extended cognition and fixed properties: steps to a third-wave version of extended cognition

Extended cognition and fixed properties: stepsto a third-wave version of extended cognition

Michael David Kirchhoff

Published online: 18 October 2011# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract This paper explores several paths a distinctive third wave of extendedcognition might take. In so doing, I address a couple of shortcomings of first- andsecond-wave extended cognition associated with a tendency to conceive of theproperties of internal and external processes as fixed and non-interchangeable. First,in the domain of cognitive transformation, I argue that a problematic tendency of thecomplementarity model is that it presupposes that socio-cultural resources augmentbut do not significantly transform the brain’s representational capacities duringdiachronic development. In this paper I show that there is available a much moredynamical explanation—one taking the processes of the brain’s enculturation intopatterned practices as transforming the brain’s representational capacities. Second, inthe domain of cognitive assembly, I argue that another problematic tendency is anindividualistic notion of cognitive agency, since it overlooks the active contributionof socio-cultural practices in the assembly process of extended cognitive systems. Incontrast to an individualistic notion of cognitive agency, I explore the idea that it ispossible to decentralize cognitive agency to include socio-cultural practices.

Keywords Extended cognition . Fixed-properties . Dynamical properties . Cognitivetransformation . Cognitive assembly

Introduction

In philosophy of mind and cognition, the model known as extended cognition (EC)expresses the view that many of our genuinely cognitive processes are composed ofphysical vehicles running on machinery distributed across parts of the brain, body,and material–cultural environment (Clark 2011; Menary 2010a, b, c; Rowlands2010; Sutton 2010; Wheeler 2010). My independent aim in this paper is to explore

Phenom Cogn Sci (2012) 11:287–308DOI 10.1007/s11097-011-9237-8

M. D. Kirchhoff (*)Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australiae-mail: [email protected]

an issue that I do not believe has been pursued elsewhere in the literature on EC,namely the relationship between EC and, what I shall call, the “fixed-properties viewof internal and external processes” (FP). Throughout this paper, I hope to show thatit is possible to move EC along both faithfully and fruitfully by downplaying thistendency to treat the properties of the “internal” and “external” as fixed and insteadexplore an alternative route to EC.

To get an understanding of FP, we can contrast FP with what I call the “dynamicalproperties view” (DP). Unlike FP, DP holds that the plastic brain gets enculturatedthrough development in socio-cultural practices (Roepstorff et al. 2010, p. 1052).This is the first part of DP. The second part is as follows. Unlike FP, DP does notassume, when having to explain the integration/assembly of cognitive systems, thatthe individual organism is the most active element. DP implies that the assembly ofcognitive systems is the result of richly dynamical and distributed elements, wherethere is no collapse into individualism like in FP. To flesh out DP in more detail, Ifocus on two domains.

The first of these domains is sometimes referred to as cognitive transforma-tion (Menary 2010b), where I focus on the transformation of neuronalrepresentational capacities as a result of enculturation. To make sense of this, Idiscuss three examples: (1) Näätänen et al.’s (1997) study on phoneme perceptionsuggesting a diachronically mediated re-shaping of certain cortical areas of thebrain by “the brain’s” participation in structured socio-cultural practices; (2)Dehaene’s (2005) neuronal recycling hypothesis suggesting that our uniquelyhuman capacity for exact mathematical reasoning is partly biologically inheritedand partly a result of enculturation into socio-cultural practices; and (3) Wheeler’s(2004) philosophical work on language and off-line cognition, where Wheelerargues that the brain must “recapitulate” certain structural features of language inorder for humans to engage in off-line cognition. The second domain is theconstruction of cognitive systems typically referred to as cognitive assembly(Clark 2008; Hutchins 2008, 2011a; Kirchhoff and Newsome 2011; Sterelny2010). I want to signpost a couple of important issues here. First, unlikeindividualist approaches to cognitive assembly (Clark 2008), addressing cognitiveassembly via DP implies a non-individualistic conception of cognitive agency.Second, unlike synchronic perspectives on cognitive assembly (Clark 2008), DPaims to explain synchronic assembly (in part) from diachronic considerations.Thus, in contrast to DP, FP is the view that the properties of biological processesand the properties of socio-cultural processes remain non-interchangeable, bothdiachronically and synchronically.

Scope of the critical exploration and strategy

Nothing of what I have to say in this paper will undermine the credibility of the ECresearch program, in the sense that what I shall critically explore are tendencies orassumptions left unquestioned. Hence, I do not claim that there is a necessaryrelationship between EC and FP. So, the more conservative aim is to establish thatleaving FP behind opens a space for interesting research on EC topics. Let that bethe first proviso. The second is that I shall not be arguing that EC in general iscommitted to FP. First, I do not argue that parity-based arguments are committed to

288 M.D. Kirchhoff

FP. This is evident from my endorsement of Wheeler’s (2004) case of off-linecognition precisely because Wheeler is a parity-driven EC theorist. Nevertheless, Iwill argue that Clark, whose work is often directed at parity-EC, shows evidence ofFP-style assumptions with respect to the domains of cognitive transformation andcognitive assembly. In cognitive transformation, the justification for this claimcomes from the consideration that Clark only thinks that parity is sufficient forcognitive extension, and that the far “more interesting and plausible argument […],is the one which describes the seepage of the mind into the world by stressing that“the brain’s brief is to provide complementary facilities that will support the repeatedexploitation of operations upon the world […].” (Clark 1998, p. 98; italic added).Hence, it is at the fine-grained level of Clark’s complementary arguments—and notat the coarser-grained level of functional isomorphism—that FP assumptions arise inClark’s work. In addition to this, what warrants my gluing of Clark to FP in thedomain of cognitive assembly is the individualistic conception of cognitive agencyexpressed in Clark’s hypothesis of organism-centered cognition: if the orchestrationprocess of systemic parts on the synchronic level is primarily the result oforganismic properties, then the dynamics of socio-cultural practices are leftexplanatorily static, with the result of separating unnecessarily the biological fromthe cultural. Therefore, it is not parity that I am questioning but rather assumptions inthe complementarity model and in EC’s individualistic notion of cognitive agency.Second, I do not argue that Menary’s framework of cognitive integration iscommitted to FP, in that Menary is much more DP-oriented in his approach.However, on the issue of cognitive assembly, there is still a tendency to explainintegration from the perspective of the individual organism. Third, because I ampursuing a critical line against complementarity EC, the arguments against Clarkalso apply to the model of complementarity endorsed by Sutton (2010). However,and which will become clear in the “Toward a third-wave extended cognition”section, Sutton is quite aware of the tendency within EC of fixing the realms of the“internal” and “external.”

Different waves of extended cognition

There are different versions, articulating different methodologies and researchinterests, in EC. Especially Sutton (2010) and Menary (2010c) should be creditedfor making several of these important differences come to light. In the presentliterature there are two articulated waves or versions of EC: Sutton and Menarycall these 1st wave EC (Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2008; Wheeler 2010) and2nd wave EC (Menary 2006, 2007, 2010b; Rowlands 2010; Sutton 2010; Suttonet al. 2010).

