Abstract
Arguments for the ‘extended mind’ seem to suggest the possibility of ‘extended knowers’—agents whose specifically epistemic virtues may depend on systems whose boundaries are not those of the brain or the biological organism. Recent discussions of this possibility invoke insights from virtue epistemology, according to which knowledge is the result of the application of some kind of cognitive skill or ability on the part of the agent. In this paper, I argue that there is a fundamental tension in these appeals to cognitive virtue. The tension centers on the presence of a tool or technology as an object of awareness, hence something apt for epistemically virtuous engagement on the part of the agent. I highlight a dilemma: the better something looks as a non-biological element of the machinery of mind, the worse it looks as a potential object of any specifically epistemic skill or ability on the part of the agent. The tension is resolved, I argue, by thinking about sub-personal forms of epistemic hygiene. I examine one such form (rooted in the vision of the ‘predictive brain’), and show how it sits neatly with the vision of the extended mind. I end by asking what we can still reasonably expect, given this more complex sub-personal story, by way of agent-level cognitive hygiene.
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Notes
Thanks to an anonymous referee for encouraging me to clarify the shape of the argument at this point.
The proper functioning of these non-conscious epistemic resources is, however, plausibly a pre-condition for the proper functioning of their conscious counterparts. Thus agents whose basic precision-assignment mechanisms malfunction will, it has been suggested, be prone to both sensory hallucinations and delusions (see Fletcher and Frith 2009). Sub-personal epistemic virtues may thus provide the necessary bedrock for conscious, personal-level epistemic achievements.
Sissi may or may not constitute a case of extended cognition (it will depend on how you feel about temporary, highly environment-specific brain-body-world coalitions—contrast Otto who always carries the notebook). But it is easy to imagine Sissi-style functionality being implemented using a constantly-carried or worn resource—e.g. a ‘phone that gives a gentle (potentially below conscious awareness) buzz whenever some particular kind of shop is nearby, so that over time the agent starts to feel they ‘just know’ when to linger in that area or explore a new back-alley. Such technologies have already been explored using ‘FeelSpace’ belts that constantly channel information about the position of magnetic north (Nagel et al. 2005).
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Adam Carter, Orestis Palermos, Duncan Pritchard, Mikkel Gerken, Sandy Goldberg, and an anonymous referee, for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this material. This work was supported by the AHRC-funded ‘Extended Knowledge’ project, based at the Eidyn research centre, University of Edinburgh.
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Clark, A. What ‘Extended Me’ knows. Synthese 192, 3757–3775 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0719-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0719-z