Extended mind thesis

“Seneca [had an] anecdote about a wealthy freedman who wished to make himself appear cultured by reciting poetry at dinner parties but was hampered by a bad memory. So he bought educated slaves and had one memorise Homer, another Hesiod, and so on, on the theory that what his slaves knew, he knew too.” [1][2]

In philosophy of mind, the extended mind thesis says that the mind does not exclusively reside in the brain or even the body, but extends into the physical world.[3] The thesis proposes that some objects in the external environment can be part of a cognitive process and in that way function as extensions of the mind itself. Examples of such objects are written calculations, a diary, or a PC; in general, it concerns objects that store information. The hypothesis considers the mind to encompass every level of cognition, including the physical level.

It was proposed by Andy Clark and David Chalmers in "The Extended Mind" (1998). They describe the idea as "active externalism, based on the active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes."

For the matter of personal identity (and the philosophy of self), the EMT has the implication that some parts of a person's identity can be determined by their environment.

  1. ^ (Epistles 27.5-8).
  2. ^ Hall, Edith M (2012-08-09). "Reading Ancient Slavery (2010)". Academia.edu. Retrieved 2024-03-20.
  3. ^ Wilson, Robert A.; Foglia, Lucia (25 July 2011). "Embodied Cognition". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition).