The Limits of The Extended Mind and How to Transcend Them

B015222
MSc Mind, Language and Embodied Cognition
The University of Edinburgh
2013

1- The Extended Mind

The hypothesis of Extended Mind has been defended in different versions by philosophers like
Robert Wilson (1994), Richard Menary (2007, 2010), Mark Rowlands (2009) Merlin Donald
(1991), Edwin Hutchins in the form of distributed socio-cultural systems (1995), Clark & Chalmers
(1998), John Sutton (2002, 2008, 2010) and John Haugeland (1998) among others. What all these
philosophers have in common is the way they agree that human cognition is essentially anchored on
the props, artefacts and of environmental resources that humans design and integrate in their
cognitive life. Perhaps his most notorious proponent has been Andy Clark (1998, 2001, 2003, 2008,
2008) whose version of Extended Mind has attracted the widest attention among philosophers and
cognitive scientists. Thus, this is the version of Extended Mind that I am going to discuss. To
distinguish it from Extended Mind as a general theory that proposes that cognitive processes and
states extend beyond the bodily boundaries I am going to use EM to refer to Clarks version and
Extended Mind or cognitive extension when I want to refer to the general version of the thesis
that cognitive processes and states extend beyond the body defended by the heterogenous group of
philosophers mentioned above. The singularities of Clarks version of Extended Mind will become
clear in the first sections of the essay.
Clarks EM in a nutshell can be defined along these lines: in some cases individuals are so
dependent of external apparatus, tools and props for their cognitive economy and stability that we
can treat those as forming a coupled cognitive system with the organism. In these cases the mental
states of the agent as beliefs and/or cognitive capacities as perception (think about your lenses or
hearing aids) supervene not only on the organism but also on the external devices and props
integrated into the individual cognitive economy by the right kind of coupling. Clark & Chalmers
claimed that not only mental states and processes but also individuals minds, agency, is extended in
those cases (1998, 23). On the other side consciousness still supervenes only on the body due to its
dependence on high-bandwidth connections which are unlikely to be found between internal and
external components (Clark 2009).
EM has three main ontological commitments. Firstly it embraces functionalism as the correct theory
of mind. Second, it employs two theoretical devices as its methodology for determining whether
some external part is cognitive or not and under what conditions EM applies. The first
methodology, dubbed the Parity Principle (henceforth referred to as PP) motivates externalism and
2

delimits what parts of the world will count as cognitive. The second, the Glue and Trust four
criteria (henceforth referred to as 4C).
There are two main goals in this essay; one modest and the other more ambitious. The modest aim
is to analyze the commitments of EM and delimit its scope for a range of phenomena. In order to
achieve this that I will discuss PP and 4C. As will becomes clear once this is done EM limits itself
in the range of extended cognition to the model of an individual coupled with some external
device/s in a way that it/they become integrated in her cognitive economy to the point of becoming
a coupled system. For this coupled system to be formed ownership is a necessary condition
(Rowlands 2009). Thus, EM is suspiciously silent on cases of cultural and social cognition where
the requirement of individual ownership is rarely met. Some philosophers have already noticed this
important gap in EM (Hutchins 2010, Gallagher & Crisafi 2009, Sterelny 2010, Barnier et al. 2008).
My contribution to this paper will be to separate those parts of EM that could be preserved from
those that needs to be discarded.
The ambitious, although promissory and tentative, aim of the essay will address the worry about the
mark of the cognitive. Discussing the critiques of EM Rowlands reduced all of them to the
problem of the mark of the cognitive (2009, 2). But even for the second wave of EM 1 according
to Ramsey the problem is still pressing and unresolved (2010). My suggestion here will be to
defend the classic minimal definition of cognition as problem-solving activities which, in my view,
underlie much of cognitive science. The way to connect these two aims in the essay will by
noticing that EM, being a natural continuation of functionalism for the mental needs, recognizes and
employs the functional characterization of socio-cultural systems above the organismic level where
naturally EM has operated so far. Once EM has broken the functional cocoon, the individualistic
and internal model of cognition, on which EM has relied through PP and 4C, cannot be anymore the
sole model of Extended Cognition.

2- EM and Functionalism
Clark has endorsed functionalism as the metaphysics behind EM. In its first version known as
Machine Functionalism (Putnam, 1967) identifies the percepts of the organism with inputs in a
Turing machine, behavior as outputs in that machine, and mental states in that organism as
3
1

The distinction between a first wave within EM centered around arguments from parity ( la PP) and a second
wave around arguments from complementarity of internal and external roles is clearly explained in Sutton 2010.

machines states that are connected inferentially among them and cause outputs. The whole system
operates according to algorithms so that for a given input it should be possible to predict the chain
of mental states that it will follow and its outputs. In the model of a Turing machine any possible
combinations of states of that cognitive system can be computed by a given Turing machine.
Despite it being originally defined as a deterministic automaton, Putnam (1967) already admitted
that cognition is more likely to work by inductive inferences. Clark (2013) has also recently
embraced an inductive-reasoning model for cognition in the form of bayesian inferences. In any
case, the exact form of computation performed by a cognitive system is still debated and is
irrelevant for the purposes of this essay, as I will be employing only the highly abstracted functional
vocabulary of the common-sense version that EM endorses.
This common-sense version, also known as analytical functionalism (Braddon-Mitchel & Jackson
2007, Lewis 1970) is the one that Clark (2008, 96-97) advocates for EM. According to Commonsense Functionalism, a cognitive system possesses the same tripartite structure of Machine
Functionalism as mentioned above: inputs, mental states and outputs. The originality is that the
mental states are whatever plays the functional or causal role for the organism. For example, pain is
analyzed by the homeostatic role which it plays in the organism (Braddon-Mitchel & Jackson 2007,
52-53). As I will argue in section 7, this characterization of a system, process or state in terms of
functional role is ubiquitous in folk, scientific and philosophical descriptions for biological forms,
all kinds of human-made objects and specially relevant for the purposes of this essay at the level of
socio-cultural systems. Thus it would be unwise for EM not to use it to recognize new functions
above the putative level of description for EM, the personal level.

