The New Science of the Mind

1. The Cartesian Mind: An Internalist Legacy

What unites these differing faces of Cartesian cognitive science is an unquestioned—indeed seemingly banal—assumption: whatever else is true of mental processes, whether they are abstract formal processes or patterns of activity in a neural network (or both)—they are processes that occur inside the head of the thinking organism.

Traditional view. For centuries, the dominant understanding of the mind, particularly in scientific inquiry, has been rooted in a Cartesian framework. This perspective posits that mental processes—perception, memory, thought, reasoning—are exclusively internal, residing within the brain. Whether conceived as abstract "programs" or neural network activations, the mind's operations are seen as confined to the skull.

Scientific tasks. Traditional cognitive science, in its classical guise, focused on identifying these internal programs (cognitive psychology) and understanding their implementation in the brain (cognitive neuroscience). Even with shifts to connectionist models, the core assumption remained: cognition is fundamentally a brain-bound phenomenon. This internalist bias, inherited from Descartes's dualism (mind as a nonphysical substance located in the brain), persisted even as the mind was re-conceived as purely physical.

The "ghost in the machine" persists. While modern science rejected Descartes's nonphysical "ghost," it retained the idea that the mind operates solely within the "machine" of the body, specifically the brain. This unchallenged assumption forms the bedrock of what is termed "Cartesian cognitive science," setting the stage for any truly "new science of the mind" to fundamentally challenge this internalist dogma.

2. Beyond the Brain: The 4E Conception of Mind

The new way of thinking about the mind is inspired by, and organized around, not the brain but some combination of the ideas that mental processes are (1) embodied, (2) embedded, (3) enacted, and (4) extended.

A radical departure. Emerging from diverse fields like robotics, psychology, and neuroscience, a "new science of the mind" challenges the Cartesian internalist view. This "4e conception" proposes that mental processes are not solely brain-bound but are fundamentally shaped by and integrated with the body and environment. It represents a return to older, renegade philosophical ideas, now bolstered by empirical evidence.

Defining the 4Es:

• Embodied: Mental processes are partly constituted by wider bodily structures and processes (beyond the brain).
• Embedded: Mental processes are designed to function only in tandem with a specific external environment, relying on "environmental scaffolding."
• Enacted: Mental processes are constituted by an organism's actions on the world and the world's reciprocal actions.
• Extended: Mental processes are not exclusively inside the head but literally extend into the organism's environment.

Off-loading cognition. A core motivation for the 4e view is the "barking dog principle": why do work yourself if the environment can do some of it for you? Humans constantly offload cognitive burdens onto external structures, from GPS devices to written language. This distribution of tasks reduces the complexity required of the "naked biological memory," suggesting that cognition is a hybrid process involving both internal and external elements.

3. The Amalgamated Mind: Embodied and Extended Cognition

The new science will be based on the idea of mental processes as amalgamations.

Refining the 4Es. While the 4e conception offers a powerful alternative, not all its strands are equally anti-Cartesian or mutually compatible. Through careful analysis, the truly radical and foundational elements coalesce into two core theses: the embodied mind and the extended mind. The "embedded mind" often serves as a neo-Cartesian fallback, acknowledging environmental dependence without embracing constitution. The "enacted mind," in some interpretations, also leans towards dependence rather than full extension.

Composition, not just dependence. The crucial distinction lies between dependence and constitution. The embodied mind claims some cognitive processes are partly constituted by wider bodily structures (e.g., ear distance for sound localization). The extended mind claims some cognitive processes are partly composed of actions on environmental structures (e.g., manipulating a notebook for memory). Both are ontic claims about what mental processes are, not just how they are understood or what they depend on.

Process, not state, externalism. The most defensible version of the extended mind focuses on cognitive processes rather than cognitive states. For instance, Otto's manipulation of his notebook is part of his process of remembering, not that the notebook is his belief. This "amalgamated mind" views cognitive processes as hybrid, combining neural, bodily, and environmental structures and processes, rejecting the notion that cognition is solely brain-bound.

4. The Crucial Question: What Makes a Process Cognitive?

If defenders of the extended mind can provide an adequate criterion of the cognitive and can demonstrate that the external processes they regard as cognitive satisfy this criterion, then there is no substance to the charge that they confuse constitution and mere coupling.

Addressing the critics. The amalgamated mind faces significant objections, including the "differences argument" (external processes are too unlike internal ones), the "coupling-constitution fallacy" (confusing causal interaction with actual constitution), and "cognitive bloat" (uncontrolled expansion of what counts as cognitive). All these objections ultimately hinge on the lack of a clear, defensible "mark of the cognitive"—a criterion for when a process genuinely qualifies as mental.

The proposed criterion. To overcome these challenges, a four-condition criterion for cognitive processes is essential. This criterion, derived from analyzing established cognitive science practices (even internalist ones like Marr's theory of vision), provides a sufficient condition for a process to be deemed cognitive. It aims to be conservative in its origins but radical in its implications for the location of cognition.

The four conditions:

• Information Processing: The process involves the manipulation and transformation of information-bearing structures.
• Proper Function: Its function is to make previously unavailable information accessible to the subject or subsequent processing.
• Representational State: This is achieved by producing a representational state (with nonderived content) in the subject.
• Ownership: The process belongs to the subject of that representational state.

This criterion allows the amalgamated mind to argue that hybrid processes, combining internal and external elements, can indeed satisfy the requirements for being genuinely cognitive, rather than mere causal accompaniments.

5. Ownership: The Unsung Problem for All Theories of Mind

The problem of ownership is an equal opportunity problem that does not discriminate between Cartesians and anti-Cartesians.

