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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.

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.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a background to current research in medieval and Renaissance studies on topics related to distributed cognition and to consider how the various chapters in this volume represent, reflect and advance work in this area. The volume brings together 14 chapters by international specialists working in the period between the ninth and the seventeenth century in the fields of law, history, drama, literature, art, music, philosophy, science and medicine. The chapters revitalise our reading of medieval and Renaissance works by bringing to bear recent insights in cognitive science and philosophy of mind on the distributed nature of cognition. Together the chapters make evident the ways in which particular notions and practices of distributed cognition emerged from the particular range of sociocultural and technological contexts that existed during this period. This chapter attempts to put these contributions in their wider research context by examining how such topics have been approached by mainstream scholarship, earlier work in the cognitive sciences and by existing applications of distributed cognition theory. It draws out both more general features of distributed cognition and what was distinctive about medieval and Renaissance insights into (and superstitions about) the cognitive roles of the body and environment. Throughout this chapter, I reference the chapters in this volume that provide further information on topics covered or take forward the issues in question. In the concluding section, I turn to a fuller overview of the chapters themselves

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.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a background to current research in Victorian and modernist studies on topics related to distributed cognition. The first section of this introductory chapter by Peter Garratt reflects on current research, while the second section by Miranda Anderson considers how the various chapters in this volume advance work in this area, and the role and potential of distributed cognition in studies of Victorian culture and modernism.

This chapter compares Robert Hooke’s views on the use of writing as an external memory with contemporary notions of extended and distributed cognition. The aim is not to portray Hooke as a proponent of these views avant la lettre, but to highlight certain interesting structural similarities and differences. Hooke believed that cognition could be externalised through the use of an external ‘repository’. In this case, cognition takes place through the manipulation of written material. This externalisation of memory makes it possible for other people to access, supplement, and organise the same ‘repository’, which allows for a cognitive division of labour. It is further shown how the Royal Society, of which Hooke was a member, is presented by Thomas Sprat as an enterprise aimed precisely at this kind of cognitive division of labour. The chapter concludes with a concrete example of an ‘external repository’ designed by Hooke, analysing the way it puts into practice Hooke’s ideas on individually and socially extended cognition.

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.

Innovations advance into the ‘adjacent possible’, enabled and constrained by the current state of the world, in a way that is unpredictable and not law-entailed. Unpredictability is the hallmark of the idea that innovation processes are contingent and embodied in the interaction between individuals and artefacts in the environment. In this chapter, we explore the cognitive and behavioural factors involved in exaptive innovation processes by using the notion of ‘extended cognition’. Extended cognition builds on the hypothesis that cognitive processes are not limited to the brain but also extend into the physical world as the objects of the environment facilitate, integrate with, and even constitute specific cognitive processes. We argue that exaptive innovations can be better understood by focusing on practicality and procedural knowledge from an extended cognition perspective. Artefact manipulation is not merely pragmatic but also epistemic as it enables specific reasoning processes that lead to the discovery of new uses.

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.