First-wave extended cognition

First-wave EC is based on a combination of complementarity and what is known asthe parity principle (PP). Opinions on these matters, however, differ somewhat.While Clark (see above) only thinks that the PP is sufficient for cognitive extensionand that the better argument for EC is a complementarity-based argument (Clark

Extended cognition and fixed properties 289

1998, p. 99), Wheeler (2010, 2011) conceives of the PP as the only viable route toEC (Walter 2010, p. 286). Nevertheless, because first- and second-wave EC share acommitment to complementarity, but do not equally share the endorsement of the PP,I focus here on the PP. The PP stresses the following: “If we confront some task, apart of the world functions as a process which, were it to go on in the head, wewould have no hesitation in accepting as part of the cognitive process, then that partof the world is (for that time) part of the cognitive process.” (Clark and Chalmers1998, p. 8; and reprinted in Clark 2008, p. 77). The PP focuses on functionalisomorphism of “inner” and “outer” processes. In support of the PP, Clark andChalmers developed the case of the neurobiologically impaired Otto and hisnotebook. Otto is a victim of a mild form of Alzheimer’s disease. Over time, Ottohas written down useful information in his notebook in a similar way to storinginformation in biological memory. According to Clark and Chalmers, because thedispositional information in Otto’s notebook is functionally poised to guide action ina functionally similar way as non-occurrent beliefs in biological memory, theinformation in Otto’s notebook should be considered as cognitive belief-like states.Importantly, the PP by itself is not meant as an argument for EC but rather toencourage us to look at various cases of cognitive extension “behind a veil ofmetabolic ignorance,” (Clark 2011, p. 449). Given this picture, then, the PP acts as akind of heuristic device (Menary 2010a, p. 5) designed to suspend what Clark calls“biochauvinistic prejudice” (2008, p. 77).

Second-wave extended cognition

Second-wave EC shares the complementarity view of Clark’s version of first-wave EC. But this second wave of EC is critical of arguments based on parityand functional isomorphism. Generally, it is EC in its integrationist, historical,and cognition-in-the-wild mode. Even so, second-wave EC is best understood notas a substantial doctrine departure from first-wave EC; but rather, as a refinementand (perhaps) attunement to a more empirically and enactive oriented approachto EC. However, even if the two waves are compatible, they are also distinct, inthe sense that most proponents of second-wave EC argue that the PP is eitherwrong or incomplete as a motivation for EC in general (Sutton 2010, p. 200).Within second-wave EC, there are two approaches with slightly different views orinflections: the first starts from a principle of complementarity (Sutton 2010),whereas the second focuses on integration and manipulation (Menary 2007).Sutton builds his case for complementarity arguing, among other things, that thePP “does not encourage attention to the distinct features of the components inparticular cognitive systems […],” and because of this “downplays—or evencollapses—differences between inner and outer resources […].” (Menary 2010a, b,c, d, p. 198). As a result, the PP fails to study the deep mechanistic dissimilaritiesbetween “inner” and “outer” parts and on how they complement and “operatetogether in driving more-or-less intelligent thought and action.” (Sutton et al. 2010,p. 525). Against functional isomorphism, complementarity EC “both predicts andrequires” (Rowlands 2010, p. 89) such disparate but complementary processesbetween culturally engineered props and artifacts and the brain’s biological modesof processing. For Menary, complementary is also an important aspect of cognitive

290 M.D. Kirchhoff

integration (2006, p. 330). Sharing Sutton’s critical stance towards the PP, Menarybuilds his case for second-wave EC on the manipulation thesis:

“The manipulation thesis as a constituent thesis of cognitive integration is firstunderstood to be an embodied engagement with the world, […]. Secondly it isnot simply a causal relation, bodily manipulations are also normative—they areembodied practices developed through habit and training and governed bycognitive norms.” (2007, p. 84).

Important for Menary’s version of second-wave EC is that some cognitiveprocesses are (partly) made up of—constituted, composed of—an individual’s bodilymanipulation of “external” structures and that such manipulations are embedded inthe wider social, semantic, and normative cognitive niche (2010d, p. 611). Animportant focus of Menary-style EC is the idea of cognitive transformation. Inparticular, Menary thinks that the PP fails to explain how bodily manipulations alterthe informational and physical structure of the cognitive niche, thereby transforminghuman cognitive capacities. Also, nothing in the PP tells us about how suchmanipulations literally result in the transformation of body schemas required formanipulation of external elements and in transformation of both representational andcognitive capacities (2010b, p. 561).

Toward a third-wave extended cognition

Following Sutton (2010), this paper explores what a third-wave version of EC mightlook like. I take my starting point in the following specifications:

“If there is to be a distinct third wave of [EC], it might be a deterritorializedcognitive science which deals with the propagation of deformed andreformatted representations, and which dissolves individuals into peculiar lociof coordination and coalescence among multiple structured media […].Without assuming distinct inner and outer realms of engrams and exograms,the natural and the artificial, each with its own proprietary characteristics, thisthird wave would analyze these boundaries as hard-won and fragiledevelopmental and cultural achievements, always open to renegotiation.”(2010, p. 213; italics added)

The first feature mentioned is the framing “a deterritorialized cognitive science.”This is both a radical and fascinating proposal. Although I cannot deal with itsufficiently, since doing so will take us too far astray, more detail is required. DespiteEC’s core claim that we should not privilege the boundaries of the biologicalorganism in settling the question of what is cognitive and what is not, or,alternatively, what is “internal” to a cognitive system and what is “external,” certainstrands of EC end up setting the bar for cognitive inclusion by appeal to what is‘internal’ to the skin-and-skull boundary of an individual organism. This is evident ifwe consider first-wave EC’s parity argument for EC. Briefly, the PP worksaccordingly: (1) locate an “external” element taken to perform a functional role inintelligent behavior; (2) locate or imagine a scenario in which the same functional


role is realized by an “internal” mechanism; (3) then ask the question, should wecount the “internal” mechanism in (2) as part of the cognitive system?; (4) if theanswer is yes, then (1) qualifies for cognitive inclusion. So, despite employed toovercome any sharp separation between “inner” and “outer”—between “fluidbiology and stable culture” (Sutton 2006, p. 242)—the PP ends up privileging the“internal” on matters of cognitive inclusion for the “external” (Di Paolo 2009, p. 10).The relationship between what is “external” and what is “internal” to a cognitivesystem is most certainly complicated; nonetheless, it is not at all clear that sticking tothe old “internal” and “external” distinction will be helpful in settling this debate.Moreover, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that the question of what issupposed to be “internal” to a cognitive system and what is “external” is pitched at asynchronic, individualist level, thereby encouraging an object-based view ofcognitive systems. If one acknowledges, as Hutchins does (1995, 2008, 2011a, b),the socio-culturally distributed nature of cognitive systems and consequently ofcognitive agency (more on this in the “Cognitive assembly: EC, FP, and DP”section), the criteria for what it means to be “internal” to a cognitive system becomeeven more opaque. EC, of course, can still pursue the all important boundaryinquiries into which processes, relations, systems, and mechanisms are cognitivelyrelevant. However, if Sutton is correct, EC should not presuppose any clear-cutboundaries between “internal” and “external.”

