The Limits of The Extended Mind and How to Transcend Them

B015222

MSc Mind, Language and Embodied Cognition

The University of Edinburgh

2013

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1- The Extended Mind

The hypothesis of Extended Mind has been defended in different versions by philosophers like

Robert Wilson (1994), Richard Menary (2007, 2010), Mark Rowlands (2009) Merlin Donald

(1991), Edwin Hutchins in the form of distributed socio-cultural systems (1995), Clark & Chalmers

(1998), John Sutton (2002, 2008, 2010) and John Haugeland (1998) among others. What all these

philosophers have in common is the way they agree that human cognition is essentially anchored on

the props, artefacts and of environmental resources that humans design and integrate in their

cognitive life. Perhaps his most notorious proponent has been Andy Clark (1998, 2001, 2003, 2008,

2008) whose version of Extended Mind has attracted the widest attention among philosophers and

cognitive scientists. Thus, this is the version of Extended Mind that I am going to discuss. To

distinguish it from Extended Mind as a general theory that proposes that cognitive processes and

states extend beyond the bodily boundaries I am going to use EM to refer to Clarks version and

Extended Mind or cognitive extension when I want to refer to the general version of the thesis

that cognitive processes and states extend beyond the body defended by the heterogenous group of

philosophers mentioned above. The singularities of Clarks version of Extended Mind will become

clear in the first sections of the essay.

Clarks EM in a nutshell can be defined along these lines: in some cases individuals are so

dependent of external apparatus, tools and props for their cognitive economy and stability that we

can treat those as forming a coupled cognitive system with the organism. In these cases the mental

states of the agent as beliefs and/or cognitive capacities as perception (think about your lenses or

hearing aids) supervene not only on the organism but also on the external devices and props

integrated into the individual cognitive economy by the right kind of coupling. Clark & Chalmers

claimed that not only mental states and processes but also individuals minds, agency, is extended in

those cases (1998, 23). On the other side consciousness still supervenes only on the body due to its

dependence on high-bandwidth connections which are unlikely to be found between internal and

external components (Clark 2009).

EM has three main ontological commitments. Firstly it embraces functionalism as the correct theory

of mind. Second, it employs two theoretical devices as its methodology for determining whether

some external part is cognitive or not and under what conditions EM applies. The first

methodology, dubbed the Parity Principle (henceforth referred to as PP) motivates externalism and

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delimits what parts of the world will count as cognitive. The second, the Glue and Trust four

criteria (henceforth referred to as 4C).

There are two main goals in this essay; one modest and the other more ambitious. The modest aim

is to analyze the commitments of EM and delimit its scope for a range of phenomena. In order to

achieve this that I will discuss PP and 4C. As will becomes clear once this is done EM limits itself

in the range of extended cognition to the model of an individual coupled with some external

device/s in a way that it/they become integrated in her cognitive economy to the point of becoming

a coupled system. For this coupled system to be formed ownership is a necessary condition

(Rowlands 2009). Thus, EM is suspiciously silent on cases of cultural and social cognition where

the requirement of individual ownership is rarely met. Some philosophers have already noticed this

important gap in EM (Hutchins 2010, Gallagher & Crisafi 2009, Sterelny 2010, Barnier et al. 2008).

My contribution to this paper will be to separate those parts of EM that could be preserved from

those that needs to be discarded.

The ambitious, although promissory and tentative, aim of the essay will address the worry about the

mark of the cognitive. Discussing the critiques of EM Rowlands reduced all of them to the

problem of the mark of the cognitive (2009, 2). But even for the second wave of EM 1 according

to Ramsey the problem is still pressing and unresolved (2010). My suggestion here will be to

defend the classic minimal definition of cognition as problem-solving activities which, in my view,

underlie much of cognitive science. The way to connect these two aims in the essay will by

noticing that EM, being a natural continuation of functionalism for the mental needs, recognizes and

employs the functional characterization of socio-cultural systems above the organismic level where

naturally EM has operated so far. Once EM has broken the functional cocoon, the individualistic

and internal model of cognition, on which EM has relied through PP and 4C, cannot be anymore the

sole model of Extended Cognition.

2- EM and Functionalism

Clark has endorsed functionalism as the metaphysics behind EM. In its first version known as

Machine Functionalism (Putnam, 1967) identifies the percepts of the organism with inputs in a

Turing machine, behavior as outputs in that machine, and mental states in that organism as

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1 The distinction between a first wave within EM centered around arguments from parity ( la PP) and a second wave around arguments from complementarity of internal and external roles is clearly explained in Sutton 2010.

machines states that are connected inferentially among them and cause outputs. The whole system

operates according to algorithms so that for a given input it should be possible to predict the chain

of mental states that it will follow and its outputs. In the model of a Turing machine any possible

combinations of states of that cognitive system can be computed by a given Turing machine.

Despite it being originally defined as a deterministic automaton, Putnam (1967) already admitted

that cognition is more likely to work by inductive inferences. Clark (2013) has also recently

embraced an inductive-reasoning model for cognition in the form of bayesian inferences. In any

case, the exact form of computation performed by a cognitive system is still debated and is

irrelevant for the purposes of this essay, as I will be employing only the highly abstracted functional

vocabulary of the common-sense version that EM endorses.

This common-sense version, also known as analytical functionalism (Braddon-Mitchel & Jackson

2007, Lewis 1970) is the one that Clark (2008, 96-97) advocates for EM. According to Common-

sense Functionalism, a cognitive system possesses the same tripartite structure of Machine

Functionalism as mentioned above: inputs, mental states and outputs. The originality is that the

mental states are whatever plays the functional or causal role for the organism. For example, pain is

analyzed by the homeostatic role which it plays in the organism (Braddon-Mitchel & Jackson 2007,

52-53). As I will argue in section 7, this characterization of a system, process or state in terms of

functional role is ubiquitous in folk, scientific and philosophical descriptions for biological forms,

all kinds of human-made objects and specially relevant for the purposes of this essay at the level of

socio-cultural systems. Thus it would be unwise for EM not to use it to recognize new functions

above the putative level of description for EM, the personal level.

