Essay Club: The Extended Mind by Andy Clark and David Chalmers

“Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?”

“Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?” So begins The Extended Mind, a 1998 essay by philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers (C&C) that challenges us to reconsider many of our default assumptions about the human mind. This essay is a major work of late 20th century philosophy. While not all subsequent thinkers have accepted C&C’s thesis, anyone who engages seriously with the philosophy of mind will eventually need to wrestle with this problem.

Andy Clark and David Chalmers.

The problem is this: while most of us assume that ‘the mind’ is located entirely within the brain, our mental processing (cognition) often relies on things outside of the body. C&C provide many examples of this, including the use of paper, pens, and calculators to do mathematics, and the rearrangement of letter blocks to prompt new word ideas in Scrabble. It’s not just that our lives are made easier by our use of tools; our thinking is actually enhanced by them, and in some cases is even dependent upon them. We have no problem calling it cognition when the problem solving takes place within our heads, but as soon as we outsource some of this work to tools, computers, or other people, we erect a barrier between the mind and the outside world. C&C argue that this is an arbitrary distinction, and that where external objects are actively involved in ‘epistemic action’—that is, where they are involved in problem solving, knowledge production, decision making, etc.—they should be considered a part of the cognitive process, not separate from it.

The authors summarise their view as follows:

“the human organism is linked with an external entity in a two-way interaction, creating a coupled system that can be seen as a cognitive system in its own right. All the components in the system play an active causal role, and they jointly govern behaviour in the same sort of way that cognition usually does. If we remove the external component the system’s behavioural competence will drop, just as it would if we removed part of its brain. Our thesis is that this sort of coupled process counts equally well as a cognitive process, whether or not it is wholly in the head.”

An important thing to note here is that, for C&C, not just any external entity can be a part of our cognition. It must be active in the here-and-now, a process that they refer to as active externalism. The test is whether removing this external object would change a person’s subsequent behaviour. In C&C’s words, “if we retain internal structure but change the external features, behaviour may change completely”. A key implication of this is that “the re-arrangement of tiles on the tray [in Scrabble] is not a part of action; it is a part of thought”.

C&C suggest that their view is similar to that held by most cognitive scientists, who see cognition as “continuous with processes in the environment”. But of course, not everyone agrees. One key objection is that true cognition needs to be portable; that is, for a cognitive process to be classed as cognitive, it should be possible no matter one’s location or circumstances. By this standard, adding two numbers together is a cognitive process because it can be performed entirely within the mind, and the use of a calculator is a convenient but unnecessary add-on. To this C&C respond:

“Even if one were to make the portability criterion pivotal, active externalism would not be undermined. Counting on our fingers has already been let in the door, for example, and it is easy to push things further. Think of the old image of the engineer with a slide rule hanging from his belt wherever he goes. What if people always carried a pocket calculator, or had them implanted? The real moral of the portability intuition is that for coupled systems to be relevant to the core of cognition, reliable coupling is required. It happens that most reliable coupling takes place within the brain, but there can easily be reliable coupling with the environment as well.”

For C&C, the important thing to consider when determining whether an external object is a core part of a cognitive process is not whether it is portable, but whether it is reliably coupled, meaning it can be regularly relied upon for certain mental tasks. Some cognitive activities are impossible to achieve without some form of external coupling—in my own work, for example, tracking the appointment times for 50+ therapy clients would be impossible without the use of, at minimum, pen and paper. C&C would argue that my work computer (or perhaps more accurately my work account, which can be accessed from multiple devices) is so crucial to certain elements of my work that using it would constitute extended cognition.

What it looks like to extend one’s mind… (Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin by Rube Goldberg)

So far the authors have made a compelling argument for expanding our definition of cognition. But this essay is called The Extended Mind, and what people usually mean by ‘the mind’ encompasses more than just conscious mental processing. C&C anticipate this objection: “perhaps some processing takes place in the environment, but what of mind?”

What follows is an extended philosophical reflection on the nature of belief. C&C begin:

“While some mental states, such as experiences, may be determined internally, there are other cases in which external factors make a significant contribution. In particular, we will argue that beliefs can be constituted partly by features of the environment, when those features play the right sort of role in driving cognitive processes. If so, the mind extends into the world.”

They go on to introduce two characters: Inga, who has an ordinary, functional brain, and Otto, who suffers from Alzheimer’s Disease. In C&C’s hypothetical scenario, both Inga and Otto hear about a new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). For Inga, what follows is a simple enough process; she recalls the location of the museum (53rd Street, Manhattan) and then goes to see the exhibit. For Otto, the process is not so simple. He relies much more on external information for his day-to-day activities, and to make this easier, he carries a notebook with him at all times in which he records important information. Being an art lover, he knows that the address will be somewhere in his notebook, so he consults his notes, finds what he believes to be the right address, and then visits the museum.

