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This chapter focuses on the effort of Adams and Aizawa to refute the arguments presented by Clark and Chalmers regarding the extended mind. Using the famous example of the pencil, Adams and Aizawa show that the extended mind theory falls victim to the “coupling-constitution fallacy,” one often evident in the pervading literature for the extended mind. This fallacy, attributed to Van Gelder and Port (1995), Clark and Chalmers (1998), Haugeland (1998), Dennett (2000), Clark (2001), Gibbs (2001), and Wilson (2004), jumps to the conclusion that the causal coupling of some object or process to some cognitive agent makes it part of the cognitive agent or its cognitive processing ability. Adams and Aizawa assert that extended mind theorists commit this fallacy because they fail to recognize and appreciate “what makes something a cognitive agent.”

This chapter discusses the plausibility of the criticism against the thesis that external factors causally influence cognition and that they are, consequently, partly constitutive of cognition. The discussion should not be taken as implicitly proposing that the opposite theory is true, although the works of Adams and Aizawa suggest that they are defending internalism. This can be attributed to the fact that systems are, by definition, bounded; one must make assumptions about systems in developing cognitive models. This chapter defends the position that metaphysical considerations should play no role in deciding how to model cognition. It further explains how there is no basis for a general fact of the matter about determining what is and what is not a cognitive system.

This chapter aims to clarify the relationship between the extended cognition hypothesis (ExC) and functionalism, and to defend extended functionalism against three of its strongest criticisms. ExC claims that there are conditions under which thinking and thoughts are spatially distributed over the brain, body, and world in such a way that the external factors concerned are rightly accorded cognitive status. It is concerned mainly with the whereabouts of thinking and thoughts that is separate not only from the position adopted by orthodox cognitive science, but also from the position adopted by any embodied-embedded account of mind. Adams and Aizawa have repeatedly emphasized the insufficiency of thoughts being spatially distributed over brain, body, and world solely in the sense that applies when some instance of intelligent behavior is discovered to be causally dependent on the bodily exploitation of certain external props. The chapter concludes with a brief remark on extended functionalism and phenomenal consciousness.

The association of Kokugaku with exceptionalism has been made indirectly, since the link between Kokugaku and Nihonjinron is strong within Japanese studies, and the one between Nihonjinron and exceptionalism is one Americanists have already made. Because the foundation of Tokugawa exceptionalism is firmly rooted with seventeenth-century Confucianism, it might be tempting to argue that Kokugaku represented a more mature stage in the development of exceptionalism, since it signified a turning away from Confucianism. The case of nineteenth-century Mitogaku, however, demonstrates that this was not the case; the influence of Confucianism on Tokugawa exceptionalism lingered until the very end of the Edo period. Mitogaku’s historiographical importance, however, emerges as a result of its linkages to sonnō-jō’i, connections that indicate that the intellectual trajectories of exceptionalism and nativism began to overlap after 1853. The example of Mitogaku demonstrates a paradigmatic association between the exceptionalism and nativism that was likely duplicated in other places, including the United States.

Here the narrative returns to historical development to discuss the role that a movement called ‘Late Mito Thought’ played in the years prior to the Restoration. Here we find a revival of the Neo-Confucian–Shintō amalgam developed by Yamazaki Ansai. The ‘young Turks’ at Mito were highly critical of how the country was being run and argued for a moral revival on Confucian lines in order to effectively counter the threat from Russia and Britain. The most important of these figures was Aizawa Seishisai, whose writings were influential with many young samurai concerned that Japan was heading for disaster. In the end this ideology of total exclusion was not to succeed as the pressure from outside proved too powerful to resist. It was then realized that an opening up of the country controlled by Japan itself was infinitely preferable to the alternative.