Another core element of functionalism as a theory in any of its versions is what it has been know as

multiple realizability: the property which a mental state possesses of being implemented in different

materials. This feature of functionalism, more than any other, points to the fact that functionalism

can be happily married to EM. Indeed, Sprevak (2009) has argued that functionalism implies EM. If

mental states are identified with the functional roles which they play for the cognitive system,

instead of with the physical process, then we should grant that any material is, in principle, able to

implement a given mental state. Therefore, there is no reason to restrict the material vehicles of

mental states to biological inner matter. External props and devices seems equally to be candidates

to act as realizers of functional/mental states as much as we rely on them and manipulate external

representations by activities such as writing, drawing and labeling.

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However, by being functionalist, EM has to count as cognitive not only in terms of the non-

biological external human resources by which we live but also in terms of other earthling species

and even alien and other fictional beings, in case they implement the right functional profile. As

Sprevak (2009) has argued, being EM, deeply functionalist EM is in fact committed to a version of

cognitive extension that is much more liberal than what Clark is prepared to admit. This was in fact

the classic critique of functionalism by Block (1978) under what was called the problem of the

inputs and outputs. His conclusion by that time was overly pessimistic towards functionalism:

The question is: is there a description of inputs and outputs specific enough to avoid liberalism, yet

general enough to avoid chauvinism? I doubt that there is.(1978, 51). As I will argue in section 5, I

think we have reasons to be optimistic about functionalism. Although for that we may need to get

rid of PP by restricting the methodology to actual cases and to get rid of 4C if we are going to

expand our notion of cognition from cases of individual ownership to the socio-cultural realm.

Having explained the main ontological commitment of EM, functionalism, I will introduce in the

next two sections the two methodological principles of EM. In the next section I will briefly

mentioned 4C to return to the issue of how it excludes social phenomena by the end of the essay. In

between I will comment on PP and how functionalism may motivate a methodology that will

overcome the difficulties of PP.

3. The Glue and Trust four criteria for an extended cognitive system

The 4C address the worry of availability and portability of those external devices; they, as Otto's

notebook seems prone to be plugged and unplugged with ease and so they seem available for the

agent only temporarily. 4C needs to be introduced into EM to secure the fact that the external parts

of cognitions needs to be coupled to the agent in a reliable way (Clark & Chalmers 1998, ). 4C are

these:

1. That the resource will be reliably available and typically invoked. (Otto always carries the

notebook and wont answer that he doesnt know until after he has consulted it).

2. That any information thus retrieved be more or less automatically endorsed. It should not usually

be subject to critical scrutiny (e.g., unlike the opinions of other people). It should be deemed about

as trustworthy as something retrieved clearly from biological memory.

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3. That information contained in the resource should be easily accessible as and when required.

4. That the information in the notebook has been consciously endorsed at some point in the past and

indeed is there as a consequence of this endorsement. (Clark 2008, 79).

I will not stop here to analyse 4C; I will do so before the end of the essay. All I want to bring into

attention is how the 4C restrict the range of those external apparatus and processes to only those

that become deeply integrated into individual cognitive stability. We should now start the discussion

about EM with what has been the most controversial principle of EM: the Parity Principle (PP).

4. The Parity Principle: Internalist Methodologies for Externalist Ontologies

PP has been at the core of most, if not all, debates around EM. According to John Sutton, it is PP

which gives EM its immediate metaphysical bite, enthusing sympathizers and infuriating critics

(2010, 299). PP was introduced within the first paper by Clark & Chalmers (1998) about EM as a

methodological principle to distinguish between the external parts and processes that will count as

cognitive from those which are not. In this regard, PP serves the same methodological purpose as

4C: to restrict the apparent over multiplication of cases of EM to only those cases in which there is

a deep integration of those external apparatus into the individual cognitive economy. This is what

PP and 4C have in common. PP distinguishes itself from 4C in being a subjunctive claim. PPs

explicit formulation is this:

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. (Clark & Chalmers 1998, 8. The italics have been used in the

original).

EM has been accused of being committed by PP to accepting a parity of contributions between

internal and external processes (Adams & Aizawa, 2001, 2008, 2010; Gallagher & Crisafi, 2009;

Rupert 2004; Sutton, 2010). Rupert (2004) Adams & Aizawa (2001, 2008, 2010) first criticized EM

and PP by showing how a series of relevant differences between internal and external memory raise

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doubts about the parity of treatment between the external and the internal that PP seems to motivate.

Clark has defended EM from those criticisms that EM needs any fine-grained equivalence between

internal and external processes to motivate externalism (2008, 96). All that EM needs is enough

coarse-grained functional similarity so that a counterfactual case can be constructed via PP to

motivate cognitive extension. This counterfactual defense of PP has been argued in Clark (2007,

114) and Clark and Kirverstein (2009, 3). The argument in short amounts to this: EM ontology

recognizes the idiosyncrasy of external roles by accepting them as complementary, rather than

equivalent to internal. EM therefore is not asking for parity of causal contribution between internal

and external machinery. The purpose of PP was rather to engage in our rough sense of cognition

without the pervasive distractions of skin and skull (Clark, 2008, 114). Kiverstein and Farina have

argued that critics have often mistaken PP for a claim about actual cases; PP is a counterfactual

claim (Farina & Kiverstein, 2009, 9). This possible world, though experimental, has been always a

commitment of functionalism needed to avoid chauvinism about mental states: human individuals,

or even Martians, may have the same functionally relevant mental states despite their different

material organization.

