Clark and Chalmers consider the extended mind thesis: the thesis that cognition is located beyond a cranial boundary, in an organism’s environment. This is the fairly strong view that things outside of the brain not only aid cognition (as tools) but are constitutive of cognition. Mediate the debate between trans-cranialists like Clark and Chalmers and intra-cranialists like Adams and Aizawa. Do you think the extended mind thesis is defensible against its critics?
The tools with which someone explores the idea of cognition are often defined by where cognition is thought to emanate from. Clark and Chalmers’ extended mind thesis offers a seat of cognition extending beyond just the cranial boundary. In this paper, I will argue in favour of this viewpoint. It is my contention that not only does cognition extend beyond the brain into the physical world, but also that cognition itself is a result of a highly ordered external physical reality that is innately conscious.
Chalmers described the Hard Problem of Consciousness (1998) as the problem of explaining relationships between physical phenomena and experiences encompassing phenomenal consciousness. Dissecting this problem systematically through different philosophical parameters will help elucidate the nature of cognition and the natural necessity of realizing its existence beyond the framework of the brain. The work of intra-cranialists such as Adams and Aizawa, constitute important tools in providing the necessary contrarian discourse required to argue and logically prove this argument.
The Extended Mind Thesis
The extended mind thesis at its core posits the existence of a cognitive framework that encompasses external tools and objects that aid in processes otherwise understood at intracranially cognitive. Clark and Chalmers (1998) elucidated this by demonstrating situations where internal processes such as memory can in fact be external if accessed in that manner. Coupled Systems as stated, not only aid, but are present within the cognitive framework through which cognitive realizations are possible. Clark and Chalmers argue this point by explaining that the deniability of this process (known as active externalism) fails when approaching this sort of view, because the brain is subject to the same physical dangers as the external objects. In addition to this, the most controversial points stated by Clark and Chalmers stress that our environment is integral in moulding our cognition and is then a core cognitive process as opposed to being an additive non-cognitive feature.
Cognitive processes at their very core are tied to consciousness. In the Hard Problem of Consciousness (1998) Chalmers describes the hard problem as one being the problem of experience over all else; phenomenal consciousness. There is an innately subjective and personal aspect to understanding consciousness that has perplexed and intrigued humans above all other living organisms. This subjective experience is primarily driven by biological processes that manifest as physical behaviour. The conscious experience, however, is inexplicable in a scenario where the individual experience of a person of organism cannot be quantified or explained by another in a manner that is all encompassing. This primarily stems from a selfish view of thinking that conscious experience is in fact limited to living organisms.
All-Pervading Consciousness
Interactions of matter, radiation (hereby referred to singularly as particles) are governed by universal physical laws that manifest in the form of highly entropic entities. Supernovae, humans, oak trees, bacteria and quartz crystals are all entities of this kind. The physical laws that govern the interactions of these particles seem to be built into the fabric of the universe. These laws present themselves with every interaction and are infinitely consistent (to our knowledge, at least) – and it is almost as if the particles ‘know’ how to interact with each other. This state of ‘knowing’ may be understood as an innate consciousness that manifests in the form of physical laws that pervade the universe.
Asserting that all particles and everything is conscious begs a very important question. What is the conscious experience of a particle, or a rock or an atom or a chair? The truthful answer is we do not know. Denying its existence, however, does not make sense either. Humans are limited by their biology and cannot fully grasp the completeness of the universe. For example, our vision is limited to a certain spectrum of light that does not include ultraviolet light. Just because we cannot see it, doesn’t mean it does not exist. In saying this, we might be limited in understanding the conscious experience of everything around us, but the inability to understand it should not invalidate its existence. Perhaps there is an entirely exceptional way in which inanimate objects experience their environment that we cannot understand. If the same chemical material that makes humans exists in other places in the universe, there should be nothing special about the structuring of this substance to generate consciousness. If this were, however, the case, our understanding of cognitive psychology and human biology would be incomplete. The primary reason why we consider humans (and animals by extension) and nothing else to possess consciousness arises from the bias of only being able to attest to the existence of something we have ourselves experienced and even so, there is reasonable doubt that we do not completely understand the conscious experience of other humans.
Humans are made of trillions of cells which are made trillions of atoms. On each individual level, atomic and microscopic, processes occur in accordance with universal physical laws. At what point is something declared conscious? A million atoms? A trillion perhaps? Using a traditional metric, one would not stop before a multicellular organism and even then, there might be contention with the degree of consciousness that being might possess. Scientifically speaking, demarcating this boundary seems illogical given that apart from the quantity of substance, nothing else has really changed. In saying this, any scientific defense in favour of describing chemical processes in giving rise to cognitive conscious behaviour fails to rise to the task of explaining why this isn’t the case for more elementary systems. Chalmers (1998) mirrors a similar view in his paper
“It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.”
While I agree with this majority of this statement, I do not think that these physical processes giving rise to a rich inner life is objectively unreasonable. There is a very real possibility that this rich inner life is persistent at every level down to elementary particles, and our limited knowledge of its experience is the only factor inhibiting us from fully realizing it. The argument in this paper has significantly expanded beyond the functionalist perspective the extended mind thesis offers, but I must be noted that understanding consciousness is at the very core of cognition and has been debated by many philosophers, physicists and scientists in understanding cognition.
