Abstract
The concept of extended mind has been impressively developed over the last 10 years by many philosophers and cognitive scientists. The extended mind thesis (EM) affirms that the mind is not simply ensconced inside the head, but extends to the whole system of brain-body-environment. Recently, some philosophers and psychologists try to adapt the idea of EM to the domain of social cognition research. Mind is socially extended (SEM). However, EM/SEM theory has problems to analyze the interactions among a subject and its surroundings with opposition, antagonism, or conflict; it also tends to think that the environment surrounding the subject is passive or static, and to neglect the power of non-human actants to direct and regulate the human subject. In these points, actor-network theory (ANT) proposed by Latour and Callon is more persuasive, while sharing some important ideas with EM/SEM theory. Actor-network is a hybrid community which is composed of a series of heterogeneous elements, animate and inanimate for a certain period of time. I shall conclude that EM/SEM could be best analyzed as a special case of actor-network. EM/SEM is a system which can be controlled by a human agent alone. In order to understand collective behavior, philosophy and psychology have to study the actor-network in which human individuals are situated.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Although the concept of “extended mind” was invented by A. Clark and D. Chalmers, pioneering visions were proposed by Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, William James, Dewey, James Jerome Gibson, Gregory Bateson, and Hilary Putnam. For example, Bateson has already maintained in his book published in 1972 as follows: “The computer in only an arc of a larger circuit which always includes a man and an environment from which information is received and upon which efferent messages from the computer has effect. This total system, or ensemble, may legitimately be said to show mental characteristics. […] Similarly, we may say that “mind” is immanent in those circuits of the brain which are completely within the brain. Or that mind is immanent in the circuits which are completely within the system, brain plus body. Or, finally, that mind is immanent in the larger system—man plus environment.” (Bateson 1972, p.317)
One classical concerns is the meaning of EM. What does the EM thesis claim exactly? EM is used to be interpreted as claiming the parity principle. The parity principle says that cognitive states and process extend beyond the brain and into the external world when the relevant parts of the world function in the same way as do unquestionably cognitive processes in head (Clark and Chalmers 1998). However, this principle has been criticized by some dissenters (Adams and Aizawa 2008, 2010; Rupert 2004, 2009, 2010), since the relevant parts of the world don’t function in the exact same way as the brain does. This critique is valid.
So, we should redefine EM as based on a complementarity principle: in extended mind, external parts need not mimic or replicate the inner states or processes; “rather, different components of overall system can play quite different roles and have different properties while coupling in collective and complementary contributions to flexible thinking and acting”(Sutton 2010, p.194). As Clark maintains, “[t]he argument for the extended mind thus turns primarily on the way disparate inner and outer components may co-operate so as to yield integrated larger systems capable of supporting various (often quite advanced) forms of adaptive success.” (Clark 1998, p.99)
In defending EM against the critics from Adams & Aizawa and Rupert, Clark also proposed a set of additional criteria which external physical processes should to meet if they are to be included as a part of an individual’s cognitive process:
-
1.
That the external resource be reliably available and typically invoked.
-
2.
That any information thus retrieved be more-or-less automatically endorsed. It should not usually be subject to critical scrutiny (unlike the opinions of other people, for example). It should be deemed about as trustworthy as something retrieved clearly from a biological memory.
-
3.
That information contained in the resource should be easily accessible when required. (Clark 2008, p.79; Cf. Clark 2010)
-
1.
ANT theorists formerly used the word “actor” when they referred to the components of the network. But, because the word “actor” ordinarily has the implication of “living agent with intention or will”, the theorists replaced “actor” by “actant” in order to avoid misunderstandings. Latter means merely a performing part of the network whether it is animate or non-animate.
References
Adams, F., & Aizawa, K. (2008). The bounds of cognition. Malden: Blackwell.
Adams, F., & Aizawa, K. (2010). Defending the bounds of cognition. In R. Menary (Ed.), (2010).
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Brinkmann, S. (2011). Towards an expansive hybrid psychology: integrating theories of the mediated mind. Integrative Psychology and Behavioral Science, 45, 1–20.
Callon, M. (1987). Society in the making: The study of technology as a tool for sociological analysis. In W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes, & T. J. Pinch (Eds.), The social construction of technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Callon, M. (2004). The role of hybrid communities and socio-technical arrangements in the participatory design. Journal of the Center for Information Studies, 5, 3–10.
Callon, M., & Law, J. (1997). After the individual in society: lessons on collectively from science, technology and society. Canadian Journal of Society, 22, 165–182.
