Extended mind thesis

The extended mind thesis (EMT) says that an agent's mind and associated cognitive processing are neither skull-bound nor even body-bound, but extend into the agent's world. As Clark and Chalmers see it:

Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?...We propose to pursue... an active externalism, based on the active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes.

The question is raised as to the division point between the mind and the environment. The EMT proposes that some objects in the external environment are utilized by the mind in such a way that the objects can be seen as extensions of the mind itself. Specifically, the mind is seen to encompass every level of the cognitive process, which will often include the use of environmental aids.

Philosophical arguments against the extended mind thesis include that:

Each of these arguments is addressed in Clark (2008), in which he notes that:

While in Supersizing the Mind, Clark defends a strong version of the hypothesis of extended cognition (contrasted with a hypothesis of embedded cognition) in other work, some of these objections have inspired more moderate reformulations of the extended mind thesis. Thus, the extended mind thesis may no longer depend on the parity considerations of Clark and Chalmers' original argument but, instead, emphasize the "complementarity" of internal and external elements of cognitive systems or processes. This version might be understood as emphasizing the explanatory value of the extended mind thesis for cognitive science rather than maintaining it as an ontological claim about the nature of mind or cognition.

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