Developmental Paradox”. De Bruin and Kästner recently suggested that the Developmental Paradox is best addressed in terms of the relation between coupled and decoupled processes and argued that if enactivism is to be a genuine alternative to classic cognitivism, it should be able to bridge the (...) “cognitive gap”, i.e. to provide us with a convincing account of how low-level sensorimotor practices transform into higher-order representational skills. This paper defends, against De Bruin and Kästner, an enactive response to the Developmental Paradox. I argue that 3-year olds’ failure to verbally report their false-belief understanding does not arise from stronger decoupling demands. Rather, they fail because the elicited response false-belief trials involve representational decoupling tout court and what is more, under pressure. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyse a specific kind of loneliness that can be experienced in the networked life, namely “extended loneliness”. I claim that loneliness—conceived of as stemming from a lack of satisfying relationships to others—can arise from an abundance of connections in the online sphere. Extended loneliness, in these cases, does not result from a lack of connections to other people. On the contrary, it consists in the complex affective experience of both lacking and longing for meaningful relationships while (...) being connected to many people online. The recursive interaction with a digital assistant in a smart flat is my key example for defining the contours of this specific kind of loneliness that emerges when hyperconnectivity becomes pervasive in the user’s daily-life. Drawing on Sherry Turkle’s work and employing the conceptual framework of the extended mind, I analyse the specific characteristics of extended loneliness and explore its phenomenology. (shrink)

Neural organoids are laboratory-generated entities that replicate certain structural and functional features of the human brain. Most neural organoids are disembodied—completely decoupled from sensory input and motor output. As such, questions about their potential capacity for consciousness are exceptionally difficult to answer. While not disputing the need for caution regarding certain neural organoid types, this paper appeals to two broad constraints on any adequate theory of consciousness—the first involving the dependence of consciousness on embodiment; the second involving the dependence of (...) consciousness on representations—to argue that disembodied neural organoids are not plausible candidates for consciousness. (shrink)

Dreams provide a compelling problem for sensorimotor enactivists like Alva Noë: they seem to replicate our perceptual experiences without sensorimotor interaction with distal sensory stimuli. Noë has responded by saying that dreams actually fail to replicate perceptual experiences in virtue of their lack of detail and stability. Noë's opponents have replied by pointing out that some dreams are richly detailed and stable, and that instability and a lack of detail in dreams can anyway be explained in terms of the underlying (...) neural activity. In this paper, I develop how the sensorimotor enactivist should respond: dreams fail to replicate perceptual experiences because they are exhausted by what shows up at a given moment in phenomenal consciousness, while perceptual experiences go beyond this to include everything accessible via sensorimotor exploration. This difference permeates all levels of experience, so that dreams can't even replicate perceptual experiences of simple shapes and colors. Further, unlike detail and stability, there are not obvious neural explanations of this phenomenal difference. (shrink)

I argue that we find the articulation of a problem concerning bodily agency in the early works of the Merleau-Ponty which he explicates as analogous to what he explicitly calls the problem of perception. The problem of perception is the problem of seeing how we can have the object given in person through it perspectival appearances. The problem concerning bodily agency is the problem of seeing how our bodily movements can be the direct manifestation of a person’s intentions in the (...) world. In both cases what, according to Merleau-Ponty, obscures a recognition of the phenomenon in question is a conception of our bodily capacities, i.e. our sensibility and our motility, which reduces these to the workings of mechanisms that are blind to meaning. I argue that both the problem concerning perception and the problem concerning bodily agency can be properly called transcendental. The problem of perception is transcendental because it concerns the very intelligibility of appearances and judgements with empirical content. The problem of bodily agency is transcendental in the sense that it concerns the very intelligibility of our bodily capacity to carry out intentions and by implication the intelligibility of our intentions as such. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship between emotional sharing and the extended mind thesis. We argue that shared emotions are socially extended emotions that involve a specific type of constitutive integration between the participating individuals’ emotional experiences. We start by distinguishing two claims, the Environmentally Extended Emotion Thesis and the Socially Extended Emotion Thesis. We then critically discuss some recent influential proposals about the nature of shared emotions. Finally, in Sect. 3, we motivate two conditions that an account of shared emotions (...) ought to accommodate: Reciprocal Other-awareness and Integration. Consideration of and discussion of relational accounts of joint attention lead us to the proposal that a construal of socially extended emotions in terms of a constitutive integration of the participating individuals’ experiences is more promising than proposals that simply appeal to various forms of social situatedness, embeddedness, or scaffolding. (shrink)