However, as we saw above, PP clearly states that for some external part of the world to count as

cognitive it has to fit into our intuitions of what we accept to be internal cognition. According to Di

Paolo (2009, 9-10), what EM needs (but it does not offer) is an operational, location-neutral,

definition of cognition, which may be used subsequently to determine location. This argument is

strong because, if EM could offer a location-neutral account of cognition, it could eventually

employ it to locate the material vehicles of cognition. If such a criterion could be defined, then EM

would not need an internalist criterion as PP. According to Di Paolo (2009: 10-11), instead, EM

offers the PP principle as the only metaphysical criteria for counting some part of the world as

cognitive. EM deals firstly with the boundaries of cognition through a method, the PP, which is

internalist and then asks to count that part of the world as a proper part of cognition if it elicits

internalist intuitions.

PP, in this way, according to Di Paolo induces a kind of paranoia in EM theorists; they aim to break

traditional internalist boundaries of cognition by relying in the first place on internalist intuitions

(2009, 11). Therefore whereas EM ontology is clearly externalist its methodology, the PP, is

however still internalist.

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One may question at this point why employing an internalist methodology for Extended Mind is

per se a mistaken strategy. One might think that casting internalistic notions to study the assorted

coalition of biological and external resources that coalesce into a persons individual cognitive

economies is precisely the right model and methodology for cases of cognitive extension. In cases

where a person externalizes a previously held internal belief by encoding it in representational

format in notebook, the internalist methodology seems the right one. PP will work successfully here

by internalizing in our counterfactual imagined scenario what happens to be in our actual case an

example of externalization as an previous internal mental state; in this case, a belief. For these cases

there seems to be no problem in using our putative internalist intuitions. Indeed EM and PP has

relied mostly in these kind of cases, that I will call prosthetic, to build the metaphysical tenets of

EM. It is worth recalling the famous case of Otto by which Clark and Chalmers firstly introduced

EM (1998, 17). In that case, Otto had to rely on his notebook as his external memory due to its

degraded biological memory. Once the new coupled system is presented, namely Otto and his

reliable notebook, EM needs another case that needs to be functionally equivalent where the

external function is however performed internally. In the Otto case, it was Inga who still relied on

his biological memory. In the case of PP, it needs to be a counterfactual scenario where we imagine

Otto storing the same information internally.

The crucial problem for this model of prosthetic cognitive extension is that it seems enormously

restricted. Most cases of human problem-solving activities are done in the socio-cultural arena

where tools, props, artifacts, human groups, and coalitions of humans of all kinds give rise to new

functionalities that have no parallel in the model of individual cognition on which PP relies.

Hutchins (2010), Sutton (2010), Sterelny (2010), Gallagher and Crisafi (2010), Gallagher (2013)

and even Clark (2008: 68) have all pointed to this incapacity of EM through PP to subsume socio-

cultural cognition. It is worth thinking about many of the cognitive tasks which we perform in

which tools and all kinds of external machinery form an essential part of the task; i.e without which

the task cannot be performed at all. For example, these might include playing an instrument, writing

a book, plotting a chart on a computer, or searching on Google. For those cases it would be hardly

intelligible to imagine, a la PP, how it would be to perform those cognitive processes entirely in the

head. Therefore, the utility of an internalist counterfactual thought experiment like PP is pretty

restricted. Kim Sterelny has summarized nicely the core of this critique saying that Extended

minds are more powerful not just because they are bigger, having external as well as internal

resources. They are more powerful through differentiation and the division of labour. (2010, 472).

Then EM applicability seems too limited to cases of prosthetic replacement of faulty biological

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functions for external prostheses, such as hearing aids, glasses and external memory storages for

Alzheimer patients. The crucial point is that, for all the other most common cases in which human

problem-solving involves new conquered socio-cultural functionalities and abilities according to the

EM framework, either they will become non-cognitive processes or they will fall out of EM scope.

Sterelny also offers as alternative the view of cognition as scaffolded (via niche construction see

quote) rather than extended on the grounds that the former case is more general and has a greater

range; it applies to more cases of human cognition both in present and evolutionary time scale,

whereas EM, built around PP and prosthetic cases, will be more restricted (2010, 472).

Another justification for using the counterfactual PP is that it works by engaging with our rough

sense of cognition (Clark, 2008, 114; Clark and Kiverstein, 2009, 3). If it happens that our folk

notions about cognition are mostly internalist, then PP will be an astute strategy for EM to motivate

externalism. Nevertheless it is unclear why we need to elicit our internalist intuitions, if the purpose

of PP was merely to engage in our folk notions about cognition, however it turned out and we

counterfactually located those. It may be the case that our folk notions about cognition are not

internalist but involve the peculiar ways by which extended and socio-cultural processes constitute

cognition too. If we are going to rely on a common-sense ontology, we should rather be liberal

about the way those common-sense ontologies turn out to be. Then PP may be a non-starter.

Here we have entered a dilemma for EM. Either by using internalist counterfactual imagined

scenarios like the ones PP proposes, we will then leave out of the EM picture many of our extended

activities that will not fit into our internalist notions, or we do not make use of PP at all and simply

leave the criterion to each of us, the rough sense that EM proponents advocates, whether external

parts and processes count as cognitive or not. I think that the price which EM has to pay to keep PP

is too big and that the second option is a more rewarding alternative.

My proposal for the solution to the dilemma will be to indicate how within a functionalist approach

there is no reason to stop at the individual or even cyborg level. As we will see in the next section

functionalism about cognition is part of a larger canvass of functionalism operating at different

levels of nature. Thus functionalism and EM have already the resources to appeal to intuitions at

different levels of nature without relying only on intuitions at the within-the-head level as PP does.

