Atypical Minds: the Cognitive Science of Difference and Potentialities
Cognitio 2015
Young researchers conference in cognitive science
Montréal, June 8th, 9th and 10th 2015
Can an extended mind be diseased? On active externalism and mental illness
Jean-Charles Pelland.
Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? Traditionally, answers to this question have limited themselves to the physical boundaries of the brain: whatever minds are, their physical extension ends where our brains do. In their seminal 1998 paper The Extended Mind, Andy Clark and David Chalmers question this traditional “skull n’ bones” conception of the bounds of cognition. In a bold philosophical move, Clark and Chalmers use a number of compelling examples to argue that paradigm cases of human cognition could in some cases be constituted by systems that include things outside our heads.
One oft-discussed example proposed by Clark and Chalmers involves a fictional person named Otto. Affected by Alzheimer’s and its effects on his in-brain memory, Otto is forced to rely on a notebook to orient his actions, such as making his way to a museum. Clark and Chalmers argue that, to find out where the museum is, if Otto can consult his notebook the same way that a person without Alzheimer’s would consult their memory, then his notebook plays the same information-processing role as would a typical biological memory, and should as such be considered part of Otto’s cognitive system. Clark and Chalmers claim that in cases like Otto’s the person and the external entity form a two-way coupled system that can be considered just as cognitive as a traditional biological cognitive system, and they provide some “glue and trust” conditions meant to identify structural isomorphisms that allow us to identify which external items can count as legitimate members of cognitive systems.
While this ‘active’ externalism has been challenged by a number of writers (e.g. Adams and Aizawa 2001, 2008; Wilson 2004, 2005), few have based their arguments on the implications of this proposal on how to (re-) conceive of mental dysfunction. And yet, many questions come to mind concerning how the notion of an extended mind relates to mental illness. For example, if a person with Alzheimer’s disease can be as functional as a biologically healthy person by relying on a very sophisticated notebook, in which sense is the person’s mind diseased? Can a faulty brain-world coupling be considered a type of mental illness? Can external couplings be as reliable as biological ones? If a brain is diseased, can it be a part of a disease-free cognitive system?