This brings us to the second interesting feature, namely that third-wave EC deals with“deformed and reformatted representations.” This idea of deformed and reformattedrepresentations takes third-wave EC’s focus on a decentralized and deterritorializedcognitive science even further. What does Sutton means by this? One way to get a gripon this allows me to comment critically on the complementarity framework endorsed bySutton himself. Building on Donald’s (1991) theory of engrams (biological memoryrecords) and exograms (culturally encoded public representations) as a signature markof complementarity, Sutton points out that exograms are often discrete, modality andtask independent, and much more durable than engrams. However, followingHutchins, this distinction between two disparate (but complementary) representationalformats “has the unintended side effect of rendering cultural practices invisible.”(2008, p. 2017) In line with the enactivist approach (Stewart et al. 2011), what makesa material pattern into a representation is a process of enactment—of bringing forth ofmeaning. Within this framework, cognition is an active embodied and heavilyembedded process (Hutchins 2011b, p. 429). Hence, to even engage with exograms asrepresentations, it is necessary to bodily engage “a material pattern as a memoryrecord” (Hutchins 2008, p. 2017) within structured and patterned socio-culturalpractices. Thus, exograms are not simply “memory records outside the brain” withproperties different from engrams; but rather, exograms are constantly reformattedaccording to the non-symbolic features of physical materials, cultural norms for theiruse, and embodied activities of individuals (Ingold 2000). There is a second way tounderstand the framing of “deformed and reformatted representations,” and it is this Ishall pursue in depth in this paper. Instead of looking at the meshed composition ofexograms, Sutton’s framing encourages analysis on the effects of enculturation on theplastic brain’s own representational capacities. I signpost this here, and nothing else,since a large part of the “Cognitive transformation: EC, FP, and DP” section is devotedto fleshing out the idea of the “enculturated brain.”

292 M.D. Kirchhoff

The third, and final, suggestion in the above passage is the claim that third-waveEC “dissolves individuals into peculiar loci of coordination and coalescence amongmultiple structures media.” Echoing Latour (1999) and his decentralized notion ofagency, I understand this as a direct call to free EC from its present individualistictendencies and to do so by taking socio-cultural practices, and diachroniccontributions, seriously in addressing the issue of cognitive assembly and theunderlying notion of cognitive agency. In fact, on a DP-oriented third-wave EC,cognitive assembly and agency are best understood as self-organizational processesdistributed across brains, bodies, people, norms, and socio-cultural practices andstructures—none of which have any analytical priority. However, driving assemblyis not the same as effecting a significant “internal” transformation. So, apparentlyone can have DP-style assembly without DP-style transformation. I bring this worryhere in order to avoid confusion about FP in cognitive transformation and FP incognitive assembly. Generally, FP-style assumptions involve keeping boundariesfixed and separate. In cognitive transformation, FP arises because of a tendency toclaim that the properties of “external” elements augment but do not transform thepsychological innards of the individual. In cognitive assembly, in contrast, FP comesinto play because of certain individualistic tendencies delegating all the causallyactive roles to the organism, thereby deactivating the dynamical role of theenvironment in co-driving cognitive assembly. Hence, FP is not only indicative ofa non-transformative view of representational capacities but also of prioritizing theindividual as the loci of coordination and control in cognitive assembly.

Cognitive transformation: EC, FP, and DP

I begin this section with a version of cognitive transformation endorsing DP, namelyMenary’s (2010b) hypothesis of dual component process transformation. As I shallunpack this hypothesis, it contains not two but three important elements. The firstimplies an extension of the functional architecture by integration of new processingnodes into the cognitive system. The second implies an enhancement of individualcognitive abilities to engage in cognitive practices. According to Menary, the third,and final, element is:

“The deeply transformatory power of our learning histories in the cognitiveniche is one that reformats the representational capacities of the brain in termsof public symbol systems.” (2010b, p. 576; italics added).

Everyone in EC endorse the first two elements of cognitive transformation. It isthe final element—the claim that ontogenetic development within the cognitiveniche reformats or transforms the representational capacities of the brain in terms ofpublic symbol systems—that non-trivially marks the distinction between DP-inspired EC and EC with FP tendencies. Unfortunately, Menary is not very clearabout what he means by this. Hence, part of my exploration (in the “Cognitivetransformation, EC, and DP: the enculturated brain” section) is to examine this inmore detail. In the following subsection, however, I show how FP theorizing sneaksinto EC.


Cognitive transformation: EC and FP

Imagine digging a hole in your garden. When asked about where the digging powerresides, how would you respond? Would you answer “in the spade,” or “in you”?According the Clark, both answers are incorrect, since digging power is the product of alarger coupled system. In the digging case, the point is that the spade makes an “ongoingand complementary contribution to that made by [the] biological body,” and “in such acase, [there is] no obvious sense in which I biologically replicate the essence of thespade’s activity.” (Clark 2006, p. 292) An important step in Clark’s reasoning aboutthe transformatory role of language (and public symbols in general) is to viewlanguage in analogy to the spade. Hence, on Clark’s view, understanding languageimplies explaining the coordination dynamics between “internal” biological resourcesand “external” non-biological resources, enabling language to “occupy a wonderfullyambiguous position on any hybrid cognitive stage […], looking one moment like anyother piece of the biological equipment, and the next like a peculiar potent piece ofexternal cognitive scaffolding.” (2006, p. 293)

A quick objection and response

My claim is that precisely this spade-language analogy, conceiving of scaffolds asdifferent but complementary, contains the assumption of FP in EC theorizing. Justlike the properties of biological resources do not need to take on the properties of thespade’s activity, so is it possible for the biological brain to dynamically coordinatewith linguistic scaffolds, and do so without alteration of the brain itself. As Clarksays: “Over cultural-evolutionary time, […], language itself becomes the kind ofthing (artifact) that brains like ours can learn to use, and that they can usewithout radically altering their basic modes of representation and computation.”(2004, p. 720; italics in original). Before going any further, I want to discuss anobjection to my claim that the complementarity model of EC—crisscrossing first-and second-wave EC—displays FP tendencies. First, one could argue that amotivation for endorsing EC is that it frees the biological organism from having tocarry on-board all the machinery required for higher-level problem solving. Ourbrains, as Clark puts it, “are generally better at Frisbee than at logic.” (1997, p. 60).Humans become good at logic not because our brains undergo a functionaltransformation so the brain becomes good at both Frisbee and logic, but rather byour brains continuously coupling with, decoupling from, and recoupling withpublic symbol systems. Second, if our brains become functionally transformed tobe both good at Frisbee and logic, this would seem to screen-off the environment fromits role of augmenting and empowering cognition. Although I agree with this worry in itsmotivational claim for EC, there are two problems with this way of conceiving ofcognitive transformation from an anti-FP perspective. Giving a DP-style explanation ofcognitive transformation by focusing on how some (and only some) of the brain’srepresentational capacities undergo a process of enculturation does not imply areduction of the contribution of the environment to merely a form of garden-varietycausal influence. This will become much clearer in the “Cognitive transformation, EC,and DP: the enculturated brain” section. But consider, briefly, Gallagher and Crisafi’s(2009) account of mental institutions. According to Gallagher and Crisafi, large-scale,

294 M.D. Kirchhoff

socio-cultural practices—like legal institutions—carried out in interactive coordinationby many people, usingmany kinds of cognitive tools, constrained and empowered by theactivities of previous generations, could be instances of distributed cognitive systemsenabling the achievement of cognitive practices. Such a case is important preciselybecause it “is a cognitive practice that in principle could not happen just in the head;indeed, it extends cognition through environments that are large and various.” (Gallagherand Crisafi 2009, p. 48) So, looking at how processes of enculturation might transformthe brain’s representational capacities—as Menary puts it, in terms of public symbolsystems—does not imply delegating the cognitive contributions of the environment aless important role than it is taken to play in the EC literature. The second problem withthis kind of worry is that it itself indicates an overly synchronic way of dealing withcases of EC. Consider how the response is framed in terms of coupling with anddecoupling from external resources. This imposes an overly inert picture of what is avastly dynamical process at multiple levels. An important virtue of DP considerations isthat such a perspective encourages an argument for synchronic cognitive extensionbased on diachronic, developmental considerations. It is from diachrony that thequestion of enculturated transformation processes becomes important.