Did Inga believe that MOMA was on 53rd Street prior to hearing about the new exhibition? C&C say yes; it was not a conscious belief before this moment, but it was sitting somewhere in her long-term memory, waiting to be accessed. What about for Otto? To C&C his situation is no different to Inga’s. The address was already present in his ‘memory’ (his notebook), and he only needed to search it to find the right information. C&C argue that, as Otto has come to rely on his notebook as much as we rely on our own memories, the two processes are essentially the same. To complicate our description of the process any further—for instance, by treating Otto consulting his notebook as an extra step—is “pointlessly complex” and unnecessary.

C&C go on to explore a few variations and objections to their hypothetical scenario, but at this stage the basic point has been made. The authors summarise it thusly:

“The moral is that when it comes to belief, there is nothing sacred about skull and skin. What makes some information count as a belief is the role it plays, and there is no reason why the relevant role can be played only from inside the body…

“An opponent might put her foot down and insist that as she uses the term ‘belief’, or perhaps even according to standard usage, Otto simply does not qualify as believing that the museum is on 53rd Street. We do not intend to debate what is standard usage; our broader point is that the notion of belief ought to be used so that Otto qualifies as having the belief in question. In all important respects, Otto’s case is similar to a standard case of (non-occurrent) belief. The differences between Otto’s case and Inga’s are striking, but they are superficial.”

C&C’s argument is ultimately a pragmatic one. We may object to their flexible use of words like ‘cognition’ and ‘belief’, but to restrict ourselves to such narrow definitions is to limit the usefulness of these concepts. “Simplicity is power”—the simplest explanation for the way that belief and other cognitive functions work is that they sometimes involve objects outside of the body, and when this happens, we are extending our cognition—and extending our mind—into the external world.

For what it’s worth, I do object to the authors’ use of the word ‘belief’. To me, a belief is not a piece of information one has stored away, but the interpretation one has of that information. C&C’s use of the word doesn’t properly capture this nuance. Similarly, their expanded definition of ‘cognition’ risks diluting the concept entirely. There is real value in maintaining strict definitions and boundaries between concepts, and when it comes to the psychological sciences, the distinction between cognition and behaviour is an important one. Simplicity may be easier on the noggin, but accuracy is true power. For this reason, I find it difficult to fully accept the Extended Mind Thesis. Our use of external objects supplements our thinking, it is not thinking itself.

That said, I don’t think we should throw this idea out entirely. C&C have clearly identified a very real phenomenon. Remember how teachers used to encourage us to do maths in our heads by saying that “you won’t always have a calculator in your pocket”? Well, that’s no longer true. We now rely on smartphones for many things that we previously did in our heads, or with less portable tools; I would argue that we even rely on smartphones to generate new beliefs and opinions. Instead of saying “I don’t know”, we now look to our favourite social media influencers to tell us what to believe. The Extended Mind Thesis is arguably more relevant than ever, and if this essay were written today with more contemporary examples, I suspect I’d have a much harder time disagreeing with it.

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Questions and Housekeeping

Thus we come to the end of another essay! This was one of the more complex topics we’ve covered, and honestly, there’s a lot more that I could have said about it. If you found this interesting, I’d encourage you to re-read the essay in your own time.

In the meantime, join the discussion below! Here are a few questions to get the ball rolling:

• What did you think of this essay, generally?

• What do you make of Clark and Chalmers’ Extended Mind Thesis? Are you convinced?

• If our minds can truly be extended out to the objects (and even the people) around us, what are some of the implications of this? What kind of impact might technologies such as the internet and AI have on our extended selves?

As always, thanks for reading. I hope you’ve enjoyed this one. If you did, consider commenting below, liking, sharing, and/or subscribing...

The next instalment of Essay Club will be the 14th of September, where we’ll discuss T. S. Eliot’s highly influential essay, Tradition and the Individual Talent. To be clear, this means that there will be no Essay Club next month. I have a lot of personal stuff happening over the next couple of months, and need to take a bit of a hiatus from EC to manage that. I also want to make some changes to the overall format of Essay Club, so I’ll be thinking a bit more about that over the coming weeks. In the meantime, consider checking out some of the old posts and re-reading your favourite essays— there’s always more to be gained from a re-read, and we’ve covered some incredible pieces so far. See you in the next one!