The socially extended mind

“Rowlands (2009), in response to the cognitive bloat argument, has suggested that part of what qualifies a process as cognitive is that it is owned by the agent.”

“Also, a yet unavailable, consensual and complete theory of content would be necessary to account for the origin of these intrinsic, nonderived contents, within a naturalistic perspective (Shapiro 2009; Kaplan 2012; Gallagher 2013).”

“For these reasons, I applaud the 17 moderate Hegelian turn that some authors in the philosophy of cognitive science have recently 18 pushed for (Gallagher 2013; Gallagher & Crisafi 2009; Merritt et al. 2013).”

“These two critical points are useful for introducing the notion of ‘ cognitive ’ or ‘ mental ’ institution (Gallagher, 2011, 2013; Gallagher and Crisafi, 2009).”

“Extended , meaning that cognitive processes partly take place, and depend on, extra bodily processes (e.g., entities enabling storage and access to information, such as books, phones, computers, and other humans; [55, 115, 148]).”

“There was a fourth criterion, but Clark (2010b, p. 46) and others (Bray, 2008; Gallagher, 2013, p. 2; Merritt, 2013, p. 1) have dropped it (see Roberts, 2012 for a discussion).”

“For Gallagher, “these cognitive practices are such that in principle they could not happen just in the head” (Gallagher, 2013, p. 7).”

“Yet, individual emotion repertoires are not only shaped by encompassing temporally and spatially specific cultural emotion repertoires but are even “socially extended” (Gallagher, 2013) or “invaded” (Slaby, 2016) by social structures: sociality is internalized and embodied in the subject’s (affective) comportment.”

“One clear example of a cognitive institution, the legal system, has been the focus of previous analysis (Gallagher, 2013), and we will briefly rehearse that analysis here.”

“To solve a problem, we may rely not only on such tools but also on other people or team members with whom to interact, as well as on normative practices and institutions (understood as cognitive institutions – see Gallagher, 2013; Slaby and Gallagher, 2015).”

“…this idea in a more enactive direction and toward a socially interactive interpretation of economic reasoning, by employing the concept of mental or cognitive institution understood in terms of the “socially extended mind” (Gallagher and Crisafi, 2009; Gallagher, 2013; Slaby and Gallagher, 2015).”

“Thinking is 12 For an overview of work on representations see Gallagher (2013, 2015) and Gangopadhyay (2011).”

“It suggests that just such practices allow for the establishment of cognitive institutions (Gallagher, 2013).”

“…of ecological validity in non-verbal communication and social cognition research (Kingstone, 2009; Marsh et al., 2009; De Jaegher et al., 2010; Konvalinka and Roepstorff, 2012; Risko et al., 2012, 2016; Skarratt et al., 2012; Gallagher, 2013; Pfeiffer et al., 2013b; Schilbach et al., 2013).”

“(Gallagher, 2013, p. 7; italics in the original) Legal systems, educational systems, but also systems of cultural conventions consist of tasks and roles that are inter-defined and that jointly make up these systems.”

“Beyond body extension, users can extend their cognitive performance [5,6] through the constant access to information [7], self-identity [8-12], and through the highly personal experience [13,14] tailoring it to their personal preferences [15].”

“…of thoughts and actions that are unintelligible without the concepts and procedural social routines associated with the law” (Slors 2019, p. 5; see Gallagher 2013).1 The practice of law is constituted by cognitive and communicative processes instantiated in the cooperative activities of many…”

“In a discussion of the extended mind in general, Gallagher (2013) has elaborated on the theme of cognitive extension by extending the mind to include processes and social practices that occur within cultural institutions, which he calls “mental institutions”. Mental institutions are defined as institutions that help u…”

“2 See, for example, recent work on the social embeddedness of knowledge, and extended cognition (Goldberg 2010; Gallagher 2013; Clark 2008). meaning of the work.”

“Although Chaser’s cognitive achievements look standard, a liberal extendedmind theorist could suggest that the social achievement of operant psychology forms part and parcel of extended social cognition (Gallagher, 2013) in this case.”

“9 It is important to stress that, in line with the socially extended mind framework (Gallagher, 2013), for Slaby (2014) the extension is not reduced to technological devices, but it also happens with other people and institutions.”

