(This is going to be a bit of a self-serving blog post, but I hope it will give rise to a discussion that may interest others.) I am currently working on my monograph on formal languages, whose role in the cognitive processes involved in what we refer to as 'doing logic' can be fruitfully analyzed from the point of view of extended cognition (or so I claim). Philosophy of mind is not really my field though, so I am trying to get an overall picture of the debates. I am of course frantically reading Andy Clark's 'Supersizing the Mind', which I think is an invaluable source of references (among other merits!), but as it turns out I am not particularly interested in the debate on the boundaries of the mind. In fact, I think the debate is somewhat misleading in that it has us focus on the similarities between cognitive processes with or without external devices (the famous 'parity argument'), while I think the most interesting case are precisely those where interaction with external devices in fact deeply transforms the cognitive processes in question. (This is what I want to argue concerning formal languages.) Just to give an idea of what I have in mind, here's the abstract of a talk I gave recently:
Formal Languages and the Extended, Altered Mind
Clark and Chalmers (1998) have drawn our attention to the wide range of external devices that are inherently involved in some of our mental processes and reasoning. They claim that these devices can be considered as part and parcel of the agent’s mind in specific cases – hence, the extended mind hypothesis. Importantly, though, the subsequent debates on the notion of the extended mind have mostly focused on the increase in computational power afforded by such external devices. Indeed, to my knowledge, the possibility of actually ‘running a different software’, as it were, by means of external devices has not been seriously considered. In this talk, I will argue that formal languages, and more generally formal frameworks such as mathematical formalisms, may allow us to accomplish just that, i.e. to run a different software. I will argue that they make it possible to counter what Stanovich (2003, 292) has described as “one of the fundamental computational biases of human cognition – the tendency to automatically bring prior knowledge to bear when solving problems.” In virtue of a process of ‘de-semantification’ (Krämer 2003) that typically accompanies uses of formal languages, it becomes possible for the agent to reason following patterns other than the ones she typically follows when unaided by these devices. Hence, more than just extending the mind and increasing its computational power, formal languages may go as far as altering the mind (albeit momentarily) in that they offer a counterbalance to some deeply entrenched reasoning mechanisms.
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So my question is: can anyone suggest literature on extended cognition which is not particularly focused on the issue of the boundaries of the mind and the parity argument? I am of course aware of the book published last year on the extended mind thesis, but here again the focus is not the one I am looking for (although I do think that it is a must-read). I am also aware of Margaret Wilson's 2002 article, 'Six views of embodied cognition', which is also quite critical of the idea of 'supersizing the mind'. In a similar vein, can anyone suggest references on criticism to the extended cognition approach? Again, I am not interested in those who argue (against Clark) that we should not redefine the boundaries of the concept of 'mind'; what I am interested in is arguments against the whole idea of embodied/situated/extended cognition as the view that "cognitive processes are deeply rooted in the body’s interactions with the world" (quoting Wilson), and thus must be studied as such.
Suggestions/thoughts/remarks would be most welcome! (And it's my birthday today, so it would be a bit like a birthday present...)
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