Attacking the Bounds of Cognition

Abstract

Recently internalists have mounted a counter-attack on the attempt to redefine the bounds of cognition. The counter-attack is aimed at a radical project which I call “cognitive integration,” which is the view that internal and external vehicles and processes are integrated into a whole. Cognitive integration can be defended against the internalist counter arguments of Adams and Aizawa (A&A) and Rupert. The disagreement between internalists and integrationists is whether the manipulation of external vehicles constitutes a cognitive process. Integrationists think that they do, typically for reasons to do with the close coordination and causal interplay between internal and external processes. The internalist criticisms of the manipulation thesis fail because they misconstrue the nature of manipulation, ignore the hybrid nature of cognition, and take the manipulation thesis to be dependent upon a weak parity principle.

Keywords:

• Extended Mind
• Cognitive Integration
• Cognitive Process
• Intrinsic Content
• Conventional Content
• The Parity Principle

Acknowledgements

Thanks to John Sutton, Andy Clark, Mark Rowlands, Dan Hutto, Mike Wheeler and Tim Bayne, for various comments and conversations.

Notes

Notes

[1] A general definition of a cognitive task can easily end up being unhelpfully vacuous. If we define the cognitive task as any task for the completion of which cognition is required, then almost every task will be a cognitive one. I think it is more helpful if we think of cognitive tasks as involving the exercise of particular cognitive capacities such as remembering a date, solving a problem, learning to drive, etc. These are tasks where the exercising of cognitive capacities is directly tied to their successful completion.

[2] C&C (1998, p. 8) give a longer version as follows: if, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognizing as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is (so we claim) part of the cognitive process.

[3] Here's a way of invoking a parity principle which does not lead to distortion of the integrationist's aims, suggested to me by Tim Bayne: Otto's actions, perceptions, etc. are, in the relevant ways, as causally coupled to his notebook as Inga's actions, perceptions, etc. are causally coupled to her hippocampus (or whatever). Of course there are causal differences between Otto's situation and Inga's situation, but these differences are not relevant differences.

[4] It is certainly true that the parity principle is prominent in the formulation of the extended mind (Clark & Chalmers, 1998), but I think that Clark relies upon it as an intuition pump rather than as a primary reason for the hypothesis of extended mind.