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

Abstract

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...

Remembering as Public Practice: Wittgenstein, memory, and distributed cognitive ecologies

“…On the latter approach, the human brain is unusually open and incomplete: it thus does not constitute or exhaust our mental life, which is rather distributed across brain, body, and world in heterogeneous and dynamic cognitive ecologies (Haugeland 1998;Clark 2003;Hutchins 2011). While in popular science the idea that memory 'resides in' the brain is still often simply assumed, the advent of alternative theories of distributed memory (Clark & Chalmers 1998;Sutton 2010) has changed the theoretical landscape dramatically (Menary 2010;Sutton, Harris, Keil, & Barnier 2010). When Moyal-Sharrock delineates her target as 'the predominant view … that human meaning and emotion ultimately reside in, and can be reduced to, encoded traces in the brain' (2013c, 1), anti-individualist views cannot be the subject of the critique.…”

“…In van Gelder's terms, cognitive systems are 'complexes of continuous, simultaneous, and mutually determining change': the cognitive system is not just the encapsulated brain; rather, since the nervous system, body, and environment are all constantly changing and simultaneously influencing each other, the true cognitive system is a single unified system embracing all three ... interaction between the inner and the outer is ... a matter of coupling, such that both sets of processes continually influence each other's direction of change. (1995: 373) The unit of analysis for cognitive science would thus have to expand, potentially including not only the individual brain and body, but other people and groups, the physical environment, social interaction, cultural norms, artifacts and technologies, thus bringing these new anti-individualist movements into close contact with relatively independent anti-individualist traditions in cognitive anthropology, ecological psychology, educational and social theory, science studies, robotics, developmental and cultural psychology, and phenomenological philosophy (Donald 1991;Hutchins 1995;Clark 1997;Lave 1998;Latour 1999;Robbins & Aydede 2009;Sutton 2010;Michaelian & Sutton 2013).…”

Extended emotion

“…The proponent of HEC enters at this 37 Implicit memory is a form of 'non-declarative' memory. See here Sutton et al 2010. point to remind us that in GLOSSOPHOBIA*, we simply have an extended version of such a case-that is, we have a case where one's non-propositional appraisal is generated by a process that extends. Thus, an implication of extended cognition will be that some emotions are extended in this way even if we set aside cognitivists accounts and endorse weaker non-propositional or non-conscious versions of psychological appraisal theory.…”

Is external memory memory? Biological memory and extended mind

“…Supporters of the extended mind hypothesis normally appeal to function when arguing for the hypothesis-according to the parity principle, what matters is only the function of a resource, not its location relative to the agent's body or brain-so they will grant that this move is legitimate. As Clark emphasizes, not any difference between internal and external memory matters, since internal and external memory might differ in terms of implementation-but differences at the level of function do matter (Clark, 2010;Sutton, 2010).…”

“…2) applies to both episodic and semantic memory. As Sutton emphasizes (Sutton, 1998(Sutton, , 2010, the distributed, superpositional character of biological memory storage (brought out clearly by connectionist models of memory-see (McClelland, 1995(McClelland, , 2011) means that the representations stored in biological memory are, in contrast to the representations stored in typical 13 external memories, highly malleable:…”