Another core element of functionalism as a theory in any of its versions is what it has been know as
multiple realizability: the property which a mental state possesses of being implemented in different
materials. This feature of functionalism, more than any other, points to the fact that functionalism
can be happily married to EM. Indeed, Sprevak (2009) has argued that functionalism implies EM. If
mental states are identified with the functional roles which they play for the cognitive system,
instead of with the physical process, then we should grant that any material is, in principle, able to
implement a given mental state. Therefore, there is no reason to restrict the material vehicles of
mental states to biological inner matter. External props and devices seems equally to be candidates
to act as realizers of functional/mental states as much as we rely on them and manipulate external
representations by activities such as writing, drawing and labeling.
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However, by being functionalist, EM has to count as cognitive not only in terms of the nonbiological external human resources by which we live but also in terms of other earthling species
and even alien and other fictional beings, in case they implement the right functional profile. As
Sprevak (2009) has argued, being EM, deeply functionalist EM is in fact committed to a version of
cognitive extension that is much more liberal than what Clark is prepared to admit. This was in fact
the classic critique of functionalism by Block (1978) under what was called the problem of the
inputs and outputs. His conclusion by that time was overly pessimistic towards functionalism:
The question is: is there a description of inputs and outputs specific enough to avoid liberalism, yet
general enough to avoid chauvinism? I doubt that there is.(1978, 51). As I will argue in section 5, I
think we have reasons to be optimistic about functionalism. Although for that we may need to get
rid of PP by restricting the methodology to actual cases and to get rid of 4C if we are going to
expand our notion of cognition from cases of individual ownership to the socio-cultural realm.

Having explained the main ontological commitment of EM, functionalism, I will introduce in the
next two sections the two methodological principles of EM. In the next section I will briefly
mentioned 4C to return to the issue of how it excludes social phenomena by the end of the essay. In
between I will comment on PP and how functionalism may motivate a methodology that will
overcome the difficulties of PP.

3. The Glue and Trust four criteria for an extended cognitive system
The 4C address the worry of availability and portability of those external devices; they, as Otto's
notebook seems prone to be plugged and unplugged with ease and so they seem available for the
agent only temporarily. 4C needs to be introduced into EM to secure the fact that the external parts
of cognitions needs to be coupled to the agent in a reliable way (Clark & Chalmers 1998, ). 4C are
these:
1. That the resource will be reliably available and typically invoked. (Otto always carries the
notebook and wont answer that he doesnt know until after he has consulted it).
2. That any information thus retrieved be more or less automatically endorsed. It should not usually
be subject to critical scrutiny (e.g., unlike the opinions of other people). It should be deemed about
as trustworthy as something retrieved clearly from biological memory.
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3. That information contained in the resource should be easily accessible as and when required.
4. That the information in the notebook has been consciously endorsed at some point in the past and
indeed is there as a consequence of this endorsement. (Clark 2008, 79).
I will not stop here to analyse 4C; I will do so before the end of the essay. All I want to bring into
attention is how the 4C restrict the range of those external apparatus and processes to only those
that become deeply integrated into individual cognitive stability. We should now start the discussion
about EM with what has been the most controversial principle of EM: the Parity Principle (PP).

4. The Parity Principle: Internalist Methodologies for Externalist

Ontologies
PP has been at the core of most, if not all, debates around EM. According to John Sutton, it is PP
which gives EM its immediate metaphysical bite, enthusing sympathizers and infuriating critics
(2010, 299). PP was introduced within the first paper by Clark & Chalmers (1998) about EM as a
methodological principle to distinguish between the external parts and processes that will count as
cognitive from those which are not. In this regard, PP serves the same methodological purpose as
4C: to restrict the apparent over multiplication of cases of EM to only those cases in which there is
a deep integration of those external apparatus into the individual cognitive economy. This is what
PP and 4C have in common. PP distinguishes itself from 4C in being a subjunctive claim. PPs
explicit formulation is this:
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 recognizing as part
of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is (so we claim) part of
the cognitive process. (Clark & Chalmers 1998, 8. The italics have been used in the
original).
EM has been accused of being committed by PP to accepting a parity of contributions between
internal and external processes (Adams & Aizawa, 2001, 2008, 2010; Gallagher & Crisafi, 2009;
Rupert 2004; Sutton, 2010). Rupert (2004) Adams & Aizawa (2001, 2008, 2010) first criticized EM
and PP by showing how a series of relevant differences between internal and external memory raise
6

doubts about the parity of treatment between the external and the internal that PP seems to motivate.

Clark has defended EM from those criticisms that EM needs any fine-grained equivalence between
internal and external processes to motivate externalism (2008, 96). All that EM needs is enough
coarse-grained functional similarity so that a counterfactual case can be constructed via PP to
motivate cognitive extension. This counterfactual defense of PP has been argued in Clark (2007,
114) and Clark and Kirverstein (2009, 3). The argument in short amounts to this: EM ontology
recognizes the idiosyncrasy of external roles by accepting them as complementary, rather than
equivalent to internal. EM therefore is not asking for parity of causal contribution between internal
and external machinery. The purpose of PP was rather to engage in our rough sense of cognition
without the pervasive distractions of skin and skull (Clark, 2008, 114). Kiverstein and Farina have
argued that critics have often mistaken PP for a claim about actual cases; PP is a counterfactual
claim (Farina & Kiverstein, 2009, 9). This possible world, though experimental, has been always a
commitment of functionalism needed to avoid chauvinism about mental states: human individuals,
or even Martians, may have the same functionally relevant mental states despite their different
material organization.

