Extended Mind

Mainstream epistemologists have recently made a few isolated attempts to demonstrate the particular ways, in which specific types of knowledge are partly social. Two promising cases in point are Lackey’s dualism in the epistemology of testimony (2008) and Goldberg’s process reliabilist treatment of testimonial and coverage-support justification (2010). What seems to be missing from the literature, however, is a general approach to knowledge that could reveal the partly social nature of the latter anytime this may be the case. Indicatively, even though Lackey (2007) has recently launched an attack against the Credit Account of Knowledge (CAK) on the basis of testimony, she has not classified her view of testimonial knowledge into any of the alternative, general approaches to knowledge. Similarly, even if Goldberg’s attempt to provide a process reliabilist explanation of the social nature of testimonial knowledge is deemed satisfactory, his attempt to do the same in the case of coverage-support justification does not deliver the requisite result. This paper demonstrates that CAK can in fact provide, pace Lackey’s renunciation of the view, a promising account of the social nature of both testimonial and coverage-supported knowledge. Additionally, however, it can display further explanatory power by also revealing the social nature of knowledge produced on the basis of epistemic artifacts. Despite their disparities, all these types of knowledge count as partly social in nature, because in all these cases, according to CAK, the epistemic credit for the individual agent’s true belief must spread between the individual agent and certain parts of her epistemic community. Accordingly, CAK is a promising candidate for providing a unified approach to several and, perhaps all possible, instances of what we may call ‘weak epistemic anti-individualism’ within mainstream epistemology: i.e., the claim that the nature of knowledge can occasionally be both social and individual at the same time.

Perché l'essere umano non può essere come un lombrico?
Wilfred Bion e il transindividuale

Abstract: Domanda. Se il paziente sa quello che sta facendo, e lei sa perché lo sta facendo, perché interpretare quello che sta facendo anziché chiedergli perché lo fa? Bion. Questo è un altro mistero. Perché non trasferirlo direttamente da lui stesso a lui stesso? Perché è necessaria una persona esterna? Perché l’essere umano non può essere come un lombrico? Perché avere un partner? Perché non avere una vita sessuale con sé stessi senza altre seccature? Perché non si può avere una relazione direttamente con sé stessi senza l’intervento di una specie di levatrice mentale o fisica? Pare che abbiamo bisogno di “rimbalzare” su un’altra persona, di avere qualcosa che rifletta indietro quello che diciamo prima che esso possa diventare comprensibile (Bion, 1984b, p. 59).
Per sapere chi sono io devo chiederlo a te. Quindi la mia essenza è fuori di me. Tu, gli altri, siete il ‘mio’ segreto. La natura eccentrica dell’animale umano viene percorsa attraverso una riflessione sull’opera dello psicoanalista Wilfred Bion. Avendo in mente una domanda finale: se io sono tu, l’Io – propriamente - non esiste. Allora è un impostore? C’è un modo per essere io che non sia fittizio?

Parole chiave: Wilfred Bion, Melanie Klein, transindividuale, altro, linguaggio, pensieri


Why human being cannot be like a worm?
Wilfred Bion and the transindividual

Abstract: A question. If the patient knows what he is doing, and he knows why he is doing so, why should we interpret it instead of asking him why? Bion. This is another mystery. Why cannot we transfer it directly from himself to himself? Why is an external person necessary? Why are nonhuman beingslike an earthworm? Why should we need a partner? Why cannot we have a sexual life with ourselves without any other annoying problems? Why cannot we have a direct relationship with ourselves without the interventionof some kind of mental or physical“obstetrician”? It seems that we need to “rebound” on another person and to have something that could reflect back what we say before any comprehension (Bion, 1984b, p. 59).
In order to know who I am, I need to ask it to you. Therefore my essence is outside me. You, the others, are “my” secret. The eccentric nature of the human animalis studied through a reflectionon the work of the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion. With a last question: if I am you, the I – in itself – does not exist. Thus, is it an impostor? Is there a way to be an Iwhich is not fictitious?


Keywords: Wilfred Bion, Melanie Klein, transindividual, other, language, thoughts

In lieu of an abstract, here is the introduction:

