Abstract
According to the extended mind thesis, cognitive processes are not confined to the nervous system but can extend beyond skin and skull to notebooks, iPhones, computers and such. The extended mind thesis is a metaphysical thesis about the material basis of our cognition. As such, whether the thesis is true can have implications for epistemological issues. Carter has recently argued that safety-based theories of knowledge are in tension with the extended mind hypothesis, since the safety condition implies that there is an epistemic difference between subjects who form their beliefs via their biological capacities and between subjects who have extended their cognition. Kelp, on the other hand, has argued that a safety-based theory of knowledge can be correct only if the extended mind thesis is true. While these claims are not logically inconsistent, they do leave the safety theorist in an uncomfortable position. I will argue that safety-based theories of knowledge are not hostage to the truth of the extended mind thesis, and that once the safety condition is properly understood it is not in tension with the extended mind thesis.
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Notes
See Wikforss (2014, pp. 470–472) for the argument that the cognitive process that Otto undergoes while consulting his notebook is not functionally similar to the cognitive process that he would go through if he consulted his biological memory.
Note that Pritchard (2015) has in his later work abandoned condition (ii). I think this is a mistake, but I will not defend that claim here.
Coffman (2007, p. 396) argues that the events in question need to be similar to each other in order to count as relevant. What events count as relevantly similar varies from case to case. This is, of course, rather vague, but given that we are not trying to provide a reductive analysis of luck, but a helpful elucidation of it, this is not a fatal problem. The modal account of luck, as it is stated by Pritchard, is already quite vague, but still useful. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer of Synthese for making me consider this issue.
See Williamson (2000, p. 101) for an argument why the safety condition needs to be of the globalized kind.
I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer of Synthese for highlighting this fact.
An anonymous reviewer of Synthese encouraged me to motivate the globalized safety condition in greater detail. This section was substantially improved as a result.
According to Pritchard (2012, pp. 256–257), the relevant set of propositions is adequately restricted by the basis of belief-formation that the subject has in the actual world. This feature of his view makes it even more important to provide an answer to the generality problem as it inflicts the safety condition. Crucially, Pritchard does not provide an account of how to individuate bases of belief formation. Williamson (2009, p. 325) agrees that the relevant set of propositions cannot be adequately restricted solely in terms of the basis of belief formation that the subject has in the actual world. He claims that all of the relevant propositions have to be “close” to each other. For a critique of Williamson’s proposal see Hirvelä (2017). Sosa (2015) advances also a globalized version of the safety condition, though he does not engage with the problem of how to restrict the relevant set of propositions in detail. For a critique of Sosa’s formulation of the safety condition, see Hirvelä (2018b).
This case appears originally in Goldman (1976), though he credits Carl Ginet for it.
Palermos (2014, p. 1934) argues that this kind of unreflective integration allows us to trust the deliverances of our cognitive abilities provided that we lack any reasons for negating our beliefs and that we are motivated to believe what is true.
According to the sensitivity condition a subject S’s belief that p is sensitive just in case if it were the case that not-p S would not believe that p.
Clark and Chalmers (1998) also offer a fourth condition, according to which the information in the notebook would have to have been consciously endorsed by Otto in the past, but suggest that this condition might be too stringent.
In fact, many have argued that the trust and glue conditions are too weak, and fail to specify sufficient conditions for when cognition extends. See Farkas (2012, pp. 444–4445) and Wikforss (2014, p. 475). For a critical assessment and discussion of attempts to confine cognition that do not resort to the trust and glue conditions, see Allen-Hermanson (2013).
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I would like to that Duncan Pritchard, Adam Sanders, Pii Telakivi and an anonymous referee at Synthese for insightful comments that helped to improve this paper.
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Hirvelä, J. How to stay safe while extending the mind. Synthese 197, 4065–4081 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-01920-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-01920-0