However, as we saw above, PP clearly states that for some external part of the world to count as
cognitive it has to fit into our intuitions of what we accept to be internal cognition. According to Di
Paolo (2009, 9-10), what EM needs (but it does not offer) is an operational, location-neutral,
definition of cognition, which may be used subsequently to determine location. This argument is
strong because, if EM could offer a location-neutral account of cognition, it could eventually
employ it to locate the material vehicles of cognition. If such a criterion could be defined, then EM
would not need an internalist criterion as PP. According to Di Paolo (2009: 10-11), instead, EM
offers the PP principle as the only metaphysical criteria for counting some part of the world as
cognitive. EM deals firstly with the boundaries of cognition through a method, the PP, which is
internalist and then asks to count that part of the world as a proper part of cognition if it elicits
internalist intuitions.

PP, in this way, according to Di Paolo induces a kind of paranoia in EM theorists; they aim to break
traditional internalist boundaries of cognition by relying in the first place on internalist intuitions
(2009, 11). Therefore whereas EM ontology is clearly externalist its methodology, the PP, is
however still internalist.
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One may question at this point why employing an internalist methodology for Extended Mind is
per se a mistaken strategy. One might think that casting internalistic notions to study the assorted
coalition of biological and external resources that coalesce into a persons individual cognitive
economies is precisely the right model and methodology for cases of cognitive extension. In cases
where a person externalizes a previously held internal belief by encoding it in representational
format in notebook, the internalist methodology seems the right one. PP will work successfully here
by internalizing in our counterfactual imagined scenario what happens to be in our actual case an
example of externalization as an previous internal mental state; in this case, a belief. For these cases
there seems to be no problem in using our putative internalist intuitions. Indeed EM and PP has
relied mostly in these kind of cases, that I will call prosthetic, to build the metaphysical tenets of
EM. It is worth recalling the famous case of Otto by which Clark and Chalmers firstly introduced
EM (1998, 17). In that case, Otto had to rely on his notebook as his external memory due to its
degraded biological memory. Once the new coupled system is presented, namely Otto and his
reliable notebook, EM needs another case that needs to be functionally equivalent where the
external function is however performed internally. In the Otto case, it was Inga who still relied on
his biological memory. In the case of PP, it needs to be a counterfactual scenario where we imagine
Otto storing the same information internally.
The crucial problem for this model of prosthetic cognitive extension is that it seems enormously
restricted. Most cases of human problem-solving activities are done in the socio-cultural arena
where tools, props, artifacts, human groups, and coalitions of humans of all kinds give rise to new
functionalities that have no parallel in the model of individual cognition on which PP relies.
Hutchins (2010), Sutton (2010), Sterelny (2010), Gallagher and Crisafi (2010), Gallagher (2013)
and even Clark (2008: 68) have all pointed to this incapacity of EM through PP to subsume sociocultural cognition. It is worth thinking about many of the cognitive tasks which we perform in
which tools and all kinds of external machinery form an essential part of the task; i.e without which
the task cannot be performed at all. For example, these might include playing an instrument, writing
a book, plotting a chart on a computer, or searching on Google. For those cases it would be hardly
intelligible to imagine, a la PP, how it would be to perform those cognitive processes entirely in the
head. Therefore, the utility of an internalist counterfactual thought experiment like PP is pretty
restricted. Kim Sterelny has summarized nicely the core of this critique saying that Extended
minds are more powerful not just because they are bigger, having external as well as internal
resources. They are more powerful through differentiation and the division of labour. (2010, 472).
Then EM applicability seems too limited to cases of prosthetic replacement of faulty biological
8

functions for external prostheses, such as hearing aids, glasses and external memory storages for
Alzheimer patients. The crucial point is that, for all the other most common cases in which human
problem-solving involves new conquered socio-cultural functionalities and abilities according to the
EM framework, either they will become non-cognitive processes or they will fall out of EM scope.
Sterelny also offers as alternative the view of cognition as scaffolded (via niche construction see
quote) rather than extended on the grounds that the former case is more general and has a greater
range; it applies to more cases of human cognition both in present and evolutionary time scale,
whereas EM, built around PP and prosthetic cases, will be more restricted (2010, 472).

Another justification for using the counterfactual PP is that it works by engaging with our rough
sense of cognition (Clark, 2008, 114; Clark and Kiverstein, 2009, 3). If it happens that our folk
notions about cognition are mostly internalist, then PP will be an astute strategy for EM to motivate
externalism. Nevertheless it is unclear why we need to elicit our internalist intuitions, if the purpose
of PP was merely to engage in our folk notions about cognition, however it turned out and we
counterfactually located those. It may be the case that our folk notions about cognition are not
internalist but involve the peculiar ways by which extended and socio-cultural processes constitute
cognition too. If we are going to rely on a common-sense ontology, we should rather be liberal
about the way those common-sense ontologies turn out to be. Then PP may be a non-starter.

Here we have entered a dilemma for EM. Either by using internalist counterfactual imagined
scenarios like the ones PP proposes, we will then leave out of the EM picture many of our extended
activities that will not fit into our internalist notions, or we do not make use of PP at all and simply
leave the criterion to each of us, the rough sense that EM proponents advocates, whether external
parts and processes count as cognitive or not. I think that the price which EM has to pay to keep PP
is too big and that the second option is a more rewarding alternative.

