Memento’s Revenge: The Extended Mind, Extended
The MIT Press eBooks May 21, 2010 DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/9780262014038.003.0003 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Citations | 260 |
| Key points | Argues that the extended mind thesis survives objections about derived content, natural kinds, and agentive control, using Memento to illustrate how external traces can ground beliefs. |
Abstract
This chapter analyzes the movie Memento and how the questions it poses is analogous with the essay “The Extended Mind.” The essay claims that mental states, including states of believing, could be grounded in physical traces that remained firmly outside the mind, as long as a few simple conditions are met. This chapter attempts to answer objections to this argument—especially those focusing on the contrast between the intrinsic content of neural symbols and the merely derived content of external inscriptions, those focusing on the demarcation of scientific domains via natural kinds, and those focusing on the ultimate locus of agentive control and the nature of perception versus introspection. This chapter begins the discussion through the presentation of the original argument from Clark and Chalmers.