“Importantly, such judgements could in fact not be made solely inside the heads of individuals, and so the cognitive work is by definition extended and not just embedded: ‘the particular cognitive process of forming a legal judgment, is what it is only in that [legal] system’ (Gallagher 2013: 7).”

“…MET proposes to move beyond more conservative theories of extended mind (Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2008), by rejecting mental representations and content while shifting the gravitational centre of mind away from the individual (cf. Gallagher 2013, Hutto and Myin 2013:152, Di Paolo 2009).”

“That is, it could include interactions with social affordances, institutions, and collective practices (see Gallagher 2013, van Dijk and Rietveld 2017, Gallagher 2017 Ch. 3), accounting for the formation of more abstract D-intentions like those that have been mentioned above (saving for retirement…”

“Within the current debate, this, of course, takes situated views of affectivity for granted (see e.g., Gallagher, 2013; Colombetti, 2018; Stephan and Walter, 2020); and basic assumptions from this field are presupposed, most importantly that “there is no pre-formed, independently existing…”

“…in some cases constituted not only in social interactions with others, but also in ways that involve institutional structures, norms, and practices” (Gallagher, 2013, p. 4).8 8See also the related papers in the special issue on “Socially Extended Cognition” in Cognitive Systems Research 25–26…”

“These are clearly operative in the cultural domain, for example in the legal system (Gallagher 2013 ), but they get in the way of operational explanations aimed at the subpersonal level (Di Paolo et al. 2010 ).”

“The most thoroughly developed version of this approach is defended by Gallagher (2013) and builds upon the concept of social affordances (see Gallagher & Crisafi, 2009).”

“In this sense we can also talk about the self being distributed or extended to others and to the social and cultural groups and mental institutions (Gallagher, 2013) to which one belongs. As Linell (2009) underlines, distributed cognition is typically understood as distributed along the extended loop of body–brain sys…”

“…to all theorists of the embodied, embedded, extended and enactive mind (Clark 2006; De Jaegher and Di Paolo 2007; Spurrett and Cowley 2010; Gallagher 2013; Krueger 2013; Fusaroli et al. 2014). inquiry into habits of action and beliefs, into new gestures and words, into more or less shared…”

“…have also a significant cognitive role in the sense that, for instance, the legal systems with its vast panoply of codified substantive and procedural rules shape and direct our thinking about legal issues and thus is part and parcel of cognition (Gallagher, 2013; Gallagher and Crisafi, 2009).”

“Relational theories of cognition argue that cognition results from the dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment, including its social or institutional surroundings (Gallagher, 2013).”

“…technology may be viewed as affording a way to enhance or extend our mental possibilities, so our encounters with others, especially in the context of various institutional procedures and social practices may offer structures that support and extend our cognitive abilities (Gallagher, 2013, p.4).”

“By being able to detect the emotional responses that their actions produce in adults, children begin to acquire a basic knowledge of what types of actions are acceptable in the specific context of that interaction (Gallagher 2013; Kiverstein 2015; Satne 2014).”

“Apart from the discussion concerning the practical criteria identified by proponents of this approach to delimit the range of environmental factors that could be considered genuine extensions of our cognitive processes [46,47,49-52], this new theoretical paradigm seems to be particularly well suited to achieving a bet…”

“Various views fall into the socially extended category, including embedded cognition (Aydede & Robbins, 2009), embodied cognition (Gallagher, 2005), extended cognition (Clark, 2008; Gallagher, 2013), and enactive cognition (De Jaegher, Di Paolo, & Gallagher, 2010).”

“Secondly, we join others’ attempt to elucidate the way in which minds cannot only be “invaded” in ways that go against their interests, but also “shaped” in potentially beneficial ways (e.g., Gallagher, 2013; Maiese & Hanna, 2019).”

“As the emerging field of political philosophy of mind (Gallagher 2013; Maiese and Hanna 2019; Protevi 2009, 2022; Slaby 2016) shows, it is possible to deploy the tools that embodied cognitive science has been developing these past decades to make nuanced analysis of sociopolitical urgent issues.”

