The dynamically extended mind

The extended mind hypothesis claims that cognitive processes can extend beyond the brain into the body and environment, but critics argue that coupling to external elements does not make them part of the cognitive system—a charge called the coupling-constitution fallacy. This paper uses an evolutionary robotics approach with a minimal model of two acoustically coupled agents to respond. The interaction as a whole has properties irreducible to the isolated agents, and the coupled agents' neural dynamics exhibit formal properties impossible in isolation. The work shows that the fallacy rests on a misunderstanding of how nonlinear interactions can be constitutive in dynamical systems.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The extended mind hypothesis has stimulated much interest in cognitive science. However, its core claim, i.e. that the process of cognition can extend beyond the brain via the body and into the environment, has been heavily criticized. A prominent critique of this claim holds that when some part of the world is coupled to a cognitive system this does not necessarily entail that the part is also constitutive of that cognitive system. This critique is known as the “coupling-constitution fallacy”. In this paper we respond to this reductionist challenge by using an evolutionary robotics approach to create a minimal model of two acoustically coupled agents. We demonstrate how the interaction process as a whole has properties that cannot be reduced to the contributions of the isolated agents. We also show that the neural dynamics of the coupled agents has formal properties that are inherently impossible for those neural networks in isolation. By keeping the complexity of the model to an absolute minimum, we are able to illustrate how the coupling-constitution fallacy is in fact based on an inadequate understanding of the constitutive role of nonlinear interactions in dynamical systems theory.