Abstract
The extended mind hypothesis (Clark and Chalmers in Analysis 58(1):7–19, 1998; Clark 2008) is an influential hypothesis in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. I argue that the extended mind hypothesis is born to be wild. It has undeniable and irrepressible tendencies of flouting grounding assumptions of the traditional information-processing paradigm. I present case-studies from social cognition which not only support the extended mind proposal but also bring out its inherent wildness. In particular, I focus on cases of action-understanding and discuss the role of embodied intentionality in the extended mind project. I discuss two theories of action-understanding for exploring the support for the extended mind hypothesis in embodied intersubjective interaction, namely, simulation theory and a non-simulationist perceptual account. I argue that, if the extended mind adopts a simulation theory of action-understanding, it rejects representationalism. If it adopts a non-simulationist perceptual account of action-understanding, it rejects the classical sandwich view of the mind.
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Notes
The extended mind hypothesis I shall consider in this paper is not concerned with providing a definition of the mind or a mark of the mental. I shall follow Clark’s (2008) and Chalmers’ (2008) pragmatic insight that where one sets the boundaries of the mind is largely a matter of what one wants to explain. This paper is also not concerned with metaphysical views which challenge the division between the mind and the world and stress their co-emergence (Thompson 2007; Zahavi 2008). I shall follow the original hypothesis of the extended mind theorists (Clark and Chalmers 1998) that some cases of ongoing agent–environment interaction qualify as cognitive processes in their own right even if they are not conducted entirely “in the head” and thus an account of mental states need not be radically neurocentric.
“Embodied intentionality” refers to the kind of intentionality that characterises our skilful bodily coping with the world. Much contemporary discussion of embodied intentionality is inspired by Merleau-Ponty’s (2002) idea of “motor intentionality”. He writes, “...my body appears to me as an attitude directed towards a certain existing or possible task.” (p.114). Again, “…the recognition of something between movement as a third person process and thought as a representation of movement- something which is an anticipation of, or arrival at, the objective and is ensured by the body itself as a motor power, a “motor project”…a “motor intentionality”….”(pp.126-127).
The purpose of the present discussion is not to evaluate the respective explanatory advantages of the simulationist and the non-simulationist perceptual accounts of action-understanding. The goal is to explore whether either account of action-understanding fares any better than the other in keeping the extended mind hypothesis in line with the assumptions of the traditional information-processing paradigm.
Some authors argue that understanding embodied engagement is ontogenetically the most primitive form of social cognition (Trevarthen 1998; Meltzoff and Moore 1998; Reddy and Morris 2004). It is an open empirical question whether or not our most primitive understanding of others is in terms of their embodied intentionality. However, embodied engagement, like gesturing and facial expressions, continues to play a vital role in adult intersubjective interactions.
The parity principle states “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 . . . part of the cognitive process.” (Clark and Chalmers 1998, 29)
This paper is neutral with regard to the question whether or not some mental states are such that they cannot, in principle, be enabled in the absence of coupling with the extra-cranial world. It follows Clark and Chalmer’s (1998) moderate principle of extending the mind into the extra-cranial world, namely, the parity principle as stated in footnote 6. The present paper claims that certain embodied intersubjective interactions satisfy the requirements of an extended cognitive system based on the parity principle. To this end, the removal of the “external components” like gestures and facial expressions is viewed as leading to a drop in the behavioural competence of the agent whose mental state is enabled rather than as a statement about the inadequacy of purely neural processes to generate the mental states in question.
Hurley (2010) maintains that the causal-constitutive debate is a non-starter and dubs the debate “the causal-constitutive error”. The dynamical systems influence on the shared circuits model seems to motivate Hurley’s rejection of the debate.
The best way to ensure that dynamical systems explanations do not creep into a simulationist interpretation of action-understanding is by describing the functioning of the simulationist mechanisms as not grounded in ongoing sensorimotor feedback. In other words, the simulationist system is to be taken “offline” for inputs. Instead of grounding the function of the system on actual ongoing sensorimotor input from the world it is grounded in counterfactual inputs internally generated by the system. When such an offline system is coupled with appropriate “controls”, which enable the brain to distinguish between actions of self and others, it results in a simulation theory of action-understanding that does not necessarily refer to ongoing sensorimotor feedback. However, combining offline simulation with internal controls as the building blocks of action-understanding encourages a significantly internalist picture of the mind. The process of action-understanding can be run entirely on internal models and corresponds to the emulation theory described by Grush (2003, 2004). Grush (2003) describes the internal offline process in detail in an article appropriately titled “In Defense of Some ‘Cartesian’ Assumptions Concerning the Brain and Its Operation.”
In the context of action-understanding as simulation, whether an adequate functioning of mirroring mechanisms of the brain can be achieved by a wholly neural route is an open empirical question. However, this does not prevent an account from construing the mechanism of simulation, in principle, as offline processing enabled by a fully internal route, as for example, in Grush’s account. On such a reading of simulationist mechanisms of action-understanding, vehicle externalism is unable to make use of the instances of embodied intersubjectivity which would otherwise support it. In a purely “offline” description of action-understanding as simulation the mechanism that drives one’s mental state of grasping the other’s embodied intentionality is purely neural.
Gallagher and colleagues (De Jaegher et al. 2010) have recently proposed an “Interaction theory” of social cognition. The present paper is, however, concerned with the particular theory of perceptual understanding of the other’s embodied intentionality as elaborated by Gallagher (2008) and Gallagher and Zahavi (2008) and the implications of a perceptual non-simulationist account of action-understanding for the extended mind hypothesis.
Peripersonal space is the space surrounding the body of the agent where the agent can interact with objects (including other bodies) at the present moment without bodily displacement. Extrapersonal space is the space lying outside the zone of the embodied agent’s immediate interaction and requiring bodily displacement for future interactions.
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Gangopadhyay, N. The extended mind: born to be wild? A lesson from action-understanding. Phenom Cogn Sci 10, 377–397 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-011-9198-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-011-9198-y