Following reports that a private prison in Arizona treated eighteen year old Regan Clarine's open C-section wound by filling it with sugar from McDonald's sugar packets, legislator and proponent of privatized health care State Representative John Kavanagh released the following statement:
“You know prisoners have 24/7 to think up allegations and write letters,” he said. “I'm not saying that some of them can't have a basis in fact. But you got to take them with a grain of salt or in the case of the hospital, with maybe a grain of sugar.”
(Abigail and May)
In the United States, about 2,300,000 adults are in prison and with the cost of keeping a convicted criminal in prison for one year as high as 170,000 dollars, it is no surprise that many States have started to cut costs. However, as the above example illustrates, these cuts come at a high ethical price, and as the
conditions in prisons deteriorate, the psychological trauma prisons cause will only increase. Neurointerventions could provide an opportunity to circumvent the monetary and psychological damages caused by the prison system. Unlike the uncontrolled psychological and physical dangers characteristic
of American prisons, interventions could target individuals' psychologies in a safe and targeted manner that prevents future recidivism, so what, besides current technological limitations, would prevent us from using them?
According to Neil Levy, there is a bias against any kind of intervention that would affect "the mind". As Andy Dufrense, a prisoner in the Shawshank Redemption put it, "there are places in this world that aren't made out of stone. There's something inside...that they can't get to, that they can't touch. That's yours." The mind is a sacred domain, the one place that is one's own, and, therefore, the one place that must be protected by the law.
However, Levy argues that the view that the mind is a "sacred domain" is misguided. Following Clark and Chalmers, Levy argues that the mind is actually extended outside of the skull and into the world, suggesting that certain changes in the environment actually change the mind directly.
"Much of the heat and the hype surrounding neuroscientific technologies stems from the perception that they offer (or threaten) opportunities genuinely unprecedented in human experience. But if the mind is not confined within the skull...(then) intervening in the mind is ubiquitous. It becomes difficult to defend the idea that there is a difference in principle between interventions which work by altering a person's environment and that work directly on her brain, in so far as the effect on cognition is the same; the mere fact that an intervention targets the brain directly no longer seems relevant." (Levy 2011, 91).
Levy uses the extended mind thesis to argue that it is only bias that stops us from intervening on criminals' brains instead of assigning prison time. He defends his view by systematically providing counter-arguments to many well defended objections against the extended mind thesis. For the most part, I believe that Levy is successful. However, in this paper, I will argue that his objection to Dan Weiskopf's information integration theory relies on a misinterpretation of the relevant empirical data, and,
therefore, Levy's appeal to the extended mind theory to support neurointerventions is unsuccessful. I conclude by suggesting that Levy may not need the extended mind thesis to argue for the use of neurointerventions. He ought to argue that there is no practical dissimilarity between prison and neurointerventions instead of arguing for a controversial metaphysical claim.

Mainstream epistemology has typically taken for granted a traditional picture of the metaphysics of mind, according to which cognitive processes (e.g. memory storage and retrieval) play out entirely within the bounds of the skull and skin. But this simple ‘intracranial’ picture is falling increasingly out of step with contemporary thinking in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Likewise, though, proponents of active externalist approaches to the mind—e.g. the hypothesis of extended cognitition (HEC)—have proceeded by and large without asking what epistemological ramifications should arise once cognition is understood as criss-crossing the bounds of brain and world. This paper aims to motivate a puzzle that arises only once these two strands of thinking are brought in contact with one another. In particular, we want to first highlight a kind of condition of epistemological adequacy that should be accepted by proponents of extended cognition; once this condition is motivated, the remainder of the paper demonstrates how attempts to satisfy this condition seem to inevitably devolve into a novel kind of epistemic circularity. At the end of the day, proponents of extended cognition have a novel epistemological puzzle on their hands.

While language use in general is currently being explored as essentially situated in immediate physical environment, narrative reading is primarily regarded as a means of decoupling one’s consciousness from the environment. In order to offer a more diversified view of narrative reading, the essay distinguishes between three different roles the environment can play in the reading experience. Next to the traditional notion that environmental stimuli disrupt attention, the essay proposes that they can also serve as a prop for mental imagery and/or a locus of pleasure more generally. The latter two perspectives presuppose a more clear-cut distinction between consciousness and attention than typically assumed in the communication literature. The essay concludes with a list of implications for research and practice.

This article proposes an analogy between Self-Portrait with two Circles by Rembrandt van Rijn and the Ego-shot Petra Cortright-selfie. Both are viewed as forms used by their authors to build a public image of the artist. In both the Rembrandt from the seventeenth century and in the digital
photograph taken in the twenty-first century by Cortright we encounter signs that indicate the incorporation of what is known as transparent technology (Norman, 1999; Clark, 2003) and mastery in its handling. Also evident is a great proximity in terms of an extended perceptual mechanism between the hand-painted portrait and the smartphone camera selfie taken using a timer.


Este trabajo plantea una analogía entre el Autorretrato con dos círculos de Rembrandt van Rijn y el ego-shot Petra ortright-selfie. Ambas obras son vistas como formas utilizadas por sus autores para construirse una imagen pública de artista. Tanto en la mencionada obra del holandés, creada en el siglo xvii, como en la fotografía digital tomada en el siglo xxi por Cortright se encuentran signos que indican la incorporación de la llamada tecnología transparente (Norman, 1999; Clark, 2003) y la maestría en el manejo de ésta. Asimismo, se señala una cercanía mayor, en cuanto mecanismo perceptual extendido, entre un autorretrato pintado a mano y una fotografía obtenida por medio de un teléfono inteligente con una cámara digital usada con temporizador a distancia.

Pessoa’s The Cognitive-Emotional Brain (2013) is an integrative approach to neuroscience that complements other developments in cognitive science, especially enactivism. Both accept complexity as essential to mind; both tightly integrate perception, cognition, and emotion, which enactivism unifies in its foundational concept of sense-making; and both emphasize that the spatial extension of mental processes is not reducible to specific brain regions and neuroanatomical connectivity. An enactive neuroscience is emerging.