My proposal for the solution to the dilemma will be to indicate how within a functionalist approach
there is no reason to stop at the individual or even cyborg level. As we will see in the next section
functionalism about cognition is part of a larger canvass of functionalism operating at different
levels of nature. Thus functionalism and EM have already the resources to appeal to intuitions at
different levels of nature without relying only on intuitions at the within-the-head level as PP does.
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5. Multilevel Functions, Ineliminable Functions

Functional analysis in terms of purposes and intentional behavior 2 has a long tradition ever since
Aristotle who first introduced teleology, as a final cause, into what was then proto-scientific
discourse to explain the functions found in biology. Today it is involved in the functional analysis
which is widely used in biology, the intentional and teleological vocabulary in philosophy and
social sciences. Since the 1970s, it is also the best theory we have about the mental in philosophy of
mind. However, its prevalence in philosophy of mind must not hide the fact that it belongs to a
larger project of scientific explanations along different levels of nature above and below the
individual level: the putative level of explanation for psychology either at the personal level
(properties that can be ascribed to the individual as a whole) or at the sub-personal level (properties
that can be ascribed to some of its parts, such as the amygdala or the frontal cortex).
A functional analysis works with great success in biology at the level of organelles, cells, organs
and traits. A kidney, for example, is defined by its functions like filtering blood to excrete urine and
regulating blood pressure. In evolutionary psychology, it is also used to explain the prevalence of
certain psychological traits. Those traits have a function/purpose and that function is explained as
selected and preserved by natural selection. Following Aristotles tradition, Kant in the second part
of his Critique of Judgement argued that, in contrast to mechanical explanations in physics, living
beings are teleological systems and therefore teleological explanations are necessary to analyze
them. It is worth noticing that teleological explanations are common and fruitful for both organisms
and artifacts (see Lewens, 2004); and this is precisely the range of phenomena that EM covers in
those cases of cognitive coupling between the two. Later on from the nineteenth century to
twentieth century the analysis of organism as goal-directed systems was applied to social systems
that were then treated functionally as organisms. (see Turner , 29-38). The founding fathers of
sociology, namely Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, also used functional analysis
of social features despite their divergences. In social sciences, the functionalist vocabulary takes the
individual as the minimal unit of study in contrast to cognitive sciences which goes also into subpersonal processes. Sociology takes the individual level as the basic level and then scales up to the
different roles assumed by individuals and up to the analysis of the daunting array of coalitions of
individuals into religious groups, professions, sport teams, companies, NGOs, local governments,
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2

- An interesting question is if functionalism in its Machine Functionalism version (Putnam 1967) or its commonsense version (Braddon-Mitchel and Jackson 2007) needs teleology. My own view is that it does. Enactivism finds
also lacking in functionalism the analysis of the autonomous system as a goal-directed systems. See Di Paolo 2009,
Thompson 2007; Nagel 2012 for a defense of natural teleology.

nations, armies and universities. It is worth noticing that, at this socio-cultural level, it is not only
the coalition of individuals that makes possible the function of the group but also the coalition of
individuals in groups plus artifacts, as Hutchins showed in Cognition in the Wild (1995). An army
will not be an army without its weaponry, an industrial company without its machinery or a musical
band without its instruments. Their very identity as systems depends not only on their individuals
playing some role within the given social system but also on their non-biological human-made
artifacts and tools.
In philosophy of mind William Lycan argued in favor of functionalism as a theory that posits a
hierarchy of multiple levels of functional characterization in nature. Once this hierarchy of
functional levels is in place the function/structure (realizer) distinction goes relative: something is
a role as opposed to an occupant, a functional state as opposed to a realizer, or viceversa, only
modulo a designated level of nature (Lycan 1987, 70). And although to my knowledge Lycan has
not discussed how those functional levels go above the organismic level it is frequent to explain
functional roles and what multiple realizability amounts to by using the example of the university in
which different departments or the university as such preserve its functions despite changes in
material conditions. Or by the role someone plays within a company or a university as vice
chancellor (Braddon-Mitchel & Jackson 2007, 45). However surprisingly few people were ready to
accept that the social levels to which all these examples naturally belong could be a proper
cognitive level of analysis. Early in the debates about functionalism Block argued that
functionalism is a wrong theory of the mental because (P1) A given functional profile in terms of
inputs, inferentially promiscuous mental states, and output/behavior can be, and is probably realized
by social entities as nations. Nations receive inputs in terms of goods and information, processes
those in complex ways and produces some outputs in terms of responses, actions, etc. (P2) Having
consciousness is necessary for mentality. (P3) We cannot conceive a nation having consciousness.
(C) Therefore, functionalism fails as a theory of cognition (1978) 3. The burden of Blocks argument
lies in consciousness being a necessary condition for having a mind. I am no going to worry in this
essay about the possibility of other forms of organization in nature like the cellular or social having
consciousness despite the tradition of talk about the spirit of a nation. I find the possibility
attractive but probably those forms of consciousness have little in common with consciousness at
the organismic level where we are trapped. Thus, at this point we would better remain agnostic
about the issue. In the case of a man-machine coupled system I do not need to worry about the
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3

However Schwitzgebel has recently bitten the bullet and defended the claim that some social entities such as
nations are in fact conscious (2013).