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5. Multilevel Functions, Ineliminable Functions

Functional analysis in terms of purposes and intentional behavior2 has a long tradition ever since

Aristotle who first introduced teleology, as a final cause, into what was then proto-scientific

discourse to explain the functions found in biology. Today it is involved in the functional analysis

which is widely used in biology, the intentional and teleological vocabulary in philosophy and

social sciences. Since the 1970s, it is also the best theory we have about the mental in philosophy of

mind. However, its prevalence in philosophy of mind must not hide the fact that it belongs to a

larger project of scientific explanations along different levels of nature above and below the

individual level: the putative level of explanation for psychology either at the personal level

(properties that can be ascribed to the individual as a whole) or at the sub-personal level (properties

that can be ascribed to some of its parts, such as the amygdala or the frontal cortex).

A functional analysis works with great success in biology at the level of organelles, cells, organs

and traits. A kidney, for example, is defined by its functions like filtering blood to excrete urine and

regulating blood pressure. In evolutionary psychology, it is also used to explain the prevalence of

certain psychological traits. Those traits have a function/purpose and that function is explained as

selected and preserved by natural selection. Following Aristotles tradition, Kant in the second part

of his Critique of Judgement argued that, in contrast to mechanical explanations in physics, living

beings are teleological systems and therefore teleological explanations are necessary to analyze

them. It is worth noticing that teleological explanations are common and fruitful for both organisms

and artifacts (see Lewens, 2004); and this is precisely the range of phenomena that EM covers in

those cases of cognitive coupling between the two. Later on from the nineteenth century to

twentieth century the analysis of organism as goal-directed systems was applied to social systems

that were then treated functionally as organisms. (see Turner , 29-38). The founding fathers of

sociology, namely Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, also used functional analysis

of social features despite their divergences. In social sciences, the functionalist vocabulary takes the

individual as the minimal unit of study in contrast to cognitive sciences which goes also into sub-

personal processes. Sociology takes the individual level as the basic level and then scales up to the

different roles assumed by individuals and up to the analysis of the daunting array of coalitions of

individuals into religious groups, professions, sport teams, companies, NGOs, local governments,

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2 - An interesting question is if functionalism in its Machine Functionalism version (Putnam 1967) or its common-sense version (Braddon-Mitchel and Jackson 2007) needs teleology. My own view is that it does. Enactivism finds also lacking in functionalism the analysis of the autonomous system as a goal-directed systems. See Di Paolo 2009, Thompson 2007; Nagel 2012 for a defense of natural teleology.

nations, armies and universities. It is worth noticing that, at this socio-cultural level, it is not only

the coalition of individuals that makes possible the function of the group but also the coalition of

individuals in groups plus artifacts, as Hutchins showed in Cognition in the Wild (1995). An army

will not be an army without its weaponry, an industrial company without its machinery or a musical

band without its instruments. Their very identity as systems depends not only on their individuals

playing some role within the given social system but also on their non-biological human-made

artifacts and tools.

In philosophy of mind William Lycan argued in favor of functionalism as a theory that posits a

hierarchy of multiple levels of functional characterization in nature. Once this hierarchy of

functional levels is in place the function/structure (realizer) distinction goes relative: something is

a role as opposed to an occupant, a functional state as opposed to a realizer, or viceversa, only

modulo a designated level of nature (Lycan 1987, 70). And although to my knowledge Lycan has

not discussed how those functional levels go above the organismic level it is frequent to explain

functional roles and what multiple realizability amounts to by using the example of the university in

which different departments or the university as such preserve its functions despite changes in

material conditions. Or by the role someone plays within a company or a university as vice

chancellor (Braddon-Mitchel & Jackson 2007, 45). However surprisingly few people were ready to

accept that the social levels to which all these examples naturally belong could be a proper

cognitive level of analysis. Early in the debates about functionalism Block argued that

functionalism is a wrong theory of the mental because (P1) A given functional profile in terms of

inputs, inferentially promiscuous mental states, and output/behavior can be, and is probably realized

by social entities as nations. Nations receive inputs in terms of goods and information, processes

those in complex ways and produces some outputs in terms of responses, actions, etc. (P2) Having

consciousness is necessary for mentality. (P3) We cannot conceive a nation having consciousness.

(C) Therefore, functionalism fails as a theory of cognition (1978)3. The burden of Blocks argument

lies in consciousness being a necessary condition for having a mind. I am no going to worry in this

essay about the possibility of other forms of organization in nature like the cellular or social having

consciousness despite the tradition of talk about the spirit of a nation. I find the possibility

attractive but probably those forms of consciousness have little in common with consciousness at

the organismic level where we are trapped. Thus, at this point we would better remain agnostic

about the issue. In the case of a man-machine coupled system I do not need to worry about the

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3 However Schwitzgebel has recently bitten the bullet and defended the claim that some social entities such as nations are in fact conscious (2013).

possibility of extended consciousness 4. My claim here is that functionalism in philosophy of mind

has elicited thought experiments about social entities being conscious because functionalism about

mental states indeed forms part of a larger project of functionalism for a variety of levels of nature

below (Lycan 1987) and above the personal level. Functionalism is not primarily a theory of the

mental but an essential explanatory tool for natural phenomena at different levels. Thus it has

greater predictive and explanatory power than explanations at the putative cognitive level: the

human organism, or, in the case of EM, the coupled human system plus its apparatus. .

Also applying functionalist categories, Hutchins (1995) has defended the claim of distributed social

systems as, in the case of a ship which he studied extensively, they are in fact cognitive systems.

