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Why the extended mind is nothing special but is central.

Ongaro, G., Hardman, D. and Deschenaux, I., 2024. Why the extended mind is nothing special but is central. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 23, 841-863.

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DOI: 10.1007/s11097-022-09827-5

Abstract

The extended mind thesis states that the mind is not brain-bound but extends into the physical world. The philosophical debate around the thesis has mostly focused on extension towards epistemic artefacts, treating the phenomenon as a special capacity of the human organism to recruit external physical resources to solve individual tasks. This paper argues that if the mind extends to artefacts in the pursuit of individual tasks, it extends to other humans in the pursuit of collective tasks. Mind extension to other humans corresponds essentially to the ‘we-mode’ of cognition, the unique power of human minds to be jointly directed at goals, intentions, states of affairs, or values (which, importantly, differs from having a ‘group mind’). Because the capacity for collective intentionality holds evolutionary and developmental primacy over human-epistemic artefacts relations, the extended mind should not be seen as a special phenomenon, but as a central aspect of the human condition. The original extended mind thesis carried important implications for how the cognitive sciences should proceed. In a version of the thesis that accommodates collective intentionality, these implications would go far deeper than originally assumed.

Item Type:Article
ISSN:1568-7759
Uncontrolled Keywords:Extended mind; Collective intentionality; Shared cognition; Extended emotions; Social ontology
Group:Faculty of Science & Technology
ID Code:37237
Deposited By: Symplectic RT2
Deposited On:18 Jul 2022 11:23
Last Modified:10 Sep 2024 05:50

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