Optimising the 4E revolution in cognitive science arguably requires the rejection of two guiding commitments made by orthodox thinking in the field, namely that the material realisers of cognitive states and processes are located entirely inside the head, and that intelligent thought and action are to be explained in terms of the building and manipulation of content-bearing representations. In other words, the full-strength 4E revolution would be secured only by a position that delivered externalism plus antirepresentationalism. I argue that one (...) view in 4E space—extended functionalism—is appropriately poised to deliver externalism but not antirepresentationalism. By contrast, in the case of a competing 4E view—radical enactivism—even if that view can deliver antirepresentationalism, its pivotal notion of extensiveness falls short of establishing externalism. These conclusions are justified via an examination of, and by responding critically to, certain key arguments offered in support of their view by the radical enactivists. (shrink)

Advocates of extended cognition hold that the physical machinery of mind sometimes extends beyond the skull and skin. In the first part of this paper, I explain why, and more specifically the precise sense in which, consciousness presents such theorists with an extra hurdle to be cleared. The key challenge is posed by phenomenal consciousness, the what‐it's‐like‐ness of experience. I consider two arguments for the claim that the physical machinery of phenomenal consciousness sometimes extends beyond the skull and skin. The (...) first – the argument from sensory substitution – suggests that acceptance of extended phenomenal consciousness should follow from a careful analysis of the phenomenon in which technological augmentation enables one sensory modality, for instance touch, to support the kind of environmental access and interaction ordinarily supported by a different sensory modality, for instance vision. The second argument – the argument from the relational character of experience – suggests that acceptance of extended phenomenal consciousness should follow from a particular conception of conscious experience that is mandated by sensorimotor contingency theory. I conclude that neither argument is decisive. (shrink)

The transparency of perceptual experience has been invoked in support of many views about perception. I argue that it supports a form of enactivism—the view that capacities for perceptual experience and for intentional agency are essentially interdependent. I clarify the perceptual phenomenon at issue, and argue that enactivists should expect to find a parallel instance of transparency in our agentive experience, and that the two forms of transparency are constitutively interdependent. I then argue that i) we do indeed find such (...) parallels: the way in which an action is directed towards its goal through our bodily movements parallels the way in which an experience is directed towards its object through our perceptual sensation, and ii) reflecting on sensorimotor skills shows why the two instances of transparency are constitutively interdependent. Section 4 gives reasons for generalizing beyond the cases considered so far by applying the enactive view to Kohler's landmark studies of perceptual adaptation. The final section clarifies the form of enactivism to which the previous sections point. The view that emerges is one whereby our perceptual and practical skills are interrelated aspects of a single capacity to have one's mind intentionally directed upon the world. The transparency of experience, on this view, is achieved in virtue of our capacities as agents as much as it is given in virtue of our capacities as perceivers. (shrink)

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 (...) in ‘dyadic synchronic interaction’ between infant and caretaker and argues that some ‘socially extended’ cases of cognition cannot be captured with the HEC. Instead, the ‘Hypothesis of Emergent Extended Cognition’ is introduced that complements the HEC and helps in understanding how cognitive properties are sometimes irreducibly emergent, non-programmed properties of coupled social systems. It will be concluded that operating with the HEEC leads to both a more precise grip on the explanandum and to a more robust explanans. (shrink)

