The Extended Mind

What is the Brainbound view?

Cognition happens inside the brain, and external things merely help it

What is the Extended Mind?

Sometimes external resources become so integrated into a cognitive process that the process is best understood as spanning brain, body, and environment

What is the claim that the emerges from the debate in the Extended Mind question?

If the phone could become part of the system doing the cognitive work

What does the Extended Mind view mean and argue?

That cognitive processes can sometimes extend beyond the biological brain and body when external resources are reliably integrated into an agent’s thinking, memory, and perception

What does the Brainbound view mean and argue?

Keeps the cognitive system within the individual, treating environmental resources as external aids rather than constituents of cognition

1. Relevance, why does the claim of the extended mind argue?

That cognitive science should sometimes study the whole integrated system rather than assuming the brain alone contains everything relevant

How do smartphones apply to our external memory?

Offload cognitively demanding tasks, including analytical reasoning

How does smart phone apply in Brainbound memory?

Brainbound where you learn a fact, store it internally, and retrieve fact

How does smart phone apply in Offloaded/extended arrangement memory?

know information exists, remember where or how to retrieve it, phone stores it, and retrieves when required

What is the provocative idea of the smartphone?

It might not merely be a tool, but in some meaningful sense part of “you”

1. Connection, cognitive offloading connect to the extended mind, what is it?

Cognitive offloading is using external resources to reduce internal cognitive demands

2. Connection, what are some examples that cognitive offloading offloads the in the extended mind?

A grocery list offloads memory, calculator offloads arithmetic, smartphone can offload memory, navigation, information retrieval

So cognitive offloading gives us a mechanism through which cognition can become distributed across internal and external resources, but what?

Offloading alone doesn’t prove the Extended Mind thesis

What’s the 1. debate/criticism for extended mind

Using something is not the same as incorporating it into the cognitive system, such as Google Maps

What’s the 2. debate/criticism for extended cognition, what strengthens the extended mind argument?

When the external resource is reliably available, routinely used, deeply integrated into ongoing cognitive routines

What’s the 3. debate/criticism for extended cognition, what strengthens the case of extension?

The more seamlessly the system operates as person and resource rather than person occasionally asks external object for help

What’s the 4. debate/criticism for extended cognition, what strengthens the case of extension?

Profound embodiment where environmental resources are integrated deeply enough into the production of thought