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The extended cognition thesis: Itssignificance for the philosophy of(cognitive) scienceEric Arnau, Anna Estany, Rafael González del Solar & ThomasSturmPublished online: 12 Sep 2013.
To cite this article: Eric Arnau, Anna Estany, Rafael González del Solar & Thomas Sturm (2014) Theextended cognition thesis: Its significance for the philosophy of (cognitive) science, PhilosophicalPsychology, 27:1, 1-18, DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2013.836081
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Philosophical Psychology, 2014 Vol. 27, No. 1, 1–18, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2013.836081
The extended cognition thesis: Its significance for the philosophy of (cognitive) science
Eric Arnau, Anna Estany, Rafael Gonza lez del Solar, and Thomas Sturm
While the extended cognition (EC) thesis has gained more followers in cognitive science and in the philosophy of mind and knowledge, our main goal is to discuss a different area of significance of the EC thesis: its relation to philosophy of science. In this introduction, we outline two major areas: (I) The role of the thesis for issues in the philosophy of cognitive science, such as: How do notions of EC figure in theories or research programs in cognitive science? Which versions of the EC thesis appear, and with which arguments to support them? (II) The potentials and limits of the EC thesis for topics in general philosophy of science, such as: Can naturalism perhaps be further advanced by means of the more recent EC thesis? Can we understand “big science” or laboratory research better by invoking some version of EC? And can the EC thesis help in overcoming the notorious cognitive/social divide in science studies?
Keywords: Distributed Cognition; Extended Cognition; Philosophy of Cognitive Science; Philosophy of Science
1. Introduction
In recent decades, the extended cognition (EC) thesis has gained more and more followers in cognitive science and in the philosophy of mind and knowledge. The EC thesis denies that each item of cognition must be confined to individual minds or brains, or that it must be explained in such a way. Such claims have provoked many discussions in the philosophy of mind and knowledge, and led to repeated pro-and-
Eric Arnau is a graduate student at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.Anna Estany is a professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.Rafael Gonzalez del Solar is a graduate student at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.Thomas Sturm is a Ramon y Cajal Research Scholar at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.Correspondence to: Thomas Sturm, Department of Philosophy, Autonomous University of Barcelona, 08193Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Valles), Barcelona, Spain. Email: [email protected]
q 2013 Taylor & Francis
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con arguments, e.g., regarding questions such as: What exactly is EC? What does it mean to say that cognition extends beyond the mind/brain system as usually conceived? What, if anything, is the mark of the cognitive? How far from the mind/ brain system does EC extend: just into the body or further out into the natural, social, or technological environment? How is the EC thesis related to functionalism about the mind? And so on.
While picking up on these debates, our main goal in this special issue is to show that the EC thesis is of broader significance; concretely, it is important for specific areas of the philosophy of science. We should not only analyze the concept of cognition or the nature of extended cognitive processes in abstracto, but also consider their importance for less discussed philosophical underpinnings of cognitive science and—even less discussed up to now—its possible applications for general issues in the philosophy of science. Accordingly, two major issues will be addressed in the following contributions:
(i) The EC thesis in the philosophy of cognitive science: How do notions of EC figure in theories or research programs in cognitive science? Which versions of the EC thesis appear, and with which arguments to support them? It is useful here to discuss, as some of the papers in this issue do, the application of notions of EC to specific domains of cognitive science, such as emotions or rationality. However, as will become clear, these discussions are interwoven with general questions as well: Is the EC thesis about certain kinds of cognition or about cognition in general? Also, can—and should—we not, after all, distinguish between cognitive states and processes, which occur inside the head, and resources or aids for cognition (such as paper, pencils, and computers) that are outside the skull? Do the relevant external processes merely play a causal role in cognition, or are they actually constitutive of it? Or is there, beyond these commonly adopted views, room for third, intermediate options—e.g., an externalist, yet non-constitutive reading of the organism’s relationship with the environment, achievable through closer analysis of dimensions of EC (e.g., locational, relational, constituent, and temporal dimensions)? Such options will clearly affect how to understand the cognitive science that uses versions and models of EC.
(ii) The EC thesis applied to the philosophy of science: Naturalistic approaches in the philosophy of science have often used concepts and theories from earlier psychology or cognitive science. Can naturalism perhaps be further advanced by means of the more recent EC thesis? Some papers again deal with specific issues such as: Can we understand “big science” or laboratory research better by invoking some version of EC? And how do new technologies or the Internet— with its widely distributed and at the same time easily accessible systems of information storage and processing—enhance scientific research? Once again, these specific issues are closely related to more general or basic conceptual issues: How, for instance, should we explain central notions of the EC approach, such as
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3 Philosophical Psychology
“scaffolding” or “affordances”? Again, can the EC thesis help in overcoming the notorious cognitive/social divide in science studies, as has been maintained by, e.g., Ronald Giere?