This paper offers a novel argument against the phenomenal intentionality thesis (or PIT for short). The argument, which I'll call the extended mind argument against phenomenal intentionality, is centered around two claims: the first asserts that some source intentional states extend into the environment, while the second maintains that no conscious states extend into the environment. If these two claims are correct, then PIT is false, for PIT implies that the extension of source intentionality is predicated upon the extension of (...) phenomenal consciousness. The argument is important because it undermines an increasingly prominent account of the nature of intentionality. PIT has entered the philosophical mainstream and is now a serious contender to naturalistic views of intentionality like the tracking theory and the functional role theory (Loar 1987, 2003; Searle 1990; Strawson 1994; Horgan and Tienson 2002; Pitt 2004; Farkas 2008; Kriegel 2013; Montague 2016; Bordini 2017; Forrest 2017; Mendelovici 2018). The extended mind argument against PIT challenges the popular sentiment that consciousness grounds intentionality. (shrink)

When you and I share an experience, each of us lives through a we-experience. The paper claims that we-experiences have unique phenomenality and structure. First, we-experiences’ phenomenality is characterised by the fact that they feel like ours to their subject. This specific phenomenality is contended to derive from the way these experiences self-represent: a we-experience exemplifies us-ness or togetherness because it self-represents as mine qua ours. Second, living through a we-experience together with somebody else is not to have this experience (...) in parallel with the experience of the other. Rather, the paper argues that a we-experience is partly co-constituted by the experience of the other. After offering an account of the phenomenality and constitution of we-experiences, which traces these two elements back to the subject’s self-understanding as a group member, the paper argues for the claim that an experience’s for-us-ness is committal to this experience being co-constituted by another we-experience. (shrink)

When you and I share an experience, each of us lives through a we-experience. The paper claims that we-experiences have unique phenomenality and structure. First, we-experiences’ phenomenality is characterised by the fact that they feel like ours to their subject. This specific phenomenality is contended to derive from the way these experiences self-represent: a we-experience exemplifies us-ness or togetherness because it self-represents as mine qua ours. Second, living through a we-experience together with somebody else is not to have this experience (...) in parallel with the experience of the other. Rather, the paper argues that a we-experience is partly co-constituted by the experience of the other. After offering an account of the phenomenality and constitution of we-experiences, which traces these two elements back to the subject’s self-understanding as a group member, the paper argues for the claim that an experience’s for-us-ness is committal to this experience being co-constituted by another we-experience. (shrink)

This paper does two things. Firstly, it clarifies the way that phenomenological data is meant to constrain cognitive science according to enactivist thinkers. Secondly, it points to inconsistencies in the ‘Radical Enactivist’ handling of this issue, so as to explicate the commitments that enactivists need to make in order to tackle the explanatory gap. I begin by sketching the basic features of enactivism in sections 1–2, focusing upon enactive accounts of perception. I suggest that enactivist ideas here rely heavily upon (...) the endorsement of a particular explanatory constraint that I call the structural resemblance constraint, according to which the structure of our phenomenology ought to be mirrored in our cognitive science. Sections 3–5 delineate the nature of, and commitment to, SRC amongst enactivists, showing SRC’s warrant and implications. The paper then turns to Hutto and Myin’s handling of SRC in sections 6–7, highlighting irregularities within their programme for Radical Enactivism on this issue. Despite seeming to favour SRC, I argue that Radical Enactivism’s purported compatibility with the narrow supervenience of perceptual experience is in fact inconsistent with SRC, given Hutto and Myin’s phenomenological commitments. I argue that enactivists more broadly ought to resist such a concessionary position if they wish to tackle the explanatory gap, for it is primarily the abidance to SRC that ensures progress is made here. Section 8 then concludes the paper with a series of open questions to enactivists, inviting further justification of the manner in which they apply SRC. (shrink)