He thinks that the Turing machine model of cognition is better suited to study socio-cultural than

internal cognition. This is because when the early theorist of A.I defined cognition in terms of a

symbol manipulation machine they were reflecting on how a mathematician works to solve a

problem by manipulating external symbols on a piece of paper by a mechanical procedure

(Hutchins 1995). Thus they wrongly took what are the features of an extended socio-cultural

cognitive system as the model of how internal cognition works (Hutchins 1995, 362).

However we do not need to go as far as as Hutchins to claim that the functionalist model of

cognition is in fact a model apt only for sociocultural phenomena and so a mistaken model to study

internal cognition (1995, 362). We can maintain that the functionalist model of cognition is a useful

model for both individual cognition and social systems. This is enough for my purposes as I am not

claiming that functionalism is a bad theory for studying phenomena at the personal or sub-personal

level or at the cyborg-like extended system la EM. All I want to notice is that functionalism

operates at socio-cultural levels above the individual level and then even an extended cyborg-like

system by participating and being part of those socio-cultural levels may possess functional

characterizations not subsumed under the internalist model of PP.

To appreciate this point, let us consider an example of an individual, Leo, a journalist, carrying

everywhere and relying transparently on his notebook for making notes about his work as journalist.

His mental states in this way happen to supervene on his notebook as EM predicted. The functional

analysis does not stop at the level of his extended mental states supervening at the internal and

external material substrates. Not only his mental states but the notebook as such plays a role for him

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4 Clark defends EM as a theory about non-conscious processes (2009) and claim that consciousness is probably still all internally realized as it requires high-bandwidth connections that cannot operate along the multiple interfaces that span between body external apparatus.

in that it allows him to record externally and manipulate externally the symbols encoded there.

Some may claim here that his mental states stored externally are truly mental whereas his notebook

plays some function for Leo but that function is not mental. Mentality stops therefore at the level of

states but does not own objects by its functions. Both are different functions; only the one that

characterizes states and beliefs but not objects being cognitive. However, as a proponent of EM,

Rowlands (2009) has argued for individual ownership as the criterion to count external phenomena

as cognitive. Leos notebook as an object, and not only the beliefs there recorded, are owned by

Leo. However, contra Rowlands, Leo, his notebook and their cognitive outputs, for example the

article he writes, together also play a role maybe for his company, a magazine that reuses Leos

cognitive outputs, his article as inputs for the company and integrates the companys functional

economy.

Am I not after all just equating cognition with functions or the property cognitive with

functional? Am I not reaching the absurd conclusion that the three or a mountain in front of my

house is cognitive because it plays some function for me (such as giving me shade when I need

it)? Is the cognitive bloat worry not getting worse by replacing cognitive vocabulary with

functional rather than solving it? The task of answering this question will require more space of

what I have here. However, I suggest that teleological and functional characterization is primitive

and ineliminable whereas the property of cognitive and mental is perhaps eliminable. I believe,

along with Searle (Searle, 2010), that explanations at different levels of nature carried out by

physics, chemistry, biology and sociology do not mean that they correspond to different realities.

Instead naturalist philosophy should embrace a single reality composed of different levels. For the

purposes of this essay, the benefit of buying the functionalism commitment of EM without PP and

4C will allow a more comprehensive picture of human cognition to be formed.

In this section. I have analyzed how the functional characterization of mental states in philosophy of

mind is part of a larger picture of functional explanations at different biological and socio-cultural

levels. For the range of phenomena that EM studies, the cyborg-like coupled system and the artifact,

there are many functional characterizations that fall out of the internalist model of PP, as the role

that the artifact as problem-solving prop plays for the agent and the role that they together plays for

a social agent as a company. Also, as we saw in the previous section on PP, there are many cognitive

tasks that humans achieve with external apparatus, such as making a model of a building, that it

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would be difficult to imagine this counterfactually happening inside the head as PP proposes. Thus,

functionalism at multiple levels is an ineliminable feature of extended systems whereas PP is

probably a dispensable, or, at least, an incomplete methodology.

In the next section we will see how the second methodological principle of EM, the glue and trust

four criteria (4C) has received serious criticism from some philosophers like Kim Sterelny and

Shaun Gallagher. Both conceive cognition essentially as a human problem-solving activity

accomplished at the socio-cultural level. The aim will be to show how 4C is theoretically built to

avoid those phenomena by restricting cognition to the individual, although hybrid, sphere.

6. Cognition is primarily a socio-cultural phenomenon

In this section I will now return to the analysis of 4C that we postponed after the presentation of

EMs three major commitments: functionalism, 4C and PP. The PP works, as we have seen, as a

counterfactual method that triggers our internalist intuitions to retain from them some coarse-

grained functionality to motivate cases of external cognition, in case these external parts show some

level of functional similarity with respect to those putative internal processes. PP does the

methodological job of providing motivation for sceptics of cognitive extension. 4C, on the contrary,

does not try to convert any profane theorist; it limits the reach of EM to the external parts in which

the information contained (e.g. beliefs) within those artefacts so that it satisfies the criteria of being

reliably and typically invoked, automatically endorsed (so not subject to critical scrutiny) and easily

accessible by the agent to which the artefact is coupled (Clark, 2008, 79).

It is not difficult to observe how the 4C are built on the model of traditional internal cognition as

information processing of conscious mental states such as beliefs and desires. As in the externalist

cases considered by EM internal mental states are putatively considered to be available when

necessary, automatically endorsed, easily accessible (unless some traumatic event has blocked or

erased the accessibility), and consciously endorsed at least once retrieval is done. Thus the model

for EM once more as in PP is internal cognition. What 4C introduces with respect to PP is a safety

area that once we have accepted it externalism will avoid EM falling into panpsychism. It answers

in this way to the worry about the cognitive bloat by restricting the possible cases to only those

that integrate into the individual cognitive economy in a transparent and seamless way.