The first five papers in this issue—by Robert Wilson; Edwin Hutchins; Eric Arnau, Saray Ayala and Thomas Sturm; Achim Stephan, Sven Walter, and Wendy Wilutzky; and Lisa Osbeck and Nancy Nersessian—all place the main emphasis on metaphysical and methodological questions about EC, insofar as these help to improve the philosophical understanding of cognitive science. The last three papers—by Adam Toon; Anna Estany and Sergio Martınez; and David Casacuberta and Jordi Vallverdu —focus on the potential and limits of versions of EC for the philosophy of science more generally.
In this introduction, we provide a framework for the individual contributions by outlining first how the more abstract debates over EC can and should be brought into considerations concerning the philosophy of cognitive science (section 2), and then how the EC thesis can be related to previous and current naturalistic approaches in the philosophy of science (section 3). Alongside this, we clarify more carefully how the authors provide answers to their topics. We will also signal divergent viewpoints, and on this basis hope to develop new questions at the intersection of philosophy and cognitive science.
2. Extended Cognition and its Role in Cognitive Science
In order to carve nature at its joints, scientists have to assume certain boundaries for their intended explananda. Drawing upon venerable philosophical and scientific traditions that include, say, Descartes or classical computational cognitive science, cognition has mostly been understood as something that happens within the boundaries of the organism; more specifically, inside the head. Cognitive internalism is both a stance on the ontology of cognition, taking it as something that is located within the organism; and a stance on the scope of cognitive science, demarcating its object of inquiry and thus constraining research and theoretical development (e.g., Adams & Aizawa, 2001, 2008, 2010; Grush, 2003; Rupert, 2004, 2009, 2010;Weiskopf, 2008). Even if an active role of the body in cognitive processing is acknowledged, as it is by proponents of embodied cognition,1 the internalist approach has maintained the picture of cognition as a set of internal structures and mechanisms within the mind or brain. These would of course engage in complex interactions with the environment, but remain ontologically distinct and explanatorily autonomous from the external world.
By some metonymic process, not unusual in the academic literature, the label ‘extended cognition’ has been increasingly—and inappropriately—used to refer loosely to a whole range of positions that oppose the internalist picture of cognition. This affords a minimal, negative characterization of cognitive externalism as the denial of the claim that cognition is bound within the organism. Yet cognitive externalism is a broad church (Kiverstein & Clark, 2009). Within the camp of those who stand against cognitive internalism, we find different strands whose specific theses, motivations,
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commitments, and arguments diverge, and whose ultimate unification or divorce is quite controversial in itself.
First, under the flag of distributed cognition (DC) championed by Hutchins (1995, 2010a, 2010b), it has been claimed that some cognitive achievements, such as navigation of an aircraft, are such that in order to provide an explanation of them, the unit of analysis has to be broadened to include the whole set of coordinated agents and artifacts across which the representation and computations are distributed.
Second, under the flag of extended cognition, several authors have argued that the individual’s cognitive processes (sometimes, at least) spread beyond biological boundaries. That is, the material vehicles that constitute the cognitive system sometimes include non-biological elements. Proposals along these lines have received different labels: the extended mind hypothesis or active externalism (Clark & Chalmers, 1998), vehicle externalism (Hurley, 1998), environmentalism (Rowlands, 1999), locational externalism (Wilson, 2004), cognitive integration (Menary, 2007), and extended functionalism (Wheeler, 2010).
Finally, defenders of enactive cognition or enactivism maintain that cognition is essentially a relational phenomenon that emerges in the interaction between autonomous adaptive systems and their environment. As such, cognition is neither internal nor external, as the idea that it can be individuated and located in space, it is claimed, is the very first mistake when thinking about cognition (DiPaolo, 2009; Thompson & Stapleton, 2010). This makes enactivism more radical than the other challenges internalism faces and distinct from them; and indeed enactivism has lived to fight mostly on its own.
The contrast between distributed, extended, and enactive cognition has evolved in interesting ways, blurring here and sharpening there as everyone’s positions have been refined (Sutton, 2010). To prevent oversimplification and ambiguities that might obscure discussions of this issue, we need to get some grip on key aspects of this development, particularly insofar as the EC thesis is concerned. We will thus highlight the major positions involved, the most prominent arguments for and against them, and important questions that are still open to debate.