Much attention has recently been paid to the idea, which I label ‘External World Acquaintance’ (EWA), that the phenomenal character of perceptual experience is partially constituted by external features. One motivation for EWA which has received relatively little discussion is its alleged ability to help deal with the ‘Explanatory Gap’ (e.g. Fish 2008, 2009, Langsam 2011, Allen 2016). I provide a reformulation of this general line of thought, which makes clearer how and when EWA could help to explain the specific (...) phenomenal nature of visual experience. In particular, I argue that by focusing on the different kinds of perceptual actions that are available in the case of visual spatial vs. colour perception, we get a natural explanation for why we should expect the specific nature of colour phenomenology to remain less readily intelligible than the specific nature of visual spatial phenomenology. (shrink)

The extended mind thesis states that the mind is not brain-bound but extends into the physical world. The philosophical debate around the thesis has mostly focused on extension towards epistemic artefacts, treating the phenomenon as a special capacity of the human organism to recruit external physical resources to solve individual tasks. This paper argues that if the mind extends to artefacts in the pursuit of individual tasks, it extends to other humans in the pursuit of collective tasks. Mind extension to (...) other humans corresponds essentially to the ‘we-mode’ of cognition, the unique power of human minds to be jointly directed at goals, intentions, states of affairs, or values. Because the capacity for collective intentionality holds evolutionary and developmental primacy over human-epistemic artefacts relations, the extended mind should not be seen as a special phenomenon, but as a central aspect of the human condition. The original extended mind thesis carried important implications for how the cognitive sciences should proceed. In a version of the thesis that accommodates collective intentionality, these implications would go far deeper than originally assumed. (shrink)

This article proposes a methodological schema for engaging in a productive discussion of ethical issues regarding human brain organoids, which are three-dimensional cortical neural tissues created using human pluripotent stem cells. Although moral consideration of HBOs significantly involves the possibility that they have consciousness, there is no widely accepted procedure to determine whether HBOs are conscious. Given that this is the case, it has been argued that we should adopt a precautionary principle about consciousness according to which, if we are (...) not certain whether HBOs have consciousness—and where treating HBOs as not having consciousness may cause harm to them—we should proceed as if they do have consciousness. This article emphasizes a methodological advantage of adopting the precautionary principle: it enables us to sidestep the question of whether HBOs have consciousness and, instead, directly address the question of what kinds of conscious experiences HBOs can have, where the what-kind-question is more tractable than the whether-question. By addressing the what-kind-question, we will be able to examine how much moral consideration HBOs deserve. With this in mind, this article confronts the what-kind-question with the assistance of experimental studies of consciousness and suggests an ethical framework which supports restricting the creation and use of HBOs in bioscience. (shrink)

Despite the remarkable progress made in consciousness research during recent decades, there is still no sign of a general agreement about the location of its object. According to internalists, consciousness resides inside the brain. According to externalists, consciousness is partly constituted by elements or aspects of the environment. Internalism comports better with the existence of dreams, hallucinations and sensory imaging. Externalism seems to provide a more promising basis for understanding how we can experience the world and refer to the content (...) of our consciousness. I argue that the framework of structural realism supports internalism and helps to reveal the reasons behind the apparent explanatory success of the externalist approach. More specifically, structural realism supports the view that the structure of our consciousness is always present in our neural processes and only sometimes in an extended system that includes elements of the environment. (shrink)

The mechanistic model depicts scientific explanations as involving the discovery of multi-level, organized components that constitute a target phenomenon. Meanwhile, sensorimotor enactivism purports to offer a scientifically informed account of perceptual experience as a skill-laden interactive relationship, constitutively involving both perceiver and world, rather than as an agent-bound representation of the world. Insofar as sensorimotor enactivism identifies an empirically tractable phenomenon – skillful agent-world interaction – and mechanistic explanation establishes the subpersonal components of this phenomenon, the two approaches allow for (...) a fruitful division of labor in investigating perceptual experience. On closer inspection, however, two challenges arise. First, the “representation challenge” arises because promising attempts to set out implementational details of our sensorimotor interaction with the world implicate cognitive representations, creating tension with sensorimotor enactivism’s nonrepresentational commitments. Second, the “reconstitution challenge” arises when mechanistic explanation not only uncovers the components of some established phenomenon but plays a role in “reconstituting” this phenomenon. This means that, through investigating mechanisms, perceptual experience may be reconceived such that its constituents are wholly organism-bound. We explore both challenges to the compatibility of mechanism and sensorimotor enactivism and examine possible solutions. The result is a clearer understanding of the tensions and opportunities for learning between the frameworks. (shrink)

