Overcoming Deadlock: Scientific and Ethical Reasons to Embrace the Extended Mind Thesis

Karina Vold

doi:10.2298/FID1804489V

Authors

Karina Vold Research Associate Ph.D, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge;

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2298/FID1804489V

Keywords:

extended cognition, intracranialism, embedded mind, ethics, theory selection, cognitive rehabilitation

Abstract

The extended mind thesis maintains that while minds may be centrally
located in one’s brain-and-body, they are sometimes partly constituted
by tools in our environment. Critics argue that we have no reason to
move from the claim that cognition is embedded in the environment to
the stronger claim that cognition can be constituted by the environment.
I will argue that there are normative reasons, both scientific and ethical,
for preferring the extended account of the mind to the rival embedded
account.

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