Abstract This chapter explores how the notion of cognitive extension, which is the idea that cognitive processes can be extended through material resources, reshapes the way we think about musical consciousness. A brief review of recent work on cognitive extension by Andy Clark is provided and linked with Edwin Hutchins’s idea of distributed cognition. Examples of cognitive extension from...
This chapter champions the notion of ‘strange’, paradoxical, level-crossing feedback loops as a means to address the shortcomings of information-processing approaches to cognition, especially as applied to musical improvisation. It highlights the inherent challenges of studying improvisation and consciousness, and suggests ways that embodied and enactive theories of cognition, and emerging...