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 (...) cognitive sciences. First, we outline the background of the debate and discuss different argumentative strategies for ExE. In particular, we distinguish ExE from cognate but more moderate claims about the embodied and situated nature of cognition and emotion. We then dwell upon two dimensions of ExE: emotions extended by material culture and by the social factors. We conclude by defending ExE against some objections and point to desiderata for future research. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between perceiving and imagining on the basis of predictive processing models in neuroscience. Contrary to the received view in philosophy of mind, which holds that perceiving and imagining are essentially distinct, these models depict perceiving and imagining as deeply unified and overlapping. It is argued that there are two mutually exclusive implications of taking perception and imagination to be fundamentally unified. The view defended is what I dub the ecological–enactive view given that it does not (...) succumb to internalism about the mind-world relation, and allows one to keep a version of the received view in play. (shrink)

An exciting theory in neuroscience is that the brain is an organ for prediction error minimization. This theory is rapidly gaining influence and is set to dominate the science of mind and brain in the years to come. PEM has extreme explanatory ambition, and profound philosophical implications. Here, I assume the theory, briefly explain it, and then I argue that PEM implies that the brain is essentially self-evidencing. This means it is imperative to identify an evidentiary boundary between the brain (...) and its environment. This boundary defines the mind-world relation, opens the door to skepticism, and makes the mind transpire as more inferentially secluded and neurocentrically skull-bound than many would nowadays think. Therefore, PEM somewhat deflates contemporary hypotheses that cognition is extended, embodied and enactive; however, it can nevertheless accommodate the kinds of cases that fuel these hypotheses. (shrink)

This article provides an overview and analysis of recent work on the extended self, demonstrating that the boundaries of selves are fluid, shifting across biological, artifactual, and sociocultural structures. First, it distinguishes the notions of minimal self, person, and narrative self. Second, it surveys how philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists argue that embodiment, cognition, emotion, consciousness, and moral character traits can be extended and what that implies for the boundaries of selves. It also reviews and responds to various criticisms and (...) counterarguments against the extended self. The main focus is on the link between the extended mind and extended self, which has received the most attention in recent literature. But accounts of the extended self developed independently of the extended mind are also briefly discussed. This article ends by drawing out some of the conceptual, methodological, and normative implications of the extended self and suggesting some directions for future research. (shrink)

It has been twenty years since Clark and Chalmers published “The Extended Mind.” In the present article I review the development of the extended mind hypothesis across what some proponents have defined as three theoretical “waves.” From first‐wave extended mind theory, based on the parity principle, to second‐wave complementarity, to the third wave, characterized as an uneasy integration of predictive processing and enactivist dynamics, extended mind theorists have faced and solved a number of problems along the way. The fact that (...) the hypothesis continues to spark debate and to generate both new insights and new objections suggests that it continues to play a productive role in contemporary philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This PhD thesis concerns introspective approaches to the study of the mind. Across three standalone papers, I examine the significance of introspective data and advise on appropriate kinds of training for the production of such data. An overview document first introduces major themes, methods and arguments of the thesis. Paper 1 then begins the argumentative work, interrogating the constraining function of introspection in cognitive science. Here, I evaluate “enactivist” claims about the significance of introspection, clarifying central enactivist suggestions to draw (...) out the broader importance of introspection in science and philosophy. Paper 2 then examines the proposed employment of Buddhist meditation practices in the production of rigorous introspective data. I defend such proposals against concerns that meditators yield ungeneralizable data, given the transformative character of these attention-training techniques. I argue that some meditation-trained transformations are actually epistemically-beneficial, undermining popular associations between transformation and “distortion”. Paper 3 then reviews difficulties involved in integrating meditative training into research. I emphasise the importance of specific contextual supports to meditation as critical ingredients of introspective proficiency, showing how difficulties replicating these threaten to limit the scope of meditation’s scientific benefits. I layout methodological responses to this that can maximise meditation’s positive impact going forwards. (shrink)

