Chicago Pragmatism and the Extended Mind Theory. Mead and Dewey on the Nature of Cognition

Cognition is not confined to the brain but emerges from the dynamic interaction between an organism and its environment, according to both early 20th-century Chicago pragmatists and recent cognitive science. The paper examines how George H. Mead and John Dewey anticipated key ideas of embodied and extended mind theory, particularly their treatment of perception and action as interdependent phases within an organic circuit. Mead's four-stage theory of the act—impulse, perception, manipulation, and consummation—reveals surprising similarities with contemporary extended mind theory, which also views cognition as an objective relation between organism and environment rather than an exclusively internal process.

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Abstract

The goal of this paper is twofold. First, it examines the pragmatic ramifications of recent research in certain areas of cognitive science (embodied mind theory, extended mind theory). Second, it shows how the Chicago pragmatists (George H. Mead, John Dewey) not only envisioned these findings but also how, within certain strains of cognitive science, their work is explicitly appreciated for important preliminary insights which help us interpret the outcomes of current research. The argumentative line of the paper revolves around Mead’s and Dewey’s treatment of the relation between perception and action. Cognition, in the view of the Chicago pragmatists, is not divisible into atomistic, ontologically disconnected units but rather should be seen as an organic circuit within which stimuli and responses are mutually interdependent phases of an ongoing goal-directed active involvement of the organism in the environmental structures. According to Mead and Dewey, as well as the presently burgeoning branch of cognitive science called the “extended mind theory,” cognition is not something that takes place exclusively in our heads but should be rather seen as an objective relation between organism and the environment. On the background of Mead’s theory of the act (with its four stages – impulse, perception, manipulation, and consummation) the author points to certain surprising similarities between the pragmatists’ treatment of the notion of cognition and ideas recently suggested by defenders of the extended mind theory.