The inception of EC is commonly placed in Clark and Chalmers’ well-known (1998) paper. By appeal to parity considerations, there they defend the idea that some mental states—the examples being cognitive states such as beliefs or memories—are realized outside the body:
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 accepting as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is . . . part of the cognitive process. (Clark & Chalmers, 1998, p. 8)
To the extent that we find external elements that are causally coupled with the agent, and those elements play the adequate functional role, they should themselves be considered as cognitive states, or parts thereof. Clark and Chalmers use the following thought experiment. Consider Otto and Inga. Inga learns that there is an interesting exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. She remembers where the museum is, and
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heads off. Poor Otto suffers from Alzheimer’s disease but, fortunately, always takes a notebook with him to store and allow him to recover relevant information, such as the location of MoMA. When he hears of the exhibition, he looks up the information in his notebook and gets on his way as well. Otto’s notebook plays a similar functional role to Inga’s memory and—so Clark and Chalmers conclude—the information contained in the external device should be considered in the same way as any other belief Otto has. Cognition does not have to be in the head.
The parity argument for the EC thesis has prompted numerous objections and responses, of which we point out four here. First, the EC thesis had to appeal to a coarse-grain functionalist level of analysis to accommodate the many differences critics jumped to point out between internal and external processes. Adams and Aizawa (2001, 2008) maintain that alleged cases of extended memories are not memories at all because they do not exhibit crucial features found in biological memory, such as negative transfer together with recency, primacy, and chunking effects. Similarly, Weiskopf argues that “beliefs are, as I will say, normally informationally integrated with, and updated in concert with, other beliefs . . . But most externally located mental states do not share this feature. So, they cannot be beliefs” (Weiskopf, 2008, p. 268). Rupert, again, claims that
the external portions of extended ‘memory’ states (processes) differ so greatly from internal memories (the process of remembering) that they should be treated as distinct kinds; this quells any temptation to argue for HEC [Hypothesis of Extended Cognition] from brute analogy (viz. extended cognitive states are like wholly internal ones; therefore, they are of the same explanatory cognitive kind; therefore there are extended cognitive states). (2004, p. 407; see Clark, 2010 for a reply)
Second, too liberal a criterion would lead to the threat of cognitive bloating. In this vein, Rowlands argues:
If we are willing to allow that the sentences in Otto’s notebook are beliefs, why stop there? Why not the entries in Otto’s telephone directory, of which he also makes frequent use? Why can these not be numbered among Otto’s beliefs? Indeed, why stop even there? Why does Otto not believe everything contained on the Internet, given that he is able to use this in a way akin to the way he uses his notebook? (2009a, p. 638)
Hence, as some proponents of the functionalist parity argument admit, they require the specification of a “theoretically-loaded and locationally-uncommitted account of what counts as cognitive” (Wheeler, 2011, p. 233; see also Walter, 2010). However, to provide such a distinguishing mark of the cognitive without begging the question against either internalism or externalism is a hard task, and the issue is still open (for further discussion see Kaplan, 2012 and Spaulding, 2012).
A third recurrent line of criticism claims that the cognitive externalist confuses the structures and processes that realize cognition with structures and processes that the cognitive system is merely causally connected to (Adams & Aizawa, 2001, 2008). Just because Otto can elicit a belief concerning the location of MoMA by using his notebook, it does not follow that the information in that notebook is itself a belief, or
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part of anyone’s belief system. The charge here is not simply one of confusion; it is clear that what advocates of EC intend to do is precisely to motivate a reinterpretation of what is typically considered as a mere causal connection in stronger terms: ‘constitution’, ‘integration’, etc. Their intended conclusion is that we ought to treat certain extensions as part of the cognitive system instead of just as mere props for internal cognitive systems. But are there good reasons for such a move?
A fourth, and perhaps most persistent and pressing charge against the EC thesis finally leads to its significance for cognitive science. The objection is twofold: as an alternative to the internalist orthodoxy in cognitive science, EC (a) has significant costs and (b) delivers no significant benefits (Rupert, 2004).
As to part (a) of this objection, the main worry is that the heterogeneous motley of elements, structures, and processes involved leaves an unscientific kind that would make cognitive science lose its grip on the intended explanatory target (Adams & Aizawa, 2001, 2008; Rupert, 2004). Sutton compellingly captures the problem (referring to EC as EM, since Clark & Chalmers, 1998 spoke of the “extended mind” thesis):
If—to sample the relevant literature—other people, scrabble tiles, theatre architecture, cocktail glasses, slide-rules, incised sticks, shells, languages, moral norms, knots, codes, maps, diagrams, fingers, monuments, software devices, knots, rituals, rhythms and rhymes, and roads can count as part of the legitimate subject matter of the sciences of mind, isn’t EM obviously absurd? The fear is that EM would leave cognitive science paralyzed, in the same way—and for the same reason—that Tooby and Cosmides mock “mainstream sociocultural anthropology,” in “a situation resembling some nightmarish story Borges might have written, where scientists are condemned by their unexamined assumptions to study the nature of mirrors only by cataloguing and investigating everything that mirrors can reflect” (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992, p. 42). (Sutton, 2010, p. 214)
Critics of EC argue that cognitive science is not likely to find interesting regularities arising from such an incongruous bunch. So we should rather stick to the internal goings-on of the individual, where law-like regularities can warrant explanation (Adams & Aizawa, 2001; Rupert, 2004). But should we? A counter-objection is that it might not be the best policy to judge in advance—or from the infamous armchair— the chances of finding interesting regularities in any domain (Clark, 2010).