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The key problem with 4C is that leaves out of the EM range most of those cases that are precisely

taken to be the defining features of human cognition: those in which humans learn, manipulate,

reason and act in a socially constituted public arena where public symbols, language, and social

apparatus abound. Kim Sterelny (2010) in one of the finest critiques of EM has attacked 4C on the

grounds that external apparatus normally operates in a public and contested public space where

deception and corruption by other agents are too common to be trusted automatically 5. Trust for

him is a cognitive dimension along which some cases of individual engagement with external

apparatus and epistemic artefacts will fall nearer to the public kind that resists customization

whereas others (for example, my customized PC) will allow the kind of integration into individual

economy that 4C predicts (2010, 473-475). Sutton has also highlighted against 4C and PP this

liberal multidimensional space for doing EM-inspired cognitive science (2010, 303).

In a clarifying defense for the purposes of this essay, Clark has responded to Sterelny that the

lower the vigilance and defenses, the closer we approximate to the functionality of a typical internal

flow. (Clark, 2008, 104). Thus, Sterelnys argument about the contested public space against 4C is

taken by Clark as an argument in favor of EM rather than against EM (ibid.). According to Clark,

only insofar as the external apparatus works in a way that mirrors internal functionality will they

count as cognitive extensions of the individual if coupled in the right way; otherwise it will not

count as a cognitive extension (Clark, 2008, 104). In a similar way, Rowlands (2009, 16) offered

individual ownership as the key criterion which counts something as a proper extended part of the

mind. Rowlands thinks that ownership for internal cognitive processes is not more problematic than

for external and that spatial containment cannot be a criterion for cognitive ownership. The problem

with this strategy is that individual ownership and 4C, although not fully internalistic because they

can be applied to some external apparatus coupled in the right way to the individual, are however

still typically internalistic (Gallagher & Crisafi, 2009, 46). These are not new ideas as they appeared

already in the original paper by Clark & Chalmers In effect, explanatory methods that might once

have been thought appropriate only for the analysis of "inner" processes are now being adapted for

the study of the outer [...] (1998, 13).

However, by retreating to 4C to restrict EM to only those cases where external devices mirror some

rough functionality of internal cognition Rowlands and Clark's response (2010) to Sterelny has

15

5 - Importantly Sterelny soon realizes the external contested space prone to deception and trickery, a Machiavellian model for social relations, is often rare. Reliability is a more pervasive issue (2010, 474). Human societies has also built important social institutions like law, social bonds and emotions based on altruism and reciprocities that tend to deal successfully with cases of social anomie.

missed the more important point of Sterelnys objection to EM: the loss of scope of EM by adopting

4C and PP. As an alternative to EM, Sterelny argues in favour of the scaffolded model of cognition.

Scaffolded means that our cognitive abilities are essentially dependent on environmental

resources. Humans, to a greater extent, and some other animals, to a lesser extent, engineer their

environment by building all kind of artifacts and aids for survival. Scaffolded cognition belongs to

the niche construction hypothesis (Odling-Smee et al., 2003) that considers culture as a second

channel of inheritance in evolution parallel to the genetic inheritance channel. The scaffolded

competing hypothesis of human cognition is supposed to offer same explanatory power as EM for

the cases of cyborg individual cognitive extension by treating those as scaffolded minds instead of

extended but importantly it offers an explanatory framework for all those cases of public cognition

that EM is unable to explain. Therefore, according to Sterelny (2010), niche construction/scaffolded

theory is more general than EM and should be adopted over EM.

One of the main tenets of the niche construction model is that, in contrast to how it is traditionally

conceived, natural selection, organism and species do not adapt to a pre-existent environment.

Instead organisms modify their niche in substantial ways, such as plants that modify the chemical

composition of the soil to benefit from it or beavers that build damns in the rivers to facilitate the

capture of prey. Therefore, the active always-adapting elements of natural selection are not only

organisms and species but also the environments which are progressively modified by those who

inhabit them to improve the material conditions for life. Environments in this way are not the

passive parts of evolution as traditionally conceived by evolutionary theory but participate

reciprocally with organisms in the evolutionary process. In this way, the human world (and,

therefore, human cognition) is constituted not only by their organismic parts, maybe coupled with

their individual extensions as in EM, but also by its cultural niche which is rarely individualistic. It

is worth noting that a similar critique applies to EM. EM presupposes an already given set of human

made devices and apparatus that enter at some point of the development in the cognitive economy

of the individual to be so entangled with her internal functionality as to be considered extensions

beyond the skin of her cognitive states. No explanation is offered of the socially distributed

knowledge required to build those apparatus, or how that knowledge is acquired and transmitted by

the community via that second channel for transmission of information beside genes that is culture.

Nor is it explained how that new cyborg-like coupled system interacts and enters the socio-cultural

world by which he lives.

16

Hutchins (2010) has also targeted this point in his critique of Clark's Supersizing the Mind (2007).

What Clark, in his Principle of Ecological Assembly finds intriguing, is how the agent is able to

recruit on the spot whatever mix of problem-solving resources will yield an acceptable result with

a minimum of effort (Clark, 2008, 13) Clark's solution is to retreat to Organism Center Cognition

that sees the agent as the core controller and recruiter of those external resources. Although he also

recognizes in the book the essential role that social groups and culture play in that process, as

Hutchins noticed (2010, 3), these remarks are often left for the footnotes (see. Clark, 2008, ft.18. ft.

19) and the bulk of the argumentation in the book is built around Organism Centered Cognition.

However, as Hutchins points out, some of the most central examples of Clarks argumentation for

extended cognition are language and gesture which are in the first place cultural practices (2010, 4-

5). As an antidote, Hutchins proposes to enculturate the cyborg model and the culturally elusive

language that Clark employs to hide the fact that extended cognition is essentially a cultural

phenomenon (2010, 9).