Cognition, Consciousness and the Contrary View
The existence of cognition outside of the cranial boundary is inherently postulated by this pervading consciousness. This train of logic is also common in Advaita Vedanta – the root philosophy governing spiritual experience and discipline in Hinduism (Ward, 1998). It asserts that the self is an all-pervading energy (in this case understood as consciousness) and everything that exists is a physical manifestation of it. The reason for the assumed separation is the illusion of duality that is manifested in these physical systems.
The brain seems to have a random mental model of what is and isn’t part of the body. A cellphone, pen or notebook doesn’t seem to be part of the brain’s model for belonging in the body, however, blood vessels, bones and tissues – all parts of the body as recognized by the brain are elements of us that we are not consciously aware of. In removing some part of our body that the conscious system seems to be unaware of, the brain doesn’t consider it part of the body anymore. The brain considers a cellphone to not be an extension of our bodies because it is inanimate, but a similar reasoning fails for a severed appendage that once served a biological purpose in the body. There is reasonable doubt here whether there is – if any – justification to view physical boundary of our bodies as the boundaries of oneself. Why is a body not everything we hold or wear, the whole room or perhaps even the whole universe? This extension of the body can also then be extended to a definition of an extended cognition.
Cognitive frameworks serve the function of performing cognitive tasks, but even more abstract elements such as thoughts, ideas an experience are brought about the collective that seems to unite the brain and its surrounding. The environment, and on a large scale, the whole universe postulates cognitive processes to occur as they do due to the collective consciousness that is manifested in the physical laws we know. The gap in understanding is brought about by considering a cognitive process as something internal, when it is very much not. It is the result of very basal activity in the collective system of all interacting particles working exactly as they are supposed to. Humans are cognitively aware of a certain feeling because they feel it and there is no other way to feel it. If the interaction of even one particle was different, it would be an ever so slightly different feeling. The conscious ‘knowledge’ possessed by each of these fundamental particles could likely be a working part of what we consider to be physical laws, but in aiming to assess the nature of consciousness, the problem of being conscious of consciousness raises the same issue again. To be conscious is to be aware, and the state of awareness itself posits the existence of everything. If there was no conscious way to experience, there is no way to prove the existence of anything. Cognition works in a similar way – extended to and intimately tied and dependent on everything within and beyond the cranial boundary.
We must now consider some criticism for this argument to answer some questions that might arise when discussing this contentious viewpoint. The primary source of this criticism will come from a paper written by Adams and Aizawa titled Why the Mind Is Still in the Head (2012). It is a thoroughly extensive document arguing against the transcranial view of cognition. Of primary concern to both authors is the terminological issue surrounding inclusivity of the word ‘cognition’ and what constitutes a cognitive process. Aizawa and Adams believe that what transcranialists consider to be cognition is conflated with causation in what they call the coupling-constitution fallacy. This criticizes the argument of coupled systems (or extensions of the mind as described by Clark and Chalmers). Broadly, their consideration is that non-cognitive elements are induced wrongfully into what they consider cognitive frameworks. In stating what I have about cognition arising from a collective consciousness, this criticism falls short because the extended mind exists everywhere. The coupling fallacy is essentially missing because the perturbation which appears as a thought in a cognitive framework is exactly that – a perturbation. No elements of it are inherently non-cognitive and while certain parts of the system may not explicitly participate in an immediate cognitive task, it should not take away the ability of the system to be inherently cognitive.
Another more ‘nagging’ worry outlined by Aizawa and Adams is the motivation behind transracialism. What reason is there to make this proposed conceptual shift? Why parse up causal processes in the transcranialist way rather than in the intracranialist way?
Physical sciences as they exist today are a result of constantly attempting to better understand the workings of the universe. The only way to tangibly explore this reality is through the lens of each person’s conscious mind. It is the only reality we know and the only reality we are likely to ever know, and it only stands to reason that that to understand the workings of the universe, we must first understand the working of our own cognition. In making these observations, there is an innate duality between observer and observation. The transcranial view seeks to unite the two by making objects around it an extension of its cognition. This unity is expressed in the transcranial view and so it can be seen why this conceptual shift is not only made but seems almost necessary. The intracranial view cannot alone transcend to understanding any knowledge that might come with actualizing cognition beyond biological ability. It is reasonable to state that cognition and the underlying consciousness cannot alone be a product of biology – and the theory of pervading consciousness posited in this paper explores just that.
The extended mind thesis is defensible against its critics. Not only does it posit an interesting and logical way to view cognition and where it is situated, but also offers a unique perspective in understanding how our reality is not as subjective as it may seem. Understanding consciousness as an integral building block of everything in the universe lends a unified understanding to cognition, cognitive frameworks and the workings of all the processes within it.
Bibliography
Adams, Fred, and Kenneth Aizawa. “Why the Mind Is Still in the Head.” The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition, 2001, 78–95. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511816826.005.
Chalmers, David. “The Hard Problem of Consciousness.” The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, 2007, 223–35. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470751466.ch18.
Clark, Andy, and David Chalmers. “The Extended Mind.” Analysis 58, no. 1 (1998): 7–19. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3328150.
Ward, Keith. “Non-Dualism (Advaita Vedanta).” Religion and Human Nature, 1998, 10– 35. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198269618.003.0002.
Shubhang Suri 