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Collective memory, group minds, and the extended mind thesis

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Abstract

While memory is conceptualized predominantly as an individual capacity in the cognitive and biological sciences, the social sciences have most commonly construed memory as a collective phenomenon. Collective memory has been put to diverse uses, ranging from accounts of nationalism in history and political science to views of ritualization and commemoration in anthropology and sociology. These appeals to collective memory share the idea that memory “goes beyond the individual” but often run together quite different claims in spelling out that idea. This paper reviews a sampling of recent work on collective memory in the light of emerging externalist views within the cognitive sciences, and through some reflection on broader traditions of thought in the biological and social sciences that have appealed to the idea that groups have minds. The paper concludes with some thoughts about the relationship between these kinds of cognitive metaphors in the social sciences and our notion of agency.

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Acknowledgements

This paper was written while on sabbatical leave from the University of Alberta in 2004–2005. I thank the University for granting this leave, which was spent anchored in Perth at the University of Western Australia. I would also like to thank Dr. Myra Keep for her hospitality in providing me with office space in her geology lab during this time. Thanks also to John Sutton for the invitation to contribute to the volume, for organizing the conference that first started me thinking about collective memory, and for some helpful, quick comments on the penultimate version of the paper.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta, 4-115 Humanities Centre, T6G 2E5, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    Robert A. Wilson

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  1. Robert A. Wilson
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Correspondence to Robert A. Wilson.

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Communicated by John Sutton

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Wilson, R.A. Collective memory, group minds, and the extended mind thesis. Cogn Process 6, 227–236 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-005-0012-z

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