Abstract
The goal of this paper is to encourage participants in the debate about the locus of cognition (e.g., extended mind vs embedded mind) to turn their attention to noteworthy anthropological and sociological considerations typically (but not uniquely) arising from transhumanist and posthumanist research. Such considerations, we claim, promise to potentially give us a way out of the stalemate in which such a debate has fallen. A secondary goal of this paper is to impress trans and post-humanistically inclined readers to embrace (or at least seriously reflect on) the extended mind thesis as a potential gamechanger to the state of play in their own debates. We start off (Sect. 1) by reviewing two crucial ideas (homo faber and plasticity of the body schema) that are instrumental in setting up the dispute between extended and embedded. We then summarise (Sect. 2), the stalemate between these two competing accounts of cognition, and review some of the dialectics underlying it. In Sect. 3, to get out of the stalemate, we propose to focus on a series of important anthropological and sociological considerations derived from and related to trans and posthumanist research. In doing so, we claim (Sect. 4) that an extended approach to cognition becomes anthropologically preferable and morally as well as socially more desirable than an embedded one.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
N/a.
Notes
Even if in what follows we focus on the issue of transparency (because it is directly relevant to tool use hence to cognitive extension), we are aware that the debate on the extended mind thesis is much broader and more complex than what we summarise here. The reader will thus excuse us if we do not recall all the well-worn dialectics underlying this debate here (such as rediscussing the three waves characterising EMT or some of the most debated arguments for or against it; e.g. the causal constitutive conflation, the mark of the cognitive, the Martian intuition etc.: e.g., Clark, 2007; Sprevak, 2009).
A more comprehensive treatment of EMT transcend the scope of this paper. The interested reader may nevertheless refer to Sutton (2010), Rowlands (2010), Clark (2008), Menary (2010), Wheeler (2005), Wilson (2004), Kiverstein et al. (2013), Rupert (2004), Adams and Aizawa (2001), Farina and Lavazza (2022a).
Thanks to one of the reviewers for pressing us on this point.
In truth, Clark and proponents of EMT are not making a claim about the location of one’s nose as Rupert seems to suggest (Rupert, 2009, p. 165)—rather the point is about the experience of one’s nose and of the boundaries of one’s body more generally. So, the real question to answer would be: does the experience of the boundaries of one’s body tell us anything about the location of cognitive processing?
Admittedly, there are many different aspects of this stalemate. As mentioned in footnote 3 above, it is beyond the scope of this manuscript to recall the well-worn dialectics underlying the debate over EMT. Yet, to familiarize with those different aspects of the stalemate, the reader may want to look at Rupert (2009), Adams and Aizawa (2001) and Clark (2008).
See Carr (2008) for some criticism of this idea.
References
Adams, F., & Aizawa, K. (2001). The bounds of cognition. Philosophical Psychology, 14(1), 43–64.
Alcaraz, A. Ł. (2021). Are cyborgs persons? Palgrave Macmillan.
Aloimonos, Y. (Ed.). (1993). Active perception. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.
Arendt, H. (2013). The human condition. University of Chicago Press.
Auvray, M., & Farina, M. (2017). Patrolling the boundaries of synaesthesia: A critical appraisal of transient and artificially-acquired forms of synaesthetic experiences. In O. Deroy (Ed.), Sensory blending: On synaesthesia and related phenomena (pp. 248–274). Oxford University Press.
Auvray, M., & Myin, E. (2009). Perception with compensatory devices. From sensory substitution to sensorimotor extension. Cognitive Science, 33, 1036–1058.
Bach-y-Rita, P., Collins, C. C., Saunders, F. A., White, B., & Scadden, L. (1969). Vision substitution by tactile image projection. Nature, 221, 963–964.
Ballard, D. H. (1991). Animate vision. Artificial Intelligence, 48(1), 57–86.
Ballard, D. H., Hayhoe, M. M., Pook, P. K., & Rao, R. P. (1997). Deictic codes for the embodiment of cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 20(4), 723–742.
Bergson, H. (1907). L’évolution créatrice [Creative evolution]. Felix Alcan.
Berti, A., & Frassinetti, F. (2000). When far becomes near: Re-mapping of space by tool use. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12, 415–420.
Bonifazi, S., Farnè, A., Rinaldesi, L., & Ladavas, E. (2007). Dynamic size-change of peri-hand space through tool-use: Spatial extension or shift of the multisensory area. Journal of NeuroPsychology, 1, 101–114.
Bostrom, N. (2008). Why I want to be a posthuman when I grow up. In B. Gordijn & R. Chadwick (Eds.), Medical enhancement and posthumanity (pp. 107–136). Springer.
Braidotti, R. (2019). Posthuman knowledge. Polity Press.
Brooke, J. H. (2005). Visions of perfectibility. Journal of Evolution and Technology, 14(2), 1–12.
Brown, H., Friston, K., & Bestmann, S. (2011). Active inference, attention, and motor preparation. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 218. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00218
Cahen, A., & Tacca, M. C. (2013). Linking perception and cognition. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 144.
Cardinali, L., Jacobs, S., Brozzoli, C., Frassinetti, F., Roy, A. C., & Farnè, A. (2012). Grab an object with a tool and change your body: Tool-use-dependent changes of body representation for action. Experimental Brain Research, 218(2), 259–271.
Carter, J. A., & Palermos, S. O. (2016). The ethics of extended cognition: Is having your computer compromised a personal assault? Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 2(4), 542–560. https://doi.org/10.1017/apa.2016.28.
Cecchetto, D. (2013). Humanesis: Sound and technological posthumanism. University of Minnesota Press.
Chen, Y. C., & Scholl, B. J. (2016). The perception of history: Seeing causal history in static shapes induces illusory motion perception. Psychological Science, 27(6), 923–930. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616628525
Churchland, P. S., Ramachandran, V. S., & Sejnowski, T. J. (1994). A critique of pure vision. In C. Koch & J. Davis (Eds.), Large-scale neuronal theories of the brain (pp. 23–61). MIT Press.
Ciancarini, P., Farina, M., Masyagin, S., Succi, G., Yermolaieva, S., & Zagvozkina, N. (2021). Non verbal communication in software engineering—An empirical study. IEEE Access, 9, 71942–71953.
Clark, A. (2003). Natural born cyborgs, mind, technologies and the future of human intelligence. Oxford University Press.
Clark, A. (2007). Curing cognitive hiccups: A defense of the extended mind. The Journal of Philosophy, 104(4), 163–192.
Clark, A. (2008). Supersizing the mind: Embodiment, action and cognitive extension. Oxford University Press.
Clark, A. (2013). Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(3), 181–204.
Clark, A. (2015). Surfing uncertainty: Prediction, action, and the embodied mind. Oxford University Press.
Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 58(1), 7–19.
Clowes, R. W. (2013). The cognitive integration of E-memory. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 4, 107–133.
Clowes, R. W. (2015). Thinking in the cloud: The cognitive incorporation of cloud-based technology. Philosophy and Technology, 28(2), 261–296.
Dunbar, R. (2014). Human evolution: A pelican introduction. Penguin.
Eco, U. (1989). The open work. Harvard University Press.
Farina, M. (2019). Critical notice of sensory substitution and augmentation. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/sensory-substitution-and-augmentation/
Farina, M. (2013). Neither touch nor vision: Sensory substitution as artificial synaesthesia? Biology & Philosophy, 28(4), 639–655.
Farina, M. (2021). Embodiment: Dimensions, domains, and applications. Adaptive Behavior, 29(1), 73–99. https://doi.org/10.1177/105971232091296
Farina, M., Karimov, A., Zhdanov, P., & Lavazza, A. (2022). AI and society: A virtue ethics approach. AI & Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-022-01545-5
Farina, M., & Lavazza, A. (2021). Knowledge prior to belief: Is extended better than enacted? Behavioral Brain Sciences, 44, e152. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X2000076X
Farina, M., & Lavazza, A. (2022a). Why there are still moral reasons to prefer extended over embedded: A (short) reply to Cassinadri. Philosophy & Technology, 35, 67. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-022-00566-8
Farina, M., & Lavazza, A. (2022b). Incorporation, transparency, and cognitive extension. Why the distinction between embedded or extended might be more important to ethics than to metaphysics. Philosophy & Technology, 35, 10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-022-00508-4
Farina, M., & Levin, S. (2021). The extended mind thesis: Domains and application. In R. Michael & L. Thomas (Eds.), Embodied psychology: Thinking, feeling, and acting (pp. 127–147). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78471-3_6
Farnè, A., Serino, A., & Ladavas, E. (2007). Dynamic size-change of peri-hand space following tool-use: Determinants and spatial characteristics revealed through crossmodal extinction. Cortex, 43(3), 436–443.
Fermiiller, C., & Aloimonos, Y. (1995). Representations for active vision. In Proc. Int'l. Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Montreal, Canada (pp. 20–26).
Ferrando, F. (2013). Posthumanism, transhumanism, antihumanism, metahumanism, and new materialisms. Existenz, 8(2), 26–32.
Firestone, C., & Scholl, B. J. (2016). Cognition does not affect perception: Evaluating the evidence for “top-down” effects. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39, e229. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X15000965
Frisch, M. (1959). Homo Faber. Abelard-Schuman.
Frischmann, B., & Selinger, E. (2018). Re-engineering humanity. Cambridge University Press.
Friston, K., & Kiebel, S. (2009). Predictive coding under the free-energy principle. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1521), 1211–1221.
Fuller, S. (2011). Humanity 2.0. Palgrave Macmillan.
Fuller, S. (2018). The posthuman and the transhuman as alternative mappings of the space of political possibility. Journal of Posthuman Studies, 1(2), 151–165.
Fuller, S. (2019). Nietzschean meditations: Untimely thoughts at the dawn of the transhuman era (Vol. 1). Schwabe Verlag.
Fuller, S. (2021). The mind-technology problem. Postdigital Science and Education, 1–6.
Gallagher, S. (2005). How the body shapes the mind. Clarendon Press.
Gallese, V., & Sinigaglia, C. (2010). The bodily self as power for action. Neuropsychologia, 48(3), 746–755.
Gibson, J. J. (1979/2014). The ecological approach to visual perception. Psychology Press.
Goldstone, R. L., Landy, D., & Brunel, L. C. (2011). Improving perception to make distant connections closer. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 385.
Greene, J. (2013). Moral tribes: Emotions, reasons, and the gap between us and them. Penguin.
Grush, R. (2004). The emulator theory of representation: Motor control, imagery, and perception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 377–396.
Hayles, N. K. (1999). How we became posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. University of Chicago Press.
Heersmink, R. (2015). Dimensions of integration in embedded and extended cognitive systems. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 14(3), 577–598.
Heersmink, R. (2020). Varieties of the extended self. Consciousness and Cognition, 85, 103001.
Holmes, N. P., Calvert, G. A., & Spence, C. (2004). Extending or projecting peripersonal space with tools: Multisensory interactions highlight only the distal and proximal ends of tools. Neuroscience Letters, 372, 62–67.
Ihde, D. (1990). Technology and the lifeworld: From garden to earth. Indiana University Press.
Iriki, A., Tanaka, M., & Iwamura, Y. (1996). Coding of modified body schema during tool use by macaque postcentral neurones. NeuroReport, 7, 2325–2330.
Jaworska, A. & Tannenbaum, J. (2021). The Grounds of Moral Status. In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/grounds-moral-status.
Kapp, E. (2018). Elements of a philosophy of technology: On the evolutionary history of culture. University of Minnesota Press.
Kass, M. D., Rosenthal, M. C., Pottackal, J., & McGann, J. P. (2013). Fear learning enhances neural responses to threat-predictive sensory stimuli. Science, 342(6164), 1389–1392. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1244916
Kirchhoff, M. D., & Kiverstein, J. (2019). Extended consciousness and predictive processing: A third wave view. Routledge.
Kiverstein, J., & Farina, M. (2012). Do sensory substitution devices extend the conscious mind? In F. Paglieri (Ed.), Consciousness in interaction: The role of the natural and social context in shaping consciousness (pp. 19–40). John Benjamins.
Kiverstein, J., Farina, M., & Clark, A. (2013). The extended mind. Oxford Bibliographies Online, Oxford University Press.
Kiverstein, J., Farina, M., & Clark, A. (2015). Substituting the senses. In M. Matthen (Ed.), The oxford handbook of the philosophy of perception (pp. 659–678). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Lanier, J. (2010). You are not a gadget: A manifesto. Alfred A Knopf.
Lara, F. (2021). Why a virtual assistant for moral enhancement when we could have a Socrates? Science and Engineering Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-021-00318-5
Lavazza, A. (2019). Moral bioenhancement through memory-editing: A risk for identity and authenticity? Topoi, 38(1), 15–27.
Lavazza, A., & Reichlin, M. (2019). Introduction: Moral enhancement. Topoi, 38(1), 1–5.
Lecky, W. E. H. (1891). History of European morals: From Augustus to Charlemagne. Appleton.
Maravita, A., & Iriki, A. (2004). Tools for the body (schema). Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(2), 79–86.
Meijer, P. B. (1992). An experimental system for auditory image representations. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 39(2), 112–121.
Menary, R. (2010). Cognitive integration and the extended mind. In R. Menary (Ed.), The extended mind (pp. 227–244). Cambridge University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945/1962). Phenomenology of perception, trans. by Colin Smith London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Metzinger, T. (2004). Being no one: The self-model theory of subjectivity. MIT Press.
Meulders, M. (2010). Helmholtz: From enlightenment to neuroscience. MIT Press.
Michel, A. (2020). Cognition and perception: Is there really a distinction? APS Observer, 33.
Mitcham, C. (1994). Thinking through technology: The path between engineering and philosophy. University of Chicago Press.
Norman, D. (2010). Living with Complexity. MIT Press.
Paracelsus. (1537). De Natura Rerum. Bucher.
Passmore, J. A. (1970). The perfectibility of man. Liberty Fund.
Persson, I., & Savulescu, J. (2012). Unfit for the future: The need for moral enhancement. Oxford University Press.
Pilsch, A. (2017). Transhumanism: Evolutionary futurism and the human technologies of utopia. University of Minnesota Press.
Potter, M. C. (2012). Conceptual short term memory in perception and thought. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 113. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00113
Ramachandran, V. S., Blakeslee, S., & Dolan, R. J. (1998). Phantoms in the brain probing the mysteries of the human mind. Nature, 396(6712), 639–640.
Ranisch, R., & Sorgner, S. L. (Eds.). (2015a). Post-and transhumanism: An introduction. Frankfurt am Main.
Ranisch, R., & Sorgner, S. L. (2015b). Introducing post- and transhumanism. In R. Ranisch & S. L. Sorgner (Eds.), Post-and transhumanism: An introduction. Peter Lang Frankfurt am Main.
Rothenberg, D. (1993). Hand’s end. University of California Press.
Rowlands, M. (2010). The new science of the mind: From extended mind to embodied phenomenology. MIT Press.
Rupert, R. D. (2004). Challenges to the hypothesis of extended cognition. The Journal of Philosophy, 101(8), 389–428.
Rupert, R. (2009). Cognitive systems and the extended mind. Oxford University Press.
Rupert, R. D. (2019). What is a cognitive system? In defense of the conditional probability of co-contribution account. Cognitive Semantics, 5(2), 175–200.