The move to extend cognition beyond the brain must yield genuine advances in scientific explanations. This is a reasonable request, but conclusions should not be too hastily drawn; the science of extended thought is, as yet, in its theoretical and empirical infancy. (Menary, 2010a, p. 18)
The first of the contributions to this special issue, by Robert Wilson, accordingly adopts explanatory power at its central theme. Wilson usefully poses ten questions that any defender of the EC thesis needs to answer; and by means of which he also provides an assessment of three appealing kinds of argument in favor of the thesis. Those three argumentative avenues consist of showing that: (i) if one is committed to classical externalism about content (meanings are not in the head), one should also
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subscribe to externalism about cognition; (ii) there are at least some extended cognitive systems; and (iii) EC or some other externalist view fares better than internalist approaches in explaining a number of facts pertaining to cognition. More precisely, this third strategy (the one Wilson favors) is to provide cases of cognitive phenomena “for which individualistic explanations become strained, appeal to general principles that can’t be defended, and shut off avenues for promising research” (Wilson, this issue), while some externalist framework or other provides better explanatory leverage.
While the EC thesis should prove its worth in the arena of scientific research and explanation, one might disagree about how exactly to spell out the idea of EC when it comes to analyzing the philosophical underpinnings of particular research programs or theories in cognitive science. This becomes clear in the contributions by Arnau, Ayala, and Sturm, and by Stephan, Walter, and Wilutzky. Arnau, Ayala, and Sturm assess the benefits of applying the EC thesis to the bounded rationality (BR) program developed by Herbert Simon, Gerd Gigerenzer, and others, which centrally involves the claim that rationality is “ecological” or that reasoning is (and should be) adapted to certain environments. Their paper provides an analysis of BR in terms of EC that moves beyond the allegedly complete and exclusive causal–constitutive divide into which some critics of the EC thesis have pressed the debate. What explains the possibility and fruitfulness of the BR program is an externalist but at the same time non-constitutive construal of such ecological relations. Stephan, Walter, and Wilutzky, in turn, explore the potential benefits of applying the EC framework to emotions on the basis of their claim that the debate about situated cognition should lead to a similar debate about situated affectivity. More precisely, the authors put forth arguments for integration by parity and by complementarity to show that such a debate is justified.
Now to part (b) of the objection developed by Rupert and others. If these critics see no benefit in cognitive externalism it is mainly because they think all its putative cases can be accommodated perfectly well within a more conservative notion of embedded cognition, which holds that cognition is causally dependent (if maybe in highly complex and interesting ways) on features of the environment. Those external resources surround and supplement real cognition, which remains located within the organism. This approach thus poses no significant change to the theories, methods, and practices of cognitive science (Rupert, 2004; see also Adams & Aizawa, 2008).
To consider this objection, it is useful to begin by noting that the early Clark and Chalmers proposal has also been challenged from within the externalist camp. In particular, it is taken to render the range of putative cases of EC too narrow, as it only applies to material tools that would come to replace existing internal functions. A wholly different line of thinking to support the EC thesis emerged from this and does not presuppose parity considerations. Sutton (2010) has explicitly distinguished a first wave of EC theorizing from a second wave. The second wave emphasizes the complementarity of internal and external elements (Menary, 2007; Rowlands, 2009b; Sutton, 2010; Wilson, 2010; Wilson & Clark, 2009): “the focus is not on whether or how much the internal and external resources have features in common, but on how
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they operate together in driving more-or-less intelligent thought and action” (Sutton, Harris, Keil, & Barnier, 2010, p. 525). Thus, EC is not primarily what we have in cases in which some environmental resource acts as a substitute for an internal mechanism so that agents retain the same cognitive profile of capacities that they would have in ordinary conditions with biological equipment. Quite the opposite, EC is now thought of as what we have in those (allegedly many) cases in which internal and external resources play different but complementary roles, integrated into a whole. The new cognitive system emerging from this extends not only beyond the boundaries of the organism; it also has a distinctive cognitive profile.
This second wave of EC theorizing allowed for a broadening of the putative cases considered, as it draws our attention to the complex cognitive ecologies in which “the computational power and expertise is spread across a heterogeneous [emphasis added] assembly of brains, bodies, artifacts, and other external structures” (Clark, 1997, p. 77). Once parity is no longer required, we can tackle any manipulation of structures or elements that is integrated, whether those elements be measuring instruments, information storage devices, other agents, spatial arrangements of things, socially organized patterns of behavior, abstract representational systems, or analytical techniques. Once again, the heterogeneity of these cases should raise worries and must be dealt with (Menary, 2010b; Sterelny, 2010; Sutton, 2008; Wilson & Clark, 2009). There are roughly three overlapping kinds of cases, which require different ontological characterizations and also afford different grounds to stand against the internalist aim of accommodating them under embedded cognition.
