Extended Cognition and Extended Consciousness

Abstract

Chapter 1 discusses two questions about the extended mind. First, what is the extended mind thesis? Second, can there be extended consciousness, and if not, why not? The chapter answers the first question by arguing that the thesis should be formulated in terms of perception and action: a subject’s cognitive processes and mental states can be partly constituted by entities that are external to the subject, in virtue of the subject’s interacting with these entities via perception and action. The second question is answered by appealing to direct availability for global control as the physical correlate of consciousness: extended processes always involve indirect availability for global control, mediated by perception and action, so there is no extended consciousness.

Integration, lateralization, and animal experience

“…7 7 The same sort of view of a mind's boundaries is defended by Chalmers (2019) and more briefly in his foreword to Clark's Supersizing the mind (2008). …”

A variational approach to scripts

“…Active inference can accommodate all the dimensions of the script construct discussed above (i.e., the distinction between strong and weak modalities and the externalist versus internist conceptions) in a way that is both systematic and principled. Active inference can be used just as well to account for the structure and function of externally realised cognitive functions (e.g., extended cognition (Chalmers, 2019;Clark & Chalmers, 2010;Constant, Clark, et al, 2019), as it can be used to describe the internal dynamics of agents; and it provides the requisite flexibility to accommodate the representation of both explicit scripted sequences of events (strong scripts) and typical event type features (weak scripts). We organize the next section as follows: we will examine the strong and weak conceptions of script under active inference, and for each, show how externalist and internalist readings can be accommodated.…”

Overcoming the Past-endorsement Criterion: Toward a Transparency-Based Mark of the Mental

“…In the further literature, the criterion was at times mentioned, at times it was missing (Menary, 2010, p. 424; see Clark, 2010b, p. 50;Gallagher, 2018), while in Clark (2008) the fourth criterion was treated as problematic, but nevertheless relevant: "the 'past conscious endorsement' criterion looks too 2 Interestingly, Clark has explicitly defended internalism regarding consciousness (see Clark, 2009Clark, , 2012. The debate about extended consciousness is still open (e.g., Lycan, 2002;Vold, 2015;Kirchoff and Kiverstein, 2018;Chalmers, 2019;Manzotti, 2019), and the possibility of extending consciousness would bring completely different solutions to the problem solved by the past-endorsement criterion. Unfortunately, discussing these alternative possibilities would lead us astray from the topic of this article.…”

“… 2 Interestingly, Clark has explicitly defended internalism regarding consciousness (see Clark, 2009 , 2012 ). The debate about extended consciousness is still open (e.g., Lycan, 2002 ; Vold, 2015 ; Kirchoff and Kiverstein, 2018 ; Chalmers, 2019 ; Manzotti, 2019 ), and the possibility of extending consciousness would bring completely different solutions to the problem solved by the past-endorsement criterion. Unfortunately, discussing these alternative possibilities would lead us astray from the topic of this article.…”