A. Clark and Chalmers’s Extended Mind
The extended mind, according to philosopher Andy Clark, features an “active externalism,” based on the participatory role of the environment in driving cognitive processes. He asserts that when the human organism is linked with an external entity in a two-way interaction, a “coupled system” is created that can be conceptualized as a cognitive system in its own right (independent of the two components).
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Andy Clark
Professor of Cognitive Philosophy
Andy Clark is a British philosopher and Professor of Cognitive Philosophy at the University of Sussex, known for his influential work on the extended mind, consciousness, and cognitive science.
David Chalmers
Philosopher & Cognitive Scientist
David Chalmers is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist best known for articulating the “hard problem of consciousness” and introducing the philosophical zombie concept. As a professor at New York University and co-director of its Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, Chalmers bridges philosophy and cognitive science. He also co-founded the PhilPapers online philosophy database.
Key Takeaways
Core Claim
Cognition can extend beyond the brain into tools, environments, and social systems.
How It Works
When brain and external tools interact seamlessly, they form a single “coupled” cognitive system.
Distinguishing Idea
Rejects brain-bound thinking; treats mind as spread across brain, body, and world.
Implications
Redefines what counts as thinking, suggesting notebooks or smartphones can be part of the mind.
A. Clark and Chalmers’s Extended Mind
The extended mind, according to philosopher Andy Clark, features an “active externalism,” based on the participatory role of the environment in driving cognitive processes. He asserts that when the human organism is linked with an external entity in a two-way interaction, a “coupled system” is created that can be conceptualized as a cognitive system in its own right (independent of the two components). This is because all the components in the system play an active causal role, and they jointly govern behavior in the same sort of way that cognition in a single system (brain) usually does. To remove the external component is to degrade the system's behavioral competence, just as it would to remove part of its brain. Clark's thesis is that this sort of coupled process counts equally well as a cognitive process, whether or not it is wholly in the head (Clark and Chalmers, 1998).
Minds Beyond the Brain
Clark concludes his book, Supersizing the Mind, by inviting us “to cease to unreflectively privilege the inner, the biological, and the neural … The human mind, viewed through this special lens, emerges at the productive interface of brain, body, and social and material world.” He marvels that “minds like ours emerge from this colorful flux as surprisingly seamless wholes” (Clark, 2010).
According to Owen Flanagan, “Walking, talking and seeing are all things the enactive, embodied, extended (code words for this hip new view) mind does in the world.” Clark “provides the best argument I've seen for the idea that minds are smeared over more space than neuroscience might have us believe, and that mind will continue spreading to other nooks and crannies of the universe as cognitive prostheses proliferate” (Flanagan, 2009).
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