The Extended Mind

1. Introduction: The Extended Mind in Focus

One of the most dangerous ideas for a philosopher is, oddly enough, that we think with or in our heads. The idea of thinking as a process in the head, in a completely enclosed space, gives him something occult. —Wittgenstein, Zettel In 1998, Analysis published an essay by Andy Clark and David Chalmers1 which has excited vigorous debate about the nature and study of mind and cognition. This volume presents the best critical and reflective responses to the bold vision of mind and cognition set out in that essay. Before turning to the details of this debate, I want to briefly summarize the main proposals and arguments as laid out in the 1998 essay and highlight the main features that are criticized or developed by the essays in this volume. In this way we will be in a better position to understand the focus of the arguments and developments to be found in the essays presented here. 1 Active Externalism The extended mind begins with the question “where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?” In answer to this question, C&C present an active externalism, which should be distinguished from the more traditional meaning externalism familiar from the writings of Putnam (1975) and Burge (1986). Active externalism is distinguished from traditional forms of externalism because it concerns the active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes (Clark and Chalmers 1998, this volume, p. 27). This statement of active externalism is ambiguous between two interpretations , and we must be careful about which is implied. First, there is a rather trivial reading of active externalism, where some causally active 1 Introduction: The Extended Mind in Focus Richard Menary 2 R. Menary features of the environment influence cognitive processing in the brain. Second, there is the more robustly externalist reading, where some cognitive processing is constituted by active features of the environment. For example, C&C define an epistemic action as altering “the world so as to aid and augment cognitive processes such as recognition and search” (this volume, p. 28). I doubt that internalists will have any problem with actions that aid cognitive processes, just so long as those actions themselves are not constitutive of cognitive processes. However, C&C explicitly endorse the constitutive version of active externalism: “In these cases, the human organism is linked with an external entity in a two-way interaction, creating a coupled system that can be seen as a cognitive system in its own right” (p. 29). The coupled system constitutes a cognitive system. It is not simply that the external features, to which the organism is interactively linked, have a causal influence on the cognitive processing of the organism; rather, the interactive link is the cognitive processing. Therefore, active externalism is a constitutive thesis, not a merely causal one, as encapsulated by the slogan “cognitive processes ain’t (all) in the head” (p. 29). We should be aware that active externalism as a robustly constitutive thesis has been challenged by critics (Adams and Aizawa, this volume; Rupert 2004, this volume), who are inclined to think that the less robust causal version of the thesis is all that we are likely to get. I shall outline the reasons for this below. Before turning to the nature of coupling we should attempt to understand the difference between active externalism and passive forms of externalism. When I believe that water is wet and my twin believes that twin water is wet, the external features responsible for the difference in our beliefs are distal and historical , at the end of a lengthy causal chain. Features of the present are not relevant: if I happen to be surrounded by XYZ right now (maybe I have teleported to twin earth), my beliefs still concern standard water, because of my history. In these cases, the relevant external features are passive. Because of their distal nature, they play no role in driving the cognitive processes in the here-and-now. This is reflected by the fact that the actions performed by me and my twin are physically indistinguishable , despite our external differences. (C&C, p. 29) Active externalism is to be distinguished from an externalism where the contents of beliefs are dependent on my history. The external features are distal, not having a synchronic effect on the organism. This opens up an important question about the role of content in extended cognitive processes , a question addressed in the essays by Adams and Aizawa and [3.19.56.45] Project MUSE...