Semiotic Exograms: Extending the Mind Fully

Abstract

This essay is an analysis and expanded defense of John Sutton's essay "Exograms and Interdisciplinarity: History, the Extended Mind, and the Civilizing Process." The first section of the essay surveys the extended mind literature, following the first and second waves of the Extended Mind theory. The second section explains Sutton's exograms as external representations of internal thought. This section also details his argument that exograms extend the mind because, historically, exograms play a role in the internal functioning of a mind. The third section defends Sutton's argument from objections against their place in mental processes, namely memory. The fourth section argues against the objection that the mind cannot be extended beyond the brain, by appealing to a computational view of functionalism. The conclusions drawn from the third and fourth sections are that the mind, through language, extends with culture and that, even in cognitive science, it is fruitful to study the mind extended as such.