Abstract
According to the Extended Mind thesis, the mind extends beyond the skull or the skin: mental processes can constitutively include external devices, like a computer or a notebook. The Extended Mind thesis has drawn both support and criticism. However, most discussions—including those by its original defenders, Andy Clark and David Chalmers—fail to distinguish between two very different interpretations of this thesis. The first version claims that the physical basis of mental features can be located spatially outside the body. Once we accept that the mind depends on physical events to some extent, this thesis, though not obvious, is compatible with a large variety of views on the mind. The second version applies to standing states only, and has to do with how we conceive the nature of such states. This second version is much more interesting, because it points to a potential tension in our conception of minds or selves. However, without properly distinguishing between the two theses, the significance of the second is obscured by the comparative triviality of the first.
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Notes
People may agree that the mind has a physical basis in this world, but argue that it need not have a physical basis in another world. I do not want to go into the issue of the necessity of the physical basis; I am talking about the possibility of an extended mind in worlds where mental events do have a physical basis. Another remark concerns my talking of events. People may prefer to talk of mental states or mental properties when discussing mind/body theories. The exemplification of a property is an event or a state (depending on our metaphysical theory), so in those cases the physical basis of a mental state or event also makes sense.
For the importance of this distinction for the debate, see Menary 2010b.
One philosopher who might disagree with the claim is John Searle: he is committed to the claim that only a biological organism can host thinking.
A similar point applies to the debate on externalism and internalism about mental content. I argue elsewhere that the point of this debate is not whether facts individuating mental states are inside or outside the skull; I use an example of a Twin Earth scenario based on a brain disease, where the individuating facts are inside the body yet an externalist conclusion is put forward (see Farkas 2008).
This doesn’t mean of course that they are independent of the total history of my conscious experiences; the claim is only that I could retain my beliefs about the location of museums even if my mind is occupied with something entirely different—or with nothing at all.
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Acknowledgments
Versions of this paper were presented at the Universities of Groningen and Oxford, and as part of the Rudolf Carnap lectures at the University of Bochum. I am very grateful for the audiences for their comments, and especially for the opportunity in Bochum to present these ideas in detail. I greatly benefited from comments by an anonymous reviewer. Research leading to this paper was supported by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreement no. FP7-238128, and by the Hungarian National Innovation Office’s programme NKTH ERC_HU, within the project BETEGH09.
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Farkas, K. Two Versions of the Extended Mind Thesis. Philosophia 40, 435–447 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-011-9355-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-011-9355-0