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This chapter summarizes the book's arguments against the extended view, as well as the primary conciliatory contentions advanced with regard to the embedded and embodied views. The chapter closes with comments on the positive importance of the embodied and embedded programs, particularly in respect of such philosophical issues as reductionism and naturalized epistemology.

In this chapter, it is assumed that, in order for the debate over extended cognition (and mind) to have substance, there must be a genuine distinction between what is cognitive and what is not. This motivates the search for a mark of the cognitive, a principle demarcating the cognitive. Desiderata for a principle of demarcation are set out. Various principles supportive of the extended view are considered, and it is argued that they fall short of the desiderata or are unsatisfactory on independent grounds. These candidate criteria include causal, metaphysical, and epistemic principles, as well as proposals gleaned from Clark and Chalmers's paper, “The Extended Mind.”

This chapter addresses a realization-based interpretation of the extended approach. On this view, cognitive states are states of an organismically bounded cognitive system, yet may still have realizers—that is, physical implementations—that extend beyond the boundary of the organism. Functionalism in philosophy of mind, as well as the associated idea of a physical realization, is spelled out in detail. It is then argued that the extension-friendly approach to realization is untenable. The relevant view of realization either undermines the examples motivating the extended view or is too liberal to be of use in cognitive science. Difficulty with this view arises largely because standard examples of extended cognitive processing involve interactions with the environment, and during these interactions, the realizers of the cognitive states at issue are distinct from those things with which the cognitive system interacts.

This chapter briefly describes the history leading up to the situated revolution. It then introduces and motivates the three varieties of situated view to be discussed: (a) the extended view, which holds that human cognitive processing literally extends into the environment beyond the boundary of the organism; (b) the embedded view, which asserts that the human cognitive system is bounded by the organism but relies in surprising and extensive ways on interaction with the environment; and (c) the embodied view, according to which the human's nonneural physical body deeply influences cognitive processing. The chapter also sets out the book's naturalistic methodology and explores the way in which this methodology might support conclusions about the human mind and self.

This chapter proposes a systems-based principle of demarcation. A state is cognitive if and only if it is the state of a mechanism that is a component of an integrated cognitive system. Informal and formal descriptions of integration are given. The systems-based approach is claimed to yield a nonextended view in the case of the typical human, and to provide the best explanation of the success of standard experimental methods in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Given the empirical facts, the systems-based view may entail some extended human cognition when applied; nevertheless, this is not likely to be of the sort that causes paradigm shift in the study of core cognitive phenomena. Objections are considered, and replies provided. Throughout, the following reply recurs: insofar as the extended view explains the extant success of cognitive psychology and related disciplines, it does so by recreating the structure of nonextended explanations.

The general introduction, which is replicated across all four volumes, aims to orientate readers unfamiliar with this area of research. It provides an overview of the different approaches within the distributed cognition framework and discussion of the value of a distributed cognitive approach to the humanities. A distributed cognitive approach recognises that cognition is brain, body and world based. Distributed cognition is a methodological approach and a way of understanding the actual nature of cognition. The first section provides an overview of the various competing and sometimes conflicting theories that make up the distributed cognition framework and which are also collectively known as 4E cognition: embodied, embedded, extended and enactive cognition. The second section examines the ways in which humanities topics and methodologies are compatible with, placed in question or revitalised by new insights from philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences on the distributed nature of cognition, and considers what the arts and humanities, in turn, offer to philosophy and cognitive science.

This chapter explores two routes from phenomenology to extended cognition. One appeals directly to the contents of conscious experience, for example, the subject's sense of having an extended body under certain conditions. It is argued that the best account of such results is an error theory, one that appeals to neural representations of body, self, and the environment; the general fallibility of introspective reports is also discussed. The other route rests on a theory of sensory experience, the sensorimotor contingency view. It is argued that the distinctive claim of such a view—concerning the ubiquity of virtual content—is false and thus cannot be used to support an extended view; it is also argued that the systems-based view, and its organismically local application, provides the best explanation of the learning of sensorimotor contingencies.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a background to current research in Enlightenment and Romantic studies on topics related to distributed cognition. The first section of this introductory chapter by George Rousseau reflects on current research in Enlightenment and Romantic studies on topics related to distributed cognition, while the second section by Miranda Anderson considers how the various chapters in this volume advance work in this area. The thought-world of the long eighteenth century involves notions of flux between mind, body and world, mind-life and subject-object structural couplings, sympathetic circulations, mind metamorphoses and manacles, and texts, performances and artefacts as cognitive aids or modes of access to other minds and past phenomenologies.

Defenders of the extendedness of cognition often contrast their view with a representationalist view of cognition. They argue that (a) extended cognition and representational cognition are opposed to each other, and that (b) most of cognition is extended and non-representational. However, as I show in this chapter, these claims, at least as they stand, should not be seen to be plausible. This is so for two reasons. First, using the account of the evolution of cognitive and conative representational decision making laid out in the previous two chapters, I show that there is no reason to think that internal mental representations are in any way a needless cognitive addendum, or that reliance on them is extremely rare. Second, on this basis, I show that there are in fact good reasons to think that a number of organisms will, at least sometimes, rely on decision making mechanisms that are both embedded in the environment and representational. In fact, seeing cognition as representational may be a prerequisite to fully understanding how and why it is sometimes extended.

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.