Cognitive transformation: EC and FP continued

We can further substantiate the claim that there are FP tendencies in thecomplementarity model via recourse to a brief summary of how Clark (1997,2006, 2008) distances his view of the cognition-transforming role of language fromDennett’s (1991, 1996) account of this issue. First, Clark agrees with Dennett on theevolutionary dimension. It is certainly true that our human cognitive profile isdifferent from other non-linguistic primates—past and present. The point that bothClark and Dennett endorse is that it does not follow that this difference amounts toany profound and radical differences in underlying neural hardware. Rather, the“idea is that some relatively small neural (or neural/bodily) difference was the sourcethat lit a kind of intellectual forest fire.” (Clark 2001, p. 151, 1997, p. 198; Dennett1991, p. 219). The real disagreement between the two is on the developmental scale.On Clark’s interpretation (one he himself admits is only tentative), Dennett’s view isthat developmental exposure to public language and symbol systems results in aprofound reorganization of the brain’s computational and representational profile, inthe sense that Dennett thinks that our largely innate and connectionist cognitivearchitecture is transformed—by exposure to language—to simulate “something likea serial logic engine […].” (Clark 1997, p. 197; Dennett 1991, p. 278) In contrast toDennett, Clark sees public language (and material symbols) as essentially externalcognitive tools “that complements but does not profoundly alter the brain’s ownbasic modes of representation and computation.” (1997, p. 198; italics added)

Cognitive transformation, EC, and DP: the enculturated brain

Case #1: off-line mathematical reasoning

According to Wheeler (2004), our human capacity to engage in off-line cognitivetasks requires transformation of the brain’s representational capacities. In fact, this is


“an unavoidable consequence of the basic logic of the [EC] paradigm.” (2004, p. 709)This is an interesting argument in part because it shows DP-style considerations withinEC and in part because it is pitched against what I argue is Clark’s FP assumption oncognitive transformation. As I shall reiterate this argument, it consists of the followingsteps (Wheeler 2004, pp. 708–9):

1. In cases of on-line, distributed (extended) mathematical reasoning, the “internal”mechanisms will be directly causally coupled with certain properties ofmathematical symbols located in the environment.

2. According to Clark, it is the coordination dynamics between biological and non-biological elements that augment and empower cognition.

3. In cases of off-line mathematical reasoning, there are, by hypothesis, no suchenvironmental factors onto which the “internal” mechanisms can integrate withor lock onto.

4. According to Clark, in cases of on-line and off-line mathematical reasoning,fundamentally the same “inner” processing mechanisms are active in both cases.

5. However, if certain properties of “external” mathematical symbols areessentially part of our capacity for mathematical reasoning, and if these areabsent in cases of off-line mathematical reasoning, then certain “internal”surrogates must recapitulate certain structural properties of those “external”mathematical symbols.

6. Therefore, off-line mathematical reasoning requires “inner” representations thatrecapitulate certain structural properties of “external” symbol systems, namelythose structural properties that are non-trivial contributing factors in on-linedistributed mathematical performance.

Premises 4 and 5 carry the heaviest explanatory burden. However, we can beginby noting that the first two premises articulate an interactively coordinated systemcomposed of domain-general connectionist-style mechanisms with public symbolsystems. In accordance with EC, our human capacity for linguistic reasoning is thejoint product of neural networks organized exhaustively in terms of high-dimensional patterns of activation and similarity metrics and environmentallyrealized symbol systems (Clark 1997; Sutton 2010).

In unpacking premise 4, I focus on responding to a potential worry one might haveagainst DP in the domain of cognitive transformation. One could argue that the realpower of Clark’s phrase “complements but does not profoundly alter the brain’s ownbasic modes of representation” (1997, p. 198; italics added), is that it resists theorthodox view that language-like features such as productivity and systematicity can beexplained “only if a classical representational format (one which features a language-like combinatorial syntax) is understood to be a fundamental feature of the neuraleconomy at some “higher,” non-implementational level.” (Wheeler 2004, p. 710) Thereis absolutely nothing in either Wheeler’s argument or in the alternative to FP I amexploring that heralds anything like a return to a “language of thought architecture”(LOT). Wheeler gives two compelling reasons for this. First, unlike a LOT,mathematical reasoning—regardless of accomplished on-line or off-line—does notrequire that there is any sort of domain-specific processing device organized so as toencode language-like symbols. According to Wheeler, “we can easily hold onto the

296 M.D. Kirchhoff

Clark-inspired thought that fundamentally the same kind of processing mechanism(perhaps even the very same pattern-completing mechanism) may still be deployed[…].” (2004, p. 708). This sets DP-style views in contrast with orthodox positions likea LOT precisely because a DP-oriented explanation of off-line mathematical reasoningis fully compatible with the neural architecture being at root connectionist. Second, the“recapitulation” claim inherent in Wheeler’s argument should be not understood as aclaim about complete “re-programming” as Clark takes Dennett’s view to be.According to Wheeler, during on-line performance of mathematical reasoning weshould not expect the psychological innards of the brain to undergo distinct processesof transformation. While on-line, it is the particular hybrid system of neural pattern-completing networks and environmental symbols that drives cognitive success. It isonly during off-line cognition—in this case, mathematical reasoning processes—that atransformation of neural representational formats is required. Summarizing these twopoints, Wheeler claims:

“As far as I can see, while the sub-claim concerning the neutral effects of languageon the brain’s own basic mode of computation can still be sustained following mycritical arguments, the sub-claim concerning the neutral effects of language on thebrain’s own basic mode of representation cannot.” (2004, p. 709).

This brings us to premise 5. The argumentative appeal of this premise comes fromClark’s own view that the brain’s own basic modes of representation remainunaltered regardless of being reliably and functionally integrated with publicsymbols in the cognitive niche or being effectively disconnected or decoupled fromthe exact same environmental symbol systems. Following Wheeler, if someproperties of public symbol systems are distinctively part of our capacity formathematical reasoning—that is, if our ability to manipulate mathematical symbolsin the environment is part and parcel of our capacity to perform mathematicalpractices—and if the properties of these public symbol systems are absent in casesof mathematical off-line reasoning, then certain representations in the brain muststand in for these structural properties when conducted off-line. Thus,

“[I]n the off-line case we confront nothing less than a profound transformationin the brain’s own basic mode of representation, and that runs contrary toClark’s avowed view.” (Wheeler 2004, p. 711).

Case #2: phoneme perception

Consider the concept of “patterned practices” (Roepstorff et al. 2010, p. 1051).Patterned practices are pervasive forms of structured practices in which most (if notall) human socio-cultural activity is both conditioned by and emerges from. So apatterned practice is a socio-cultural practice structured in a particular, collectivelyassembled way. As Roepstorff et al. say of these practices:

“Everyday life is continuously ordered into more or less stable patterns that arespecific to particular types of situations, defining preferences, predispositions,and expectations for actors. These patterns present regularities that arise from


everyday practices while at the same time shaping them. Patterns appear to beemergent phenomena that are currently not sufficiently explained by itsconstitutive factors, i.e., individual behavior or intersubjectivity.” (2010, p. 1051).

A patterned practice analysis is important because it sets up a perspective fromwhich to explore important shifts in dynamical properties, viz., how patterns ofpractices at the socio-cultural level reshape the patterning of cortical connectivityand activity, “and in the same way the social practice forms patterns, large-scalebrain signals as well as other psychophysical signals generated during particular taskperformance can be analyzed to expose significant patterning.” (2010, p. 1052) Tounderpin their claim, Roepstorff et al. turn to a study on the effects of enculturationon the brain, Näätänen et al.’s (1997) study on phoneme perception. This studyindicates some important cortical transformatory effects facilitated by the brain’sparticipation in certain patterned, socio-cultural practices.