Beyond spatial containment. The "mark of the cognitive" criterion's fourth condition—ownership—is the most challenging, yet it's crucial for both traditional and extended views of mind. The intuitive idea that a cognitive process is "mine" because it's inside my head is flawed. Just as digestive processes can extend outside the body while remaining "mine," cognitive processes aren't owned simply by spatial containment. Ownership is about integration into an individual's functional life, not mere location.

The problem of bloat revisited. Without a robust understanding of ownership, the "cognitive bloat" objection resurfaces: if a telescope or calculator helps me perceive or compute, are its internal processes cognitive? The distinction between personal-level (information available to the subject) and subpersonal-level (information available only to subsequent processing operations) cognition is key. While subpersonal bloat might be acceptable (e.g., a calculator's internal workings are subpersonally cognitive when integrated into my task), personal-level bloat is not.

Derivative authority. At the personal level, we often associate ownership with epistemic authority—our capacity to know and be responsible for our thoughts and actions. However, this authority is often a symptom of something deeper, arising when our normal, absorbed coping with the world is interrupted. This suggests that epistemic authority is a derivative indicator of ownership, not its fundamental basis. The true nature of ownership must be sought at a more primordial level, one that underpins both our conscious agency and our subpersonal processes.

6. Intentionality as World Disclosure: A New Foundation

The essence of intentionality—of intentional-directedness toward the world—is, therefore, disclosing or revealing activity.

Beyond empirical awareness. The common view treats experiences as "empirical items"—objects of which we are aware. However, a rich philosophical tradition (Frege, Husserl, Sartre) reveals that experiences also possess a transcendental aspect: that which enables objects to appear to us, rather than being an object itself. This non-empirical core is where the true nature of intentionality—the mind's directedness toward objects—resides.

The dual nature of "sense." Frege's concept of "sense" (Sinn) highlights this duality: it can be an object of apprehension (empirical) or that which determines reference (transcendental). In its transcendental role, sense is noneliminable; it's what allows any intentional act to have an object, yet it cannot, in that act, be an object itself. Husserl's "Auffassungsinn" and Sartre's "nothingness" similarly point to this non-objective, yet essential, core of consciousness.

Intentionality as revealing. This noneliminable, transcendental core of experience is what allows the world to be presented to us in specific ways—as falling under certain "empirical modes of presentation" (aspects like "red" or "shiny"). Therefore, the very essence of intentionality is not merely being about something, but actively disclosing or revealing the world to a subject. This fundamental understanding of intentionality provides the bedrock for justifying the amalgamated mind.

7. Consciousness "Travels Through": The Vehicles of Disclosure

Phenomenologically, the consciousness of the blind person passes all the way through the cane to the world.

Causal vs. constitutive disclosure. Intentionality, as world disclosure, manifests in two ways: constitutive disclosure (the content of an experience or thought logically determines how an object is revealed) and casual disclosure (the material vehicles of that content causally bring about the revelation). The amalgamated mind is concerned with these vehicles of causal disclosure, which are not limited to the brain.

Beyond the skull. The idea of consciousness "traveling through" its material realizations means that the act of revealing the world doesn't stop at the brain or even the skin. Merleau-Ponty's blind person, using a cane, doesn't experience the cane as an object, but rather experiences the world through the cane. Similarly, our consciousness passes through our hands, eyes, and even external tools to engage directly with the world. This "traveling through" is not just a phenomenological observation but reflects the fundamental structure of intentional directedness.

Extraneural vehicles of perception. Our perceptual disclosure of the world involves numerous activities beyond mere neural processing:

• Saccadic eye movements: Rapid, unconscious eye movements that actively shape what information is gathered from a visual scene, revealing specific aspects based on task.
• Sensorimotor activity: Probing and exploratory actions (e.g., eye flicks, head turns) that identify "sensorimotor contingencies," allowing us to perceive a rich, stable world without needing detailed internal representations.
• Manipulation of the optic array: Our movements transform the ambient light array, making invariant information available, which is crucial for perceiving object layout and orientation.

These activities are not objects of awareness but vehicles of awareness, part of the causal means by which the world is disclosed.

8. The Amalgamated Mind: An Obvious Consequence of Disclosure

Once we accept this, the theses of embodied and extended cognition are not weird at all. They are stunningly obvious.

Cognition as world disclosure. The model of intentionality as revealing activity extends seamlessly from perception to cognition. Just as perception discloses objects, so too does thought, memory, and reasoning. When Otto consults his notebook, his manipulation of the external information is part of the vehicle of his cognitive disclosure. It's a means by which the museum's location is revealed to him in memory. His consciousness "travels through" the notebook, just as Inga's travels through her neural states.

Reconciling embodied and extended. The "weirdness" of embodied and extended cognition stems from a mistaken, internalist view of intentionality. If intentionality is fundamentally world disclosure, then its vehicles—the means by which this disclosure occurs—are naturally diverse. They can be neural, bodily, or environmental. The model of intentionality as revealing activity provides a unified framework where both embodied and extended cognition are not just compatible but are natural, expected implications.

Solving the ownership and bloat problems. A cognitive process belongs to a subject if it discloses the world to that subject. Personal-level processes disclose directly; subpersonal processes contribute to this. The "mineness" of an experience is built into its "what-it-is-like-ness"—it's disclosed for me. This relational nature of disclosure resolves the bloat problem: processes in a telescope or calculator are only cognitive when they are actively part of a subject's world-disclosing activity. Without a subject's engagement, there is no cognition, only inert information processing. The amalgamated mind, therefore, is not a strange new science, but a logical consequence of a proper understanding of intentionality.

Last updated: December 29, 2025