What would happen if extended cognition (EC) and virtue-responsibilism (VR) were to meet? Are they compatible, or incompatible? Do they have projects in common? Would they, as it were, end their meeting early, or stick around but run out of things to say? Or, would they hit it off? This chapter suggests that VR and EC are not obviously incompatible, and that each might fruitfully contribute to the other. Although there has been an explosion of recent work at the intersection of virtue epistemology and EC, this work has focused almost exclusively on the reliabilist side of virtue epistemology. Little has been said about the intersection of VR and EC. This chapter takes initial steps toward filling that gap.

First, a theoretical background to the volume’s topic, extended epistemology, is provided by a brief outline of its cross-disciplinary theoretical lineage and some key themes. In particular, it is shown how and why the emergence of recent and more egalitarian thinking in the cognitive sciences about the nature of human cognizing and its bounds—viz., the so-called ‘extended cognition’ program, and the related idea of an ‘extended mind’—has important and interesting ramifications in epistemology. Second, an overview is provided of the papers included as chapters in the volume. The sixteen contributions are divided (broadly) into two categories: those that engage with foundational issues to do with extended epistemology, and those that pursue applications of extended epistemology to new areas of research.

This chapter examines how Samuel Taylor Coleridge pictured thinking as a distributed process, using as a case study his devotional handbook Aids to Reflection (1825). Coleridge explicitly framed Aids to Reflection as an assistive apparatus, and depicts ‘reflection’ as both an inner activity and a skilled interaction with a set of external tools. The chapter argues that we might usefully read this aspect of Coleridge’s thought in light of the notion of ‘scaffolding’ in embedded and extended accounts of cognition. It begins with Coleridge’s account of distributed thinking in his early approach to philosophical method, then considers Aids to Reflection’s account of education and mental development, and concludes with Coleridge’s broader treatment of information management systems, in particular with his anxieties about thought’s dependence on material apparatuses. Ultimately, the chapter concludes, Coleridge is an important figure in the history of distributed cognition because he experimented with different ways of understanding the relationships among mind, language and information technology.

Duncan Pritchard (2010) has developed a theory of extended knowledge based on the notion of extended cognition initially developed by Clark and Chalmers (1998). Pritchard’s account gives a central role to the notion of creditability, which requires the following two conditions to be met: (i) beliefs must be attributable to the cognitive ability of the agent; and (ii) the agent must take responsibility for her beliefs. This chapter argues that difficulties arise when this notion of creditability is applied to situations where one’s cognition is extended by a second knowing agent rather than by an artifact, like a notebook or telescope. The chapter illustrates this by applying Pritchard’s account of extended knowledge to collaborating scientists. The beliefs acquired through collaborative research cannot satisfy both of Pritchard’s conditions of creditability. Further, there is evidence that scientists are not prepared to take responsibility for the actions of the scientists with whom they collaborate.

According to one prominent view in contemporary epistemology, the correct application of one’s cognitive abilities in believing truly is necessary and sufficient for a kind of credit that is, in turn, necessary for knowledge. Epistemologists who hold this view typically take the cognitive abilities concerned to be based in states and processes that are spatially located inside the head of the knowing subject. Enter the hypothesis of extended cognition (henceforth ExC). According to ExC, the physical machinery of mind sometimes extends beyond the skull and skin. The present chapter will explore what happens when the credit condition on knowledge is brought into contact with ExC. Via discussions of (a) empirical psychological work on the adaptive character of technologically augmented memory and (b) thought experiments from the extended cognition and extended knowledge literatures, conclusions will be drawn for our understanding of ‘knowledge in the wild’.

This chapter explores the cognitive and epistemic implications of emerging digital technologies from the standpoint of two philosophical positions: active externalism and virtue reliabilism. Emerging digital technologies (especially those associated with the Internet and World Wide Web) are important because they help to highlight issues that are not so easily revealed by the rather mundane and technologically low-grade examples favored by the philosophical community. The present analysis suggests that the general thrust of technology design is largely consistent with the criteria that have been used to evaluate putative cases of cognitive extension. In addition, the present analysis suggests that active externalism and virtue reliabilism are broadly compatible when it comes to the notion of extended knowledge. Despite this, a consideration of both the properties of emerging digital technologies and the requirements for extended knowledge reveals something of an unexpected tension between our prospective status as extended cognizers and extended knowers.

Mainstream epistemology has typically presumed a traditional picture of the metaphysics of mind, whereby cognitive processes (e.g., memory storage and retrieval) play out within the bounds of skull and skin. Contemporary thinking in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science decreasingly favors this simple “intracranial” picture. Likewise, proponents of active externalist approaches to the mind—e.g., the hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC)—have largely proceeded without asking what epistemological ramifications should arise once cognition is understood as criss-crossing between brain and world. This chapter aims to motivate a puzzle that arises once these thought strands are juxtaposed, and highlights a condition of epistemological adequacy that should be accepted by proponents of extended cognition. Once this condition is motivated, the chapter demonstrates how attempts to satisfy it apparently inevitably devolve into a novel epistemic circularity. Eventually, proponents of extended cognition have a novel epistemological puzzle on their hands.

This chapter has two goals: one clarificatory and the other cautionary. The first clarificatory point is to draw attention to the way in which Clark’s conditions of trust and glue have figured into some of the arguments epistemologists have given for the implications of the hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC). The second cautionary point is to provide some new reasons for thinking that the conditions of trust and glue do not provide a plausible account of when cognitive processes extend. Also addressed are externalism, the philosophy of mind, and the work of such thinkers as Palermos, Carter, Kallestrup, and Pritchard.