Barnier et al. (2008), Gallagher (2013), Gallagher and Crisafi (2008) have also followed a similar line of criticism toward EM and have argued in favor of social and institutional cognition as a level

of analysis that EM is unable to subsume. In the first part of their paper Mental Institutions (2008)

Gallagher and Crisafi have noticed how the features that 4C take to be excluding cognitive

extension are themselves considered essential parts of cognition; properties that makes those very

external processes more cognitive not less. The first criterion, availability, should not worry EM

theorist. Just because we use a machine to perform a calculation only once in our life, with the

machine being unavailable for the rest of our life, it does not mean that our cognitive process is not

extended. If we have performed the same cognitive task with the same results as if we were using it

during our whole lifetime, that should also count as a clear case of cognitive extension (Gallagher &

Crisafi, 2008, 46). The second criterion, critical scrutiny, is itself a cognitive process and, in terms

of metacognition, a necessary ingredient of many cognitive processes (ibid.) Just because that

critical cognitive stance happens to be extended by, for example, using some diagrams to reflect on

those symbols as many of the examples of manipulation of external symbols typical of human

cognition, we would not say that those extended processes count as less cognitive. The third

criterion of 4C, ease of access, is also suspicious: some people have extremely poor memory

processes, but we would not claim that they do not engage in cognition as they try to use their

untrustworthy memory (Ibid.). The fourth criterion, conscious endorsement at some point in the

past, is not discussed by Gallagher and Crisafi I suspect because Clark & Chalmers had already

17

expressed some doubts about its inclusion in 4C (1998, 19).

The positive project of Gallagher & Crisafi (2009) and Gallagher (2013) is to vindicate the socio-

cultural level as a legitimate level of cognition. Some socio-cultural systems, such as the legal

system, are indeed cognitive systems. To justify that claim, Gallagher & Crisafi devised a thought

experiment in which a person, Alexis, has to judge a case based on a set of evidence and her own

moral position. We are presented with three different variations of the same problem-solving task:

to reach a decision about a case. In each variation of the thought experiment, the amount of

cognitive workload is increasingly distributed among the legal experts and the legal procedures and

laws that do most of the cognitive work. Alexis adopts therefore a role similar to a judge. The claim

is that all cases count as cognitive, all involve the same amount of cognitive work, the only

difference being that in the later cases the legal judgements are distributed among the many heads

that partake in the process and among non-biological cultural parts as the precedent and laws.

According to Gallagher & Crisafi(1998, 9), the legal system is cognitive because it produces

judgements, it is a problem-solving activity and as Clark & Chalmers criterion for EM if we remove

the external part, in this case the legal institution, the behavioural competence of the system will

drop significantly (Gallagher & Crisafi 2008, 47-48).

It is important to notice that these socio-cultural cognitive/functional systems, such as universities,

companies, a court, families, and nations, work as stable systems. Of course they change throughout

time and history and the life of some of them will span short periods of time as a short-lived

company whereas others as nations or universities can span their existence and identity over

centuries. However, this temporary character of socio-cultural systems should not divert our

attention from the fact that humans have learnt to form stable cultural system that are reliable and

useful enough for us to preserve it. In this regard, the scaffolded metaphor often used to name

these cultural systems is too weak. Literally, a piece of scaffolding in architecture is a temporary

structure placed around a building or infrastructure that it allows to build the permanent internal

structure or building. After the building or refurbishing process is finished the scaffold is dismantled

and the building remains. Cultural systems, such as universities or political parties, are however not

precarious and temporal features of human cognition but carefully preserved structures that society

maintain as essential parts of the survival and life routines of their individuals. The state and its

multiple specialized ramifications are probably the most central and pervasive examples of this.

These socio-cultural systems also share with the organism level cognition organism homeostasis.

18

States and nations regulate and defend themselves from aggression and internal perturbation and

manage to keep a minimum of internal organization that suffices to guarantee their survival as

group.

To summarize this part, we have followed Sterelny (2010) who pointed how EM by 4C is

intrinsically unable to account for cognition in the public arena where resources are open, public

and frequently resists customization and individual ownership. The cases where 4C seems limited

are where deep incorporation into an individual economy is involved. He offers instead the niche

construction alternative that is more general as it explains communal resources and which therefore

should be chosen over the theories of EM. Gallagher & Crisafi (2009) and Gallagher (2013) which

criticized a lack of ease of access and an automatic retrieval which do not make a cognitive process

less cognitive. The cognitive task can take longer to accomplish and may require more difficulty to

access such as a long chess game. More dramatically, critical scrutiny and metacognition makes a

cognitive process more cognitive or at least sometimes a better cognitive strategy, not less

cognitive, if it happens to be extended as in the above example of a chess game. Therefore 4C

seems a mistaken methodology. Gallagher & Crisafi (2009) consider some social institutions, such

as the legal system, to be cognitive in so far as they produce judgements and modify human

behaviour systematically.

There still remains the possibility, which is in favour of EM, that organismic methodologies like PP

and 4C may be the right ones at least for the level where EM naturally belongs: the man-machine

individualistic cyborg level. However, even for this level, we saw in the case of Leo that some

functional characterization escapes from the EM methodology. All these other functionalities and

dimensions that escape from EM analysis belong to the socio-cultural world and analysis that, as

Hutchins (2010) has noticed, are suspiciously absent from Clarks magnus opus (2008).

7. Cognition as a problem-solving human activity

One idea that has underlined this essay is that EM does not need to defend cognition by the

psychological internalist and individualistic notions and categories that have been at the center of

psychology, neurosciences and philosophy of cognition. I am talking about the cognitivist

functional sandwich model of cognition which comprises an individual who receives inputs in the

19

form of percepts, processes those inputs, with those percepts triggering mental states which are built

arguably based on some a priori knowledge about the world, or prior in its most modern bayesian

inferences version. Those mental states are inferentially promiscuous and interact among

themselves producing cognitive output in the form of new mental states or action upon the world.