possibility of extended consciousness 4. My claim here is that functionalism in philosophy of mind

has elicited thought experiments about social entities being conscious because functionalism about
mental states indeed forms part of a larger project of functionalism for a variety of levels of nature
below (Lycan 1987) and above the personal level. Functionalism is not primarily a theory of the
mental but an essential explanatory tool for natural phenomena at different levels. Thus it has
greater predictive and explanatory power than explanations at the putative cognitive level: the
human organism, or, in the case of EM, the coupled human system plus its apparatus. .
Also applying functionalist categories, Hutchins (1995) has defended the claim of distributed social
systems as, in the case of a ship which he studied extensively, they are in fact cognitive systems.
He thinks that the Turing machine model of cognition is better suited to study socio-cultural than
internal cognition. This is because when the early theorist of A.I defined cognition in terms of a
symbol manipulation machine they were reflecting on how a mathematician works to solve a
problem by manipulating external symbols on a piece of paper by a mechanical procedure
(Hutchins 1995). Thus they wrongly took what are the features of an extended socio-cultural
cognitive system as the model of how internal cognition works (Hutchins 1995, 362).
However we do not need to go as far as as Hutchins to claim that the functionalist model of
cognition is in fact a model apt only for sociocultural phenomena and so a mistaken model to study
internal cognition (1995, 362). We can maintain that the functionalist model of cognition is a useful
model for both individual cognition and social systems. This is enough for my purposes as I am not
claiming that functionalism is a bad theory for studying phenomena at the personal or sub-personal
level or at the cyborg-like extended system la EM. All I want to notice is that functionalism
operates at socio-cultural levels above the individual level and then even an extended cyborg-like
system by participating and being part of those socio-cultural levels may possess functional
characterizations not subsumed under the internalist model of PP.
To appreciate this point, let us consider an example of an individual, Leo, a journalist, carrying
everywhere and relying transparently on his notebook for making notes about his work as journalist.
His mental states in this way happen to supervene on his notebook as EM predicted. The functional
analysis does not stop at the level of his extended mental states supervening at the internal and
external material substrates. Not only his mental states but the notebook as such plays a role for him
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4

Clark defends EM as a theory about non-conscious processes (2009) and claim that consciousness is probably still
all internally realized as it requires high-bandwidth connections that cannot operate along the multiple interfaces
that span between body external apparatus.

in that it allows him to record externally and manipulate externally the symbols encoded there.
Some may claim here that his mental states stored externally are truly mental whereas his notebook
plays some function for Leo but that function is not mental. Mentality stops therefore at the level of
states but does not own objects by its functions. Both are different functions; only the one that
characterizes states and beliefs but not objects being cognitive. However, as a proponent of EM,
Rowlands (2009) has argued for individual ownership as the criterion to count external phenomena
as cognitive. Leos notebook as an object, and not only the beliefs there recorded, are owned by
Leo. However, contra Rowlands, Leo, his notebook and their cognitive outputs, for example the
article he writes, together also play a role maybe for his company, a magazine that reuses Leos
cognitive outputs, his article as inputs for the company and integrates the companys functional
economy.

Am I not after all just equating cognition with functions or the property cognitive with
functional? Am I not reaching the absurd conclusion that the three or a mountain in front of my
house is cognitive because it plays some function for me (such as giving me shade when I need
it)? Is the cognitive bloat worry not getting worse by replacing cognitive vocabulary with
functional rather than solving it? The task of answering this question will require more space of
what I have here. However, I suggest that teleological and functional characterization is primitive
and ineliminable whereas the property of cognitive and mental is perhaps eliminable. I believe,
along with Searle (Searle, 2010), that explanations at different levels of nature carried out by
physics, chemistry, biology and sociology do not mean that they correspond to different realities.
Instead naturalist philosophy should embrace a single reality composed of different levels. For the
purposes of this essay, the benefit of buying the functionalism commitment of EM without PP and
4C will allow a more comprehensive picture of human cognition to be formed.

In this section. I have analyzed how the functional characterization of mental states in philosophy of
mind is part of a larger picture of functional explanations at different biological and socio-cultural
levels. For the range of phenomena that EM studies, the cyborg-like coupled system and the artifact,
there are many functional characterizations that fall out of the internalist model of PP, as the role
that the artifact as problem-solving prop plays for the agent and the role that they together plays for
a social agent as a company. Also, as we saw in the previous section on PP, there are many cognitive
tasks that humans achieve with external apparatus, such as making a model of a building, that it
13

would be difficult to imagine this counterfactually happening inside the head as PP proposes. Thus,
functionalism at multiple levels is an ineliminable feature of extended systems whereas PP is
probably a dispensable, or, at least, an incomplete methodology.

In the next section we will see how the second methodological principle of EM, the glue and trust
four criteria (4C) has received serious criticism from some philosophers like Kim Sterelny and
Shaun Gallagher. Both conceive cognition essentially as a human problem-solving activity
accomplished at the socio-cultural level. The aim will be to show how 4C is theoretically built to
avoid those phenomena by restricting cognition to the individual, although hybrid, sphere.

6. Cognition is primarily a socio-cultural phenomenon

In this section I will now return to the analysis of 4C that we postponed after the presentation of
EMs three major commitments: functionalism, 4C and PP. The PP works, as we have seen, as a
counterfactual method that triggers our internalist intuitions to retain from them some coarsegrained functionality to motivate cases of external cognition, in case these external parts show some
level of functional similarity with respect to those putative internal processes. PP does the
methodological job of providing motivation for sceptics of cognitive extension. 4C, on the contrary,
does not try to convert any profane theorist; it limits the reach of EM to the external parts in which
the information contained (e.g. beliefs) within those artefacts so that it satisfies the criteria of being
reliably and typically invoked, automatically endorsed (so not subject to critical scrutiny) and easily
accessible

by

the

agent

to

which

the

artefact

is

coupled

(Clark,

2008,

79).

