Abstract

This paper introduces pictures more generally into the discussion of cognition and mind. I will argue that pictures play a decisive role in shaping our mental lives because they have changed (and constantly keep changing) the ways we access the world. Focusing on pictures will therefore also shed new light on various claims within the field of embodied cognition. In the first half of this paper I address the question of whether, and in what possible ways, pictures might be considered to be part of our extended mind. We will see however, that the explanatory means contingent upon the extended mind thesis – i.e. the claim that the vehicles of cognition are not confined to the boundaries of the individual organism – can only take us so far. Beyond such claims it will be pivotal to understand in what specific ways pictures might be regarded as being at the basis of certain perceptions of and interactions with the world. I will therefore address, in the second half of this paper, in what ways enactive and affective elements should inform our theory of the pictorial mind. In the course of this discussion it will become apparent that pictures are strange objects because they differ profoundly from other objects surrounding us. And it will also turn out that pictures – beyond the fact that they can be considered to be tools for our mind (in the sense that they facilitate our access to the world) – are rather strange or stubborn tools in that something in them resists full integration into our cognitive routines.