Rushkoff, D. (2016). Throwing rocks at the Google bus: How growth became the enemy of prosperity. Penguin.
Sandberg, A. (2011). Upgrading the brain. In J. Savulescu, R. Ter Meulen, & G. Kahane (Eds.), Enhancing human capacities (pp. 71–91). Wiley.
Savulescu, J., ter Meulen, R., & Kahane, G. (Eds.). (2011). Enhancing human capacities. Wiley.
Schettler, A., Raja, V., & Anderson, M. (2019). The embodiment of objects: Review, analysis, and future directions. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 13, 1332.
Serino, A. (2019). Peripersonal space (PPS) as a multisensory interface between the individual and the environment, defining the space of the self. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 99, 138–159.
Shatzer, J. (2019). Transhumanism and the Image of God: Today’s technology and the future of christian discipleship. InterVarsity Press.
Singer, P. (1981). The expanding circle. Oxford Clarendon Press.
Singer, P. (2015). The most good you can do: How effective altruism is changing ideas about living ethically. Castle lectures in ethics, politics, and economics. Yale University Press.
Slaby, J. (2016). Mind invasion: Situated affectivity and the corporate life hack. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 266.
Sorgner, S. L. (2021). On transhumanism. Penn State University Press.
Sprevak, M. (2009). Extended cognition and functionalism. The Journal of Philosophy, 106(9), 503–527.
Sterelny, K. (2010). Minds: Extended or scaffolded? Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9(4), 465–481.
Stiegler, B. (1998). Technics and time, 1: The fault of epimetheus. Stanford University Press.
Stross, C. (2006). Accelerando. Ace Books.
Sutton, J. (2010). Exograms and interdisciplinarity: History, the extended mind, and the civilizing process. In R. Menary (Ed.), The extended mind (pp. 189–225). MIT Press.
Sutton, J., McIlwain, D., Christensen, W., & Geeves, A. (2011). Applying intelligence to the reflexes: Embodied skills and habits between Dreyfus and Descartes. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 42(1), 78–103.
Theiner, G. (2021). The extended mind: A chapter in the history of transhumanism. In R. W. Clowes, K. Gärtner, & I. Hipólito (Eds.), The mind-technology problem. Investigating minds, selves and 21st century artifacts. Springer.
Thweatt-Bates, J. (2016). Cyborg selves: A theological anthropology of the posthuman. Routledge.
Tripathi, A. K. (2015). Postphenomenological investigations of technological experience. AI & Society, 30(2), 199–205.
Tsakiris, M. (2010). My body in the brain: A neurocognitive model of body-ownership. Neuropsychologia, 48(3), 703–712.
Voss, K. (1998). Spiritual alchemy: Interpreting representative texts and images. In R. van den Broek & W. Hanegraaff (Eds.), Gnosis and hermeticism from antiquity to modern times. State University of New York Press.
Wheeler, M. (2005). Reconstructing the cognitive world. MIT Press.
Wheeler, M. (2010). In defense of extended functionalism. In R. Menary (Ed.), The extended mind (pp. 245–270). MIT Press.
Williams, E. G. (2015). The possibility of an ongoing moral catastrophe. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 18(5), 971–982.
Wilson, R. A. (2004). Boundaries of the mind: The individual in the fragile sciences-cognition. Cambridge University Press.
Wixted, J. T. (2020). The forgotten history of signal detection theory. Journal of Experimental PSychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 46(2), 201.
Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. Public Affairs.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their earnest gratitude and appreciation to the Editors of Synthese and to the reviewers for the constructive feedback offered during the review process that allowed to significantly improve the manuscript.
Funding
N/a.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Research involving human participants and animals rights
N/a.
Informed consent
N/a.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Farina, M., Lavazza, A. Mind embedded or extended: transhumanist and posthumanist reflections in support of the extended mind thesis. Synthese 200, 507 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03963-w
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03963-w