The first examples in support of the original EC thesis involved the coupling between an individual agent and a material artifact. Such artifacts range from those that can be used by anyone on an occasion, such as a pen, to those that are part of an individual’s life, such as a prosthetic limb. They include measuring instruments, such as rulers or thermometers, or information storage devices, such as post-its or (watch the movie Memento if you have not done so by now) tattoos, and also more general devices such as laptops that can augment our cognitive capacities. These resources are understood to be integrated with internal elements of cognition if and insofar as they score high in qualities such as availability, durability, trust, and individualization (Clark, 2003, 2010; Clark & Chalmers, 1998; Sterelny, 2010). These cases also provide the advocate of the EC thesis a clear contrast with embedded cognition, since they are amenable to a strong ontological reading in terms of being mereological parts of a cognitive system transgressing the boundaries of the organism.
A second kind of resource has, however, become more important in complementarity-based defenses of the EC thesis. In many of our cognitive activities, we doubtlessly exploit products and structures of cultural practices. Different representational and notational systems play crucial roles in education, information storage, knowledge transmission, knowledge generation, and the capacity to reflect on abstract ideas. Mathematical notations, diagrams, statistical techniques, and other analytical tools enhance our capacity for abstract reasoning, both in ordinary life and in science as well (Dutilh Novaes, 2012; Gigerenzer et al., 1989; Theiner, 2007). Performing long multiplication with pen and paper is only possible given a
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mathematical notational system and the rules it is governed by. These analytical resources are the accumulated and unified product of past cultural practices. Now, the integration between those resources and the individual cognitive system is different from the case of physical tools. Both Wilson and Clark (2010) and Sterelny (2010) argue that the relationship between agents and public resources is best seen as a process of cognitive niche construction. Just as beavers enrich their environment by building dams, so humans sculpt their environment so that it affords novel and more efficient cognitive opportunities. However, while a notebook is a relatively ordinary medium-sized physical object, a language, a logical system, or a mathematical technique is notoriously not “out there” in the same sense. It is perhaps even more plausible to think that, while they have been produced as cultural resources, they can now be internalized in a way that poses no threat to the internalist picture of cognition.
Faced with this problem, some advocates of the EC thesis claim that the real issue is not the present synchronic location of the elements that constitute the cognitive system, but the integration, co-evolution, and mutual shaping between internal and environmental resources:
External and conventional cognitive resources with complex cultural histories are often subsequently internalized so successfully that they need not still exist in the agent’s current physical environment to have their transformative effect. If location really is not the important issue, then resources can be extended in the relevant explanatory sense even when they are not literally external. (Sutton et al., 2010, p. 535)
Rather than their location, it is the transformative effect these cultural resources have on individual cognitive profiles that provides the explanatory value. The learning and development of these resources “reformats the representational capacities of the brain” (Menary, 2010b, p. 576). This point is illustrated well by the role of notation in mathematical thinking. Dehaene argues that “the arithmetic intuition that we inherit through evolution is continuous and approximate. The learning of words and numbers makes it digital and precise. Symbols give us access to sequential algorithms for exact calculations.” (Dehaene, 2007, p. 41). This is following much in the spirit of Hutchins, and Lev Vygotsky (and other authors as well: see Osbeck & Nersessian, this issue), in that what we now ascribe to the individual psychologies in order to explain external behavior emerged in the public domain, and also needs to be adopted and adapted, time and again, by individuals during their own development. Thus, we could not explain child development, insofar as it involves the shift of children being “slaves to the environment” to them becoming “masters of their own behavior,” independently of an acquisition of adequate external tools and techniques (Vygotsky, 1934/1986, 1978).
The internalist might again view all these as cases of embedded cognition. Insofar as parity considerations have given way to complementarity considerations, this cannot be resisted by claiming that the relevant external resources are so tightly coupled, trusted, durable, available, and individualized that they are as constitutive of the
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cognitive system as a certain cortical structure might be. Rather, externalists have to make their case by arguing in favor of the genuine novelty or distinctive character of the cognitive profile due to the mutual shaping between the biological cognitive machinery and the external structures and practices upon which cognition is scaffolded. This will, accordingly, have to direct the explanations provided by cognitive research. Consider again the philosophical understanding of the BR program developed by Arnau, Ayala, and Sturm. As they argue, it is superior to an internalist approach, since the latter cannot provide guidelines for explaining important questions such as: How could the “fast and frugal heuristics” that are identified within the BR program emerge? How on Earth can a heuristic, despite neglecting much information and using only small amounts of computation, sometimes outperform traditional norms of reasoning (e.g., from probability or decision theory, invoked also as normative standards in, for instance, the heuristics-and-biases program; Kahneman, Slovic & Tversky, 1982)? However, such a defense of the EC thesis will depend on convincing instances of research and explanation. There is no universal master stroke or general argument in favor of the thesis from the armchair.