Cash, M. (2010). Extended cognition, personal responsibility, and relational autonomy. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9(4), 645–671.
Chemero, A. (2009). Radical embodied cognitive science. Cambridge: MIT.
Clark, A. (1998). Author’s response: review symposium on Being There. Metascience, 7, 95–103.
Clark, A. (2008). Supersizing the mind: Reflections on embodiment, action, and cognitive extension. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Clark, A. (2010). Coupling, constitution, and the cognitive kind: A reply to Adams and Aizawa. In R. Menary (Ed.), (2010).
Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 58(1), 7–19.
Crisafi, A., & Gallagher, S. (2010). Hegel and the extended mind. AI & Society, 25, 123–129.
De Jaegher, H., & Di Paolo, E. (2007). Participatory sense-making: an enactive approach to social cognition. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 6, 485–507.
De Jaegher, H., Di Paolo, E., & Gallagher, S. (2010). Can social interaction constitute social cognition? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14, 441–447.
Di Paolo, E., Rohde, M., & De Jaegher, H. (2008). Horizons for the enactive mind: Values, social interaction, and play. In J. Stewart, O. Gapenne, & E. Di Paolo (Eds.), Enaction: Towards a new paradigm for cognitive science. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Feenberg, A. (1999). Questioning technology. London/New York: Routledge.
Feenberg, A. (2010). Between reason and experience: Essays in technology and modernity. Cambridge, Mass./London: MIT Press.
Fuchs, T., & De Jaegher, H. (2009). Enactive intersubjectivity: participatory sense-making and mutual incorporation. Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, 8, 465–486.
Gallagher, S. (2008). Brainstorming: Views and interviews on the mind. Exeter: Imprint Academic.
Gallagher, S. (2011). The overextended mind. Versus: Quaderni di studi semiotici. pp. 57–68.
Gallagher, S., & Crisafi, A. (2009). Mental institutions. Topoi, 28, 45–51.
Gallagher, S., & Miyahara, K. (2011). Neo-pragmatism and enactive intentionality. In J. Schulkin (Ed.), Action, perception and the brain. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.
Gazzaniga, M. S. (1985). The social brain: Discovering the networks of the mind. New York: Basic Books.
Gibson, J. J. (1979). Ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Harré, R. (1998). The singular self: An introduction to the psychology of personhood. London: Sage.
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the wild. Cambridge: MIT.
Ihde, D. (1993). Postphenomenology: Essays in the postmodern context. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Ihde, D. (2002). Bodies in technology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Kono, T. (2009). Social affordances and the possibility of ecological linguistics. Integrative Psychology and Behavioral Science, 43, 356–373.
Latour, B. (1988). The Pasteurization of France. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (1999). Pandora’s hope: Essays on the reality of science studies. Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (2002). La fabrique du droit Une ethnographie du Conseil d’État. Paris: La Découvertes/Poche.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the society: An introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. NY: Oxford University Press.
Law, J. (1987). Technology and heterogeneous engineering: The case of Portuguese expansion. In W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes, & T. J. Pinch (Eds.), The social construction of technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Miyahara, K. (2011). Neo-pragmatic intentionality and enactive perception: a compromise between extended and enactive minds. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 10(4), 499–519.
Noë, A. (2009). Out of our heads: Why you are not your brain, and other lessons from the biology of consciousness. New York: Hill and Wang.
Rowlands, M. (2011). The new science of the mind: From extended mind to embodied phenomenology. Cambridge: MIT.
Rupert, R. (2004). Challenges to the hypothesis of extended cognition. Journal of Philosophy, 101, 389–428.
Rupert, R. (2009). Representation in extended cognitive systems: Does the scaffolding of language extend the mind? In R. Menary (Ed.), The extended mind. London: Ashgate.
Rupert, R. (2010). Cognitive systems and the extended mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
Suchman, L. A. (1987). Plans and situated actions: The problem of human-machine communication. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sutton, J. (2010). Exograms and interdisciplinarity: History, the extended mind, and the civilizing process. In R. Menary (Ed.), 2010.
Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in life: Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). In M. Cole et al. (Eds.), Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Mass./London: Harvard University Press.
Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Wertsch, J. V. (1998). Mind as action. Oxford University Press.
Wilson, R. A. (2004). Boundaries of the mind: The individual in the fragile sciences: Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Winner, L. (1986). The whale and the reactor: A search for limits in an age of high technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Acknowledgment
This paper is supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) 24242001, (B) 24300293-1.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kono, T. Extended Mind and After: Socially Extended Mind and Actor-Network. Integr. psych. behav. 48, 48–60 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-013-9242-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-013-9242-2