The individual is also believed to have conscious experiences and constant interaction with the

world although these two features are taken for granted rather than explained by the framework.

Another two necessary features for having a mind is that it needs a boundary (in this case, the skin)

that delimit an outer from a inner. This is taken to be a prerequisite for achieving homeostasis; self-

regulation of the organism. Enactivism has taken this later feature as one of the essential features

for defining cognition. These features were jointly taken to define what is meant by a mind.

Nevertheless I think EM has instead embraced a much more dynamical and process-like view of

cognition (although EM sometimes sways between the two images). Humans, by constantly

renegotiating its cognitive limits and building its own epistemic niches are less prone to be

categorized under the traditional sandwich model of cognition and much better analyzed in terms of

material processes of human problem-solving activities. This will allow to include not only

individuals coupled with its external apparatus but also cultural systems, social systems and the

whole array of coalitions of humans, machines, and institutions as proper parts of cognition.

Cognitive Science as it is traditionally conceived has systematically neglected the socio-cultural

dimension of human intelligence (Prinz 2011; DAndrade, 1995; Hutchins, 1995). This extension of

traditionally conceived cognitive science to include the human world, but not the world tout

court as embodied theorists like to put it sometimes will address the mark of the cognitive and

cognitive bloat worries and can be easily motivated once we defend the minimal notion of

cognition as problem-solving human activity that has underlined much of cognitive science since

the times of Newell & Simon (1972). This focus on human problem-solving routines instead of

minds is explicit in recents critiques of EM (Menary 2009, 42; Gallagher & Crisafi 2009, ft. 1). It

has underlined also a novel disciplines like cultural evolution (Richerson & Boyd 2005) and

cognitive anthropology (Hutchins, 1995). The upshot of these disciplines is that human intelligence

typically arise from the interplay between these two previously disconnected worlds: the

Organism Centered Cognition that Clarks advocates (2008, 139) and the socio-cultural public

domain where emergent phenomena arise that are intrinsically unable to be subsumed under

principles like PP and 4C. This minimal notion does not need to have the features of a mind as

traditionally conceived. As Clark recognizes extended processes may not be conscious (quote),

emotional states are unlikely to externalized (Sterelny 2010, 472). Boundaries and homeostasis

20

probably are putative parts of internal cognition which are unlikely to be found in distributed

processes. For all this we would be better talking of human problem-solving activities instead of

minds.

8. Conclusion

In this essay I have analyzed the three major commitments of EM: functionalism, the PP and 4C.

The conclusion is overtly optimistic towards functionalism whereas it is overly pessimistic

regarding PP and 4C. PP ask us to imagine a counterfactual situation where the contribution of the

external machinery happens instead within-the-head. Therefore it elicits our intuitions about internal

intuitions to motivate externalism. The problems with PP, as Hutchins, Sutton, Gallagher and even

Clark pointed out, is that many of the cognitive engagements with external apparatus seem to resist

being imagined happening entirely in the head. Furthermore, if the purpose of PP was merely to

engage with our rough sense of cognition as Clarks has suggested, it is doubtful that an internalist

methodology is needed at all as many of our intuitions about cognitive extension may turn out to be

hybrid.

Regarding 4C, we noticed how it restricted the cases included in EM to only those where external

information mirrors internal flow by being easily accessible, automatically endorsed and highly

reliable. In a similar criterion, Rowlands (2009) offered individual ownership as the key criterion

for cognitive extension. However, as Sterelny (2010) noticed, most of the cases of human-problem

activities are distinctively social and public and therefore resist individualization and customization.

There seems to be many intermediate cases ranging from deep individual integration to fully public

engagement (Sutton 2010; Sterelny 2010). According to Sterenly, a more encompassing picture of

human cognition is needed and niche construction seems a good candidate. We saw also how

Gallagher and Crisafi (2009) argued that the criteria of 4C for cognitive extension, fast and fluent

automatic endorsement, seems to go against what we take to be optimal cases of human cognition

where a critical stance is needed and a careful and time-consuming process required. The common

core that unites all these objections against PP and 4C is that human cognition is not the solitary

task of some individual coupled with her reliable artifacts but, however, a socio-cultural activity in

which many levels and dimensions of cognitive analysis arise cannot be subsumed under the

internalist model of PP and 4C.

21

On the positive side of the essay, I pointed that functionalism about minds in fact belongs to a wider

tradition of functional and teleological analysis of biological and social levels of organization in

nature. In a natural way, philosophers like Block (1978) realized that a functional description in

terms of inputs, i.e. mental states described by their functional roles and outputs, fitted social

systems as nations. Sociology also used functional vocabulary to characterize all kind of social

institutions and systems. To some, like Block, this fact counts against functionalism being an

adequate theory for the mind. To others, like Lycan (1987) and myself, it supports the theory of

functionalism by showing it as a multi-level theory that can expand the putative levels of cognition

perhaps below and above the organismic level (or cyborg) where EM naturally operates. This may

enrich, rather than impoverish, the EM framework and, as I suggested, make functionalism a more

fundamental level of analysis than that of cognitive. By the end, I briefly pointed towards a vision

of cognition as a problem-solving activity versus the traditional sandwich model of a system

receiving inputs, processing those with mental states and producing behavior. This process-like

vision of cognition underlines a wide range of sub-disciplines within cognitive science as classical

A.I and more recent disciplines that treat cultural phenomena as cognitive and thus expand the

limits of individualistic cognitive science.

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6. Cognition is primarily a socio-cultural phenomenon8. ConclusionReferences