It is not difficult to observe how the 4C are built on the model of traditional internal cognition as
information processing of conscious mental states such as beliefs and desires. As in the externalist
cases considered by EM internal mental states are putatively considered to be available when
necessary, automatically endorsed, easily accessible (unless some traumatic event has blocked or
erased the accessibility), and consciously endorsed at least once retrieval is done. Thus the model
for EM once more as in PP is internal cognition. What 4C introduces with respect to PP is a safety
area that once we have accepted it externalism will avoid EM falling into panpsychism. It answers
in this way to the worry about the cognitive bloat by restricting the possible cases to only those
that integrate into the individual cognitive economy in a transparent and seamless way.
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The key problem with 4C is that leaves out of the EM range most of those cases that are precisely
taken to be the defining features of human cognition: those in which humans learn, manipulate,
reason and act in a socially constituted public arena where public symbols, language, and social
apparatus abound. Kim Sterelny (2010) in one of the finest critiques of EM has attacked 4C on the
grounds that external apparatus normally operates in a public and contested public space where
deception and corruption by other agents are too common to be trusted automatically 5. Trust for
him is a cognitive dimension along which some cases of individual engagement with external
apparatus and epistemic artefacts will fall nearer to the public kind that resists customization
whereas others (for example, my customized PC) will allow the kind of integration into individual
economy that 4C predicts (2010, 473-475). Sutton has also highlighted against 4C and PP this
liberal multidimensional space for doing EM-inspired cognitive science (2010, 303).
In a clarifying defense for the purposes of this essay, Clark has responded to Sterelny that the
lower the vigilance and defenses, the closer we approximate to the functionality of a typical internal
flow. (Clark, 2008, 104). Thus, Sterelnys argument about the contested public space against 4C is
taken by Clark as an argument in favor of EM rather than against EM (ibid.). According to Clark,
only insofar as the external apparatus works in a way that mirrors internal functionality will they
count as cognitive extensions of the individual if coupled in the right way; otherwise it will not
count as a cognitive extension (Clark, 2008, 104). In a similar way, Rowlands (2009, 16) offered
individual ownership as the key criterion which counts something as a proper extended part of the
mind. Rowlands thinks that ownership for internal cognitive processes is not more problematic than
for external and that spatial containment cannot be a criterion for cognitive ownership. The problem
with this strategy is that individual ownership and 4C, although not fully internalistic because they
can be applied to some external apparatus coupled in the right way to the individual, are however
still typically internalistic (Gallagher & Crisafi, 2009, 46). These are not new ideas as they appeared
already in the original paper by Clark & Chalmers In effect, explanatory methods that might once
have been thought appropriate only for the analysis of "inner" processes are now being adapted for
the study of the outer [...] (1998, 13).

However, by retreating to 4C to restrict EM to only those cases where external devices mirror some
rough functionality of internal cognition Rowlands and Clark's response (2010) to Sterelny has
15
5

- Importantly Sterelny soon realizes the external contested space prone to deception and trickery, a Machiavellian
model for social relations, is often rare. Reliability is a more pervasive issue (2010, 474). Human societies has
also built important social institutions like law, social bonds and emotions based on altruism and reciprocities that
tend to deal successfully with cases of social anomie.

missed the more important point of Sterelnys objection to EM: the loss of scope of EM by adopting
4C and PP. As an alternative to EM, Sterelny argues in favour of the scaffolded model of cognition.
Scaffolded means that our cognitive abilities are essentially dependent on environmental
resources. Humans, to a greater extent, and some other animals, to a lesser extent, engineer their
environment by building all kind of artifacts and aids for survival. Scaffolded cognition belongs to
the niche construction hypothesis (Odling-Smee et al., 2003) that considers culture as a second
channel of inheritance in evolution parallel to the genetic inheritance channel. The scaffolded
competing hypothesis of human cognition is supposed to offer same explanatory power as EM for
the cases of cyborg individual cognitive extension by treating those as scaffolded minds instead of
extended but importantly it offers an explanatory framework for all those cases of public cognition
that EM is unable to explain. Therefore, according to Sterelny (2010), niche construction/scaffolded
theory is more general than EM and should be adopted over EM.

One of the main tenets of the niche construction model is that, in contrast to how it is traditionally
conceived, natural selection, organism and species do not adapt to a pre-existent environment.
Instead organisms modify their niche in substantial ways, such as plants that modify the chemical
composition of the soil to benefit from it or beavers that build damns in the rivers to facilitate the
capture of prey. Therefore, the active always-adapting elements of natural selection are not only
organisms and species but also the environments which are progressively modified by those who
inhabit them to improve the material conditions for life. Environments in this way are not the
passive parts of evolution as traditionally conceived by evolutionary theory but participate
reciprocally with organisms in the evolutionary process. In this way, the human world (and,
therefore, human cognition) is constituted not only by their organismic parts, maybe coupled with
their individual extensions as in EM, but also by its cultural niche which is rarely individualistic. It
is worth noting that a similar critique applies to EM. EM presupposes an already given set of human
made devices and apparatus that enter at some point of the development in the cognitive economy
of the individual to be so entangled with her internal functionality as to be considered extensions
beyond the skin of her cognitive states. No explanation is offered of the socially distributed
knowledge required to build those apparatus, or how that knowledge is acquired and transmitted by
the community via that second channel for transmission of information beside genes that is culture.
Nor is it explained how that new cyborg-like coupled system interacts and enters the socio-cultural
world by which he lives.

16

Hutchins (2010) has also targeted this point in his critique of Clark's Supersizing the Mind (2007).
What Clark, in his Principle of Ecological Assembly finds intriguing, is how the agent is able to
recruit on the spot whatever mix of problem-solving resources will yield an acceptable result with
a minimum of effort (Clark, 2008, 13) Clark's solution is to retreat to Organism Center Cognition
that sees the agent as the core controller and recruiter of those external resources. Although he also
recognizes in the book the essential role that social groups and culture play in that process, as
Hutchins noticed (2010, 3), these remarks are often left for the footnotes (see. Clark, 2008, ft.18. ft.
19) and the bulk of the argumentation in the book is built around Organism Centered Cognition.
However, as Hutchins points out, some of the most central examples of Clarks argumentation for
extended cognition are language and gesture which are in the first place cultural practices (2010, 45). As an antidote, Hutchins proposes to enculturate the cyborg model and the culturally elusive
language that Clark employs to hide the fact that extended cognition is essentially a cultural
phenomenon (2010, 9).