Based on a mismatch negativity paradigm, where subjects are exposed tounattended sounds in certain rhythmic patterns, Näätänen et al. have established thatthe primary auditory cortex in the left hemisphere is highly sensitive to changes inpredictable sound patterns (1997, p. 432). In the first set of these experiments(1997), Näätänen et al. utilized Finnish and Estonian language speakers because of arelatively small discrepancy between the two languages in terms of vowel structure,except that Estonian vowel space includes an additional vowel, /õ/, not found inFinnish. In the experiment, the speakers were also presented as deviants a prototypeof this sound, along with vowels existing in both languages (/o/ and /ö/), and a non-prototypical vowel (located between/e/ and /ö/) (1997, p. 432; Roepstorff et al. 2010,p. 1053). The upshot was that Finnish speakers showed significantly highermismatch negativity when exposed to prototypical vowels in their native languagethan when exposed to the Estonian vowel /õ/. Näätänen et al. take this finding toshow that this “language-specific prototypical effect suggests the existence of neuraltraces of language-specific phoneme representations.” (1997, p. 433)

The neuronal recycling hypothesis: arithmetic and reading

The final piece of evidence running against FP-style assumptions and favoring a DP-based explanation of cognitive transformation comes from neuroscience and thedevelopment of arithmetic and reading abilities. Especially Dehaene’s “neuronalrecycling hypothesis” (NRH) is interesting here (2005). Why should one think thatDehaene’s work supports DP? One of the most compelling ideas of the NRH is thatwhen the brain recruits and utilizes cognitive tools during ontogenetic developmentthis may lead to a recycling or pre-empting of biological mechanisms so that theseacquire a new function from their evolved function (Dehaene 2005; Nieder andDehaene 2009). This accommodates Wheeler’s point: that during participation insocio-cultural patterns of stable mathematical practices, certain cortical areas of thebrain undergo a transformation in representational format enabling off-linemathematics to occur. Second, because of these recycling processes, the organismitself may undergo certain losses in cognitive abilities. If FP had been the case, thisloss of abilities would have been hard to explain. For instance, in learning to readand engaging in regular patterns of reading such practices will partially reduce

298 M.D. Kirchhoff

perceptual abilities like object-related activations in the left inferotemporal sulcus(Dehaene 2005). Of course, one might object to my use of the NRH as evidence ofDP, to the extent that the NRH invokes the idea of “neuronal niches”: the idea thatcultural plasticity is not unlimited, but that certain functional and structuralevolutionary mechanisms partially constrain the acquisition of novel culturalcapacities. In the following passage, Dehaene makes this explicit:

“According to this […] view, the architecture of the human brain is limited andshares many traits with other non-human primates. It is laid down under tightgenetic constraints, yet with a fringe of variability. I postulate that culturalacquisitions are only possible insofar as they fit within this fringe, byreconverting pre-existing cerebral predispositions for another use. Accordingly,cultural plasticity is not unlimited, and all cultural inventions should be basedon the pre-emption of pre-existing evolutionary adaptations of the humanbrain. It thus becomes important to consider what may be the importantprecursors of reading and arithmetic.” (2005, p. 134)

But why think (like one of the reviewers of this paper) that this countsagainst DP? As far as I can tell, this worry is based on a symptom spreadthroughout the literature on cognitive extension, namely an overly static andsynchronic conception of the relationship between brain, body and environment.If one is willing to accept that diachronic development can establish more thanmerely causal dependence of neural mechanisms on environmental elements,then the NRH’s emphasis on “constraints imposed on cognitive developmentduring ontogeny” has itself emerged through dynamical interactions over large,evolutionary time-scales. The simple fact that the NRH does not express a“largely equipotential cortex” (Quartz and Sejnowski 1997) and virtuallyunlimited plasticity is unlikely to count against a DP explanation. Let us look atsome evidence.

According to Dehaene (1997), Dehaene et al. (1999) the processes enablingmathematical reasoning are stored in a complex network of representationalmechanisms: first, the capacity for exact mathematical reasoning is stored in aculturally acquired language-specific format and located strictly in left-lateralizedactivation in the inferior frontal lobe; second, the capacity for approximatemathematical reasoning stored in an evolutionary older and non-linguistic, visuo-spatial representational format and located primarily in the bilateral parietal lobes ofthe brain (1999, p. 970, 973). The model invoked by Dehaene et al. depictsmathematical reasoning as composed from three cognitive capacities (Dehaene 2001,pp. 18–20):

& A biological precursor to discriminate small quantities, e.g., 1–2, 2–3, etc. Thiscapacity is a cross-species capacity found in preverbal children, dolphins,chimps, rats, etc.

& A biological precursor to discriminate magnitudes between objects and numbers,e.g., 8 is larger than 4. This capacity is also a cross-species capacity.

& An enculturated numerical system enabling humans to reason in a discrete andsymbolic format required for exact mathematical competence.


Evidence supporting the result that approximate reasoning is stored in a non-linguistic format and that exact, discrete, and symbolic reasoning is stored in alanguage-dependent format is given in Dehaene et al. (1999). In one experiment,Russian–English bilinguals were trained on 12 cases involving exact andapproximate sums of two-digit numbers presented in one of their two languages(1999, p. 970). In the exact addition task, subjects were required to select the correctsum of two numerically close numbers, e.g., the English trained subjects were askedto add “Twelve + Four” and then select the correct sum from “Sixteen and Fourteen”(1999, p. 970). In the approximate addition task, subjects were asked to estimate theresult and select the closest number, e.g., the English trained subjects were asked toadd “Twelve + Four” and estimate the result by choosing the closest number“Eighteen and Six” (1999, p. 970). After being trained on the 12 cases of two-digitnumbers, subjects were then tested on the same sums. What Dehaene et al.interestingly found was that on the exact addition problems, response time decreasedwhen having to perform exact calculation in their untrained language, whereassubjects show an increase in response time when performing exact calculation intheir trained language, regardless of they were trained in Russian or English (1999,p. 971). In contrast, performance on the approximate addition task was unaffected byswitching between trained and untrained language. According to Dehaene et al. suchstudies provide evidence that:

“[D]emonstrate that exact calculation is language-dependent whereasapproximation relies on non-verbal visuo-spatial cerebral networks.” (1999, p. 970)

The evidence from off-line mathematical reasoning, the view of enculturation ofcortical areas in the case of phoneme perception, and the acquisition of exactmathematical reasoning lend support to DP—certain neural transformations take theform of a re-shaping or reformatting process, where diachronic development insocio-cultural practices significantly transforms a sub-set of the brain’s corticalrepresentations from primarily non-linguistic to linguistic. A quick return to theevidence on phoneme discrimination might help shed further light on this issue.There is evidence that human infants from birth are capable of discriminatingphonemic patterns in their native language and non-native languages suggesting thatphoneme discrimination is based in non-verbal auditory networks (Bertoncini et al.1987). What is interesting is that during the first year of their lives, infants show adecrease in their phoneme discrimination abilities. After their first year, the infantsonly show sensitivity to the phoneme structure of their native language (Werker andLalonde 1988). Such evidence fits the enculturated brain hypothesis. As Roepstorffet al. point out: diachronic development in stable and predictive patterns of socio-cultural practices sculpts the patterns of neural activity to the ones found at thesocio-cultural level:

“In the cases here discussed, the differences in patterning, exposure to differentlanguages with different structures of the phonetic space, may co-locate withdifferences in culture in the sense that ‘Finns’ appear to have one type of brainwhile ‘Estonians’ appear to have a different type of ‘brain’.” (Roepstorff et al.2010, p. 1053)

300 M.D. Kirchhoff

Determining whether such evidence of enculturation is evidence for a constructivistapproach (Quartz and Sejnowski 1997), a selectionist approach (Dehaene 2005), or anativist approach (Pinker 1994) to neuronal and cognitive development is a matter ofdispute and further empirical investigation. I signpost it here, since for my purposes asolution to this debate is less important than what it illustrates—for we have here astring of evidence suggesting transformatory effects on certain of the brain’srepresentational capacities due to its immersion in patterned socio-cultural practices.

