Upshot: The “Extended Mind Thesis” claims that cognitive processes are situated, embodied and goal-oriented actions that unfold in real world interactions with the immediate environment, cultural tools and other persons. The body and the “outside” world, undoubtedly, have a crucial influence, driving human beings’ cognitive processes. In his book, Andy Clark goes slightly further by claiming that the mind is often extended into the body and the world.

Review of: Andy Clark (1997) Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again. MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts. xiii+267pp. ISBN 0-262-03240-6. Price: $US12 pbk.

Key words: artificial intelligence, dynamical systems theory, embodiment, autonomous agents, artificial life, mental repesentation, metaphysics.

In a recent paper, Andy Clark (2008) has argued that the literature on embodied cognition reveals a tension between two prominent strands within this movement. On the one hand, there are those who endorse what Clark refers to as body-centrism, a view which emphasizes the special contribution made by the body to a creature’s mental life. Among other things, body centrism implies that significant differences in embodiment translate into significant differences in cognition and consciousness. On the other hand, there are those who endorse what Clark calls extended functionalism, a view which sees the mind as the joint product of the computational resources presented by (i) intracranial processing, (ii) bodily input, and (iii) environmental scaffolding. As such, extended functionalism allows for the possibility that any contribution of the body to cognition and consciousness can be compensated for by the other two contributing factors. While Clark’s sympathies lie with the latter approach, we argue in favour of the former. In particular, we focus on consciousness and argue that the unique contribution the body makes to a creature’s manifold of phenomenal experience cannot be compensated for, in the manner, and on the scale, that Clark envisages.

Excerpt: I’m grateful for all the careful critical responses my paper has received. I’m especially indebted to Andy Clark, whose hard questions have forced me to refine my views, and to Georges Rey, who has had the courage and skill to defend representationalism in its most extreme form. Before taking on their serious criticisms, however, I would like to clear up some misunderstandings. The polemical way I posed my thesis as a defense of “intelligence without representations” seems to have misled some readers into thinking I was against appealing to mental representations to explain any form of intelligent behavior. So I’ll begin by reminding everyone, including myself, what is at stake.

The role of the body in cognition is acknowledged across a variety of disciplines, even if the precise nature and scope of that contribution remain contentious. As a result, most philosophers working on embodiment – e.g. those in embodied cognition, enactivism, and ‘4e’ cognition – interact with the life sciences as part of their interdisciplinary agenda. Despite this, a detailed engagement with emerging findings in epigenetics and post-genomic biology has been missing from proponents of this embodied turn. Surveying this research provides an opportunity to rethink the relationship between embodiment and genetics, and we argue that the balance of current epigenetic research favours the extension of an enactivist approach to mind and life, rather than the extended functionalist view of embodied cognition associated with Andy Clark and Mike Wheeler, which is more substrate neutral.

Key words: Enactivism, embodied cognition, epigenetics, plasticity, postgenomics, memory

We address the thesis recently proposed by Andy Clark, that skill-mediated access to modality implies phenomenal feel. We agree that a skill theory of perception does indeed offer the possibility of a satisfactory account of the feel of perception, but we claim that this is not only through explanation of access to modality but also because skill actually provides access to perceptual property in general. We illustrate and substantiate our claims by reference to the recently proposed ‘sensorimotor contingency’ theory of visual awareness. We discuss why this theory offers a distinctively attractive access-based approach to perceptual consciousness because it ‘dereifies’ experience and permits otherwise problematic aspects of phenomenal perceptual consciousness to be explained. We suggest our approach thus offers the prospect of ‘naturalizing phenomenology’.

According to the extended conscious mind thesis (ECM), the physical basis of consciousness is not confined exclusively to the brain, but extends beyond it via sensorimotor dynamics. ECM is enjoying growing support among philosophers inspired by developments in enactive and embodied cognitive science. ECM has obvious parallels with the extended mind thesis (EM), according to which the physical basis of cognition is likewise not confined to the brain. However, EM’s originator and most prominent defender, Andy Clark, argues that EM theorists can and should reject ECM, and offers an alternative internalist account, which admits a causal but non-constitutive role for sensorimotor dynamics. In this paper, I examine how well this claim fits with some of the key commitments of EM, and the implications for the EM theorist who wishes to deny ECM. I argue that Clark’s position – ECM-rejecting EM – is untenable, and defend the ECM interpretation of sensorimotor dynamics.

Key words: extended mind, consciousness, enactivism, andy clark