Extended mind thesis

[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.

"The Extended Mind" by Andy Clark and David Chalmers (1998)[4] is the paper that originally stated the EMT.

This criticism is addressed by Clark in Supersizing the Mind:"[the] claim was not that the processes in Otto and Inga are identical, or even similar, in terms of their detailed implementation.

It is simply that, with respect to the role that the long-term encodings play in guiding current response, both modes of storage can be seen as supporting dispositional beliefs.

[20] Each of these arguments is addressed in Clark (2008), in which he notes:[21] While in Supersizing the Mind Clark defends a strong version of the hypothesis of extended cognition (contrasted with a hypothesis of embedded cognition) in other work, some of these objections have inspired more moderate reformulations of the extended mind thesis.

Thus, the extended mind thesis may no longer depend on the parity considerations of Clark and Chalmers' original argument but, instead, emphasize the "complementarity" of internal and external elements of cognitive systems or processes.

[21] Vincent C. Müller argues that the extended mind "sounds like a substantive thesis, the truth of which we should investigate.

[29] In 2021, biology and social science writer Annie Murphy Paul published “The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain.”[30] Inspired by Clark's and Chalmers's work, the book synthesizes the results of various scientific papers and studies that examine the intelligence that exists beyond the human brain.

“ 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 ]