Cognitive assembly: EC, FP, and DP

In addition to the domain of cognitive transformation, I aim in this section to show thatthere are FP-style tendencies in the domain of cognitive assembly as well. Unlikecognitive transformation, where it was the assumption that non-biological elementsaugment but do not transform certain of the brain’s representational capacities that linkedEC’s complementarity framework to FP, FP takes on a very different structure in thedomain of cognitive assembly. Hence, it is essential not to conflate my dealings with FP inthe domain of cognitive transformation with what is to come in this section. In the domainof cognitive assembly, FP emerges due to an individualistic conception of the cognitiveagent orchestrating the assembly processes, viz., that it is primarily the biologicalindividual that is conceived as assembling cognitive systems (Clark 2008). So, FPsneaks into the debate on cognitive assembly due to a failure of decentralizingsufficiently the notion of cognitive agency to include socio-cultural practices.

Cognitive assembly: EC and FP

Concerning the product of cognitive assembly, cognitive processing is sometimesextended across the biological boundaries of the organism to include parts of thematerial and social environment. This is a view endorsed by all proponents of EC.However, when it comes to explaining the process of cognitive assembly—therecruitment and coordination of information-processing resources—especially Clarksteps back from this distributed nexus of disparate, heterogeneous, and self-organizing elements and gives priority to the human brain:

“Human cognitive processing (sometimes) literally extends into the environ-ment surrounding the organism. But the organism (and within the organism,the brain/CNS) remains the core and currently the most active element.Cognition is organism centered even when it is not organism bound.” (Clark2008, 139; italics added).“Just as it is the spider body that spins and maintains the web that then(following Dawkins 1982) constitutes part of its own extended phenotype, so itis the biological organism that spins, selects, or maintains the webs ofcognitive scaffolding that participate in the extended machinery of its ownthought and reason.” (2008, p. 123; italics added).

Clark coins this view the hypothesis of organism-centered cognition (HOC).Unlike diachronic time-scales, the HOC is intended to operate synchronically. It is in


the process of recruitment and assembly here-and-now that Clark thinks that thebrain is primarily the responsible mechanism (Clark 2011, p. 459). In his (2008),Clark refers to a series of experiments by Gray and Fu (2004) in order to empiricallysubstantiate the HOC. What these studies show is that the neural control system isindifferent to the source of information—whether it is in-the- head or in-the-worldlocated information—such that the brain (based on the time–cost involved ininformation retrieval) determines whatever mix of resources are recruited to solve aproblem. Following Gray and colleagues, Clark takes the lesson from theseexperiments to be that “our problem-solving performances take shape according tosome cost function or functions that, in the typical course of events, accord nospecial status or privilege to specific types of operations (motoric, perceptual,introspective) or modes of encoding (in the head or in the world).” (Clark 2008, 121)As Clark sums up the results to support the HOC:

“Concerning the process of recruitment, it is indeed the biological brain (orperhaps some of its subsystems) that is in the driver’s seat. That is to say, it isindeed some neurally based process of recruitment that (following Gray et al.)turns out to be so pointedly unbiased regarding the use of inner versus outercircuits, storage, and operations.” (2008, 122).

Part #1 of FP in cognitive assembly

Like Dennett (1991), who sees the human mind as consisting of a semianarchiccoalition of elements, interconnected and competing, Clark sacks the idea of an “all-powerful, hidden agent inside the brain whose job is to do all real thinking andwhich is able to intelligently organize those teams of internal and external supportingstructure.” (Clark 2008, p. 136) Clark thinks that the “control is itself fragmentedand distributed, allowing different inner resources to interact with, or call upon,different external resources without such activity being routed via the bottleneck ofconscious deliberation or the intervention of an all-seeing, all-orchestrating innerexecutive.” (2008, pp. 136–7) Consequently, Clark decentralizes the cognitive agentresponsible for cognitive assembly into a fragmented and distributed mix of internalself-organizing processes.

My claim is that it is at this particular stage that the first part of FP emerges inClark’s account, since when decentralizing the inner homunculus to self-organizingand fragmented processes, he ends up bounding all of these dynamical elementswithin the biological boundaries of the organism: “it is the biological organism that[assembles] the […] extended machinery […].” (Clark 2008, p. 123) FP is the failureof decentralizing the notion of cognitive agency sufficiently to include patternedsocio-cultured practices. Following Hutchins (2011a), the individualist assumptionof cognitive agency in the HOC threatens to isolate the activity of the brain from thedynamics of socio-cultural practices on both synchronic and diachronic time-scales(2011a, p. 411). That is, if the boundaries of cognitive agency do not outweigh theindividual organism, and if the dynamics of socio-cultural practices in cognitiveassembly are taken to play only secondary roles, then the dynamics of cognitiveassembly must derive from the biological brain and body. Hence, by endorsing anindividualist notion of cognitive agency, Clark ends up privileging the organism-

302 M.D. Kirchhoff

centered mechanisms as the driving and most active loci around which extendedarchitectures organize and dissolve.

Part #2 of FP in cognitive assembly

According to Hutchins, “A straightforward way to deal with [cognitive assembly] is toabandon the assumption that the biological brain is the essential element. Doing so, ofcourse, requires that one look elsewhere for the apparently impartial forces that assemblecognitive systems.” (2011a, p. 439) In shared spirits with Roepstorff et al. (2010), theproposal favored by Hutchins is that a “good start on understanding this process ofrecruitment would be to notice the role of cultural practices in the orchestration of soft-assembly of extended systems.” (2011a, p. 440) As Hutchins emphasizes, “Theecological assemblies of human cognition make pervasive use of cultural products.”(2011a, p. 445)

My claim is that we can find a second part of FP in cognitive assembly whenconsidering how Clark responds to Hutchins’ challenge. First, Clark argues thatHutchins fails to appropriately separate the different time-scales of the processesconcerned in cognitive assembly: to distinguish evolutionary and developmentalfrom synchronic time-scales. As Clark says: “I think Hutchins is failing to attend toimportant differences concerning the shape and timescale of the processesconcerned. My own targets, in the discussion in SSM of cognitive assembly, wereprocesses operating in the here-and-now.” (2008, p. 459) Clark does not want todeny that some spinning is done by socio-cultural practices on diachronic time-scales. As Clark says, cultural practices really do provide “me with both aprestructured recipe for success, a well-honed cultural practice (schooling) to helpme benefit from that recipe, and a pre-selected set of supporting materials andstructures (pen, paper) all ripe for assembly into a new problem-solving whole.”(2011, 459) However, what Clark wants to deny is that the assembly process itself isbeing spun and maintained by cultural practices synchronically: “even here, it is stillthe individual biological brains […] that are, in the here-and-now, the most activeorchestrating elements in this process.” (Clark 2011, p. 459) FP here is aconsequence of Clark’s view of cognitive agency, since neglecting to take seriouslythe dynamical role of socio-cultural practices in the here-and-now, precludes takingseriously the dynamical contribution of socio-cultural practices on diachronic time-scales as well.