A third set of putative cases of cognitive extension involves multiple agents coordinated in accomplishing a collective task. In the case of memory, Sutton and colleagues (Sutton et al., 2010) argue that in some cases (paradigmatically, old couples) a crucial part of one’s autobiographic memory is shaped by the use of the partner’s memory in collaborator recall. Hutchins’ (1995) case study of the distributed processes that enable ship navigation is another well-known example. There, the whole crew of shipmen is coordinated, with different agents using different instruments cued by the behavior of their partners. In contrast to Otto-cum-notebook cases, what the different kinds of cognitive resources support here is a collective activity. None of the sailors has a grip on the whole of the problem space or the relevant information.
This creates a tension for EC as long as it is understood as the thesis that individual cognitive capacities and processes are enhanced or augmented by the integration of external elements. One option to cope with these worries is to appeal to a collective emergent agent. This—clearly counterintuitive—kind of “deterritorialization” of the cognitive agent is the move that Sutton envisages as a “third wave” of cognitive externalism (Sutton, 2010, p. 213; see also Gallagher, 2001 for a treatment of the legal system as an “over-extended mind”). Of course, the individual agents will still be there; and we might want to explain what any of them is doing, cognitively speaking. Further work is needed to assess the emergent relationship between multi-agent systems at the level of the individual and collective agents at a higher-order level.
The acceptance of cases of multiple agents collaborating in a joint task seems to come down to the proposal of DC (Hutchins, 1995; Kirsh, 1995). However, proponents of DC have stressed that it is not only the case that cognition is not bound to an organism but, moreover, that it is not even necessarily centered on an organism. Hutchins’ contribution to this issue argues precisely for this view. He locates extended cognition in a continuum of distributed cognitive systems of different spatial and temporal scales. Furthermore, he claims that the center (if one
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or more exist) and boundaries of a cognitive system must be determined empirically on the basis of the relative density of information traffic in the system. Even individuals and their brains are distributed cognitive systems with no a priori recognizable center from which cognition extends. Rather than following isolated threads outward from a brain through the body to contact specific elements of the environment, Hutchins argues for zooming out to examine the network of cultural practices in which human cognition takes place. This emphasis on the broad cognitive ecology, endorsed by several prominent defenders of EC as their emphasis has shifted to symbolic and collective cognitive resources, also blurs whatever precise location we want to ascribe to the emerging cognitive system, thus bridging the previous gap with enactivist proposals.
Osbeck and Nersessian’s approach is slightly different; in their contribution, they present a careful, point-by-point comparison between classical American functional psychology (espoused in different ways by William James, John Dewey, James Mark Baldwin, and others) and the current DC approach. Osbeck and Nersessian aim to show that the latter is tightly connected with the former and they set out to clarify which aspects of DC are new and which are restatements of aspects of functional psychology. Furthermore, their work explores to what extent criticism leveled against the latter carries over to the DC approach.
To sum up: anyone who is dissatisfied with the internalist picture of cognition has to further elucidate how to integrate and cope with the tensions and divergences between the different paradigmatic examples and views of EC. It is debatable whether one can achieve a unified and comprehensive externalist framework. Perhaps they amount to distinct but nonetheless compatible positions, as Toon (this issue) suggests by claiming that an endorsement of both DC and EC would offer a way for Giere and others to make good on their claims to have shown that social factors are cognitive factors (see next sections). An alternative way to resist internalism is to take an ad hoc pluralist attitude, as defended by Wilson (this issue).
3. The EC Thesis and Cognitive Approaches to the Philosophy of Science
In the summary of the debate over the EC thesis just given, we have shifted from narrowly conceptual issues towards issues in the philosophy of cognitive science—the potential and limits of the thesis in explanations of cognitive development and achievement, specific areas of cognitive science where it plays a role, and the ways in which it does do so. Now, while the philosophy of cognitive science consists of metaphysical and methodological analyses of the cognitive sciences, a cognitive philosophy of science addresses philosophical questions by using results of the cognitive sciences—a kind of naturalistic philosophy of science. With a few exceptions, however, the EC thesis has not yet been used much in the philosophy of science, although it might offer a new framework within which to account for different aspects of scientific knowledge and practice. Since EC is in many respects still in its infancy as well as much disputed, one might think that this is as it should be. However, philosophers have the traditional privilege to speculate on the fruitfulness of adopting
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new scientific ideas for the problems philosophy raises. This is the aim of the last three contributions to this issue, by Estany and Martınez; Toon; and Casacuberta and Vallverdu . So, how could the EC thesis, as a specific view of cognition, address problems in the philosophy of science?