(Text of my talk at the First Annual Extended Knowledge at the University of Edinburgh, April 22-23, 2015)

Some recent work in Extended Epistemology has looked not at the relationship between extended cognition per se and epistemology.  Instead, it has examined the relationship between the version of extended cognition that relies on conditions of “trust and glue” and epistemology.  This paper begins with this clarificatory point, then sounds a cautionary note.  The cautionary note is a new argument for the view that the conditions of “trust and glue” commit a version of the infamous “coupling-constitution” fallacy.

In this paper, I propose to sketch the main lines of some recent theoretical accounts of numerical cognition and evaluate their ability to explain the development of mathematically viable concepts of number (Dehaene 2011; Carey 2009; DeCruz 2008). I will try to show that, despite their differences, these all share a critical flaw in that they explain the development of number concepts by relying in part on numerical symbols. I will argue that explaining how number concepts develop in the brain by relying on the presence of mathematical symbols in the environment is akin to putting the cart before the ox, since such symbols cannot emerge without there being number concepts beforehand.

Le présent texte tente de jeter de la lumière sur une hypothèse problématique que partagent plusieurs théories récemment proposées pour expliquer l’origine du concept de nombre. Bien que le domaine de la cognition numérique soit encore trop jeune pour parler d’idée reçue, il n’en demeure pas moins que l’existence de symboles numériques dans l’environnement joue un rôle central dans les théories les plus citées dans la littérature – dont celles de Stanislas Dehaene, Susan Carey, et Helen DeCruz. Je propose de démontrer que, dans ces trois modèles, le développement de concepts de nombres est le résultat d’une interaction entre l’être humain et des symboles numériques dans son environnement. En se fiant à une telle interaction, ces théories font ainsi appel à une forme de cognition externalisée et d’esprit étendu pour expliquer l’émergence d’une nouvelle catégorie de représentations, celle des nombres. Or, si l’argument présenté ci-dessous tient la route, un tel appel à des symboles numériques pour expliquer l’émergence du concept de nombre est l’équivalent philosophique de placer la charrue devant les bœufs, puisque ces symboles sont parasitiques sur les concepts de nombres dont on tente d’expliquer l’émergence.

Our minds are extended through tools – from pencils on paper to clocks and computers. ‘Extended minds’ have gained acclaim in digital times, but have also stirred fear: do objects become smarter at our expense? We propose a new approach to help cultivate auspicious cognitive relationships with things: the ‘extended object’. If our thoughts are extended through things, things can be symmetrically and methodically extended through our thoughts – in conversation, and in time. Let us consider the Moon: Can it colonize us?

In this chapter we discuss the intersection between DV devices and food consumption and resultant practices they configure. Drawing on insights gleaned from in depth interviews with 29 cooking enthusiasts living the South of England, we provide an overview of new configurations, placing emphasis on the ways in which various components of practice – knowledge, competence and commitment – are redistributed between our home cooks and their DV devices.  While we acknowledge the significance of ultimate goals, which are to be substantiated and attained through meal work, for example the expression of caring parent or competent cook (see for example Molander’s (2011) work on meal preparation as a meta-practice of love and motherhood here we focus less on the teleoaffective, or goal dimension of practices to deal with specific meal related projects and tasks, like knowing how to decorate a pirate chest birthday cake or make gluten free bread.  In this way we can better hone in on the way in which the coming together of technology and home cook produce new forms of doing meal work.

This thesis addresses the longstanding intellectual framework that has divided mind from matter, agency from environment and humanity from nature. In an attempt to break down these dichotomies this paper explores the Paris Commune of 1871 as a case study in cognitive ecology. The paper hopes to answer the question of how people transform their societies without supervision or command from a central authority. It argues that cities are selection driven adaptive landscapes, co-evolutionary structures that emerge to facilitate and sustain dense human habitation through the material organization of cognition. This study seeks to answer questions about the entanglement of environment, social organization and cognition. Specifically the ways in which ecological dynamics and selection mechanisms affect social structure; how individual agency translates into collective action; and the ways in which cultural materials feedback into cognitive processes and social activity. By investigating flows of energy, matter and information during the Siege and Commune of Paris from 1870 to 1871 the analysis attempts to show how human cognition intersects with its environment to form self-organizing, complex adaptive systems. The research utilizes a number of theoretical frameworks to explore the evidence; Material Engagement Theory, Extended Mind Theory, Entanglement Theory, Developmental Systems Theory, Panarchy, and Complexity Theory. This paper demonstrates that contractions in energy, matter and information flows created by the Prussian siege triggered selection mechanisms favoring specific social institutions while disempowering others. Further, it shows that cognitive niche construction facilitated social revolution in the city. Finally, it argues that cultural materials helped to distribute cognitive processes in ways that enabled collective revolutionary action. This includes one clear example of a positive feedback loop mediated through physical objects. In conclusion, this paper shows that the most important feature of urban environments is the ability to facilitate individual adaptations to ecologies dominated by the physical and cognitive presence of their own species. The products of human cognition, circulating as materials in socio-cognitive ecologies, function to entangle ideas and relationships into the physical environment and organize behavior. Thus, human societies do not fundamentally break from the natural world but express the developmental properties of human evolution.