Cognitive assembly: EC and DP

Case #1: mental institutions

Clark’s intuition is that the dynamical processes responsible for cognitive assemblyreside at only one level: the individual organism. Maybe it is possible to findindividual cases where the appropriate level is indeed the individual organism.However, the problem with encapsulating cognitive agency at the individual level isthat we can find cases where the individual level is insufficient in order to explainthe assembly of extended cognitive systems (Protevi 2009; Theiner et al. 2010). OnHollan et al.’s account: in “distributed cognition, one expects to find a system that


can dynamically configure itself to bring subsystems into coordination to accomplishvarious functions.” (2000, p. 175) Consequently, in such cases, cognitive agencyoutweighs the boundaries of skin-and-skull to include distributed processes andactivities across time, space, and people. Such a scenario has recently been proposedby Gallagher and Crisafi (2009) in their discussion of mental institutions.Essentially, if the cognitively relevant and reliable interactions bring a myriad ofsubsystems into play, these subsystems being largely distributed across people,artifacts, patterned practices, and the activities of previous generations, and if allthese subsystems are sufficiently integrated, it becomes increasingly difficult tosingle out the individual level as the most active element in the assembly process.

In a similar way to Hutchins’ “observation that the outcomes that mattered to[ship navigation] were not determined by the cognitive properties of any singlenavigator, but instead were the product of the interactions of several navigators witheach other and with a complex suite of tools.” (Hollan et al. 2000, p. 183), Gallagherand Crisafi show that in some cases the individual brain only performs a sub-set ofactions, while others are enacted and orchestrated by socio-cultural practices andcognitive technology. In considering legal institutions and the practice of law asmechanisms for carrying out cognitive practices, Gallagher and Crisafi argue that weshould view all of the following three cases on a par with respect to cognitive efforton behalf of the individual or distributed system (2009, p. 47):

1. A person, let us call her Alexis, is given a set of facts and is presented acollection of evidence and is asked to judge on the basis of her own subjectivesense of fairness, the legitimacy of a certain claim being made. To make herjudgment Alexis must weigh the facts and consider the evidence entirely in herown head, without help or interference from others. In this process she draws upand considers three questions about the facts, tries to answer them the best shecan, and that makes her decision.

2. Alexis is given a set of facts and is presented a collection of evidence and isasked to judge the legitimacy of a certain claim that is being made. This time,however, she is given the three questions by a group of experts who provide aset of possible answers from which she may choose. She may also decide toformulate her own set of answers.

3. Alexis is given a set of facts and is presented a collection of evidence and isasked to judge the legitimacy of a certain claim that is being made. As in (2), sheis asked to consider the same three questions by a group of experts who informher of a set of pre-established possible answers from which she can choose, anda set of pre-established rules she must follow in answering the questions. Therules specify that she must answer each question in one of only two ways,choosing from the set of possible answers. Alexis is not allowed to formulate herown alternative set of answers.

According to Gallagher and Crisafi, cases (2) and (3) are cognitive, in the sensethat they are cognition producing—they involve information-processing resources,problem solving, reasoning, etc.—and they are cognition produced—they areassembled from the activity of many people at both diachronic and synchronictime-scales and their cognitive artifacts. On the issue of cognitive assembly—what

304 M.D. Kirchhoff

or who it is that spins, selects, and coordinates the assembly process in the case oflegal practices—this could not take place primarily in the individual biologicalorganism. In fact, patterned practices would seem to do much of the spinning andmaintaining in the case of legal practices. Essentially, DP-driven explanations ofcognitive assembly enable at least two things: first, decentralizing cognitive agencyto include socio-cultural practices; and second, extended cognitive systems that existat a larger scale than merely individualist approaches focusing on integration orincorporation of tools into the profile of a single individual.

Case #2: memory in Elizabethan theater companies

Consider now Tribble’s (2005) impressive analysis of collective memory or jointaction in Elizabethan theater companies (Sutton 2010). Applying the framework ofdistributed cognition (Hutchins 1995) to understand the processes of collectiveaction and memory in Elizabethan theater companies, Tribble provides a novel andhighly impressive analysis of what not only have impressed but (more importantly)puzzled historians of English drama.

These companies would perform a staggering number of plays; up to six differentplays per week; and without frequent time for rehearsals and the full texts of theseplays. As Tribble informs us, “between 1594 and 1597 a leading player such asEdward Alleyn has to secure and retain command of about 71 different roles, ofwhich number 52 or 53 were newly learned.” (2005, p. 136) Given the ratherstaggering demands on human memory, this raises the puzzle: how did these groupsactually manage to learn or memorize so many plays with so many changing roles?Tribble offers an analysis of how socio-cultural practices, including the regular useof artefacts “form elements of a cognitive structure that, in constraining and limiting,also enables an extra-ordinary level of achievement.” (2005, p. 142) Especially therole of stage doors and the playing platform; plots or scripts; and a culturallysituated, intergenerationally mediated apprenticeship system is analyzed. In thestudy, the stage doors play a powerful double-role. First, over diachronic time, theinteractions within the cognitive niche alter the informational structure of the situation.By continuously exploiting the size and locational distribution of doors, the localenvironment comes to drive and constrain, orient and re-orient, the behavioralopportunities of the actors. Second, in line with Hutchins (2011a) and Sterelny (2010),Tribble shows how the ability of the actors to establish and maintain their grasp of thesituation is acquired through participation in socio-cultural practices in inter-personalspace. A third component of Tribble’s analysis pertains to how a specific culturally andcross-generationally mediated apprenticeship system enculturates the process ofinclusion into Elizabethan theater practices (Tribble 2005, pp. 153–55). Theapprenticeship system is hierarchically structured. Following Hutchins’ (1995) analysisof a similar system aboard naval vessels, Tribble shows how novices come to acquirethe necessary skills by being thrown into situations—guided by more experiencedactors—were it becomes a real possibility for the novice actors to perform successfullyboth computationally and theatrically.

It is not clear why socio-cultural practices (including socio-cultural technologies)could not play a dynamically orchestrating role in the assembly of extendedcognitive systems—not even if these are partly constructed over diachronic time-


scales. Right here, however, we are moving beyond the HOC—it is very hard (if notimpossible) to shoehorn collaborative memory in the case of Elizabethan theatergroups with the HOC. As Hutchins pinpoints, “few of the dynamic loops that linkpeople to their environments are invented by the people who exploit them.” (2011a,p. 441) In Elizabethan theater companies, a substantial part of the assembly processseems to be performed by dynamics of an apprenticeship system functioning on bothintergenerational time-scales and synchronic time-scales. Moreover, when Sterelnyremarks that it is true when Clark claims “that an organic brain chooses and assemblesthe resources that make much problem solving possible […], but that in many criticalcases, those brains belong to members of the previous generation, not to the agent facedwith the problem […], (2010, p. 479),” hemeans quite literally that the cultural practicesof prior generations shape our epistemic access to the world by constraining “what toattend to and to see when so attending.” (Hutchins 2011a, p. 441) Consequently, themost active orchestrating elements in the process of joint action and memory inElizabethan theater companies outweigh the organism.