Over the last few decades, the contributions of cognitive approaches to philosophy have been numerous and of considerable importance. It is beyond the scope of this introduction to offer an exhaustive overview of them. To frame the contributions in this issue, however, and to prepare the way towards understanding the new light they shed on science, it is helpful to outline some major previous contributions. Naturalistic approaches, over and above being used in general epistemology (e.g., Goldman, 1986; Kitcher, 1992; Kornblith, 2002; Quine, 1969), have included reinterpretations of Kuhn’s philosophy of science through cognitivist theories of concepts (Andersen, Barker, & Chen, 2006; Nersessian, 2002a), the meaning of theoretical concepts (e.g., Nersessian, 2008), the generation of new theories against the background of heuristics (Gigerenzer & Sturm, 2007), the thesis of the theory-ladenness of observation in the light of perceptual psychology (e.g., Churchland, 1979; Estany, 2001; Fodor, 1984), computational accounts and simulations of scientific discovery (Langley, Simon, Bradshaw, & Zytkow, 1987), and scientific progress more generally (Kitcher, 1993; Laudan, 1990).
Now, many such approaches have used ideas from classical cognitive science. For instance, Thagard (1988, 1992a) reformulates central themes of the philosophy of science (concepts, laws, theories, and explanation) using the computational apparatus it offers. His Computational philosophy of science (1988) is a manual for pursuing philosophy of science in entirely computational terms. He also applies this machinery to the history of science. For Thagard, conceptual systems are structured into kind-hierarchies and part-hierarchies. Propositional systems are structured into explicative coherence relations and new theoretical concepts come about through mechanisms of conceptual combination. Thagard reconstructs different cases from the history of science as conceptual maps, because this is the form in which we humans structure knowledge; that is, via frameworks. Using this conceptual apparatus and with the help of the connectionist computer program called ECHO, he reconstructs Lavoisier’s revolution in chemistry, the biology of Darwin, Wegener’s geology, and the physical theories of Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein.
Giere (1988, 1992) concentrates on the so-called “semantic conception of scientific theories.” Giere’s idea is that scientists, just like other people, construct theoretical models of reality that they then define through some type of language (natural language; mathematics), through schemes, or through any other conceptual instrument. These theoretical models are mental models in the sense expressed by Johnson-Laird (1983). Johnson-Laird distinguished between three forms of representation: propositional representation; mental models; and images. Despite the fact that at the level of codification all representations are propositional, at the moment of reasoning and understanding, people construct mental models of phenomena, circumstances, situations, processes, etc. that can be either real or imaginary. Giere accordingly neither limits the representation of knowledge to
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propositional language, nor does he imply that the value of scientific theories is centered on the possibility of formalizing them. He argues that the acquisition of knowledge is not limited by language, although in humans, expressing things linguistically may be virtually automatic. However, even in this regard, knowledge can be represented through other means that are not strictly linguistic.
As a final example, take the previous work of one of our contributors, Nancy Nersessian, on conceptual change and innovation in science. Nersessian (1992) proposes a “historical–cognitive analysis” for modeling conceptual change. Also building on Johnson-Laird’s (1983) idea of mental models, Nersessian views scientific theories as representations of the world. She uses the theory of mental models in order to analyze the different stages that scientists go through in the formulation of theories. Mental models, as structural analogues of the real world or of imaginary situations, contain a representation of the spatial and temporal relations between events. This approach gives rise to a psychologically realistic philosophy of science, which affects the coherence and competence of philosophy itself. Based on such ideas, Nersessian (1984, 2002b) reconstructs cases from the history of science, such as those of Faraday or Maxwell.
Thus, many early cognitivist accounts of scientific knowledge were not opposed to the traditional, internalist conception of cognition, and they have often built on information processing or computer models, and related theoretical concepts. But naturalism is doomed to constant change, on pains of becoming outdated or irrelevant: the sciences it tries to exploit for philosophical purposes frequently develop new aims, methods, and results. Not surprisingly then, several of the authors just mentioned have taken up ideas and problems that motivate the EC thesis. Goldman has expanded his “cooperative naturalism” (Feldman, 2001) into domains of public and scientific knowledge, or the relation between knowledge and its social and cultural context (e.g., Goldman, 1999, 2004). Nersessian’s recent work frequently builds on models of DC. Giere and Moffatt (2003) have argued that the idea of DC can help to overcome the—often heated—debate in science studies between those who favor cognitive or intellectual explanations of scientific consensus or change, and those who favor social constructionism or the strong program in the sociology of scientific knowledge (e.g., Bloor, 1976; for a line similar to Giere’s, see Thagard, 1992b).
