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The main argument for the Extended Mind (Going forward simply, 'the EM') is presented in Clark and Chalmers’s (1998) article, “The Extended Mind.” There, Clark and Chalmers propose an account of human cognition, for which the boundaries of the human person’s cognitive abilities are able to extend beyond the boundaries of the brain, or brain and body, alone. Clark and Chalmers introduce a defense of the EM by using a thought experiment involving two people, Inga and Otto (p. 12-14). Both Inga and Otto wish to go and see a particular exhibit in an art museum. Inga simply recalls the location of the art museum in a manner understood to be, “a normal case of belief embedded memory” (p. 12). That is to say, Inga retrieves the location through the cognitive process of memory, comes to believe that the art museum is at that particular location, and proceeds to it. Otto, on the other hand, is an Alzheimer’s patient who can only “remember” the location of the art museum by relying on a notebook. To get to the museum, Otto retrieves the location by first referring to the notebook. He then comes to believe that the art museum is at that particular location, and proceeds to it.
Clark and Chalmers state that the only significant difference between these two cases is the instrument (or vehicle) through which Inga and Otto retrieve the information about the location of the art museum. Noting that Otto uses a notebook to form his belief, Clark and Chalmers assert that, “beliefs can be constituted partly by features of the environment, when those features play the right sort of role in driving cognitive processes” (p. 12). Here, under the general taxonomy of memory, the cognitive process that Clark and Chalmers are interested in is the retrieval of explicit (or declarative) semantic memory that satisfies the condition of “knowing that” (Surprenant and Neath, 2009, p. 11). But, the broader implication for episodic memory remains equally applicable as well. Given that Clark and Chalmers hold that the only significant difference between Inga’s and Otto’s belief is Otto’s incorporation of an object external to the human body, e.g. the notebook, they suggest that there are cases in which an external feature (or object) plays a vital and necessary role in not only cueing but also tracing the retrieval of information.
The ‘Inga and Otto’ thought experiment is intended to tug on the strings of the reader’s intuitions in order to highlight two key notions that underpin the EM; namely, ‘the parity principle’ and ‘the coupling relation’. The parity principle asserts external features should be included as a proper part of the cognitive process. As Clark and Chalmers summarize:
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. Cognitive processes ain't (all) in the head! (p. 8).
The parity principle has implications for where to draw the boundary around what constitutes a cognitive process. Specifically, it is contrasted with the view that cognitive processes of a human person operate solely within the confines of the enduring entity that is the human organism, as defined by the physical boundaries of that body or some component contained therein.[1] Such a perspective demarcates the human body, or as Clark (2003) refers to it, “the biological skin-bag” (p. 5), as the boundary of the cognitive system and rejects the idea that any features external to the body can actually constitute part of the process of cognition (as opposed to merely prompting or supporting such processes). This, Clark suggests, is a “bioprejudice,” which is to say that it is, “the prejudice that whatever matters about my mind must depend solely on what goes on…inside the ancient fortress of skin and skull” (2003, p. 5).
In addition to the parity principle, the second notion underpinning the EM is the coupling relation (I will call this ‘relation C’). ‘Relation C’ is a binary relation in which the parity principle holds between the human organism and an external feature and operates as a necessary vehicle in the construction of a cognitive process. Therefore, relation C makes it so the external object plays a causally active role (or a proper part) in constituting an overarching cognitive process. In this way, the external object moves from being merely an influential role, to playing a vehicular role because it play a proper part as the instrument through which a particular cognitive process is obtained. Specifically, the external vehicle should meet the following criteria which Clark (2010) notes should work, “in much the same way as is typically achieved by biological encoding” (p. 84). (1) the external vehicle should be easy to access; (2) the external vehicle should be reliable; and (3) the external vehicle should be poised, as Clark (2010) puts it, for “automatic ‘use’ (deployment would be a better word)” (p. 84).
Suffice to say, not any coupling relation will satisfy relation C, and the right kind of coupling should be in place in order for an external feature to play a proper part of a human cognitive system. While less is known about biological encoding of memory than is often presumed, relation C establishes the right kind of coupling relation by drawing a direct comparison to say, “if we would accept something intuitively as a cognitive process were it to go on ‘inside the head’ then that is the same function criteria, sans the internal component, that should allow features external to the human organism be a proper part to that process.”
References
Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 57(1), 7-19. Retrieved March 3, 2012, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3328150
Clark, A. (2003). Natural-born cyborgs: Minds, technologies, and the future of human intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Clark, A. (2005). Intrinsic Content, Active Memory and the Extended Mind. Analysis, 65(1), 1-11. Retrieved January 11, 2012, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3329327
Clark, A. (2008). Pressing the Flesh: A Tension in the Study of the Embodied, Embedded Mind?*. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 76(1), 37-59. doi: 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2007.00114.x
Clark, A. (2010). Memento's Revenge: The Extended Mind, Extended. In R. Menary (Ed.), The Extended Mind (pp. 43-66). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Surprenant, A. M., & Neath, I. (2007). Principles of memory: Models and perspectives. Hove: Psychology.
[1] This would be inclusive of those perspectives according to which the person is the body, or those who believe that the human person is “contained” in the human body.
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