Conclusion

In this paper, I have explored some of the paths a distinctive third wave of extendedcognition might take. The critical-constructive view offered is that there is roomenough in extended cognition to do so without discrediting the validity of extendedcognition in general. In cognitive transformation cases, I argued that a potentiallyproblematic assumption concerning the complementarity framework is that itpresupposes that non-biological resources augment but do not transform the brain’srepresentational capacities. In contrast to this tendency, I have attempted to showthat a much more dynamical model is available for the extended cognition theorist,namely to view the enculturation processes on the brain as transforming the brain’srepresentational capacities. In cognitive assembly cases, I argued that anotherproblematic tendency is an overly individualistic notion of cognitive agency—onethat places all the active and dynamical elements inside the organism, therebytreating socio-cultural practices as only indirectly involved in the assembly ofextended cognitive systems. In contrast to this individualistic starting point, I haveargued that a much more distributed model is available to the fan of extendedcognition, namely to conceive of cognitive agency as socio-culturally distributedacross social groups, cognitive tools, and patterned practices.

Acknowledgments An Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project Grant (DP1095109) andan International Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship (no. 2011180) has funded thisproject. Thanks to Richard Menary, John Sutton, and Will Newsome for helpful discussions. I amespecially grateful for the highly constructive comments made by two anonymous referees. Any mistakesare mine and mine alone.

References

Bertoncini, J., Bijeljac-Babic, R., Blumstein, S., & Mehler, J. (1987). Discrimination in neonates of veryshort CVs. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 82, 31–37.

306 M.D. Kirchhoff

Clark, A. (1997). Being There. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Clark, A. (1998). Author’s reply: Review symposium on Being There. Metascience, 7, 95–103.Clark, A. (2001). Mindware. New York: Oxford University Press.Clark, A. (2004). Is language special? Some remarks on control, coding, and co-ordination. Language

Sciences, 26, 717–726.Clark, A. (2006). Material symbols. Philosophical Psychology, 19(3), 291–307.Clark, A. (2008). Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.Clark, A. (2011). Finding the mind. Philosophical Studies, 152, 447–461.Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 58, 7–19.Dehaene, S. (1997). The Number Sense. New York: Oxford University Press.Dehaene, S. (2001). Précis of The Number Sense. Mind & Language, 16(1), 16–36.Dehaene. (2005). Evolution of human cortical circuits for reading and arithmetic: The neuronal recycling

hypothesis. In J. R. Dehaene, M. D. Hauser, & G. Rizzolatti (Eds.), From Monkey Brain to HumanBrain: A Fyssen Foundation Symposium (pp. 133–157). Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Dehaene, S., Spelke, E., Pinel, P., Stanescu, R., & Tsivkin, S. (1999). Sources of mathematical thinking:Behavioral and brain imaging evidence. Science, 284, 970–974.

Dennett, D. (1991). Consciousness Explained. New York: Little Brown.Dennett, D. (1996). Kinds of Minds. New York: Basic Books.Di Paolo, E. (2009). Extended life. Topoi, 28, 9–21.Donald, M. (1991). Origins of the Modern Mind. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Gallagher, S., & Crisafi, A. (2009). Mental institutions. Topoi, 28, 45–51.Gray, W. D., & Fu, W.-T. (2004). Soft constraints in interactive behavior: The case of ignoring perfect

knowledge in the world for imperfect knowledge in the head. Cognitive Science, 28(3), 359–382.Hollan, J., Hutchins, E., & Kirsh, D. (2000). Distributed cognition: Toward a new foundation for human-

computer interaction research. Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 7(2), 174–196.Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Hutchins, E. (2008). The role of cultural practices in the emergence of modern human intelligence.

Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society, 363, 2011–2019.Hutchins, E. (2011a). Enculturating the supersized mind. Philosophical Studies, 152, 437–446.Hutchins, E. (2011b). Enaction, imagination, and insight. In J. Stewart, O. Gapenne, & E. A. Di Paolo (Eds.),

Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science (pp. 425–450). Cambridge: The MIT Press.Ingold, T. (2000). The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling, and Skill. London:

Routledge.Kirchhoff, M. D., & Newsome, W. (2011). Distributed agency in virtue epistemology. Philosophical

Explorations (in press).Latour, B. (1999). Pandora’s Hope. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Menary, R. (2006). Attacking the bounds of cognition. Philosophical Psychology, 19, 329–344.Menary, R. (2007). Cognitive Integration: Mind and Cognition Unbounded. Basingstoke: Palgrave

Macmillan.Menary, R. (2010a). Cognitive integration and the extended mind. In R. Menary (Ed.), The extended mind

(pp. 227–243). Cambridge: The MIT Press.Menary, R. (2010b). Dimensions of Mind. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9(4), 561–578.Menary, R. (2010c). Cognitive integration and the extended mind. In R. Menary (Ed.), The Extended Mind

(p. xx). Cambridge: The MIT Press.Menary, R. (2010d). The holy grail of cognitivism: A response to Adams and Aizawa. Phenomenology

and the Cognitive Sciences, 9, 605–618.Näätänen, R., Lehtokoski, A., Lennes, M., Cheour, M., Huotilainen, M., Livonen, A., et al. (1997).

Language-specific phoneme representations revealed by electric and magnetic brain responses.Nature, 385(30), 432–434.

Nieder, A., & Dehaene, S. (2009). Representation of number in the brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience,32, 185–208.

Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct. New York: Morrow.Protevi, J. (2009). Political Affect: Connecting the Social and the Somatic. Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press.Quartz, S. R., & Sejnowski, T. J. (1997). The neural basis of cognitive development: A constructivist

manifesto. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 20, 537–596.Roepstorff, A., Niewohner, J., & Beck, S. (2010). Enculturating brains through patterned practices. Neural

Networks, 23, 1051–1059.


Rowlands, M. (2010). The New Science of Mind. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Sterelny, K. (2010). Minds: Extended or scaffolded? Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9, 465–

481.Stewart, J., Gapenne, O., & Di Paolo, E. A. (2011). Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive

Science. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Sutton, J. (2006). Distributed cognition: Domains and dimensions. Pragmatics and Cognition, 14(2), 235–

247.Sutton, J. (2010). Exograms and interdisciplinarity: History, the extended mind, and the civilizing process.

In R. Menary (Ed.), the extended mind (pp. 189–225). Cambridge: The MIT Press.Sutton, J., Harris, C. B., Keil, P. G., & Barnier, A. J. (2010). The psychology of memory, extended

cognition, and socially distributed remembering. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9(4),521–560.

Theiner, G., Allen, C., & Goldstone, R. L. (2010). Recognizing group cognition. Cognitive SystemsResearch, 11, 378–395.

Tribble, E. B. (2005). Distributed Cognition in the Globe. Shakespeare Quarterly, 56(2), 135–155.Walter, S. (2010). Cognitive extension: The parity argument, functionalism, and the mark of the cognitive.

Synthese, 177, 285–300.Werker, J. F., & Lalonde, C. E. (1988). Cross-language speech perception: Initial capabilities and

developmental change. Developmental Psychology, 24(5), 672–683.Wheeler, M. (2004). Is language the ultimate artefacts? Language Sciences, 26, 693–715.Wheeler, M. (2010). In defense of extended functionalism. In R. Menary (Ed.), The Extended Mind (pp.

245–270). Cambridge: The MIT Press.Wheeler, M. (2011). In search of parity. Philosophical Studies, 152, 417–425.

308 M.D. Kirchhoff

extended cognition and fixed properties: steps to a third-wave version of extended cognition

Documents