“…any causally relevant external influence over cognitive processes as integral to them); yet the notion of ownership invoked by Rowlands, and by others after him (e.g., Gallagher, 2013; Smart et al., 2022), is not only hard to define, but also phenomenological in nature and related to subjecthood.”

“…aims to show that we should consider the enactive approach as a better way of arriving at a full-blown picture of our interactions with social norms as compared to the proposal of socially extended and distributed cognition (as developed by e.g., Gallagher and Crisafi, 2009; Gallagher, 2013).”

“In affective sciences, the development of this idea is also related to the theories of human cognition that stress the socially extended and distributed nature of mental processes (Gallagher, 2013), including emotions (Krueger & Szanto, 2016; Krueger, 2014; Slaby, 2014; Huebner, 2011).”

“But to others, the notion of coupling implies externalism, which implies a deeper entanglement between the individual and environment, problematizing a sharp distinction between the two (Gallagher, 2013).”

“…on the one hand, of experiments with naturalistic choice environments and, on the other hand, of 8 A good starting point for this issue is provided in Gallagher (2013), Maiese (2018), Gallagher and Petracca (2024), and Frolov (2023, 2024). quasi-experimental and non-experimental methods.”

“In the context of digital humanism for the most part we take into consideration liberal interpretation by S. Gallagher (2013) who coined the term “social extended mind.””

“…embedded mind, focusing variously on political affect (Protevi 2009), harmful mind-shaping (Maiese and Hanna 2019), mind-extending or -impeding cognitive institutions (Gallagher 2013; 2020), oppressive things and their cognitive niches (Liao and Huebner 2021) or hostile scaffolding (Spurrett 2024).”

“A key insight of the extended mind thesis is that, in addition to space and objects, the “environment” can also encompass interactions with other people (Gallagher 2013).”

“…we agree that such external factors, such as institutions, originate anonymously or are generated in individual and intersubjective processes (Gallagher, 2013, 2020), or whether they are internalized traditions as husserl would contend, an explanation of habit requires that we say something…”

“…human cognitive nodes, organized and mediated by culture, have been proposed by several authors (e.g., Grove and Coward 2008; Coward and Grove 2011; Gallagher 2013; Muthukrishna and Henrich 2016; Read 2020), including models where culture and its products themselves are depicted as part of an…”

“The idea of extended cognition highlights cognition as inclusive of objects (Clark & Chalmers, 1998) and even other people (Gallagher, 2013).”

“Moreover, the mind can be socially extended to encompass the social, institutional, and cultural dimensions (Gallagher, 2013).”

“…be socialized has been appreciated already from the various perspectives of ecological psychology (Costall, 1995, 2012), philosophy (Dreyfus, 2005; McDowell, 2007), phenomenology (Gallagher, 2013; Kiverstein, 2015), and the cognitive sciences (Hutto & Kirchhoff, 2015; Kiverstein & Miller, 2015).”

“See Gallagher & Crisafi 2009; Gallagher, 2013.”

“Or in what can be called a socially extended mind, or institution (Gallagher 2013), or what Alessandro Duranti (2015) calls a socially distributed cognition (Duranti 2015: 219).”

“Clark (2010) created a set of criteria for external physical processes to be part of an individual’s cognitive process (Michaelian, 2012; Nakayama, 2013; Gallagher, 2013; Anderson, 2015; Greif, 2015): 1.”

“Along these lines, Gallagher (2013) notes how decision-making and emotions can be manipulated by the spatial arrangement of supermarkets, the structure of allowable questions in a courtroom trial, and the rituals and practices associated with religious institutions.”

“5 Some researchers like Tollefsen (2006), Gallagher and Crisafi (2009), Theiner et al. (2010), Cash (2013), Krueger (2013) and Gallagher (2013) have since explored social extensions, and while their approaches and claims obviously differ, there are at least three commonalities between them.”

“In contrast, we follow other enthusiasts for socially extended cognition (Wilson 2005; Tollefsen 2006; Hutchins 2010b; Sterelny 2010; Gallagher 2013) in seeking to explore interactions between different people, even when artifacts and objects are also part of the setting or cognitive ecology.”