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Moral Reasons Not to Posit Extended Cognitive Systems: a Reply to Farina and Lavazza

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Abstract

Given the metaphysical and explanatory stalemate between Embedded (EMB) and Extended (EXT) cognition, different authors proposed moral arguments to overcome such a deadlock in favor of EXT. Farina and Lavazza (2022) attribute to EXT and EMB a substantive moral content, arguing in favor of the former by virtue of its progressiveness and inclusiveness. In this treatment, I criticize four of their moral arguments. In Sect. 2, I focus on the argument from legitimate interventions (Sect. 2.1) and on the argument from extended agency (Sect. 2.2). Section 3 concerns the argument from better protection (Sect. 3.1) and the argument from better treatment (Sect. 3.2). Sections 4 and 5 are dedicated to counterarguments against each respectively. By distinguishing between EXT (intended as an ontological claim on the extension of cognition) and the extended view (intended as a moral heuristic), I argue that it is sufficient to use this second version for directly addressing and evaluating moral problems on normative grounds, independently of the causal (EMB) or constitutive (EXT) cognitive influence of the external resource on the agents’ minds. Moreover, I argue that the arguments and assumptions used by EXT theorists do not foster values of progressiveness and inclusiveness. To conclude, in Sect. 6, I show that the analysis of each argument converges on the conclusion that EXT does not have substantive moral content and implications per se, since they always depend on further assumptions.

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Notes

  1. Given that the difference is not relevant for the purposes of this treatment, I will use the notion of mind and cognition interchangeably.

  2. By “EXT” I mean the extended mind thesis and the extended cognition thesis combined. In this treatment, I distinguish EXT, intended as an ontological claim on the constitutive cognitive contribution of the external resources, from the extended view applied to the moral domain as a “moral veil of metabolic ignorance,” which is not committed to the ontological claim (see Section 2.1).

  3. ee Clark 2010 for the reply to Adams and Aizawa’s (2008) coupling-constitution fallacy.

  4. I borrow this notion from Kirsh (1995), who shows how cognitive agents deploy a variety of strategies for exploiting the spatial environment to support their cognitive activities.

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Acknowledgements

I am deeply thankful to Professor Mirko Farina, from Innopolis University. He introduced me to the extended cognition debate and its moral implications. I would have not been able to write my master’s thesis and this article without his precious insights, corrections, suggestions and feedbacks.

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  1. Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Guido Cassinadri

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Cassinadri, G. Moral Reasons Not to Posit Extended Cognitive Systems: a Reply to Farina and Lavazza. Philos. Technol. 35, 64 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-022-00560-0

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