In their contribution to this issue, Estany and Martınez propose another way to show how the DC view combined with the extended mind thesis may help bridge the gap between cognitive and social accounts of science. Their approach centers on the various concepts of scaffolding and affordance. Estany and Martınez attempt to clarify this diversity of meanings in order to characterize and analyze the role of scaffoldings and affordances in the explanatory function of scientific practices. One particular claim they make is that rather than excluding each other, the extended mind thesis and the DC approach are best seen as describing various contexts in which affordances can provide scaffolding for different sorts of cognitive processes. Moreover, if scaffolding and affordances are considered in their conceptual, material, and social dimensions (i.e., as more than merely conceptual tools), they can be seen as approximate models that can make sense of the claim that common experience and
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shared understanding are at the center of cognition and culture regardless of the existence and development of linguistic competence.
Toon’s contribution to this issue voices skepticism about such efforts to make things compatible. Toon takes Hutchins’ version of DC and uses it to reveal two potential difficulties for the integration of cognitive and social explanations of science. In the first place, Toon views DC as mainly a claim about the implementation of cognitive processes; he sees the focus of many sociological accounts of science in the choice of representational systems involved in cognition. Yet, cognitive theories of science provide views on how those representations gain their meaning that compete with sociological accounts. In the second place, Toon claims that another obstacle is that many defenders of sociological accounts of science will find the DC assumption that science is not essentially socially unacceptable. One possible way of integrating cognitive and social accounts of science suggested by him is through claiming, with EC, that in some sense social factors are cognitive factors. This avenue of integration is hindered, however, by the explicit distinction proponents of the DC approach (such as Giere) have made between DC and the extended mind thesis. Not surprisingly, Toon’s considerations would be rejected by Hutchins: he now explicitly (see his contribution to this issue) claims that DC includes EC. He views DC as being concerned not only with implementation but also with the modeling of the representational systems (Hutchins, 1995, chapter 4); and perhaps it is also problematic to draw a contrast between DC and sociological accounts of science in terms of their views about whether science is essentially social or not. In any case, we hope that the issues raised by Toon’s paper will lead to further fruitful debates.
Another important area where non-individualistic accounts of scientific knowledge seem promising is “big science”—the massive projects especially (though not exclusively) in the natural sciences involving dozens if not hundreds or thousands of scientific collaborators. Just as in Hutchins’ case of maritime navigation, in which none of the sailors has a grip on the whole of the problem space or the information, in “big science” too knowledge appears to be distributed, leading to problems for an individualistic epistemology (e.g., Hardwig, 1985; Kitcher, 1993). Casacuberta and Vallverdu address a related topic in the present issue and investigate e-science from an EC perspective. In particular, their contribution analyzes the role of computers in the proof of the four color theorem, aiming to show that such an approach circumvents several pitfalls usually found by internalist views. Those authors obtain a similar picture by analyzing some current practices in computational biology. They do so by way of a trilemma, namely that philosophers should either: (i) deny the relevance of computer-aided proofs in practice; (ii) assume that such practice radically changes scientific methodology; or (iii) consider them as EC processes with no significant changes in the methodology of scientific research.
4. Conclusion
We have shown how the EC thesis has become important in the philosophy of cognitive science in particular and even in the philosophy of science more generally. Yet, we do not wish to claim that all aspects of science, both of cognitive science and of
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science in general, have to be explained in terms of the EC thesis. There are several reasons for this. First, there are too many different versions of the thesis, and the contributors to this issue do not agree on which version is the best. The internalist has every reason to smile at this point, not only because of the very existence of this disagreement, but also because it seems to prove one major internalist point: knowledge claims are ultimately the property of thinkers who have to make up their own minds. Second, the EC thesis primarily addresses specific aspects of human cognition: its development and transmission; its expansion and enhancement beyond subjective perception and thinking; and its public criticism and defense. We do not see how the EC thesis could help to solve the riddle of induction, clarify the concepts of explanation or causation, deal with the question of whether there is value-free knowledge, or satisfactorily address the relation between empirical and a priori (if any) parts of scientific knowledge. Thus, the EC thesis can shed light on a number of issues; but the devil is, as always, in the details.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Christopher Evans for linguistic assistance. Completion of this essay was financially supported by the Spanish Government’s DGICYT research project: FFI2011-23238, “Innovation in scientific practice: Cognitive approaches and their philosophical consequences.” Thomas Sturm’s contribution was also supported by the Spanish Government’s research award FFI 2008-01559/FISO.
Note
[1] We refer to classical embodied cognition here. The recent radical turn in embodied cognition, which is chiefly a form of antirepresentationalism based on a Gibsonian metaphysics of direct perception and affordances, and drawing on dynamical systems theory, has an unclear relationship with the EC approach. It is beyond the scope of this issue to discuss these details further.
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