Distributing Cognition in the Globe

Tribble, Evelyn

doi:10.1353/shq.2005.0065

Cited by 155 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Since there's nothing particularly "posthuman" about EM-since, if we are cyborgs now, we always have been-there should be room for what I've called a "historical cognitive science" (Sutton 1998(Sutton , 2000(Sutton , 2002aRichardson 2004, p. 23;Tribble 2006) to sit alongside work in cognitive anthropology (Hutchins 1995) (Tribble 2005), and my own account of the 'arts of memory', the strange techniques inherited from the ancients that were popular in the medieval and Renaissance periods for internalizing elaborate architectures to aid recall and cognitive discipline (Sutton 2000). In each case, historical topics of entirely independent scholarly interest can be given a new twist by the EM framework: conversely, quite specific ideas in that framework are further explicated and illuminated in its applications.…”

Section: Emphasis) Elsewhere He Clarifies the Dramatic Implications mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exograms and Interdisciplinarity: History, the Extended Mind, and the Civilizing Process

Sutton¹

2010

The Extended Mind

348

275

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1 Exograms, Interdisciplinarity, and the Cognitive life of Things The Extended Mind HypothesisOn the extended mind hypothesis (EM),l many of our cognitive states and processes are hybrids, unevenly distributed across biological and nonbiological realms (Clark 1997;Clark and Chalmers 1998). In certain circumstances, things-artifacts, media, or technologies-can have a cognitive life, with histories often as idiosyncratic as those of the embodied brains with which they couple (Sutton 2002a(Sutton , 2008. The realm of the mental can spread across the physical, social, and cultural environments as well as bodies and brains. My independent aims in this chapter are: first, to describe two compatible but distinct movements or "waves" within the EM literature, arguing for the priority of the second wave (and gesturing briefly toward a third); and, second, to defend and illustrate the interdisciplinary implications of EM as best understood, specifically for historical disciplines, by sketching two case studies.EM, an offshoot of mainstream functionalist information-processing cognitive science, has been focused in particular on our abilities to hook up with what Merlin Donald calls "exograms" or external symbols, by analogy with the brain's memory traces or "engrams" (Donald 1991, pp. 308-333; 2001, pp. 305-315).2 These abilities allow us to create and support cognitive profiles quite unlike those of creatures restricted to the brain's biological memories or engrams alone. Among other typical features, Donald pOints out that exograms last longer than engrams, have greater capacity, are more easily transmissible across media and context, and can be retrieved and manipulated by a greater variety of means (1991, pp. 315-316): so our skilled use of such crafted aids changes both the locus of memory in general and the role of our biological 190 J. Sutton memory within the new larger systems (see also Rowlands 1999, pp. 129-147).As I'll argue, it's important not to overstate the differences between internal and external traces: the version of EM I'm developing here, following in particular in Andy Clark's wake, is aimed precisely at investigating a wide range of possibilities on these and other dimensions of variation. I distinguish two versions or "waves" of EM, differentiated partly by the way these dimensions are characterized. These waves are not ultimately incompatible, but they are distinct strands in the EM literature and within Clark's own work: as we'll see, he acknowledged "a potential tension" between them as long ago as 1998 (Clark 1998, p. 99; see section 4 below). Before introducing the two waves, let me reiterate the key commitment they share, tweaked and applied differently in each case. External symbol systems and other "cognitive artifacts" are not always simply commodities, for the use and profit of the active mind: rather, in certain circumstances, along with the brain and body that interact with them, they are (part of) the mind. For Clark, "it is our basic human nature to annex, exploit and incorporate n...

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Section: Emphasis) Elsewhere He Clarifies the Dramatic Implications mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exograms and Interdisciplinarity: History, the Extended Mind, and the Civilizing Process

Sutton¹

2010

The Extended Mind

348

275

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“…Developing research programmes in distributed cognition and the extended mind are being tested and applied in disciplines ranging from science studies (Giere, 2002) to cognitive archaeology (Knappett, 2005), computer-supported cooperative work (Halverson, 2002), and Shakespeare studies (Tribble, 2005). Philosophical defenses of the extended mind (Clark & Chalmers, 1998;Rowlands, 1999;Wilson, 2004) have generated a robust, critical, ongoing debate about the conceptual foundations of the approach (Adams & Aizawa, 2001Clark, in press;Menary, 2006;Rupert, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A conceptual and empirical framework for the social distribution of cognition: The case of memory

Barnier

Sutton

Harris

et al. 2008

Cognitive Systems Research

160

138

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In this paper, we aim to show that the framework of embedded, distributed, or extended cognition offers new perspectives on social cognition by applying it to one specific domain: the psychology of memory. In making our case, first we specify some key social dimensions of cognitive distribution and some basic distinctions between memory cases, and then describe stronger and weaker versions of distributed remembering in the general distributed cognition framework. Next, we examine studies of social influences on memory in cognitive psychology, and identify the valuable concepts and methods to be extended and embedded in our framework; we focus in particular on three related paradigms: transactive memory, collaborative recall, and social contagion. Finally, we sketch our own early studies of individual and group memory developed within our framework of distributed cognition, on social contagion of autobiographical memories, collaborative flashbulb memories, and memories of high school at a high school reunion. We see two reciprocal benefits of this conceptual and empirical framework to social memory phenomena: that ideas about distributed cognition can be honed against and tested with the help of sophisticated methods in the social-cognitive psychology of memory; and conversely, that a range of social memory phenomena that are as yet poorly understood can be approached afresh with theoretically motivated extensions of existing empirical paradigms.

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“…We might suppose, as Tiffany Stern did, that they managed this by sticking to formulas and having each man play the same kind of character in each play (Stern 2000). But Evelyn Tribble has suggested that in fact the physical and documentary mechanisms of early theatre took some of the burden from the individual acting mind (Tribble 2005). According to Tribble, the 'parts', the 'plot', the conventions of movement, the company structures, and the theatre building itself together comprised a cognitive system that enabled a playing company to maintain its seemingly miraculous high-turnover repertory.…”

Section: Early Modern Cognition and Textual Transmissionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shakespeare, Idealism, and Universals: The Significance of Recent Work on the Mind

Egan¹

2011

The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies

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Distributing Cognition in the Globe

Cited by 155 publications

References 44 publications

Exograms and Interdisciplinarity: History, the Extended Mind, and the Civilizing Process

Exograms and Interdisciplinarity: History, the Extended Mind, and the Civilizing Process

A conceptual and empirical framework for the social distribution of cognition: The case of memory

Shakespeare, Idealism, and Universals: The Significance of Recent Work on the Mind

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