“The extended mind” and “The bounds of cognition”

Introduction

Cognitive science is the study of mental processes such as reasoning, memory, and the processing of perception. It is necessarily an interdisciplinary approach that includes fields such as psychology, linguistics, and neurology. Neurons can have hundreds of potential connections (and thus states). Human mental experience can be effectively mapped as relationships between symbols (words, images, and so forth) that correspond to physical states. This paper explores the proposition presented by Andy Clark and David Chalmers in research paper titled as 'The extended mind'. This paper also examines the responses to their argument given by Fred Adams and Ken Aizawa.

Statement of Clark and Chalmers' Thesis

Andy Clark and David Chalmers highlight that under certain circumstances, cognition and mental states extend into the world. They highlighted that while some mental states and experiences can be defined internally; there are many other factors in which the processes of attribution of significance include some components located in the outside external environment (Clark, 46).

Explication of Main Arguments

According to the creators of the extended mind thesis, these external elements that are part of the social and physical environments are literally part of the cognitive systems responsible for these processes. Consequently, some cognitive processes should no longer be understood as constrained by the physical limits of the brain (Marraffa, 54). On the contrary, these processes emerge, develop and extend over interactive networks that integrate and synchronize functional and strategic brain, body and the physical and social world. A human characteristic are ascertained to continuing use of sophisticated mental processing tools (Adams, 17). Human beings through the use of instruments will transcend physical objects as extensions of himself and his intentions. Culture has its own impact, but always ties to the base camp of nature, with its impulses and demands.

Clark and Chalmers propose a concept called the principle of parity to determine true cases of extended mind. This principle states that if a person faces a certain task, one part of a mind process that functions as key component would not hesitate to accept it as part of the cognitive process and it integrates the role world in part of cognitive process (Clark, 98). The human mind expands and becomes an extended mind.  Human brain is not just a mind in a body: it is greatly influenced by the society in which that body and mind are born, develop and participate inexorably (Clark, 101). It reflects on how people perceive and represent external reality and then act on it. Right between that perception and that action, human mind processing capacity is confined and enable a person to think at the interface with the outside world.

The concept of extended mind expounded by David Chalmers and Andy Clark put in a new relationship chain that is, conventionally, from perception to action. They highlight that cognition is not composed exclusively of what is inside our head, but it takes elements of the environment with which acts are performed. All resources in the mind perform computations: tools without which one's mind and processes in a particular time and circumstance ...