A recent surge of work on prediction-driven processing models--based on Bayesian inference and representation-heavy models--suggests that the material basis of conscious experience is inferentially secluded and neurocentrically brain bound. This paper develops an alternative account based on the free energy principle. It is argued that the free energy principle provides the right basic tools for understanding the anticipatory dynamics of the brain within a larger brain-body-environment dynamic, viewing the material basis of some conscious experiences as extensive--relational and thoroughly world-involving.

Film and television portrayals of posthuman cyborgs melding biology and technology, simultaneously “animal and machine” abound. Most of us immediately think of iconic characters like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s relentless cyborg assassin in the Terminator series or Peter Weller’s crime-fighting cyborg police officer in Robocop (1987). Or perhaps we recall the many cyborgs populating the Dr. Who, Star Trek, and Star Wars television series and films—including Darth Vader, surely the most famous cinematic cyborg of all time. But lesser-known explorations of cybernetic embodiment (...) have appeared in film and television for many decades. And not all portrayals involve the sort of extreme transformations exemplified by these iconic characters. This chapter considers some of different ways that film and television have explored the transformative relation between embodiment and technology. (shrink)

For 4E cognitive science, minds are embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended. Proponents observe that we regularly ‘offload’ our thinking onto body and world: we use gestures and calculators to augment mathematical reasoning, and smartphones and search engines as memory aids. I argue that music is a beyond-the-head resource that affords offloading. Via this offloading, music scaffolds access to new forms of thought, experience, and behaviour. I focus on music’s capacity to scaffold emotional consciousness, including the self-regulative processes constitutive of emotional (...) consciousness. In developing this idea, I consider the ‘material’ and ‘worldmaking’ character music, and I apply these considerations to two case studies: music as a tool for religious worship, and music as a weapon for torture. (shrink)

In this paper we suggest an understanding of the self within the conceptual framework of situated affectivity, proposing the notion of an affectively extended self and arguing that the construction, diachronic re-shaping and maintenance of the self is mediated first by affective interactions. We initially consider the different variations on the conception of the extended self that have been already proposed in the literature. We then propose our alternative, contextualising it within the current debate on situated affectivity. While the idea (...) that we exploit the external environment in order to manage our affective life is now rather widespread among philosophers, its potential consequences for and connections with the debate on the self remain underexplored. Drawing on James’ intuition of the “material self”, which clearly connects the self and the emotions in agency, and broadly envisioning an extension of the self beyond its organismic boundaries, we propose our pragmatist conception of the self: an affectively extended self that relies on affective artifacts and practices to construct its identity extended beyond skin and skull. (shrink)

The extended mind thesis claims that mental states need not be confined to the brain or even the biological borders of the subject. Philosophers and cognitive scientists have in recent years debated the plausibility of this thesis, growing an immense body of literature. Yet despite its many supporters, there have been relatively few attempts to apply the thesis to religious studies, particularly studies of religious cognition. In this essay, I indicate how various dimensions of religious cognition might be thought of (...) as extended. In particular, I focus on the mutually-supporting relationship between religious cognition and material culture: the many things we use to organize and enact our religious practices and beliefs, from relics and rituals to songs and holy spaces. As we’ll see, taking the extended mind thesis seriously suggests that an investigation of religious material culture is, simultaneously, an investigation of religious cognition. (shrink)