Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Content Preservation', 'Scepticism' and 'The Extended Mind'

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7 ideas

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 4. Belief / a. Beliefs

19743	A notebook counts as memory, if is available to consciousness and guides our actions [Clark/Chalmers]
	Full Idea: Beliefs are partly constituted by features of the environment. ....a notebook plays for one person the same role that memory plays for another. ...The information is reliably there, available to consciousness, and to guide action, just as belief is.
	From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §4)
	A reaction: This is the modern externalist approach to beliefs (along with broad content and external cognition systems). Not quite what we used to mean by beliefs, but we'll get used to it. I believe Plato wrote what it said in his books. Is memory just a role?

13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 1. External Justification

9382	Subjects may be unaware of their epistemic 'entitlements', unlike their 'justifications' [Burge]
	Full Idea: I call 'entitlement' (as opposed to justification) the epistemic rights or warrants that need not be understood by or even be accessible to the subject.
	From: Tyler Burge (Content Preservation [1993]), quoted by Paul Boghossian - Analyticity Reconsidered §III
	A reaction: I espouse a coherentism that has both internal and external components, and is mediated socially. In Burge's sense, animals will sometimes have 'entitlement'. I prefer, though, not to call this 'knowledge'. 'Entitled true belief' is good.

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 6. Anti-Individualism

6176	A mechanism can count as 'cognitive' whether it is in the brain or outside it [Clark/Chalmers, by Rowlands]
	Full Idea: If the operation of a brain implant inside the brain is a cognitive operation, why should it not count as a cognitive operation when it is outside the brain? There are many mechanisms which would count as cognitive if they were inside the subject.
	From: report of A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998]) by Mark Rowlands - Externalism Ch.9
	A reaction: This argues for externalism of the vehicle of thought, rather than its content. The idea is that there is no significant difference between remembering a phone number and writing it on a bit of paper. I find it hard to disagree.

19741	If something in the world could equally have been a mental process, it is part of our cognition [Clark/Chalmers]
	Full Idea: If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognising as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is part of the cognitive process.
	From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §2)
	A reaction: In some sense they are obviously right that our cognitive activities spill out into books, calculators, record-keeping. It seems more like an invitation to shift the meaning of the word 'mind', than a proof that we have got it wrong.

19742	Consciousness may not extend beyond the head, but cognition need not be conscious [Clark/Chalmers]
	Full Idea: Many identify the cognitive with the conscious, and it seems far from plausible that consciousness extends outside the head in these cases. But not every cognitive process, at least on standard usage, is a conscious process.
	From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §3)
	A reaction: This gives you two sorts of externalism about mind to consider. No, three, if you say there is extended conceptual content, then extended cognition processes, then extended consciousness. Depends what you mean by 'consciousness'.

16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / a. Memory is Self

19744	If a person relies on their notes, those notes are parted of the extended system which is the person [Clark/Chalmers]
	Full Idea: If Otto relies on his notebook, what this comes to is that Otto himself is best regarded as an extended system, a coupling of biological organism and external resources.
	From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §5)
	A reaction: You start to get giddy as you read this stuff. If two people constantly share a notebook, they begin to blend into one another. It inclines me towards a more 'animalist' view of the nature of a person or a self.

27. Natural Reality / A. Classical Physics / 1. Mechanics / a. Explaining movement

20365	We only see points in motion, and thereby infer movement [Rescher]
	Full Idea: We perceive motion only as isolated points, and then infer it without actually seeing it.
	From: Nicholas Rescher (Scepticism [1980], §112)
	A reaction: Note how writing suddenly becomes readable as you slow down on entering a railway station. Is that points suddenly becoming unified? This is an empiricist endorsement of Russell's 'at-at' account of motion.