Yesterday the earwig, today man, tomorrow the earwig?

Extended cognition, the new mechanists' mutual manipulability criterion, and the challenge of trivial extendedness

“…Furthermore, in order to save the general strategy of using resources from the new mechanistic account to argue for EC, the challenge should be answered with the help of tools that are not foreign to the new mechanistic thinking and the explanatory practice of the cognitive and life sciences. Indeed, in a recent paper, Hewitson et al () address a worry that looks similar to the one at issue that is compatible with the general strategy. They attempt to solve the problem by invoking the notion of causal specificity introduced by James Woodward () that is in line with Craver's original ideas regarding MM.…”

“…In a recent paper, Hewitson et al () address a worry that looks similar to the one at issue: they argue that although the application of MM in the context of EC is prima facie fruitful, “there is a residual worry that MM is still not restrictive enough” (p. 28). Indeed, they argue that Craver himself was aware of this worry in the original formulation of MM in his ()‐book.…”

“…Inspired by Craver's own suggested solution, Hewitson et al propose to use the notion of causal specificity introduced by Woodward () to distinguish between constituents and what they and Craver call background conditions (Hewitson et al, , pp. 28–29): intervening into background conditions will have rather nonspecific effects on the phenomenon at hand.…”

“…To revive the debate, some authors (Abramova & Slors, ; Gallagher, ; Hewitson, Kaplan & Sutton, ; Kaplan, ; Kirchhoff, , ; Pöyhönen, ; Theiner, Allen & Goldstone, ; van Eck & Looren de Jong, ; Zednik, ) leave the search for the mark of cognition behind and instead focus on the “mark of constitution.” (Baumgartner & Wilutzky, , p. 1105). One popular strategy is to apply tools from the new mechanistic literature to make sense of constitution in the context of EC.…”

“…In Section 4, I will discuss different proposals for how to meet the CTE. In Section 4.1, I will show why the notion of causal specificity will not be of much help (contra Hewitson et al, ). In Section 4.2, I will introduce a novel suggestion and show how it can be used to provide a new definition of what it is to be a cognitive constituent.…”