Extended mind and after: socially extended mind and actor-network.
Integrative psychological & behavioral science March 1, 2014 Tetsuya Kono
The extended mind thesis (EM) holds that the mind includes not just the brain but the whole system of brain, body, and environment. Some philosophers and psychologists have recently extended this idea to social cognition (socially extended mind, or SEM). However, EM/SEM theory struggles to account for interactions involving opposition, antagonism, or conflict, and tends to treat the environment as passive or static, overlooking how non-human elements can direct and regulate human subjects. Actor-network theory (ANT), developed by Latour and Callon, is more persuasive on these points while sharing important ideas with EM/SEM. The author concludes that EM/SEM is best understood as a special case of actor-network—a system controllable by a human agent alone—and that understanding collective behavior requires studying the actor-networks in which individuals are situated.