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Minds and Machines
Published in: Minds and Machines 4/2011

01-11-2011

The Extended Self

Author: Eric T. Olson

Published in: Minds and Machines | Issue 4/2011

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Abstract

The extended-mind thesis says that mental states can extend beyond one’s skin. Clark and Chalmers infer from this that the subjects of such states also extend beyond their skin: the extended-self thesis. The paper asks what exactly the extended-self thesis says, whether it really does follow from the extended-mind thesis, and what it would mean if it were true. It concludes that the extended-self thesis is unattractive, and does not follow from the extended mind unless thinking beings are literally bundles of mental states.
previous article The Construction of Personal Identities Online
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Footnotes
1
Given that everything is a part of itself, this needn’t prevent a thing without proper parts from having a location, though in such cases the principle becomes trivial.
 
2
Chisholm’s ‘Lilliputian materialism’ is another example: see (Chisholm 1989; Olson 2007, 176f).
 
3
Note that the relativity of psychological ascriptions has now disappeared, replaced by relativity of parthood. At any rate it is the relativity of parthood that does the work.
 
4
Two come close, however. On Geach’s notorious relative-identity thesis, Otto and O might be different material objects but the same psychological being. They would be neither one thing nor two simpliciter, there being no such relation as absolute numerical identity (Geach 1980, 215f.). And Hudson proposes that things have parts relative to places (2001, ch. 2).
 
5
Hudson (2001, ch. 4) endorses this. Shoemaker (2008) gives a different explanation of why organisms cannot have mental properties, which may interest extended selfers.
 
6
I previously used this name for the left-to-right component of the principle (Olson 2007, 88).
 
7
I discuss the bundle view at greater length in Olson 2007, ch. 6.
 
Literature
Baker, L. R. (2009). Persons and the extended-mind thesis. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 44, 642–658.
Chalmers, D. (2008). Forward to A. Clark, Supersizing the mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chisholm, R. (1989). Is there a mind-body problem? In On metaphysics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Partly reprinted in P. van Inwagen and D. Zimmerman (Eds.), Metaphysics: The big questions. Malden, MA: Blackwell 1998. Original work 1979.
Geach, P. T. (1980). Reference and generality (3rd ed.). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Hudson, H. (2001). A materialist metaphysics of the human person. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Lewis, D. (1971). Counterparts of persons and their bodies. Journal of Philosophy, 68, 203–211. Reprinted in his Philosophical Papers, vol. I. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Olson, E. (2003). An argument for animalism. In R. Martin & J. Barresi (Eds.), Personal identity (pp. 318–334). Oxford: Blackwell.
Olson, E. (2007). What are we? New York: Oxford University Press.
Shoemaker, S. (2008). Persons, animals, and identity. Synthese, 163, 313–324.CrossRef
van Inwagen, P. (1990). Material beings. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Wilson, R. A. (2004). Boundaries of the mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Metadata
Title
The Extended Self
Author
Eric T. Olson
Publication date
01-11-2011
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Published in
Minds and Machines / Issue 4/2011
Print ISSN: 0924-6495
Electronic ISSN: 1572-8641
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-011-9258-7

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