Barnier et al. (2008), Gallagher (2013), Gallagher and Crisafi (2008) have also followed a similar
line of criticism toward EM and have argued in favor of social and institutional cognition as a level
of analysis that EM is unable to subsume. In the first part of their paper Mental Institutions (2008)
Gallagher and Crisafi have noticed how the features that 4C take to be excluding cognitive
extension are themselves considered essential parts of cognition; properties that makes those very
external processes more cognitive not less. The first criterion, availability, should not worry EM
theorist. Just because we use a machine to perform a calculation only once in our life, with the
machine being unavailable for the rest of our life, it does not mean that our cognitive process is not
extended. If we have performed the same cognitive task with the same results as if we were using it
during our whole lifetime, that should also count as a clear case of cognitive extension (Gallagher &
Crisafi, 2008, 46). The second criterion, critical scrutiny, is itself a cognitive process and, in terms
of metacognition, a necessary ingredient of many cognitive processes (ibid.) Just because that
critical cognitive stance happens to be extended by, for example, using some diagrams to reflect on
those symbols as many of the examples of manipulation of external symbols typical of human
cognition, we would not say that those extended processes count as less cognitive. The third
criterion of 4C, ease of access, is also suspicious: some people have extremely poor memory
processes, but we would not claim that they do not engage in cognition as they try to use their
untrustworthy memory (Ibid.). The fourth criterion, conscious endorsement at some point in the
past, is not discussed by Gallagher and Crisafi I suspect because Clark & Chalmers had already
17

expressed some doubts about its inclusion in 4C (1998, 19).

The positive project of Gallagher & Crisafi (2009) and Gallagher (2013) is to vindicate the sociocultural level as a legitimate level of cognition. Some socio-cultural systems, such as the legal
system, are indeed cognitive systems. To justify that claim, Gallagher & Crisafi devised a thought
experiment in which a person, Alexis, has to judge a case based on a set of evidence and her own
moral position. We are presented with three different variations of the same problem-solving task:
to reach a decision about a case. In each variation of the thought experiment, the amount of
cognitive workload is increasingly distributed among the legal experts and the legal procedures and
laws that do most of the cognitive work. Alexis adopts therefore a role similar to a judge. The claim
is that all cases count as cognitive, all involve the same amount of cognitive work, the only
difference being that in the later cases the legal judgements are distributed among the many heads
that partake in the process and among non-biological cultural parts as the precedent and laws.
According to Gallagher & Crisafi(1998, 9), the legal system is cognitive because it produces
judgements, it is a problem-solving activity and as Clark & Chalmers criterion for EM if we remove
the external part, in this case the legal institution, the behavioural competence of the system will
drop significantly (Gallagher & Crisafi 2008, 47-48).

It is important to notice that these socio-cultural cognitive/functional systems, such as universities,

companies, a court, families, and nations, work as stable systems. Of course they change throughout
time and history and the life of some of them will span short periods of time as a short-lived
company whereas others as nations or universities can span their existence and identity over
centuries. However, this temporary character of socio-cultural systems should not divert our
attention from the fact that humans have learnt to form stable cultural system that are reliable and
useful enough for us to preserve it. In this regard, the scaffolded metaphor often used to name
these cultural systems is too weak. Literally, a piece of scaffolding in architecture is a temporary
structure placed around a building or infrastructure that it allows to build the permanent internal
structure or building. After the building or refurbishing process is finished the scaffold is dismantled
and the building remains. Cultural systems, such as universities or political parties, are however not
precarious and temporal features of human cognition but carefully preserved structures that society
maintain as essential parts of the survival and life routines of their individuals. The state and its
multiple specialized ramifications are probably the most central and pervasive examples of this.
These socio-cultural systems also share with the organism level cognition organism homeostasis.
18

States and nations regulate and defend themselves from aggression and internal perturbation and
manage to keep a minimum of internal organization that suffices to guarantee their survival as
group.

To summarize this part, we have followed Sterelny (2010) who pointed how EM by 4C is
intrinsically unable to account for cognition in the public arena where resources are open, public
and frequently resists customization and individual ownership. The cases where 4C seems limited
are where deep incorporation into an individual economy is involved. He offers instead the niche
construction alternative that is more general as it explains communal resources and which therefore
should be chosen over the theories of EM. Gallagher & Crisafi (2009) and Gallagher (2013) which
criticized a lack of ease of access and an automatic retrieval which do not make a cognitive process
less cognitive. The cognitive task can take longer to accomplish and may require more difficulty to
access such as a long chess game. More dramatically, critical scrutiny and metacognition makes a
cognitive process more cognitive or at least sometimes a better cognitive strategy, not less
cognitive, if it happens to be extended as in the above example of a chess game. Therefore 4C
seems a mistaken methodology. Gallagher & Crisafi (2009) consider some social institutions, such
as the legal system, to be cognitive in so far as they produce judgements and modify human
behaviour systematically.

There still remains the possibility, which is in favour of EM, that organismic methodologies like PP
and 4C may be the right ones at least for the level where EM naturally belongs: the man-machine
individualistic cyborg level. However, even for this level, we saw in the case of Leo that some
functional characterization escapes from the EM methodology. All these other functionalities and
dimensions that escape from EM analysis belong to the socio-cultural world and analysis that, as
Hutchins (2010) has noticed, are suspiciously absent from Clarks magnus opus (2008).

