Abstract
Two aspects of cognitive coupling, as brought forward in the Extended Mind Hypothesis, are discussed in this paper: (1) how shall the functional coupling between the organism and some entity in his environment be spelled out in detail? (2) What are the paradigmatic external entities to enter into that coupling? These two related questions are best answered in the light of an aetiological variety of functionalist argument that adds historical depth to the “active externalism” promoted by Clark and Chalmers and helps to counter some of the core criticisms levelled against this view. Under additional reference to conceptual parallels between the Extended Mind Hypothesis and a set of heterodox theories in biology—environmental constructivism, niche construction, developmental systems theory—an argument for the grounding of environmentally extended cognitive traits in evolved biological functions is developed. In a spirit that seeks to integrate extended functionalism with views from cognitive integration and complementarity, it is argued (ad 1) that instances of environmental coupling should be understood as being constitutive to cognitive functions in either of two distinct ways. It is further argued (ad 2) that the historically and systematically prior environmental counterparts in that coupling are features of the natural environment. Language and linguistically imbued artefacts are likely to have descended from more basic relations that have an extension over the environment.
Highlights
In their brief, bold, and controversial manifesto of a thorough, “active” externalism in the philosophy of mind, titled “The Extended Mind”, Clark and Chalmers highlight “the active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes” (1998, p. 7)
Clark and Chalmers argue that there are situations in which “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” (1998, p. 8, emphasis in original)
My guiding questions will be these: firstly, how shall the functional coupling between the organism and some entity in his environment be spelled out in detail? Secondly, what are the paradigmatic external entities to enter into that coupling? In seeking to answer these questions, I will make a suggestion towards sharpening the notion of “extension” that is in play here: the paradigm of cognitive extensions are those features of the environment which play either of two kinds of constitutive role to the function of some cognitive trait, and, in functional-historical terms, these features have been primarily natural rather than artificial
Summary
Bold, and controversial manifesto of a thorough, “active” externalism in the philosophy of mind, titled “The Extended Mind”, Clark and Chalmers highlight “the active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes” (1998, p. 7). In seeking to answer these questions, I will make a suggestion towards sharpening the notion of “extension” that is (or should be) in play here: the paradigm of cognitive extensions are those features of the environment which play either of two kinds of constitutive role to the function of some cognitive trait, and, in functional-historical terms, these features have been primarily natural rather than artificial. This suggestion shall help preventing the notion of cognitive extension from becoming extensionally bloated to the point of vacuousness.. I will discuss two paradigms of cognitive extension in the light of the aetiological variety of functionalist argument developed in the preceding sections (Sect. 6)
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