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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.

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Notes

  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.

References

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Acknowledgments

For comments on earlier versions I thank Dave Robb, Jenny Saul, and Dave Ward.

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Correspondence to Eric T. Olson.

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Olson, E.T. The Extended Self. Minds & Machines 21, 481–495 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-011-9258-7

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