Extended Mind Hypothesis

Context

John Sutton:

"On the extended mind hypothesis (EM), many of our cognitive states and processes are hybrids, unevenly distributed across biological and nonbiological realms (Clark 1997; Clark and Chalmers 1998). In certain circumstances, things-artifacts, media, or technologies-can have a cognitive life, with histories often as idiosyncratic as those of the embodied brains with which they couple (Sutton 2002a, 2008). The realm of the mental can spread across the physical, social, and cultural environments as well as bodies and brains. My independent aims in this chapter are: first, to describe two compatible but distinct movements or "waves" within the EM literature, arguing for the priority of the second wave (and gesturing briefly toward a third); and, second, to defend and illustrate the interdisciplinary implications of EM as best understood, specifically for historical disciplines, by sketching two case studies.

EM, an offshoot of mainstream functionalist information-processing cognitive science, has been focused in particular on our abilities to hook up with what Merlin Donald calls "exograms" or external symbols, by analogy with the brain's memory traces or "engrams" (Donald 1991, pp. 308-333; 2001, pp. 305-315).2 These abilities allow us to create and support cognitive profiles quite unlike those of creatures restricted to the brain's biological memories or engrams alone. Among other typical features, Donald pOints out that exograms last longer than engrams, have greater capacity, are more easily transmissible across media and context, and can be retrieved and manipulated by a greater variety of means (1991, pp. 315-316): so our skilled use of such crafted aids changes both the locus of memory in general."

(https://philarchive.org/archive/SUTEIA)