7. Cognition as a problem-solving human activity

One idea that has underlined this essay is that EM does not need to defend cognition by the
psychological internalist and individualistic notions and categories that have been at the center of
psychology, neurosciences and philosophy of cognition. I am talking about the cognitivist
functional sandwich model of cognition which comprises an individual who receives inputs in the
19

form of percepts, processes those inputs, with those percepts triggering mental states which are built
arguably based on some a priori knowledge about the world, or prior in its most modern bayesian
inferences version. Those mental states are inferentially promiscuous and interact among
themselves producing cognitive output in the form of new mental states or action upon the world.
The individual is also believed to have conscious experiences and constant interaction with the
world although these two features are taken for granted rather than explained by the framework.
Another two necessary features for having a mind is that it needs a boundary (in this case, the skin)
that delimit an outer from a inner. This is taken to be a prerequisite for achieving homeostasis; selfregulation of the organism. Enactivism has taken this later feature as one of the essential features
for defining cognition. These features were jointly taken to define what is meant by a mind.

Nevertheless I think EM has instead embraced a much more dynamical and process-like view of
cognition (although EM sometimes sways between the two images). Humans, by constantly
renegotiating its cognitive limits and building its own epistemic niches are less prone to be
categorized under the traditional sandwich model of cognition and much better analyzed in terms of
material processes of human problem-solving activities. This will allow to include not only
individuals coupled with its external apparatus but also cultural systems, social systems and the
whole array of coalitions of humans, machines, and institutions as proper parts of cognition.
Cognitive Science as it is traditionally conceived has systematically neglected the socio-cultural
dimension of human intelligence (Prinz 2011; DAndrade, 1995; Hutchins, 1995). This extension of
traditionally conceived cognitive science to include the human world, but not the world tout
court as embodied theorists like to put it sometimes will address the mark of the cognitive and
cognitive bloat worries and can be easily motivated once we defend the minimal notion of
cognition as problem-solving human activity that has underlined much of cognitive science since
the times of Newell & Simon (1972). This focus on human problem-solving routines instead of
minds is explicit in recents critiques of EM (Menary 2009, 42; Gallagher & Crisafi 2009, ft. 1). It
has underlined also a novel disciplines like cultural evolution (Richerson & Boyd 2005) and
cognitive anthropology (Hutchins, 1995). The upshot of these disciplines is that human intelligence
typically arise from the interplay between these two previously disconnected worlds: the
Organism Centered Cognition that Clarks advocates (2008, 139) and the socio-cultural public
domain where emergent phenomena arise that are intrinsically unable to be subsumed under
principles like PP and 4C. This minimal notion does not need to have the features of a mind as
traditionally conceived. As Clark recognizes extended processes may not be conscious (quote),
emotional states are unlikely to externalized (Sterelny 2010, 472). Boundaries and homeostasis
20

probably are putative parts of internal cognition which are unlikely to be found in distributed
processes. For all this we would be better talking of human problem-solving activities instead of
minds.

8. Conclusion
In this essay I have analyzed the three major commitments of EM: functionalism, the PP and 4C.
The conclusion is overtly optimistic towards functionalism whereas it is overly pessimistic
regarding PP and 4C. PP ask us to imagine a counterfactual situation where the contribution of the
external machinery happens instead within-the-head. Therefore it elicits our intuitions about internal
intuitions to motivate externalism. The problems with PP, as Hutchins, Sutton, Gallagher and even
Clark pointed out, is that many of the cognitive engagements with external apparatus seem to resist
being imagined happening entirely in the head. Furthermore, if the purpose of PP was merely to
engage with our rough sense of cognition as Clarks has suggested, it is doubtful that an internalist
methodology is needed at all as many of our intuitions about cognitive extension may turn out to be
hybrid.

Regarding 4C, we noticed how it restricted the cases included in EM to only those where external
information mirrors internal flow by being easily accessible, automatically endorsed and highly
reliable. In a similar criterion, Rowlands (2009) offered individual ownership as the key criterion
for cognitive extension. However, as Sterelny (2010) noticed, most of the cases of human-problem
activities are distinctively social and public and therefore resist individualization and customization.
There seems to be many intermediate cases ranging from deep individual integration to fully public
engagement (Sutton 2010; Sterelny 2010). According to Sterenly, a more encompassing picture of
human cognition is needed and niche construction seems a good candidate. We saw also how
Gallagher and Crisafi (2009) argued that the criteria of 4C for cognitive extension, fast and fluent
automatic endorsement, seems to go against what we take to be optimal cases of human cognition
where a critical stance is needed and a careful and time-consuming process required. The common
core that unites all these objections against PP and 4C is that human cognition is not the solitary
task of some individual coupled with her reliable artifacts but, however, a socio-cultural activity in
which many levels and dimensions of cognitive analysis arise cannot be subsumed under the
internalist model of PP and 4C.

21

On the positive side of the essay, I pointed that functionalism about minds in fact belongs to a wider
tradition of functional and teleological analysis of biological and social levels of organization in
nature. In a natural way, philosophers like Block (1978) realized that a functional description in
terms of inputs, i.e. mental states described by their functional roles and outputs, fitted social
systems as nations. Sociology also used functional vocabulary to characterize all kind of social
institutions and systems. To some, like Block, this fact counts against functionalism being an
adequate theory for the mind. To others, like Lycan (1987) and myself, it supports the theory of
functionalism by showing it as a multi-level theory that can expand the putative levels of cognition
perhaps below and above the organismic level (or cyborg) where EM naturally operates. This may
enrich, rather than impoverish, the EM framework and, as I suggested, make functionalism a more
fundamental level of analysis than that of cognitive. By the end, I briefly pointed towards a vision
of cognition as a problem-solving activity versus the traditional sandwich model of a system
receiving inputs, processing those with mental states and producing behavior. This process-like
vision of cognition underlines a wide range of sub-disciplines within cognitive science as classical
A.I and more recent disciplines that treat cultural phenomena as cognitive and thus expand the
limits of individualistic cognitive science.

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